Matt & Topher

The Vineyard

There wasn't any need to set an alarm for Saturday morning. Both of them had forgotten to close the curtains on the bedroom window, and the winter rising sun hit him right in the eyes when he rolled onto his back.

He'd found a one bedroom cottage on Air B&B for a reasonable nightly rate in a vineyard further down the east side of the lake. It had been classified as a farm stay, the wood walls left exposed and un-painted. Someone who'd grown up in a city would consider it rustic — Matt called it homey.

It was an open floor plan, the kitchen and living room flowing together. Upstairs was a single loft-style bedroom with an en suite. The cottage wasn't completely isolated — about fifty yards back toward the main road was an 1850s farmhouse where the family who owned the property lived.

Matt slid carefully out of bed and pulled his sweatpants on. He'd seen a coffee pot in his cursory glance at the kitchen when they'd gotten in, and he knew Toph had packed their bag of dark roast. They'd brought some groceries with them, mostly so they wouldn't have to venture out into the cold.

Well, that and a restaurant was at least a twenty minute drive away.

He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his hip against the counter. His honors defense was set for mid-April. Toph's capstone presentation was set soon after that, the exact time and location TBD since he was sandwiched between other capstone projects. Matt planned on attending, no matter what he had to skip class-wise to be there.

The smell of dark roast coffee filled the kitchen. It was always easy for Matt to make Toph's cup of coffee — all he had to do was pour it in a mug — and after sipping his own, he took both mugs back upstairs. He set Toph's on his nightstand, moving his glasses to do so. Matt retrieved his Kindle out of his backpack and carefully settled into bed, his back against the wooden headboard.

Toph, like the heat-seeking missile he was when he was asleep, immediately rolled over as close to Matt as he could get.

Matt opened the romance novel he was in the middle of and began to read, periodically drinking his coffee.

If Matt didn't touch him, Toph wouldn't wake until he was ready. He'd discovered this through trial and error — some mornings he ran his fingers through Toph's hair and it wouldn't take long for him to stir, sleepily pushing into Matt's hand and sprawing across his chest. Matt was more than happy to spend his mornings like that, but if Toph was up when he didn't have to be, he had a tendency to be a bit grumpy.

He didn't want a grumpy Toph. He had plans for later, and Grumpy Toph wasn't part of those plans.

So he'd sip his coffee, read his book, and let Toph snooze.

About an hour later, Toph shifted with a grumble, burying his nose between Matt's side and the pillow. Matt ran his fingers through Toph's hair and set his Kindle aside.

"Did I smell coffee earlier?" Toph mumbled.

"On your nightsand, babe."

He made a pleased sound deep in his throat, pushing at Matt's t-shirt until he could get his mouth on the soft skin of Matt's side. "You should come back down here."

"You gotta get your head out from under my shirt first."

Toph laughed outright. "Hyperbole much?"

"You swallow a dictionary sometime last night?" Matt reached back and lifted his shirt over his head, dropping it to the floor before he slid down the mattress. He let Toph pull him close and kiss along his stubbled jaw.

"You sleep good?" Matt asked between kisses.

"Like a frickin' rock. It was great. Are you wearing pants? You never wear pants," Toph added.

"It was cold earlier."

Toph, in the process of trying to get Matt's sweats and boxers off him, leaned back with a leer. "You want me to warm you up?"

"Not with a line like that," Matt said, grinning. "You have something specific in mind right now?" His breath hitched as Toph tossed his sweats somewhere.

"I was going to give you a morning blowie, but I am also open to suggestions. Or if you'd rather not that's always okay, too." Toph's eyebrows rose. "You have plans for us?"

"For later, yeah."

"Are they a surprise?"

"Yeah. Unless you really wanna know and then I'll tell you." Matt had a backup plan, too, in case Toph wasn't on board with everything. "Though I should probably ask you if you're okay with catching instead of pitching."

"Yes," Toph croaked, and Matt watched his pupils blow out.

Matt leaned in and kissed him hard, sliding his fingers through Toph's bedhead. One kiss turned into two, turned into many, and Matt let his hands wander. Toph crawled into his lap, then slithered down.

Toph pressed wet, open-mouthed kisses along the cut of his hips, and Matt's last coherent thought was that they needed to take weekend mini-cations more often.


"Color?" Matt murmured against Toph's neck.

"Green." Toph had both hands on the wall above the headboard, his head hanging below his shoulders.

He slid his hands up and down the planes of Toph's back as he pushed his hips more upward than forward. Toph's grip slipped; his elbows thumped against the top of the headboard, hands in his hair.

"Oh, my — holy fuck." Toph's breath hitched.

