Two Man Station Page 15

  Gio was warm, his skin gleaming.

  “Lie down, Jason,” Gio whispered in his ear.

  Jason lay back, and sighed as he felt that skin-on-skin contact he needed. Gio slid a hand up Jason’s chest, trailing his fingers through coarse hair, catching a hardening nipple between his fingers and squeezing it. Jason jerked in surprise.

  Gio smiled at him and leaned down for another kiss. His dick was hard and hot against Jason’s thigh, leaving a sticky trail in the hair there.

  Jason stretched and rolled over.

  Gio slid a hand down his spine. “You good to keep going?”

  “Yeah.” Jason’s body stiffened as Gio’s hand swept over the curve of his arse before sliding into the warm crease of his body. Jesus. It had been so long since he’d had someone do this for him. He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the sensation.

  Gio pressed his fingers against Jason’s tight opening. He slipped a fingertip inside, and Jason shivered.

  It seemed to take forever for Gio to work him open. Jason wasn’t sure how much was Gio being overly careful, or if he was just a bloody tease. Jason shifted impatiently, but it was years before Gio got two fingers inside him, and eons before he began to scissor his fingers, and then crooked them, clearly looking for Jason’s prostate.

  Jason jerked, then shifted restlessly on the bed. “Oh, oh god!”

  Gio gave a satisfied hum and leaned down to bite his shoulder gently.

  Jason flushed, squirming underneath him. The biting thing felt good. Really fucking good. It went straight to Jason’s already-hard dick, trapped underneath him, and he wanted to get his knees under him, get into position, get fucked.

  Gio—a tease, definitely a bloody tease—worked his fingers for a few more minutes, and then moved back onto his knees.

  Jason rolled his shoulders before getting his hands and knees under him. He moved forward then, and rested his forehead on his folded arms. He heard the crinkle of tearing foil, a sound that took him straight back to university, and shivered. Gio curled one hand around Jason’s hip. The other . . . Jason twisted his neck to see Gio gripping his dick tightly and pressing slowly forward.

  Jason remembered to bear down as Gio notched the head of his dick up against Jason’s entrance. There was a moment of resistance, and then Gio’s dick was pushing carefully inside his body.

  Jason groaned.

  Gio echoed him. “Okay?”

  “Yeah.” Jason rocked back against him. Gio was moving at a snail’s pace, pushing in a fraction, drawing back, and pushing in again. “I’m not gonna bloody break.”

  Gio’s huff of breath might have been a laugh, and it warmed Jason. Then Gio thrust forward, and Jason groaned as he felt Gio’s balls come to rest against his arse. He rolled his hips and clenched, and Gio moaned.

  Jason had missed this. Not just the feel of a dick in his arse—although that was pretty bloody incredible—but this letting down of his barriers, this closeness. He’d known he was lonely, but he hadn’t realised how acutely until now, until this moment when the sheer feeling of having someone again, of having Gio, threatened to overwhelm him. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, twisting his fingers in the rumpled sheets.

  Gio withdrew, and then thrust slowly back in. Jason gasped and shuddered as Gio’s dick rode against his prostate. His own dick throbbed, and his balls tightened.

  “Come on,” Jason said, shoving a hand underneath himself and gripping his dick. “Come on, Gio. Faster.”

  Gio picked up the pace. He groaned as Jason clenched around him, and his fingers tightened almost painfully on Jason’s hips.

  “Jason.” His voice cracked as he moved faster. “Jason!”

  Jason gasped for breath as a shiver ran up his spine, and need, hot and urgent, coiled as tight as a spring in his balls. “Gio!”

  Jason’s whole body jerked as he came all over the sheets underneath him, Gio snapping his hips quickly. A moment later Gio was coming too, breath warm and ragged against Jason’s sweat-damp skin.

  Jason sagged onto the mattress, and Gio followed him down. He pressed his mouth against the skin between Jason’s shoulder blades, the tenderness of the gesture making Jason’s breath catch, and then rolled away.

