Page 16 of Dear Daddy, Please Want Me

He could only imagine how many people were missing connections right now, expecting to write back to someone they’d seen earlier who now appeared to be gone. He’d hate to have the media get ahold of this, especially while they had a big Christmas push going on.

The holiday didn’t mean anything to him personally except for an odd week where everyone else took off work and he had some quiet days in the office. But the Dear Santa advertising campaign they’d set up had brought in droves of new users hoping to find their match. Love it or hate it, it was difficult to avoid the pulse of Christmas, especially now that it was only a few days away.

He closed the window on the whole search chain he’d been working on, then stood to stretch his back. This really wasn’t getting anywhere.

He thought about wandering out into the office to stretch his legs and maybe see how Levi was doing, but he didn’t trust himself.

When Levi had looked up at him with those soulful eyes and said he’d let him get the door next time it sounded like… something more. An invitation to a tenuous dance of dominance and submission, spoken in a not-so-secret code.

He could be misinterpreting it, of course. But there was this pause where he almost thought Levi was expecting to be kissed.

He didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

Of course, it was flattering as all hell to imagine that a hot guy might actually be interested in him. He’d obviously dated before transitioning, but although he’d always identified as pansexual, it was easier to date women. It let him be the butch one.

The world of gay men was a new planet that he wasn’t quite sure would welcome him.

Then there was the fact that it was Levi. Levi with those playful eyes and flirty smiles. Levi who seemed to linger at the end of meetings just to walk down the hall with him.

That was why it was also a terrible thing. If Levi weren’t his employee, he might at least work up his courage to ask him out.

But, he was. Better to stay in his office.

Saul sank back into his chair and opened a window to the sandbox. Maybe Levi had made some progress.

It took him only a moment to get a sense of what Levi had been up to. Lots of incremental error logs. A few usernames that he recognized from the support tickets.

He scrolled through a few more screens of report logs when something caught his eye. The words PerfectDaddy seemed to jump from the page. The other account that was getting a lot of action was JewBoy3. They’d both been created today on a version of the platform that no one else had access to. Was there a JewBoy1 or JewBoy2?

Before he even opened the profiles, he started wondering. Was that Levi’s kink? Did he want a Daddy? Those names couldn’t be accidental, even if Levi was just messing around while he tested possible errors.

A shiver raced through him.

Saul had never thought of himself as a Daddy. When he’d been working so hard to force himself into a box that didn’t fit, it hadn’t seemed like an option. Being queer had been its own exploration. Then discovering kink. Recognizing and enacting his masculinity in the past year seemed like it was writing the rules all over again. And in between, he’d founded two successful companies, built them from the ground up, and sold them off to move on to the next thing.

So he’d thought a lot about being called Sir. But he hadn’t explored any other identities.

He looked around, then tested the word out in the silence of his office. “Daddy.”

OK, that sounded a bit weird. It wasn’t like he wanted to call anyone Daddy.

But he could hear Levi saying it all too easily, in a hundred variations. Lightened by laughter as he joked around. Flirtatious and seductive when he knew just how sexy he was being. Frustrated and whiny with that little scrunch to his nose if Daddy wasn’t giving him what he wanted.

But mostly Saul could imagine him, all sweet and serious, like he’d been at the doorway today. Saul was certain that Levi would like his Daddy to open doors for him. Not because he was weak or incapable, but because he wanted to be adored and taken care of.

Closely behind that thought was the breathless Levi on the phone earlier. He would pant Daddy’s name, helpless and transfixed.

Saul knew he shouldn’t open the tester profiles, but he did anyway.

The text was sparse, but he devoured it all. It was funny and quirky, just like Levi. As he compared the profiles and checked the logs, he became more certain that JewBoy1 had started out with Levi’s actual kink list before he changed some of it for testing, because he’d changed it back to the same list. It was an exact match to PerfectDaddy’s, which was the first profile he’d made.

It felt like Saul was getting a glimpse into Levi’s secret world. Not that he hadn’t read dozens of lists like this, shared on spreadsheets or on creased pieces of paper. Hell, Cuffd had a whole spin-off app just for this.

But if this really was Levi’s list it was… special. Important.

He read through it again, imagining each act. He could give Levi all of that. Most of it he’d done before. A few things were lower on his list and some that he enjoyed weren’t included. But overall, it was a very close match.

Vague longings for just being closer to Levi, maybe spending a bit more time together, started to coalesce into something tangible and lush.