"Was that ever how you had sex Gus?" We looked at each other and I raised my eyebrows."Of course not. And you in particular, you like hearing what a good boy you are. It gets you hot when people praise you. That's why you liked serving me, cos I'll tell you you're my hot little stud slave. We're just gonna have to get Dylan to do it another way though. It's just two sides of the same coin." I blinked at him. "You just need to hear what a fucking stud you are." He said slowly. "And you're used to hearing it from the bottom, but don't kid yourself, the bottom guy is always in charge. That's why they make good tops. You need him to tell you how good you are, so tell him how good you are. Make him agree." I shrugged and Eric pulled out his laptop and started typing. "Right." He said. "I'm sending you some homework. Every morning look in the mirror and tell yourself ten good things about yourself. And then, when you have sex with Dylan demand to hear at least one of those. Make him tell you, don't wait for him to tell you by trying to make him happy." My mouth curled up.
"10 good things? Jesus you're my fucking life coach now." Eric shrugged.
"Tell me it doesn't work."
——
You are hot. I told myself silently when I glanced at the mirror the next day. I mean, you're a midget but you work out and it shows Hmm. I probably wasn't following the instructions right by calling myself a midget, but the rest counted for one. I looked awkwardly at myself. I wasn't sure it was true though. I mean, I knew there was nothing majorly wrong with my body, I swallowed. Ok. Ok, I mean I worked out 6 days a week. I had a really good body. My tan was fading a bit coming into winter but you could still faintly see the tan lines from working outside all summer. My muscles were huge, no doubt about that. People occasionally looked at me with that... interested look on their faces. Even girls, and from what I understood about girls back in high school they REALLY didn't like short guys so I knew I had something going for me. I was hot. I tried to say it out loud but it felt too corny and I sighed. Who even cares about how good you look? I cleared my throat as I gathered my thoughts- because I cared, I know I cared.
I ran my fingers through my hair before tying it up and conceded that I liked my hair. I liked how I looked next to Dylan when both of us had our hair down. We looked so good together.
Good hair. Great cook... Funny, you're funny. People like you. 10 good things about myself had to be my very own brand of torture. I wondered if 5 would do. I started to get dressed for work- this could take all day. Hard worker I thought to myself. Not that I particularly wanted Dylan to tell me I was a hard worker during sex, which was why I'd started this in the first place. Good in bed? Well.
I mean.
That was why I was so anxious this week, wasn't it?
I made myself a protein shake and headed to work, stuck on that. At least work was a good distraction. I loved the new team. I had way more responsibility and when I had a bad day Blake seemed to understand it was just a bad day, not that I was a shit human being- which is what the last few temp jobs seemed to think. Blake liked me, he took me under his wing. I mean there was still a lot of grunt work, but I always got a nice job at the end of the day.
We were working on some finer stuff, the others were working on the cabinetry and I was working on the skirting for a residential build.
"Hmm." Blake stopped to inspect my work. I stopped immediately- no point continuing if I had to rip the whole damn thing out. Blake called Frank over- Frank was Blake's right hand man. He was probably only a couple of years older than me but he clearly had his shit together- he was married with one kid, and another on the way. I loved the dude. He was like the cool older brother I never had. I tensed up as the two of them inspected my work and muttered about it.
"You've been wasted labouring haven't ya?" Frank said to me eventually. "We gotta get you doing more of this stuff. You got a good eye mate." Good eye. I grinned and continued working.
--
What can I say except- it worked. Sex with Dylan was better than ever. I was opening myself up to telling him about myself, my hobbies... stuff that I'd kept hidden since I was a teenager and thought it was faggy to be into art. I took pride in my talents- my cooking, my carpentry... and best of all I was starting to find it easier to make plans with Dylan- to suggest a place to eat, to veto a shirt that he threw at me which I thought looked ridiculous...
I was learning to stand on my own two feet. And I was enjoying it. It was only coming at the expense of the tremendous guilt I was carrying around knowing that, once again, I'd changed because of Eric, and that would break Dylan's heart.
——
I always meant to tell him. To slip it in casually. Maybe something like 'Weirdest thing Dyl, but Eric and I ended up at the same coffee place the other day...' Test the waters you know?
I wasn't ready for Chris to call me out. Not that he realised he was calling me out until I lied about it. He glared at me as we ate dinner and I avoided his eyes.
I was a piece of shit.
Tama was badgering me to join their touch team for winter. That distracted us enough over dinner that I thought Dylan had forgotten what Chris said. We retired to my room to watch Mindhunter- of which we had not yet seen a single episode and Dylan sighed as he closed the door and gently pushed me off him.
"So that's new." He said, standing with his arms crossed. He flinched as I moved to him again and I paused at the look on his face. "Since when were you lying about seeing your ex?"
I opened my mouth.
"You can probably save it." He said slowly as I turned red. "You want to be with him, clearly. So you should be with him." He looked at me. "Have fun." He opened the door and I reached for him.
"Let me explain, please." I said desperately. "Don't walk out until I explain." Dylan paused and I could see under his frown and knitted eyebrows he wanted there to be an explanation. "Uh..." I stammered. Dylan was looking at me as I tried to explain why the fuck I would lie about hanging out with Eric. I was about to lie more- I mean in for a penny- but he stopped me before I made too much of a tit of myself.
