Lights and Sirens

by Lisa Henry

  Yeah, that made sense actually. “Thanks, Grandad.”

  It was just after six when Hayden arrived. Matt heard the squeak of the rusty front gate and went outside to greet him, and to shoo the chickens away. Hayden was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and his smile when he saw Matt seemed a little self-conscious, or even shy.

  He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Matt said, close enough now to see the dark shadows under Hayden’s eyes. “Did you sleep okay?”

  There were probably a hundred different reasons that was rude as hell to say to someone, but Matt and Hayden were shift workers. Asking about sleep was a more common conversation starter in their circles than any pointless bullshit about the weather.

  “I got about six hours,” Hayden said. “Broken though.”

  Matt knew that feeling. Sometimes he felt like he’d lived his whole life in a state of mind-numbing fatigue, pushing through with a few scant hours sleep here and there and as much caffeine as he could handle. And sometimes it felt like all he did on his days off was sleep, and it didn’t make a bloody difference. The cycle could be vicious.

  “Sucks,” he said, and Hayden nodded and flashed him a smile. “Come in, and I’ll get dinner started.”

  Grandad was lurking by the front door, clearly attempting to look casual, and failing miserably.

  “Grandad, this is Hayden,” Matt said, ushering Hayden up the few short steps. “And Hayden, this is my grandad.”

  “Call me Joe,” Grandad said, and stuck out a wrinkly hand.

  Hayden took it. “Nice to meet you, Joe.”

  Matt had worried that dinner would be awkward—that Grandad would be awkward, mostly—but everyone loved Hayden, didn’t they? He was friendly and funny, and though that had rankled so much back when Matt had apparently been the only person in the universe that Hayden hated, it didn’t rankle now. Hayden sat at the kitchen table with Grandad, and they chatted and laughed while Matt got dinner started.

  Hayden asked about the house, and Charlie, and it didn’t take long before Grandad was telling him all sorts of stories, including one or two from his army days that Matt had never heard before. And given that they involved the price of a prostitute in Kapooka back in the sixties and a mysterious burning sensation for weeks after when Grandad peed, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to hear them again.

  Even Charlie joined in, flopping on the floor at Hayden’s feet with a loud sigh, and resting his boof head on Hayden’s shoe. Hayden leaned down and scratched his ears while Grandad talked, and Charlie closed his eyes and drooled blissfully.

  Matt knew how the dog felt.

  Hayden listened to Grandad’s stories, his eyes bright, and his laughter loud. Grandad looked regretful when he finally eased himself to his feet, gripped his cane, and shuffled away to go and watch TV like he’d promised Matt he would.

  “Can I do anything to help?” Hayden asked.

  “I’ve got it.” Matt set the saucepan on the stovetop and turned the burner on. “Do you want a beer?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Matt was aware of Hayden’s gaze taking in the kitchen as he worked. Matt had been working hard over the past few months to get around to all the fiddly jobs that needed doing— the cabinet doors, the dripping tap, the warped skirting board—but even with all those repairs done the place was still undoubtedly a little rundown. Chipped paint, scratches on the floor from Charlie’s claws, and the general marks and stains of age. It was comfortable though. It was home.

  “This is nice,” Hayden said at last. “Thanks for inviting me around.”

  “You sound like you’ve had a rough day.”

  Hayden exhaled. “The lack-of-sleep thing, for starters. I spent most of the afternoon at Kate’s place. She’s broken her ankle.”

  “Shit. Seriously? What happened?”

  “She tripped over her cat.”

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Is she okay?”

  “She’s scheduled for surgery.” Hayden wrinkled his nose. “She really did a number on herself. Which sucks for her, and also sucks for me, because it means I’ll be stuck with a new partner at work.”

  “Mmm.” Matt laid the rashers of bacon out onto the chopping board and reached for the knife. “Do you know who?”

  “Not yet.” Hayden shrugged. “But me and Kate are a good team. I don’t have to…”

  Don’t have to be on all the time, Matt thought. Hayden was always smiling, always joking, and people loved it. Now, looking at him sitting at the kitchen table, quiet and tired, Matt wondered how much of that didn’t come naturally, and how much of an effort it might be for him to sustain it. And how many people ever got to see Hayden like this.

