‘What?’
‘The rhinos,’ Ashley laughed at him. ‘Why are they all different colours?’
‘Oh, different flag colours,’ Finn laughed. ‘Black, yellow, red, green, blue, white … They all make up the different flags of countries I lived in.’
Meaning he lived in more than Zimbabwe, even if that was the only one he’d talked about. Though, Australia was red, white and blue so maybe that explained things.
‘But there’s a pink rhino,’ he pointed out, remembering the tattoo.
‘Well, yeah, that’s me. Because, well … you know the pink elephant joke?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You know, that stupid kid joke where the guy keeps fleeing every country he goes to because the pink elephant keeps showing up?’
‘Uh, no, I don’t know that one.’ But Ashley was laughing anyway, mostly because Finn seemed very perplexed that anyone would not know his pink elephant joke. He stood in the kitchen with his hair mussed in Ashley’s oversized shirt, spatula in one hand and stumped expression on his face. Ashley thought he was ridiculous, and somehow the most beautiful thing in the world.
‘The joke starts with this guy on vacation. The trip of a lifetime or whatever, and he’s on the beach when suddenly a pink elephant comes tearing along the sand looking like it’s gonna kill him, so he flees to the next country, say maybe Italy. But all of a sudden he’s in the Colosseum and there’s the pink elephant, charging for him, so he flees to another country. Goes to say … Iceland. But he’s checking out a volcano and the pink elephant appears …’
‘Yeah, okay so he keeps running, elephant keeps showing up. Then what?’ Did this actually make sense? Ashley didn’t get it. Was it a metaphor? Was he showing how dumb he was? Was Finn going to dump him because he didn’t understand the pink elephant joke?
‘Well, he eventually stops and lets the elephant catch him and screams in its face, demanding to know what it wants, right? Like, he’s completely losing his mind and has finally snapped and roars at the elephant, totally bonkers.’
‘Okay?’ What the hell?
‘And the elephant says, ‘tag you’re it!’ and runs away.’
Ashley sat for a long minute, contemplating.
‘I’m sorry, what?’ He eventually asked, sure he had missed something.
‘Tag. You’re it.’ Finn repeated. Looking at him expectantly. Still nothing.
‘Tag, you’re…’
‘No, yeah, I get it,’ Ashley interrupted him, shaking his head. ‘That’s not even funny. How is that a joke? That’s so stupid!’
But Finn was grinning at him, and then laughing. He kept laughing the whole time he served up two steaming bowls of rice and veggies in plum sauce and settled on the couch to eat it.
‘I’m serious, Finn! That joke is terrible! I’m not even sure it’s a joke!’ He had to have missed something. He grabbed his bowl of food and sat next to Finn, running the joke on repeat in his mind, because he had to have missed something but nope. It was plain stupid.
‘I like it,’ Finn eventually explained. ‘It’s stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. I want to be the pink elephant. I think it’s an analogy for life. Here everyone is, running all over the world trying to have a great time, spending all their money on exciting vacations to escape their lives, but they’re all scared of something, and if they stopped and faced their fears they’d realise it was playing with them. That they could go home and every day would be like they were on vacation, because they wouldn’t have anything to run away from anymore. And meanwhile, that thing you’re so afraid of follows you all over the world anyway, and it’s simply playing a game, enjoying its life. Completely oblivious to your fear.’
Finn ate, not expecting an answer. Ashley nibbled and contemplated. He replayed the story in his head, over and over, and he stared at Finn Hale and wondered if maybe Finn Hale was stupid or the smartest man he’d ever met. In the end, he realised Taylor was right and Finn was just good.
‘I guess I’d rather be a pink elephant,’ he had to agree. Fun was always preferable to fear. But he wondered what Finn was afraid of, that he needed the reminder right there on his skin that he didn’t want to be afraid any more. That he was going to make every day matter.
‘You think I’m crazy, huh,’ he said softly and while he sounded like he was teasing, there was an odd undercurrent to it.
‘No,’ Ashley leaned in over his bowl to kiss the corner of Finn’s mouth and nuzzle his cheek, loving the friction from his shadowed jaw.