"You've always been a really shitty liar." He said firmly. I bit my lip and looked at him. I mean what do you say to that?
"I should have told you. It's... just... hanging out." Dylan frowned and slowly moved away from the door to sit on my bed.
"That would have been more reassuring if you said it straight away." I sat down at my desk opposite him with a sigh. "Now it makes me worry. So you're... just hanging out? With your super possessive ex? And you didn't think that might make me feel... a little shaky about where we stand with each other?"
"I promise it's not like there are feelings or anything there..." Dylan snorted. "Not like that! Feelings obviously... But not like that. We were just talking." Dylan was looking at me with a small frown. I wish he was more like me when he was mad. He got very quiet and asked a lot of questions, trying to understand. Sometimes I wished we would just beat each other up and have it over with... although I can see why that might be a slightly unhealthy way of thinking. "Please don't hate me." Dylan raised an eyebrow but said nothing. "You wanted me to be... less submissive. But I'm only like that because of Eric. So he sort of offered to... I don't know. Fix it. Um. So we started hanging out to get my confidence back up. And... I mean it's working right? I mean... we're happy?" Dylan breathed deeply.
"You... went to your ex instead of talking to ME? What do you mean fix it?" He frowned. "Happy? You've been talking to him for what? It's been fucking weeks since we spoke about that. You've just been... lying? For weeks? Gus!" I flinched, even though his words were softly spoken. "Gus I'm so... disappointed." I sighed and tried not to dramatically sink to the floor. Oh god.
Disappointing him was even worse than if he hated me. I should have let him leave. I should have let him leave and assume I was just fucking Eric again. At least that would have been black and white. I'd be the bad guy and Chris and Dylan would become best friends and I could crawl away feeling sorry for myself and find someone else or just find Eric and go back to being the quiet closet case I was so good at being.
This was different though. Dylan didn't want to leave- he wouldn't be sitting on my bed frowning at me if he wanted to pack it in... but my endless apologies were beginning to sound pretty fucking insincere. I didn't know how to fix this.
"Ok." I said. Dylan folded his arms and looked at me. "Can we start with the premise that I'm a fucking idiot and work from there?" Dylan's mouth twitched a little. "I didn't want to tell you because I was... embarrassed about the whole thing. Not being dominant enough for you. Not even dominant... Not being... real. And then he was really helping and I knew I'd left it too late to explain properly..." I hung my head in my hands. "I know. I just love you Dyl. I was trying to do it for us." Dylan shook his head.
"That's stupid." He said. I nodded. "Do you really believe that?" He asked. "That you were doing it for us? What my theory pre supposes is you're totally fucked for Eric and you thought you could get away with cheating on me emotionally because you think sex is all physical Gus, and you're wrong. You are a fucking idiot though, I'll give you that." I felt my face turn red. Next guy I fall for, I'm going to make sure he's dumb, at least as dumb as me. I really didn't like the way my gut twisted and the weight on my shoulders when I heard Dylan speak. I hung my head.
"I never thought of it like that." I said quietly.
"You want the best of both worlds." Dylan said. "And I don't know how you think that's going to work out without talking to me because theres's a lot of things I can put up with because I love you, but going behind my back and lying to my face... that's fucking unforgivable." I nodded slowly. Unforgivable. I swallowed. Well. I guess this was it. I stood up to let Dylan leave and I felt his hand stop me. I glanced at him and he rubbed his temples. "You know anyone else and I would think this was a whole bunch of bullshit." He sighed and pulled me on to the bed. "Luckily for us, I know you. You're an absolute moron. But you're not a bad guy, Gus. Just... Jesus, come to me with your problems, not your ex? Please?" I leant against him and he hugged me close.
"I'm sorry." I breathed into him. He stroked my hair.
"Good start."
"I'll stop seeing Eric."
"You don't have to." Dylan pulled away to look at me. "But I'd rather he didn't give you sex tips."
"It's not like that." I winced. "It's a bit like that." I mumbled and held his hands tight. I was so lucky to have him. No one else would have been so understanding. "It was so stupid. I'm so thick Dyl." He chuckled.
"Yeah, you're lucky you're pretty." I let him get away with that. It was more than I deserved.
--
"So what are we going to do about this?" Dylan said after holding me tight for half an hour while I sobbed with regret. "I love you madly, truly, deeply, whatever... but I don't trust you." I looked at him and wiped my face. I shrugged hopelessly. It's not like I could give him a magic fucking rock and tell him it would glow red if I was hiding something. I sighed.
"I don't know if it helps..." I said. "But I don't mind if you have all my passwords and stuff..." Dylan's nose wrinkled.
"I hate that." He said. "You have a right to privacy."
"Do I?" I mumbled. His eyes softened and he stroked my hair.
"Babe, we'll be ok." He said. "Maybe you could try opening up a little, so when you have to tell me something big it's not so scary."
"How?" I asked. He shrugged.
"Tell me a secret. About me."
"A secret about you?" I blushed. Well. I had lots of those. But there was a reason I didn't say them. He looked at me carefully.
