Chapter Text
Demo day at the new house was basically a House 51 party, about a week after Matt closed on it. Everyone pitched in, and they had the place stripped really bare by 5 o’clock that night. It was February, and miserably cold outside, but at least there was no snow or ice. The dumpster Matt had hired was full, and ready to be taken away the next day. Matt bought pizza and had it delivered to Molly’s, where he also bought the first round of beers. Everyone was sweaty, dirty, and tired, but also in great spirits.
Now, she and Matt could start really deciding what they wanted to do with the house. She was pretty sure they’d do the interior stuff all first, then work on the outside stuff. Except the windows. Matt wanted to get those replaced and in some cases moved before they did much inside to the first and second floors. A couple days after demo, he laid out plans on the table at the loft, so they could plan what they wanted to do.
“I was thinking we’d do the ground floor apartment first.”
“But that’s the guest space.” Sylvie wrinkled her nose. It didn’t make sense to her to start with the space they’d use the least. Matt shrugged.
“If I finish that up, I could move in there, work upstairs.”
“Hey, man, I told you – no rush.” Kelly walked behind, heading for the sofa to watch the hockey match.
“I know, but it’s also the part I can work on while the windows are being reconfigured upstairs.”
“You’re not doing that work yourself?”
“Faster to hire a crew.” Matt shook his head. “And February is the driest month in Chicago, so I want to get on that now. It’s cold as hell, but since we’re not living in the place, I figure better to take advantage of the dry weather if we’re opening exterior walls.”
“That makes sense.” Sylvie nodded along.
“If we want to move walls, I’ll need to get an engineer to sign off on the plans, so that’s our first decision. Most of the stuff I can do myself, but substantial floor-plan changes, and the decks on the back, those are going to require an engineer’s approval to get city permits. Plumbing, HVAC, and wiring all need inspections, too, but I can schedule those later – just deal with the basement stuff first.”
“This is a huge project, Matt. Are you sure you can afford to do all this?” Sylvie asked, and he shot her an aggravated look. “What? It’s a legitimate question.”
“I told you to let me worry about the money. So let me worry about the money.”
“Well, I don’t like that rule. If it’s our project, then it should be our worry about the money.”
“I don’t think you can afford a fifty-percent buy-in.” Matt pointed out a little sharply.
“No, I can’t, but I don’t want you to think you have to…try to do too much.” She tried to soften her words, and her tone, because she could see he was getting offended. “Matt, you’re a contractor. You’re going to be working on this house every winter for the next however many years you live there. You’re going to be constantly finding projects. I know you. We don’t have to do everything right now. And I’m going to worry about money because I don’t want you working a bunch of over-time to spend more on this house – I’d rather do the projects a bit piecemeal and have you home with me. Okay?”
“Sylvie, I appreciate that.” He softened as well. He leaned over to kiss her gently. “I’m just saying, don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t like you just saying it’s your job to worry about money. I don’t want you to ‘take care of me’ like that.” She had visions of being told he wanted her to stay home or something, not work once they had kids, which maybe she’d decide that for herself once they had kids, if they had kids, she was sort of getting ahead of things there, but she didn’t want to be dictated to or told she didn’t ‘need’ to work as if she only worked for the money or as a hobby for lack of anything ‘better’ to do, or like it was some slight on his manhood that she worked.
“I had good equity in the condo, because of the place I had before that. So I had a pretty big down payment.” Matt paused. “I promise, I will tell you when we hit the budget, okay?”
“You’ll seriously tell me if we start dreaming too big?”
“I will seriously tell you. Just remember that we’ll take longer to do this, because I’ll be doing a lot of the work – but that means less labor costs, too. And no contractor fees.”
“Fine, I trust you.” She gave in, mostly graciously. She looked at the plans he had laid out. She didn’t see any real need to change the layout of the home. It was pretty open on the ground floor for a late Victorian house, and she didn’t want to give up any bedrooms upstairs, even if they were smallish. “I think the only walls are the ones blocking the stairs to the ground floor, we wanted to take those out, right?”
