I had been living with Matthew for a little over a year now. We were roommates and nothing more, and even though I found the boy charmingly adorable I restrained myself from ever even letting the thoughts that normally coursed through my mind grace him. He remained purely the young man I lived with that helped pay our apartment's rent, and that was that. The young struggling artist with nowhere else to live while he worked to pay off his student loans.

Startlingly green eyes and dark, almost black hair that fell in not curls but rather… rather a wavy curvature, falling partially down his neck and just barely grazing his shoulders. He was twenty-eight years old, and though I am only a mere thirty-four I always considered him to be much younger than even that to me. He spent his days at home, usually locked up in the studio he'd made himself with my permission and slaving away at several different canvases. There was an eerie quality to his work and I always found myself worrying some evenings that he would never come back out.

I, myself, am a writer. Though not aspiring to be so as Matthew is with his art, I am published and though not famous I enjoy the little attention I have perfectly fine. My name is Daniel Rathford. My hair is blond, my eyes are blue but they are terrible and I can see absolutely nothing without the aid of my glasses. While he locked himself up with his paints, I locked myself up with my laptop and a bottle of white wine. We dealt so well with each other I really was amazed, we were so different, and never had I imagined sharing my life in such a way with another person. Even if they were just sharing my house.

I was surprised one day while writing out in the living room – spur of the moment decision, I needed to feel less cramped – when Matthew stormed out of his studio angrily, cried something indecipherable out loud, and immediately locked himself into his room. All my later attempts to knock on his door and get him to come out were unsuccessful, and he wouldn't speak to me at all. I gave up soon, defeated, and chose to let myself go to bed instead.

Crossing the hallway directly from Matthew's bedroom to my own, I changed quickly and stuffed myself into my covers. It was around midnight that there was a knocking on my bedroom door and groggily, I got up to answer it. What a perfect time for Matthew to tell me what's been bothering him, I thought. Especially when I'm barely awake and comprehensible.

Matthew just stood there, a rather distressed look creasing his features and the lines in his face distorted with the motion. His intensely green eyes were on me, unmoving, and he didn't speak for a long while. Just stared at me. I could tell he realized I was getting a bit worried, and spoke up.

"I've been thinking." His voice was barely a whisper.

"I noticed – " My words were cut short by his soft lips meshing with my own quickly, and I stumbled back from the unexpected force on my body that came so suddenly. When Matthew drew back I only stared at him, eyes wide in shock but I'd been going more for mild confusion.

I was pulling him gently by the wrist into my room when he kissed me again, and I clicked my bedroom door shut while his hands fumbled with my night shirt. There was a certain spark when flesh met flesh and that was when I realized that Matthew hadn't been wearing a shirt when he came to my door. I was smiling dumbly I'm sure, but I had waited quite a long while for the tender joy that would accompany the almost spicy taste of Matthew pressing his tongue past my lips.

---

After what was possibly one of the most enjoyable moments I'd ever actually spent with another person in several years, I lay still on my back while Matthew curled himself into my side, resting his head on my chest. Neither of us had spoken save for the words he'd whispered when we had our exchange at the door, though there had been moments I heard my name escape his lips in a hushed moan.

Idly I curled my fingers in the locks of Matthew's hair, and with a soft exhalation of breath he began to speak again. "I'd been thinking, Daniel, about you. I had no inspiration. I thought it would right itself eventually, something perfect would come to me, but it just didn't. It had been weeks."

I didn't know what to say for as I'd experienced writer's block before myself, I figured a lack of inspiration but a need to do something with one's hands must be particularly different. "I'm listening," I assured him, assuming that was the reason for his little pause.

When I looked down at him, his eyes were closed, but he continued. "You had been on my mind. You've been on my mind for a long while now, and each day I spent alone I found myself falling for you more and more." A quiet laugh, hushed though our conversation was. "Though I'd been falling for you from the very beginning. I can't paint again until I've told you… I love you. I've had experience with this before. Psychologically, I come to a mental block because I'm blocking myself from something, some passion or something I'm feeling too desperately in my mind and my art won't come until I've settled it."

I wriggled his body further upwards so I could rotate myself to my own side, beneath my covers with him and pressing my nose to his with a smile. "I loved you when you brought me into your world with the first painting of yours that you showed to me." I could tell there was a sparkle of tears in his eyes, brimming the edges of his lashes and I pulled him back into me.

"I can't really think of anything to say." Were his next words.

"We never really had a relationship using words." I assured him, and I felt his warm body becoming gradually more and more relaxed into my own. He pulled away from me just so he could make himself more comfortable for a sleeping position, and I snuggled up behind him with an arm around his waist. "Will we be sharing my bed often, Matthew?" I asked curiously.

