4. RUSSELL

Griffin was everything I never imagined happening. I'd told myself it would've been fun to hook-up with my roommate, as long as we were compatible, and after what we'd just done, we were very compatible.

Laid on the bed together, stroking each other's bodies and enjoying the silence of the world the ship swishing.

"We should thank whoever put us together," he whispered, his fingers tracing the lines of the tattoos on my chest. "Unless it was all random."

I took his hand and kissed it. "I want to think one guy was putting us all together, but I feel like they added everyone who submitted to this thing into some spreadsheet and then they let a computer match us."

He chuckled. "You could pretend it was a little more romantic than that," he said. "Unless you're not a—"

"I am a romantic," I said, squeezing his hand to my lips and kissing them once more, harder. "I just don't want to put too much pressure on this thing from the start. You knew your friends are going to be asking."

"And I'll have to tell them," he said, biting his bottom lip and holding back his excitement. "We have another ten days or whatever, so I'm going to enjoy every day."

I could get behind that. I wanted to ask him questions. I was curious, but I knew, from age and experience that I couldn't jump into those things immediately. "Should we test the shower?" I asked him. My hand touching at the dried spot of cum on his belly.

"Noooo, I just wanna stay like this." He wiggled his hips on the bed like he was burrowing.

Wrapping an arm over his chest, I held him in a cuddle. "Ok," I said. "Ten minutes, then we should start getting ready to get back out. It's my first cruise, there's a lot I want to see and do out there." I kissed his cheek. "If that's ok with you."

I knew it was Griffin's first cruise, but he hadn't mentioned any more seasickness.

Even though I worked with a lot of queer establishments for work, this might've been the most concentrated population of queer people in any one location right now, and we were all on a ship. The idea brought a chuckle right out of my chest, startling Griffin.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Just thinking." I couldn't even accurately explain my thoughts to him.

"About me?"

"About the ship. About how many people are on it. When I was a teen, these sorts of places didn't exist."

Griffin snuggled close. "I always wonder what it would be like to grow up gay in the nineties."

"Fun, sometimes hell, people were scared," I said. "I'm not that old though, but I had some older gay mentors, huge activists, people who had friends that died. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring it up, it doesn't set the right mood."

"No," he said. "It's important. It's history and culture. Maybe that's why I wished I lived back then, so I could understand better."

I kissed his forehead. "One thing I always remind myself is never to wish your life away," I told him. "The path you're on is the path you're supposed to be on. I mean, I hope so, because if you weren't, we might not have met."

His big smile had a look of familiarity to it, like fate was telling me we might have met each other regardless of coming on this cruise. He mentioned having an apartment in New York, after all. But there was something else about his smile. It was like putting a central line in my arm and filling me with warmth.

I hadn't completely committed myself to a schedule for the cruise, except for the evenings when my friend was working as a drag queen. The first night on the boat was the kick-off event. It was going to be one of the first nights I was going to be letting my hair down, so to speak in months. After being swamped under paperwork for business dealings, it was my time to celebrate.

Earlier, I thought Griffin had a wall up, and he had, butt hat wall came down quickly once there was a drink in his system and the promise of playtime in the bedroom. It happened so fast, I was scared it happened too fast. It wasn't like either of us were rushing into a relationship, it was fun, mandatory and regularly scheduled fun.

All fresh from the shower and dressing smart, Griffin mentioned something that I caught myself needing clarification on.

"A model?" I peered out of the bathroom, slicking a little hair pomade into my hair, flattening it back.

"Yeah," he said. "I thought my friend said that earlier. I'd rather he didn't, but I like being honest."

I looked him over. His face and body, the way he held himself. It had all the clues and makings right in front of me. Of course, he was a model.

"Mostly commercial stuff," he continued. "But like, it's not anything major. Catalogues and stuff. Which is basically just playing dress up for a job." He spritzed himself in cologne. "It's a lot of fun, but sometimes, it's annoying because only a couple times I get to keep the clothes."

"You'll have to show me some of these pictures," I told him. "I guess it makes sense why you have great style. You've probably been working around stylists forever."

"Since I was sixteen," he said. "I was scouted from social media. My friend made a post of me, it was a video, and then someone contacted me. I thought it was a joke at first, but then this agency send me a casting location and a time. My mom took me, thankfully as well because if I'd gone alone, they wouldn't have let me take part."

At sixteen. That was nine years ago for him. Nine years ago, I was thirty-three, closing million dollar deals on commercial properties. It was wild to put those numbers out there in my brain. I didn't want to do it again.

"And then from there, I guess everything just snowballed. I traveled, I got paid, and then I—" he continued, but there was a distant look in his eye. "I—"

"What's up?"