  “It’s always hard working with someone new,” he said, attempting to bridge the sudden silence between them. “I mean, I like Sean a lot, but I have to watch everything he says and does, to make sure he’s doing it right. It’s easier with someone you can trust not to screw it up.”

  “That’s why I don’t work with newbies.” Hayden’s smile was wry.

  “It’s not just newbies though. It could be someone with twenty years in the job, but if you’ve never worked with them before you still need to make sure you’re on the same page the whole time.” Matt shrugged. “It’s exhausting.”

  “Yeah.” Hayden snorted, and took a sip of his beer. “I bet it will be. So what are you making over there, anyway?”

  “Spinach and bacon ravioli.”

  “Sounds fancy.”

  “Not really. The ravioli is that premade stuff.”

  “Matt.” Hayden’s eyes widened. “I had baked beans on toast three times for lunch this week. And the only green thing I’ve eaten in twenty-four hours was the lettuce off the Big Mac I got for dinner last night. This is going to be amazing.”

  “No pressure,” Matt deadpanned.

  “Oh, please,” Hayden said. “I already know you’re incredible in bed. You could give me food poisoning and it still wouldn’t be a deal breaker.”

  “That’s good to know,” Matt said, laughing as he tipped the ravioli into the saucepan.

  When dinner was cooked, Matt took a plate to Grandad in the living room, and then he and Hayden ate at the kitchen table. He felt a low burn of satisfaction in his stomach when Hayden asked for seconds. And when he helped Matt with the washing up, a tea towel slung over his shoulder and a smile hovering around his lips, it felt right, like a piece of something slotting into place.

  “Want to watch a movie?” Matt asked, setting the last plate in the dish rack.

  Hayden snatched the plate up and wiped it dry. “That sounds good.”

  It was dark outside, but it wasn’t until Charlie wandered into the kitchen and stared up at Matt pointedly that he realised he’d forgotten to lock the chickens in their coop. They would have taken themselves to bed by now, but if Matt didn’t latch the door after them there was nothing to stop a python getting in and gorging itself overnight. Grandad had lost chickens that way before.

  “I just have to go and lock the chooks up.”

  “Spoken like a true copper,” Hayden said, and walked into the yard with him.

  The warm air was heavy and sweet with the fragrance of frangipani blossoms. There was enough light from the moon to follow the cracked back path to the clothesline and beyond. The chicken coop was under the cover of a large tulipwood, the ground almost inky black underneath the canopy of thick leaves. Matt flipped the door of the coop shut and latched it by feel, then stepped back out into the moonlight again.

  “Look at those stars,” Hayden said softly, and Matt guessed that there was one thing Hayden’s apartment with its sweeping views didn’t have. There was too much light pollution in his neighbourhood to really see the stars. Not here though. West End was an old neighbourhood, and this was one of the quieter streets. There was barely even any street lighting, and certainly nothing that made it to the back yard. The darkness made the stars seem bright and close.

&nbs
p; Weird how Matt locked the chooks in every night, but always forgot to look up. He felt a little breathless doing it now, gazing into something too vast for words. Something incomprehensible.

  He had a sudden flash of memory. Lying on his back on the jetty at Lucinda at night, with the ocean whispering below him, and the stars burning above. He must have been about ten or eleven, no older, and he’d felt a flash of fear that the dark, vast ocean of the universe was going to swallow him whole. For a moment he’d been gripped with the same deep-set fear as one of those occasional nightmares where he couldn’t move—sleep paralysis, he figured out years later—but then he’d heard the whirr of his dad casting off, the reel on his fishing rod clicking rapidly on every rotation, and suddenly the spell had been broken and he’d felt the rough wood of the jetty underneath him again.

  The memory amused him. Ten years old, and a bout of night fishing had brought on his first case of existential panic.

  Hayden stepped closer and bumped their shoulders together. When he spoke, his voice was soft, his tone held just on the gentler side of teasing. “I think you’d better kiss me now.