‘I think you’re beautiful.’
‘What?’ Finn choked on a piece of capsicum and Ashley slapped his back while his eyes watered and he struggled to breathe, both of them laughing. Finn didn’t need to believe him for it to be true.
‘Who bit you anyway?’ Ashley finally asked to change the subject and Finn’s gaze went to his arm and he scowled.
‘Alice Hong. We were arresting her brother, Tuan Hong, and Jones swears he’d checked the other room, but out of nowhere Alice pops up and I grab her right as she’s about to kick Jones in the head and the next thing you know, she’s biting me like a damned ferret.’
‘I don’t know what sort of ferrets you’ve encountered, but …’ Ashley was shaking his head and pointing his fork at the bite. ‘They don’t look like that.’
‘Ha ha,’ Finn rolled his eyes. ‘Anyway, it was annoying as hell! I had to go to the hospital and get blood drawn for all these tests, including rabies! Can you believe that? They thought she might have given me rabies. Crazy.’
‘Hepatitis, more like it,’ Ashley mused. ‘Or Herpes. Or HIV.’
Finn was frozen, glaring at him with a limp bean on his fork.
‘I’m trying to eat here, not panic about what my test results might say!’
‘Wait, you didn’t get the results yet?’
‘Kidding,’ Finn smirked. ‘You’re so easy. Taylor would never have fallen for that.’
‘Clay would’ve.’ Ashley tried to defend himself, but even he had to admit comparing himself to Clay was in no way helping his case. Clay was dating a science professor, but that didn’t make him a genius. Clay wasn’t even sure what Joel did, and usually referred to it as ‘Joel’s sciencey school stuff’.
‘So did you arrest Alice Hong, or are you not allowed to tell me that?’
‘Of course I arrested her, she assaulted a police officer. We arrested her brother too, because he was doing bad things.’
‘Bad things,’ Ashley snickered.
‘Come on, I’m not allowed to tell you much. I’m trying here!’
‘I know,’ Ashley placated him, rubbing Finn’s thigh and finishing his own dinner. ‘I’ve been worried, is all. You’ve been working a lot and Taylor and Clay have been pretty mum about the whole thing.’
‘It’s a hard case, but we’re getting there,’ Finn acknowledged and that was the best Ashley could hope for. He took the empty bowls to the sink and quickly did the washing up, a firm believer that the man who cooks doesn’t clean, which left cleaning duties to him. He was startled when Finn got up and grabbed a hand towel and started drying the dishes.
‘No, you cooked.’
‘And you sat and watched and entertained me, and would have helped if I’d needed it. So I can help with this, we can get it done quicker and we can sit on the couch and watch a movie or something.’
That did sound good. Ashley didn’t argue. He nodded instead, ridiculously pleased when Finn stroked his jaw in quiet thanks for letting him help and they made quick work of the chore.
They raided the Netflix catalogue and found an obscure looking movie they both liked the look of and Finn immediately flopped over into his lap, Anubis at his feet.
‘Make yourself comfortable.’
‘Did,’ Finn acknowledged and Ashley felt his grin against his thigh.
The oversized shirt draped low around Finn’s neck and the top of the red rhino peeked out around his shoulder. Ashley marvelled at the finer details. It lo
oked like a speckled watercolour ruby, as if the skin would be slightly rough to touch, but it was smooth and soft and perfect. He still couldn’t imagine what drove Finn to pack up his whole life and move to Africa to save an animal he’d never seen outside a zoo based on an article he read in a magazine. That kind of impulsiveness simply wasn’t in Ashley. But there was a degree of calculation to the decision as well. He’d had to plan it, save money, buy a ticket. There had been a plan, vague and rough as it was, and once he’d decided, there had been no hesitation. No argument. No changing his mind.
‘You’re not watching the movie,’ Finn noted and Ashley looked down to find the man half asleep on his lap, eyes closed, equally oblivious to what was going on on the screen.
‘Neither are you.’
‘Sure I am,’ Finn smirked. ‘Just a different movie. Mine’s better.’ And with no further comment he was asleep again.
