by Lisa Henry
“I’m an Ingham boy.”
“And what brought you to Townsville?”
Matt took a sip of his beer. “Better opportunities for promotion, mostly. Also, my Grandad is here, and he’s getting on a bit.” He hesitated for a moment, and a flush rose in his cheeks. “I actually live with him.”
“Oh.” Hayden raised his eyebrows. That was…unexpected, but he was nothing if not practical. He could roll with the punches. “So I guess if we’re fucking tonight, we’re doing it at my place?”
Matt huffed out a laugh. “You get straight to the point, don’t you?”
“Never saw any reason not to.”
“Fair enough.” The corner of Matt’s mouth twitched. “So yeah, your place would be a better option.”
It had been a while since Hayden had taken anyone home. It was less messy to go home with someone else and extricate himself later when they were done. He much preferred the walk of shame to hours spent dropping hints about what time it was, and how he had to be up in the morning, and do you need me to call you a taxi? Besides, what was shameful about getting laid?
Hayden had always had a healthy attitude towards sex, not so much his sexuality, but sex. He’d known from the time he was a teenager that sex was something that should be fun and safe, even if at the same time he’d known to shut his mouth about who he wanted to have sex with. He hadn’t been ashamed of sexuality, but he’d been acutely aware that other people were prepared to hate him for it: he’d stayed in the closet because that had been the safest place to be, and he’d been desperate to burst out and finally get some dick the moment he could. He had spent most of his late teens and early twenties making up for lost time.
He wondered what the closet looked like in small-town Ingham. It was hard to imagine a small town in North Queensland would have been more accepting of Matt than Melbourne had been of Hayden. Then again, Hayden had hardly grown up in St. Kilda, had he?
“So, how long have you been an ambo?” Matt asked.
“Three years since I qualified. How long have you been a copper?”
“Four years.” Matt set his knife and fork down on his plate. “What made you want to get into that?”
Sometimes people expected a story—a singular moment in Hayden’s life that put him on the path to his calling. Sometimes Hayden thought he should just make something up—and sometimes he did—but he gave Matt the truth.
“I like the rush of driving fast and saving lives.” He raised his eyebrows. “And the Service paid for my degree.”
Matt’s mouth tugged up at the corners. “Fair enough.”
“What about you? Why’d you want to be a copper?”
“When I was a kid, we lived next door to the old sergeant,” Matt said. “He busted me for shoplifting when I was about twelve, read me the riot act, and promised not to tell my parents if I came to the station every day after school for a month and washed all the cars.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess the place grew on me.”
“Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome.”
Matt laughed. “Maybe.”
Hayden smiled at him and knocked his foot against Matt’s under the table. “You were a real bad seed as a kid, huh?”
“I was a literal boy scout, actually.” Matt snorted. “I just really wanted those Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.”
The waitress came to clear their table. “Another drink?”
Hayden met Matt’s gaze, and felt heat stirring. “No, thanks. I think we’re good to go.”
They were kissing the moment they made it through the front door. It was rough and messy and rushed, and Hayden hardly had time to check that Monique was out before he dragged Matt toward his bedroom. For an apartment as flash as this one, the walls were surprisingly thin, and Hayden planned on being as loud as he wanted once he had Matt in his room.
He shut the bedroom door behind them and crowded Matt toward the bed. Got up into his space, tilting his head to lick a stripe along Matt’s jaw that made Matt’s breath shudder. The faintest hint of stubble rasped against Hayden’s tongue, and he came back and worried the place with his teeth.
“Fuck.” Matt dragged his fingers through Hayden’s hair, and Hayden wished he wore it longer. Wished that Matt really had something to grab hold of, to curl around his fist and pull.
Hayden pushed Matt down to sit on the bed, and climbed onto him. Grinning, he straddled his thighs, and popped the top button of Matt’s dress shirt. Matt’s hands settled on his hips, his fingers digging in. Hayden worked his buttons free, and slid the shirt off his shoulders to reveal tanned skin that tasted a little like salt when Hayden dipped his head to lick it, and that tribal tattoo that he’d only caught tantalising glimpses of before. It was a half sleeve that extended across his shoulder to his scapula at the back and his right pectoral at the front. The ink covered his skin like some sort of gladiatorial armour. The design was Celtic; intricate knot work that must have taken hours in the chair. Hayden wanted to follow every loop and scroll with his tongue.
