Deliverance - Hooch and Matt's Story (17 page)

A tilted head, as Matt followed the movement of the glass, then turned back to look at Hooch. “How so?” Having a good idea of the answer, but pushing Hooch to put it into words.

“This.” Hooch made a vague gesture between them. “Not touching you. I don’t mean the sex, I can accept that it’s off right now, but I can’t not touch you. It’s all wrong.”

A hand, warm and firm on Hooch’s bare knee was the response. “You’re freezing.” The hand was removed just as quickly as it had come, as Matt disappeared into his own room for his robe

Hooch had never really accustomed himself to one

and came out to fling it over Hooch’s shoulders. It was several years old, slightly threadbare, and smelt of Matt.

Matt was like a dog with a bone, wouldn’t let go. “How?”

Hooch rolled his eyes at Matt’s ‘mothering’, but pulled the robe closed around him anyway. He hadn’t noticed how cold his skin had become until the soft, worn cloth covered it with warmth. He was about to say something about Matt trying to force him to find words he didn’t have, when he inhaled and the familiar scent of Matt surrounded him. Hooch closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “This. This is how,” he said quietly.

Matt took a long look, as though knowing these were already more words than Hooch was really comfortable with, then nodded. He held out his hand. “Come to bed, then.”

Hooch looked up, surprised, but took the offered hand. The robe slid off his shoulders as he stood, but neither man cared, as they walked into the main bedroom.

The bed was still warm, and Matt settled in behind Hooch, pulling the blankets over them both. Matt, the solid presence at his back. Hooch thought that nothing had ever felt so right, as Matt held him closer, body-warmth seeping into him.

Hooch huffed softly. “I’m the little spoon now, huh?”

It was more a rumble in Matt’s chest than an answering chuckle, but the amusement was clear. “I guess. Sleep, then. I’ll take watch.”

Hooch was about to say something in reply, but thought the better of it, and just placed his hand on top of Matt’s that rested on his chest. Enveloped in the familiar warmth and scent, he didn’t even notice when he fell asleep, it was that quick.

* * *

Hooch woke to milky winter sunlight streaming into the room through a gap in the curtains. Matt’s arms still encircling him, Matt’s body pressed all along his back, and the hardness of Matt’s morning wood digging into him.

Matt muttered sleepily and snuggled closer, into the warmth, until he realized that Hooch was awake and deliberately staying still. “Morning,” he yawned, pulling away slightly.

“Does a hand job count as sex, or as helping out a buddy in need?” Hooch murmured.

Matt’s hand on Hooch’s hip stilled. Not moving away but neither moving closer. Clearly thinking, considering Hooch’s question. He finally snorted softly into the nape of Hooch’s neck, and his hand moved forwards, having made a decision. “I’ll let you get away with it this time,” slightly grumbly, but with a smile, as he shifted to allow Hooch to roll over.

Hooch had a small grin on his face as he pushed Matt’s PJ bottoms down. “Honestly, I’m just helping out a buddy in need,” he muttered as his calloused hand closed around Matt’s erection. He knew Matt so well, every stroke was perfectly set. Two men familiar with their bodies, no second guessing necessary.

It didn’t take long before Matt came, bodies close together, his head buried in the juncture between Hooch’s neck and shoulder, teeth scraping against Hooch’s collarbone as he shuddered.

He pulled away as soon as he had his breath back, close enough to see Hooch’s still-dilated eyes in the faint dawn light. “Return the favor?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow in an unconscious imitation, his hand already going to the waistband of Hooch’s shorts.

“No.” Hooch said softly, voice a little hoarse with desire. Gaze fixed on Matt’s flushed face, he gently circled Matt’s wrist with his hand, sticky with cum, and smiled his ghost of a smile. “Not yet. I want the test done first.”

A hesitation, then a nod. They’d been through this before, and Matt bit back the memory of—what was it now—nearly four years ago, back in his old apartment. The same worry from Hooch, but for a far different reason. “‘course,” he murmured, not making an attempt to pull away, instead burying himself further into the bed. It was near-freezing in the room, because they’d forgotten to turn on the apartment’s rarely-used heater.

