Terrence Faulkner, a struggling writer and lonesome twink

For Terrence — Terry, for short — the day started much as any other day would have, this rather bland, less-than-august third of October. At twenty-two, he still lived at home, with his single father, Alphonse, relatively close to other relatives.

As he sat leaning forward with his chin in his hands, staring at his computer screen, he heard the sound of footsteps. Terry tried to ignore them, since they could have just been on their way somewhere else in the house, but today, no such luck.

“What're you working on, today?” came the voice of his father, “Is it the clean project, the naughty one, or the positively filthy one?” His cheeks turned to a warm pink, immediately, but at this point he knew better than to cover up the screen.

“It's the naughty one,” he admitted, if in an embarrassed grumble, “I'm having trouble with ... uh ... with one of the, um ... the foreplay scenes, I guess you could call it.” He really hoped his Dad would leave it at that, but heavy footsteps didn't lie.

“Up, let me sit and I'll read it and see if I can jog your muse,” his father said, and he didn't move fast enough, which made his father urge more firmly, “Up, I said. Move, and remind me which project of yours this is. Main characters, remind me.”

Terry hurriedly got out of his chair and mumbled under his breath about having an over-supportive Dad. Then, he cleared his throat and coughed into his hand, “It's the one with the nineteen-year-old whose father is ... well, the opposite of you.”

“So, asshole father, nineteen-year-old with Daddy issues,” Dad summarised, and Terry grudgingly nodded in answer, “And the other main character? The love interest?” Terry took a deep breath, since there was no way out of this except through.

“It's the thirty-two-year-old English Literature Professor,” Terry answered, “too young to be his father, but he also has the premature greying thing going on, so he's basically a handsome nerd who has this young silver fox thing going for him.”

“And before you ask, it isn't his professor,” Terry adds, swiftly, “It's actually his elder sister's professor. The boy himself is a history student. I mean, he has English classes, too, but, not with Professor Crawford. He's with Professor Jessica Albert.”

“So he's getting stuffed by his sister's professor,” his father stroked his chin as he sat down and leaned forward to read it, to Terry's continued mortification, “Right. I remember, now. I was pleasantly surprised by you breaking that stereotype.”

“I never had one Professor when I was at university who even remotely looked like they wanted to fuck me,” his Dad said, propping his chin on one hand, “Now. Sit on your bed, be quiet, and let me read. Let's see if I can't help you out with this.”

His father had an absolutely annoying, downright infuriating, way of somehow managing to do that. His father was not a writer, he was not an editor or a publicist, he had never worked as an agent for a novelist. Yet none of that even mattered.

Even with all that, Terry had lost count of the number of times his father would read his work, then ask some question or make some remark. Then, an hour or two later, when Terry had processed it completely, boom. It'd triggered inspiration.

For whatever reason, his father had that miraculous talent, and so Terry had learned to deal with ... this. The abject and utter mortification of having his, so far as he knew, completely heterosexual Dad, sitting at his desk, reading m/m erotica.

Terry took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of his bed, and fell backwards onto his back. He let his legs dangle over the edge, swaying in tandem, as he covered his face with his hands. A very real part of him wished for spontaneous death.

That would be worse, though. He could just imagine arriving in the afterlife, presumably to some gatekeeper or some such thing as that. Ideally someone who already had all the information, but knowing his luck, they'd know nothing, and ask.

“Well, it reads quite well, Terry,” his father said, disrupting Terry's daydream of getting out of this by literally dying right there on his bed, “Professor Crawford seems like a very pleasant sort of man. Not really the sort I was expecting to use ...”

“Well,” his father shifts, turning toward him, “Let's just say the metal paddle was quite a surprise. From what I've read in some research, your boy must be somewhat accustomed to being paddled, to have graduated to needing a metal paddle.”

“How do you even know about that?” Terry asked, before thinking about how bad an idea it would be to ask his father an overtly potentially intimate question like that. His father just leaned back in the chair and chuckled a little bit in response.

“I had a roommate at university,” Alphonse answered his son, “He was a bit of a lightweight, had a string of boyfriends, all of whom losers. The one girl he brought over was an utter bitch, and she seriously just didn't do it right.”

“I told him I wouldn't mind, you know, helping him out, a bit,” he continued, “You know, if he told me what he wanted, or what he needed, I'd sooner help him out, myself, than have a chain of jackasses coming through the dorm room, at night.”