“Nice,” he murmured.
Matt flushed. “Your turn.”
Hayden leaned back, tugging his shirt off and dropping it onto the floor. His skin warmed as Matt’s heavy-lidded gaze raked over him, and then Matt closed the space between them and pressed his mouth to the juncture of Hayden’s shoulder and neck. Hayden shivered at the scrape of his teeth. He squirmed, laughed, and pushed Matt away so that he fell back onto the bed, Hayden still straddling him.
Hayden rubbed a hand across Matt’s chest, exploring the small thatch of hair between his pecs that thickened as it got lower, and eventually darkened into a treasure trail that vanished into the top of his hip-hugging jeans. He always liked this part with someone new: exploring a body that was unknown to him and mapping it out with his fingers and his tongue. And Matt was an enthusiastic subject—dropping his head back and moaning as Hayden touched him and pulled up marks on his neck with his mouth.
“How do you want to do this?”
Matt looked a little dazed. “Um…how do you want to?”
“Now’s not the time to be shy, Constable Deakin,” Hayden said, grinding against the bulge in his jeans. “Do you want to fuck me? Get your dick in me?”
Hayden wouldn’t call himself a size queen or anything, but he remembered with enthusiasm that Matt’s dick had been more than a mouthful, and he couldn’t wait to get it inside his arse.
“Yeah.” Matt swiped his lower lip with his tongue. “I want to get my dick in you.”
Hayden ducked down and licked the same path along Matt’s bottom lip. When he leaned back, Matt followed him up. They jostled with flies and underwear and jeans that were suddenly a pain in the arse to get off. Hayden rolled off Matt, laughing when Matt got his jeans caught around his shoes. He helped him tug the shoes off, dropping them one at a time with a dull thunk onto the floor.
He liked this part of sex as well. The awkward, fun part where it was okay to laugh.
Hayden climbed off the bed, naked now, and opened the drawer in his bedside cabinet. Condoms, lube, tissues, and a couple of toys. Lately he’d been lazy and couldn’t be fucked with cleaning up his toys afterwards, so he hadn’t used them much. Not even the plug. And one glance at Matt’s dick told Hayden he was definitely going to feel the stretch tonight.
Good.
Hayden tossed the lube and a condom onto the bed. “Come on, Constable Deakin, get that dick in me, huh?”
“It’s Matt.” Matt raised his eyebrows. “I don’t want to think about work right now.”
“Really?” Hayden climbed onto the bed again and straddled his thighs. “Not even about handcuffs? Do they let you take those home, by the way?”
Matt laughed again, breaking off into a moan as Hayden wrapped a hand around his dick. “Fuck. I’m—I’m sure that could be arranged.”
Hayden rubbed his thumb over the head of Matt’s dick, loving the way that Matt shuddered underneath him. “I could be into that.”
He caught a bead of hot pre
come on his thumb, and spread it over the head of Matt’s dick. He pressed hard, dragging his thumb across that sensitive flesh. Matt dropped his head back, his spine arching.
“You’re big,” Hayden said. He ducked down and licked Matt’s pec, following the lines of the tattoo. “Gonna feel you for days, aren’t I?”
“You want that?” Matt asked, his voice rough.
“Yeah.” Hayden flashed him a cocky smile. “Yeah, I do.”
He didn’t waste much time on prep—a couple of fingers, a shitload of lube, and nature would find a way. It was a philosophy that had always served him well in the past, so it was the work of minutes before he was straddling Matt again, pushing him down and digging the fingers of one hand into his shoulder. Into the lines of his tattoo. He reached behind himself with his other hand, caught Matt’s dick, and held it in place while he sat back.