“Yeah, but we don’t need an engineer to sign off on that – we’re just taking out some drywall basically. You don’t want to change anything else?”
“No, I like the layout.” She shook her head.
“Okay. Well, let’s decide big stuff first then. You like the idea of doing the ground floor first?”
“It makes sense.” She nodded.
“Great. So now, we need to pick the windows we want, and start on things like flooring and cabinets for the ground floor.” Matt smiled at her. “Usually, this is where the guy I’m talking to turns it over to the woman in his life.”
“Nuh-uh. We are making these decisions together. I may be the fixer-upper guru, but it’s your house, Matt.”
They spent a good two hours that night talking about the windows they wanted, and what sort of deck they wanted on the back. Matt really hated the deck off the master, with stairs down to the lower levels, which he said blocked light to the first floor and was unnecessary. She pointed out fire egress, but he’d just shot her a dirty look. She wasn’t really going to fight him on it. She thought the three-story patio/deck dominated the back of the home too. He sketched out their ideas, and they narrowed it down to what they wanted to talk through with the engineer. They also talked plumbing changes, which really shouldn’t have been sexy, but she ended up in Matt’s lap as they looked at bathroom options which was inherently distracting. Plus, there was something incredibly sexy about Matt in contractor mode. Was it early in their relationship to be renovating a house together? Absolutely. They’d been dating for four months. They weren’t engaged. He hadn’t asked her to move in with him. But here he was building, or rebuilding anyway, a home and she had a distinct feeling (backed up by the looks from pretty much everyone at 51, and especially tonight from Kelly and Stella) that it was for them. Did she care that they’d only been dating four months? Not at all. And the longer she sat in his lap, the more she got distracted by the heat and the smell and the Matt-Casey of him. She wiggled a little, so she could whisper in his ear.
“Why don’t we call it a night?”
“It’s nine o’clock.” Matt seemed confused for a second. She wiggled again, a little more obviously this time. She took his hand, removed the pencil from his grip, and moved it to her stomach. She didn’t want to be too blatant, not with Stella and Kelly on the sofa, watching the Blackhawks. Luckily, Matt was a pretty clever man. He was not, however, a very subtle man.
“Sev, you mind if I leave this stuff spread out?” He called without even turning around.
“Nah, man, we’re good.” Kelly replied, though there was a definite hint of laughter in his voice. She was mostly over the shyness about Kelly and Stella knowing what they were doing. Everyone knew they were having sex, in general, and it was a little weird to have friends know you were having sex right now, but she wasn’t uncomfortable enough with it to not have sex with Matt. If he was in the mood, which he’d rarely been since that awful email, she was not about to be shy about his roommates being home.
She managed to keep her hands to herself until they were in Matt’s bedroom. Then she kissed him, hard and fast and deep, because she could and she wanted it, she wanted him. She wanted to get lost in him, the strength and solidness and firmness and just the masculinity of him, it all turned her on incredibly, right now. She pulled at his shirt, feeling desperate to get at bare skin. Together, they stripped each other quickly, and dropped onto his bed. She loved the feel of him over her, something about the size differential between them made her insanely hot, that sense that if he wanted to, he could take her, that he could control her, it felt sexy and amazing, but safe, not at all dangerous. She loved the way he could hold her down, make her submit to him, in the most delicious ways, like now with her arms above her head and his mouth on her tits, and his body pinning her down so all she could really do is writhe a bit underneath his attentions, that and let him tease and please her. He pulled back after a few minutes.
“Can I?” He always asked, even months after she’d given him his ‘birthday present’. She nodded, and he dropped back down to run his mouth so slowly from her tits to her pussy. He released her hands as he moved down, but she left them over her head, not wanting to move and disrupt even the slightest bit of the feeling just yet. Everything he did to her always felt so good. She was mostly over her aversion to having his mouth down there, because he so clearly did not think it was awful or tasted weird or smelled bad, and once she let herself go, it felt fantastic. She tugged on his hair with her left hand though, and he looked up at her with a nod.
