“Everything okay at home?”
Nick scrubbed at his face. When was the last time anything had been okay at home? “It’s exhausting,” he said, staring at his palms. “It always feels like we’re one step away from the whole thing falling apart. And it’s almost like Hayden is trying to make it worse. Like he wants to be caught.” Hayden in juvenile detention was Nick’s worst nightmare.
“You ever talk to anyone about it?”
“What? Like a shrink?” Anya tried to make them go a few times, but Hayden had been so bored and disrespectful that the whole thing had been pointless.
“It’s not a bad idea. Jess and I, we’ve been talking to one for a few months. It really helps. I can give you her number. Or you know the department would refer you to one if you didn’t want to meet the same woman we’ve been seeing. But I think you’d feel better.”
Nick laughed bitterly. He’d told Brian some of it, over the last few months, but talking about it made him angry. Or sad.
“Are you talking to Oliver about it?” Brian asked as Nick’s dark mood tried to swallow him.
Nick’s hands clenched into fists, and he pushed his chair away from the desk. “Why do you keep coming back to him? There’s nothing going on with me and Oliver. Not like that.”
“What do you mean? Not like what?”
Nick closed his eyes. Nothing to be ashamed of. He and Oliver were consenting adults, and they had an arrangement that worked for both of them. But talking about it would make it public. He didn’t want to share what he had going with Oliver. So little in his life these days was his by choice, but Oliver offered this to him, and he was going to hold onto it with both hands.
“It’s just sex,” he heard himself say. His voice was raw. “Just casual. You don’t need to read more into it than that.”
He nearly broke when Brian put a hand on his shoulder. “And you’re okay with that?”
Okay? How could he not be okay with it? Even when they weren’t together, Nick’s brain was full of Oliver. His hair in Nick’s fists, the taste of his skin on Nick’s tongue. He woke up sometimes, his hand on his hard cock, with the sound, the groan Oliver made a split second before he came, ringing in Nick’s ears.
That knowledge, and the ache that came with it, were so much more than his previous exhaustion and numbness. He wouldn’t give that up, not as long as Oliver would have him.
“It was my choice.” He forced himself to meet Brian’s eyes.
The other man nodded, a sad smile on his lips. “You’re allowed to ask for more for yourself. You know that, right?”
After that, Nick couldn’t look at him anymore.
A tractor trailer tipped over on its side that night, while another lay burning in the ditch on the freeway west of town. The whole department was sent out, and Nick spent most of the shift on the phone communicating with other emergency response teams.
He didn’t get around to eating until nearly four o’clock in the morning. Out of habit, he turned his phone on, realizing too late that Oliver would have gone to sleep hours ago, insomnia be damned.
One text message waited for him.
Hey! Want to come by tonight before your shift? You can wear your uniform :)
Fuck Brian. Nick chewed angrily as he read it again. Fuck him for making this text feel like less than the ones sent before. Like it shouldn’t be enough for Nick.
He stared at the message a long time before he wrote a reply.
I can’t tonight. Sorry.
He left the rest of the meal uneaten.
* * *
Oliver tried calling the market board office for clarification a few times before his summons. The phone always went to voicemail. In a fit of desperation, he tried emailing the genericInfoemail address on the market website, but that didn’t garner a reply either.
The uncertainty made him uneasy.
So did Nick’s sudden silence. On Thursday, he made a vague excuse about commitments a few hours before they got together on Nick’s day off. Oliver tried calling, but, like the market, all he got was voicemail. So they’d last seen each other almost a week ago.
Finally, with no other option but to be as prepared as possible on zero information, Oliver compiled all his business literature and records. He put on one of his suits, the ones he’d worn like a uniform every day of his old life, but then decided against it and hung it back up. He was going with an open mind. No need to try to intimidate them in his full corporate swag.
