Deliverance - Hooch and Matt's Story (19 page)

“Okay.” Hooch hadn’t taken his eyes off the plate and was swishing the now-cold piece of abandoned chicken repeatedly through the ketchup.

A hand descended onto his wrist. “Stop that.” Matt increased the pressure until Hooch looked up. “I don’t particularly like this.” He said at last. “I hate that I can’t be for you what you need. I hate the thought that someone else is going to be hurting you, humiliating you. But you need it if you’re not going to crack. You know that this is the best—heck, probably the only—option that won’t screw things up.”

“You hate it.” Hooch stated, dark eyes betrayed his turmoil. “How is this going to be anything but screwed up, if you hate it.”

Matt’s turn to look away. “How can I not, when I can’t be what you need?” he said at last, repeating himself. “When it’s taking huge risks in more ways than one? But,” he met the dark, burning eyes again, “we need to work it out.”

Hooch shook his head ever so slightly. “The more you want to be part of this the more you hate it, because you know more. It won’t work. Let me do this alone.”

Matt took a deep breath, knowing that his words were going to wound. “No fucking way. You did it alone last time. I. Am. Not. Letting. You. Do. That. Again.” Each word clearly articulated, Matt’s determination absolute.

“I need to,” Hooch pulled his hand out of Matt’s grip, “need to be alone.”

Matt let him go to his study.

“Well, that went well,” he said to the thin air, as he gathered up the plates and started to clean up.

He washed the dishes slowly, taking far longer than usual. Thinking, and keeping one eye on the closed study door. Never easy living with Hooch, but at least he only retreated further into the apartment, instead of taking off like he had in the early days.

Or as he had more recently, for that matter.

With an eye on the clock, Matt thought for a moment, then turned the oven on, letting it heat, while rummaging in the freezer for the apple pie he knew was there.

Half an hour later, the air was heavy with the scent of cinnamon and cloves when he saw the door to the study crack open, slowly opening further to reveal Hooch with his nose crinkled and sniffing the air.

“There’s some ice-cream to go with it.” Matt said, deliberately casual, feeling like a zoologist trying to lure some rare big cat out from its lair. Not too far from the truth, actually.

Hooch took a step further into the room. “Did you chuck out the chicken?”

“No, it’s in the fridge.” Matt sounded mildly horrified at the thought of throwing away perfectly good food. “I’ve got a couple of bread rolls heating up in there with the pie.” White bread at that, which was usually forbidden at the table, a measure of the lengths he would go to lure Hooch out.

Another step, Hooch looked as if he were a puppet, pulled closer by the string that was the scent of food. “Do you have butter?”

“Yes.” It was already on the kitchen bench, beckoning.

“Salted?” Hooch looked like a kid at Christmas.

Matt nodded. No way was he going to admit to Hooch just how many lonely dinners he’d had of full-fat macaroni and cheese on the couch in front of the television, his mother’s recipe made for feeding hordes of active children.

Hooch padded across to his usual chair, still sniffing the air. He watched Matt heating the food, a pensive look on his face. “Never thought anyone would look after me. Never thought I wouldn’t hate it.”

“Sometimes shit really surprises us,” that was as close as Matt got to philosophy. He opened the oven and took out the tray with the bread rolls, tipped them on a plate and put them in front of Hooch, before going back to the microwave for Hooch’s chicken. He was nowhere near as assured as he sounded, evidenced as he absently took one of the rolls for himself. “You need looking after. I like doing it.”

Hooch didn’t seem to notice Matt’s carb-fuelled faux pas, as he thickly buttered a hot roll. “Am I really that pathetic?”

“No,” Matt’s smile was back at the expression on Hooch’s face. “Just human.”

Hooch was thoughtfully chewing with a fairly blissed out expression on his face at the dripping salty buttery goodness. “Not quite. Seems to me most humans can look after themselves.”

Matt snorted, “if they could, we’d all be hermits. And extinct.” He brushed over the contradiction. “But like it or not, you are one extraordinary human being. You’re not ‘most humans’. You need someone to keep an eye on you, and that’s me.”