“I know, same rules.”
“Thank you.” She knew he was a little disappointed that she still said surface-level only but the idea of his tongue inside her just weirded her out.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He grinned, and dove into his task. Either the men she’d been with before had really sucked at this, or Matt was magical, because that thing, whatever it was, that he did with his tongue and her clit and the sucking and the teeth and the everything, it sent her skyward so quickly. It might be embarrassing, how quickly she came, except that he took great pride in it, and his ability to make her keep coming multiple times. After the second orgasm, though, she tugged at his hair again. She didn’t want him to wear her out like this, she had other plans.
“Fuck me, Matt. I want you inside me.”
“Grab a condom.” He directed her with a smile as he slid back up her body. She shook her head, and kissed him. She concentrated for what felt like a long time just on kissing him, lips and teeth and tongues and hands roving freely over each other’s bodies. Her right hand eventually made it to his dick, tugging at the solid thickness of him several times. He pulled back, arching into her touch. Every stroke, she let her thumb run long the bottom, rubbing a little more forcefully at the little bit of flesh where his foreskin was connected to the head of his dick. She swore it was the single most sensitive spot on his body. It always made him arch like that, and curse under his breath in the best ways. She leaned up to him, kissing along his jaw until she got to his ear.
“No condom.”
“Syl-“
“Birth control, Matt.” She assured him. “I’m on it, it’s had plenty of time to be at full effect, and I want to feel you fuck me, just you, no condom.”
“You sure?”
“We’re both clean. I’m sure.” She nodded with a smile. “Just you and me, nothing between us.”
“Fuck me.” He groaned, but then he slid two fingers up in her, soon a third, rubbing along the front of her pussy that way that made her so wet, but opened her up for him, and then a fourth finger, and his mouth was all over her, from her tits to her neck, to her mouth where they battled for dominance, and then back to her tits, and when his thumb hit her clit as well she exploded into a third orgasm for the night. She had never thought she came particularly easily, but he must’ve gotten a cheat code somewhere, because she sure as fuck did with Matt.
“Please, Matt. Be in me. Please. Inside me.” She managed almost coherent English. His fingers eased her down from the wave just a little, then she felt him line up and start to push home. She couldn’t help the tiny flinch at the twinge. No matter how much he brought her off, it always took her body a little bit, just a moment, to adjust to the size of him as he pushed deeper into her. He felt hotter, smoother, and somehow just a little bit bigger without the condom, which made no sense but she didn’t care because the feeling mattered not the sense. He was inside her, just him, no barrier, and just the emotions and thoughts tied up with that had her flying headlong towards another orgasm. She moved against him, impatient for that feeling, but he grabbed her hips firmly.
“Shit, Sylvie, give me a minute.”
“Fuck me, Matt. Please, fuck me.”
“I’m gonna come too quick if you don’t…you’re so tight, so hot and wet and fuck, it feels so fucking good, Sylvie. Need a minute.”
“I’m so close again, I don’t care, just fuck me.” He obliged after a moment, his strokes angled perfectly, but not too hard or even that fast, at least, not tonight, and she shifted the slightest bit, and he was hitting that spot dead on, and a few seconds later she flew apart. Once she could manage any sort of conscious bodily action, she forced her eyes open as he followed her over that cliff. She could feel his cock jerking a little inside her. He kept moving, slowly, gently, for a few minutes, easing them both down from their highs. Eventually, he pulled out, and settled into the bed next to her.
“That was…a pleasant surprise.” He managed, slightly out of breath.
“No distance between us, right?” She replied. “And you feel even better without a condom, which just…I didn’t even know there was a better.”
“You, Sylvie Brett, are dangerously good for my ego.”
“It’s well-earned.” She rolled to kiss him gently. “I need to go clean up a little. Then sleep, seems like we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”