“You lying in the wet spot?”

Matt snorted, “it’s all over you, and you know it.” He paused and sighed. “We have to talk, you know.”

Hooch wiped the cum off himself with a corner of the duvet, then settled back down. “What about?” Which of the many things they’d never talked about.

“You. Me. Us. This.” Matt exhaled, then elaborated. “What you need as a masochist. What you expect of me, and what I’ve been assuming these last few years. The things we’ve been letting slide because we’ve been getting settled here, into your new job, into the gym, into living together.”

Hooch closed his eyes and let out a soft groan. This was what he had anticipated, and definitely feared, yet he knew he had to do this or he would lose Matt for good this time. He opened his eyes, and his serious expression was proof enough for Matt that Hooch was willing to talk. “It’s too big, Matt, the whole masochism thing. I don’t know where to start; how to explain…how to find the words. Can you break it down?”

Matt nodded slowly, considered asking whether Hooch would be more comfortable getting up, but then realized if there was any place that Hooch was going to be able to talk it was right here, together, in the bed. Thinking, thinking about what it was, until he came to the answer. The selfish one, perhaps, but it was a place to begin. “What is it you don’t think that I can help you with?”

“Do you enjoy inflicting pain? Do you get off humiliating others?” Hooch asked without hesitation.

A start, and a shudder Matt couldn’t repress. “No,” he answered truthfully. He trailed a finger down the length of Hooch’s nose, slightly straighter now than it had been before. The doc, too used to patching up the aftermath of bar fights, had evidently had his own idea of aesthetics.

“It’s a necessity for the really dark stuff.”

“But that’s not all?” Matt asked eventually.

Hooch tried to follow the finger, ending up cross-eyed. “What do you mean?”

The finger disappeared. “It can’t be all the pain and humiliation,” Matt clarified, leaving aside the ‘really dark stuff’ for later, though not too late. He felt anxiety he hadn’t even suspected was there, that he didn’t know where it came from, or why. Jealousy? He had never felt that in all the years that they had been together: knowing he was ‘Central Station’ at first, and then Hooch had come home to him. He’d been convinced that was all he had wanted or expected.

Hooch exhaled softly and audibly. Suddenly, a few things became clear in his mind. Truths he should have noticed for years, but had never looked at. “I knew Dan was jealous for a while, back when he fucked up his knee, but I’m a selfish bastard, because I never thought twice about it. I knew I was only in love with,” he hesitated, realizing he’d never actually said the words, “only with you. I never even wondered what you felt about anything.”

Matt clamped down on the fury that rose automatically, but his anger with Hooch had burnt out, and now they needed to sift through the ashes. “I figured…I figured it was just something you did,” he said at last. “I never thought about it much.” He stopped. Honesty, of course, needed to go both ways. “I didn’t, because it hurt too much. That there was something you thought I couldn’t give you.”

“Fuck.” Hooch exclaimed softly. “Jesus fucking H Christ, I never considered your feelings.” What the fuck had he been doing all those years? Even after he’d claimed he didn’t take Matt for granted anymore? “This is not an excuse, Matt, because there isn’t one, but I’m trying to explain. To me, the time-out somewhere far away, never counted as having
sex
with someone else.” Hooch paused, “it was easy to compartmentalize.”

With anybody else, Matt would have thrown them out of bed. But with Hooch—with all his secrets and the big chunks of his life that were classified—it actually made sense, albeit a painful one. “I guess it was,” he said noncommittally. Their heads were so close on the pillows, it was impossible to turn away. “But it can’t all be pain and humiliation for a week?”

Hooch cupped Matt’s face, letting his thumb stroke gently, trying to take some of the hurt away he could see in the handsome face before him. He’d never felt like a rat bastard before, not even after his last stunt that had got him almost killed. Now, though, he truly realized that he’d deeply hurt the one person who meant more to him than anyone or anything—and all because he’d never bothered to think beyond the obvious and the convenient. “It is, Matt. It is all about that.”

