Daddy's Boy

by T C Heffer

  "That's…relieving."

  "Would you judge him?"

  Adam mulls it over. "I'd try not to."

  "That'll have to do for now. Just don't let him see it if you do. You'll only hurt him again and make him ashamed of himself, and neither of us wants that for him."

  "That's what I did yesterday, wasn't it?" Adam guesses, disappointed in himself all over again. He doesn't dwell on it, though. "I won't show it. And who knows? I'll keep thinking about it, and maybe if the time ever comes, I'll be in a place where I can accept it."

  "Here's hoping."

  "Alright," Adam says, apparently satisfied with everything so far. "I've given you my blessing, but I don't want to hear or see anything, if you catch my drift."

  Jeremy does. "You got it."

  "And until he's graduated and officially moved out, I want to know if Pete is staying at your house. And I don't want him staying there every night."

  "Okay. And what happens if, at some point down the road, Pete becomes comfortable calling me Daddy around you?"

  Adam swallows tightly, but he doesn't look sickened by the concept. "Then I'll have to get used to it."

  Jeremy smiles slightly. "I'm glad, because I sincerely believe it's what he needs. He spends a lot of time worrying about other people and making sure they're okay, or hung up on what they're thinking about him. He needs someone to take the weight of all that off of his shoulders every now and then. I'm more than happy to do that for him, and knowing that you accept him for everything he is should go a long way to making him happy and content with himself. He deserves that."

  Adam sighs again, but it's not as sad a sound as before. "He really does. He's such a good kid."

  Jeremy stays for another few minutes and then takes his leave. They have nothing else to talk about, and he's happy with where his friendship with Adam is for now—not quite healed yet, but getting there. When he steps out the front door, Adam calls his name.

  "Yeah?" he says, turning back around on the doormat.

  Adam stands there holding the door open. "I'm going to spend the rest of the day coming to terms with everything. It all needs time to sink in, but could you tell Pete to come see me after school tomorrow?" he requests. "And tell him that there's nothing that could make me stop loving him."

  Jeremy nods immediately. "I will."

  Adam gives him a grateful smile, the first smile Jeremy has got the whole time he's been at the house. "I'll see you some other time, then."

  "Yeah. Probably a lot more often," Jeremy notes.

  "Probably."

  With a wave, Jeremy walks down the front path to his Porsche. Before he drives off, he shoots Pete a text to let him know that everything went okay. If he knows his boy—and he likes to think he's really getting to—then Pete will have fretted all day so far, despite of Jeremy telling him not to before he sent him off. It feels good to be able to alleviate such stress.

  Once the text is sent, he puts his keys in the ignition and begins the short drive back home, already planning another date to keep Pete's mind off of things for the evening. They won't have to go to the next town over this time, either, now that everything's out in the open. It provides a lot more variety as to what they can do together, and Jeremy can't wait to experience it all with his baby boy.

  — CHAPTER SIXTEEN —

  - Monday, December 2nd, 2013 -

  When he gets to school, Pete takes a moment before exiting his Kia and walking inside the main building. He doesn't see his best friend Steve anywhere right away, so he walks through the halls to his locker by himself. A few of his peers glance his way when they notice the leather jacket Jeremy gave him—some of them with confusion on their faces because he's never worn anything like it to school before, and others with approval. It feels nice to be met with the latter for once. It makes him hold his head high as he turns the last corner and finally reaches his locker.

  After transferring into it some books that he won't need until later in the day, Pete slams the locker shut and turns to find Steve approaching him with his girlfriend on his arm.

  "Hey, dude!" Steve greets when he reaches him. He pulls Pete into a hug like they haven't seen each other in months instead of a single weekend.

  "Hey," Pete replies, waving at Mia over Steve's shoulder.

  When the embrace ends, Steve steps back again and smiles at him. "Dude, where did you get that jacket? It's sweet!"

  Pete can't help but smile too. "Oh, it was a gift."

  "From who? Where'd they get it?"

  Pete smooths his hands anxiously down the front of the buttery-soft leather. He doesn't want to talk about it right in the middle of the hall like this, so he says, "I'll tell you about it later, if that's okay."