Chuckling softly, Ashley didn’t bother to get up. He settled more comfortably into the cushions and pulled a blanket over them, letting his fingers trail lazily up and down Finn’s back while he watched the movie and dozed and Finn slept, completely still and silent in his arms. Anubis slept at his feet. He’d never felt more at peace with the world.
‘Pink elephant. What the fuck?’ He was dating a crazy person.
11
Oh, Harriet, sweet chariot
‘You had another sleepover.’ Dave loomed at the end of Ashley’s bed, arms on his hips like he thought he was Superman, grin wide. Ashley groaned and pulled his pillow over his face, rolling away when he felt the bed shift under Dave’s weight. Hands pulled at the pillow and he struggled to hold onto it but in the end gave up both pillow and any hope of morning peace. Dave was still grinning when he tossed the pillow aside and stared down at him.
‘The bed’s very untidy.’
‘I slept in it.’
‘So did Finn Hale. I know because I heard him sneaking out the front door at 5.00 am.’ Dave fetched the pillow back and propped it up against the headboard, settling in, feet tucked under the doona.
‘That’s all we did. Sleep. Okay?’
‘No, not okay. That’s very boring. I want to hear that you had fantastic monkey sex long into the early hours and that you liberally covered that man in so many hickeys even Taylor won’t have the heart to pick on him about it.’
‘You were home by one in the morning. You would’ve heard us.’ Ashley was trying to be reasonable, which was really sort of stupid since he apparently lived with entirely unreasonable people. ‘And I do not want Finn having to deal with shit from my brothers.’
‘Yeah … good luck with that.’ They both knew there was no way a member of Ashley’s family would leave his love interest alone.
‘Do you think Finn’s okay?’
Dave was immediately quiet, studying him. It was a sign of how well they knew each other that he took the question seriously. That he knew Ashley was worried, for real.
‘Like, in the head? He has to have passed all sorts of psych tests to be in the police, right? So I think so, but I’m kind of concerned that you’re unsure and still dating the guy. He didn’t hit you or anything, right?’
‘What? No! I told you a house fell on me!’
‘Which would frankly be the dumbest excuse ever except that I saw it on the news so it’s true …’
‘Hayley would give you the most annoying lecture for believing anything you saw on the news.’ But the observation made him smile and eased the tension tightening his shoulders.
‘Finn reminds me of Sietta,’ Dave admitted in hushed tones. ‘Not physically. Finn looks like he walked out of a bloody superhero movie … have you seen those abs?’
He had, up close and personal. He scowled at Dave though, because no one else was supposed to be admiring his things. Which was probably an awful sign of possessiveness but he couldn’t bring himself to care when someone was paying close attention to Finn Hale’s body.
‘God, you’ve got it bad.’ Dave shook his head and ruffled Ashley’s hair, which didn’t do a damn thing to soothe his irritation.
‘Cool your jets, I’m a Freya-man, all the way. I’m just saying, if you’re gonna to swing that way, you picked a really freakin’ hot one, okay? But yeah, he gives me the same weird vibe as Sietta, like you know something really bad happened to them and, even though it’s clear they’ve moved on, it’s still there under the surface somewhere and if you say that one wrong thing maybe they’re gonna shatter like glass, you know?’
Yeah. It was exactly like that. They were quiet, lying in bed together, happy to share space while the shower turned on and then off and the scent of coffee slowly permeated the apartment. Freya was getting ready for work.
‘How come you haven’t asked Freya to marry you?’
‘I don’t know how to.’ The response was immediate and Dave’s eyes were suddenly wide, his expression pinched. ‘Seriously, man, you’ve gotta help me. Nothing I think of is original or cool or anything and if it’s not the greatest proposal ever she’s gonna tell me to come up with something better and keep saying no …’
Ashley was laughing and it felt good. He pushed aside his own misgivings for the moment and settled in to try and brainstorm a way to propose to the most ridiculous woman alive because about that, Dave was right. Freya would keep saying ‘no’, if only to see how far Dave was willing to go with the next proposal. The first one had to maybe literally steal the breath from her lungs.
Preferably by seven, since he had to go on shift.
