#para:xander

He wasn’t sure where this would go, but after his early meeting with Casey and his feelings in general, Cade was all over the place emotionally. He knew he hadn’t been in love with Xander, he loved him but he wasn’t in love with him. He still wanted to give it a chance. He needed to let himself not be pushed back into a hole because of Casey’s rejection. He had almost fallen right back into his hole, his depression, but he hadn’t let himself collapse. No, he had pushed forward, so he was going to keep doing just that and try and fix things with Xander. 

He didn’t know where this would lead, but he wanted to at least talk. He needed things to be not weird between them, he’d start with Xander and Casey would come tonight, maybe, if the other was willing to talk to him. Cade had to work all of this out if he was going to stay sane. That meant fixing shit with Casey and making sure he gave what Xander felt, a fair shot. It would take a bit of time and they would have to work through things, but it was going to be good. Cade would force it all to be good. 

He had on a pair of shorts, black t-shirt and an OBEY cap. He was smiling as he walked Bentley down to the boardwalk docks. He was going to get them breakfast burritos from the taco stand and then they could just walk and talk. When he got down to the docks, he saw Xander easily. So did Bentley. Pulling at his leash to try and get to the boy, “Hey. You often just stand around trying to be cute?” Cade called out in greeting as he approached. 

“Hey.” 

It was all that he managed to say as he walked into the hotel room. They were on day two of their trip, the Thursday night sky blazing outside, they would be headed back to Riviera Estates tomorrow night, he was sick to his stomach. Yesterday when they had landed, shopping at Gucci and buying Xander presents, it had been a nice day. He had been gone since early this afternoon, gone to the prison to see his Uncle. Corbin. Bryn had passed away in jail, so he only had one Uncle left in the world.

He had talked to him for the entire hour they had been given, he hadn’t gotten exactly what he’d wanted, he had expressed what he needed to express. He had screamed, he had cried, he had finally said what he always had needed to say, the one thing he hadn’t been able to say in his entire life, that he didn’t need his Uncle anymore, that he didn’t need Corbin. He was depressed, he was emotionally drained and he hated his life right now. 

The evening was cool and Cade had left the back doors wide open, the cool breeze blowing through and into the open floor plan of his first floor. The kitchen back behind him, Cade laying on the couch, Bentley standing essentially over the top of Cade from the side of the couch,  licking at his face. Cade’s body clothed in a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting black t-shirt, he could already smell Xander’s cooking, which still blew his mind. That the young man had decided to cook for him for the first actual date. He wasn’t really sure what to do with himself, as he was zero help in the kitchen for the most part despite Connor’s efforts to teach him otherwise. 

He rubbed the top of Bentley’s head before sitting up some on the couch, turning his head to look over at Xander in the kitchen, “It is smelling good. But, I swear if this is some sort of ruse to poison me though your food, I am so haunting the shit out of you.” Cade said with a smirk, Bentley pawing at his side because Cade wasn’t giving him direct attention anymore. He leaned on the back of the couch, resting so he could look over the couch and kitchen island at Xander cooking behind him, “You look cute in the kitchen though.” 

The current poker game was going quite spectacularly, if Cal did say so himself. He had won four of the seven rounds so far (after deliberately throwing some of the games so as to not look like the cheating bastard he was), but he was still cashing it in big. It wasn't that the young man was actually the best poker player on the table; he was very... skilled with his hands in more ways than one, which always won him brownie points with the women and a few odd men here and there. A stray card here, a stray card there... No one noticed. They were all too drunk to realize that they were being cheated.

Not that Cal wasn't willing or anything whenever a pretty-headed boy fixated his eyes on him. It was just that those kinds of guys were few and far in between.

Which was why when Cal felt a set of eyes weigh heavily on him, he languidly twisted around to flirtatiously catch the eye of a barmaid and called for a tankard of beer on the pretense to catch a glimpse of his admirer (or so he liked to think was an admirer; God be damned if it was Houston Billy again- the man gave him the chills). Eyes quickly picking out faces in the room, Cal easily noted the face of a slightly Hispanic-looking guy with a grievously crooked jaw that somehow still gave the man a handsome look.