Claude mercifully doesn’t belittle him for his lack of restraint and honestly, he probably never will. Never. Presuming that there’s a time span long enough between them to warrant that particular adverb. Running his palm across his forehead, sweat already forming on his skin despite the coldness of the room, he leans into Claude’s embrace further, almost desperately so. The fact that the other man’s drawing away only makes the movement more pronounced – of Vincent following along, grasping for… for straws. He ought to be humiliated by now and maybe, deep down, he is. A little bit. Not by Claude, no. It’s worse than that.

“I…” Pause. Again. He looks down into his lap, at the way his hard cock strains beneath the duvet, the skin underneath growing more sensitive by the minute. He shuts his eyes, tries to imagine something unpleasant to chase away his arousal, a strategy that never works. Not this time, either. When he continues, his voice is slightly flat, eyes still closed. “I probably shouldn’t. It’s…” It’s not proper. What a ridiculous notion, all things considered. He’s sitting here, leaned against a half-naked man with his cock sticking up in the air! Opening his eyes and rolling them for good measure, he finally shrugs. A harsh motion, enough to jumble Claude’s arm around his shoulders. “Well, never mind. So long as it’s nowhere close to where I live, I’ll be glad to come.”

Verbalising the painful aspect of it – of secrecy, of knowing how wrong it all is and doing it anyway - is making his chest hurt. It's also making his cock less stiff and that's something, supposedly. He knows with absolute certainty now that his mother will never succeed in her matchmaking. That the girls will never appeal to him, that he’ll never marry a woman. And maybe the worst part isn’t even her inevitable disappointment, the shamefulness of it all. No, it’s how he’s always wanted to believe in it, just a little bit. That if he only tried hard enough, he’d find a way to be better.