Something in the Water

Author Note: This is long, and has character development and all that sort of shit, so there's no first-page sex. Not a quick fap, this one. Secondly, this story is (sort of) a sequel to 'Head Boy', but it can be read as a stand-alone.

This is a work of fiction. All characters are eighteen years of age or older.

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It used to be that arguing with people was kinda my thing. That might've had something to do with the fact that I grew up in one of the most blue-ribbon electorates in the country and somehow managed to turn out eco-conscious, left of centre, pro-refugee... so there was plenty up for dispute, and no shortage of people to be disputing stuff with.

My folks were sort of tiredly tolerant of my zealotry - probably they told themselves it was only a phase, and I'd grow out of it when I grew up some more. I didn't - exactly - but my approach to it definitely evolved, and that had its roots in a Christmas Day blow-up with my maternal grandfather when I was seventeen.

Granddad was not tolerant. Of me, or of anything else. It was my way or the highway with that guy. He seemed to think his conservatism was automatically deserving of respect for no other reason than that he'd reached harrumphing age. Also, his idea of 'discussion' was to simply state shit and then dig in and re-state it over and over. That particular day, I got so frustrated with it that I made some under-my-breath comment about talking to walls.

He might have been old and grumpy and calcified in his politics, but Granddad wasn't deaf. He really unloaded on me in response to that little piece of sass. I got told I was 'tragic', a 'mealy-mouthed pinko', 'more of a girl than your sisters', a 'bloody disgrace' and 'a hell of a disappointment for your poor father'.

The first four of those rolled right off me. The last one hit home, because... there was some possibility it was true. There was a distinct possibility it was true. No kid grows up aiming to be a disappointment to his dad, but I was at the point where it seemed inevitable enough that I was kinda leaning into it, some days at least - basing my identity on not thinking the same as him.

I walked out on Granddad, mid-tirade. It felt like the only thing I could do to hurt him back, to make him feel as bad as I did. Leave him impotently sputtering at the space where I'd been, unable to empty all that spleen he'd gone and built up...

It was still hot outdoors, but I took a long walk anyhow, by the side of the water-race until it passed into the neighbouring property, then across one of the big paddocks now shut up for haying, leaving a narrow trail of flattened grass behind me, then back home in the shade of the pines along the northern boundary, dodging the dive-bombing magpies.

By the time the gracious old house came into view again it was early evening and all the additional cars were gone from the gravel semi-circle out front. I felt my shoulders slacken in relief at not having to face Granddad. I wasn't exactly sad to know that Alannah and Todd and Kim and her latest piece of man-flesh were off the premises either.

Mum and Bec were curled on the couch together, eating chocolates and cooing at some stupid seasonal movie. I couldn't see any sign of Dad. Probably feeding the dogs. Whatever, I thought. Merry Fucking Christmas, everyone. Not.

I made for my room and shut myself in, lying on my back with the curtains open, staring dully at the leaves of the big silver birch outside my window as they shivered in the faint breeze.

My door creaked open and Dad poked his head around it. "Caleb?"

I glared at him, but it had no noticeable effect. He pushed the door the rest of the way open and plopped himself on the mattress beside my feet, meshing his hands together, cracking his knuckles.

I wondered if I was about to get a lecture on respecting my elders, but he just fucking sat there, and sat there. Fingers writhing, body still. It'd about got to the point where I was properly unnerved, when he finally spoke:

"You're not a disgrace," he breathed. "Not at all, Caleb."

Oh, my fuck... he heard...

"Not a disappointment either," he continued. "Not on any level. I'm actually really proud that your values are important to you, that you've developed your beliefs instead of just absorbing them from the atmosphere surrounding, and that you're prepared to go into bat for them."

"Oookay...?" I said. It felt like there might be a 'but' coming up...

"And, Caleb? I think you should go on arguing with anybody who'll let you, for as long as you want. The more you do it, the more agile you'll get, and as you go over your ideas with others - some of them you'll strengthen and some you'll modify and some of them you might end up ditching as time goes on. But-"

Ah. There it was.

"But - no, hear me out, Caleb - as you do your arguing, maybe try and keep in mind that your opponents... they might be ignorant or prejudiced or arseholes - but at least some of them will be regular people who've considered the issues and who've simply reached a different conclusion to you. And all I want to suggest is that it's better to go into a discussion assuming you're dealing with a decent person and wait to be proved wrong, than to go in assuming you're dealing with an idiot engaging in bad faith. Okay?"

I rolled my eyes. "Right. So Granddad's a nice guy who's thought about the issues, is he? Is that what you're trying to say?"

Dad snorted. "No. The opposite. I'm saying that Granddad is your object lesson, or your teachable moment or whatever. That's where you don't want to go. That's why you engage with others as people first and opponents second. So you don't wind up like that."

Whoa... I pushed myself up to a sitting position, blinking, struggling to compute that he seemed to be taking my side.

"I... didn't really expect you to, um..."

"I don't see why not," Dad shrugged, standing and making for the door. "This is what I'm saying, basically. I can still be in your corner without agreeing with you on every single issue. You'll never find common ground with somebody if you're not looking for it, but you'll be surprised where you do find it, if you take the approach that the other guy's a regular person, just like you..."

I think I said 'yeah', in response, or maybe 'uh-huh?'. Not anything eloquent, that's for sure. My head was spinning too much. It was enough, then, to know that Dad had my back.

The rest of it... eh, it sunk in, and worked its way out over time. It - and several years of campus politics - made me a great advocate, a valuable spokesperson, a capable organiser and campaigner, and a level-headed negotiator...

It did not, unfortunately, make me a good income. Or even a reliable one. It's an awesome feeling, working alongside conservation groups to force a proposed highway to be re-routed around a wetland, or partnering with grassroots orgs who're trying to protect an īnanga spawning ground, and it's a really awesome feeling seeing a court slap down a multi-national corporation that's been operating a bottling plant outside their allotted take and fucking up the local iwi's groundwater - but at the end of the day... it's gig work. If you're successful, the campaign winds down and you've put yourself out of a job. Again.

And that's where I was. Again. But I didn't see what else I was gonna do. This was my skill-set. I couldn't foresee a future as a teacher or a tour-guide or a real estate agent - problem was, I couldn't entirely foresee a future in activism either...

I'd always managed to make ends meet in between, to find some stop-gap retail work and a mate with a pull-out couch until the next gig came up. Not this time. Maybe, maybe, it was that my CV showed a pattern by now. I was a short-termer. Or... maybe twenty-seven was a bit old for night-fill work - plenty of high school boys coming through, cheaper and more compliant.

Twenty-seven. Also a bit old to be couch-surfing. Too many of the uni mates had fiancées and weird little dogs by now, and the whole... can I just crash for an unspecified number of weeks? thing... I felt the hesitation from them when I asked. I hated it. I didn't want to be a drag on anybody. The only thing that'd feel more like failure would be moving back home - and that eventuality wasn't too many weeks away if I couldn't sort out some paying work...

I sighed and opened the Seek website one more time, broadened my search, chewed my nails down further while finagling yet another cover letter to better fit yet another application. Again, I weighed up paying one of those recruiter-types to gussy up my CV, fill it with the right keywords, pepper-gun it across the internet... but it'd cost up-front money, and I already had almost none of that...

Fuck it, I thought. Not today. Enough of all of this for today. Go for a walk or something, Caleb. I tabbed to my gmail before stepping away.

Ooh, an email. And a Google Meet invitation...

I opened the email first. Short and to the point. Mr Caleb Adkins: Please review the attached document in preparation for your Thursday interview via Google with Mr Brian Ferris, Chief Operations Officer, South Taranaki District Council. Best regards, Claire Crouch, Director of HR...

Holy shit! I got an interview, I got an interview... my hands were shaking as I opened the attachment, but then... 'Water Quality Control Officers (2) - STDC' ... What the fuck, Caleb? What were you thinking, applying for a technical job? You have a degree in public policy, for crissakes...

I read the document - it was a standard JD - through, sent it to Cam's printer, read it again. What were they thinking, offering me an interview? Did they get no other applicants? When did I even apply for this role?

By the time I clicked the little link to join my 'interview' on Thursday, I'd combed back through my gmail for over a month and... I hadn't. Applied, that is. This whole thing had literally dropped from the sky into my inbox, and as such it was likely a mistake. Some other poor Caleb Adkins with an email address one dot or dash different to mine was currently day-drinking over having missed out on yet another opportunity...

'Mr Brian Ferris' was tricked out like something out of a classic English detective series. Honestly. Little moustache, gold-rimmed spectacles, collar and tie, slicked down iron-grey hair... I felt a twinge of regret. He looked kinda headmasterly, yet benevolent. Like somebody who'd look out for you. Like somebody you'd want for a boss.

Might as well get it over with. I dived right in. "I'm sorry, but I think you might have the wrong Caleb Adkins. I'm pretty sure I didn't apply for this position."

He smiled. "Spot on. You didn't. You know Stuart Forsyth, Far North District Council? - he's my brother-in-law. He recommended you to me."

My jaw dropped. "He recommended me? I wouldn't expect anybody from up there to be doing me any favours - I've spent the last eighteen months being a giant pain in the Far North District Council's collective ar- uhh... rear..."

I saw the very ghost of a smile on the guy's face at my near slip-up, before he calmly said;

"Sure. But on the other hand, he's seen you work, Caleb. He's aware you have an interest in the general area - he also knows you're organised, self-motivated... collaborative, a great communicator - and currently unemployed..."

Oh shit, oh fuck - ohh, all of the fucks - I hadn't prepared for an actual interview, because this was obviously just a mistake...

I tried to school my face into neutrality. Or staunchness, even.

"It's true - I'm currently unemployed. And I'm happy to move for the right role. But... are you aware that I don't have any relevant qualifications? I've got some hands-on experience from the HydroCore thing, sure. But no paper to back it up."

Ferris didn't even blink. "I'm aware. I've seen your CV."

I blinked, several times. "You... uhh, have?"

"It's on your LinkedIn profile," the face on my screen reminded me. "I can see why you might feel under-qualified for the role, but remember we're looking to fill two positions. Well, we made an offer earlier today to somebody with a strong science and engineering background, but perhaps a little weaker in the uh... less of a client-focussed.... ahh, anyway, you'd complement each other nicely, I believe..."

* * * * *

Standing outside the Council offices about to start my first day of work, I took a moment to appreciate how truly ugly they were. I mean, wow. At least with brutalism, the ugliness is in pursuit of an ideal. But this... this was pointlessly ugly. There were haybarns and bus shelters and pump sheds up and down the country with more style and panache than this...

Okay, I was uncomfortable. I felt out of place. Already. Not only because I was about to embark on a job I technically wasn't qualified to do - not only because I was now officially working for the man, rather than against him - there was also a nagging sense that I'd... hmm. Come home. And not in a feel-good way.

All rural service towns have an undercurrent to them, a constant that colours things despite specifics such as the climate or the topography or the style of the war memorial or the nature of the plantings on the main drag. Which is to say, they all bleed blue when they're cut...

I made myself stop over-thinking. I went in, I gave my name at the front desk, I trailed the receptionist down a long sick-brown corridor and into a clammy side-room containing a large-framed Māori guy sprawled over one of the two swivelling office chairs, and... not much else.

"Here you go," the girl said brightly to some point on the wall between us. "Mr Ferris is in the Finance Committee meeting at the moment. They'll be done by about 9.30. Can I get you a coffee maybe?"

"I'm good, thanks," murmured the reclining guy, raising his takeaway cup in a 'cheers' gesture as she exited the room. Then he looked at me and grimaced. "Eh, that was a bit shit of me, wasn't it? You don't already have one."

"It's okay," I said. "Let's be honest here, she was asking you..." She was asking you one or two other things besides...

He laughed and unfurled himself, coming easily to his feet and extending a big hand for me to shake. "Declan. I'm guessing you're the other noob?"

"Yeah. Caleb, Caleb Adkins. You been here long?"

"Nah... ten minutes, maybe?" Declan said, settling back in the chair and re-arranging his long limbs as they'd been. "Bit weird asking us to come in at a time when he knew he was gonna be in a meeting." He yawned, and downed the rest of his coffee in a gulp. "But hey, I've never been a morning person..."

Despite apparently not being a morning person, he seemed far more on to it than me once Ferris arrived and started throwing information at us. While I sat nodding and feeling overwhelmed, Declan took continuous notes in a rapid curly left-handed scrawl, and still retained the capacity to ask intelligent questions about suppliers and assays and reagents and monitoring equipment...

After about forty-five minutes, Ferris wound down by saying;

"Anyway, that's an overview. You report directly to me, both of you, and I'll want to meet with you weekly to begin with. We should be able to drop it back to fortnightly once you're both up to speed, but..."

He trailed off and looked down at his hands for a moment. "I should probably also tell you that there's been nobody in this role for the past three months, so you may find things both... intense... and potentially somewhat disorganised at the outset. But I have no doubts of your ability to get on top of it."

"Well, I have doubts," I growled, as he left the room. "Seriously, most of that went whoosh... right over my head..."

Declan shrugged. "A lot of the jargonese was related to the software package they're using, which, trust me, isn't fundamentally any more complex than Excel. It's just... different." He stood and paced about the room. "God, I wish he'd told us what's next. I'd definitely prefer intense or whatever it was he said to sitting around twitching - even if I'm getting paid for it."

I bet you would, I thought, taking him in, his high forehead, thin lips, deep-set penetrating eyes... the glossy hair pulled austerely back, not one strand escaping. And all that before even accounting for the restive, caged-animal energy. Yeah. I'm gonna assume you're right at home with intense. Looks like your default state, you with your resting intense-face and all. God. How the fuck am I gonna keep up...?

A couple more days getting to know him and with tasks to be doing, actually he wasn't that intense. But still not exactly easy to be around. He had a hell of a lot of presence. Like, an aura or something. Like... mana. It made me feel small and insipid and indecisive in comparison.

It didn't make me dislike him. That's how it works with charismatic people, right? You could resent them, but you're too busy trying to work out what that ineffable... something... is, and how you can get a piece of it...

And damn, he could work. He pushed us and pushed us, through the week - once we got computer access - firstly, to understand the scale of the clusterfuck we'd been handed, then to triage it and prepare a catching-up plan to present to Ferris on Monday. We were in by eight-thirty each morning and not out again until around eight, and by the end of it I was undoubtedly exhausted, but also sort of euphoric. It'd been an epic effort, I'd contributed something to the process, and I didn't feel so in-over-my-head any longer...

"Well, thank fuck that's done," Declan said, turning off his monitor and standing up, stretching. "I won't put you through another week like that, promise. And, uh, I realise I should've asked - are you with anybody? Have I been cocking up your partner's domestic arrangements for the last four evenings?"

"Nah, single at the moment," I assured him, as he crawled under the desk to retrieve his phone, which'd been charging. "How 'bout you? You got a girlfriend?"

"I'm gay, actually," his voice floated back, "but no. No partner just now."

I felt my cheeks burn. What a mistake to make - what a colossal piece of dumbarsery. You say 'partner', Caleb. You always say 'partner'. My god, he even fucking prompted you!

Declan re-emerged and caught sight of my face. He raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess. I don't look gay..."

"What!? No, what? I'm not - I don't - I shouldn't have assumed... I'm sorry. Sorry about that."

The eyebrow flickered again. "And? 'Cos you're studying me pretty intently right about now..."

I nodded. "I'm wondering what else I failed to pick up on, that I maybe should've..."

He seemed amused. "Getting any readings?"

No. I wasn't. He was... inscrutable, along with the rest.

I shook my head. "Nothing. And if I had to guess, I'd say that's the way you like it."

He pointed a couple of pistol-fingers at me. "Well, there's something you did get... hey, I ate sandwiches for dinner every night this week so far. You wanna see if they have anything that approximates a pub in this town? No homo..."

"Sure," I sighed, "but not if you're gonna append 'no homo' to the end of every sentence for the next hour. I messed up, okay? I apologised. I meant it. Do you think we could maybe move on?"

"Hey," he said quietly, gently. "I was joking, Caleb. I'm not annoyed at you..."

"Well, I'm annoyed at me," I confessed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"You're tired," Declan told me. "You're tired and overworked and underfed and you could really use a beer right about now. Hmm?"

"Yeah." I grabbed up my own shit and ducked out of the office after him, scrambling to keep pace. I had a feeling there was gonna be a bit of that going on...

* * * * *

We'd had two beers apiece and ordered our meals and were just... hanging, letting the week bleed out of us, when suddenly Declan asked;

"Caleb? How did you come by this job?"

Oh, shit, I thought. This is the 'please explain' conversation. Here we go...

"You googled me, didn't you?" I said. "You googled me and you looked through my work history and now you'd like me to clarify how exactly I'm qualified to be doing this. Well, I'm not, is the answer."

He ignored that last part. "C'mon. You're telling me you didn't google me?"

"Couldn't," I told him, honestly. "I don't know your last name."

"It's Lawton," he said. "So... now you can. Have at it."

I squinted at him. Still inscrutable. "I'm not gonna find anything, am I?"

He grinned. "Not heaps. I can give you my TED talk in a minute though... But here's the thing. I'm not necessarily the most obvious candidate for this role either, and it's just us two, and... a lot about this feels weird to me, which is why I was wondering... was there anything strange about... the... the recruitment process, from your end?"

I weighed it up, and decided to spill. "Yeah, I was headhunted. Directly, by Ferris. He knew somebody that I had a bit to do with in my last, uh, project. It - he wasn't bothered by my, um, technical weakness. Seemed to think you'd make up for that. He was all about my communication skills, but I mean... doesn't seem to me like you're gonna need help in that area..."

Declan smiled thinly. "I can get a point across, sure. But you - I think you can probably get a point across without pissing anybody off. Which is kind of important in a role where there's rules, but not much in the way of enforcement, due to nobody having the budget for that..."

I reassessed him - again. That was a fairly cynical take, but god, it's so true. Councils are toothless, and every developer, lawyer, and maverick with a concrete mixer out there knows it...

"You've worked for a local body before, then?" I prompted.

He gave a single curt shake of his head. "Nope. Never saw myself as a civil servant, to be honest. But I was..." He trailed off, bit his lip. "See, I didn't apply for this role either. Ferris found me like he did you. Contacted me directly. And I was at the point where... I hadn't worked in nine months, and I was looking at Australia, and honestly I was wondering if it was far enough away, or if-"

Our meals arrived with a couple of wordless thunks and the clatter of a cylinder full of mismatched cutlery and napkins dumped down alongside, and as the waitress retreated, Declan said;

"Remind me - where was I?"

"You were wondering if Australia was far enough away?"

"Right, right," he said, stabbing chips onto his fork. "Yeah, the problem is that everyone knows everyone here, and I'd gone and made myself notorious..." He laid the fork down. "You know, why don't I just back this truck all the way up and tell you my entire fucking life story..."

I gestured for him to go ahead, and he grimaced.

"You might not thank me, after. But anyway, the short version... Bogan kid from bogan town proves to be surprisingly not shit at schoolwork, takes his dean's advice and becomes first in his family to attend university, does well, gets great job after graduation, seems to have it made, then of course he goes and screws it all up royally."

He dived into his steak and I let him eat a few mouthfuls before saying, "Okay... can we maybe do the long version?"

Declan swallowed, shrugged. "Sure, whatever. Baby of the family, two brothers much older than me. Both sloped off to Aussie as soon as they possibly could, and they basically never bloody come back, which is one reason I couldn't - I mean, I didn't want to leave Dad here all by himself, but fuck, there was just nothing... I was at the point of applying for night-fill work..."

"Nothing wrong with night-fill work!" I interjected.

"I know," Declan nodded. "I did it, while I was at at school, but... anyway. Like I said, I had a bit of the bogan thing going on way back when, but I was always more into the technical side of things - just really gelled with engines and motors and shit. Not just the how but the why - why do you get better performance if you swap out these valves for those or whatever. And I was good at maths and good at physics, though you'd better believe I tried to keep that shit on the down-low among my mates - along with my, uhh, other preferences..."

He shot a glance at me, I think to see how I handled that last bit, sawed off another hunk of steak, carried on around it. "Anyhow, I got convinced by the senior dean that it'd be a waste if I stuck around and became a mechanic or an auto-electrician, that I should do things properly and go get myself an engineering degree."

He shrugged. "It probably helped that I wanted an excuse to get the hell out of dodge and, um, try some things... so I go to uni, and I'm all signed up for a mechanical engineering degree, but the rule was - in first year, this is - the rule was, you had to take one paper each semester that was, like, unrelated to the course. Broaden your horizons, blah, blah...

"Most people chose business studies or some such shit, but for some reason I put myself down for Introduction to Geology, and..." He was inward-looking, distant now, smiling softly to himself... "And, uh, I totally fell in love with rocks. So I switched to civil engineering, 'cos it seemed a better fit and did a BSc in geology alongside, and-"

Well, that explains the work ethic, I thought. "Lemme guess. You crammed a four-year degree and a three-year degree into... five years, total?"

"Yeah?" he confirmed, in a tone that communicated ob-viously?... "and I ended up mostly looking at aquifers and water tables and floodplain management and coastal geomorphology and - I mean, water-related stuff. When I graduated I got a job with an irrigation consultancy firm, and after a few years they sent me to Canterbury to join their team down there."

He shook his head and downed the last of his beer. "I had literally never set foot in the South Island before, and... whoa... they're like a different species down there, I tellya. The women... god, they're practically apex predators. I mean, I was familiar with the feeling where you're out at the pub or whatever and it's like, oh great, I'm about to get hit on, but this...? Yeesh. It was more like, I'm about to get clubbed over the head and dragged away to your den..."

"Snoo-snoo," I said reflexively, and Declan threw back his head with a crack of laughter.

"Exactly! That's the one! God, I love Futurama! So there was that, and then... you know, I get down there and I'm two weeks into the job, settling down nicely, and my boss starts to give me grief about my hair!" He gestured to his undercut and topknot. "I was like, bro, I've had my hair like this since I was fifteen, and if my dad and my high school principal didn't have a prob..." He trailed off suddenly, a hunted look in his eyes.

"What?" I prompted.

Declan grimaced. "I've just... only recently realised... that I neglected to ask you where you're originally from..."

I was glad he said that, because it was getting increasingly difficult to keep a straight face.

"So, uh, where are you originally from?" he asked, very quietly.

Finally. I let myself grin. "Leeston," I told him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck. At least please tell me you don't have any sisters...?"

I held up three fingers and tried not to laugh, as he squirmed and muttered;

"Aggh. Sorry about..."

"You're good," I assured him. "And, not that I know for sure, but for two of them that's probably scarily accurate. The oldest one's married to a guy she met while they were both still at school and too young to go to pubs, so..."

Declan was poking at the remains of his meal, looking really uncomfortable still.

"Wassup?" I prompted.

He sighed. "Uh... I hate to tell you this, but the water rights management down there? It's dirty. As in, properly dirty."

"As in, it operates largely on handshakes and winks?" I said. "Well, dude. Colour me surprised, not. I mean, yeah. That's how the gears grind down there. Old boy's club. I mean, c'mon. And even if I hadn't grown up practically marinating in that shit? There was all that stuff in the press about a year ago - somebody obviously pushed things a bit far, and it looked pretty bad when it hit the headlines. There'll be plenty of regulatory eyes overseeing it right now..."

He shrugged. "Sure. Now. But the minute the headmaster's not looking, it'll be back to the exact same game. Because nobody wants to change it. Nobody has any motivation to change it. Everyone benefits from things staying the same. It-" he pulled up abruptly.

As much as anything, the bitterness in his voice fascinated me. "Go on..." I prompted, leaning in, locking eyes.

"It's not just handshakes and winks," he said. "It's season tickets for the Crusaders, it's 'I can get you a membership at such-and-such a golf club', it's 'I could have a word with the Rector at St Bede's College', and... there's geologists and hydrologists and hey, I dunno, civil engineers who specialised in aquifers and floodplain management involved in the process because their input is necessary - it's, like, really important not to cock this stuff up - but actual expertise gets ignored in the face of all the fucking scummy back-room double dealing..."

He drew in a deliberate breath before continuing. "And obviously I was the odd one out, I was the new boy - I was so fucking dumb that when I figured out what kind of shit was going down I went and talked with my boss about it..."

I winced, and he acknowledged that with a lift of his brows.

"Yeah. He was like, oh, thanks for letting me know, we should look into that, and I never heard anything more and nothing changed and of course after I while I realise, duh, he's part of the fabric of the whole thing. He's sitting on this board and that and pumping hands and conveniently not noticing the same crap as all the rest of them - including the regulators - and I... got to the point where I just couldn't anymore, and I quit."

I wondered why he was telling me this stuff. He didn't really come across as a guy who spilled his guts to strangers, or somebody who needed attention or sympathy, or even basic validation of his choices. He didn't really seem like he needed anything. Very... sufficient in himself.

"Where are you going with all this?" I asked.

He sighed. "Well, so... let's just say that when I left, I might - or might not - have taken a flash drive with me, and I might - or might not - have handed it off to a journalist..."

Aaaand that was how it all blew up into a thing in the press. Holy shit. Hoh-lee shit.

"Wow," I gasped. "And, uh, good on you..."

He looked bitter again. "Mm. I thought at the time it might actually, like, make a difference. But now... not so much. And yeah, I knew I'd never work in irrigation again, which was fine by me because I didn't want to. But I honestly didn't realise how connected everything is at the top. All the decision-makers, all the movers and shakers - they all know each other. And - surprise, surprise - they all know about me...

"Like I said, I was applying for every position going that wanted a civil engineer for nine months straight and I never got so much as a call-back, let alone an interview, and then this Ferris guy drops a job offer on me from out of a clear blue sky - what's with that?"

He spread his hands like a conjuror. "And now we get to the 'why I'm telling you this' part. Why, if the role's been vacant for three months, was it never even advertised? And why did the guy hand-pick himself a rookie," pointing at me, "and a... leper?" He indicated himself.

I shrugged. "Maybe he doesn't know about you?"