  In the sudden quiet, Jason could only hear the thumping of his heart. He turned over onto his back, resisting the urge to reach for Gio, and watched the blades of the ceiling fan turn slowly above them. What now? Jesus. What the hell was the protocol for a moment like this? For two blokes getting off together.

  He blinked to clear his vision. “Do you want a beer?”

  Gio stretched. He flashed a quick smile that Jason wasn’t sure how to read. “I should probably, ah, clean up and head home.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, swallowing down the unexpected stab of disappointment. That made the most sense. “Sure.”

  After Gio had left, Jason went and emptied the bathroom bin, and then treaded down the stairs to dispose of the contents in the wheelie bin. The last thing he needed was for Taylor to find a used condom. That would open up a whole discussion Jason really wasn’t prepared to have. On so many fucking levels.

  The cat, perched on top of the tool cupboard, regarded him narrowly and lashed its skinny tail.

  On Wednesday afternoon, Jason ran into Patricia Howe in the supermarket.

  “Hello, Sergeant Quinn,” she said with a faint smile.

  Taylor, hanging off the end of the trolley, looked at her curiously.

  “Taylor, go get some cat food.”

  He could see the cogs turning in his kid’s brain, his nosiness battling with the fact that he’d just been given tacit approval to keep the bloody cat. His desire for the cat won out, as Jason had known it would, and he abandoned the trolley and scurried into the next aisle.

  Patricia watched him go. “How old is he?”

  “He’s ten.”

  “Mine are all grown up now.” Patricia fiddled with the gold bracelet she wore. The links were delicate. “My daughter lives in Rockhampton. She’s said I can go and move in with her and her family.”

  “Do you get on?”

  “Oh, yes.” Patricia sighed. “I just don’t know how Brian would take that. He’s been very good these past few weeks. Very kind and respectful. I don’t want to make him upset.”

  Jason nodded. “But what do you want to do?”

  She looked at him, her expression strangely hopeful, as though she was asking for his permission. “I think I’d like to stay with my daughter for a little while.”

  “Then you should do that,” Jason said. “It sounds like she’d be glad to have you.”

  “Thank you.” She laid a hand briefly over his, where it rested on the bar of the trolley. “Thank you, Sergeant Quinn.”

  “If you need a hand,” Jason said, “with anything, call us, okay? It doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of the night.”

  “Thank you,” she repeated, clearing her throat and stepping back. “I won’t take up any more of your time today. I’ll let you get back to your son.”

  Jason glanced towards the end of the aisle to where Taylor was rushing back to him, a triumphant grin on his face and a stack of purple Whiskas tins cradled in his arms.

  It was easy to fall into a habit with Jason. Not a routine exactly—their ever-changing working hours didn’t allow for anything as rigid as a routine—but certainly a habit. They kept things professional at work. But late at night when Taylor was in bed, or in the middle of the day when he was at school, if neither Jason nor Gio was working, then sex was something that happened.

  They didn’t talk about fucking when they worked, and they didn’t talk about work when they fucked.

  “What’s going on with you?” Sandra asked one afternoon, eyeing Gio suspiciously. “You look . . .” She waved a hand in his direction. “Happy.”

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Gio said.

  Sandra narrowed her eyes. “No, it isn’t.”

  Gio rolled his eyes. “Fine. It’s a horrib
le day, and existence is bleak, and we all die alone in the end.”

  Her mouth twitched. “That’s more like it.”

  Sandra wasn’t the only one to notice the change in his attitude.

  The Richmond State School Fete was held on Friday afternoon. Taylor had been excited about it for days, begging for jobs to do around Gio’s house so that he could earn more spending money than Jason had given him. Because they had a cake stall, Gio! A cake stall!

  Gio had paid him five dollars to wash his car.

  Gio could see the famous cake stall from where he was standing with Vicki at the first aid tent. The afternoon was softening very slowly into dusk. Swathes of wispy clouds, turned pink and orange by the sunset, were draped across the sky like the fairy floss every second sticky kid was waving around. There was a queue at the cake stall, and Gio smiled as he saw Taylor dragging Jason by the hand to join the line.

