After the shower, Shawn dressed and left the house again. He walked slowly, without rushing, and by the time he reached the same club where he had met Jean, it was already seven in the evening.
He hadn't come for anything complicated. Just one thing, and then he would leave.
This time, he didn't sit stiffly in one place like before. He moved around, letting his gaze pass over people, observing them without much interest in how they looked.
What mattered to him now was their age.
He approached only those who clearly looked to be in their mid-twenties, starting conversations without really caring how they went. But every single time, no matter who stood in front of him, all he could hear was Jean's voice from that night.
All he could see was the way Jean had carried himself, how unexpectedly interesting he had been, how he had turned Shawn's entire night into something completely different from what he had planned.
It made everything else feel… uninteresting.
Still, Shawn forced himself to go through with it. Eventually, he agreed to leave with one of them.
That was all he needed. If he slept with someone else, then whatever was happening inside him would stop.
The beast wouldn't fixate on one person like that. It would stop clinging to Jean like he was the only one in the world.
That was the plan.
At first, he thought of suggesting a hotel, but the idea didn't sit right with him.
"Your place?" Shawn forced out instead.
"Sure," the man replied easily.
"Do you live alone?" Shawn asked, even though he didn't know why it mattered.
"No, I have roommates, but it's fine. Everyone has their own space, and they don't really mind. They also bri..."
"My place." Shawn cut him off immediately. The thought of going there had already irritated him before he even arrived.
He couldn't believe he was bringing someone else into his house again. But maybe it was because he was sure he would never entertain anyone else the way he had entertained Jean.
Jean had felt different from the moment they started talking.
He had managed to get under his skin in a way no one else had, even changing his mind that night when he saw him dancing with other people.
This wasn't that.
They took a cab and arrived in no time. The building was quiet as they climbed the stairs and entered the apartment. There was no hesitation from the other man, had said he was ready, so things moved forward almost immediately.
When the man stepped closer, Shawn had to fight the instinct to step back.
"No kissing," he said the moment the man leaned in.
"So many rules," the man muttered with a faint smile, but Shawn didn't respond to that.
He could feel the hesitation in himself, and it made no sense. He hadn't come this far just to stop now. All he needed was to get it over with. So he forced himself not to hold back.
But even as he went through the motions, there was nothing he was feeling. It was almost like he was uncertain where to touch about man if it wasn't for the body he was used to.
With Jean, it came naturally. Now he had to close his eyes and imagine it was Jean; only then did his hands begin to move almost instinctively over the man in front of him.
He pulled the man's shirt off, and the man did the same. They drew closer, skin brushing, hands moving against each other as Shawn forced himself to picture that night Jean had come back after their first encounter.
Shawn had lost control completely the moment he saw him at his door, and it was because he had been thinking about their first night nonstop, no matter how much he tried to push it away.
"If you tell me, you might get a reward… and the reward is that I might let you do this another day." Jean's words from that night had lingered with him the two next days.
That night, Shawn had insisted he didn't want anything like that to happen again. And he wasn't pretending, he genuinely hadn't wanted it to become something repetitive, something that could turn into an obsession.
But what real control did he have when it came to Jean?
He told himself Jean was the obsessive one, but deep down, he knew it was the opposite.
Every time he saw Jean at his door, he pulled him in without hesitation, needing to feel him, even when it went against everything he told himself he wanted to be.
He got carried away with the man for as long as he could still see Jean in him, but the moment they got into bed, he couldn't continue.
He felt unsettled, a persistent thought at the back of his mind making it feel like he was doing something he shouldn't be.
As if, somehow, this was betrayal- even though it wasn't. And no matter how much he tried to focus on the moment, all he could think about was Jean. And now, thinking about Jean didn't immerse him in the person beneath him anymore; it only made him want the real Jean.
What was he doing?
He should feel ashamed for even thinking about Jean like that. He was his student, he was younger…
but they had done this before when he didn't know all that. Now that he did, was that why he hesitated? What difference did it make? They had already crossed that line.
And knowing that Jean was the son of the man who had ruined his life clearly wasn't much of a problem to him at all, even if he wanted to pretend it was.
If he kept pushing Jean away and Jean actually moved on, stopped coming back to him at all- what was he going to do?
"What's the problem?" the man's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"Why?" he asked, even though he knew exactly what the man meant.
In that moment, a knock came at the door, and Shawn got off him immediately, moving to open it as if the sound had saved him.
The feeling didn't even give him time to think, he just opened the door without thought, wearing nothing but his pants.
And the moment he saw who was standing there, his breath stalled. He froze completely, his heart suddenly racing violently.