"He knows," Declan stated, calm, certain. He scooted around to my side of the table and dug out his phone, tilting the screen so I could see. I was looking at a photo of a table of figures, the columns dated along the lower edge.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Nitrate levels," he told me. "From the Waingognoro River, just below the highway. I got it from the file cabinet in our office. Now tell me what's wrong with it."

I squinted at the chart, hoping for inspiration. I knew about acceptable ppm's for e. coli, but... nitrates?

"It's too... constant?" I guessed.

Declan tucked his phone away again. "Bingo," he said. "There's no seasonal fluctuation patterns, no spiking, and you can't tell me they went a whole year without a major rainfall event - not here. If you ask me, these are fudged. If you ask me, there's an employment gap because there's been an investigation going on. If you ask me, we're here doing this thing because we're apparently the last two people left on earth who maybe, possibly... can't be bought."

He stood up and grabbed his jacket. "But of course you didn't ask me. And I could be wrong. I could definitely also be paranoid. I could be interpreting shit through the lens of my prior fucked-up experience. I guess we'll find out soon enough."

* * * * *

It was maybe ten days before we found out for sure. We were about to take an at-source sample from a bakery which had its own bore - and before you start banging on about the nanny state, private households with bores are free to drink all the pathogens they want, okay? But commercial enterprises don't get to sell giardia-glazed almond croissants...

The door jingled as we passed through into a dinky space with two cafe tables set up, both occupied, and the girl behind the counter trilled, "With you in a moment!" Then she looked up and spotted the embroidered logos on our polo shirts.

"Lance!" she called out. "Hey, Lance!"

A second or two later Lance ducked out through the fly-strip door that separated the shop from the kitchen, and... it could just've been me, but I felt like he wasn't super-pleased to see us...

I passed him a business card. "Just after a quick sample."

The dude grimaced apologetically. "Uhh, guys? Not a good moment right now. Really busy. Lotta bodies back there doing their thing," he jerked head toward the kitchen, "and I can't spare you the time either. Ideally, gimme a call beforehand so I can suggest when we might be in a lull?"

"We're literally asking to run a tap into a couple of tubes," Declan pointed out. "It'll take twenty seconds, tops."

The guy pivoted. "Yeah, but health and safety - not to mention you aren't dressed for it. No hairnets." He wasn't wearing a hairnet. "Also, you really need non-slip shoes - I don't wanna have to be responsible for either of you cracking your heads open because one of my guys spilt something on the floor. Come back after close, say four o'clock maybe, and we can..."

The door jingled again as a courier towing a hand-trolley stacked with several boxes of pastry margarine backed through it and hustled around behind the counter and through the strip-screen into the kitchen - wearing no protective or hygeinic gear.

Declan raised his brows. He said nothing. But his eyebrows sure felt like they were due an explanation.

Mr Lance-guy was agitated by now. "He shouldn't be doing that," he panted. "I accept that he shouldn't be doing that. But you know how it is - you can't bloody tell couriers anything! Look, if you come back after close, we can talk this whole thing through like adults and-"

"Nothing to talk about," Declan interjected. "We're only here for samples."

Lance huffed in frustration. "You don't understand what I'm trying to say! If you would just-"

Declan threw up a hand, like a soldier calling a column to a halt, and said;

"Yeah... let's leave it like that, shall we? Where I don't understand what you're trying to say?" Then he stepped around Lance and I and disappeared through into the kitchen area, tubes in hand...

Five minutes later we were back on the road and just past the town boundary when Declan pulled over into a layby, threw the ute into park, killed the engine, and sat gripping the wheel, staring straight ahead.

He exhaled, slow, shaky. "Fuck, I wanted to be wrong," he breathed. "I so badly wanted to be wrong." He punched the wheel. "Gahhh! What is with these people? Is it too much to expect that everybody just do their jobs properly and honestly?" He punched the wheel again and subsided into seething silence.

I didn't quite know how to respond. "I, um... you want me to drive, maybe?"

He whipped his head round, blinking like I'd surprised him. "Uh - yeah. That might be best."

I don't know if I was maybe a little disoriented still by what had very nearly gone down back along the road aways, but he was out of the ute and around the passenger side and standing there holding the door open for me like some limo driver before I was done fumbling with my seatbelt.

When my feet hit the gravel I found myself penned into what was effectively a corridor, the truck at my back and Declan parallel to it a foot in front of me, and I was struck - like, almost sucker-punched struck - by just how much space this guy took up. I mean, yes, he was genuinely tall and had shoulders for Africa, but I knew that what I was feeling - it was some other kind of bigness - a stronger, much stronger version of that 'aura' I'd already fleetingly sensed...

I bolted for the other side of the ute and scrambled up behind the wheel - or I thought I did, but Declan was in his seat and belted up before me...

"So," I babbled, turning the key in the ignition, "I think we established already that you're the bad cop, right? Which means I should be the one to go back to him tomorrow and just break it gently - like, say 'hey, based on the results we got it seems like you might've forgotten to replace your steriliser lamp so if you could order one today that'd be cool and I'll come back again in a fortnight and re-do these samples and I'm sure everything will be fine', because if we take that approach-"

"Caleb..." Just one word, but the same energy behind it as those eyebrows, back there. I stopped, and stayed stopped.

"I apologise for putting you in an uncomfortable position in that store," he said. His voice was quiet but I heard him loud, somehow. "And also I'm sorry about that tantrum I just threw. I need you to understand that I'm not a person who punches people, and that I'm not usually a person who punches things either. There's no need to be scared of me."

"I'm not! I don't - I..." my tongue was a flailing lump in my mouth as Declan watched, intent.

Eventually he nodded. "Okay. If you say so..."

I pulled out of the lay-by and back onto the highway, heart thudding up in my throat. I'd told him I wasn't scared - and it was true. But honestly, I probably wasn't in any better shape than him as far as driving went. I was... confused, unsettled, and underneath it, something oddly close to intoxicated...

We had one more episode of weirdness, less than a week later, with a proprietor rushing out to inform us that we'd picked a bad time to ask for a sample because the aerator on his disposal system had failed only a couple of days ago, and he had one on order but there was no stock in the country at the moment and he was calling up about it every day and he'd let us know as soon as it arrived and...

"News travels fast, I see..." Declan murmured.

"You don't have to put the boot in, you know," I told him afterwards, remembering the blush that'd crawled up the guy's neck in response to that. "It doesn't matter whether he was lying about when or why his aerator failed or how long he's been trying to get hold of one. He wasn't lying about the bit where he was genuinely planning to replace it, and that's what matters for us."

"Yeah, you're right," Declan acknowledged. Then he laughed. "And he might even be telling the truth about there being no stock if everybody in the district's suddenly rushing to replace parts they haven't bothered with for years." He laughed again. "God, I'd love to know what they're saying about us down at the cozzie club..."

"New sheriff in town?" I suggested.

"Sheriff-sss," he corrected me.

"Nah... pretty sure I'm just the horse..."

He rolled his eyes. "Stop putting yourself down, Caleb!"

"I'm not. I like horses!"

"Eh, I prefer people."

"Wow," I breathed. "You must really hate horses..."

He looked shocked for a moment, then he bent over choke-laughing. "Okay, that's a king-hit. You win today's... whatever. You get the belt and the trophy and the champagne and the podium girls - who you can totally keep - but just so you know? I don't hate everybody. I quite like you, for instance..." He let that hang for a moment before dropping me the most audacious wink ever, adding, "... no homo..."

"Too late," I quipped. "I'm keeping the podium girls..."

I felt buoyant for the rest of the day, almost trippy. I debated in school, and I'd always loved the feeling of getting a line to hit just right - of putting it out there pitch-perfect, stilling the room. But this was more than that. I'd felt like I needed to prove myself in the role since day one, but not any more. I was apparently good enough for Declan, and that? - that was my trophy...

* * * * *

I liked the work, once we got into the swing of it properly. I enjoyed it more than I'd expected to. I was fairly... hmmm... about the town. There was good Thai available, and superlative kebabs, and cheap accommodation and a five-minute commute and free parking right outside work, and still... hmmm.

My house was worse than hmmm, but I'd signed a year's lease, so basically I had to deal with it. It was old and draughty and had a bit of the mildew going on - the kind of place where it'd be dumb to store leather shoes on the floor. On the other hand, it did have a full kitchen and a laundry. Declan, I discovered, had opted for a much more modern sleep out in somebody's back garden. It had the advantage of being insulated and built for the sun, but there was no oven and no washing machine - facts he never clocked when looking through the place first-up.

"Not a great loss anyway," was how he explained it to me when I found him eating chow mein on a street-side bench just around the corner from work one evening. "I'm hardly a natural in the kitchen."

He was waiting for a week's worth of washing to be finished at the laundromat, which he seemed totally unbothered by. I didn't understand how anybody could view that as a long-term solution, and told him so.

He shrugged. "Eh. I signed up for a year, so I'm gonna have to wear it..."

"I have a washing machine. And a kitchen."

"And yet somehow I doubt you're volunteering to cook and clean for me," he said drily.

"Um no... but if you want to come around in the evening and put a wash on, that's totally fine. And... if you wanna eat with me while you're waiting for it to be done... I mean, that's fine also. Honestly. This whole laundromat thing is stupid..."

Declan squinted at me. "And what's in it for you?"

Hm. I mean, I hadn't thought about it... like that. "Do you have a gaming console, by any chance?"

His wonky grin broke out. "I do. And nobody to play with just now..."

So that was how that shook down. Twice a week he came around and shoved a sackful of stuff in my machine, and we chatted and ate and shivered, and once - or sometimes twice - a week I headed to his and we gamed and drank and talked smack at each other. Most weeks we went to the pub after work on Fridays as well.

I never spent so much time with a workmate before. But then I never moved cold-turkey to a whole new town and set up house by myself before either. And Declan was in the same boat, so we were a couple of nigel no-mates. A pair, I mean. Not a couple...

* * * * *

I was by myself, which was strange. And when had it suddenly got this hot, and why was I out in the fetid mid-afternoon sun, trudging my way up the flank of a grassy hill corrugated with sheep-tracks, when the river I was presumably meant to be sampling was all the way down there at the bottom of a steep-sided valley?

Turning to look back below, I discovered I wasn't as alone as I'd thought. There were a couple of girls standing knee-deep in the current, playfully splashing and shying at each other, their boots and gear stashed a few metres behind them on the little shingle bank that'd built up on an inner curve.

It wasn't clear to me how they'd got here. How I'd got here. Where here even was. Nothing about the place seemed familiar. I was standing puzzling over it all as cicadas and bumblebees fizzed past and a skylark trilled overhead, when something changed.

I felt it before I heard it. An ineffable... interruption in the eerie sticky stillness surrounding me. Then close on its heels came a deep, gravid thrumming, a sound so alien and yet so-

Water. It was the roar of water, vast, constricted and angry, fighting free.

Oh, shit. No. No.

I shouted a warning, loud as I could, but I was out of range. The girls hadn't heard. I started running down the slope fast as I dared, yelling as I went, desperately afraid it was too late, too late already...

It was over so quick. I hadn't taken more than three gigantic leaping steps before the sickly grey torrent surged through, briefly welling the valley a quarter-full, sweeping everything with it...

Then I was sitting up in bed swallowing down bile and blinking at the square red numerals of my bedside clock, which read 05:04, and telling myself it wasn't real. Disentangling myself from the covers, I went through to the bathroom, sitting down to pee - I was trembling too much for anything more ambitious than that.

It wasn't real! I reminded myself. I showered and drank coffee and tried not to see it on the insides of my eyelids, tried not to hear that noise.

It wasn't real. Okay, I knew that. But all morning, I couldn't clear the plummeting feeling in my gut, the sense of absolute dread. I couldn't shake the sense that something unspeakably awful was already set in motion and about to play out in front of me while there was nothing, nothing I could do to stop it.

I was right.

About 11am we were checking the monitoring equipment in what was - thank christ - the laziest, slackest, most meandering little semi-tidal stream ever, and my phone rang.

It was Dad, calling to tell me that Mum had found a lump in her breast a couple of weeks previously and that she'd had a biopsy three days ago and they got the results today and yes it was cancer and she was scheduled for surgery Tuesday week and after that...

... after that I don't know, because my mind kinda shorted out. Dad said more stuff but I didn't take it in, and when he hung up, I put my phone away, took a few steps in some random direction, and puked. It was a genuine insta-barf - didn't feel it coming, didn't feel it happening - just saw the stuff pouring out, and my brain couldn't make sense of that either.

What I did feel was Declan's hand closing around my upper arm in the moments afterward. "You need to go home," he said, steering me toward the ute. "I'm driving."

Suddenly my brain lurched back into gear.

"No, I need to go home- home," I wailed. "My mum! My mum has cancer!" My mum, my mum! It was like the ground underneath me had given way. I was a six year-old all over again, vulnerable, alone, lost at a fair... my mum!

He'd just started the engine when I blurted it out, and he turned to look at me with this really raw expression. "Oh my god," he breathed. "I am so sorry, Caleb..."

Then he arranged himself face-forward and drove in total silence without so much as glancing in my direction the whole way back, so right there I got my first taste of somebody coping with strong emotions in their environment by ignoring them.

At least I thought that was what was happening. But when we got to mine Declan came inside and helped me prioritise, think through what I needed to do - book a flight from New Plymouth, reserve some airport parking, get one my sisters to pick me up at the other end, apply for compassionate leave - he stayed and held my hand through the entire process.

He did not actually hold my hand, to be clear. He metaphorically held my hand, in addition to finding some Berocca in my bathroom and bringing me a glass. He made marmite on toast and folded his arms and looked forbidding when I was reluctant to eat it - so I did, and whaddaya know, it made me feel a bit better...

He pulled some fairly similar shit when I got back after four days away, not that I clocked it at the time. I flew back into New Plymouth early evening, paid for my parking, and headed out south with the sun setting behind Taranaki Maunga, the snowy cap all glowing pink and gold and way too beautiful. I had to not look. I totally wasn't in the mood for things to be beautiful.

I was almost home when my phone rang. Pulling over, I wondered what crappy news I was about to hear this time - but it was Declan.

"Hey, man. You back yet?"

"Nearly. Five-ish minutes away."

"Good-oh," he grunted. "I literally just got in from Whanganui. I'm getting a kebab. Want me to grab one for you?"

"Uhhh, sure?"

He must have ordered two before even before calling, because he was plonked on my step with a takeout bag when I turned into the driveway. He scooted to the side so I could sit, handed me a foil-wrapped parcel, and dived straight back into his own. I wasn't halfway done before he dealt to his last mouthful and turned to me, saying;

"So, how was it?"

I shrugged. "You don't wanna know."

"Yeah I do," he said. "That's why I'm asking."

"It was ghastly," I told him. "It... I can't even... like, it's my family, right? We all know each other. We don't usually act like... like, everybody was being brave for Mum, and she was being brave for us, and... four days of fake fucking bravery and my sisters all trying to help Mum with stuff and Mum all insisting that she wants to be doing things, and Kim and Bec all super-polite to each other and they don't even like one another and Dad, he..."

I stopped. I had to. I needed to sit and breathe, deliberately, in and out, because Dad had been the hardest thing of all - watching him and realising that he was hanging on by the thinnest of threads. He'd start sentences and just run out part way through, train of thought dissolved, he'd be doing something and abruptly stop, walk to the nearest window and stare out. Over and over it happened and there was no way to reach him, because we were all being brave...

"Wanna go inside?" Declan prompted, standing, pulling me to my feet.

Yeah. I wanted to go inside and crawl into bed and flake out for the longest time and hopefully wake up in a different reality. But... I was also weirdly freaked at the idea of being alone. I sorta hoped that Declan would hang around for a while and we could do something normal and maybe I could decompress a bit before trying to sleep...

... which made it all the more important that I got a hold of myself instead of starting to blubber, because how can anybody do normal stuff while that's going on?

Stop thinking about it, I told myself. Think about something else. I flopped onto my sofa, switched on the TV, started flicking through the options.

"What were you up to in Whanganui?" I asked.

"Eh?" said Declan. "Oh - I was visiting my Dad. My folks moved up there after he retired, and I'm not sure it was the greatest plan, really, because it meant they basically left behind all their networks, and now he's, y'know... he's kinda isolated..."

"What about your Mum?"

He walked to the window and stood looking out. There was a weird familiarity to it. Oh. Shit. Shite.

"Declan?"

He nodded without turning round.

I could hardly form words. "Was it, um...?"

His arms came up, fingers interlocking at the back of his head, tugging at one another just below his sleek black topknot. "Mm-hmm."

Oh god. And him standing there silhouetted and distant and self-contained and... it was too much. I drew my knees up, tucked my face in, and bawled.

I heard him growl, "Aggh, fuck." But instead of the front door opening, closing behind him, I heard the sound of a chair scraping the floor as he dragged it, and then his voice again, in close this time.

"Caleb. Hey. Hey. Let's try not to catastrophise this, eh? We're talking about different things here, for a start. My mum had lung cancer. She was older, wahine Māori, a lifelong smoker, distrustful of doctors. Didn't seek help until it was too late. It's not the same situation. Like, I get that you're scared, but the odds for your mum haven't changed any. Honestly."

"Sorry - I'm sorry," I told him as I sat back up, wiping at my cheeks.

Declan made a face. "Why? It's not weird to be upset during these times."

"No!" I blurted. "I meant, I'm sorry to be making this whole thing all about me, when you've-"

He cut me off. "What? C'mon! It's fine for it be all about you. Right now, at least. It's entirely acceptable for it to be about you today, okay? You and what you need in this moment. Which is? I dunno, do you want me to go and get some beers or something? Do you want me to fuck off and leave you alone? Or...?"

"I think," I said slowly, "I think... could we just watch something maybe? To distract me? Something completely unrealistic and stupid with pointless explosions and shit?"

His grin was the most welcome thing I'd seen in days. "Pointless explosions? I'm in."

We wound up watching 'The Fast and the Furious' - the original, obviously. I'd seen it so many times it was the visual equivalent of comfort food. Not restaurant quality, but that's actually why you want it. Of course once I calmed down the emotional strain of the past few days started to tell on me, and about two-thirds of the way through the movie I lay down, pillowing my head on my hands.

I don't remember falling asleep - who does? But I must've, given I woke to Declan dragging a duvet over me and trying to kind of gently tuck it in. I caught the music of the closing credits for a few seconds before he evidently switched off the TV. Then it was silent and dim, and I expected to hear his footsteps retreat toward the door.

Except they didn't. He was standing - now that I was properly awake I could sense it easily - he was standing only a couple of feet away in the muted dark, watching me.

"God, what is it about you?" he eventually sighed.

Another pause, before he breathed; "You're not even really my type."

I knew that I was meant to be asleep, so I did nothing, said nothing, and a few moments later there came those receding foot treads. I lay there until I was sure he was well gone, my body so still as to be inanimate, my mind racing wildly.

What. Was. That?

I mean, I knew what that was. That was Declan having a fight with himself over the fact that there was something about me that he was into, despite the fact that I 'wasn't even his type'.

You'd think it might've freaked me out, but for some reason it intrigued me. I felt, of all things, vaguely hurt that I didn't properly measure up. I wanted to know - to discover what his 'type' was, so I could understand how, or maybe why, I fell short.

Dumb? Yes. Irrational? That too. But it wouldn't leave me. And it wasn't like I could ask. Not only because technically I never heard, being asleep and all, but because-

Haha, yeah. Because I did already kinda try to probe the topic once, and boy did I come away with burned fingers. I was just curious, y'know, not having had a gay bestie before, I was curious what dating might be like for him in a town like the one were sequestered in, and while trying to sort of set up the question I threw in; "I mean, you're a top, right?"

I should - should have abandoned the whole thing right there and then, because I did notice Declan frost up a tiny bit when he heard that.

"Oh? Am I?" He said. "And you know this because...?"

I had sort of wordlessly gestured at - him, his size, and his... his energy, charisma, whatever. Well, I mean, look. What else was I gonna assume?

And he'd sighed and gone; "Oh great. This heteronormative bullshit again."

Actually that was just the intro to what turned out to be a lo-o-ong speech that ran over physicality being uncorrelated with sexual preferences, masculinity being a social construct and as such having no anchor in either biology or sexual preferences, and the arrogance of straight people assuming they could just slap their paradigms and their narratives across other folks' spaces and make everything fit neatly with their categories, and...

There was more. There was more, all of it delivered in a tone of patient resignation, like it was the worst tedium for him to be obliged to have to once again explain this shit to some dumbfuck normie, while I sat there feeling both schooled and also like I deserved to be schooled.

Then he wound up, and he took a long pull on his beer, and he put it down and grinned at me and said;

"Okay. Now that you you're feeling suitably chastised, Caleb... yes. I am a top. Exclusively."

I remember I just buried my face in my hands and tried not to exist because it was so, so embarrassing, even though I'd introduced the topic, and Declan sat there and laughed at me while he finished his beer.

So. Yeah. I wasn't even gonna be skating around that topic with him again, but after he said... what he said, I couldn't stop myself from ruminating on the whole thing. I did other stuff, sure. Showed up to work, went the gym, took care of household chores, called my folks regularly for updates on Mum. And in between times, when there wasn't anything actively padding out my consciousness, I thought about Declan.

Inevitably, thinking about how he might feel about me bled over into thinking about how I might feel about him, and there I had to face one or two uncomfortable truths. Because... there was definitely something going on there, even though he fairly explicitly wasn't my type, being the whole wrong gender and all...

I mean, I wasn't so unaware of myself that I hadn't already realised I was carrying about some kind of bro-crush for the guy. He just... moved through life with such ease. And people listened to him. Even people he hadn't spent ages working hard to get on-side with.

But all the same... it wasn't his maleness I was into, it was his... his vibe. This is just some emotional dependency you have going on, I self-soothed. It's not, like, a physical thing.

And then... then I remembered something. Who am I kidding? As if I'd forgotten. For some inane historical reason, it was part of our job to shut off the various public fountains around the district for the winter season. External contractors maintained them, but turning them off and on? Council business. Madness.

We'd spent a whole day on it last month, and except for one instance, it was thoroughly unchallenging - but that one made up for all the others and then some. In place of a valve hidden in some little cabinet nearby, or under a brass plate on the plinth, this one had a whole-ass shed housing the plant, and the shut-off valve was down a narrow shaft in the ground beside the pump. Quite a long way down.

Declan summed up the situation faster than me. "Bags not," he said.

I looked over. He had this thumb to his forehead already. Dammit. I shone my phone's light down the hole. How the fuck was I supposed to reach that? Tucking my phone away, I lay down on my right side, cheek to the damp gritty floor, trying not to think about earwigs and cave wetas and other gross things as I inched my hand down the void.

My arm wasn't long enough. I could get my fingers to the nubbled tap ring - just - but not curl them around it. No possibility of gaining enough hold to turn the thing. I peeled myself off the floor and relayed this information to Declan.

"You are fucking kidding me," he breathed, looking at me filthy.

"Ah, no. Sorry."

He glared at me a few moments longer before sighing as he accepted he was gonna have to have a go. His eyes ran up my right side - damp, grimy, little bits of moss clinging to me here and there...

"Hold this," he instructed, tugging his t-shirt over his head and passing it to me.

Oh. Jesus. Whoa. I... let's just say there was a lot of him. A lot a lot. It took him all of fifteen seconds to get down there and do the thing, up again, brush himself off and regain his shirt, but... I swallowed convulsively, recalling the absolute assault on my senses in that constricted space, the sheer fact of him, half-bare - right there.

Yeah, whatever tugged at me on that occasion, it wasn't only his vibe...

And it wasn't just that one occasion. I turned it over and over in my mind, the way I felt about him, examining it. It had many facets, like a cushion-cut diamond, and for one or two... or ten?... of them? It... actually was a physical thing.

Yeah, mostly what I had going on, it was a kind of hero-worship affair, me wishing I had that energy, that poise, self-possession. That command.

Mostly, but not completely. I didn't want to have those shoulders, I wanted to... ugh, to lean on them. Into them. That broad flat swimmer's chest, I wanted... Okay, I told myself. Maybe... maybe this happens with these sorts of, like, crushes - that they leak out into other spaces. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Necessarily.

Yeah, drawled my subconscious. Yeah right, mate. Keep telling yourself that, why don't you?

"Oh this is bad," I groaned, rubbing my sticky palms down the thighs of my jeans. "Like, capital B bad..."

The issue with humans is that they're not rational creatures. I knew I couldn't afford to do anything which upset the balance of my life as it was. I didn't wanna have to move towns or change my job or lose a great friend. But even while acknowledging it was a problem to be teasing myself running over this stuff in my head, I kept doing it.

I'd sit back my ugly old armchair reflecting on the way his face was perfectly symmetrical at rest, but his grin was lopsided. I'd think about the small smile that'd played about the corners of his mouth the time when he told me he fell in love with rocks...

Oh god, it was bad. But it felt good. Shuddery good. The bone carving he wore about his neck, it hid under his shirts most of the time. But he'd reach it out when he was concentrating, thinking hard about something, and run it along his bottom lip, over and over. It was a beautiful thing, large - as was fitting on him - and intricate, featuring some long coiled writhing creature.

Watching him one of the times he was fondling it, I asked if it depicted a taniwha.

He shook his head. "No. Tuna. Long-finned eel. My Koro made it for me. My brothers both got one for their sixteenth birthdays, but he died when I was fifteen and I thought I missed out there. Turned out he'd already finished it and given it to Mum, so..."

He drifted off for a moment, presumably thinking of his Mum, before saying;

"Did you know they can live for eighty or ninety years? They float here on the currents as weird little larvae without anything much in the way of a nervous system, all the way from somewhere up near the Tonga trench. They live here the rest of their lives - in fresh water - but when the time comes, they know to find their way back where they came from to breed. No-one's discovered how they do it."

A faraway look came into his eyes as he murmured, "I hope they never do. I like that some things are mysterious." Nodding gently to himself. "Yeah. Let the eels keep their secrets."

The eels and you, Caleb. Keep your secrets.

Actually I wound up spilling a shit-ton of secrets to him. Not that one, not that one, but... see, a few days later, we went to grab a couple of drinks at the pub, which was something we were doing, eh, maybe every second Friday? Or every second Friday we were both in town - I was flying back home every four weeks or so while mum was having treatment, and Declan visited his Dad even more often than that.