The stretch was good. Shocking enough that Hayden’s skin pebbled with a sudden chill and his breath punched out of him before his body adjusted. He arched his spine, and Matt’s hands came to rest on his hips.
“Fuck!” Matt squeezed his eyes shut as Hayden began to ride him.
This.
Hayden was good at this. It felt good too. It took a little while for them to fall into a rhythm, but once they did Matt lifted his hips to meet Hayden whenever Hayden pushed back down, and his dick rode Hayden’s prostate every time.
Hayden clutched Matt’s shoulders and let out a breathless laugh.
Matt was pretty fucking good at this too, and then it was better than good. It was amazing.
Hayden leaned down to nip Matt’s bottom lip. “Fuck, yeah. You like this?”
Matt gripped Hayden’s hips tighter. “Y-yeah.” His voice was ragged at the edges. “Yeah, I like it.”
Hayden straightened up, pulling his shoulders back and arching his spine. He rose up on his knees again, feeling the burn in his thighs and his arse, and rolled his hips as he slid down onto Matt’s dick. Matt’s eyes were wide, and the tendons in his neck stood out when he rolled his head back. Sweat darkened his hairline, and shone on his upper lip. Hayden grinned at him, and then clenched down hard on his dick just to listen to the sounds he made.
Matt groaned, and lifted a hand from Hayden’s hip. He reached up above his head, and wrapped his fingers around the one of the slats in the headboard of the bed, as though he was trying to anchor himself. The sight of his biceps bunching, making his tattoo move, pushed Hayden right to the edge of coming. He sucked in a breath, and began to jerk himself off. So close. He rocked against Matt, the springs in his mattress sighing.
“Come on,” Matt rasped. “Come on!”
Hayden stroked himself faster, pleasure tightening in a coil inside him, his balls drawing up. His muscles locked, and then he was there, coming over his fist and over Matt’s stomach and chest in sudden hot spurts. He collapsed forward onto Matt, thighs aching, fingers twitching, the aftershocks of his climax still shivering through him.
Matt rolled him onto his back, following him over. They jostled against one another briefly, Matt’s dick slipping free, and then Matt was hooking one of Hayden’s legs over his shoulder. Hayden tilted his pelvis, and closed his eyes as Matt pushed into him again.
It was Hayden’s turn to grip the slats of the headboard.
Matt thrust. Two times, and then three, and then he was shuddering through his own orgasm.
For a moment he held himself up above Hayden, his eyes wide and his chest heaving, and then he shifted and face-planted into the mattress beside him. “Holy fuck.”
Hayden, breathless, couldn’t agree more.
They sat on the balcony with a beer each. The balcony overlooked the creek, and the park, and the restaurant precinct over in Palmer Street. It caught a good breeze at night.
Hayden was wearing his boxer briefs and a T-shirt. Matt was wearing his jeans. His button-up shirt hung open, framing the planes of his chest. Hayden sipped his beer while he stole glances, and waited to feel that itch, that restlessness that usually translated into a need to get this stranger out of his space now. But he didn’t feel that building impatience with Matt, which was weird. It usually hit twice and hard and fast with someone he’d brought home instead of going to their place.
Instead, they slipped easily into conversation.
They talked about work, about some of the jobs they’d been to, and the frequent flyers they had in common. They talked about shiftwork, and how isolating it could be, and then Matt told Hayden about how he was slowly doing up his grandfather’s house while he was living there, and that was how he spent most of his time off.
“Just the little stuff, mostly,” he said. “I mean, the roof will need looking at soon, but I’ll get someone in for that. You don’t want to fuck up a roof, you know?”
“Seems like it could be an expensive mistake,” Hayden agreed. “Does the house need a lot of work?”
“It’s mainly cosmetic stuff, apart from the roof.” Matt tilted his head back as he drank his beer, and Hayden watched his throat bob. “Grandad’s old, so he hasn’t been keeping on top of things. And since he’s refusing to take a fair amount of rent, this is the least I can do.”
Hayden had spent so long hating Matt Deakin that it felt strange to realise that maybe he liked him instead. And not just because he was hot, but because he might actually be a decent person as well. Hayden was usually a lot shallower than that.