Marrickville was smothered in a cloud of dark ash and heavy smoke. The truck could barely see where it was going as they followed the GPS to the address dispatch had given them. They were not going to be the first crew on the scene, which was good since it looked like they wouldn’t be able to see the scene.
‘Fuck me, did someone light up a rubber factory?’ Bell swore darkly, sitting up front with Keller, the two of them trying to make sense of the streets while drivers tried to scatter away from the truck without being able to see where they were going. The smoke was billowing over the suburb from a northerly draft coming in off the water.
Ashley was trying to remember if he’d shut all the windows in the apartment before he left that morning, hoping he had because the smoke would drift east at some point into Erskineville and the last thing he wanted was his home to smell like his work.
The truck rounded a corner and the fire came into view. Black clouds coughed up from rich red flames roaring up the side of a five story apartment block, the brick structure already starting to cave in the heat, crumbling across the undercover parking area where several cars were well and truly engulfed, rubber and petrol only adding to the problem.
‘Bloody hell!’ Bell was already half out of the cab before the truck stopped. Ashley leapt out ahead of Smith, Tully and White, the other three men on duty. He didn’t usually work with Tully and White, but they’d swapped shifts and ended up in sync with Ashley for a few weeks and he was starting to get to know them. It was hard when everyone you worked with was at least a decade your senior and married with kids. Not a whole lot to relate to, especially when you wanted to rave about your sexy police officer boyfriend. So not happening.
‘How’d it get so bad so fast?’
The call had only come through twenty minutes ago and two other trucks were already on scene, but the fire seemed to be getting worse, not better.
‘There’s gotta be an accelerant somewhere.’ Accelerants usually meant arson, but Ashley refused to contemplate it and instead helped get the hoses on.
Bell clapped him on the shoulder and pointed to his mask. Ashley hurriedly pulled the rest of his gear on and followed Bell toward the building, wondering what they were doing. Then he heard the screams.
Cursing, he followed Bell to the back entrance which was not as engulfed as the front yet. They broke the glass on the door and climbed through, immediately calling out for survivors.
Bell pointed in the direction they heard sc
reams coming from and they went down and slowly made their way forward, sticking to the back wall as much as possible.
Glancing up, Ashley noticed the roof had a slow roll of flame slithering across it, and he doubted the floor was stable any more. He didn’t like his chances if it came down on him; there were no couches to take cover under this time.
He pointed it out to Bell, who shifted them away from the window in case it shattered on them, swapping to the wall on the opposite side of the room and staying low, hurrying to the stairs. The screams were growing in intensity and suddenly they were accompanied by loud thumping and Ashley pointed to one of the doors straining against a heavy weight being thrown against the other side.
The screams were horrendous. Before they could get to the door it burst open, smashed off its hinges and two people came fleeing through the opening, arms flailing, their hair and clothes on fire. Ashley ran forward and hugged one of the figures to him, dropped and rolled, using his suit to put them out. A woman, he realised as the wailing sobs reached him. Her skin came off on his clothes in clumps, leaving red sinew and muscle so he rolled off her and tried to touch her as little as possible, ushering her back toward the door and helping her out through the shattered glass.
Tully was there with paramedics and Ashley left to go back and help Bell, who was trying to carry the other unconscious woman out. Together they lifted her and got her through the broken glass but she was a heavy, dead weight in their arms and her burns were far worse. Skin had peeled off and she was blistering, still smouldering when they lay her on a stretcher for the paramedics.
They went in for a final check, the silence damning. The door the women had broken down was on the floor with evidence they’d been trying for some time to get it open. Ashley noticed there was a lock on the outside, broken off its bracket now, but with the padlock still attached. He paid it only a cursory glance and moved on.
There was a body in the stairwell, so blackened it was barely recognisable as a person and still on fire. Flames roared down through the cement space like a funnel, forcing them back. Ashley was grateful. The heat was suffocating, he was sweating so badly in his suit it was filling with water that in turn heated and would likely give him a mild irritant burn. He wanted out, and yet it kept him enclosed where he could smell burning flesh. For that he was grateful.
Rhino Ash (Saturday Barbies Book 2) Page 18