Anyhow, this particular day a gaggle of other staff from the council had arrived before us. They were predominantly female. Already slightly lagered. And they included Imogen. Imogen was the front-desk receptionist at the council offices - not the one who'd wanted to get Declan a coffee on our first day, but her replacement...

Imogen was bright and bubbly and irrepressibly cheery, which I guess are great qualities in a front-desk receptionist. She was young, pink-cheeked, petite and sweet, and for whatever reason, it was me her eyes followed when we walked past on our way out somewhere, not Declan. It was me she was addressing anytime she chirped;

"Hey guys!! How's it's going?" As we arrived back from wherever.

I had no idea how to deal with it. To be clear, I wouldn't have known how to deal with it even if my mum hadn't been going through chemo, even if Declan hadn't been present to witness her attempts, even if my gut hadn't recently decided to inform my brain, at the age of twenty-fucking-seven, that maaaybe I wasn't completely ram-rod straight...

I pretended not to notice the flirting. Just let it flow right over me. It was really the only solution I could come up with - inasmuch as you could call it a 'solution'. And then of course we were at the bar, these folks saw us come in, waved us over, pressed us to sit with them...

Declan hung back. I hung back. But Tanya from finance rolled her eyes and exclaimed;

"My god, you guys are such bros! C'mon! Sit with us! We don't bite!"

At that point, it was either sit with them, or be total dicks. So we plonked ourselves down, drank beer, joined in the chit-chat... and Imogen flirted with me. Not outrageously - I don't think she was that kind of person - just... lots of laughing and touching her hair, watching me intently while I spoke, chin tucked in hand. I was game to simply keep on ignoring it, but I knew shit would head south fairly fast if anybody else picked it up and made something of it...

I was saved by karaoke. Now there's a phrase I never imagined myself using. But after an hour or so they were all tipsy enough to see it as a grand plan for the rest of the evening.

Not Declan, though. He pushed back his chair and stood. "Sorry, too much of a bro for that..."

I followed suit, to a chorus of moans and boos. "Yeah, I know, I'm a wuss..." Flapping a hand at them as I turned away.

Maybe ten minutes later we had a table to ourselves, another beer apiece, and Declan was eating wedges. It was a huge plate - a ridiculous serving for one person, even if that person happened to be a really big guy. I went to sneak a couple for myself.

Declan raised his brows at me - but instead of telling me to get my hands off of his fuckin' chips or something of that nature, he said;

"You could've stayed, y'know. Over there." Gesturing with his head to the council crowd. "Don't have to keep me company."

"Ah, no. I'm good, thanks."

An amused look crept over his face. "You do realise she's into you, right? Imogen? You had clocked that?"

"I had clocked that..."

"So go back over there... go on. You're not gonna have to put in a heap of groundwork, I'd say..."

I shook my head.

"Why not?" Declan probed.

I shrugged. "Not my type."

He looked perplexed. "How come? I'd have thought she was about exactly your type."

"Nah. Too innocent."

He smiled. A slow, thoughtful, butterfly-inducing grin. "Hmmm. But you're kinda innocent yourself..."

I felt my insides curdle. "Gee, thanks," I growled. "Thanks a bunch."

Declan rolled his eyes, like I was the one being unreasonable. "I didn't mean innocent as in, y'know, naïve..." he told me.

Somehow that twisted the knife even more. "Yeah?" I spat, shoving back my chair. "Well, I did."

Of course it was super immature of me to just stamp out of a bar mid-way through a conversation, not to mention unnecessarily dramatic, not to mention I neglected to pay. Fortunately for my reputation in the district, Declan took care of that before coming after me, meaning I had a couple of minutes to myself after getting home in which to reflect on how pathetic I'd managed to make myself look.

So-oo... when he knocked on the door I didn't stand on the other side of it and tell him to fuck off, despite kiiinda wanting to. I let him in and indicated he could take a seat. Sat down myself in my ugly old armchair with my hands linked around one knee. Looked at him for a moment, then looked away.

"Anyway," I muttered. "Sorry... about... that."

He stared at me in a weirdly headmasterly fashion. "Ahhh... I think it's probably me who should be sorry in this instance. I mean, retrospectively? I shouldn't have even touched on the topic. I definitely shouldn't have pushed it. So I apologise for that. But... seeing as I'm here, can I have a chance to explain what I meant? 'Cos what you thought I meant obviously stung."

Sure. Whatever. I spread my hands in vaguely sulky permission.

"I meant... I meant uncorrupted, I guess. Fresh. Non-jaded. Not some kind of infant who doesn't know up from down. Because... it seems to me you've got this perspective on the world that's... it's not empty positivity, it's real faith in humanity.

"When I think about the work you've been doing, the kinds of causes you were taking on? You'll have been personally abused, had your motives questioned, for every round you won you'll have lost ten, but you're not bitter or down on people. Instead you're all about teachable moments, and willing to give folk another chance to be a better version of themselves, whereas... I had one set of bad experiences in one area of my life, and I took it personally and started to turn into some kind of misanthrope..."

He shrugged. "I guess what I'm saying is, I realise multiple times a week that you're a better person than me. And actually I'm a little bit in awe of it."

Jeez. "You're in awe of me?" I snorted. "That's really fuckin' funny, man. I mean, c'mon."

He shrugged again, in a kind of take-it-or-leave-it way. "Okay. The main thing is, I wasn't trying to suggest that you were underdeveloped or hopelessly naïve or whatever. It's just... it seems like you're a good person, which almost certainly makes you a good fit for another good person. Like Imogen. Which was kind of all I was trying to say."

I sighed. "Well you're gonna need to take my word for it when I tell you it wouldn't work. In all my life, the only two females I've been able to hold on to for any length of time - hah. 'hold on to' - who am I kidding?" I tipped back my head back to stare at the ceiling. "I did not call any of those shots..."

Declan's face, when I dropped my chin again, was utterly unreadable. Enigmatic bastard. I knew I didn't owe him explanations, but...

"I wound up fucking one of my flatmates," I told him. "At my last place. Up north. Which everybody will tell you isn't a great idea, and in my case it definitely wasn't a great idea because all of my flatmates were girls, and they all talked about... y'know, stuff, so all of them knew that I was, like, Sophie's back-up dick for when she had nothing better going on, and it didn't exactly increase their regard for me..."

I sighed. "But... but it was one of those things that's difficult to get out of once you're in it. There wasn't a whole heap of accommodation available, and my room was actually affordable on what I was earning, and most of the time she left me alone, it was only when she was really quite drunk..."

Enigmatic, when I glanced up, had been replaced by concerned. He was leaning forward, listening intently. Frowning.

"Okay, so that probably made it sound a bit worse than it actually was," I clarified.

His expression grew more concerned. "Are you sure?" he grated, holding my eye. "Are you really sure about that, Caleb? Or are you maybe trying to make it sound better than it was?"

"What? No! I'm just-"

He put up that hand of his, that always made everybody stop, and said;

"How about you reverse the roles here? Imagine. Imagine if you were a female, and you had just made that little speech to me, rationalising your guy flatmate's behaviour. 'Most of the time he left me alone. It was only when he was'..."

Ew. Ick. No. No. I shook my head wildly. "That's ridiculous! For starters, I am a guy! Look at me! I'm twice Sophie's size - it's not like she could've fuckin' held me down, is it?"

Declan nodded, changing his angle so he was sat back on my sofa, ankle up on his knee, an arm slung along the top. I got the sense he was deliberately dialling down the intensity, adopting a chilled-looking pose so as not to spook me.

"If it helps," he said after a moment, "I wasn't implying that you were subjected to physical force. But... cornering somebody into having sex with you? It's still coercion. If they don't say 'no' because they feel like they can't say no... like, if they have nowhere else to live..."

"You're getting it wrong," I told him. "I promise you you're getting it wrong. It was just some... misunderstanding at the outset. Crossed wires or something. Basically, Soph had been out on the town and obviously hoping to score and it didn't happen and she came home and found me watching something on Netflix and just kinda sat and unloaded her frustrations on me - like, what do you have to do to get laid these days, etc., etc."

I tented my hands and hoped I could explain this next in a way he'd understand...

"I don't think - I don't think she was trying to actually hit on me," I told him. "I think she was just drunk and unfiltered and bitching to me because I was there, but... I didn't especially wanna hear it, so after a couple of minutes I switched off my show and told her I was going to bed, and left. And - and I think that... I think maybe her drunk brain parsed that as something it wasn't. Because she showed up in my room five minutes later kinda throwing off my duvet and ready to do business, and-"

Declan nodded again. Slow. Thoughtful. And evidently not totally convinced.

"I wasn't intimidated by her, okay?" I panted. "It's just... I wasn't into her either, at all... until I like, tried to reason with her and she got annoyed and started being all high-handed and autocratic with me. And then, unfortunately," I pointed to my groin, "... things started to happen. Which obviously gave her the idea that - anyway, none of that was her fault. That's..."

I swallowed, and tried to reset myself.

"So... the other one? Of the two? It was... I had a thing going on with one of my sisters' friends for a while, when I was still living at home, but it wasn't - it wasn't exactly a normal thing, and um..."

My heart drummed in my throat as the memories flooded back. To say it 'wasn't exactly a normal thing'? Understatement. And it seemed like it'd laid down the tracks I was gonna run on for the rest of my life...

I sighed. "So, um... Bec, she's two years older than me, she was a rower from way back, and she was on the UC rep team for the fours, and she hung out with this group of girls who were all rowers, and there was this time when they'd been off somewhere doing this boot-camp sort of thing, and they were going out on the town afterwards, so they all came back to our place to like, shower and change before grabbing a taxi together, and-"

Oh my god. This was a bit I really didn't like thinking about.

I forged on. "You definitely won't think I'm a better person than you after I tell you this, but anyway... mum and dad's house, it's a thirties farmhouse, you know the thing. Gables, loads of verandahs, quite big, it's got five bedrooms, and the master bedroom is kind of its own suite, but the other four, they're like... two pairs? Like mirror-images of each other, with wardrobes down the adjoining wall, yeah?"

Another nod, and I continued; "Well, so the wardrobes, they're not... there's no divider in there, it's just a void with a rail for hangers, and the doors are offset, so you use the space at the end where your door is and the other person uses the space at the other, and... you can see where I'm going with this, right?"

He nodded yet again, a bit reluctantly. Distaste had crept into his expression, and I felt sick, but I'd gone past the point of no return.

"I don't, I don't wanna try and justify it," I panted. "I wasn't a child. I was eighteen. I knew that it wasn't okay to be hiding out in wardrobes and perving on my sister's friends while they got changed... but I will say that I don't think I understood - at the time - just how not okay it was. Like, it's completely non-consensual, right? I mean, if one party's unaware, it's automatically non-consensual. It's predatory. Gross. Disgusting."

I had my face in my hands by now. It felt safer in there. Dark. Hidden.

"Anyway. I did it. Not until after Bec had gotten changed, because apparently there are limits to my depravity, but once she was out of her room, I went into the wardrobe from my side, pushed her door open a little bit..."

I flashed a quick glance at him through my fingers. "I got caught, obviously. Fiona, she went next after Bec, and I... y'know... and when she was finished getting dressed she walked over to the mirror to do something to her hair, and... I don't know if she saw me or heard me or just perceived me somehow, but she ripped open that door and grabbed me out and..."

"She was a big girl," I told him. "Tall as me. Fit. Strong. They all were. I mean, they were athletes... And if she'd, like, kneed me flush in the balls and then kicked me a few times once I was down in a heap it would've been a fair punishment. Justified. But she didn't. She just-" I hauled in a breath. "She called me a lot of names. Also mostly totally justified..."

I could hear her voice in my head even now, low-pitched to avoid detection, laced through with anger and contempt.

"You sack of shit! Yooouuu mangy little creep. What the fuck is your deal? This is what works for you, is it, you mouth-breathing toddler - jizzing your pants in other people's wardrobes? How fucking desperate can you get? Standing in the dark tugging on your sad little weenie while trying to catch a glimpse of some titties, 'cause let me guess - nobody's giving it up for you, are they?"

And the snarl melting off her face to a strange kind of blankness as she let go, stepped back, lifted her top, and said;

"Well then. You wanna wank to some titties, you can do it in the open. Go on. Go on, whip it out..."

And myself, stammering hoarse-whispered apologies and disclaimers and pleas, and the implacable look in her eyes as she brushed them away...

"I don't think you get it. It's not a suggestion. Unless you want Bec to hear all about this, then shut up ... and do as you're told."

Myself trying one more time... her cutting me off.

"If you don't fucking hurry, you're gonna get a bigger audience. I'd say you've got five minutes tops, before Liv's done in the bathroom. But maybe that's what you want, eh? You want a crowd watching you play with your pee-pee?"

Me, shaking my head vigorously in answer. No. No. Please no...

Her handing me a couple of tissues from the box on Bec's nightstand, hissing;

"Then get busy, bitch..."

I looked back over at Declan, still watching me intently. "She made me - made me, like, do it in front of her, like, while she was watching and uh, belittling me. Said if I didn't she'd tell Bec. So... I did. And - and when I was finished, she kinda shoved me toward the wardrobe and said; now you can go back where you came from, little boy. And learn some basic fucking manners."

I took a couple of breaths to steady myself. "I thought that was it. I thought that was my lesson I had to learn, my... yeah. Punishment. But she got my number from somewhere - I guess it was probably easy enough for her to grab it from Bec's phone. And she would... ugh, once a month maybe, she'd... summon me basically, and I'd have to just go to wherever she was and... do my thing for her again.

"She never assaulted me," I clarified. "She never even touched me. Not once. I think it was more my head she wanted to mess with. To be able to reiterate that I didn't have a choice unless I wanted everybody to find out what a creep I was, to be able to mock my tiny dick, and-" I stumbled, stuttered. "I don't... obviously it's not the point, but I don't actually have a tiny dick. I mean - oh god, kill me now..."

He held up that hand again, calling me to a halt. "I get it, Caleb. The tiny dick thing is just pretty much the easiest - and laziest - way to demean a guy, and clearly that was part of the dynamic there. Carry on."

"She would - she would, like, bait me," I told him. "Telling me that I could have x if I did y, kind of thing. Like offer to let me touch her tits if I could hold out for three minutes, and then she would do - or say - such outrageous shit while I was at it that I wouldn't, um, manage... after which she'd tell me to go away because I was too pathetic to even look at, and y'know, rinse and repeat. That's basically how it went.

"After a while it got kinda obvious that I was being set up to fail. That that was the whole point. But I kept it up, because I was scared of what'd happen if I didn't. And then it carried on even longer, and at some stage it occurred to me that she - Fiona - was in equally deep as I was by now.

"See, I had texts from her on my phone, not just arranging meet-ups but saying things like; I own you, little bitch-boy. That kinda thing. There was at least as much stuff had happened that she wouldn't want Bec to know as stuff I didn't want Bec to know. And that meant she almost certainly wouldn't tell anybody if I just - stopped showing up."

My cheeks were hot. So hot. Burning. "I didn't stop," I croaked. "I could've, but I didn't. I kept doing it. She moved to Sydney in the end, by which time it was nearly two years of... of... weirdness, and..."

I swallowed, and looked over at him again. "I think she broke me, basically," I whispered.

Declan weaved his head side to side, considering. "Mm, could be, I guess? If there's one thing for sure, it's that there's been a real lack of consideration for your active consent to this point, and that definitely sucks. That undoubtedly can mess a person up."

"But..." He leaned forward again, fixing me with his gaze. "What if you're not broken, Caleb? What if that's just how you are? What if being the follower instead of the leader is actually what works for you?"

He was speaking quietly, but god I was hearing it loud. And with every 'what if' it felt as if some net tightened around me...

"What if what you like, and what you want," he murmured, "is to not have to think about what you might want? For somebody else to do that part?"

I thought I'd seen him doing 'intense' already. I had seen nothing.

He dropped his voice still lower, spoke even slower. "What if what you need is someone who'll take charge of you and tell you how it's gonna be...?"

Instinctively, I lashed out against the constriction of the trap it seemed he was building.

"So what are you trying to tell me? That that's you? That where you're going with all this?"

"I don't know," came the calm reply. "What I can tell you is that I'm very definitely that kind of person. But whether I'm that exact person?" He spread his hands. "That's actually something you'd have to tell me."

I stared at my feet. Silence. Not even a clock ticking. Who has clocks that tick anymore?

"Am I, Caleb?" He breathed. "Am I that exact person?"

Humans. Not rational creatures. I wanted to deny it even while I didn't. To run and to stay.

"I, uhm, maybe? I think so? Yeah."

As he had earlier, Declan sat back, retreating a little. Giving me space. And time. He was watching me though - I could feel it. Watching me struggle with the implications of what I'd just admitted to us both.

"It's a big deal, yeah?" He said, after a while. "I get it - I do get it. It's not a small thing to acknowledge something like that. It's gonna take a while to process."

He sat forward again, requiring my attention, but earnest now in place of intense. "Like I said, it's not a small thing - on top of which you've had a long week and a weird evening and then raked over some distressing stuff from your past. Your head's probably not in the right space just now to be making important decisions - or to be giving properly informed consent."

He stood, came a pace or two closer, and crouched beside me. "I'm gonna head off and leave you to chill and think - and decide. I'll come back tomorrow evening - say, around seven? - and we can see how you're feeling about things, and go from there. Or not." He squeezed my knee. "Which is also okay - okay?"

I didn't sleep well that night. I didn't function all that great the following day, until it occurred to me I could channel my restless energy into sorting, tidying and scrubbing. Declan showed up, exactly on time, to a super-clean house and a freshly-showered-but-already-sweating-again me...

"How are you feeling?" Was the first thing he said.

I made the world's most equivocal gesture. "Not sure there's really a word for it..."

He nodded. "That tracks."

A thought flashed into my mind. "Ca-can I ask you something?" I stammered.

Declan smiled, slow, benevolent. It was a smile designed to put me at ease, and it did - mostly.

"Fire away," he murmured.

"Why am not your type?"

"Oh, man. Oh shit." He buried his face in his hands. "You were awake?"

"I woke up," I told him. "When you put the blanket on me..."

The hands came away, dragging down his face. "Wow. I'm... guh. Sorry about that. It must've been super-weird for you. But actually you are my type. God, you are so my type. I mean, from where I was standing at that point in time there was the small matter of your apparently being straight, but... aside from that? You are it as far as I'm concerned. You can think for yourself but you prefer to be led, you're soft without being weak..."

He stepped in and loomed for a moment, and my head tipped automatically back, tracking his gaze, as he breathed; "... and you are, actually - whether you accept it or not - a little bit innocent. Which I also like..."

He sighed. "I was talking to myself, obviously. Trying to convince myself 'no', keep myself from doing anything really really inadvisable. Besides which, there's the whole 'don't shit where you eat' thing, given we work together. But..." He looked at me. Intense. "... but last night I decided none of that mattered. And I haven't changed my mind. Have you?"

I was scared, yes. But it was the electric kind of scared. The anticipatory kind.

I shook my head. "No."

"No... what?"

"I haven't changed my mind..."

Declan grinned. "I'll be so good to you, Caleb." He reached out and tilted my chin with his fingers. "I might not always be nice... but I'll be good, I promise..."

He let the moment build for a bit, the static crackling between us while those fingers connected my flesh, then stepped away, creating distance again, saying;

"Okay... before we go anywhere at all, we need to talk safe words."

I cringed internally. It just seemed... squicky. "I don't think-"

He put a finger to his lips. "That's correct. You don't. Start here by trusting me on this one. As to why: I've always been dominant with my partners, from the beginning. It feels right for me. Natural as breathing. And with my first... boyfriend, I guess, we were just really... really in sync with one another, and our roles, they developed organically and worked amazingly for both of us. Which meant that I, having no frame of reference other than that, went into my second relationship assuming that was how things worked, and... I hurt somebody."

He looked away to the side for a moment, before continuing; "I can't fix that. I can't undo that harm. What I can do is make sure to never be that guy again. So you're gonna have a safe word, something short, non-sexual, and memorable. That way, if things ever get too much, you don't need to be able to describe what you're feeling in the moment, you don't have to make a case as to why we shouldn't go any further. Because there's no need to have your thoughts and your emotions all lined up in order to be able to say one little syllable. I mean, my intention is to never push you that far, but my promise is to respect your word. What's your word?"

It came to me easily. "Eels," I told him.

Declan blinked. "Whut??"

"Eels," I repeated, tapping my chest just below the collarbone, indicating the spot where his pendant lay. "Eels. They have secrets. Remember?"

He laughed. "I remember. God, you're cute. Okay, eels it is. So, we gonna do this thing?"

I gulped. "Yeah..."

He got to his feet. "Stand up," he instructed. Just like yesterday, it was spoken quietly but I heard it loud...

I stood, and then - then he did the thing. I'd seen him pull it on others... he was already unfairly tall, but he had this way of gathering himself which gained him yet another half-inch - and people noticed. They noticed, and shrank a little in response. Which is what I instinctively did.

"Stand up properly," Declan snapped. "Like you mean it."

I straightened my back, squared my shoulders, and made myself maintain as he stepped in uncomfortably close, and breathed;

"That's better. You don't half-ass things with me, alright? You never half-ass things with me."

I closed my eyes, because honestly it was a lot, and a finger tapped on one of my shuttered lids. "Hey. I get that this is all new to you and we can take baby steps, but at no point am I going to tolerate this kind of hiding. You want to be here, right? You want to be doing this?"

I nodded.

"Then open your eyes!" he hissed. "Own your shit."

I complied, unable though to completely control the quivering of my lower lip. Fuck... messing it up. Already. I felt terrible.

Declan stepped back a pace and dipped his head, regarding me from under his brows, expression almost playful. "I'm not annoyed with you, bub," he said gently. "I'm just setting parameters here. Because that's how this works. I set the parameters, and you operate within them." He held my gaze for another few seconds. "There will be expectations. There will be rules. There will be discipline. But we'll take baby steps. And you can call a halt to it any time you want. Only with your word, though. Because that's one of the rules."

He loomed in again, and I realised it was strategic, the advance and retreat, coupled as it was with reproof and reassurance. It was deliberate - designed to keep me on tenterhooks, never able to predict what was next, dependent on his guidance... my gut slithered and my dick began to tingle...

"I'd like to see some skin," Declan announced, jerking his head to the side. "Lose that shirt. Over there somewhere. Now."

I did as I was told, my ears burning, not sure why this felt so... taboo. Like, it's not weird to be topless around other guys. Or girls, for that matter. But this... well, yeah. I was getting looked at, big-time. He circled me, several times - just looking - before palming my back in a sweep, shoulder to sacrum, saying;

"This is a really nice body you've given me to play with." Then, apparently to himself, "So nice..."

I couldn't quite make that compute. Sure, I was fit - but not gym-fit, not sculpted. Just... an average-sized, pale, freckly guy - no striking blue eyes or tousled curls - no stand-out features whatever...

He came around the front and repeated his sweep, low to high this time, dragging heat from my belly, up, up, all the way up the column of my throat until his thumb and forefinger rested under my jawbone, and I tilted my head back as far as it would go in obedience to the pressure...

"Mm, yeah," Declan purred. "Very good. Somebody's flexible..."

Okay... that sent my imagination in all directions at once like a dog trying to run on a slick tiled floor. But I fought the urge to shut my eyes, and when he removed his hand I stayed as he'd left me, gazing ceiling-ward.

"Ugh," I heard him grunt. "Fucking perfect."

The thumb and forefinger returned, gripping my chin this time, urging me back down until our eyes met. "Doing so well..." He breathed. Then he slid that thumb up to my lips, past my teeth and into my mouth. It was an unambiguous statement of intent. I will put things in you, Caleb...

He smiled at me, standing there like I meant it, cupping his thumb with my tongue, and it was just the purest thing. Honestly, it was a follow-you-to-hell-and-back affair. I was beginning to suspect this man had an entire catalogue of smiles - and that I was gonna catch some of the rare ones...

My dick was more than halfway swollen by now, and not arranged right. Tugging uncomfortably, pulling hairs. I went to reach in and free it, and got the eyebrow treatment.

"I don't recall asking you to move..."

I returned my arm to my side. Closed my eyes - remembered not to do that - opened them again...

Another smile. Slightly ironic this time, maybe? "That's better," he said. "I want you to move, I'll let you know..."

He withdrew his thumb from my mouth and instead circled it around my left nipple. A moment later the other thumb found my right nipple and set up a sort of counterpoint, the one cool and slippery with my spit, the other warm and dragging fractionally against my skin, and it... agh... fuck...

I thought nipples had no function on a guy. I. was. so. wrong. Those things were apparently hardwired to some place behind and below my dick. I felt a current zinging there and back, growing in strength, creating a pool of pleasurable-yet-agonising tension at my groin, and I shifted my hips side to side in an effort to ease it, tamp things down...

"Did I tell you to twerk?" Declan demanded, grasping my chin again, ungently this time. "Or did I tell you to stand? Be still, boy..."

I stood, my breath hitching. You can do this, Caleb...

Then. Then he dipped his head and sealed his mouth about the one he'd already wet. He sucked hard, creating a prickly ache - then released, and the extra blood he'd drawn to the area seemed somehow to amplify those nerves as his tongue and his teeth played gently over them. It was unbearable - in the best possible way.

Stand, I reminded myself. God, I can't. I literally can't. Not while you're doing that... but I did. I forced myself to immobility even as the pool in my groin grew to a lake of lava, but the built-up tension had to vent somewhere. It came burbling out my mouth in the form of whimpers, groans and sobs, a formless stream of visceral and unmistakably sexual noise...

Declan raised his head and looked me over as I panted and quivered in the aftereffects of his efforts. I'd never felt so embarrassed in my life - nor so enlivened.

"Fuck, you're responsive," he whispered, cupping my my jaw with his hand. His thumb, which'd felt warm on my chest, was cool against my heated cheek as he stroked. "So responsive, and those eyes, too... they're talking to me. That's good... it's good that you're letting me see where you're at."