“You should come over sometime,” Matt said. “Check the place out. I could make you dinner or something.”
“Yeah.” Hayden said, warmth bubbling up in his chest. “That sounds good.”
They sat in silence for a long time, watching the sweep of traffic follow the curve of the road on the other side of Ross Creek.
It was late by the time Matt left. Hayden saw him out, and then shuffled into the bathroom. His body ached in all the right ways. He stripped his clothes off, and turned from side to side in front of the mirror to see if Matt’s fingers had left bruises on his hips. There were no marks he could see, but the skin was tender to touch.
Hayden showered, stroking his dick lazily and replaying the sex as the hot water coursed over his skin. Shit. He and Matt were doing that again, and as soon as possible.
Hayden left damp footprints through the apartment when he finally headed back toward his room, a towel tucked around his waist. Monique was still out, so the apartment was silent apart from the low hum of the air-conditioner. Hayden lay on his bed. His sheets smelled like sweat and sex, but he told himself he couldn’t be bothered change them now.
He turned his head and buried his face in his pillow, chasing the ghost of Matt’s aftershave. No, it wasn’t laziness that kept him from changing his sheets. He just wanted to hold onto the memory of Matt in his bed for as long as he could.
He fell asleep breathing in the scent of sex, and dreamed of Matt’s fingers digging into his hips like he would never let him go.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
On Tuesday afternoon, Matt was back at work. He spent the first hour checking his emails and following up whatever he could while Sean was in an interview with one of the sergeants from the FYC program. From what Matt remembered from his own time as a first-year constable, they’d be checking in with Sean to see how he was travelling, and to make sure that Matt was doing right by him. It was past three by the time Sean was done and they were heading for the car. They had a few break and enters to attend, and a complaint of wilful damage in South Townsville.
“You wanna drive today?” Matt asked.
Sean grinned, and held out his hand for the keys.
Matt settled into the passenger seat.
“Did you have a good weekend?” Sean asked as they waited for a break in the traffic to turn onto Sturt Street.
Matt smiled when he thought of Hayden. “Yeah, not bad at all. You?”
“Me and a mate went down to Cungulla,” Sean said. “His uncle’s got a fishing hut there.”
Sean was mad ke
en on fishing. Matt wasn’t. But it was good that Sean had got out and done something with his weekend. Often, because of the shift work and because of the general shittiness of the jobs they went to, it felt easier to climb into bed and not crawl out until it was time to go to work again. And the danger in that was that it could be the start of a vicious downward spiral. It was important to keep active. That work/life balance the HSO talked about wasn’t just physical; you couldn’t let the job take over your entire psyche either. And that could be a difficult line to walk, especially for the newbies who were anxious to prove themselves. Listening to Sean talk about his weekend fishing was a small price to pay for knowing he was choosing a healthy way to deal with stress.
Matt let Sean take the lead at their break and enters. It was basic stuff: checking in with the complainant, and then knocking on a few neighbouring doors to see if anyone had seen anything suspicious. In Matt’s experience, neighbours fell into two categories: those who wouldn’t notice the Great Train Robbery happening right in front of their nose, and those who could give a rundown of every stranger they’d seen in the street since 1985. And Sean wasn’t so great at shutting down the second sort yet.
Mrs. Jessup was telling them about how she didn’t like the look of the bloke who’d delivered the junk mail three weeks ago, when the “Any Unit” call came through for a disturbance in Hyde Park: a report of twenty people fighting in the street.
They jogged back to the car, leaving Mrs. Jessup peering after them unsatisfied.
Driving at code in peak hour traffic was always interesting—there was always someone who didn’t know how to get out of the way—but they made good time. They weren’t the first unit on the scene though. The Mundingburra crew was already there, and someone else was pulling as Matt and Sean did.
The twenty people turned out to be five people, so all the parties were separated when the ambulance rumbled into the street. One guy was definitely worse for wear. He had a busted mouth, and blood dripping out of his nose. One of the others was complaining loudly of sore knuckles.
