Page 30 of Goaltender Interference

“You fuckingnerd,” Matt said, and kissed him again. Softer, this time. Fondly. “You and your goddamn comic books.”

And then they stopped talking at all. It was easy to give in when Matt kissed him like this, like he was the only thing Matt had ever wanted.

“I wasn’t sure we were—” Aiden gasped, a little later, seated on Matt’s hips, Matt’s fingers wrapped just this side of too loosely around his dick “—you know, doing this.”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been holding myself back all week.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to push you when you were in a bad place.”

“Matt, I’ve been sleeping in your fucking bed for—”

“Well why didn’tyou—”

“I didn’t know you wanted this, I didn’t want to assume things were still going to be like this, even after New York.”

“I just didn’t want to take advantage of anything, Aiden.”

“Advantage? I’m fucking up my life, that doesn’t mean I can’t... I want this, I wantyou.”

“Look,” Matt said, his hands twisted in Aiden’s shirt, pulling him down. Their eyes met, Matt’s searching, like he was lookingfor something in Aiden’s face but still couldn’t find it. “If we’re both here and we’re both on the same page, I want you every way I can have you.”

Aiden exhaled. It would be easy to hear it, easy to accept it. Easy to pretend there wasn’t ten years of bitterness behind it, that they could start over again or that they never really stopped in the first place. Like everything else he had done recently, it was a terrible idea. But for the first time since Matt showed up on his doorstep and left New York again, Aiden felt something beyond the dread of knowing he was going to have to live through the exact same day again when he woke up in the morning.

Couldn’t he let himself have this?

“You’ve always had me.”

Matt looked amused. And a little rueful. “Liar.”

Aiden wanted to sayno, that was the one thing that wasn’t a lie, but instead he managed, “So do you want to fuck me on the living room floor, or...?”

There was probably a time they would have just kept it going right there, but they weren’t getting any younger and his knees and hip and back wouldn’t thank him for it in the morning. They went to the bedroom.

It was different than in New York. There they had been frantic and desperate, both certain every time was going to be the last time. Now, Aiden took the time to undress Matt, slowly, carefully, touching each part of him as he exposed it, enjoying the increasing impatience with which Matt submitted to his exploration. Took the time to admire Matt’s body naked: how solid he was, the trail of hair from his chest to his stomach, the twitches of muscle in Matt’s abs and thighs and arms betraying how much he was holding himself back. Aiden, still fully clothed, rocked against him; Matt’s breath hissed, like he couldn’t hold it back if he wanted to.

“Aiden...”

“Yeah?” Aiden asked, his mouth trailing the line right under Matt’s jaw.

“Are you going to let me touch you?”

“I thought I’d make you wait,” he started, but then he was on his back in the bed, unceremoniously lifted and dumped down again in a movement too fast to track.

“I don’t want to wait,” Matt said, grinning down at him.

“Then make me, coward.”

A little later, Aiden was naked, too, trying desperately to catch his breath. The struggle for his own clothes had been perfunctory, slid easily into something else by the time Matt slammed his wrists against the headboard. It feltrightto be here, in Matt’s bed, trapped under the weight of Matt’s body, one of Matt’s slick fingers a little too roughly crooked inside of him.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “Fuck, Matt, I don’t want to do it like this—come on, I don’t want to wait, fuck menow, youhaveto—”

“Oh? I thought you were all about dragging this out.”

Aiden had thought so, too, thought he was going to make it last, torture both of them, but now that he was here, he could see how wrong he had been. Felt almost frantic with the intensity of what he wanted, how badly he wanted Matt, how badly he wanted to feelanything. “No—I need, I need you, I need this, I don’t want to think—”

He watched with that almost nauseous sense of anticipation while Matt fumbled with the condom and the lube, tried not to think of anyone else Matt might’ve fucked in the same bed, tried not to think of anything except Matt, except the way Aiden knew it was going to feel. It was easy when watching Matt do this was pornographic all on its own, when Matt looked up at him suddenly, stricken, and Aiden knew he was just as fucked up by the whole thing.

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