  Steve frowns but thankfully doesn't push. "Oh. Yeah, sure, I guess."

  The bell rings then, and Mia taps Steve's arm. "We should get to class." She looks to Pete. "You have English now too, right?"

  Pete nods. "Yeah. Let's go."

  As a trio, they walk leisurely through the school to their English classroom, with Mia and Steve talking quietly to each other the whole way there. Pete would usually feel left out by this, like he's the unwelcome third wheel, but he doesn't mind it today. He's actually happy for Mia's presence because it keeps Steve's attention off of him—if she wasn't there, he knows from years of friendship that Steve will very quickly get tired of waiting and ask him again about where he got his jacket.

  Pete is ready to tell Steve about him being bisexual and about Jeremy, but he'd prefer if the whole school didn't know yet. While Steve might not understand the part where Pete is seeing a forty-one-year-old man, Pete doesn't think the other boy will really judge him for it. He doesn't think that would be the case with the rest of the school, though. Some of them would probably get on Pete's case and ceaselessly refer to Jeremy as his sugar daddy.

  Or maybe something worse.

  Sure, Pete would know it wasn't true, but he doesn't like the thought of anyone else assuming that money is the reason he's with Jeremy. He shudders just thinking about it. It's going to be a sad reality about their relationship wherever they go, he knows that, but he'd rather not experience such scrutiny unless it's absolutely necessary. Besides, it's his life—no one else besides him, Jeremy and his Dad has any right to know anything about what he does outside of school unless he wants them too.

  Inside the English classroom now, Pete trails behind Steve and Mia to a set of desks in the second-to-last row.

  As is its wont nowadays, while he waits for their teacher to get here, Pete's mind drifts to Jeremy. Just thinking about the older man is enough to make Pete's stomach all fluttery and his heart rate kick up a notch or two. Without conscious thought, he turns his head, puts his nose on the shoulder of his jacket and inhales long and slow, breathing in the scent of leather and… It's probably just his imagination because the jacket was in the basement for years and couldn't possibly still smell of its previous owner, but somehow Pete gets a whiff of Jeremy's wonderful scent, all masculine and spicy.

  The power of the brain, he figures, not complaining.

  When he's done, he sees Steve staring at him out of the corner of his eye. "What?" he asks nonchalantly, pretending that he did nothing out of the ordinary.

  Steve shakes his head. "You're acting weird. Seriously, what's up with that jacket?"

  Pete struggles to come up with an explanation for his behaviour on the spot, but in the next second their teacher walks in and demands silence. Pete is off the hook for now, but Steve shoots him a look that very clearly says they'll be revisiting this later. By then, Pete will have hopefully come up with a good way to ease the other boy into knowing the best thing that he thinks has ever happened to him in his life. Fuck, does he hope Steve takes it well.

  He doesn't know what he'll do if the reveal goes poorly.

  * * *

  During lunch, Pete is sitting in the cafeteria with Steve, Mia and a couple of other guys, Kurt and Lane. It's a pleasant time, real
ly, even if the food today isn't all that appetising. Pete mostly pushes it around with no interest in eating it while he listens to the conversations going on around him, offering little input himself. Steve and Mia are caught up in each other as usual, and Kurt and Lane are in the middle of a heated discussion about whether Dark Souls II is a better game than its predecessor.

  "You got it when it came out, right, Pete?" Kurt asks suddenly. Both he and Lane stare at Pete, needing a tie-breaker.

  "Uh, yeah, but I haven't beaten it yet," Pete answers.

  "Why not? It came out weeks ago! What've you been doing?"

  Spending as much time as I can with a sexy-as-hell man in his forties who I call Daddy, Pete thinks. He chuckles to himself as he imagines the looks he'd see on Kurt and Lane's faces if he actually said those words out loud.

  "I've just been busy," Pete says instead, choosing to be safe. Steve is the first—and maybe only—person at school that he wants to tell the truth right now. Possibly Mia, by extension.

  Kurt frowns. "With what?"

  "Just…stuff."

  This catches Steve's attention, and he butts into the conversation. "He's been busy with his new girlfriend," he says teasingly, waggling his eyebrows.