He grinned, a flashy gangsta smirk as his free hand briefly grabbed at my pec, making me jump despite myself. "And I think we can safely say we've found one of your triggers..." His thumb then traced the very rim of my lips, around and around, as he breathed; "I'm hoping this might be another one. You got such a pretty mouth on you, bub... it's so small and sweet and..." his eyes glinted, "innocent-looking, but turns out it's good for some hella slutty sounds..."

He stepped in again, close enough this time that I felt his breath on my face as he spoke. "I'm thinking I can probably train this pretty mouth up to be good for a whole lot of other things, and that you'll get as much out of the process as me... hmm...?"

Then he kissed me - kind of. Kind of but not really. Not enough. Just the briefest brush of his closed lips, grazing sideways across mine...

I knew I wasn't allowed to open up, invite him in, drink him like life itself. I wasn't allowed to go after more. But that tiny glancing swipe of him ignited something in me, violent and instantaneous, making me realise that most of my reactions so far were the old type - I'd been enjoying being fucked with. Because that, apparently, was who I was.

But not all I was. Not anymore. Not with this gut-deep thirst punching out all the way to my extremities and pulsing there hotly...

"You still okay?" Declan prompted.

I was light-years beyond okay, but I just nodded...

"Good," he said. "I'm gonna ask to see more skin - but first... take off your belt."

I took it off.

"Fold it in half," he instructed.

I did that too, then he held out his hands, flat, palms upward. "Give it to me."

I hesitated a moment, wondering if he was thinking of hitting me. I didn't feel like I'd cope with that. Not today, anyway. And for sure not with a belt. Then I remembered I had a word, and could call time on anything we did - that he'd promised to respect that...

I handed it to him, and got a chin-tilt of acknowledgement, before he walked around behind me. Reaching for my hands, he brought them back, looped the belt around my arms just below the elbows, and hauled it in, fixing it tight enough that my chest thrust forward and my back formed an arch just to accommodate.

He came around the front again, caught my eye, held it. "So you know - I did that to make you feel a bit helpless, because I think you quite like feeling helpless. It's supposed to be a good thing, okay, not a bad thing. Is it a good thing?"

Was it a good thing? Hell, yes, it was a good thing. Even though it really pulled around my clavicles, even though I couldn't entirely expand my lungs... I liked it. I liked it a lot.

"Caleb?" he prompted. "I need an answer. Is it a good thing?"

I took as deep a breath as I could manage. "It's a good thing."

He grinned, and this one was cheeky, suggestive... "Now. I want you to lose some more threads, but I just took away your hands. Terrible planning. Guess I'll have to do it for you..."

To my surprise, he ignored my fly button in favour of crouching down and tapping at a foot, prompting me to raise it. Off came that sock, then the other... on his way back up to standing, he caught sight of my bemused expression.

"Yeah. Remember that," he said dryly, as he reached for the button at my waist. "I tell you I want you naked, I mean naked. Not; I left my socks and my cap on because I decided they don't count..."

He had my jeans undone now, he was gonna... I mean, I expected it, but now we were here...?

"How you doing?" he asked.

"Terrified," I hissed.

The back of his hand pressed gently against my straining erection. "Terrified, eh? What kind of terrified?"

He was fucking smiling at me again. I gulped. "The good kind."

Yeah. It was like that. The worst thing, and also the best. Being on display, nothing hidden - having my hands bound meant not only could I not use them for modesty, but in addition I was compelled to stand chest outthrust, like I was trying to show the world my tits...

Declan stared me up and down, licking his lips. "Well, that's nice,"he breathed. Around the back I heard him murmur, "And actually that's bloody nice as well..." His hands cupped my butt-cheeks, one after the other, as he grunted first 'God' then 'damn', a squeeze accompanying each syllable.

Then he was at the front again, grabbing at my hair, twisting my face side to side, taking in my scarlet cheeks and pleading eyes.

"Kneel," he grated. I dropped to my knees and the hand in my hair followed me down.

His voice seemed to come from a long way above. "Can you sit back on your heels?"

I can, yeah. I do yoga. Like the soy boy Granddad always believed me to be... it almost broke the moment, that intrusion - and the thought of throwing this in his face. Fuck, he'd have a coronary. If he hadn't already...

The hand in my hair remained, keeping me anchored as Declan stepped in close, one foot then another planting themselves astride my thighs, and- god, he hadn't taken his boots off! I wasn't even allowed to keep my socks, and he was still in his boots! He was up there. I was down here. It was all so twistedly wrong-but-right...

Then my face was mashed into his groin and I had no thought of wrong or right, or up or down or... no more thought, just sensation. The hunger which'd already possessed me surged again, my face buzzing with it against the dark denim and the hot hard hunk of iron behind. And the scent of him, and the weight of his hand on my crown, and the warmth and the darkness and the drifting drugged sense of safety...

Reason - realisation - returned as he tugged me away into the cold open air and the light of the room...

"Jesus Christ," I said jaggedly. "Maybe I do have a tiny dick..."

His free hand came to rest across the lower half of my face. "Shh."

I sagged. Right. I mean, obviously there was no place here for smartarsery on my part. He was taking this seriously. The least I could do was-

"You're okay," The hand on my head was stroking now. "It's fine." He fisted my hair again and tipped my head right back, so I was staring up at his face.

"You're doing great," he breathed. "I know - I know this isn't easy, bub. But you didn't want easy, did you? Easy wasn't your type. Isn't that right? Isn't that what you told me?"

I couldn't nod, since he hadn't let up on my hair, and I couldn't see either, but I heard - I definitely heard - the sound of his button popping free and the zzzhick as his zip was lowered and what I thought was that while this next bit might not exactly be 'easy,' I was ready for it. More than ready. Hungry, aching. I let my mouth fall open.

Declan glanced down. "Oh no, puppy," he chuckled. "You have to earn that..."

I struggled, for a moment, to process. I mean, I'd assumed from the instant he forced my lips open with his thumb that this was where we were headed, and everything which'd happened since had only served to confirm. He was gonna have me blow him. Can I do it? I'd asked myself as my tongue first cupped his thumb... I guess? Probably.

But ever since he dragged that ghost of a kiss across my lips it wasn't just, I will follow you to hell and back, but; I will follow you to hell and back and do anything you want on the way there. And back. Then I'd knelt and breathed him in, and cemented for myself there that were no maybes here, no probablies, no hesitation - only a bone-deep yearning...

... and then he said that...

And I realised I had this all wrong. I thought I'd understood how this dynamic worked, but I hadn't, not truly... He wasn't going to require me to serve him with my mouth. He was going to permit me. Possibly. At some point. If I earned it. Oh god... my eyes slid shut. I was off balance and out of my depth all over again, and it felt unreal...

I floated a moment on the hedonistic joy of it, only recalled to the present by a tug on my hair and a sound I couldn't... quite... place. "Look at me!" Declan demanded.

His expression was different. Intense, yes. That was given. But more than that... zeroed in, locked on some target, some goal... oh. Oh. That noise. The position. The restraint of my head, tipped up... he was beating off, and he was going to finish all over my kneeling supplicant face. He was planning to mark me like some owned thing in viscous white spunk. And I was gonna let him.

Fuck... my cheeks were incandescent with the humiliation of it, but my dick burned in a whole different way, even as my balls drew up in expectation of an orgasm they weren't actually gonna get...

The rhythm of those vague squelching sounds upticked, and upticked again, then Declan was saying, slightly breathless;

"Eyes closed now, bub. Good boy. Eyes closed, mouth closed - stay like that..."

They were surprisingly gentle, those spurting stripes raining on my face, gentle like his tone, his manner, his patient leading of me to this point, and though some aspect of me still writhed wretched at the indignity, a greater part felt almost honoured - blessed.

I kept my eyes closed as I heard the sound of his zipper going back up, as I felt a runnel of his cum slither down one side of my neck. I kept my eyes closed while he carefully wiped me clean with what I later discovered was my own t-shirt... and he spoke to me - gently - all the while, telling me what a good boy I was, how well I'd done, how proud he was of me...

I opened my eyes and he tugged me up to stand, keeping a hold on my shoulders as I readjusted, flexing my toes, wincing through the pins and needles, the burn beginning in my shins - none of them pleasant sensations, but through it all my cock poked up and forward in its usual stupid way, like a teapot-spout...

Declan noticed. "I bet that dick of yours would really like some attention just now..." he breathed.

I nodded, unable to meet his gaze, but he didn't seem to mind.

"Yes, it would," he continued, "but you can't do anything about it, can you? Not with your hands behind your back. Can't help yourself out." He leaned in. "Totally powerless..."

I was nearly crying, but it wasn't frustration, it was just pent-up... everythingness...

"I can help you, though," Declan whispered, breath ghosting my ear. "Would you like me to help you?"

My dick lurched and a tiny bead of moisture drooled delicately from the tip, hung from a gossamer string of the same.

"Yes," I stammered, from a tongue somehow sticky and over-large. "P-please..."

He stroked my cheek. "I'll help you. You've been good." Then he was around the rear, untying my belt, saying; "This is gonna get sore if we leave it much longer, pulled tight like that. Just hold your arms for me instead - nuh-uh, like this..." He arranged my hands, each clutching the opposite forearm, laid one over the other below my jutted shoulder-blades. "That'll be easier - keep them like that for me, bub. Now..."

He backed us over to the sofa and sat, tugging me down into his lap and fanning my thighs out either side of his. "Lean back on me," he urged. "Yeah, that's it. That's nice, eh?"

It was. So nice. So good to be laid all along him, even with the weird lump my arms made between us. Basking in the warmth and buttressed by the bigness, my left shoulder tucked under his chin and my cheek resting against his ear...

"Now, I seem to remember hearing that you have a bit of an issue with stamina," Declan murmured, "so we're gonna start working on that, okay?"

He wormed a hand into his pocket and brought out his phone. "Here's what we'll do," he told me. "I'll set a timer on this, for three minutes. I'll be jerking you while it counts down. You can cum any time you want - after that timer goes off. And I'm not gonna sit here and bring you down and tell you you can't do it. I'm gonna tell you that you can do it. You can do it. And, Caleb? You will do it. Don't disappoint me, bub."

He placed his phone on the arm of the sofa nearest us, where I could see it, tapped the screen to start the countdown, then closed his hand around my dick.

Oh hell. Oh bloody hell. And jesus, and christ. Hoh-lee... mary-mother-of-god. Shhhit. I can't. I can't do it. I glanced over at the timer, blinking wildly, already feeling the ground slipping under me. 02.17-something, the fractions of seconds moving too fast to distinguish. I can't. There's no way. No way...

And yet, in amongst all the jangling neon madness in my mind, I could tell he wasn't deliberately making this difficult. He wasn't employing any cunning tricks, mixing in twists across my glans - he wasn't even gripping especially firmly. Just enveloping me in one of his big brown paws and metronomically tugging away, and it was absolutely utterly too good, too much to handle...

He kept going, and it kept getting more and more challenging to... anything. I gritted my teeth and groaned, digging my nails into the skin of my forearms, rigid all over with the strain of not giving in to this thing...

"Stop this shit," I heard Declan say. He didn't sound annoyed. Just... matter-of-fact. "Get it together, Caleb. I am not asking the impossible here. Control yourself. And breathe normally, for fuck's sake."

Oh, yeah. Breathe. That'd be good. I had kiiinda forgotten... Breathe. And control. I drew in a big slow lungful and tried - less successfully - to let it out just as slow.

It helped, some. And also I found a kind of trigger point behind each of my elbows which really hurt when I pressed my thumbs into them. And I was biting the inside of my cheek, and counting down from five hundred in steps of seventeen, and even then-

I could taste blood in my mouth by the time the hollow little iphone tune signalled my sweet torture's end and I could let go, let it happen, let the waves roll over me. I actually wailed as the first contraction blew through me - at least, I think I did. Somebody made that inhuman noise and it probably wasn't Declan.

In fact, for the first few seconds I was so focussed on cumming, finally cumming, finally being allowed to cum, that Declan sorta wasn't even there. And then... I came back to myself and he was. Right there where he'd been, sprawled under me, heart beating slow and sure against my back, his left hand gripping my thigh to prevent me toppling off him, inclined to the right as I was.

He reached gingerly to the side for something and that was when I realised my t-shirt had been repurposed as a cum rag. I wasn't mad though. Too woozy and heavy and nice and hey fuck it was only a t-shirt...

Declan wiped his hand first, then me, then balled the t-shirt carefully back up and wrapped both big forearms across me. "You did good, bub," he murmured, rocking us infinitesimally side to side. "You okay there...?"

I nodded. I was a bit too spent to speak. Plus I'd have to have thoughts, and I didn't. My head was full of wool.

He rocked us a little longer, then gently deposited me off to the side and got up, pocketing his phone, leaving me sitting naked on my very second-hand couch. His hand tangled in my hair again and tipped my head back to look at him.

"I meant what I said, Caleb," he stated. "You did great. You might be a beginner, but you're also a natural, and I would love to have the chance to play with you again. Which is something you need to mull over, now you've had a taste. Will it work? Will it work... with me?"

He released my hair. "Think about it. Let me know." A sneaky grin crept over his face. "I'm free tomorrow evening..."

And then he was gone.

I got up and gathered my clothes, including the very damp t-shirt, and carried them all through to the laundry to get a wash started. Then I turned the shower on and while it was taking its sweet time to warm up, I thought; I just let a guy jerk me off. After he came on my face. I sort of waited for it to hit, the shame, the regret, the what now? the twisting in my gut, the... whole Caleb post-sex package. But... I felt great. And it wasn't 'a guy'. It was Declan. Declan, who liked that some things were mysterious, who had a thousand smiles, who'd held me and rocked me, and...

I had a pretty decent smile on myself, when I paused in front of the mirror. I would actually, I thought, slipping under the steaming spray. I'd follow him to hell and back. Because it might not be easy... but fuck, he'd make sure it was good...

Out of the shower and drying myself, I looked down and... yeah. That'd made me cringe earlier. And not in a way I got off on. Nothing says 'I haven't had sex in so long I've stopped even expecting it to happen' quite like a totally-gone-to-seed mad mountain man crotch forest...

Right, I thought. Time for a trim. I found some scissors, and - you know what? I am not very good at these things. I wound up looking hacked about rather than maintained. Ugh. Now I was gonna have to shave.

Five minutes later I and was wishing I'd thought that one through a bit more before committing. How was I supposed to shave my balls? Without risking a really bad accident?

You don't grow up with three older sisters and remain ignorant of the many depilation options out there. Hair-removal cream, I thought. That's what I need. I knew it worked, because I'd put some on my arm once when I was about fourteen, to see what happened. In case you're wondering, what happened was that I had to walk around with a hairless patch on my left forearm for several weeks and deal with intrusive questions about it.

It was 9.25pm - Countdown would still be open. I threw some fresh clothes on and headed out to my car, supremely conscious of how weird everything felt down there, especially the slightly spiky catchiness of my half-finished 'do' against my boxers. They'd dimmed the lights in the supermarket by the time I got there, unsubtly encouraging late lingering customers to please fuck off so they could close for the night.

I found the stuff I needed no trouble, but it was only then it occurred to me - god was I doing a poor job of forward thinking - that this was a bloody weird thing for a guy to be buying. Especially by itself. I grabbed a box of tampons in an effort to misdirect the cashier, tossed a Pinky Bar and a packet of gum in with them, and tried to act insouciant, like I did this sort of thing every day.

My mood was low by the time I got back home. It'd been dropping steadily since I began the escapade with the pubes, but there was more to come. My arms and shoulders ached from being tied earlier, my back hurt from all the weird positions I'd had to contort into trying to shave. And that cream? I remembered it worked. I had forgotten how fucking awful it smelled.

Well, that's just fabulous, I thought. Declan's gonna come over tomorrow and I'm gonna smell like a science experiment gone wrong. But I was in too far. I waited until the stuff had cured properly, then went back in shower, and the weird chemical smell washed away down the drain with all the hair - to be replaced by a very feminine fragrance that I couldn't shift...

It was late, and I was sore and tired and I smelled of lilacs or potpourri or some such shit - and all for my cock and balls to look like a mediocre serving of raw chicken tacked on between my legs. I felt like crying as I dragged myself to bed. The one-single-solitary consolation was that at least the area was smooth. It felt cold and oversensitive and unprotected, but it didn't snag on my boxers...

I slept alright despite everything and woke more positive in the morning. I still smelled too feminine about the undercarriage though. It occurred to me to go for a swim - if I could get the tang of chlorine well settled in my skin it might mask things pretty effectively...

Swimming wasn't really my thing. It was Declan's thing, I recalled, hauling myself determinedly through the water as my arms and shoulders protested yesterday's ill-usage. And you could tell, looking at him... that chest, when he stripped his shirt off in the pump-shed... I hadn't got to see it yesterday. Maybe I would, today?

An hour and a half's flailing in the pool had me jelly-legged, strongly redolent of chlorine, and with far less of the two-dollar-shop car air freshener scent about me. So, success. I drove home, ate a couple of bananas chopped into a bowl of yoghurt for a late lunch, and called Mum to see how she was going. Then... I was kind of at a loose end.

I wonder what time Declan's gonna come over? I thought. S'pose he'll let me know. And if he doesn't, then it's gonna be the same time... probably? I mused over some variant of that for a solid two hours before remembering that I was supposed to be letting him know...

Okay, I thought, as I stared down at the empty blue speech bubble on my phone screen, what am I meant to say here? Can you please come around and fuck with me again? And also... be really kind and sweet to me again? In the end, I settled for;

~be good to see you later on~

~seeing as apparently you're free~

And in reply I got;

~same time, yeah?~

~looking forward to it :)~

God, I was looking forward to it too. I started to get this pleasant feeling of warmth in my lower abdomen - not heat, just a gentle emanating glow that followed me about while I tried to find stuff to do to pass the time. Of course there was the little niggling fact that my junk looked very different to what it had yesterday playing at the corner of my consciousness. I'd just have to hope Declan didn't mind...

He arrived exactly on time and wearing a t-shirt that, ugh... not much left to the imagination there. I still hoped he'd take it off, though. I wanted to know what his skin felt like, what it smelt like, what it-

He was looking at me curiously. "Hello? Anybody home?"

I jumped. "Uh - yeah? Did you say something?"

He crouched down so we were eye-to-eye, elbows on my knees and his chin propped in his hands. "I said, how's my boy today?"

Fuck. I melted. Absolutely melted. Could hardly even gather together a few syllables. "I'm... um, great...?"

"You wanna play again?"

Well, duh. That's why you're here, isn't it? But I couldn't blame him for wanting specific consent.

"Yeah, I - definitely."

"Good," he purred, as he stepped up and away. "You can start by stripping and letting me take another look at you..."

Here goes nothing... I began with my socks, so I didn't forget, then my hoodie, t-shirt, pants... I was down to my boxers when I ran out of nerve.

"I, ah, I should probably tell you something," I stammered. "So... last night I went to ah, tidy up a bit, and... I kinda got carried away, and..."

Suddenly I just wanted it over with. I stepped out of my boxers and stood like I meant it, hands at my sides, chicken giblets out in the open. I looked for some... indication of something in Declan's face, but he was doing the inscrutable thing again...

There was a long silence, before he muttered; "Well. You'd better let me have a proper look at that, I think. Just... sit on the very edge of the sofa, yeah... and now lie back, good boy... just lie back like that and let me take a look..."

He knelt between my thighs as I lay there in a major slouch, my head cricked up by the sofa's back - then he took hold of my ankles and folded my legs up and back so that my quads almost touched my chest.

"Hold these for me, bub," he said, threading my arms around and behind my knees. Then... he stared. At me. At my... like, all of it was on display in that position. It was the literal most embarrassing thing that'd ever happened to me.

And yet somehow... it wasn't a bad thing. Maybe because he wasn't keeping up his whole inscrutable gig, so I could tell he was... not displeased with what he was seeing, even before he said;

"Oh, this is nice. This is... very nice..."

His voice, before it trailed off again, was hushed - almost reverent. And then his hand, touching me, skimming lightly over all that sensitised, newly naked, profoundly private flesh like it was the most normal casual thing... and me, lying there trussed up by my own elbows, letting him do it. Watching him do it...

He cradled my jaw with his left hand, dragging his attention away from my genitals and up to my face, nodding, smiling.

"Very thorough," he breathed. "You've done a good job, puppy. You pass inspection."

Ugggghh... That went through me like a thousand volts, straight to my dick. Zero to sixty in no seconds flat.

Peeling back, preparing to stand, Declan clocked the state I was in.

"Wow... somebody's happy to see me. What brought that on?"

I could've said, 'nothing'. I could've said anything. But there was no point trying to deceive him. No point in doing any of this if I was gonna lie. He hadn't touched my dick, and he knew that as well as I did. Everything, yes, everything else, but not that...

I swallowed. "It, um... it was the 'pass inspection' bit..."

He smiled, friendly enough. But there were little devils dancing in his eyes. "Eh, believe me, bub... inspections can get somewhat more... probing ... than that. But that's down the road aways. Meantime..." He stood, taking one of my ankles with him, extending my leg, and once it was locked straight he placed my foot at his crotch, leaning into it.

"Feel that?" He said. "I'm hard for you again. Can't help it. You look so fine like that... so inviting..."

Ah-hahhh... yeah. I could feel it. Distinctly. His hands were working the upper surface of my foot now, kneading and squeezing, pressing me against him in an undulating rhythm. It felt nice, but what lay underneath felt... oh god, it was so compelling, it made me feel so...

It made me feel really torn. Like I had when I'd sat fantasising, the day I acknowledged I was into him... oh god, this is bad - so why is it so good?

I dropped my head in my hands and groaned, long and loud. "Why am I like this?" I hissed. "Why do I want this so much? I don't understand!"

My foot was returned to the floor and Declan was kneeling between my legs again - I couldn't see him but I felt denim scrape my inner thighs as he lowered himself down.

"You don't need to understand it," he said softly, taking hold of my wrists. "Just be it. Also please remember I don't allow hiding..."

I let him drag my hands away from my face and hold them together in a sort of praying gesture over my chest, while he regarded me thoughtfully.

"I think I know what's going on here," he mused. "You said yes to this because you were interested in what I had to offer. You knew there was a dick involved. You told yourself that hey, you'd find a way to cope. You didn't expect to actually want it. But... you do - don't you?"

I nodded shakily. It was true. It was true. I'd thought so much about his body, his strength and beauty and size and grace, his skin and his hands and... ugh, his fucking chest, but I'd absolutely utterly avoided thinking about... that. And here I was. Unprepared for the magnitude of this thing - no, not like - well, okay. That too. But... for the magnitude of my feelings about this thing.

Keeping my hands trapped, Declan leaned forward so his lips were just below my ear, grazing the delicate skin there as he spoke.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," he whispered. "Dicks are like that..." He drew back and caught my eye, a playful gleam in his own. "Though I guess I would say that, eh?"

I laughed. Couldn't help it. Of course you'd say that. But... you'd also be right. He grinned in response and traced around my lips, just like yesterday, before trailing away down my neck... up again, following my jaw, back to my lips... I sagged spellbound into the caress, and Declan muttered;

"Fuck, you're so touch-starved, aren't you puppy?" His hands, both of them now, palming my chest, abdomen, inner thighs, up and down in broad sweeping strokes. "You'd lie there and let me do this all day and still want more..."

He took hold of one of my hands and placed it where my foot had lately been, pressing in. "You wanted more yesterday, didn't you? You thought you were being such a good boy, kneeling down for me. Did you think I couldn't feel you fighting my grip - trying to yank your own hair out just so you could catch a glimpse?"

"Here's the thing," he said, twitching his hips into my hand. "You'll always want more. Always. But you'll get it when I decide to give it to you. And you'll be content with that."

I nodded. I would, actually. I'd be more than content with that... because it made sense to me. It all made so much sense - right down to my having a momentary freak-out and him talking me back from it...

"You actually were good yesterday," he was saying now. "And I like for you to have things that make you happy. You want to see... you wanna watch me today?"

"Yeah," I panted.

He squeezed my hand before letting it go, saying; "In future I might get you to do a better job of asking nicely, but I know you've got a lot going on right now..."

Then he... look, all he did was undo his button, then lower his zipper and free his junk, shifting his hips side to side so that everything... waved about a bit, but... like yesterday, when he almost-nearly kissed me, it was a threshold moment, a state-change. I felt an actual physical compulsion toward it, and involuntarily surged forward on the couch - or tried to. The extreme recumbent position Declan had put me in and the sagginess of the springs meant I didn't get far...

"No," he told me softly, shaking his head, and I subsided, abashed but enthralled, as he spread my arms wide, instructing me to keep them there. Then he knelt across my waist, obscuring any view of my own junk and replacing it with his. Left hand on my shoulder, doing double duty keeping him balanced and me pinned, he swept his dick back and forth across my pecs...

I groaned, and even to my own ears it sounded desperate.

Declan frowned. "I will let you touch, bub. I will let you taste. But not today. You need to be patient and wait. Be a good boy and let me set the tempo. And be here," with two fingers he pointed at his eyes and then mine, "be in the moment with me, not in your head thinking about when you can get all this more that you want..."

Oh god, called. Again. "Can you read my mind or something?"

"No, baby," he huffed, thwapping his dick imperiously against my ribcage. "I can read your face. All you get today is to watch. So make the most of it, okay? Watch."

I watched. I watched and I felt as he meandered his tool over my torso, switching it up occasionally with more of those weighty slaps which reverberated deliciously all through my core, and time went all kind of liquid and meaningless so that there was only 'here' and 'the moment' until...

... until he knelt up taller and wrapped a hand around himself, the other winding in my hair, tugging jee-ust hard enough that it wavered either side of the pain-pleasure line, but not preventing me from looking. Not preventing, simply reminding me this was a privilege, not a right... and I thought; why did I not try this sooner? Why did I not try all of this sooner?

"Ffffuck... that looks fine," Declan sighed, having painted my chest and stomach. "Don't you think that looks fine, bub?"