  “Yeah.” Matt lifted his hand and brushed his knuckles against the side of Hayden’s throat, chasing the moonlight on his skin. “I think I’d better.”

  The kiss was soft. It tasted like ravioli and beer, and they broke apart with a shared smile that was as comfortably domestic as the moment they’d knocked shoulders together while standing at the sink. Tonight Hayden seemed quieter, softer. It was a very different side to him than the one he’d shown Matt that first night in the toilets in City Lane, where he’d been brash, unashamedly sexual.

  Matt liked this side of him too.

  They went inside again, and Matt closed the door on the vastness of the night sky, making the world small again. He took Hayden by the hand and drew him along to his room. It was cluttered—not as messy as Hayden’s room, but full of stuff. There were boxes of gear he hadn’t unpacked yet, and didn’t want to store in the shed because of damp.

  “What are we watching?” Hayden asked, toeing his shoes off and making himself comfortable on Matt’s bed.

  “Whatever you want,” Matt said, tossing him the remote control.

  They sat on the bed, pillows shoved behind them and legs stretched out, while Hayden went through the Netflix menu.

  “Just so you know, I’m weirdly impressed by anyone with their shit sorted out enough to have Netflix on their TV,” he said, selecting some movie Matt had never heard of. “I’m strictly a laptop guy.”

  “When I moved in, Grandad didn’t even have the internet.” Matt bumped his shoulder against Hayden’s. “I got it all set up for him, and the first night we had everything connected he told me not to forget to turn the Wi-Fi off before bed so we didn’t waste it overnight.”

  He liked the sound of Hayden’s laugh, and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Oh, man.”

  “Have you got family up here?” Matt asked.

  “Nah.” Hayden turned away slightly, setting the remote aside.

  “All back in Melbourne?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really see my family.” He turned back, angling his body toward Matt’s. “We’re not close.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Hayden shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

  Maybe there was a story there, and maybe there wasn’t, but Hayden clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Matt reached down between them and curled their fingers together, and watched the way the corner of Hayden’s mouth twitched with a small smile when he rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of his inner wrist.

  “I like you,” he murmured.

  “Good.” Hayden’s smile grew. “I like you too.”

  Was this it? Was it too soon to be thinking about a future together? Not as the objective, or the point of the game, exactly—Jesus, it wasn’t as though he was at the stage where he was picturing two little plastic grooms on top of the cake or whatever—but maybe this was something subtler than that: I like him and he likes me. Maybe we can get wherever it is we’re going together. Maybe it could be this easy. Not a big moment. No fireworks, no cheers, no dramatic public declarations. Just this. Just two people holding hands and inhabiting the same space. Two people inhabiting the same emotion in the same moment in time. That seemed more amazing than fireworks.

  “I’m glad.”

  “Yeah.” Hayden jutted out his chin. “Of all the dickhead coppers who’ve ever given me speeding tickets, you’re my favourite.”

  “You paid that, right?” Matt asked. “I’d hate to have to give you another one for driving on a suspended licence.”

  “You’d do it too, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hayden said, his eyes closing slowly as Matt leaned into brush their mouths together. His breath was hot against Matt’s lips. “My boyfriend is such an arsehole.”

  Matt laughed softly and squeezed Hayden’s hand.

  They settled into a warm, companionable silence, and watched the movie for a while. Hayden’s breathing deepened, and he gave a series of long, slow blinks as he slipped towards sleep. His hand was warm in Matt’s, his grip loosening a moment after his eyes finally closed.

  Matt let him sleep. He obviously needed it.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Greg Carson wasn’t the last guy Hayden would have chosen to work with, but he was close to the top of that list. He was perfectly friendly and personable, but there was an undercurrent when he dealt with Hayden, and Hayden knew just what it was: homophobia. A beat, a tightening of the skin around his eyes, or a smile frozen in place a fraction too long when Hayden said something gay. It wasn’t the sort of homophobia that waited down an alleyway with clenched fists, but it was persistent and pervasive in its own way. Greg was the type of guy who’d loudly tell his friends all about how he was totally okay with the gays, but why did they need to shove it everyone’s faces? And then ask Hayden what he did on the weekend, hardly hiding his flinch when Hayden mentioned his boyfriend.