"Every night."

I buried my face against the crook of his neck, kissing the soft skin there and feeling him shiver with delight, though he seemed too tired to do so a bit earlier. "As you wish." I murmured, content just with the smell of his body before me. His hair, that odd combination of oil paints and linseed oil giving Matthew a sort of exotic beauty that I never thought I would really obtain.

His scent and the evened out sounds of his breathing lulled me easily to my own sleep that night, and as we'd hoped, many more nights to come.

---

After the two of us had finally admitted how we felt for each other, I had figured the simple, silent relationship we had earlier shared would change into something more. During the night, it had. During the day we spent our time alone just as we used to, both locked in our respective areas of the apartment and neither one of us moving even for food. I don't think I ever returned from grocery shopping or from the bookstore just once to find Matthew out of his studio.

I heard him jump when I knocked on his studio door. He was listening to some classical music as he did when he was working to keep his head cleared of everything but the painting he was working on and the emotions required to paint such a painting. He'd told me that the first time I disturbed him one day sometime around when he had first moved in with me. Much like this time now, it was because he hadn't had anything to eat in at least two days. The music came to a sudden stop, and the door swung open almost violently to reveal a rather upset Matthew.

I held out the plate I'd prepared a sandwich on for him, and my other hand held a can of soda. I smiled lightly and he looked me up and down, sniffed the sandwich in much a way as an animal would, before taking both from me. Before I let him close the door, I pressed it back a bit but he'd already set the plate down and was able to stop the door just in time. I'm sure I looked a bit upset, and his fierce eyes softened when he saw. As if he knew just what I'd been wanting, Matthew slipped through his door to kiss me gently on the lips and I couldn't help but laugh when his teeth nibbled at my lower lip.

"I'm going to get back to work." He said as he retreated with a couple backwards steps into his studio. I wondered briefly what it was that he had been working so diligently on these past months, and why he was so hell-bent on making sure I wouldn't see it. I felt left out, I guess, but that really was the sort of relationship that the two of us had. We obviously weren't going to change it just because we had admitted our love.

Until he was finished with his work, he would never let me see what it was. He left me out of his life until the final moment that he would unveil it before me, and wait eagerly for my opinion like a child. I never quite knew what to do in those situations because I was afraid to speak. Most of the time, however, his paintings moved me to a sort of silence and I couldn't say anything even if I tried. I was the same way with Matthew, too, though. If I were working on a novel I would be pleasantly locked up in my office sipping a wine and practically lulling myself to sleep with my keyboard clicks. Only when it was finished would he tell me what he thought of my drafts, before I sent it in to my editor. If I were feeling particularly proud of something or depressingly unconfident, I would ask him to read bits and pieces.

I guess you could say the two of us worked in an artistic sort of synch that really required no exchange of words. I'm surprised we talked at all, really. When I realized I'd been thinking too much to myself, I was shocked to find that Matthew was still standing in the doorway awaiting my response to his earlier words. "O-oh. All right, yes, of course." I smiled carefully, and he didn't return it before shaking his head and locking himself back into the solitude of his studio.

My fingers graced the brass of the doorknob before I turned around and went back into my office. I really shouldn't feel sad at all, but I figured the two of us would spend much more time together now that we were officially partners. Though I guess that's the love affair of a painter and a novelist. He'd been crawling into bed with me later and later in the night, and I was beginning to miss the sensations of a new lover that I'd been waiting so long for. I began working on my laptop again, but this time it was a journal that I'd been keeping since I found myself falling in love with Matthew. I was tired by the time I'd finished letting out everything that kept bothering me, all of the things that were making me upset. I sighed and closed the document, but left the application open in case I wanted to write something up later.

Afterwards I headed back into my bedroom, Matthew's classical music a soft sound to let myself sleep to when I buried myself into my covers. A sad feeling continued to roll around in my stomach as I waited for the sound of the music to fade away and the click of Matthew coming in to join me. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it seemed he hadn't made any attempt to come join me at all.

---

I was tapping away at my laptop about the night carefully, sighing and leaning backwards in my seat. I pinched the bridge of my nose and pulled my glasses off to rub at my eyes. Matthew was still painting, even now. I began to think that if he were to suffocate in there from the fumes I would never know.

"I'm going out for groceries!" I called at his door, and his response was an:

"Okay – could you stop by the art supply store and buy me a new pallet while you're out? I can pay you back."

Whenever you let yourself out of your room, I thought. "Of course. Be back in a couple hours."

---

I returned to our house in a couple hours as I'd said, and when I stepped into the living room I was startled to see Matthew sitting on the couch in plain sight. I almost dropped my bags. I sat the two of them on the dining table and placed the plastic bag with Matthew's pallet next to them. My eyes never left Matthew, and he wasn't looking at me – just hunched over with his head in his hands and looking straight ahead.