Slow and steady, Matt bottomed out and, through sheer force of will, held himself still. "Color?"

"Still green."

Matt pressed his fingers into the crease between Toph's thighs and his torso, slid back for a little separation, and then eased into a steady rhythm. Toph moaned loudly. Toph adjusted his arms again, his fists on the wall on either side of his head; Matt slid his right hand up Toph's spine and into his hair.

Toph inhaled sharply and all but yelled, "Yellow."

Matt stopped immediately, though he left his hands where they were for the moment. His heart hammered against his ribcage. "I'm just — here." He removed his hand from Toph's hair but kept his other anchored near Toph's hip. That one hadn't seemed to bother him. "Do you want me to pull out?"

"No. I — I just — "

"Take you time." He watched the overly-regulated rise and fall of Toph's back. "Can I hug you?"

"I'd like that." Toph shuffled backward on his knees to gain a little more distance from the wall. "It's...I couldn't..."

Matt wrapped his arms slowly around Toph and pulled him close until they were chest to back. It brought them closer together in other places, and they breathed through it together. He pressed kisses along the slope of Toph's shoulder and up his neck until he could whisper in his ear, "You don't have to explain anything to me if you don't want to."

"I have to feel you," Toph whispered. "I have to feel you more than just a hand here and there."

"Is this still a good position for you?"

"Yes."

He resettled his knees a little wider, nudging Toph's further apart. "Still okay?"

"Yes."

"Lean back. I got you."

Toph rested a bit more of his weight on Matt and his breathing hitched again, this time in a good way — a way Matt had heard before.

"Barnaby," Matt whispered, and received a full-body shudder in response. "You make me feel so good." He stayed slow and steady, keeping as close to Toph as was bodily possible.

"Ah, God," Toph said, lapsing into French. French was good — Matt didn't understand one word in half a dozen — but he knew it was definitely a good thing when Toph couldn't remember his English.

Even better was when Toph couldn't string two words in any language together.

Somehow Matt's fingers ended up tangled with Toph's, Toph's palm pressed to his own chest. Toph's free left hand landed hard on the mattress when he unexepectedly pitched forward. Matt followed him, readjusting his hold to help hold them both up.

"Color?" he whispered in Toph's ear.

It took several seconds, but finally Toph answered back, "Green."

Matt happily pressed numerous small kisses to Toph's neck and shoulder, and continued at the same slow and steady pace until he almost couldn't tell where he ended and Toph began.


Later, cleaned up and still lying skin to skin, Matt cracked an eye open as Toph flirted with the line between snuggling and aggressive cuddling.

"You wanna talk about it?" he offered.

"Probably should," Toph said after a long pause.

"Only if you want to."

Toph was silent for nearly a minute. Finally, he said, "I couldn't see you. I think that was my biggest thing, was that I couldn't see you. You weren't real talkative, either, so it was — what was left of my cognitive brain wandered."

And not into something good by the sound of it. Matt stroked his thumb over Toph's back near his shoulder. He wanted to ask while, at the same time, afraid to voice that kind of question.
Swallowing repeatedly to work some moisture back into his mouth, Matt asked, "Were you — did anyone — ?"

"No."

Good God. Okay. That was...that was good.

"I...got lost in my head a little bit." Toph wiggled up Matt's body until he could put his face in the crook of Matt's neck. "So much so that I kind of...totally forgot where I was for a second." He hesitated, then added, "I might have accidentally dropped. Into subspace."

"Did you mean to do that?" This was not a wholly foreign concept, but not one he'd explicitly explored before.

"No. I'm not sure if you did it accidentally or I slipped on my own, but I think that's what freaked me out."

This was....this was a can of worms the size of those government-issue peanut butter cans Matt's grandmother had gotten during World War II. Still, if this was something Toph wanted and Matt was comfortable giving him, then....

"We should think about this," Matt said slowly, feeling each word before it left his mouth. "We should really think about this. If this is something you — we could try. Together."

Toph pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the nearest patch of skin he could comfortably reach. "You're going to have a very not-safe-for-work search history, aren't you?"

"Lots of reading, yep." He didn't mind that. There was something that didn't sit well with him that he knew was going to come up. "Just...I don't think I can hurt you. I don't want to. Please don't ask me." He was entirely unsurprised when Toph propped himself up on one elbow to look him in the eye.

"Never," Toph said, his voice cracking halfway through. "I don't — I won't. Ever. I promise."

If there was one thing Matt knew for dead certain, it was that Toph was good on his promises.

Toph dropped back down with a contented sigh; Matt snuggled closer and pulled the blankets up over Toph's bare back. A nap wouldn't hurt anything. From the feel of it, Toph was already dozing, and that was more than okay in Matt's book.