I did, yeah. My eyes took in the sheeny satiny gloss of it, strewn about, the absurd abundance - and the last, last precious drop, still seeping from the piss-slit of that gorgeous fat penis, now drooping if not exactly deflated, and I was almost as satisfied as if I'd been the one who'd cum - but...

He really could read my face. "There you go," he breathed, stroking up his shaft, milking that final clot into my belly button. "That's all of it. All for you... all for you..."

I never wanted to move. I never wanted to wash. I didn't want him to put his dick away, either, or to dismount. But he did. He stood and gazed down at me, chin in hand, softer somehow than usual, and muttered;

"God, I'm so tempted to leave it like that, but it'd probably end up on your sofa, and it's no fun trying to sponge cum out of things. Just... doesn't work, if you can't throw it in the wash. Where are your towels?"

"Well, my t-shirt's just over there," I snarked, rolling my eyes.

His face went steely. "Just for that..." he murmured, sweeping it up and swiping it roughly over my abdomen, gathering the bulk of the ooze. "In future," he grated, "you will have a towel ready before I arrive... and if you forget, I'll cut out the middleman and cum directly on your t-shirt - while you're standing in the fuckin' corner with your hands behind your back!"

I shivered all over at that. It wasn't that I liked the idea of standing in a corner, at all. It was that I liked the idea of being made to stand in a corner. By him.

"And now..." he murmured. "Now, puppy - look at me - would you like to cum?"

My cheeks were stinging with heat. My chest was tight, and I could feel my eyes brimming. "Is... really? Aren't you mad with me?"

Declan massaged the space between his brows for a few seconds before replying. "Of course not. Look, this has to work for both of us, and if you don't want me wiping up cum with your t-shirts, that's actually totally fine. Totally fine. All you need to do is a.) provide an alternative, and b.) ask me nicely. None of this fuckin' sass. Understood?"

I nodded. "Understood."

He stroked my neck, urging my chin up. "I don't hate that you have a bit of spice in you. I want a sexual partner, not a droid or a hole. I mean, some people are genuinely into that and that's fine for them, but it's not my kink. You're allowed to have opinions, Caleb. And preferences. But you communicate them respectfully. That's a red line."

A smile glinted briefly on his face. "You can cum, bub. But we're gonna use that timer again. And it's four minutes today."

"Oh, god," I whispered, as he tugged me up and sat, pulling me back down to sprawl over him, "a whole minute more? But I barely-"

He laid a hand over my mouth and I quit my protesting. I mean, I wanted it. Even if it really really wasn't gonna be easy.

"Listen," he whispered into my neck, "I'm sure you feel like you know what you're talking about. But I know a few things as well. I know you thought you couldn't do it yesterday - but you did do it. I know you need more confidence, more faith in yourself - and I know that I can help you with that."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, programmed the timer and placed it where it'd laid yesterday. But he didn't set it going.

"It won't always be like this, okay?" he told me. "Just so you know. It's not always gonna be this super-regulated me-first-then-you whole thing where you're just following one instruction at a time. But there is a point to this. I'm training you, basically. I want to get you used to responding to instructions and for you to be able to feel good about yourself because you've pleased me..."

He trailed off, and I felt that great ribcage rise and fall beneath me as he took some kind of centring breath.

"Look," he said, "I know you have history, and the fact is there's some of it I want to over-write. Because for myself I don't feel like you get the best out of a partner if you're continuously making them feel small or stupid or inadequate or constrained. You've got to give them room. Boundaries, yes," - he tugged my head back by that same patch of hair at my crown - "boundaries, definitely. But also room. And I will give you room, Caleb, just as soon as I'm confident you're comfortable with the boundaries - but I don't want to get ahead of myself and do anything too intense at this stage..."

"Mate," I muttered, "everything you do is intense..."

"I said too intense," he specified, jerking my head back again and tweaking a nipple hard with his free hand, getting something close to a squeal out of me for his troubles. "Right, let's get this party started. Put your hands up behind my neck, bub - yeah, link your fingers, that's it. Those hands are gonna stay right there, okay? Let me do the work..."

Then the timer was counting down and his palm closed warm and firm about my dick and I was panicking in several directions at once - another whole minute! Can't poke those tendons behind my elbows in this position! How am I gonna! - breathe. That's right. Breathe.

I shut my eyes and let myself sink down, melt into Declan's torso until I picked up the rhythm of his breath, and I matched my own to it, and I waited. Waited for the signal he'd set me. Was it easy? Ha-ha. No. But weirdly enough, four minutes wasn't any more challenging than three had been...

"See? You're better at this than you think, puppy," he whispered to me as I lay in the aftermath. "Now pass me that t-shirt, eh?"

He mopped up once more then gathered my legs together and over to one side so he was kinda cradling me and again he did that little rocking thing and again I utterly went for it without having any clue why...

"You a bit sleepy, bub?" He said after a while.

I nodded droopily. "Yeah..."

Next thing I knew he was throwing himself forward, using the moment to bring himself to his feet, still holding me, then striding down my hall carrying me like I was some overgrown infant. He plopped me down on my bed and dragged the covers up, before bopping my nose with a finger and saying;

"There... have a little nigh-nigh, eh?"

Even though he wasn't doing his enigmatic thing, I couldn't make out whether he was being cute or condescending.

"Are you, um, messing with me?" I hissed.

He shook his head, smiling down from all the way up there. "No. Definitely not. I'll see you in the morning, 'kay?"

Honestly, it was only at that point - I know it sounds ridiculous - but it was only at that point I remembered, or assimilated, the fact that we. worked. together. That I was going to have to see him in the company of other people in about twelve hours' time. The realisation jerked me out of my woozy little post-orgasm trance and kept me awake and biting my nails until it occurred to me that Declan likely wouldn't approve of nail-biting. So I put my hands behind my back and laid on them to reduce the temptation and guess what that made me recall...?

It'll be okay, I told myself, listening to my heart thud erratically in my chest. It'll be okay because it has to be okay. I'm not bailing on this. I'll get another job if I have to, but I. am. not. turning my back on this.

It was teeth-gritted determination rather than confidence that held me together during the monthly all-staff meeting in the morning, but given nobody exactly wanted to be there I got through it without anybody seeming to think there was something off about me.

We had fieldwork to do after and walked side-by-side out to the ute in the cold morning sunshine. My stomach was still doing flip-flops as I reached for my seatbelt. I stole a tiny glance at Declan, and he smiled at me, a soft centering smile, reaching out to lightly touch the back of my neck, as he murmured;

"All good?"

"Yeah," I told him, and from that point on I actually was all good. Floating, but grounded - if that makes any sense. In fact, I mostly stopped thinking about it. I had a regular work day, with my colleague - who was also my friend - and everything went fine.

Then, as I was leaving for the day, he called across the carpark to me.

"Hey, Caleb!"

"Yeah?" I called back.

"Okay if I come over and put a wash on later?"

"Sure," I yelled, and he gave me a thumbs-up before dropping down into the driver's seat.

Is... that code for anything, I wondered, as my own car groaned and sputtered and generally acted janky about starting. And... do I have enough spare cash to get this shit-box serviced? It's gonna plain refuse one day soon...

Remembering my little telling-off from yesterday, I put a towel out on the side-table by the sofa as soon as I got home (just in case) and decided to otherwise play it cool when Declan arrived. That went about as well as me trying to play things cool ever had. He showed up - with a laundry bag, yeah - but the literal first thing he spotted was that towel. And he stood smirking at it for several seconds before turning to me with a feral gleam in his eye, saying;

"I take it you'd like to play again, then?"

I was the polar opposite of 'cool' by that point. Red-faced - probably blotchily so, thanks Scottish ancestors - dry-mouthed and sweaty-palmed...

"I - um - yeah? If... that's okay?"

He nodded. Slowly. "Mm. Well, how about you ask me nicely?"

I opened my mouth then shut it again. 'Asking nicely' was gonna involve more than words, I was sure of that much. But what, exactly?

He was doing the enigmatic-face. Okay... I'd have to figure this out myself. What did he want? What did he like - aside from the fact I enjoyed being fucked with? He... liked eye contact. And he liked my body. My body.

Holding his gaze, I peeled off every stitch of my clothing - including my socks. Then I knelt down, sat back on my heels, unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth, and croaked;

"Can we play, please? Again?"

I had a feeling I'd hit right. He was biting his lip and he looked fucking fierce.

"Oh hell yes," he growled. "You wait there for me, bub, while I get this washing on." He strode over and tipped up my chin. "You can blink - and that. is. all. Do not move a muscle." Then he was gone, leaving me wondering what I'd just unleashed...

But there was a thoughtful look on his face when he returned. He picked up my trackpants and tossed them to me.

"Put these on, bub. I, uh, let my dick do a bit much thinking for me just before. Let's... we should talk first."

I stumbled up, got one leg in, and hopped about uselessly trying to finish the job. A hand closed around my bicep, steadying me.

"It's okay, it's okay - don't start freaking out on me. I literally just want to talk. Come and sit down..."

I sat, in my chair. He sat, on the sofa.

"You haven't done anything wrong," he breathed. "It's only... ideally, we'd have a debrief after each session, except you always look so blissed, and I can't bring myself to drag you out of that space. But... we have to talk. We have to check in with each other and make sure we're on the same page, that we're both liking where this is going. I have to hear that you're okay with what we've been doing. I have to hear if you're not okay with anything we've been doing. I mean, I can tell that you enjoy it at the time, but how do you feel after? I mean... after-after? Once the glow wears off?"

I looked at him sitting there - just sitting there - and felt hot and liquid all through my body. "I... don't think it has. Worn off, I mean."

He smiled crookedly. "Oh yeah? You are not currently in the sort of state you were in when I left you last night."

"Yeah... but I'm in some kind of state. Permanently. That I never was in, before... before I met you."

"Well, that's good for my ego," he said. "No, but seriously. Do you feel safe? I haven't... pushed any boundaries?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Cool," he said neutrally. "I mainly ask because it occurs to me that there's some fine line to be trod between keeping you guessing and having you slightly off-balance all the time because it increases your sense of helplessness - which, let's be honest, we both enjoy - and, like, screwing with you simply for the sake of screwing with you. Which is why I thought I'd let you know... this whole timer thing? I'm not gonna just keep on moving the goalposts away until you inevitably fail. Five minutes is what I want. At this stage, anyway. Five minutes seems like a reasonable ask to me, given I usually get you kinda riled up before we start..."

He shifted in the seat, slouching a little further, manspreading a little more. "So-oo... anyway, is there anything you wanna talk about, anything you wanna ask?"

I shook my head. "I'm good. This is... amazing. All of it."

"Okay. Come over here now - no, leave those on. Come and sit on my lap, bub..."

'On' his lap turned out to actually be astride his thighs, and he was palming my sides in full strokes, letting his thumbs occasionally graze my nipples, when I remembered...

"Ah, I actually maybe do have a question?"

He quit stroking. "Okay. Shoot."

I pointed to my groin. "I, um... this whole bald situation I've got going on. You - you seemed to like it. Should I... keep it like that? Is that something you'd want?"

He put a finger in my waistband and pulled it back so he could peer inside. "Oh? This?" He said teasingly. "Is this what you're talking about, shy boy? Is this your situation?"

I laughed awkwardly. "Obviously..."

"It's really up to you..." Declan murmured, now running that same finger along the stretched-taut waistband, back and forth, never meeting my skin. There was something inexplicably erotic about the combination of his unapologetic staring and that touch-which-wasn't-a-touch...

"Yeah, but it's not, is it?" I panted. "Not really..."

He let the elastic snap back. "Eh, sweets... how this works is, when we are playing, I tell you what to do, and you damn well do it - but... the rest of the time? You are your own person. I'm not about to police how you dress, what you eat, who you hang with - how you groom yourself. Those are your decisions. Just like being here and doing this - obeying me - is actually your decision. Understand that. Admit it. Face it."

I felt like he wasn't getting it. "Yebbut..."

"Caleb. Babe." He sighed. "I like soft boys. That's me. And you... honestly, you could grow a beard and get a full sleeve tattoo and wear flannel shirts and ride a fucking Harley-Davidson about the place and you'd still be a soft boy on the inside. And I'd still see it," - he gripped my upper arms hard with both hands - "and I'd still want it..."

The pressure on my biceps slackened. "Yeah. I'm into it. But the important question is, are you into it?"

What was that he just said? Admit it and face it... "Um, yeah. I think so. It makes me feel, like, more naked, if that makes sense." Much more naked...

"And therefore more vulnerable?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

He looked at me through half-lidded eyes, a hint of the fierceness from earlier creeping in. "Turn around, bub. Yup, like that... sit down, lean back..."

Out the corner of my eye I saw his phone placed down on the sofa's arm, then that same hand was enfolding my junk, squeezing gently.

"You're naked under here," he told me. "Completely naked. Just a thin layer of fabric..." His fingers traced down one side of my shaft, trailed my balls, back up the other side. "No hiding... I can feel everything. You can feel it too, can't you? Can't you?"

He was drawing tiny and very distracting circles immediately on my frenulum now, terrifyingly intense...

"Asked you a question, bub..." he said warningly.

"Yes," I hissed.

"Yes what...?"

"I c-can feel it..."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It almost doesn't matter whether or not you have clothes on when you're that naked underneath. I don't need to see it, do I? I know anyway. And so do you. Don't you?"

"Yes," I panted helplessly.

His hands delved into my waistband, the right cupping my balls, the left closing around my dick and pumping relentlessly, while he peppered me with words, filthy words, and demanded answers...

"You showed it to me yesterday. You showed it to me today. But I don't need to see it, I can feel it. Because you're letting me. Hell, you're inviting me. Made it pretty easy access today, didn't you? I'm up to my wrists here... were you hoping this would happen? You wanted this, boy? You wanted to spread yourself for me like a little whore... yeah...?"

"Yeah," I whimpered.

"Well here you are," he hissed. "Here you are, and a man's got both his hands down your pants and you're letting it happen and you're loving it. Aren't you? Aren't you?"

Yes, so much - but - agggh, no... no-no-NO! - between the hypnotic pull of his voice and the counterpoint of my interspersed answers I'd forgotten the timer, forgotten the breathing, the control, the whole damn point of this thing... I let out a strangulated squeak as I passed the point of no return, and Declan instantly snatched his hand away, the elastic snapping back against my abdomen jee-ust clear of the straining head of my dick...

"There are no participation trophies here," he whispered against my ear. "You want the prize, you need to stay the course..."

I groaned, watching in a kind of fascinated horror as my poor cock jerked about uselessly beneath the fabric like some severed limb, silently howling for the return of that stimulation, and then... it was too late. An orgasm to end all orgasms was right there like a beautiful big shimmering orb, a soap bubble I'd glanced the very very edge of for a millisecond, before it vanished without a trace.

Well... no. Not entirely without a trace. A pool of jizz had oozed, rather than spurted, from my dick, staining the pale grey knit, but without the - the anything that usually accompanied it, and for some reason my balls still felt taut and full. Like really full - verging on blue...

I was still shuddering and wondering how I felt about all these feelings when the stupid timer went off. Declan swiped at it, then flicked the phone out of the way.

"You're a good boy," he told me, wrapping an arm around and squeezing as it fell to the floor with a clunk. "You took that well. I know it ain't fun." Then he laughed softly. "I've gone and got cum on your clothes again." He shook his head at himself. "And that's despite you providing me with a towel. Sorry about that, bub..."

"It's okay," I sighed. "I mean, from my perspective the positives kiiiiind of outweigh the negatives..."

"Mm," he grunted, easing himself out from under me. "I actually didn't do it on purpose. Today. Just... ran with things, basically. And now I'm thinking... how 'bout we lean into it?" He knelt on the floor in between my still-spread legs, undoing his fly, tucking his t-shirt up under his chin. "Hold that waistband open for me, bub. Gimme some room."

I did as I was told - obviously. And fortunately I had his hand and his dick and his abs to be focussing on, so I didn't have to catch an eyeful of my own gooey, semi-deflated failure of a cock... He made me look, though. Once he was done spattering me. And in fact it was... everything. Who would've thought I could be into this? So into this? But it wasn't so much this as him. Him and his bold-faced ownership of his personal desires and kinks.

I walked - very gingerly - to the bathroom and took a shower, not tempted to linger due to the constant changes in water pressure and temperature which indicated the washing machine hadn't yet finished. That's good, I told myself. If his washing's still going, he's not going to have left before I'm done here. But - just walk out on me?... nah. Declan wouldn't do that anyhow. He's a decent guy. A good person. And he's... it won't be awkward, because how can it be with somebody who gives zero fucks about liking what they like? Oh jeez. I'm gonna fall in love or something if I'm not careful...

He was lounging deliciously all over my sofa, helping himself, taking up space. God it looked good...

"Alright?" he said, swinging himself upright so there was room to fit beside.

I sat. "Yeah."

"Good." He smirked. "But... I'm guessing you're feeling... maybe a fraction less blissed out than usual?"

Because I didn't cum? Or... I did, but I didn't? Or... whatever that was?

I shrugged, weaved my head about. "Ah, yeah. I mean, I don't feel bad. But, uh... a bit uncomfortable, I guess?"

He nodded. "Also a bit... unsatisfied? And maybe... a bit horny still?"

I huffed a short laugh. "Ah... yup."

"And maybe... vaguely tempted to take matters into your own hands after I leave?"

Reading my face again. Or my thoughts, or... I swung round to look at him, wide-eyed and wordless.

"I'd rather you didn't," he told me, blandly meeting my stare.

"Oh. Um, okay..."

He took hold of one of my hands, laid it flat on his abdomen, and started drawing around the outline with a finger. "Right. So here's where we talk, debrief, etc. I've told you I want five minutes outta you, and we're gonna keep aiming for that, unless... unless it feels like that's not working for you at all?"

I put my free hand over my eyes. "C'mon. It's clearly working for me. Too well, even, today..."

Declan grinned. "That's one way of looking at it. The thing is, you could obviously tip the scales in your favour by beating off strategically between-times. Though like I said, I'd rather you didn't. I want you to come by this thing honestly, Caleb. For your own sake as much as mine. But just to be clear: I am not telling you that you may not cum without me being involved. I am asking you to agree to that condition, at least for the moment. If it doesn't appeal or it feels impossible - then say so, and we won't do it."

He raised my hand to his mouth and nipped one of my knuckles. "But if you do agree, then I'm gonna expect you to uphold the bargain. Am I gonna be able to police it? Obviously not. But... y'know... think carefully. If you make me a promise and then break it, you'll be cheating yourself as much as you're cheating me..."

"Makes sense," I told him.

Declan laughed. "Makes sense. That's all he's got to say, after my spiel. Makes sense..." He dipped his head so he was in my eye-line. "You actually quite like the idea, don't you?"

"Uh... for a weird and twisted value of 'like'? Yeah..."

"So, we gonna do this?" He breathed.

I felt cornered - in a good way. Nowhere to run. Being stared down by a guy with resting intense-face. Only two options - yes or no.

"Yes," I whispered.

He took my face in his hands, grinning like he won the the lottery. "Oh puppy... you and me are gonna have so much fun together..."

His touch, his stare, his commands and demands - the knowledge he had more and bigger ideas taking shape in that head... I was starting to bone up again. Already.

"Don't worry," he told me, stroking my cheek. "I will never lock you in chastity or anything like that. That's not where we're headed. It's gotta be your decision. Daily, hourly, your decision..."

I did not honestly think it would have to be hourly my decision because I'd never been one of those folk who routinely jack off four times a day - once was generally plenty, and he was giving me that anyway. I failed to account for the fact that since I got with Declan I was living in a new and different reality. Or maybe it was some generalised perversity in me - now that I wasn't supposed to touch my dick, it was all I wanted to do...

Whatever the reason, the experience was like being fifteen all over again. Random, unpredictable, embarrassing boners here there and everywhere. I was hard when Declan left with his sack of damp laundry. An hour of watching an illegal livestream of the Black Caps flailing about like so many blind toddlers during a test match in Pakistan took care of that, but once I was in bed all it needed was for me to recall Declan's existence and - hello! - instant boner number two...

Instant boner number three co-incided with seeing him in the morning, getting a smile and a wink, and thanks to the combination of his near presence and the vibrations of the ute, lasted nearly until lunchtime... Daily and hourly, I thought, safely out of sight in a toilet cubicle once we were back in the council offices, daily-and-hourly. How long is it gonna be like this? What have I let myself in for?

I needed to piss, and I was... not in the state for it. Gritting my teeth, I punched myself in the dick. Drastic, but it worked. Back in our office, I put in earbuds, selected some angry grungy music, and refused to look in Declan's direction. That also worked - apart from a couple of short periods where it didn't...

Of course once he got his hands on me that evening, I was every imaginable kind of wound up. I remembered the breath control. I squeezed those tendons behind my elbows. I didn't have to listen to - or participate in - any filthy talk. It wasn't enough. I couldn't do it.

Just like the day before, he snatched his hand away at the critical moment, and I moaned and writhed in the almost-feeling, the sense of having lost something I hadn't had...

"You'll get there, bub," Declan crooned, doing his rocking thing. "You'll get there. I believe in you..."

By the week's end, I wasn't sure I believed in myself. Five days in a row I'd failed to beat that timer. Five days in a row he'd ruined my orgasm, and though I hated it - I loved it even more...

By the time Saturday rolled around I was determined to hold out, not so I could finally cum properly, not so we could be done with the sodding timer, but... because Declan believed in me and I needed to live up to that belief.

Early afternoon he texted me that he was in Whanganui visiting his Dad and wouldn't be back until late, 'but I'm definitely coming over so wait up for me bub'. I spent an hour doing a really challenging yoga practice with heaps of static poses and centring and visualisations and it seemed like it'd helped - so I did it over again.

He wasn't that late in the end - about nine - but I felt ready. And maybe that was what I needed. To feel ready. Because I did it. I broke that goddamn barrier, I outlasted the clock, and sure, I got to cum, but even better than that was Declan's reaction. He was thrilled to the point of babbling, turning me to face him and hugging me hard, heedless of the mess he was getting on his t-shirt, telling me over and over what a good boy I was, such a good boy, in between peppering the top of my head with kisses...

I'd never experienced him like this - close to giddy. He was usually so chill, but now? And I did it, I gave him this feeling. Or... no. He did it. Without him I would never - you know what? - we did it. Together. I lay on him, basking in the feeling, delighted, but calmly so. Happy, safe, soft and warm...

The next day he told me I deserved a reward. I actually felt like I already got one but I wasn't about to turn him down because I was pretty sure I'd love any 'reward' he came up with.

Except... I didn't. And unfortunately I couldn't completely conceal the fact.

He had me naked as usual, and he was clothed, as usual. But this time his dick was tucked away in his clothes, all ignored, and he was kneeling between my thighs and gently licking up my shaft.

"I love giving head," he confided, having just planted a sloppy kiss on my glans, "but if I'm gonna go to the trouble I'd like to be at it for more than thirty seconds. And now I know you can do it, and you also know you can do it. Just last as long as you can, bub. Long as you can."

He sealed his lips about me and dived down and I shut my eyes and summoned all my willpower...

Ummm... it was weird. There was plenty of sensation, sure - but it was all in my dick. The exposed remainder of my body felt colder than ideal in the chill of the room, but also... strangely neglected. Lonely, even.

How can you be lonely, dumkopf? I chided myself. He's literally right there. I opened my eyes, and... sure enough, there he was... It can't be comfortable for such a big man to be down so low like that, I mused. And on his knees all kind of cricked and kinked instead of spread out everywhere taking up room...

Declan pulled off abruptly, glancing up, and caught my gaze before I could redirect it.

"Um, hi...?" I said, hating the tiny quaver in my voice.

"Are you okay, bub?" He murmured, wiping his chin.

"Yeah," I panted. "Yeah, great..."

He sighed. "C'mon, sweets. This dick is noticeably less over-enthused than usual, and I know I'm not useless at this. What's going on, eh?"

As if I could explain... I shook my head mutely.

Declan pushed himself up off his knees - I noticed the wince as he did and felt a twinge of guilt - twisting himself to sit sideways on the floor between my thighs instead. He took a deep breath.

"Does - have you had a traumatic experience in the past around getting a blowjob?" He asked me gently.

I shook my head again, cold for real now and wishing for a blanket - not just for warmth but to hide under.

"Or does it ruin the dynamic for you maybe?" He prompted. "Do you feel like I'm demeaning myself somehow by doing this? 'Cos... y'know, I don't feel that way. But though I do like doing it, I'm not gonna enjoy it if you're not enjoying it..."

"It isn't - isn't that..." I stammered.

"Are things perhaps getting a tiny bit gay for you at this point?" He suggested.

"No! No!" I spat.

"Well, then tell me," Declan urged. "Instead of leaving me to play twenty questions here. Remember what I said? We have to be able to talk. About what works and about what doesn't work."

I remembered. And I understood. And I knew. But...

"You're gonna think this is stupid," I whispered.

"I doubt that, bub," he said, taking one of my hands. "C'mon. Talk to me."

"It's just... you were all the way down there," I began. "You weren't, like, holding me. I couldn't hear your breathing. Couldn't feel your pulse. Couldn't... smell you..."

I felt so stupid, and not in a way that I liked. "I could see you," I whispered, "but I didn't - didn't know whether it was okay to touch you, and..."

He came to his feet, dragging me forward, urging my arms around him, enfolding me in his. "You're allowed to touch," he whispered, "you are allowed to touch. I didn't regulate your hands today, did I? - but that's on me - I could've been clearer." He pressed my head to his stomach, and a moment later said;

"Oh, you're cold. You're so cold, puppy. God, I'm doing a shit job of looking after you today, aren't I?"

He stepped back, but not out of, the embrace, and looked down at me. "What do you want to do now, Caleb? What do you want to do? Do you wanna draw a line under this, get dressed again and we can just hang out, play cards or something? Do you want to get into bed and I'll make you a hot drink and we can reassess when you've warmed up...?"

I went to say, 'I don't know,' but my teeth chattered when I unclenched my jaw.

"Okay. Bed." Declan stated, taking my hand and towing me down the hall.

He got me under the covers, scrunched up into a ball hugging my shins, then crouched down beside the mattress.

"Seriously," he breathed, "tell me what you want..."

