Elijah informs Pieter of his mistake upon getting home that night.

Pieter just shrugs and says: "I thought he was a fit enough lad."

Then he snaps the cap off a beer for himself and hands a wine spritzer to Elijah. Elijah collapses heavily down into a kitchen chair. "Of course he's fit."

He thinks about the way Christian's blue eyes sparkled under his fringe, long lashes brushing his cheekbones —

"Has a nice bum," Pieter adds. Elijah eyes him. 'Nice' is a bit of an understatement but, seeing as Pieter isn't an expert in the area, he'll let it pass.

Look, he's just not my type."

Pieter just raises an eyebrow. "Oh, is Christian not old enough for your daddy kink? Not enough grey?"

Elijah sputters his spritzer. "What? I don't have a—"

"But what about that once—"

"Once," Elijah hisses, slamming his hand down on the table. "Once and it was humiliating and will never be repeated and, also, I told you that in confidence."

"No worries." Pieter leans back in his chair, unconcerned. "Our boy Shawn won't tell anyone."

Elijah glances over at where Shawn is sat on the sofa watching ice hockey on the Premier Sports channel Pieter makes them invest in. He raises his own beer at him in acknowledgement.

Elijah sighs and turns back to Pieter. "Look, no, shit. It's not a kink thing."

"So it's a sugar daddy you're looking for?"

"No." Elijah rubs his eyes. "No, no, no. God. I just like someone in a little more mature place in life."

Pieter looks at him for a long moment. Elijah is sure he's going to bring up Nick, but instead he just says: "Fine."

"What?" Elijah peers at him. "Fine? That's all?"

"Thought you'd be a match, but can't make you like someone you don't, can I?"

"Right," Elijah says slowly.

Pieter takes a drink. "So, you gave it a shot and now you won't see each other again. No harm done."

"Yeah." Elijah fiddles with the label on his spritzer bottle. "After next time, yeah, probably won't see him again."

"Right, so, have ya got an answer for me on those tickets for—" Pieter cuts himself off. "Wait. Next time?"

Elijah bites his lip.

"Oh, were you too nice to say no when he asked you out again?" Pieter asks.

"Look, I'm sure he'd understand if you just told him."

"Um. That's not quite what happened?"

"And what does that mean?"

"I might've asked him for his number so we could get together again?" Elijah says. At Pieter's sceptical look, he hurries to explain, "Look, we were just getting on really well, but it was getting late."

Pieter narrows his eyes at him."I have my child development class at eight in the morning," Elijah reminds him.

"That's not exactly the part I'm — No, you know what if you're not interested, it's fine. But you can't lead him on. He's a good lad."

"I know. I wouldn't do that."

"So, you'll tell him?"

"Um. Yeah." Elijah pulls out his phone. But then decides it's too late to text him now. He'll do it in the morning.

He sends Christian a polite good morning, and a picture of Elijah Willson, from last night and Christian texts back a photo of a man with a shaved head and his tongue spat out in disgust and then tells Elijah about sabotaging his housemate's granola and Elijah lets out a big honking laugh and would have probably been kicked out of his lecture except his lecturer is friends with Nick and has been giving him pitying looks all morning.

And then somehow it's night-time and they've been texting all day, enough that Elijah almost gets kicked out of his second lecture, too, and Elijah's forgotten to cancel their date.

He resolves to tell him the next day.

Except the same thing happens again.

And again.