  Jason was on a day off. He looked good in his jeans and a T-shirt, and he smiled at Gio when Gio eyed him up and down as though he knew exactly what Gio was thinking. Gio had to turn away before he laughed.

  “You seem like you’re finally settling in,” Vicki said, raising her voice to be heard over the scratchy PA system. There was some announcement in progress, but Gio had given up trying to understand them. They had become background noise, like the bursts of pop music, the squeals of kids on the dodgy-looking rides nearby, and the hiss of hydraulics and the roar of the motors on the rides themselves.

  “I think I am,” Gio told her.

  “I didn’t think you’d last more than a few weeks, honestly.”

  “Really?” Gio raised his eyebrows.

  Vicki shrugged and tucked a curl behind her ear. “You had the look of a man who was wondering what the fuck he’d done with his life. I thought you’d run screaming back to the southeast corner.”

  “That wasn’t an option.”

  “I guess not.” She knocked him companionably with her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re settling in though.”

  “Me too.”

  A gaggle of small kids approached them, barefoot and scab-kneed. They were familiar, and it took Gio a moment to place them. Janey Ferguson’s kids. He’d first seen them the day Jason had taken him around to Janey’s place and she’d screamed at them to get to school, and he saw them on his regular visits to the Fergusons’ house whenever the neighbours had got tired of the screaming matches and called the police.

  “I’ve got lollipops,” Vicki said, “and he’s got stickers. Who wants one?”

  The kids darted forward eagerly, and Gio handed out some of the Clancy Koala stickers he’d found in the storeroom at the station. The kids moved on again.

  “Those poor kids,” Vicki said, clicking her tongue.

  They were exactly the sort of kids who would fall through the cracks. Their parents were caught in a cycle of abuse that neither of them seemed capable of walking away from, and what sort of environment was that to raise kids in? Evidently not one bad enough for the Department of Child Safety to intervene, because Gio had seen the number of notifications that had been forwarded to them and not actioned. Because there were always kids who needed more immediate help. That was the kicker.

  “Gio! Vicki!” Taylor ran up towards him, face flushed. “I got lamingtons! Want one?”

  “Oooh!” Vicki leaned forward to take one. She lifted it off the cardboard tray in a shower of coconut, and raised it in a toast in Jason’s direction. Jason was a few steps behind Taylor. “Your dad’s raised you right, Taylor!”

  “Uh-huh,” Jason agreed dryly. “Always offer the ladies cakes.”

  “I’m a cheap date,” Vicki said through a mouthful of lamington.

  Taylor presented the tray to Gio.

  Gio peeled the cling wrap back and carefully eased a lamington free. “Thanks, Taylor.”

  “After I eat one of these I’m going to meet Kane and we’re going to the haunted house.” Taylor made a face. “It’s not a real house. It’s the year-three classroom.”

  “I’m sure it’s horrifying in its own way,” Jason told him.

  Gio grinned. He set his lamington down on top of one of the campstools Vicki had set up, and peeled a Clancy Koala sticker off the roll. He pressed it against Taylor’s shirt. Taylor laughed, so Gio stuck another one on him, and then another one, and another.

  “There,” he said. “Perfect.”

  “Dad, tell Gio to stop picking on me!”

  “What?” Jason asked. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Daaad!” Taylor shoved the rest of his lamingtons into Jason’s hands. “I’m going to the haunted house now!”

  He rushed off, covered in Clancy Koala stickers.

  Gio caught Jason’s gaze and smiled. Around them, the fete continued into the night.

  There were a hundred things to learn in Richmond that Gio wouldn’t have been exposed to at a bigger station. Driver testing was one of them. There was no Queensland Transport in Richmond, or within four hundred kilometres, so on a Tuesday morning, Gio found himself climbing into a beaten-up old ute with an incredibly nervous seventeen-year-old L-Plater at the wheel.

  Gio checked his paperwork. “Isabella, right?”

  The girl nodded and clenched the steering wheel tightly. She hadn’t even started the car yet.

  Her address was a station some way out of town. Gio relaxed a little at that. He had no doubt this girl had been driving since the time she could reach the pedals.