"I... the thing is... I don't, like, know what's okay to want," I stammered.

He shrugged. "You can ask for literally anything, bub. Even if it's outrageous. Because I'm comfortable with saying 'no' to you. So all you need to figure out is whether you're comfortable hearing it."

I grimaced. Am I? Am I okay with you turning me down? Or will it kind of break me...?

Declan leaned in stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers. "Caleb. Bunny. If you ask to fuck me, you'll get a 'hell to the no'. Squared. If you ask for us to, I dunno, move in together, you're gonna hear some version of 'whoa, slow it down there, mate'. But if you go for something less heavy-duty than that... there's a decent chance you'll get it. He smiled. "I do, y'know, like for you to be happy - within the boundaries we've established..."

"Okay..." I said slowly. "Would you... could I um, see you? Like, totally naked? 'Cos I could go for that..."

"One strip-tease coming right up," he joked, standing, reaching for the hem of his t-shirt.

It didn't even occur to me to hold back, tone down my appreciation. "Oh, holy shit," I moaned. "Oh god... oh my fucking goddd...."

Declan rested his chin on a fist as he looked over at me, elbow cupped in the other palm. It made his biceps pop. "Okay," he murmured. "Well, I guess I believe you about this not being a 'too gay' problem..."

"Yeah," I panted. "I'm not sure that it, like, translates across the whole category - but... as far as you're concerned I'm apparently very gay..."

"Oh, are there gradations of gay?" He teased. "Weird - nobody told me."

"No, what I meant is... like, this is a big deal. A bigger deal than I'm used to. A bigger deal than I thought... existed. The feeling-"

I mangled my way through a whole speech trying but mostly failing to explain how much this all was, and when I finally stumbled to a halt, Declan, instead of agreeing with me or pointing out where I was wrong, simply said:

"Anyway, I can see why you were shivering. Your house is an icebox. Maybe I should be getting you naked around at mine in future..."

"Well..." I began, heart beating hard, hoping this wasn't pushing it, "if you were to hop in here with me, you wouldn't get any colder... and... you could help warm me up...?

He laughed. "Oh, so it's a win-win - that what you're saying?"

"Ummm... yeah?"

He padded over, lifted the covers, then paused. "Hmm... I can't help thinking that if I join you there's a non-zero chance we're gonna wind up needing a towel. Lemme just fetch it."

He reappeared, towel in hand, and slipped in, shimmying toward me. We lay on our sides, feeling each other's arms and chests, backs and necks, just touching, beautiful touching, skin on skin on skin. Mesmerised as I was by the strength and symmetry under my fingers, I barely noticed him whispering, 'hey, puppy...?', into my ear.

I brought my wandering hands to a reluctant halt. "Yeah? And um, why 'puppy'?"

Declan laughed. "It's the innocence, I guess. And the eagerness." He took my face in his hands. "The trust in those eyes." Another laugh. "And my complete inability to be mad with you for more than, like, two seconds..."

"Anyway," he continued. "Now that I have your attention, puppy..." He took hold of my wrist and brought my hand down to my straining cock. "Show me," he whispered. "Show me how you do it..."

I swallowed, following his instruction, doubtful of my ability to make this an even vaguely erotic experience for him. Jerking off, for me, had always been much more about the destination than the journey. A means to an end, the end being a nice cum and a (hopefully) a rapid descent into sleep. I'd never gloried in the act, never engaged in it as an hours-long self-care session. Never seen the point.

"Slow it down a bit," Declan whispered to me, stroking my jaw. "slow it down a bit, bub." He waited until I obeyed, and continued; "You're listening to me, right?"

I gasped out an "uh-huh."

He grasped my chin. "Don't cum, okay? Not yet. If you feel yourself getting close, then take a break, wait for things to even out, start up again. I want you to practice identifying when you're getting close, when you're getting really close. I want you to recognise those feelings - and to understand that you can wait them out..."

His fingers trailed down my neck and returned to squeeze my chin, hard. '"Because you're gonna need to," he whispered. "What we're working toward here - and I know it'll be a process - is a situation where you ask my permission to cum, any time we're together. And for that to succeed you need to have some idea of how long you've got, so you can time things right. You need time to ask the question. Time for me to reply. Time to stop, if I happen to say 'no'."

His eyes searched my face with a look I hadn't yet seen. "Ohh, that turns you on, doesn't it? Not getting a say in when - or whether - you cum?"

"Yeahhhh..." Even admitting it caused my balls to churn. I hastily quit stroking as Declan buried his face in my neck and whispered;

"God, where have you been all my life?"

And you, I thought. Where have you been. All my life.

I don't know for how long it went on, only that it was a lot, lot longer than five minutes. I needed to take a break no fewer than four times while Declan ramped up the sweet sweet torture by stroking himself to my rhythm only a hands-breadth away, turning the dial even further when he cricked his neck to draw one of my nipples into his mouth, before finally swapping our hands so I was gripping his shaft as he encircled mine, and hissing;

"I'm gonna say 'yes' today - I promise. But you have to ask..."

So I did. Laid on my back by that point, him half-looming over me and thrusting through my fist, I requested permission for my own release... and the strange dark exultation which leapt in Declan's eyes as I did was all the encouragement I could've needed to keep playing this game to its furthest conclusion...

* * * * *

When we met the next day, he was serious. Solemn, almost. He hugged me, crawling a hand up the nape of my neck and fanning his fingers in a way I was coming to know and crave. But then he stepped back, paced around the room a few times. Sat down, gestured to me to do the same.

"Wanna talk to you about something," he said, as my arse made contact with the sofa.

Oh god, I thought. What did I do? Or not do?

But it wasn't that. He fiddled with his fingernails for a while, picking at the cuticles, before saying;

"Remember how I said to you, it's not my business to tell you what to do with your life, outside of when we play? Well, I meant it, but even if I was a - a more controlling partner than that, I'd like to think I'd still hold to the position that it's nobody's business to tell anybody else when they should come out."

I nodded, and he continued;

"So I'm not - I'm not doing that. I promise. You can discuss - or not discuss - as much or as little of, uh, all this... with who you want, when you want, including not at all if you want, and no shade from me. Now, having just said all of that..." He grimaced. "... I've gotta admit, I'm uncomfortable carrying this on under Ferris' nose. We both report to him. Neither of us have recruiters beating our doors down with alternative job offers..."

He sighed and rearranged his limbs, angling his body my way. "I just feel... I always feel like it's better to front up than to fess up, with these things. That way you're never on the back foot. So-o-oo... if it was up to me? I'd tell him. But I can't do that without outing you, Caleb. And I won't do that if you're not cool with it. But if you could give it some thought maybe? I think... he's the kind of guy who can be relied on to keep his trap shut."

I nodded again, more to myself than anything. The rational side of me could see the sense in his arguments, definitely. The emotional side... hmmm...

Declan picked himself up, walked over, and hauled me to my feet. "Too early to eat. We could head out for a drive maybe? Take a look at the beach? Might be quite nice down there - it's not super-windy."

Not super-windy, hah! I was thinking to myself fifteen minutes later as we inclined ourselves into the gale like infantry soldiers trudging through a blizzard, the sting of salt slapping our cheeks. I liked it though, this rough-hewn coastline of low cliffs, with its scattered sandy coves and the very meagre shelter they provided. It was unfamiliar, all this terrain - but it made sense to me somehow...

The beach was utterly deserted. We might have been the only two humans left on earth. That was good, too. For the moment anyway. I took a chance and slid my hand in Declan's. He didn't say anything, but the look he gave me as he squeezed it warmed me more effectively than my jacket and scarf were doing...

I waited until we got back to his car to tell him - there'd been no point trying to converse out in that gale. "You're right. I think we should tell him. We've got a meeting with him in the morning. Could do it then?"

Declan jumped. "Whoa! Caleb... I was just putting it out there for you to consider. It's... you can take time to think about it, y'know." It was him who reached for my hand this time, draping over top, enveloping it. "It's been, like, a week..."

I shrugged. "I feel like... on my side, at least, it's been going on somewhat longer than that. And you... you wouldn't have started this if you didn't intend to continue it. Give me credit for knowing that much about you, eh?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Touché. Tomorrow, then?"

I gulped. "Tomorrow."

He flicked my cheek carelessly before releasing the handbrake. "And now you're freaking, aren't you, bub? Don't worry, I'll help you forget about it - and everything else. Before dinner, or after?" His eyes flashed. "Or... both?"

* * * * *

It was an interesting meeting - in the 'may you live in interesting times' sense of the word. I was edgy, wishing we had talked strategy yesterday. But hey, it was Declan's idea, so maybe the 'strategy' was to leave it up to him. I snuck a glance in his direction as Ferris droned on. He sat perfectly still, but I had the sense it was because he was willing himself to do so. Or maybe I was projecting - simply imaginging a coiled tightness in place of that usual sprawling ease...

I wasn't. Imagining it, that is. When Ferris wrapped up with: "Okay - and anything from your end?" Declan drummed his fingers on the desk before blurting; "Ahh... yeah."

Then he drummed his fingers some more, tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, before finally snapping out of it. "We're, um, seeing each other," he announced, drawing an imaginary line between us. "Just... thought you should probably know. And, ah, I guess we're looking to keep it confidential - for the moment anyway?"

Ferris blinked at him for a couple of moments before transferring a more penetrating gaze to me. "This... comes as something of a surprise..."

"You're telling me..." I batted back.

He laughed. "Well, best of luck to you both going forward. I'm not in a position to preach to you about the unwisdom of working for the same org as your partner, given my wife's the Mayor's EA. And the CFO's partner works here as well. What else are you gonna do in a place this size?"

He was shrugging, he was grinning - if ruefully - he was okay with it, he was on our side... I breathed a sigh of relief as we stood up to go, and then he said;

"Actually, Caleb - stay a moment, please?"

Declan shot me an apologetic grimace and melted away. I sat back down.

"I really am not going to lecture you," Ferris breathed, taking in my guilty face. "In fact, I have good news. Or... at least I hope you'll think so..."

Okay... now I was royally confused...

"As I already indicated," Ferris began, "I don't see any issue with couples working for the same org. And I appreciate you guys being upfront about it. But I will say that there's working for the same org and there's doing the same job, together, for forty hours a week. You might wind up wanting a break from each other at some point."

He caught sight of my expression. "I'm not lecturing," he reiterated. "But this provides me with an opportunity to..." he trailed off, and I sat perplexed, waiting.

"There's a full council meeting next month," he told me, apparently changing tack. "One of the items on the agenda is a motion that the district adopt a policy of coastal retreat." A gusty sigh. "The motion will pass, despite..." An eye-roll this time. "Climate change is coming for us all - even the skeptics can't argue with the reality in their own backyards. But... it's gonna be controversial. Wildly so. You realise that, right? We opt out of this eternal game of trying to keep the sea out, people are gonna lose their homes. Not this year, not next year, not the year after either - in fact, the first thing that'll happen is-"

"Insurance," I breathed. No insurance, no-one will lend on it, no possibility of selling - boom! Your biggest asset becomes worthless overnight...

"You got it," Ferris nodded. "There will be," he paused delicately, "a shitstorm, I suppose you might say. But we have the opportunity to head it off somewhat by being prepared for the public response. There's a fund being set up for financial relief and buyouts, and one of the finance team here will be assigned to that more or less full-time for the next few years. We've contracted an environmental consultancy to provide the detailed gen which underpins the decision - but we need somebody to front the whole thing, bring together the financial and technological imperatives, package them for public consumption, build the relationships with other agencies out there, be the liaison, the human face of the institution..."

He drew breath. "And I was hoping... I was hoping to have you be that human face, Caleb."

Holy crap... I closed my eyes and took a moment to try and imagine it. Tangled. Controversial. Emotional. A shitstorm, for sure. And for all that...

"You can do it," Ferris urged. "I know you can, Caleb."

I knew I could, too. It was much more my thing than what I was currently doing. Much more my thing. I opened my eyes and scrutinised Ferris suspiciously.

"Hang on... is this why I'm here? Is this what it's actually been about the whole time?"

He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "You... could say that. Not that I'm in any way unhappy with the work you've been doing... but I saw this vote coming a mile off - that's what I get paid for - and I wanted to snap you up before anybody else got hold of you."

I thought about how fucking desperate I'd been before coming here. About how nobody, anywhere, had shown the slightest inclination to 'snap me up'. I dropped my face in my hands and laughed.

"Is that a yes, then?" Came the voice from across the desk.

"Totally," I told him, raising my head. "One hundred and ten percent yes."

I'd been asked to 'stay a moment' and I ended up in that room with him for over an hour as he ran through detail with me. Declan, he assured me, would get a replacement - 'I'm thinking maybe a new-grad level role, I feel he'd be an effective mentor' - and I would move to share an office in the finance suite with Shan, the person they'd picked to number-crunch the strategic response.

"I can't give you your new contract, new job title, etc., until after the meeting," Ferris pointed out. "I mean, if it got around that we'd anticipated the vote... we can't afford to be perceived as presumptive, on any level. Despite which I'll have you starting informally on it from next week, I think..."

It was actually good having my own work - not because I'd been feeling like I needed a break from Declan, not at all - but because it was what I did. Putting together a campaign from scratch, preparing to pull in disparate agencies and stakeholders to work alongside, setting the groundwork for a round of public meetings, talking - listening, engaging with people. It was what I grew up on, what I did best - where I was at my best.

Though I rarely saw Declan during the days once I was properly into the swing of my new role, we still spent a bunch of time together, just like we always had. We hung out, like usual, and much ot the time it was like usual. Just like it'd been from the beginning, except with a few side-benefits, because he turned out to be surprisingly affectionate. Tender, even. Creeping up behind me and kissing the nape of my neck, running a fingernail down my spine... no particular intent, not necessarily trying to get me going. Just touching, for touch's sake.

I hadn't expected it, I guess because I had no blueprint for anything similar. But... he was so... so loose and easy in himself, and so generous with that ease. Any time we watched something together on a sofa - his or mine - and I showed the slightest inclination toward drowsiness he'd start urging me to lie down, then he'd drag my feet into his lap and rub and massage them, and sometimes I'd lie awake luxuriating in how improbably good it felt, and sometimes I'd lose the fight and fall asleep with him caressing me.

He also did this thing where he liked to get his face in at the junction of my neck and shoulder, and he'd play all innocent like it was something he enjoyed just because - 'mmm, I love this spot, so baby-soft, yeah, you're a snuggly one, aren't you, huh' - but what he actually enjoyed was my inevitable reaction after thirty seconds of him raising goosebumps whispering into my skin...

... because it tickled. Obviously it tickled, in a place like that, and once the feeling started to really bite I'd kind of shrug my shoulder up to force him out. At least, I'd try, but he'd yank it back down again, holding both of my biceps hard, fingers digging in, still gentle up top where his whispering lips were at work, keeping me immobile while he tortured me into breathless hysterics...

Always, I resisted. I fought him with everything I had. Always, I wound up conquered by the intensity of his assault. And in my free moments I'd wonder what was behind it... I mean, he wasn't that much bigger than me. Or probably that much stronger. But he was that much more determined. And every time he pinned me, it'd make me short-circuit, go mushy in the brain, feverish for more of what he was subjecting me to even though on the surface I was fighting it.

And then one day he did it again. He was still bearing down on me after, crushing my lungs as I caught my breath, and out of nowhere - certainly not out of the thinking part of my brain - I blurted;

"Oh, god - fuck me."

And Declan? He laughed. The douchebag actually laughed at me, ten centimetres from my face. Then he dropped a tiny kiss on the end of my nose. "Oh, I will, believe me. When you're ready."

"I think I'm ready," I gasped, unfamiliar currents zinging around my body as he continued weighing me down. Yeah. Now that I was thinking about it, I did... feel... ready.

"You think you're ready - now. In the moment," he said, peeling himself up and off me. "But if I took you at your word and sent you to have a shower and clean out for me, by the time you got done you would know that you weren't ready, but you might feel like you had to go through with it anyhow because you asked for it, and if I let you do that - any of that - I'd be a truly shitty person."

He took one look at my 'still processing some of that' expression and recognised it for what it was.

"Yeah," he breathed. "Look, sex between two guys has these additional complications. Kinda unavoidably. There's zero possibility of us being able to fuck spontaneously for, um, a while yet. To get to that point, you'd need to be a lot more familiar with your internal rhythms, and to've had a bit of practice taking me as well."

I knew my face was searing red. I could feel the splotchy heat. But it wasn't the practicalities so much as the-

"You - you do want me though, right?" I stammered.

"Oh, holy shit, yes," Declan hissed. "I want you... god, so much. And when you are ready, believe me, I will fuck you every which way. Every which way. In your bed, in mine. Against the inside of your front door. And mine. In your shower, in mine..." He laughed to himself. "This is getting to sound like a Dr Suess book..." The laugh faded and he gripped a hank of my hair and grated, "I will bend you over your kitchen counter and take you from behind while you whine to me about how our dinner's spoiling, and I'm reasonably certain you'll love every single second of it. When. you. are. ready."

"Well, that's given me something to think about," I gasped. Seriously... thank you for the verbal porno, Declan...

"Actually it's given me an idea as well," he mused. "From what I've seen of you so far, you're your own worst enemy in terms of getting wound up about things you perceive as... as barriers, or step-changes, or whatever. In some ways, it'd be better if I could just spring it on you... like, tonight's the night, Caleb. Except I just explained how that won't work. But what if..."

His hand found mine and clasped it. "What if I set you a little task, bub, a little once-a-week practice? On Saturdays, say - seeing as we always end up here at mine, and my bed's larger - before you come around, clean out for me, as though we were gonna fuck..." He held up a finger. "But we won't, of course. At the outset. And you can get used to that whole side of things in your own time, no pressure..."

His eyes glowed. "Ohhh, I just had another idea. I mean, I think you like routine. So that's good. But I know you like having to please me. So how about you do that every Saturday, and when you get here - 'member how I told you a while ago about how inspections can get a lot more... yeah?"

I nodded, cringing. Yeah, I remembered. Vividly.

He dipped his head and gave me another of those no-you-can't-have-a-kisses before saying;

"Well, they are about to get more, puppy... and how about we say, if you pass you can sleep over with me? If that's something you'd like. And then sometime - when you're ready - we'll take the next step. Without you having had several days to work yourself into a state about it." He drew back and regarded me, head tilted to one side. "Well? Whaddya think?"

"Ugh," I grunted. "I hate you. It's perfect, obviously..."

* * * * *

We waited. Other things happened. I got told off for having let my car get into such a state and taught how to change the oil and filters, so... that was great. I visited Whanganui with Declan and met his dad. I flew down to see Mum again and celebrate the end of her treatment. I started hanging out quite a bit with Shan and her partner Troy and his flatmate Ian. And every Saturday evening I headed around to Declan's, squeaky clean inside and out, feeling light-headed and trippy, unsure what lay ahead in the next several hours but knowing I'd love it...

It'd been maybe eight, nine weeks? - we were naked together in his improbably large bed and he started up his nuzzling at my shoulder in that way he had, that I knew what it was inevitably going to lead to, which was me immobilised and struggling for breath as he held me down and kept on going with the having his way with me-

And then suddenly he stopped. He drew back a little, held my gaze, and said;

"Still want me to fuck you, bub?"

I felt my stomach drop. Shit. He'd circled us back to exact moment where I...

"Yes," I whispered. Very yes.

He rolled off me and sat up. "Sure?"

I nodded, and he leaned behind him, fishing about one-handed in his nightstand drawer before handing me a bottle of lube. "Good. Then how about you get yourself ready for me?"

"I already-"

"I know you're clean," he interrupted. "But... you'll probably want to stretch yourself some..." His eyes drifted lazily over me as that sank in, a satisfied smile on his face. "I mean, I could do it - obviously - but I'd like to watch you. Like to watch you watching me watch you make yourself ready for me..."

Okay. So it was my face he wanted to watch, not my... fingers. Well at least that was - I swallowed - or was it? Less embarrassing? Maybe... not? I didn't even... my eyes flicked from my hands, holding the bottle, to his face - and back again.

He seemed to take pity on me. "Unless you wanna crouch, you'll probably find it easiest to kinda go on all fours then drop down at the front while you reach back," he murmured. "And actually, I'll get a towel..."

"I cannot believe I'm doing this," I hissed a minute later, my cheek hot against the smooth cool sheet, my arse all the way up in the air and dripping lube.

Declan stroked my hair, smiling at me, a soft pretty smile. "Yeah, you can. You're here because you wanna be, remember?"

Yeah. I'm here because I want you and what you can give me and I want you to be pleased with me, but on my own account? I would not stick my fingers up my arse. I could see the practical sense in it, though. I mean, jesus - that cock took up all the spare room in my mouth, and I was pretty sure my mouth was more-

I started to push myself up. "I think I'm good here now."

He pressed down between my shoulder-blades. "You're not. Keep going."

"No, I'm-" my attempt at a protest was cut short as his hand came to rest over my mouth.

"I get it," he assured me. "You just wanna be at it, so you can have this whole awkward first time thing done and out of the way and move on past it. I absolutely get it, babe. But I don't recommend it. I want you to be so-so ready and so utterly deranged with lust before we start because... honestly that's gonna make it better for you."

"Declan," I panted, "C'mon, man. I have loved every single thing we've ever done..."

"That's not quite true, is it?" He whispered.

Well, okay. No. I didn't love it the first time he went down on me. But he managed to fix that problem in a predictably creative way. I shuddered, closing my eyes and letting the memory take me as I continued to work myself...

He'd hustled me through to his room, gestured to the bed, covers ready pulled, and instructed me flatly to strip and lie down on my back. I complied, eagerly, but instead of a 'good boy', all I got in the way of feedback was;

"In the middle."

I shuffled over a little. Declan tutted. "In the middle!"

Sitting up, I took stock of my surroundings before arranging myself close as I could estimate to the actual centre of the enormous expanse of mattress.

Declan nodded down at me. "That's better." He took hold of my right arm, which was nearest him, and stretched it out, up and away from my torso. At the foot of the bed, he pushed my legs apart - not obscenely wide, but... wide enough for a breeze to get to my balls, if there'd been one. He completed his circuit by matching my left arm's angle to the right. Then he looked down at me, naked and splayed. "Are you comfortable?"

I nodded. "Yeah..." Confused, maybe, but comfortable...

I didn't stay confused for long. He knelt down, fumbling behind the bed head as I heard a dull dragging and put two and two together... he had restraints down there. Yes. It was rope, slim slippery rope that sat snug against my skin without irritating it, and soon enough I was pinned down at all four corners, cheeks hot, heart thudding in my throat. But comfortable, yeah...

He stood, and looked at me in that way he had - that imperious demanding of my whole attention, and when he knew he had it, he spoke. A soft cascading series of sentences underlining my current vulnerable state and the fact that he could do anything he wanted with me now he had me like this and threaded through all that I'd allowed it, I wanted it, I liked it.

He stripped in silence, then put one foot up on the mattress, an elbow on that raised knee so he was half-looming over me, and started fondling his semi-hard tool. More talking. They were questions this time - rhetorical, yes, but he made me answer, made me say it, say all of it as he leered down at me and fuck, if I'd felt helpless before... All I could do was watch and salivate as he hardened and grew, that beautiful hand working that beautiful dick, the meaty foreskin sliding back and forth, back and forth...

He kept the agonising foreplay going for an absolute age, switching up his positions while putting on a show I was forbidden to take any part in, regularly inching closer and closer... and closer... to a hand, until I thought I might jee-ust... if I stretched, if I strained, if I dislocated something... be able to reach him - but I couldn't. Of course I couldn't. Then he knelt over my ribcage and played the same game with my face, my mouth - close enough to smell, to go cross-eyed with want - but no tasting, no touching allowed.

I took it, all of it, without a murmur of complaint, without a single whimper, hoping that if I was good enough for long enough, he'd reward me, and when his hand slid under my neck to support me in my upward straining toward his cock, I thought I'd passed the test. I expected him to incline forward and drift it over my chin, my lips, while I waited, waited to be told I could open and suck and swallow...

But even while supposedly helping me, he stayed out of reach, kneeling up high and shifting his weight from one side to another so that his dick nodded like a pendulum as I tracked its progress, hypnotised...

"You're very frustrated, aren't you baby?" Declan's voice broke in on me. "You're so wound up, but you can't do anything with all that tension. Can't let off any steam. Can't do anything much at all..." He stared lazily down at me, smiling serenely at my struggle. "You're frustrated, but you're not mad, are you?"

God, no, I wasn't mad. I was... on fire. I shook my head in the warm cradle of his palm.

"... because you trust me," he murmured, in continuation of the thought. "You trust me to make it right, to make it work for you. Yeah?"

Pretty much, yeah. I nodded - as much as I could.

"Good boy." Oh, there it was...

He dismounted and lay on his side beside me, propped on one elbow. The hand that'd supported my neck stroked my face, neck and chest, while he rutted against my near thigh, and I did... nothing, because there was nothing I could do.

Until he gave me something to do. He slipped that thumb between my lips again, murmuring; "This is for you, bub," - and then he planted himself between my legs and took my cock in his mouth.

It was so different, so good to have even the tiniest piece of him inside me, and the rest of his hand spread relaxed but not passive across my cheek and temple and the hot urgency of his erection still rasping against my leg, lower now, and the things he was doing with his tongue...

I opened my eyes. Declan was watching me and he looked as buzzed as I felt.

"You little whore," he whispered caressingly, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Can I get a turn maybe - or are you having too much fun there?"

Then I was awkward and stammering and suddenly acutely aware of how much lube had gotten everywhere and-

He touched my face. "Don't stress, beautiful. I was having a ton of fun watching you. But now I wanna fuck you." He dragged the towel a little further up the bed. "Lie down here. On your tummy."

I did as I was told. I heard him fiddling with a condom, felt the bed shift as he moved between my spread legs. When his hand made contact with my sacrum, I flinched. Yeah, I was nervous - though not enough to drown out the want coursing through my veins.

"Can you kinda arch your back?" He asked. "Tip your butt up? Mm-hm, like that. Try and keep it like that, yeah? You're probably gonna instinctively want to run away from it for the first little while, but stay tipped up like that, almost coming up to meet me... it's a more comfortable angle, I promise you..."