“Right.” Hooch cut off a generous piece of chicken and chewed it, before he said anything else. “Is that your way of saying I’m off the ‘normal’ scale?”

Another snort. “Delta are all off the normal scale.” Matt had just a smear of butter on his bread, but he was chewing it thoughtfully. “What sort of normal person would go through what you go through? Much less pass it? Voluntarily, at that?”

Hooch let out a huff of dry amusement. “Yeah, guess you’re right. I can feed myself, though. On roots, hunted wildlife, insects…” He flashed a grin.

Matt wrinkled his nose. “If that’s an offer, I think I’ll keep on doing the cooking, thanks.” He went back to the oven to turn it off and take out the pie so that it could cool slightly.

Hooch kept eating in silence for a while, until he had polished off all of the food. “Been thinking.”

Matt raised an eyebrow, urging Hooch to go on. He took out the tub of ice cream from the fridge, a silent encouragement

“Do you want me back?”

Matt, who had been getting the ice cream scoop out of the drawer, straightened up in surprise. He had certainly not been expecting that. “Yes,” he said, the simple truth, “but you can’t keep running away.”

“Not even into the study?” Hooch kept his gaze fixed on Matt.

Steady, meeting Hooch’s eyes calmly. “It’s only got one door, you can’t fit through the window, and it’s not difficult to lure you out. Retreating into the study I can deal with.”

“If I give you my word I’d never run any further than the study, can I come back?”

Matt’s smile grew as he reached out and grasped Hooch’s hand. “Yes.”

Hooch grinned back, taking the offered hand in a firm grip. “Promise me carbs and butter and ketchup in return?”

Matt laughed, “only in moderation, and as part of a balanced diet.” He let go his grip and went to cut up the pie.

“I can live with that.” Hooch watched Matt scooping the ice cream onto his pie. “I guess that means I’ll have to get back to ‘the talk’ again, huh?”

“Did you honestly ever think I was going to let you off?” Matt put the bowl in front of Hooch. “My mistake in tackling it without feeding you first.”

Hooch sighed, but Matt had put an extra large portion into his bowl, and that somehow eased the dread. “Can’t I just leave it all to you and you tell me what to do and when and where to go?” Adding after a moment’s hesitation, “with you.” He’d accepted that Matt wasn’t going to let go and this was Hooch’s way of admitting that he’d been an ass.

Matt shook his head. “No.” The feeling, almost like a thrill; the rare moments when Hooch was like this with him, like he’d managed to get a panther to walk at his heel, something so dangerous and powerful bending to his will. “This is for you, and we need to find a place that will give you what you need—or as much of it as possible, and where I’m satisfied that you’ll be safe.”

Hooch drew in a deep breath and nodded. He attacked the pie and ice cream to keep himself from dwelling on it too much. “The Raleigh place, then. The private one.”

Matt nodded, though he knew that Hooch probably only saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. “Good, we’ll start there, and move on to the others if it’s not right.”

“Can we change the topic now?”

Matt had to smile at Hooch’s plaintive tone. Some things never changed. “Mandy’s been moping around like a wet rag for the last week, but Jeff’s still coming here at the weekends. Is there something happening on base?” Focusing on someone else other than themselves, and knowing that if Jeff had told Mandy something, it certainly couldn’t be classified.

“Yeah, they’ll be off in a couple weeks. Half a year at least.” Hooch shoveled more half-molten ice-cream into his mouth. “If she’s moping now, she’ll be unbearable soon.”

Matt closed his eyes at the thought of Mandy sulking for months. “Is this what people do when they’re not worried about getting a dishonorable discharge?” it slipped out.

“Openly moping?” Hooch shrugged, “I guess.”

Matt snorted. “We’ll have to put up with it, I suppose. Problem with her being an army brat is that she pretty much knows exactly what could happen, so lying to her about it isn’t going to make her feel any better.”