  “Okay, let’s head around the block first,” Gio said. “And hey, this is my first time giving a driving test, so go easy on me, alright?”

  She gave him a shaky smile and peeled her fingers off the steering wheel long enough to turn the ignition. She eased them out onto the road.

  “Okay, turn right up here,” Gio said.

  “I’m not good on right turns!”

  “You’re doing fine,” he assured her. There wasn’t much traffic around. “It took me three times to pass my test.”

  She glanced at him, disbelief written on her face.

  Of course, doing his test in Brisbane had been a lot more stressful than this. For starters, every start had been a fucking hill start. Richmond didn’t even have a hill. Or a roundabout. Or traffic lights. Gio was pretty sure the only tricky manoeuvre he had to throw at Isabella was a reverse parallel park.

  They tried that outside a house in Victoria Street, and somehow ended up at least two metres from the gutter.

  “I don’t know how that happened!” Isabella looked on the verge of tears.

  “Let’s try it again,” Gio suggested.

  Half an hour later, back at the station, Isabella did burst into tears when Gio told her he was going to pass her despite her parallel park.

  “You went easy on her, didn’t you?” Sandra asked, eyebrows arched, when he’d finally sent Isabella on her way with her documentation to send to Queensland Transport.

  He shrugged and didn’t answer.

  “Huh,” Sandra said, and brought him a cup of tea without asking.

  Maybe he was finally getting the hang of this country copper business after all.

  Gio went jogging most mornings, following the curve of the river. Early enough to catch the dawn, to see the moment the sky lit up in brilliant colour, and the birds woke up. The air smelled of eucalypts, and the sweet powdery pollen of the silver wattles settled like dust on his skin. It was beautiful when the sun rose, and with every step Gio took, every kilometre he ran, it felt like he was finding his feet again at last.

  It felt good.

  He tried to run for at least thirty minutes every day, but sometimes pushed it out to closer to an hour, depending on what time he had to start work. Today he wasn’t working until two, so he aimed for an hour.

  He checked his watch when he reached the cluster of red gums that marked the farthest extent he usually ran, and then turned back towards home.

  His muscles were aching when he climbed the front steps and let himself into his house. He sho
wered, threw a load of washing on, and made his first coffee of the day. He wondered if Jason was up yet. Wondered what mornings looked like in his house, with Taylor thrown into the mix. Gio pushed his faint sense of wistfulness away. What he and Jason had was casual, and that was fine. He told himself repeatedly that it was fine, and that he didn’t need or want more. Imagining himself eating breakfast with Jason and Taylor and fitting into their everyday lives weren’t exactly the sort of fantasies Gio had expected to be indulging in when he’d first noticed Jason was a good-looking guy, but then he hadn’t expected to like Jason so much. He hadn’t expected to find himself hanging on every smile.

  Gio was sitting on his kitchen bench, a bowl of muesli beside him, when his phone rang. He set his coffee down and accepted the call.

  “Sophie?”

  “Hey. You’re not at work, are you?”

  “No. I just got back from a run.”

  “Is that all you do there? Run and work?”

  “It’s a step up from just working.”

  She hummed. “Do you have any friends yet?”

  “I do, actually.”

  “Friends, or friends?” His silence answered for him. “Gio?”

  “I’ve got friends,” Gio said. “I’ve also got an arrangement, which is none of your business.”

  “Gio!”

  “Save the outrage,” he said. “You were the one who told me to do it, remember?”

  “Yeah, I suggested a friend or a hobby.” She clicked her tongue. “Who is this guy anyway?”

  “He’s um . . .” Gio had no idea why he lowered his voice. “My sergeant.”

  “You’re sleeping with your sergeant? Jesus! You don’t take long on the rebound do you?”

  Gio was sorry he’d mentioned it at all, but Sophie had been needling him about having no social life, and how he needed to put himself out there, and every time he talked to her it was only about his job and that wasn’t healthy, Gio, and it had just spilled out. “You were the one who told me to find someone!”

  “As if this isn’t a disaster waiting to happen!” Her breath huffed down the phone. “I mean, Pete was the one, and now—”