Daddy's Boy

by T C Heffer

  Pete nods and moves closer again, hiding in the other side of Jeremy's neck this time. "My Dad found out about us. One of my neighbours saw us leaving for the diner and told him. He was waiting for me when you dropped me off."

  "And I'm guessing from you showing up in tears that he didn't take it very well."

  "Uh-uh…"

  Jeremy rubs his hands up and down Pete's back. "I'm sorry, baby."

  "He looked so horrified," Pete whispers.

  "Do I want to know about what?"

  "Pretty much all of it. You being older…the Daddy thing… God, he seemed to really hate that I wanted that." Fresh tears spring to Pete's eyes as he relives it. "It was like he hated me."

  They stand there for another few moments, and then Jeremy picks Pete up in a bridal carry and brings him into the living room. He sits down on the sofa with Pete cradled safe in his lap. "Tell me everything."

  It's tough, but Pete manages to relay his conversation with his Dad to Jeremy. That Jeremy runs his fingers through his hair the entire time helps immensely.

  "It's unfortunate that it had to go that way," the man says once Pete has finished. "But I still believe that it'll turn out okay in the end."

  Pete closes his eyes, his face still tucked into Daddy's neck. "How d'you figure that?"

  "You said he was drinking, right?"

  "Uh-huh. Whiskey."

  "Do you know how much he'd had before I dropped you off?"

  "He wasn't drunk-drunk," Pete replies, "but I don't think it was his first glass either."

  Jeremy hums and leans the side of his head atop his boy's. "Well, there's one reason I'm sure right there. I don't think he'd have reacted like he did if he was completely sober. And as much as I know it sucked, baby, you have to keep in mind that your Dad only just found out about us a few hours ago."

  "I know, but…"

  "No buts," Jeremy says, stern but still soft. "Think about it from his point of view for a moment. He finds out that his eighteen-year-old son—who's still in high school, I might add—is seeing a forty-one-year-old man. That would be tough for any parent to swallow, even with the knowledge that their kid was a legal adult. I don't know firsthand because I don't have kids of my own, but I'm sure that, no matter how old you get, part of your Dad will always see you as his young child, with missing baby teeth and all. He's just trying to protect you and not doing a great job of it because it's all so fresh. Give it time, baby. I'm sure your Dad will come around."

  "But what about the other stuff?" Pete asks, not ready to let it go yet. "Any reminder of the type of relationship we have is just gonna weird him out again. If he saw us acting like this…"

  "We'll figure it out," Jeremy says with certainty. "Even if Adam never really gets it, that's okay. He doesn't have to. All he has to do is accept that it's what you want and not judge you for it. I've been friends with your Dad for a few years now, and I probably have a different perspective than you because he's not my parent. I have more distance. It might take a while, but trust me when I tell you that he'll get there."

  "And until then?" Pete asks, his voice small.

  Jeremy kisses Pete's forehead. "I'll take care of you, baby. Until your Dad comes around, and always."

  The rational part of Pete thinks it's a bit too soon to promise always, but he's in such a vulnerable state that he clings to the promise with everything he has.

  "Okay, Daddy," he says.

  Jeremy draws him out of his hiding place and gently brings their lips together. "Good boy," he says after a short kiss. "Did you bring some things?"

  Pete nods. "I left them in my car."

  "C'mon, then. Let's get you settled in."

  Pete gets off of Daddy's lap and sticks close to him as they head outside. He picks up his laptop and the power cords, but Daddy grabs both of his bags before he can pick them up too. The man shoots him a reassuring smile and puts a hand on the small of Pete's back as they go back inside the house. The door closing behind them carries a sense of finality to it, but Daddy wisely doesn't give him any time to dwell on it. Instead, Jeremy prompts him to put his laptop down on the coffee table in the living room and then to accompany him upstairs.