“I never understood why anyone would want to be lied to.” Hooch scraped the last of his dessert out of the bowl. “Better to face the facts.” He put the spoon down and looked expectantly at Matt. “Is there any more?”

The pie dish with the rest of the pie was easily visible from Hooch’s seat, as was the almost finished ice cream tub, but Matt had to smile at Hooch’s attempt at subtlety in the face of sugar, as he obligingly pushed both over.

Some things, he thought, would never change.

Hooch flashed a grin as thanks, and tackled the remains of the dessert with dedication.

* * *

A week later, after Hooch had settled properly back into the apartment, Matt entered his study.

Hooch looked up from the laptop screen, squinting a little after staring for too long at the screen.

“So, I made an appointment.”

“With whom?” Hooch frowned, trying to remember what kind of appointment Matt was talking about.

“With the club.” Matt said calmly, as though he’d just made an appointment with the dentist.

“The club.” Hooch repeated slowly and entirely unnecessarily. “Which one?”

“The private one in Raleigh, like we said. I’ve checked your diary, you’re off on Monday, so if it doesn’t suit we can have a look at the other two as well.”

“You’re better at organizing than I ever was, getting my team in and out from behind enemy lines.” Hooch cast a wry grin and rubbed his tired eyes. “You got more intel on the club?”

“Mmmm,” Matt made a noise as he waved a few sheets of paper he was holding his hand. “Application form and an introduction to the club, just a one-pager for that. Most of the information comes during the interview and tour of the club.”

“Application form.” Hooch commented. “Of course.” He reached for the laptop and shut its lid before getting up. “Let’s get on with it.”

The first part of the application form was deceptively short, and, after the usual questions—contact details, age, gender, allergies—they came to a halt.

Hooch stared first at the form then at Matt. “What does that mean? ‘Do you consider yourself to be D, M, s(u) or s(a)?’ What the fuck’s all that?”

Matt shook his head in bewilderment. “I’m not entirely sure. I think ‘D’ might stand for…” he trailed off. “No, not something that we should be getting wrong, I don’t think. Leave it blank?”

“Yeah, I put n/a. Makes no fucking sense to me.” Hooch scanned through the rest of the questions. “That one’s easy: ‘men only’.” He glanced across at Matt, “you’re filling it in, too?”

Matt nodded. “When I called, they said partners too, if there was one, whether they were going to join or not.”

“Okay.” The latter made more sense to Hooch. “Did they say anything about preferring couples attending to single attendees?” He put another n/a beside the questions regarding preference of leather, PVC or rubber.

Matt shook his head, “only that they were quite firm that if one of a couple was going to be coming, that the other had to know what was going on. I suppose the last thing they want is an outraged spouse trying to break in and screaming the place down.”

Hooch huffed a short laugh. “Sounds like fun to me, would make the place livelier. So far it sounds as hot as a stockbroker’s canteen.”

“I think,” Matt replied dryly, ticking the box next to ‘leather’ after few moments thought, “that lively is likely to bring the cops, and all sorts of interesting questions that don’t generally get asked in stockbrokers’ canteens.” His pen hesitated at the rest of the page, as he left a great many blank.

“Good point. Score one for you.” Hooch quickly filled in his stats. Height, weight, hair color, eye color…then hesitated. “How hairy or not hairy am I, you think?”

Matt looked up from his contemplation of the same question, where he’d made a mark near, but not at the ‘smooth’ end. “Somewhere in the middle,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “We could take some off, if you feel like it, but putting more on is a bit difficult.”

“Why would I want to take any of my body hair off?” Hooch shrugged. “I shave my balls, that’s enough. Smooth suits you though.” He dutifully put his tick in the middle. “Piercings? Hell, no.”

Matt continued down the page, ticking the appropriate boxes, leaving blank the ones with the incomprehensible acronyms, before finishing. Hooch was still working his way methodically down the last page, so Matt picked up the page where a summary of the facilities and services was listed, and scanned it briefly, eyebrows climbing to his hairline.