“Plus, he'd know he could trust me and there wouldn't be any risk of ... mm ... privacy breaches,” he added, “which meant he could really open up to me, and he did. Eventually, at least, and once I knew all I needed to know about his needs ...”

“Well, I took that information and did what any good man would,” he said, in conclusion, “I started to look around, found a man I respected, one interested in all of those things, asked if he'd like me to introduce him to someone.”

The implication there was that this other fellow had said yes, his dad had introduced them, and it'd gone well. He couldn't envision his father telling him this if his roommate had ended up being murdered the next semester by his new boyfriend.

The mental image of his father spanking and paddling another man, during their college days? Not a mental image that he needed in his head, but now he needed brain bleach. Either way, he took a deep breath and focused, before he even sat up.

“Okay. Thanks, Dad,” he replied, watching his father get out of his chair and walk over, turning and sitting down right by his side. He looked over, and up, as his Dad put a hand on his knee and squeezed, reassuringly, while looping the other.

His father kissed his temple, which made him blush, but as a single father, he'd struggled to fill the role of both parents. If it meant giving his kids kisses, it meant giving his kids kisses. As his Dad squeezed his far shoulder, he took a deep breath.

“You know I love you, and I'm proud of you,” his Dad said, “You don't have to be embarrassed about this, okay? What you write ... the erotica, the outright smut, there's nothing wrong with it. It's a completely valid medium of literary artistry.”

“Not everyone can write good smut. You realise that, right?” his father asked, smirking triumphantly when Terry looked at him with a deadpan expression that said he'd read terrible smut. “See? You know firsthand how bad some smut can be.”

“Now. I'm going to go get started on dinner, should be ready in about two hours,” his father said, letting go of him before standing up.

He watched his father walk out of his bedroom, then flopped back down on his back. Before he could even think about the idea of resuming his writing, he needed to get the mental image of his Dad spanking a boy his age out of his damned head.

He heard a ping! on his tablet, and blinked and looked over at it. A weird little crystalline heart with an MRE label, for just a moment, before the screen went back to sleep mode. Odd, he didn't remember giving anyone the number to his tablet ...

Before he could think to investigate, however, a loud knock on the doorframe made him about jump out of his shorts. He jerked to look, and glared at his little brother, Heath, standing there grinning at him, “Hey! I need to ask you something.”

“Dude, does it require making me jump out of my skin? You could knock gently, you know!” Terry forced his voice to be lower and calmer than he felt, “Yea. Come in. What do you want to ask me? Are you still having trouble picking a major?”

“Fuck you. No,” Heath stuck his tongue out at him, “Okay, yes, sort of, shut up, not the point. Well, kind of the point. Not what I wanted to ask, though. I mean, I'd also like to talk about that, since you bring it up, but, not what I was intending.”

“Must be something that makes you nervous the way you're dancing around it,” Terry observed. Heath stuck his tongue out at him again, before grabbing his computer chair and swivelling it around, dropping into it, and then staring at him.

“So, uh, I know this is a weird question, but,” Heath prefaced, “So, there's this guy I met recently. I think he'd really like you. You want me to set you up? I told him I had a brother his age who's, you know. Fit. Smart. Creative. Not hideous.”

“Gee, thanks for the ringing endorsement of my looks,” Terry answered, his cheeks flushing as he forced himself to look away and break eye contact, feeling embarrassed his kid brother was trying to set him up, “... but, uh. Yeah, maaaaybe?”

“It's just, I've dated, so, I wanted to know, why haven't you dated? I've never seen you with anyone, before,” Heath said, sounding pensive, “So what're you, like, what's your preference, I guess, I want to know. Maybe I could be your wingman.”

“You know, if this guy ends up not being your kind of man,” Heath added, “I mean, I don't really know what you're into, or, well, okay, not into into, but like, I don't know what you're looking for, when it comes to, you know, like, partners.”

“Uh, that's ... wow,” Terry blushed, but he smiled, “That's really sweet of you, Heath. I think what I would look for in my partner is someone who can be assertive, outgoing, someone who can take charge, who also has a good personality, too.”

“You know, someone who, yes, has a nice cock, but who can hold my attention,” it felt a little weird to be letting Heath into this side of his life, but what'd he have to lose? Aside from virginity, if wingman little brother was a successful ploy.

His cheeks were a bit rosier, which meant at least Terry wasn't the only one embarrassed, so Terry tried to push past it, for both of their sakes. “So I guess I only have one question to ask.”

“What's that?” Heath queried.