  Once they're on the first floor, Jeremy enters the master bedroom and sets Pete's bags on top of his dresser. He unzips the duffel, takes stock of the clothes Pete hastily packed and then gets to work clearing some space in his drawers. Pete just stands next to him with the iciness in his chest slowly thawing, warmed by the thought of them cohabiting. It's fast, just like the promise of always that Daddy made him a few minutes ago, but Pete doesn't mind it. Even if him living with Jeremy only lasts as long as it takes his Dad to accept his choices, he'll enjoy every second of it.

  Just the idea of going to sleep sheltered in Daddy's arms every night and then waking up next to him every morning has butterflies proliferating in his stomach.

  "There, all done," Jeremy announces, shutting the final drawer.

  "You're sure you don't mind?" Pete asks.

  "I don't mind even a little bit, baby," Daddy tells him, giving him an Eskimo kiss. "Is it sooner than I thought it'd be? Yes, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I have my gorgeous boy in my home, in my bed every night. What could be bad about that?"

  "Well, when you put it that way…"

  Jeremy grins and moves them back out of the bedroom. "Since you're going to be living here for a while at least, I think it's time I gave you a proper tour. Does that sound good?"

  Pete is excited. "Yeah, Daddy."

  "And then later tonight, I've got something planned that I think will make you feel even better. It's something I haven't done in a very long time."

  The best guess Pete is able to make is that it's something sexual. "You're not gonna tell me what it is, are you?"

  Jeremy winks at him. "Nope. You'll just have to wait and see, baby. I will tell you that it'll be worth it, though."

  Pete pouts but doesn't argue. He's already looking forward to it.

  — CHAPTER ELEVEN —

  - Sunday, December 1st, 2013 -

  As Pete is given the full tour of Jeremy's house, he's impressed. He thought it was a nice place before, but apparently he knew nothing. It's bigger than he thought it was, and every inch of space is utilised perfectly. It seems a bit much for just one man, but Pete isn't judging at all. He'd say it's somewhere between his own house and the houses on the more affluent side of town. Pete has always liked his and his Dad's home just fine—it's big enough and feels homey, holding a lot of good memories from his childhood—but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't excited to live in Jeremy's house for a while.

  They begin on the first floor, Jeremy's hand a constant presence on the small of Pete's back. He's shown the two guest bedrooms and the guest bathroom, and then Jeremy leads him into the study.

  The walls are painted a light cream colour, contrasting pleasantly with the dark hardwood floor and the ornate wooden desk that's opposite the door. In the corner are a few metal filing cabinets positioned side by side, and the wall directly behind the desk is taken up entirely by tall bookcases stuffed with books, putting the ones Jeremy has in his bedroom to shame. At first, Pete thinks that the books are just more things that Jeremy reads in his free time, but upon closer inspection, he discovers that every single book is related in some way to practicing law.

  "You're a lawyer?" Pete asks. He's surprised, and then he feels bad that he never asked what Jeremy did for a living before today.

  "I am," Jeremy confirms, scanning his eyes over the books too.

  "I'm impressed. That's a tough job."

  "It can be, but I like it well enough."

  Pete looks away from the books and his gaze lands on several diplomas on the wall to his left, each framed and displayed equidistant from each other. The one right in the middle is from Yale University. "Jesus…"

  Jeremy frowns and follows Pete's gaze to see what's wrong. "What?"

  Pete gestures to the diploma that caught his eye. "You went
to Yale?"

  The frown doesn't clear. "Yes?"

  "I'm kinda shocked. No offence. That's a very good school, and isn't it super hard to get into?"

  "It is," Jeremy responds. "If I'm remembering it right, I think I heard once that only about seven percent of the people who applied the same year as I did actually got admission."

  Pete gapes. "Okay, wow… How the hell did you even afford that? There's no way my Dad and I could."

  A shadow passes briefly over Jeremy's face, there and gone in an instant. "My family was always well-off. My parents would've been able to afford to send me there if they were still alive, but then the break-in happened, and…"

  Pete grabs Jeremy's hand and squeezes it. He regrets inadvertently bringing up painful memories again, but he doesn't change the subject; Jeremy won't talk if he doesn't want to.