"I bought the pallet you asked for," I informed him softly, before padding over there to join him on the futon we used for a couch. It was almost eleven at night. I believed in doing all my shopping when no one else did, and we were friends with the owner of the local art supply store and she allowed either of us in at any time. Matthew wasn't one to talk when something was bothering him and that was obvious considering the first day we slept together. "I'm going to bed. The bag is on the table, I'll put away the groceries tomorrow morning."

He looked up when I said this, but stayed silent. I tore my eyes away from him and got up off the couch, walked quickly down the hallway and into my bedroom, where I shut the door almost too loudly. I knew I was being foolish and that I should ask Matthew what was bothering him, especially since it took him away from his painting to sit and think about it out in the living room. He knocked on my – our – bedroom door minutes later, before coming inside.

"I read your journal." Matthew murmured.

I stayed completely silent. He was upset, and I could tell. I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I looked up at him when he began to speak. I was surprised to find that I wasn't upset with him for invading my privacy. After all, I did practically leave it in plain sight. I imagined him stumbling upon it and taking a seat at my desk to scan my words. I swallowed, and stood up to motion Matthew over to the bed. He obeyed and sat next to me, looking up. Watching me. With those beautiful eyes.

"The painting that keeps taking me away from you…" He began. "It's a portrait." There was a pause, as if he were letting me think on this. I didn't quite understand what that had to do with anything. "I never paint portraits, and I've been focusing on it so much lately because I want it to be perfect."

"You're not a perfectionist, Matt." I told him with a little chuckle. He shook his head in reply.

"I know. I know I'm not, but I just want this one to turn out right. There's something I'm trying to capture, okay? So I'm sorry…" He leaned his head up against my shoulder. "I'm sorry I haven't been a good lover to you. You wrote… you wrote so elegantly about the way I was neglecting you. I guess I never really realized that I wasn't doing much for you, and I was afraid I was going to start crying."

Standing up, I laid myself back on my mattress and was pulling off my shirt in a gesture that showed I was getting ready for bed. Matthew watched me with a sort of glint in his eye that I wasn't quite sure how to decipher. He wiggled out of his painting clothes as he stood and lay down next to me, pressed into my side. "All of the things you said you wished for… all of the kisses, all of those little touches and how you mentioned waiting for me to crawl… crawl into bed with you so you could sleep better. I want to do that for you."

"I was just upset at the moment I wrote all that, Matthew…" I tried to explain. It was true, I had been almost melodramatic in my journal entries, though my artistic little lover seemed to mistake such a thing for eloquence and I wasn't about to decline a little bit of praise. "It doesn't make everything I said true."

Matt was nipping at my collarbone as I spoke, and I had to close my eyes and lean further back into my pillow, exhaling. "You really can calm me down, you know. Wonderfully so."

He let out a laugh of his own and bit one of my nipples to gauge my reaction when my chest arched forward and I couldn't restrain a squeak. "I promise that from now on, I'll spend every night with you. I'll go to bed when you do, and I'll be there when you wake up in the morning."

"And we can have coffee together in the morning as well?" I questioned. "And wine in the evenings? It really is heartbreaking for me that you spend so much time alone. I don't even really think I know that much about you."

This seemed to hurt Matthew and that was far from what I'd intended. His next words were in that soft whisper we used when we spoke during the night regularly, as if each word were something sacred that only we should share. "Coffee in the mornings, wine in the evenings, and cocoa when it's cold. I'll spend as much time by your side as you'd like of me and as much time in your bed as you wish for."

I pulled his face up to mine and held his cheeks cupped in my hands for a couple quiet moments, before we were kissing again and back to our much needed ritual of fevered nips and kisses. The warmth of one's lover's flesh against their own and the soft cries they'll make when you give them everything you can in each sliver of your soul that they take with them to sleep. The heightened senses from such things lovers can only accomplish under their covers, the look of initial pleasure on a lover's face, the feel of his body, the sound of his raspy delight-filled voice and the taste of his yielding lips and wet mouth.

His eyes gleamed up at me proudly, it seemed, as our kisses became shorter with our breath following the same pattern. "I love you, Daniel." He was whispering to me, again and again, making sure I heard him, making sure he'd made up for each thing I'm sure I'd complained about to myself and my computer.

"Sleep," I coaxed. "You haven't slept in about a week. You've barely left your studio. Rest." My voice was heavy and dulled with the afterglow of our lovemaking and the imminent drowsiness pulling my eyes shut. A kiss to his forehead. "I love you too and you know that. It's bed time."

But he had already let himself fall asleep, curled up into me, his chest rising and falling with each of his breaths.