The “Why?” slipped out before Matt could stop it. Much to his dismay, it was almost plaintive.

“I don’t know.” Hooch said softly. “There is something in me which gets wound up tighter and tighter the less I have control over events and the longer it goes on. Back when I was out on missions, the more often I had dodged death or seen destruction, the tenser I got. It was worse when I couldn’t prevent losses.” He hesitated as he tried to explain to Matt what he couldn’t fully understand himself. “It’s like something that eats me up from the inside; like millions of fire ants racing through my guts and crawling under my skin. I feel like I’m about to snap, and I worry I can’t trust myself anymore, that I’ll be unable to function like a human being and instead become someone unhinged, who wreaks havoc because he can; because he can’t bear anymore what he has seen and done.” Hooch took a deep breath, this was taking more out of him than he’d ever imagined. Never before had he tried to put the darkness into words. “It’s a compulsion I cannot escape from, because if I try to, I stop being able to function. I can’t relax, can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t eat, can’t breathe, can’t interact, until I get taken apart and until I break. Until I can’t take it anymore and yet I get taken that one bit further.” Unlike those men a couple of months ago who had taken him too far beyond. “That’s when I can finally let go.” Hooch ended quietly, barely above a murmur.

Silence, then Matt put out his hand to Hooch’s face, mirroring the earlier caress. “I can’t pretend I understand right now,” he said at last, “but thank you for telling me. I’ll try to get it.” His hand went to the back of Hooch’s neck. “That was why you called New Zealand in November,” he knew the answer already, but needed confirmation from Hooch. “You were already past breaking point, and you couldn’t wait the time it took to set something up, the way you usually do.”

Hooch nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve been thinking about how to avoid getting to that point of no return when I don’t care about anything anymore. I won’t do that again, because I do care about you. I need to find a way of never getting to that point in the first place.”

Matt had been thinking about it too, about alternatives. “What did you use to do before?”

“I went to bars or clubs, preferably outside of the US. That tied me over.”

It was as Matt had suspected, and probably not something that was as feasible now with Hooch’s job, but he’d been researching one option, ever since an overheard conversation in the wet room between two of the longest-standing gym members. “Have you ever thought about a members-only club?” he asked. “Something with strict confidentiality rules?”

“Do you think that exists? Here? Not exactly gay central, huh?” Hooch gave a wry grin.

“Well, probably not here.” Matt conceded, trying, and failing to imagine such a place. “But Charlotte, maybe. Raleigh, probably. They’re near enough for a weekend.
Asheville definitely, but that’
s too far.”

“Seems to me you did some research already.” Hooch gently mock-punched Matt’s nose. “But that’s not all, is it?” Echoing Matt’s earlier question.

“No,” no getting away from Hooch, nor the question at the back of his mind. Matt hesitated, “I suppose this is when we talk about other people. Having sex with other people, I guess. What counts, what doesn’t. We’ve never actually talked about this; not at the beginning when it was fun, and not when we moved in here. To be quite frank, I’ve been so busy the last few years with the gym, I don’t think I’d have noticed anyone, even if I’d wanted to.”

“Would you want others?” Hooch smiled slightly. “To me, any of the sex in a ‘scene’ is just part of the whole humiliation and pain infliction that I crave at that time. It’s not sex in my mind, which probably sounds crazy. I don’t care who fucks me when I’m out of my head. The man’s just a body, then. I don’t want to have sex, just sex, with anyone else, but if you do, I don’t mind. Sex is just that.”

Matt gave a thoughtful look. “No, not recently.” Truth be told, with Hooch around and his work, he’d been too exhausted to consider exploring further afield, though there were speculative glances aplenty at the gym. In a bizarre way, what Hooch was saying sort of made sense—once you managed to remember that it was Hooch the crazy bastard saying it.

Hooch’s stomach suddenly rumbled and he cast a wry grin at Matt. “Before I beg you to let me out of this torture-talking-rack to get some breakfast, I want you to know it’s okay if you ever wanted to experiment with me and my masochistic side. Anything and anytime.”