Open House — Chapter 06
Tim’s desperate confession shatters Dan’s world, but a dark and dangerous fantasy takes root, changing everything.
Open House — Chapter 06
For a full ten seconds, the only sound in the kitchen was the low, steady hum of the refrigerator. Tim kept his eyes on the worn wood grain of the table, his jaw tight, saliva pooling at the back of his throat the way it did before he was sick. He didn’t look up. He couldn’t.
Then Dan’s voice, quiet and dangerously level, cut through the silence. “Who is he?”
The questions came one after another, each one a careful, clinical incision. Tim’s answers were flat, automated. He spoke of the “harmless” hookup in the hospital bathroom, the night Neil stayed over, the feeling of being seen. The last word came out as a ragged whisper. “Submission.” He laid the ugly, liberating word on the table between them, and finally dared to look up.
It was over in less than five minutes.
When it was done, Dan stood up. He didn’t look at Tim. He walked out of the kitchen, his footsteps heavy on the old linoleum. A moment later, Tim heard the click of the front door opening, then the soft thud of it closing.
Tim sat there in the deafening silence, the kitchen feeling colder and larger than it had moments before. He didn’t move. He just listened to the hum of the refrigerator and the frantic, useless beating of his own heart. Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. He had no idea.
The sound of the front door opening again made him flinch. Dan came back into the kitchen, his face pale, his eyes red-rimmed but dry. He went to the sink, his movements stiff and robotic, and started washing the single coffee mug in the basin. His back was to Tim.
“Dad’s infection is back,” Dan said, his voice flat, distant. “Another round of antibiotics, but the prognosis is good. He’ll be in the hospital until at least the weekend.”
The shift in topic was so jarring, so brutally normal, that Tim didn’t know how to respond.
Dan turned off the water, dried his hands on a dish towel, and finally turned around. He looked at Tim, his expression not angry, but something far worse: decisive.
“I need to understand,” Dan said, his voice low and steady. “I need to see him.”
Tim blinked in confusion. He didn’t know what to respond to first. “Your dad—”
“Dad will be fine,” Dan snapped, crossing his arms over his chest. He seemed unnaturally calm, the kind of calm that Tim had learned over thirty years meant Dan had already decided something. “I want to see Neil. The one you’ve been texting. The one you were with tonight.”
Tim’s mouth went dry. He’d been prepared for anger, for Dan to explode, but this cold, calculated response sent ice through his veins.
“Why would you want that?” Tim asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Because I need to understand what this is.” Dan’s gaze didn’t waver. “Is he just a body? Just sex? Or is there something else going on? Because if you’re falling for someone else, Tim, I need to know that now.”
Tim’s hands trembled as he gripped the edge of the kitchen table. He pressed his fingertips into the wood until he could feel the grain, the small ridge where two planks met, the faint stickiness of an old spill someone had missed.
“I don’t know what this is,” he admitted, the truth spilling out before he could stop it. “It started as just... physical. But now—”
“Now what?” Dan pressed, taking a step closer.
Tim looked up at the man he’d built a life with. Dan’s face was a mask of control, but Tim could see the pain lurking behind his eyes, the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth that always betrayed his distress.
“I don’t know,” Tim said again, hating how inadequate the words sounded. “There’s something about all this, something I wasn’t expecting. A feeling like something was missing before—”
“And now you’ve found it? This missing thing?” Dan nodded slowly, absorbing the information as if he were receiving a difficult medical diagnosis. “Then I want to meet him,” Dan said. “Face to face. The three of us.”
“Dan, I don’t think—”
“I’m not asking, Tim.” Dan’s voice hardened, the first real crack in his composure. “If there’s any chance of salvaging what we have, this is non-negotiable.”
Are you ready for more, Mister?