Sharing a room together was a little bit like a pressure cooker situation. We'd already both popped our corks, and now we were simmering together, both of us getting lost in the sauce of such a temporary situation that the things we might have kept secret if we'd met outside in a bar or from a dating app.

"I haven't always been the best gay," he said, seemingly forcing himself to smile. "There are so many gay models, but you've got to sell straight. You've got to sell the ‘fantasy'." He put in air quotes and rolled his eyes. "It fucking sucks, I'll be real with you."

"Same in business, when I was first starting." I came out of the bathroom fully and sat with him on the bed.

All the bottled up words we hadn't said to anyone came out of both of us. He was excited and nervous about this trip, and confessed to being very hungover this afternoon. And I confessed that being open to people was new as well. It had only been in the last ten years that I'd managed to gather the courage to stand up my community in business.

We both had anxieties, and it's why we stuck around so long in the cramped quarters of the cabin room, sniffing cologne and rifling through each other's products to see what we used. For someone as young as Griffin, he had so many face products. It put me and my three-step face washing regime to shame, soap, wash, and moisturize.

"We should probably head up and make an appearance," Griffin said. "I'm going to try and not be so obvious about what we've been getting up to, but my friends will know. Ryan just has this sixth sense about sex."

The idea was funny. I patted a hand to my chest as I chuckled. "Then his senses must be overwhelmed on this ship. We probably weren't even the first couple on board to fuck." I picked out a nice, light gray dinner jacket that matched my slacks.

"Couple," he picked from the sentence.

"For the purposes of this stay, we are two people, and two people together in such close proximity are a couple," I said, getting comfy in my suit jacket. "Also, I think it'll make the next ten days go by nicely."

Griffin held out his hand. "I don't need to be asked twice to enjoy myself."

There were gatherings happening all over the cruise. People were meeting up with friends, groups of queer people cliqued together, which was hardly surprising to see. They were all probably gathering to talk about how they would secretly do poppers which were a prohibited item. They weren't technically illegal all over the world, but in Spain, they were, and port of origin dictates the law, or something my friend, Mick had said.

Walking with Griffin, I hadn't noticed how eyes naturally gravitated to him. Or perhaps now I was just recognizing it a lot more since he'd come out to me about his job. We met his friends in the large entertainment lounge. There were chairs scattered around the edge of the room, and in the center, from the ceiling, a disco ball was raining reflective colors all around the room. It was like something from a dream with the little smoke coming from the machine on the stage.

"It doesn't even feel like I'm on a boat—shit, I mean ship," Griffin giggled, tugging my hand as we walked around the room. "Oh. There's my friends."

I caught his friend, Ryan waving us over.

His friends were nice, and it was a difference pace to what I was expecting from this. I had thought I'd meet my cabinmate, we'd talk, and then go on with our separate ways. There was always the what-if we were sexually compatible, but I wasn't counting on it. It had changed my entire mental plan. I probably wasn't even going to finish the book I'd bought in the airport, one of those large thrillers with bold yellow text on the front.

"You two fucked," Ryan's first words to us when we met them.

Ryan and Thom were both dressed in nice shirts. Thom had a rainbow bowtie and Ryan some rainbow suspenders, probably a matching pair.

I looked to Griffin. He was grinning away. "What gave it away?"

Thom held Ryan from behind. "Baby," he said, kissing his cheek. "Let them have their fun."

"I'm just surprised," Ryan continued. "Griff is selective."

"I know," I said, wrapping an arm around him. "What's the plan for tonight?"

Ryan seemed to have the entire booklet of events happening onboard memorized. He listed event rooms and numbers, decks, all from memory. None of it went in. I was off the clock, I didn't have the capacity to be retaining information right now. The only information I wanted to know was how to keep Griffin happy.

"There's also a littles event," Ryan said, catching my attention.

"We should go to that," I said, hugging my arm tighter around Griffin. "If you're interested in that."

He held onto my arm. "It would be fun," he said, leaning his head back against me. "I also have some ideas of how we can play in the bedroom too."

"Yay! I've already got my onesie and stuffie picked out," Ryan said. Hewas giddy, nearly spilling his drink as he gestured wildly. It reminded me I was thirsty. I had a nice drinks package on board, and I was ready to milk it for everything it was worth.

"I briefly met Griffin's stuffie," I said, kissing him on the neck. He was doused in a sweet, fruity cologne. I wanted to devour it off his skin. I'd been to the Playhouse Club enough times to know how events worked with littles, middles, boys and all those age regression types of play. I hadn't seen much from Griffin, but I wanted to. I loved playing caretaker, and I knew Griffin needed someone to take care of him, even if that was just his little side, the part that was underfed and starved of attention.

He didn't have to worry anymore.

Daddy was here.