  Pete's eyes go wide and his mouth drops open. Wow, what a traitor.

  "Dude, since when do you have a girlfriend?" Kurt enquires, shocked. "No offence."

  "Some taken," Pete responds.

  "Is that where you got that jacket from? I've been meaning to ask," Lane says, sitting forward with his elbows on the table. "It looks cool."

  "That's my theory, but I haven't been able to get it out of him yet." Steve brings out his puppy-dog eyes, which usually never fail to have Pete agreeing to whatever crap he wants to do.

  "Don't hold out on us! Who is she?" Kurt asks excitedly, his very important debate with Lane all but forgotten.

  Pete glances around and finds four sets of eyes on him. "Uhh…you wouldn't know them," he says, avoiding the use of a gendered pronoun. He's pleased when it seems that none of the other three guys notice, but Mia gets a bit more speculative. She doesn't call him out on it, though, and Pete trusts that she won't. She's not that kind of girl.

  "Just give up," Steve says to Kurt and Lane. "If he hasn't told me yet, he's not telling you two."

  "Ugh, no fair…" Kurt whines. "You could've been a bro and let me live vicariously, Pete. I haven't gotten any since Ashley broke up with me, and that was over a month ago!"

  "Wow, your poor balls," Lane says, patting him mockingly on his shoulder.

  "I know, right?"

  A minute later, Pete's phone vibrates in the pocket of the chinos Jeremy picked out for him that morning. When he thinks that the focus is no longer on him, he takes the device out, unlocks it and finds a text from Jeremy. He holds his phone close as he reads it, lessening the chances of anyone else seeing the screen. The text reassures him that Jeremy just finished talking to his Dad and everything went fine, and that he'll tell Pete what happened in more detail when he gets home. Pete doesn't think the word 'relieved' covers the amount of weight that leaves him with that information.

  He sends a text back to thank the man, and his phone vibrates again very quickly:

  [DADDY / 12:05 p.m.]

  You're welcome, baby. :) As for what we're doing later, I know we agreed on ice cream, but afterward, I've been doing some looking, and there's a small carnival about an hour away. I thought it might be fun to check it out. Sound good?

  Pete's expression is probably all sorts of lovesick, but he doesn't give a single shit.

  [PETE / 12:06 p.m.]

  Sounds great, Daddy. I can't wait! :D

  Before Pete can hit send, Steve acts like a douche and snatches his phone. He tries to grab it back, but he isn't fast enough. He can tell by the way Steve's face fills with confusion that his friend read the texts, and to preempt the questions he knows are coming, he leaps up from his seat, forces Steve to get up too and shepherds him out of the cafeteria, leaving their unfinished lunches behind and ignoring Kurt and Lane when they shout after them to ask where he and Steve are going.

  "Dude…dude…" Steve whispers as Pete drags him down the hall toward a janitor's closet.

  "Shut up. Not yet," Pete hisses. When they reach the door, he wrenches it open, turns on the light and shoves Steve inside. Once the door is closed behind them, he waits.

  "Dude…" Steve says again, like what he read on Pete's phone broke him.

  Pete sighs and throws himself down on a stepladder that's pushed against the wall of the tiny space. "Just ask, Steve. You know you want to."

  Breaking out of his shock enough to function again, Steve upends an empty bucket and sits on that. He watches Pete closely, bafflement and a hint of horror practically radiating from him as he no doubt jumps to all sorts of conclusions. "Why do you have someone called 'Daddy' on your phone?"

  "Because the person I've been seeing recently isn't a girl," Pete replies, figuring that he might as well be honest. Cat's out of the bag now, as the saying goes.

  "But…Daddy?"

  Pete shrugs, acting like he doesn't care when in fact his heart is beating rapidly in his chest. "That's what I call him when we're together."

  The horror grows in Steve's countenance. "Daddy? Seriously? That's where you got the jacket from, isn't it? So he's like a sugar daddy or something?"