  "After the break-in, Jess and I got hefty payouts, both from the home-owner's insurance because of everything they stole or broke, and from the life insurance policies our Mom set up. It was a lot of money, and I used some of that to pay for Yale. I might've been able to get a scholarship to make it less expensive, but I decided not to."

  "Why?"

  "Because I could afford to pay for it myself and then some. In my eyes, that scholarship money was better off going to someone who wasn't as financially lucky as I was."

  "Makes sense," Pete says with a nod.

  "Besides, that money came from something terrible. I would've much rather had my family still be alive, but since that wasn't possible, I wanted to do something good with it. Help other people, y'know? That way, I didn't feel as awful having all those numbers just sitting in my bank account like they were mocking me."

  Pete moves to sit on the edge of Jeremy's desk. "Are you part of a firm or something?"

  Jeremy sits next to him. "I was when I was living in New York a few years ago, but since I've been back in Leraine, I've been working freelance. The King name still carries enough weight around here and my reputation is good enough that I get a decent number of clients. I can pretty much choose who I want to take on too, and more often than not, I'll choose to work with someone who's down on their luck and either charge on a scale or help them pro bono."

  Coming from anyone else, what Jeremy is saying would sound boastful, like they were only doing such things so they could talk about them and get adulation from others. From the expression on Jeremy's face and the tone of his voice, Pete knows that isn't the case here. No, Jeremy truly believes in what he's doing. It isn't to fuel his ego at all. Pete feels even more in awe of him than he did before.

  "You're a really good person," he opines softly.

  Jeremy shoots him a small smile. "I try."

  "I'll have to see you in a suit sometime." Pete waggles his eyebrows. "I'm sure it'd look super sexy."

  "Mmm, maybe. If you behave."

  Pete smirks. "Oh, I'll be very good, Daddy. The bestest," he adds, playing up his role.

  "The bestest, huh?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "C'mon, you," Jeremy says after a moment, breaking the sexual tension. He gets up and brings Pete with him. "I've still got to give you the rest of the tour."

  Pete has seen most of the ground floor before, but never long enough to really take in all the details. He pays more attention now and continues to be impressed as Jeremy takes him in a circle through the living room, the kitchen, the laundry room, the dining room and finally into the foyer again. Pete thinks that's it, but he's proven wrong when Jeremy brings him into the hallway that connects the foyer with the kitchen. They stop in front of a door that's built into the side of the staircase.

  "And this is the basement," Jeremy says, reaching for the handle with the hand not holding Pete's.

  Down another set of stairs, at first all Pete sees is darkness, but then Jeremy switches on the lights and he discovers that it's not a regular basement. Sure, the left wall has a few boxes stored there, each one of them labelled meticulously, but the rest of the space is taken up by various exercise equipment that looks ridiculously expensive and well-maintained.

  "This is my home gym," Jeremy explains unnecessarily. "I come down here a few times a week to stay in shape. Some of the guys use it from time to time too."

  Pete looks up at him. "The guys?"

  "The other guys you met at the basketball game," Jeremy elaborates. "Your Dad's been here once or twice too."

  "Oh, right." Pete breezes past the mention of his Dad, not wanting his mood to be brought back down. "That's generous of you."

  "Well, it's better than them paying gym fees, and it's no skin off my teeth. Plus, it's kinda fun to have a workout partner every now and then, someone to spot you."

  This fills Pete's head with images of him and Jeremy working out together down here, getting all hot and sweaty…

  Damn.

  His cock beginning to chub up, Pete walks away from Jeremy so that the man doesn't notice and does a cursory inspection of all the equipment. He doesn't know what half of it is for, but he easily recognises the bench press and the state-of-the-art treadmill. There's also a metal bar bolted to the ceiling with two grips on it that he assumes Jeremy uses for pull-ups. He's tempted to test it out himself but refrains because of how scrawny he is. He doubts he'd manage more than a couple before he had to give up, and he'd rather not embarrass himself like that in front of Jeremy.

  "So…what do you think?" said man enquires after letting him look things over for a few more minutes. His voice is hopeful, like he wants Pete's approval.