The head of his dick was there, lingering a long moment at my entrance - then it was in, and for the first second or so, it was fine. Thennn... god, it was... aggh... ugh. Fuck, it was so unrelenting! All of the pressure and all of the stinging stretch and no relief no ebb and flow in fact if anything it was getting widerrrrr... oh fuck! There was so much of him, so much of him, too much of him... panic spiked, little flashing lights dancing on the inside of my screwed shut lids. It's not gonna work...

I dragged in a lungful of air. You can do this, Caleb, I told myself. You can do this and you will do this. And actually you are doing this. Yes. You really are. Suddenly I understood this was fated, it was happening, it was going to work - I wouldn't fail or tap out or break...

That certainty, that knowing... the relief of it was huge. As it washed over me properly, I started to cry a little bit...

Behind me, Declan was flexing gently, adjusting pressure without gaining - or ceding - any ground.

"Ah, bub," he breathed. "It's okay. I'm here, I'm right here..."

What a dumbfuck thing to say! "Well thanks for clarifying that," I spat, "because it's not like I'd have been able to tell or anything!"

A sudden bark of laughter, then he slapped my ribcage gently, exited me and peeled away to the side, tugging me onto my back so I was staring up at him. He was trying to glare, but that laugh was a bit of a giveaway.

"I haven't completely tamed you yet, have I?" He murmured. "But I will. I will..."

He pushed my legs apart again and climbed in between them, dragging the towel over. "You wanna try it like this maybe? I know it's better for you when you can see me and touch me. But I'll... I will go deeper in this position. Just so you know..."

I did not know. Obviously. There was plenty I didn't know at that point, including that he hadn't even got half the shaft in me on the previous attempt. But it was better, maybe because I was a little bit open already, maybe because I could see him, because I had something to grab on to now, to steady me as I panted my way through it...

I snatched my hands away in shock when I realised I was violently digging my nails into the flesh of his arms, but Declan just said;

"Do it. It's fine. Squeeze as hard as you like, bub." He offered me a hand. "Hell, bite me if you want. Do what you need to do - it's okay..."

I didn't bite him but I sure did grip, like you do on a rollercoaster where you're already strapped in and committed to this ride and you know, intellectually, that you're safe but it doesn't necessarily feel that way...

... and once he was finally in-in? Utterly worth it. I was still breathless but in a whole other way. Also grinning like an idiot. My god, the fullness... it wasn't a blatantly sexual feeling, but it was madly exhilarating to be speared on something so vividly alive, to feel it kick gently now and then as though it had its own heartbeat, its own instinct and will...

It's own will which was to go deeper - I felt it inexplicably burrowing a little more and something twinged inside.

Declan nodded down at my grimace. "Feels like there's an end there, yeah?"

I nodded back, and he said;

"Well, it isn't an end. It's a bend. And when I next push I'll straighten it out. It'll be uncomfortable at first... just hold on tight, okay?"

I craned my neck to try and spy where we were joined, but it was impossible. "How much more is there??"

Declan could obviously see from his vantage point. "'Bout... an inch and a half? Ish? Less than two for sure..."

The idea was overwhelming. I was full already. "You mean there's still, like, twenty percent to go? How?!"

Declan rolled his eyes. "Caleb. Are you actually trying to do maths right now? Percentages don't matter. All you need to know is you don't have all of it, and now-" he bore down, "now you do..."

Ssssss... at least it was quick. A sharp sheeting pain, like stepping under an ice-cold waterfall. And on the other side another world, dark and hidden and quiet... and spacious. He just kept finding more of me, more and more... so much room now. So much room that was there all along... washed in euphoria and gratitude and a strange sense of fragility my eyes welled again, spilling over at the corners, trickling down across each temple... no sobbing this time, just a small soft thing, just tears leaking out because I was so full - so full...

He wiped away the moisture with his thumbs. "You're doing great, babe..."

I hauled in a deep breath. "Gawd," I muttered. "Crying. Laughing. Crying. What's next?"

Declan grinned, eyes gleaming. "Fucking," he whispered. "Lots and lots of fucking."

I couldn't help myself. "Wow. That's fairly heteronormative of you, Declan..."

What actually came next was more laughing - lots of it. Planked above me laughing, hips flush against my skin, cock burrowed as deep as it would go... in me. In me.

"Someday..." he said as his amusement died down, "someday, when you're waaay more ready for it than you are now, I might look into plugging up that noise-hole of yours while we do this. But that's down the road aways... meantime, any more opinions you're keen to share? No? Like me to get fucking then?"

He was looking down with his 'answer me' face on. I nodded - but unsurprisingly that wasn't good enough.

"Ask me," he growled. "Ask me nicely..."

Why was it more difficult, more embarrassing to beg to be fucked now, when I'd already spread my legs and laid down for it, when it was happening anyway? I was trying to will my tongue to it when I felt another of those subtle kicks deep inside. It sent a shiver through my whole body and immediately overrode the mental gymnastics...

"Please-fuck-me-please," I gibbered, grabbing on to his biceps again.

He nodded. "Good boy..." Then he was unlocking his hips and sliding away, retreating from those depths and it felt... ver-ry strange... but amazing in spite of that... Driving back in was different again - also kinda bizarre, and less - no wait, not less amazing... slow but determined, carving a path, making its own room... my mouth fell open at the sheer intensity, the everything-ness...

"You're okay, bub," Declan whispered.

Oh, I'm definitely okay. I'm... my eyes rolled back in my head. No words. No more words...

Only I had to have words, had to go scrabbling for them in the mush that was my brain, because Declan liked to play games with his dick. He'd thrust for a few minutes, gradually cranking the intensity, ramping up his assault until I was borderless quivering bliss underneath him - then he'd take it out, holding himself away, and say;

"You want it back?"

And I'd scrabble and pull at him, gasping some tangle of yeses and pleases, sounding delirious and desperate because I was. Even if it didn't necessarily look like that. I'd peered down between us repeatedly, watching that dick bridge the widening-shrinking gap between our hips, wanting to infuse my eyes with what I knew via my body, and... I'd seen myself, perforce. Some of the time I'd been hard and... quite a bit of the time I hadn't, despite being more turned on than I'd ever been in my life before. I didn't care - couldn't care, no headspace free for that - except I was worried that I would worry, later.

But I'd worry about that later...

Declan eventually quit the stop-start thing and settled down to a steady rhythm, like a distance runner easing into to his stride, and everything fit so well and felt so right... there was no unfamiliarity to these sensations now - they were a timeless truth, a thing that'd always been. I lay woozily watching him as he thrust and thrust, and it seemed to me he was in some kind of flow state. Concentrating, but not in an effortful way - merely engrossed in his task - he was a study in contradictions. Beautiful, austere and serene even as he rutted, strong yet delicate in the detail, eternal and remote but right here under my fingers, distilled essence of man ploughing into me again and again and again...

You know how when you get a massage, everything's really distinct at first? You're profoundly aware of the scratchy towel you're lying on, of a stranger's hands pinching at your flesh, of just how many knotty lumps you've developed... then after a while you sink into the thing and it all melds and you're just in some beautiful zone where your whole body feels amazing even though those hands are only working one part of it?

It was like that but on steroids. I was being broken and re-made at the same time, by the same action, it was all one, the him and the me and even the occasional flickers of pain were part of the pleasure, all one big glorious juicy concerto of pressure and sensation and rhythm and need...

I was hard now - aching desperate hard. My right hand detached from Declan's arm and snaked downward...

He saw. And he didn't approve. His own hand flashed out, capturing my wrist and slapping it audibly back to the mattress beside my head, pinning it there.

"Uh-uh, no you don't..." He breathed.

Of course, I still had the other hand free. Except I didn't, because it flew out instinctively in defence when my right hand was so aggressively grabbed and was promptly taken captive as well. Both my hands, he had both of them trapped, bearing down on them with his whole weight.

I wanted to cum - needed to cum - the ache was an inferno now. But Declan was holding me tight. I couldn't even struggle because I'd largely forgotten how to move the lower half of my body - though my pelvis was tipping to meet his strokes in some brain-stem-level rhythm...

Declan grinned down at me, gently mocking. "Oh noes," he whispered, voice a little jerky from the exertion, "looks like somebody's completely at my mercy..."

I think he knew. I think he guessed what that would do to me... my knowledge of his knowledge of my utter helplessness... That, or the pressure he'd been building simply reached a point where there was no holding it - either way, it spilled over as a wave of hot tingling pleasure, surging outward from my groin to my extremities, then rebounding back in only to flow out again. And again. And again.

As the ripples eased in intensity I became aware of something else. The muscles of my arse were convulsing around Declan's dick, clutching at him in the same sort of way - with the same desperation - that I'd grabbed with clawing hands when he withdrew from me... goddamn it was amazing! It was worth all the noise I was making, worth the wait, worth the work, worth every step of my blundering journey so far, just to be here, here...

Declan's voice broke through my orgasmic trance. "Look at me," he was hissing, "look at me!"

I looked. His eyes had that glazed intensity I knew well by now, and his pubis was mashed into my undercarriage. With my rectum still coiled in the excitement of my own release, hugging him hard, I felt the final swell of him like a deep, deep breath - and then, on a tiny grunt, the exhale - I felt that too, the subtle spasming of his shaft as he unloaded...

I thought I might explode with joy. Obviously I'd already exploded - bodily, I was spent - but on another level I was invigorated, bouncing on metaphorical toes, ready for more, so much more. And on all levels I was grateful.

He dipped down to kiss me and as he pulled away I gasped;

"Thank you - seriously thank you..."

He raised that single brow. "You did great, babe. In fact you did so great I'm gonna overlook that whole bit where you came without asking permission..."

Oh. Shit. Yeah. My eyes bugged in their sockets, but he just laughed and levered himself upward, finally releasing my hands as he slipped out of me and stepped off the bed. I felt an itch deep in my gut, calling him back. I knew it had to be over but god I wanted it again. A whole bunch of agains...

Declan blew me a kiss. "Back in a mo. You just stay there and be cute."

It felt so empty with him gone - not in a bad way, just... I reached down a hand to touch my pucker and found it... not gaping, no, but weirdly soft - almost jelly-like. I grinned to myself - how profound to have been so elementally changed by a man! I was open in all of the ways and I welcomed it, lying in gentle floaty contentment awaiting Declan's return.

He strode back in unapologetically naked, having disposed of the condom, and tugged the towel out from under me, scooping and tucking away the mess I'd made on my stomach. I lay passively and let him do it, eyes following the drunken sway of his godlike dick. I loved to watch it in this state of half-retreat, softly swollen, the weightiness evident in the asymmetric nature of the hang...

Declan folded the towel in on itself and set it on the nightstand before tossing himself down beside me and pulling the covers up, bringing an end to my little worship session.

"Well, you're plenty sassy when you're full up with dick, aren't you?" He breathed, booping me on the nose. "... almost like it suits you or something..."

I found his hand and squeezed. "Yeah, I think it suits me."

He squeezed back. "I think so too, bub." His voice dropped an octave. "It looked really really good on you..."

It looked so good on me that we repeated the exercise before the week was out. Wednesday evening Declan followed me home from work in order to put some laundry on, but he didn't quite get that far. Well... he did, but later.

I was in a slightly hyper mood for some reason, so despite knowing he was only a minute behind me, I shut my door when I got home. Being an older house, the front door was one of those key-entry only types so if not left ajar, it locked itself. When Declan arrived and knocked I stood on the other side and called through the wood:

"What's the password?"

I heard a laugh. "Is it... speak friend and enter...?"

"Um... close but no dice?"

"Is it... would you like to hear about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?"

"Fuck, no! Colder. Much colder."

The handle rattled. "Is it... don't push me too far, boy...?"

I opened the door. "Ahh, yeah - that's it."

I wasn't ready for what happened - at least partly because of that last thing he'd said and the effect it was having on me, centred low in my abdomen. I just knew that I would, one day. Push him too far. On purpose, too, because some little spark in me really needed to know...

The laundry hamper came through first, at a barrelling pace. I stumbled back to avoid it, even as Declan abandoned his hold on it, grabbing me instead as it fell to the floor and flipping me a complete one-eighty while kind of using me to shut the door again - with a decent thunk.

He slid his hand up under my chin in that way he had, and the back of my head contacted the door a second time.

"So," he growled. "So do I get to kiss you, or do I need to complete a fucking sudoku or something first, eh?"

Thoughts of pushing him too far evaporated immediately at the prospect of a kiss. Although I wondered if it was another bait and switch, like so many of them had been to that point...

But no. Not this time. Not... oh, god... I'd barely finished shaking my head - as much as I could with his hand still gripping me - when he was on me, in me, all through me... It wasn't 'a kiss', it was all of the kisses, all of them I hadn't quite had - and possibly all of them I hadn't got to yet as well - and it... ugh... any idea of bratting, however brief, collapsed as I succumbed to sensation...

Aside from the performative chucking-against-the-door, Declan's approach was undoubtedly persuasive rather than invasive, but it felt like a persuasion that was fairly used to getting its own way, prevailing in the end... the way he was at me, it was so ravenous, but at the same time it was controlled - it wasn't full throttle. I didn't understand how a person could be this hungry and still have more in reserve, but he was building a reflected hunger in me... I started to shudder all over, grateful now for the door at my back so I didn't have to waste bandwidth on things like balance...

After a long while he pulled away and stroked my lips instead. He'd made them so sensitive that they zinged with each pass of his thumb as he watched, watched the effect he was having on me...

"Was that a bit much, bub?" He prompted.

"Um, no," I panted.

In fact - now he had me in this state - it wasn't enough. I really really hoped he wasn't about to walk off and attend to his laundry.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, thumb still at play over my engorged lower lip.

"This business of hardly seeing you at work nowadays," he mused, "I can't decide whether it's a good thing or not. Because I don't get any chance to do this," - he grabbed at an arse-cheek, fingertips digging in possessively - "or put you up like this against the ute, when we're in the middle of nowhere" - I was flipped again to face the door and he came in hard behind me, hips grinding lewdly.

"I shouldn't, of course," he continued with no let-up of the pressure, "shouldn't do any of those things. At work. But... I probably would've, now and then. When we were alone."

A pause - in the talking, while the grinding continued - and then;

"Well, we're alone now," he breathed against my neck. "What should I do with you?"

I don't care, I thought, so long as you keep going...

A jerk of his hips and tightening of his fingers indicated this was one of those questions that required an answer.

"Anything," I whispered, "you can do anything..."

A soft chuckle by my ear. "You sure, bub? 'Cos I wanna be inside you..."

I went and took a shower. Declan put his washing on while I was in there, and the violent swings in pressure and temperature meant I wasn't tempted to linger once I'd assured myself everything was ship-shape downstairs. At least, I thought I hadn't lingered, but somehow he found time to turn my covers down, locate a towel, and drag my freestanding heater through from the lounge to warm the space...

"You have any condoms?" He prompted, hunching over as he pulled his t-shirt off.

Yes. A totally unopened packet I bought about three weeks ago, fully expecting none of them to be worn by me... I wrenched my eyes from his abs and gestured toward the top drawer of my dresser. There was lube in there too, and he found it. I frowned confusedly at his grimace.

"There's like, one fuck's worth of lube here, cute-face. Buy in bulk and save next time..."

I clapped my hands to my cheeks, hiding. Bad idea.

"Look at me!" Declan commanded.

I looked. He was smiling so deep he almost had dimples. "Babe. It's okay. It's just... arses don't self-lubricate, y'know..."

I would totally have dived into my hands again, but he was beckoning me toward him with one crooked finger - and the other was undoing his fly...

"Let's change it up from Saturday, hey?" He said, handing me the packet of condoms as he stepped out of his jeans. "You do this for me - I'll do this," his longest finger slid down my crack, "for you..."

Ooookay... I was woozy, lightheaded, as I rolled the condom down, down, down... I actually had no idea they went that far... but then why would I? It's not like I ever...

I was staring, of course. It got me an affectionate slap on the thigh.

"Hands and knees, bub."

I scrambled to comply, and out of the very corner of one of my eyes, saw him reach for the diminutive container of lube and the towel. The next? ten minutes?? half an hour? - I really don't know - wound up being the weirdest one-on-one tutorial of my life. In a hot way, though.

"Okay..." Declan purred, stroking a butt-cheek, "this is gonna be different than doing it yourself, puppy. It's not under your control, so you don't know when that finger's coming - or the next one." He chuckled. "You also don't get feedback from the finger, only your hole, aaaannnd... because I get the feedback from the finger, I'm gonna know how well you're following my instructions..."

Ugh... my exposed and vulnerable position and the vague sense of being lectured combined to produce the familiar tingles of embarrassed excitement pulsing out to every corner of my body, and then the anticipation - because of course once there was lube spread about he did a ton of pressing and stroking and teasing and tickling of that delicate crinkled skin... Then without any fanfare a finger breached me.

It didn't hurt - at all - but because I wasn't expecting it I did kinda tense up.

"Relax," Declan instructed. "Are you listening to me, Caleb? Stop trying to cut off the blood supply to my finger here..."

"I'm not trying to!"

"Are you trying not to?"

"Yes!" But it felt a bit like attempting to see the inside of my eye sockets or something - like the body plain didn't work that way...

"This muscle is under your control," he told me. "You know it is, because you can clench it any time you want. And if you can clench it, you can relax it - you just need to practice..."

And how do you practice? I wondered. By failing a lot at the beginning, like with anything else you practice... I strained every mental nerve - still nothing.

"Okay," I heard him say behind me. "How about we try this? Clamp down on me as hard as you can, for a count of five - then let go."

I did as I was told, and when I let go... yeah. It was different.

"See, that's relaxed," Declan breathed. "Remember the feeling. File it. Now... I'm gonna take this finger out. Then I'm gonna put it back in again, and you're not gonna clench on it. You know it's coming. Just let it happen. You aren't doing anything here, except letting it happen. I'm doing the doing, okay?"

Okay. I managed it. Then he wiggled the finger...

"Let go..." I heard from behind me, patient and resigned. A few seconds later he added; "And if you can't, follow the pattern. Hold for five and let it go. Remember the feeling."

We moved to two fingers. Two fingers wiggling, scissoring, stretching. And sometimes - occasionally - I relaxed on command. I was improving, definitely, even with this little amount of practice. So...

Declan wiped his fingers on the towel, then his palm was on my chest, lifting. "Come up, bub."

I peeled up onto my knees and he hugged us together and shuffled us toward the bed's head.

"These stay here," he told me, crossing my hands flat over one another, against the wall. "Understood?"

I nodded, and he flicked my lips with his middle finger. Ouch. "Yes," I said hastily. "Understood."

"Good. And maybe rest your forehead on them - if that's comfortable. Is it comfortable?"

"Yeah, it's good."

"Alrighty..." He shuffled in closer. "Okay, bub. So you're not gonna be able to see me this time, but I'm close up behind you and I'm gonna hold you, I'm gonna keep hold of you the whole time. Do not move those hands."

Then his own hand was reaching under, through the gap of my parted thighs, to cup my junk. The concentration I'd had to put in to our little 'tutorial' meant there wasn't much going on there, but that changed fast enough, and it wasn't even really the gentle rolling and stirring of his fingers so much as the sight, as I looked down... the sight of me, all wrapped up by him, all at his gentle mercy...

He pumped a few times once I was fully hard, then withdrew his hand, muttering; "I keep this up too long, I'll make you clam up again, and we don't want that... we want you loose. Don't we?"

I nodded.

"Say it!" He barked. "Loose..."

He was saddling up now... "Loose," I slurred, hopefully speaking it into being... Let it happen. Don't need to do anything except let it happen...

Just like last time, I handled it okay for the first few seconds, but then... and he sure wasn't rushing things, just applying the slightest slowest onward pressure, but uggggh! The absolute lack of any let up...

"It's so big!" I wailed, my voice high and thready, trying to climb, climb away from the intrusion, just as my mind was - and my body wasn't...

His answer ghosted across my neck, oh so gently. "It ain't getting smaller, bub. This is how it's gonna be. You either want it or you don't..."

"Iwantit-Iwantit-Iwantit-Iwantit..." I babbled it like a mantra over and over, telling my truth to myself, grinding my forehead into my hands as he sunk slowly deeper and deeper. It was what I wanted - it was the sum of what I wanted... then suddenly I felt the gentle tickle of his pubes against my arse. Oh, that's all of it. Thank. God.

I took some time to adjust, and Declan remained totally still, carved in stone - for sure it felt like that on the inside - stroking my chest in slow gentle sweeps while I gulped in great lungfuls of air and whooshed them back out again...

"Listen to me, beautiful," he whispered once I was getting things under control. "Listen carefully. I don't care if it's a bit crunchy at the beginning - there's no reason you shouldn't have to work for it - but you don't need to suffer, okay? Remember our word... and what it's for."

His hand threaded in my hair, tugging gently. "Remember...?"

"I remember..."

"Are you suffering?"

"No," I sobbed. "No, I love it..."

"Ugh," he grunted, "that's what I like to hear. Arch your back a little bit more. Remember I've got you, okay?"

And then we were off, and this time nothing about it felt weird - it felt obvious, so obvious that it seemed ridiculous it'd taken so long to get here - and in amongst all the tactile sensate buildup, there was the the beauty and glory of not having to think, to plan. Simply... receive instruction, do thing. Hands here, arse here, let it happen... it was what I'd needed all along, and he knew - he divined it before he ever touched me with so much as a... finger...

I was so abandoned to the experience I didn't even catch that I was effectively mooing like a cow until...

"Oh, those moans," Declan panted in my ear. "What are they, then?" A few thrusts later and he was in close again, muttering; "I know what they are. They're the sound of me fucking you. Aren't they, bub?" A sharp jab upwards. "Aren't they?"

"Yes," I gasped. And then I moaned.

"Yeah, that," he said smugly. "That's what I'm talking about. That's the sound of you taking dick - taking my dick."

He made me moan again, and demanded; "Whose dick are you taking?"

"Yours..."

Yours. I realised it then - that this was the game this time round. Not losing the dick and having to plead for it back but getting it and getting it and getting it some more and having to reaffirm that fact over and over...

"Where's my dick right now?" He hissed.

"Iss insighhh meee..." God, don't ask for syllables...

He did, though... he asked often and hard, followed by even harder if I was slow in responding, and I fought with my brain-disconnected tongue to answer and answer and answer...

He was gripping my shoulders tightly, hooked around under my armpits and forcing me down into his relentless upstrokes, when he said for about the fiftieth time;

"Where's my dick, boy?"

And I actually took my forehead away from my hands and threw my neck back, howling skyward like some mythic creature;

"Innnn- side me, it's so goooo-duhhh..."

His hands left my shoulders, one reaching across my chest, drawing my body into a tighter arch. The other snaked down and curled around my all-but-forgotten dick.

"Remember to ask," he said, as he started up stroking - fast, in time with his tooth-rattling thrusts...

There wasn't a second to waste. "Please-can-I-cum!" I burbled, every nerve in my body teetering on the brink.

"Yeah, bub," he breathed, and I was already losing it in every possible dimension by the time he added, "... course you can..."

He made me recite the same facts regarding the location and ownership of his dick for another couple of minutes before gripping me desperately tight and unloading with a few final epic thrusts. Then in the beautiful quiet after, he tipped my head back to rest on his shoulder for a moment.

"Fuck, you are so fucking good, babe..." The lightest little kiss on my still-swollen lips, then he withdrew and joked;

"Eh well, my washing'll be done now, so I guess I can be off..."

I figured he was teasing, and just smiled seraphically at him. I wasn't planning to try and make him stay, given it was a weeknight... but I also didn't object when he came back and helped himself to half the bed after dispensing with the condom. I guess if he just happened to fall asleep like this, and I just happened to fall asleep too... wouldn't be such a bad thing...

"Can't leave that washing in the machine, though," I mused out loud.

"Whut?" Declan said.

"It'll get smelly," I explained. "If it stays in there overnight."

He turned on his side to face me and wormed an arm under my head, so I was pillowed on him. "I'll grab it in a moment, bub. Haven't forgotten. Just wanna check you don't come down too hard after that. Was it okay? Anything you need to talk through?"

"About that? No." Then I remembered. "But actually... I did, um, get asked to join a pub quiz team. With Shan and... those guys. It's on Wednesdays though. I was gonna - but now I'm thinking maybe I should... not?"

Declan shook his head. "No. Go for it. You should totally do it. Not a bad thing to get to know your colleagues..." He winked audaciously.

"You could come along?" I offered.

He shook his head again. "Nah, it's all good. I'm actually trying out a bit of a new hobby lately, so no harm having some down-time."

"Ooh, a new hobby - what is it?"

"Never mind," he said. "I'll show you when I get to a point where I don't suck at it."

"You don't suck at anything!" I protested.

Declan grinned. "You only think that because I don't let you see the stuff I suck at..."

A thought occurred to me. "Actually, you do somewhat suck at cooking. Think you could probably burn water if you tried hard enough..."

He flipped me onto my front and dealt a hard slap to each arse-cheek before I had time to even think about defending myself. "Take that back!"

"Ow! Fuck!" I tried to wriggle away but Declan had me pinned pretty firmly.

"Take it back..." he said warningly.

"Okay," I panted, "okay. I don't actually think you could burn water, seeing as that's impossible..."

It wasn't much of a climbdown and I knew it, but the pressure from above eased off enough that I could scurry under the covers, spine (and arse) to the wall, and grab on to a pillow for defence.

Declan eyed me for a few seconds. "You know I could fish you out of there and have you back like you were without any trouble at all, right?" He said casually.

I swallowed. "Ahh, yeah...?"

He winked at me. "I won't, though. Today."

* * * * *

I went to ring Mum in early November and got Dad instead. It was happening a bit lately now she was feeling better. Seemed like she was making up for lost time - always out having afternoon tea with somebody or playing golf or... today she was doing ikebana, according to Dad.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Uhh, flowers I think," Dad muttered. "Japanese though."

"Oh, so like bonsai?"

"I don't think so. That's trees, isn't it?"

"Uhh, yeah, maybe..."