  This is just what Pete had been afraid of, but he supposes that—rationally, at least—he can't fault Steve for going there right away. He was expecting it to be a shock for his best friend, and at least he can be trusted not to spread the misinformation after Pete has set him straight. "No, Jeremy isn't my sugar daddy. He is older than me, and he does have a lot of money, but believe me when I say that it isn't like that at all. I'm not with him because he has money and he can buy me stuff."

  "I didn't even know you were gay," Steve says, looking down with a slightly put-out frown.

  "I'm not," Pete refutes.

  "Uhh, didn't you just tell me you're with another guy?"

  Pete rolls his eyes and leans back against the wall. "There's more to sexuality than just gay and straight, buddy," he says defensively. "I'm bisexual."

  "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

  Pete is surprised that this is what Steve is choosing to focus on right now, but maybe it's just easier for him. The other stuff will probably come afterward. "I didn't have any reason to. I've never liked another guy enough to want anything to happen with them before Jeremy came along. He's…special." When he meets Steve's gaze, he finds a different kind of shock there now. "What's wrong?"

  "You've got a ridiculously sappy look on your face right now," Steve says. "It's the same one I saw in the cafeteria."

  "Is that why you stole my phone?"

  "Yeah… I wanted to see what was causing you to look like that."

  "And you couldn't have waited until I pulled you aside after school and told you when we were alone?"

  Steve at least looks contrite. "Sorry."

  "Apology accepted. Just don't do it again. Anyway, I already told you, I'm not with Jeremy to get stuff. I…" Pete pauses, unsure if he should tell Steve before he's told Jeremy, but in the end he decides to go for it because it will help his friend understand. "I think I love him."

  "Whoa."

  "What?"

  "Nothing." Steve shakes his head. "I just…this wasn't what I expected at all. I just thought you'd been hooking up with some girl from school on the down-low."

  "Well…now you know I'm not. I'm not 'hooking up' with anyone. It's a proper relationship, like you have with Mia."

  "Just with an older dude," Steve states, like he's testing out the words. "Just how much older are we talking? Twenties?"

  "Older than that," Pete says cautiously.

  Steve narrows his eyes. "Thirties?"

  "No."

  "Forties?"

  "Jeremy's forty-one, yeah," Pete admits.

  "Jesus Christ, Pete!"

  "What? It'
s not that big a deal. I'm eighteen."

  "Exactly! That's—" Steve takes a few seconds to do the math. "That's twenty-three years he has on you! That's crazy."

  "No it's not," Pete insists. "I guess I should rephrase it—it's not a big deal to me. I don't care."

  "Talk about robbing the cradle."

  "Steve."

  "Sorry, sorry! This is just a lot to wrap my head around."

  "Join the club."

  "Huh?"

  "My Dad found out over the weekend and had a tough time coming to terms with us too," Pete apprises. "That's actually what Jeremy texted me about in the cafeteria. He spoke to my Dad, cleared a few things up, and now I think we might have his blessing."

  Steve thinks about this closely. "Your Dad's fine with it?"

  "Not a hundred percent yet, but apparently he's getting there. Jeremy's gonna tell me more after school."

  Silence reigns for a while. Pete is a bit unsettled by it, but he allows Steve the time he needs if it means his friend will come around sooner.

  Eventually, Steve asks another question. "So, the Daddy thing, what's that about?"

  "It's just…a thing," Pete explains vaguely. "And no, it has nothing to do with my actual Dad or any kind of daddy issues, before you ask."

  "Hey, I didn't say anything!"

  "Maybe not, but you were totally thinking it, weren't you?"

  Steve chuckles. "Yeah. Sorry."

  "It's okay. Jeremy just…he makes me feel safe and cared for, and he helps me relax by taking charge of things when I'm stressed. It works for us. That he's the hottest guy I've seen in my life helps."

  Steve still doesn't look entirely convinced. "So you call him Daddy?"

  "Hey, don't kink-shame me, Stevie," Pete rebukes.

  "I'm not," Steve swears. "I just don't really get it, but it's you, so I want to. As much as I can, anyway."

  "Let's just leave it with what I've already told you. I'd prefer to keep whatever Jeremy and I do in private…private, y'know?"

  "Do you call him Daddy in the bedroom?" Steve asks, apparently not listening. "Have you guys reached that point yet?"