We Have Till Monday

No wonder the photos on their NSFW account were so beautiful. He was a professional.

“Do you work as a photographer, ragazzo?” I asked curiously.

“No, I’m a content creator for a gaming company,” he replied frankly.

“He’ll have to show you his office later,” August said. “It’s like walkin’ into a rave party with all the keyboards lit up in neon colors.”

All the keyboards? How many could he have?

“I can show him quickly, a sneak peek, but I’m off till my next project,” Camden said. “Work is not a fun topic. That’s for grown-ups.”

“Of course.” August ruffled his boy’s hair and crammed a triangle of toast into his mouth, then made eye contact with me. “He loves his job to the point where it borders on obsession, but the minute he sinks back into his Little mind-set, he pretends to snore if I bring it up.”

I grinned.

“That’s how the cookie crumbles,” Camden sang. “We gotta talk about something a million times more important now.”

“Your chores?” August guessed.

Camden rolled his eyes. “Uh, no. Anthony’s next term of endearment for me. He speaks Italian, Daddy. Did you know? It’s so sexy.”

The heated look August sent me made me chuckle and shift in my seat.

“I may have discovered that last night,” he murmured.

Camden didn’t notice the shift in the atmosphere. “Do you speak any other languages, Sir?”

I finished chewing a mouthful of bacon and eggs before responding. “I grew up in a neighborhood where most people speak Spanish, so it kind of became my second language quicker than Italian could.” I thought of Nicky and grinned a little. “My brother manages to butcher four languages on a daily basis. He mixes English with Spanish, Italian, and slang like no other.”

August smiled pensively at me but made no comment.

Camden wouldn’t be steered away from his topic and requested a “new, sexy pet name” for every day I was here in Nashville.

“But it has to be cute too,” he added. “Because I’m cute.”

Yeah, he was.

I racked my brain for a fitting term as I finished my coffee and landed on one of the more common nicknames for children. “Today you’ll be my topolino, then. It’s the name for Mickey Mouse in Italy and translates roughly to little mouse.”

He grinned goofily. “I can totally be a mouse. They’re cute.”

“That cute little mouse is going to clean his room today,” August interjected smoothly. “I’ve prepared a list for you.”

Camden’s look of horror was funny.

“It includes the little mouse’s arts and crafts supplies,” August added with a pointed look. “You’ve been putting that off for weeks.”

Camden sighed heavily and stared at his plate. “I don’t wanna be the little mouse no more.”

Precious boy. I didn’t know whether to laugh or hug him.

August was primarily amused, though there was an underlying current of severity that told me he could definitely be a disciplinarian.

This was one of the things that fascinated me the most about D/s and why it appealed to so many with cognitive differences. A lifestyle where structure and order were such significant factors. Music was similar, as was the way I worked with students who had autism or ADHD. Freedom and peace were sometimes found in the confines of something smaller, be it in the structure of a song or in a dynamic encased by rules. Maybe Camden’s mind was more at rest when Daddy held the leash.

Spending the next week with them was going to be interesting in many ways.

I’d been to food festivals before—in Brooklyn. Big fan. I loved food. But this couldn’t compare. This was something else.

Everything was bigger in the South, I’d heard.

August and I had come separately for obvious reasons; today was supposed to be the first time I met the man since I’d “missed” the barbecue last night. But as I walked through the actual field that was now a temporary parking area for festivalgoers—not to mention already three times bigger than the festivals I’d been to in New York—I wondered if the sneaking around was necessary. It was ten in the morning, and the area was packed with people. And trucks. Trucks everywhere.

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as I slipped on my old, ratty baseball cap and got closer to the festival. Which was just an extension of the same field that had to be the biggest I’d ever seen. Miles of nothing but grass.

The festival area itself was fenced-off, but it didn’t stop people from having a good time outside the gates. Music poured out all over the place, several tailgates were dropped, and some had even brought camping grills.

Were they aware of the smoke billowing from countless food vendors two minutes away?

I lit up a smoke and patted the pockets of my jeans, making sure I had my ticket.

The festival was free to attend, though this lucky bastard had won a VIP ticket through August’s giveaway, granting me a goodie bag and better seating in the various dining areas.