Page 67 of Love Language

Greg shrugged. I don’t think that you need to worry about it. You should do what you want.

Marco eyed him skeptically.

You’re the Dom, he added unhelpfully, so you should decide.

Sure, except that BDSM didn’t work like that.

Should we discuss your limits and interests again?

Greg opened his mouth, a funny response since they were both signing, and then closed it again.

No. They haven’t changed.

But something had changed. He just couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. It had something to do with interests and limits, though.

Let’s go to sleep, Greg suggested. Then, he buried his face in Greg’s shoulder, ending the conversation.

With a sinking feeling, he acknowledged his fears. It wasn’t that Greg’s interests and limits had changed; it was that Marco wasn’t meeting them. As much as he wanted their kinks to align, he wasn’t giving Greg what he needed. He wasn’t enough.

Maybe all the cuddling and doting that he’d started to do, rather than feeling good for both of them, was feeling uncomfortable for Greg. He’d heard it often enough from couples where their kinks were different enough that they started to chafe under the combination.

Maybe, despite how Greg seemed to embrace their scenes, he was still itching for something darker and rougher than Marco could provide.

Maybe they were just destined to be good friends, if he could stand going through that. Perhaps he had just been… a placeholder… until Greg was ready to find someone who fit him.

When they’d first met, he’d been fine with being an experiment, but now it felt like he was wallowing in the mimicry of a relationship. It had all the parts of the relationship that he thought he wanted, all the time spent together and inside jokes, the hot sex and endless conversation. But it didn’t have Greg’s commitment.

He was putting everything into it, his mind constantly on Greg, on how to make him happy. But maybe he wasn’t enough. Maybe he’d just been reading too much into those ambiguous texts. Greg had certainly seemed lighter and happier recently, but what if it was just the passage of time, or his friendship?

Should he break things off before he got even more hurt? He wasn’t sure that he could keep it up much longer. And while he could dabble in some of the darker stuff and a little bit of roleplay, he never felt as much like himself when he was doing it. It was more like he was testing something out from a bag of tricks that belonged to someone else.

Or, let’s be serious, a bag of tricks that belonged to Richard.

While he’d been rethinking his life, Greg had curled into his chest and fallen asleep, his breath warm on Marco’s skin.

Could he really give all of this up? He stroked a hand along Greg’s back, shifted a little so that Greg’s leg fell over his.

Part of him wished he’d never volunteered to be part of Greg’s exploration. Because if Greg lost interest in him now, he’d be torn apart.

But part of him wouldn’t give it up for anything. If nothing else, he knew that he’d been there for Greg when he needed him.

He chased those thoughts around as he fell into an uneasy sleep.

When he woke up, he felt cranky. It was Saturday, and even though he’d slept in, it hadn’t been restful. He squinted one eye open.

Greg was wide awake and sitting on the other side of the bed with his tablet, probably doing crossword puzzles. That was good, wasn’t it? That Greg wanted to be near him?

And was he going to overanalyze every single one of Greg’s actions?

He sat up, attracting Greg’s attention. His sunny smile suggested that whatever had been bothering him yesterday was over.

It still lurked, uncomfortably, in Marco’s gut.

How long have you been awake?

About two hours.

You could have woken me!