There was a bit of pause before Dad said; "Anyway, how it's going up there? Good people? You feel like you're bedding in alright?"

There it is, I thought. That's my opening.

"Yeah," I said. "I... it's great, actually. And on that note... I kinda... met someone."

There was an infinitesimal pause before Dad replied, "Cool. What's his name?"

I didn't respond, because I was too busy metaphorically scrambling around the floor looking for the shattered remains of my lower jaw.

"Am I off target there, Caleb?" Dad sounded worried. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to-"

"His name's Declan," I blurted. "But... how did you know?"

"I didn't know," Dad said. "It's just... you always seemed to me like you weren't quite... settled, like you weren't entirely comfortable in your own skin, and I guess I figured you were working your way through some stuff, and you'd let me know when you got there."

We managed to move on to less fraught topics, but a couple of those phrases were bouncing around in my skull for hours after I got off the phone...'comfortable in your own skin'...'let me know when you got there'...

You know what? I thought. I might... actually be getting there. I just might be. I stood straighter these days. I looked at myself in the mirror without fear, without self-recrimination. When you have a space where you fit in your career, and a space where you fit... at home, things work. They just work.

The news that I had a boyfriend prompted a call from Mum - an inquisition from Mum. Not remotely interested in discussing inebaka or whatever it was. She wanted to know about Declan. All about Declan. My god so many questions - you suspected as well, didn't you? I thought. You and Dad and... I mean, maybe everyone...

Mum broke in on my musings. "So, are you gonna bring him down for Christmas?"

I jumped so hard I almost dropped my phone. "I, um, Mum... I don't know. We haven't talked about..."

"No harm in asking," she chipped in. "I mean, that's assuming you come down. You will though, right?"

"I... uh... probably?" Very probably. I hadn't missed a single Christmas at home since I'd left, even when I'd been poorer and living much further away, even when I hadn't just faced down losing my Mum, even when Granddad had been alive to add a drag to proceedings...

"I wouldn't leave it ages longer before deciding, if I were you," Mum told me briskly, "or you'll end up paying a month's wage for a ticket. If you can get one."

She was right, of course. She was right. I had a quick browse of some flights once I got off the call, and the options were already somewhat constrained. The upside of that was the urgency meant I couldn't spend weeks chewing over the prospect of asking Declan while becoming progressively more stressed about how I might feel if he said 'no'...

I put it to him the next day, and the momentary, hastily shelved grimace I got as an initial response didn't seem too promising. I pressed on. "Like, they specifically asked," I said. "They really want to meet you. But you don't need to worry about being some kind of zoo exhibit, there's always heeeaps of people for Christmas dinner and Boxing Day. I mean, Alannah's married, and Bec's engaged, and Mum and Dad's next-door neighbours who don't have any kids usually come over, so there's quite a mix..."

Declan nodded absently, staring off into the middle distance. "Yeah, yeah..." Then he turned to me fully. "It's not that I don't want to come. The thing is, there's Dad. He's got no-one else. I think... tell them some other time."

Oh. Yeah. I hadn't factored that in. I'd met his dad on a few occasions now - enough times that it'd stopped being a gut-churning experience. But the first time, my god...

I'd been worried about what he'd make of this ultra-masculine son of his bringing a guy home to introduce to him. It's one thing to deal with the theoretical idea of having a gay child, and a whole other thing having to deal with meeting someone who's being gay with your child... But Declan didn't see it that way at all.

"It'll be fine," he'd said, as we were driving down to Whanganui, me tagging along on one of his regular visits. "I told him I was gay before Mum died. She basically insisted on it. Obviously she already knew, but I'd hung back from telling Dad because... yeah. I did think it might be kinda tough for him to acclimatise to, to be honest. But she said, you're only gonna have each other. You have to tell him. And if you do it now I can make sure he behaves his bloody self over it."

He'd glanced briefly in my direction before continuing, "Which should give you a clue about how the dynamic swung in that particular relationship. She ran both of their lives, even when she was sick, and so far as I can tell it worked for both of them. Bu-u-ut... the upshot was there was suddenly a whole lot he had to learn to do for himself, when he wasn't exactly in the best space for it."

The truth of that became clear immediately we arrived. Graham Lawton was a tall man who'd probably, in his time, been as physically imposing as Declan. Now? He was a little thinner than ideal - stooped, with lumpy knuckles, a shuffling gait, and a sort of general hesitancy about him which made me understand why Declan felt a need to visit so often. He was an actual old man in a way my own old man wasn't. Yet.

He displayed no hostility whatever toward me, but equally no interest beyond a perfunctory shake of my hand. What was pressing to him was that his TV wasn't working. Declan had the (non) problem sorted in less than a minute, after which he stood and said;

"Right, Dad. Let's see what you need in the way of groceries."

I tagged along with the pair of them to Pak'n'Save and made coffees for the three of us while Declan and his Dad put the groceries away, then played on my phone to pad out the time while they unblocked a gutter, changed the sheets on the bed, and paid this month's bills on Declan's laptop...

And that was how it went, any time we visited. They'd work through a list of chores, Declan carefully managing his disorganised and occasionally querulous parent, gently teasing yet always supportive and firm. Watching them would bring a lump to my throat. And then when they were done, we'd go to the RSA for dinner, drop Graham back off at his house, and head home to Hawera...

In the present, Declan was regarding me with a worried frown on his face. "I will visit your folks," he assured me. "If that's what you want, I absolutely will. But... I kinda need to put Dad first in this instance."

"You know..." I said slowly, as it dawned on me, "he could come too..."

Declan put on his 'now you're talking horseshit' face. "Come on. You can't make invitations like that on your parents' behalf."

"No, really!" I insisted, laying a hand on his arm. "Obviously I would check it with them, but they will not say no, trust me! They're way more social than me, they love entertaining - truly. Like, they'll go on a cruise and meet a couple they gel with and just say; hey, come out to New Zealand and stay with us! - and people do. Like, they've done it heaps of times." Another thought occurred to me. "Oh, and also, the kind of a having somebody else's parent there for Christmas isn't without precedent - Todd's dad did Christmas with us for three years in a row after his wife died, and before he went to live with Todd's sister in Perth, so you see..."

Declan sighed. "Okay. Talk to them. I'll talk to Dad."

He came back to me the next day. "He'll do it," was how he opened the conversation. "It wasn't even hard to convince him, actually. I just had to agree to a little side-bargain. Turns out he's never been to Mt Cook and he wants to see it before he dies - and views Canterbury as a kind of a... step on the way." He shrugged. "I did tell him the mountain's not gonna be looking its snowy best in the middle of summer, but he doesn't care about that. So I guess I'm going on a little roadie with Dad just after Christmas - oh, and you can come along if you're keen. He asked me to tell you that..."

"Really?" I said. It didn't seem likely...

Declan grinned. "Yeah, really. I mean, he's the furthest thing from demonstrative, but I think he approves of you, actually."

"Oh," I said, feeling insensibly warmed by that little nugget of information, "oh. Then yeah, I'd love to tag along..."

* * * * *

We flew in to Christchurch on the afternoon of Christmas Eve and picked up the SUV Declan had hired for our upcoming 'roadie'. Riding in the passenger seat with the window down and my arm hanging out in the breeze, I was too busy basking in the huge skies, the ultra-bright sunlight and the hot dry air with that tang to it that's Canterbury's own signature scent to give any thought to what Declan might make of my parents' house...

I guess theoretically I knew it had a bit of old-world grandeur, what with the wrap-around verandahs and mature specimen trees and the formal garden beds edged with box, but for me it was just... home.

Declan laughed under his breath as we came around the last bend in the drive. "Well. Look at that. Apparently I have a thing for posh boys." A sideways glance. "Or maybe it's the posh boys who have a thing for me..."

"A bit of rough, that's called," Graham supplied from the back seat.

The car came to a crunching stop on the gravel out front. "Hoooohh-ly shit," Declan breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Dad. Do not."

My parents were spilling down the steps to welcome us as that was hanging in the air like a particularly rank fart... Oh christ, I thought, undoing my seatbelt. This was a terrible idea - all of it. Fuck.

But it turned out okay, once the first standing-around-awkwardly bit was over. Within a half-hour of our arrival, Dad had mentioned he was getting into wood-turning as his latest hobby, and from that point there was no need to worry about including Graham in conversations. He and Dad were off to the shed to talk burr-woods and lathes and penetrating oils and came back an hour later seemingly friends for life and still banging on about tools...

I discovered when we went to dump luggage that my room had been significantly gussied up sometime in the three months since I'd last been for a visit. New curtains, new dresser, but most notably my long-serving single bed was gone, replaced by...

"Wow," I breathed, turning to Declan. "Looks like they somehow guessed you were a big bloke..."

Declan snorted. "Erring on the safe side, most likely. I mean, even if I was a small guy I'm gonna be bigger than a girl, aren't I? Anyway, you can't have too much bed..."

I threw myself down on the generous surface in a starfish. "Oh yeah. Mmm... this is awesome - check it out."

Instead of joining me, he stayed standing, arms folded, a frown gathering. "Don't get any ideas, babe. Happy to fuck you into oblivion when we get back home, but for the moment...? Prepare to be celibate for the next week or so."

"Awww," I whined.

"Don't 'aww' me, boy," he warned, twitching lips giving him away...

"Or you'll what...?" I whispered.

"Retract my offer to destroy you six ways from Sunday once this whole holiday thing is done?"

He wasn't helping with that talk... but I sat up, reluctantly. "Okay. Okay. I'll behave."

"I should bloody hope so," he growled. "Now get up and straighten that coverlet out properly..."

"You'd make a great Sergeant-Major," I told him once I'd completed it to his satisfaction.

He shook his head, then leaned in, forehead on mine. "I only need one boy..."

That made me tear up a little, which didn't bode well for having to go back out into the house and face people. Declan saw and swiped his thumbs under my eyes. "You're okay, boo. You can do this." He took a deep breath. "We can do this..."

"What's the routine in the morning?" He murmured to me, once we were tucked up in bed that night, stuffed to the gills with barbecued lamb chops and hot-sour cucumber salad. "Any weird traditions I should know about, faux pas I should avoid making?"

"Uhh, no? People generally get up just... whenever, and we don't usually eat breakfast because there's so much food coming later in the day - just have coffee and there's generally shortbread and a platter of fruit hanging about to graze on, and once everyone's up and showered and the others have arrived we'll open presents, followed by... I dunno... more coffee, sitting around. Then Christmas dinner about one, you know... roast turkey, etc., big hot meal. Then people lie about going, 'ugh, why did I eat so much?' for a few hours before doing it all over again around six or seven - but that's, like, leftover cold meat and salads and things, so... less of a big deal..."

I felt him nod behind me. "That sounds pretty unthreatening. They don't work in some kind of jenga or scrabble tournament with lots of paying back old scores from last time round or any shit like that?"

I laughed. "Uhh, no. Although... there might be some petanque at some point in the afternoon. Dad made a court out back a few years ago." I swallowed. "Guess that makes them textbook landed gentry, does it?"

"Ehhh, maybe they are, a bit?" Declan agreed drowsily. "But they seem like decent people." He kissed the back of my neck. "And they made you..."

* * * * *

It was my first Christmas morning waking up next to somebody else. Next to my favourite somebody else. The first one, and I was twenty-seven. Nearly twenty-eight. God, I'm a late bloomer, I thought. Better start making up for lost time...

Or not. I was shimmying down under the covers so I could begin the day in the best possible way, waking Declan's soft sleeping cock by making love to it with my mouth, but I hadn't got halfway before my hair was grabbed, arresting me, a couple of severe yanks indicating I should come back up.

"What did I say? What did I say yesterday...?"

"I... something about celibate? But that was me - you said you wouldn't fuck me. You didn't say anything about you not..."

He took my face in his hands, regarding me gravely. "Cope. You little cock-whore." A smile broke out. "Also? Merry Christmas." He brought his lips to my ear, tickling as he whispered; "You little cock-whore..."

I snuggled in close, chest-to-chest. "Okay, then. And Merry Christmas to you too."

A few minutes later Declan said, "Heyyy... I thought I might give you your present kinda now... like, before the big family gig? Like, privately? That okay?"

I agreed, even as a thousand super-weird possibilities for a 'private' present flashed through my mind. A cock cage? Harness? Ball-gag? - he did actually foreshadow that one - well, I could probably learn to like any of them, as wielded by Declan. Especially if he followed through and kept me un-fucked for the remainder of our holiday...

I was handed a lightweight palm-sized package, neatly wrapped in festive paper. Well. It definitely wasn't a harness or a ball-gag, and if it was a cock cage it was... uh... quite a small one. I eased open the wrapper and tore through the layers of tissue paper inside, to reveal...

Oh. Oh. Oh my god. It was a bone carving. A naturalistic-looking feather with a slight curve and a couple of minor ruffles carved in, perfect in its imperfections. Strung from both ends on a narrow leather thong, with a toggle to adjust the length, it was clearly made to sit high at my neck, immediately below the collarbone. Just like his...

"This is amazing," I whispered, lifting it with shaking fingers, "it's... god, thank-you. Thank-you so much. Where did you... wait. Is this your new 'hobby'? Is that what it was? Did you make this?"

Declan nodded. "Yup. And the first one broke when I tried to drill the holes. So that was a bunch of hours down the drain - and a learning experience. Drill the holes first, and then do the detail work..."

My eyes brimmed as I stroked the tiny corrugations. "This is insane! I love it so much..."

"Thought you should have a feather," he murmured. "Kinda fits, I reckon. Soft, but made out of hard stuff. Stronger than it looks." He tilted my chin. "And really fuckin' pretty..."

"Aggh, now look what you've done," I hissed, as my eyes failed to contain the fresh influx of moisture.

Declan put an arm around me and squeezed. "Yeah, I thought that might happen. Why I suggested we should maybe do this now..."

I wiped my cheeks with my forearms. "Do you want yours now as well? It's... less cool than this, though. Sorry..."

"I dunno," he was muttering a minute later. "This is pretty fucking cool..."

Yeah. I felt like I struck gold when I found it online. A watercolour painting with ink accents, but utterly unlike any watercolour I'd seen before. No highland cows, no tame pastoral scenes - it was a depiction of his hometown, from some high vantage point to the south - but not on a sunlit tourist postcard day. This was weather with a capital 'W'. A sliver of coast, sweeping outward toward the top of the frame, a motley collection of pale roofs, power-poles and lamp-posts, tiny and insignificant, the remainder of the frame populated by sea and sky, the surf in replicating terraces of foam, with slate-grey cloud squatting shaggily above them, turning ragged at the leading edges...

He turned to me. "This is quite something. I mean, I'm not gonna cry, but... I like it a lot. Thanks, bub."

I ducked my head, and he pulled me back in toward him, draping the carving around my neck and adjusting the toggle. "There..."

I floated, feather-like, through the morning's heavy-duty socialising, all the while feeling the strange newness of the smooth cool weight at my neck. I loved it, I thrilled to it - privately. And when anybody asked me some version of 'so what did he get you?' ... I was able to pull aside the neck of my t-shirt and airily say 'this'.

Graham, it turned out, had brought my parents a large bottle of Baileys for a present/contribution, which... I mean, I got it. It's fairly innocuous as liquor goes, and arguably kinda Christmassy into the bargain - but I suspected it was gonna retire unopened to the back of a cupboard after we left.

I was wrong about that - Bec saw it sitting on the bookcase mid-afternoon and got all enthusiastic about Baileys with cold milk. For some reason Kim, Alannah, and Mum agreed with her that this was exactly the thing to put on top of a huge meal on a summer's afternoon. Every male in the room either gagged or silently grimaced - but Dad and Graham seemed to think it might go nice in some coffee...

Todd stood, rolling his eyes. "Ugh. Okay then - beersies, anybody?"

Declan and I trailed him out to the kitchen once the Baileys stampede was done, in time to see him emerge from the fridge with three bottles hanging from his fingers. Hmm. It was one of those small batch crafty hey-how-many-hops-we-can-cram-in-here types. Declan's eyes lit up, even as I shook my head. Not my thing. Dad was bound to have some Export Gold or similar in the little drinks fridge in his shed, bu-u-ut... fuck that. I just took a whole fifteen steps walking here from the living room - now you want me to go outside to the shed? I grabbed a wine glass instead and helped myself to the open bottle of white in the fridge door.

Todd seemed to find something about the situation amusing. His eyes flicked back and forth between us, me with my - so sue me - cold glass of pinot grigio, and Declan, drinking his very manly very hoppy beer directly from the bottle. A smirk formed on his face.

"Guess I don't really need to ask who's the little spoon here, do I...?" He murmured.

I felt my skin prickle with heat. Spoon-fucking was my absolute favourite. Declan could go for hours in that position. Literal hours. Declan... from the corner of my eye, I saw the muscles in his jaw standing out in sharp relief, nostrils flared.

"Careful, you prolly don't wanna go there," I told Todd earnestly. "Because what happens if you do is you get a honking great lecture which starts with; 'ugh, this heternormative bullshit again', and ends, long enough later that you've pretty much lost the will to live, with him actually confirming what you suspected all along..."

Todd looked momentarily shocked, then he laughed loudly before fist-bumping me, which was not a thing he'd ever previously done, and glancing sidelong at Declan, saying;

"Don't break a tooth there, will you, big guy? And, ah, look after my lil' bro, eh?" Then he was gone.

Declan exhaled, shaking his head. "Well. I suppose everybody has to have one dipshit relative."

I elbowed him in the ribs. "I promise you Todd's way less of a dipshit than my granddad was..."

We took a walk together after the evening meal, which of course prompted a bunch of comments - 'haha, yeah a walk', 'enjoy your walk, guys' and so on - making me gladder than ever to be getting a bit of respite from... honestly just all the people...

"Yeah, that's right," I growled, as soon as we were out of earshot, "I'm totally gonna just bend over for you behind the first hedge we come across..."

Declan chuckled. "Oh? Are you not?"

"No. I'm not."

I didn't mean it to sound pissy. I actually wasn't pissy with him - I wasn't pissy with anyone, as such. I was just a bit... done. But he stopped - behind a hedge - and drew me into his arms, loose and gentle, not boxing me in, merely offering himself.

"Been a tough day for you, bub?"

I considered it. "Not... no? I mean, I think it went as well as I could possibly have expected. It was just... a lot."

Above me, I felt him nod. "Yeah. With you on both counts there..."

We were out for about an hour and a half, in the gentler heat of the evening, fingers linked, ambling along mostly in silence. When we got back, Mum'd gone to bed and Kim, Todd and Alannah had all headed home. In the snug, Bec and her fiance Aaron were on a sofa, not... actually making out, but lying down tangled in one another. In the lounge, Dad and Graham were part-way through some slow-paced some card game I didn't recognise and too wrapped up in it to do more than grunt at us, so there was no dumb 'how was your walk, then?' to endure from anybody.

There was also kind of... nowhere to be, as we both realised at about the same time. Declan caught my eye, silently mouthing 'Bed?'. I nodded and we melted away. It was only just after nine though. Still full daylight, and the heat of the day hadn't dissipated from my room. I closed the door behind us but opened the window, leaving the curtains half-pulled so the air could circulate.

I turned back from fussing with that to see that Declan had folded the covers down all the way and thrown himself on the bed wallside, wearing only his boxers. Lying on his back and reading his phone. He didn't look up as I tiptoed over.

I felt myself frown. I guess I'd thought that seeing we obviously didn't need to sleep yet we could... Never mind. I flopped down beside him and opened my kindle. Tried to get immersed in my book. But it just wasn't happening. My eyes slid away to the smooth skin of Declan's side, the gentle rise and fall of his ribcage as he read on, calm and absorbed. He didn't seem to feel my staring, to've noticed I wasn't even pretending with the kindle any longer. I'm here! I wanted to say. I'm as almost-naked as you are! Don't you want me?

Of course he wanted me. It was just, for some reason he'd set us this weird rule about not doing anything sexual while we were here...

I put my kindle down on the nightstand. "Can I snuggle? Or is it too hot still?"

Declan stretched - without putting his phone down - and sighed. "Mm. Bit hot for full-body contact, but if you wanna...?" He extended his near arm, inviting me to pillow my head on it.

I shuffled down the bed a little and rested my cheek on his tummy instead. "Is this okay?"

"That's nice, bub." He gave my head a quick waggle then removed his hand again.

Eyes closed, I listened to the sounds of his body - relaxed breaths, the occasional gurgle immediately under my ear, the muted flick of his big toe dipping back and forth across the opposing foot as he rhythmically flexed them one against the other...

When my eyes opened again the first thing I saw was the outline of his cock through the thin fabric of his boxers... and I wanted it. Oh god, I wanted it. Like, with my whole self. I felt consumed by it. A down-to-the-bedrock level of desire. I lay there salivating, watching it, soft and fat and innocently unaware of my hungry scrutiny, and in addition to the obvious horniness I felt some weird... almost affection for it. A gentle sort of abiding true love. I recognised it in some deep inexplicable way... it was, I dunno... it was his, but it was also mine. It was mine and I wanted it.

I wondered if I could convince him to change his mind. It wasn't hugely likely... but I knew from experience that he could be cajoled. He might put a hand over my mouth and shake his head no, and that would be the end of it. He might entertain my pleading until I thought I was getting through and then say no - bu-u-ut... he might cave. He might. I had to try.

"Declan?" I whispered.

"Mm?" Was all he said in reply. I could see, at the very edge of my peripheral vision, that he was still holding his phone.

"Can I suck you? Please? Taste you? Even just a tiny bit? I know you said- but just this once, maybe? Please? I want it so bad, and it is Christmas and I promise I won't pester you about it any more times after today but I literally can't think about anything else except having you in my mouth and tasting your cum and I don't know how I'm gonna be able to sleep if I can't-"

I felt his abdomen shudder under me as he laughed softly. Then he stopped and it was quiet.

"I find it hard to say no to you, Caleb," he murmured. "But I will do it from time to time. For your own good." His fingers curled in my hair and he dragged my head back, cricking my neck so our eyes met. Then he winked. "Fortunately for both of us, this isn't one of those times..."

Yes, yes, YES!! My whole body fizzed with the thrill of it as I shuffled further down.

"You gonna close those curtains the rest of the way?" Declan wondered.

I thought about it. The tree outside my window was thickly underplanted with clivias reaching all the way to the house - on the slim chance that anybody was wandering about outside, they wouldn't pass close by my window.

"Nah," I said. "It'll be fine."

Declan shrugged. "Okay - you're the boss."

I locked eyes with him. "I am not the boss..."

He smiled. One of those ones only I got to see. "No puppy, you're not. But you can pretend to be for the next little while, if you like..."

Ugggghhh... I felt another wave of tingles spread through my body. I was pretty sure he was letting me know I could have my way with his dick, string it out as long as I wanted, which... what a gift. Especially since he didn't let me go down on him all that often. He'd told me that first day I'd have to earn it, set it up to be a privilege rather than a right, and he'd dangled it just out of reach enough times by now that it felt like the rarest of treats...

I knew, objectively, that that was quite the head-fuck he'd perpetrated on me, but I didn't care. I liked being this way. Hell, I'd always been this way. I liked having explicit permission to be this way...

I started off just nuzzling, lying beside him mouth closed, gently pushing pushing his dick this way and that with my nose as I breathed in deep, letting the aphrodisiac effect take hold... god I loved it, the sweet secret scent of him down here.

The thing with good smells is they entice you to taste - I let my tongue out and lapped at him cat-like, quick and gentle and lavishing love on every millimetre, then I made out with the head for a while, coaxing his foreskin up, feeling it move against the inside of my lips as it slithered back into its huddle beneath the ridge...

I needed more, to be filled up more. Long strokes but slow, keeping the suction cranked all the way up on the downstroke and the return, pouring myself into his pleasure... when my neck began to protest the position I swung myself up into a kneeling posture, hunched over wide-mouthed and using gravity to help me gain another half-inch of shaft... I couldn't fit it all in no matter how hard I tried - and I'd tried plenty - but Declan could. He had, and I'd loved the entire experience - the momentary terror of my inability to breathe, the euphoric glory following hard behind, the careful coaching and affirmations that got us to that point...

He lay me on my back, head dangling off the edge of his bed, and inserted his cock into my open-hanging mouth, but not at any threatening depth. He kept the crown of my head cradled in his palm as he talked me through the process and the possibilities allowed by the position I was in and how I could expect it to feel, keeping me calm and anchored as he rocked back and forth making free with my mouth, hundreds of gentle exploratory jabs to my soft palate, so that when the time came... I mean, you have to apply some force to get a dick like his into a throat, but-

I wrenched myself back to the present. I could thrill to that memory any time. I could only have this particular joy right here, right now... this balmy evening at the end of this day, this man's meat inhabiting my oh-so-willing mouth...

His hand returned to rest on my head. "Oh, that's good baby, that's real good," he said. Then a few seconds later, a little involuntary noise, a tiny 'ugh' more expressive than any word could be...

I maintained my rhythm as I moved to fondle his balls and god they were so full and so tight, climbed up high crying out for release... I forgot I was wanting to draw this out, instead feeling his urgency as my own, curling my hand to cup that beautiful weight and moaning desperately against the flesh cramming my mouth...

Declan's fingers tightened on my scalp as he jabbed erratically up into me and there was a tiny whispered 'fuck!' just as I felt the first pulse, a single little syllable that was a prayer and a curse and an unburdening all in one...

He watched, dozily content, as I cleaned him with my tongue, gentle now, and tucked him away in his boxers again.

"You're a good boy," he murmured, touching his index and middle fingers to his lips then mine, "such a good boy..." His lids were already heavy, sliding sl-oo-wly up and down, by the time I'd rearranged myself longwise, head on pillow. The same two fingers reached across to briefly brush my cheek. "You're the best boy..."

A minute more and he'd drifted into sleep, still and peaceful, the tiniest snore seeping out now and then. I lay beside him, listening to the curtains sigh as they brushed gently against the carpet, watching the leaves on the birch move with the breeze, reborn somehow, soft-shelled and vulnerable... Comfortable. In my own skin.

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© Sarah-Jane Riordan, 2025