  It made Hayden’s shifts feel a lot longer than they should have. A part of him took Greg’s discomfort onboard and carved out a nice little home for it in the corner of his mind where he secretly mocked it, because why the fuck was Greg’s homophobia Hayden’s problem? Another part of him wanted to show Greg exactly what shoving it in his face would be like—Do you know what’s great, Greg? Dicks. Big, fat dicks—but he also had to spend twelve hours a day with the guy in the confined space of an ambulance. At least it was only for a few months until Kate came back.

  Hayden could tough it out for a few months. Toughing shit out was kind of Hayden’s thing. He spent most of his shifts texting Matt and Kate anyway.

  Hayden had plenty of time for texting, since Greg preferred to drive. Another thing Hayden couldn’t be fucked to take issue with at the moment. Kate would be back soon enough, right? And he would never complain about her shit taste in music again.

  Kate had been back at work within two weeks of her surgery, but she was stuck in Comms until she could get back out on the road. When he was at the station, Hayden hung out with her, doing his paperwork or eating his lunch next to her, listening to the chirp and blare of the phones and radios around him. He decorated her headset with unicorn stickers he’d bought especially for that purpose, and stole her pen and drew penises all over her notepad.

  “Well then, my love,” Kate said, her foot propped up on a spare chair as she took a break between calls one afternoon shift, “how are things with your hot copper?”

  Hayden stole back one of the fries from the Happy Meal he’d bought her. “He likes to cuddle.”

  “That fucking monster,” Kate deadpanned, and slapped his hand. “Those are mine.”

  “I paid for them.”

  “They’re still mine.” She grabbed the fries and held them close. “You and your cuddly copper should come over sometime this week. Jimmy can fire up the barbeque, and you can bring a potato sa
lad from Woolies, like always.”

  Hayden spun her pen on her desk. “Maybe.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows.

  “I’ll have to see what our rosters are like.” It was a good excuse. Hayden was on mornings at the moment, and Matt was on nights. Hayden had been to his place a few times in the afternoon, but it felt weird to have Joe let him in so he could be Matt’s afternoon wake-up booty call. Yesterday Matt had been so dead to the world that Hayden hadn’t had the heart to wake him, and had watched an episode of The Chase with Joe instead. Matt had finally crawled out of bed at around seven, just as Hayden had been heading off. He’d been a picture of bed-hair and yawning apologies.

  Hayden liked Matt a lot, but he didn’t know if he was ready to be Hayden-and-Matt yet. He didn’t know if he was ready for Kate and Jimmy to pull Matt into their circle of friends—and that’s what would happen, no question. He’d already caught Matt looking at him sometimes like there were questions he wasn’t sure how to ask, and Hayden didn’t know if he wanted Matt to see him from another angle yet, shaped through the prism of Kate and Jimmy’s friendship. His reluctance made no sense, and the more that Hayden tried to unpack the idea the more nebulous it became, but it was there, inside him, unsettled and unsure.

  There was that old joke about men being afraid of commitment, but it wasn’t quite that. Hayden was afraid of being truly seen by Matt. He was afraid of being naked in a way that had nothing to do with how many times he’d stripped and offered up his skin to Matt.

  It was stupid.

  And whenever he tried to catch hold of that feeling—unsettled and unsettling—to examine it and to crush it, Hayden found it had slipped out of his grasp again.

  “Well,” Kate said. “Let me know a night you’re both off.”

  The pen wobbled as he spun it on the desk again. “Okay.”

  He was glad when Kate’s phone began to ring, and the emergency on the other end distracted her from prying further. He stole a few more fries and left her to it.

  The rest of the day was quiet, with a call out to the aged care home in Rowes Bay for an old man who had swollen feet because of his diabetes—Hayden and Greg transported him the hospital for treatment—and then a possible allergic reaction in Mysterton where the patient went into anaphylactic shock. Hayden gave the woman a shot of adrenaline, and administered oxygen on the way to the hospital. Her bright red flush was already fading by the time they wheeled her into A&E.