  Pete has no problem giving it. "It's awesome!" he says with a grin, bounding back over to Jeremy and wrapping his arms around his neck.

  "You can try some of this stuff out sometime, if you want," Jeremy offers, placing his big hands on Pete's hips.

  "Maybe," Pete says. He's a little unsure because of his aforementioned scrawniness, but he trusts Jeremy not to judge him. Jeremy has already seen him naked several times, after all, so he knows what Pete has to work with. "You'll have to show me how, though."

  "It'll be my pleasure, baby."

  After sharing a quick kiss, Jeremy guides Pete back up to the ground floor and checks the time on his phone. "I've got an important call from a client of mine coming soon," he says regretfully. "I'll have to take that in my study and it might take a while. Are you going to be alright alone here while I do that?"

  Pete nods. "I'm sure I can find something to keep me busy until you're done. Maybe I'll read one of the books in your bedroom."

  "Our bedroom," Jeremy corrects him with a grin.

  "Right." Pete blinks a few times, taken aback. He didn't want to be presumptuous, but since Jeremy said it first… "Our bedroom."

  "If you don't end up finding a book," Jeremy says, pushing Pete gently in the direction of the living room, "you can probably occupy yourself with this instead."

  Pete follows Jeremy's finger to the entertainment centre, to the shelves that are below the section housing the TV. In one of them is a PlayStation 4, which Pete never noticed before because the black of the system blended into the shadow of the shelf. "You play games?"

  "Yeah," Jeremy responds happily. "Why? Does that surprise you?"

  It probably shouldn't, but Pete has to admit that it does. "Sorry. You just didn't seem the type, is all."

  "Old, you mean?" Jeremy says, raising an eyebrow. His badly concealed smirk lets Pete know that he's not really offended.

  "You said it, not me, Daddy," Pete teases, grinning mischievously.

  Jeremy harrumphs and then drops the act, sharing the grin. "Now you know better, baby."

  Pete gets excited now, happy to have something he can share with the man. It's something else they can relate to each other about besides their mutual attraction, which will be good for them in the long run. "What sort of games do you play? I don't see any cases."

  Jeremy just winks. "You'll have to boot it up to find out. I get games digitally because it's just easier. It sounds lazy, but there's no need to get u
p to change discs that way."

  "Gotcha."

  It's then that Jeremy's phone rings in his hand. He gives Pete an apologetic smile. "That's them."

  "S'okay, I'll be fine," Pete assures him.

  "I'll be as quick as I can," Jeremy promises before kissing Pete's forehead and disappearing upstairs, his phone already held to his ear.

  After he hears Jeremy shut himself in the study, Pete releases a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. He wasn't entirely truthful—he will be alright, but without the distraction that Jeremy always is, his mind is in danger of drifting into unwelcome territory. His eyes sting as he remembers the reason he's in Jeremy's house in the first place, and he really doesn't want to go back there. He wants to stay in his bubble, safe with Jeremy to comfort and protect him.

  Pete needs a different distraction, so he picks up the PS4 controller that's tucked next to the console itself and takes a seat on the sofa. He switches on the television, presses the button in the middle of the controller to turn on the console too, and once everything has loaded and he's met with the PS4 home screen, he nods approvingly as he goes through the row of icons. Each one is for a different video game. Like Jeremy's taste in books, there's a little of everything present—action and adventure, FPS, a few horror games…even a JRPG. Pete hasn't played some of them but has wanted to, so it doesn't take long to find one to pass the time with until Jeremy has finished his work call.

  * * *

  That evening, Jeremy enlists Pete's help in preparing dinner.

  "What should we have?" he wonders aloud, looking over all the stuff in his pantry with his boy at his side.

  "Well, we had something pretty unhealthy yesterday," Pete says.

  "So something healthier today, then?"

  "Yeah."

  "Any ideas?"

  Pete hums and taps his index finger against his chin as he thinks. A moment later, he takes a four-pack of tuna cans and a packet of pasta from one of the pantry shelves. "How about some sort of tuna-pasta bake? It's pretty easy to make, and we could have some salad on the side."