Del’s place of work is a front for an underground surgery. One of their new patrons doesn’t care: he just wants his coffee.
Romance, erotica, humour, and a little bit of crime.
Content warnings: explicit sex, violence, mild gore and injury
It was cold in the basement.
Not colder, Del didn’t think, than most basements were, but he’d never been in a basement before this one, and he didn’t really know. It was to do with being underground, and well-ventilated, too — Doc Hanif said that operating rooms were often a little colder than other rooms in a hospital, to make sure that surgeons kept cool even working under pressure.
The basement’s walls were plastered in white and the floor was tiled a sort of wan beige colour, pale enough that blood showed up on it very obviously.
When Del had first started working here, about five years ago, it had all been one room, high-ceilinged, with a few powerful lamps on stands, like floodlamps. Last year, after the doc had done a job for Del’s old boss, who laundered his money through construction — his daughter had gotten stabbed and had needed a kidney transplant without any questions asked — he’d done some work in the room.
Now, the basement had two floors, although the second floor was a kind of crawl space and Del wasn’t allowed to go into it all the way, because only the walkway had full steel reinforcement instead of beams. The guy that had put it in had taken one look at him and said he couldn’t guarantee Del wouldn’t go right through the floor of it.
The ground — or, below ground, but Del didn’t think that counted as funny — floor was separated into three spaces. Two big rooms underneath what the construction guys had built, and a kind of waiting room at the base of where the two sets of stairs met, one going up into the café’s pantry, the other opening into one of the storage rooms in the vet.
Del stood now with his arms crossed loosely across his chest, his shoulders against the wall, at the foot of these two stairways, and watched Doc Hanif read through her docket for today.
She was a little woman, stout but barely five feet high, and she wore — like she did every day, even though she ended up scrubbing in six days out of seven — a collared shirt and suit trousers underneath her white coat. She studied the docket intensely, her dark brows furrowed together, and when a dog started barking in the backroom upstairs, she swore under her breath in Urdu, glaring up at the ceiling.
“Wish they’d put it down,” she said.
“I think they’d be out of a job if they went around doing stuff like that,” said Del. “Anyway, it’s that Rhodesian Ridgeback with diabetes. You’d cry if you had to be back in the vet’s every few weeks.”
“It’s not the diabetes that brings him back here,” she said. “That dog is accident prone. He keeps eating things he shouldn’t, and falling on walks, and skidding on ice.”
“I think we’d be out of job if there were no accidents,” said Del.
“Bah,” said Doc Hanif. “Like you help.”
“Like I help, sure,” said Del. “Six bonuses you’ve paid me this year so far, Doc — six times you’ve needed me to scrub in and assist when Ben wasn’t available.”
“Only because Ghita chose to have a baby,” said Doc Hanif gruffly. “She’ll be back in March.”
“And for now, I promise I won’t get pregnant any time soon,” said Del. “Pinky swear.”
Hanif looked up at him with a scowl on her face. She wore purple lipstick, which Del had always thought was a pretty funny thing, given that everything else Doc Hanif said and did was so conservative and understated.
Well — Except for the job, maybe.
“This is all for today?” asked the doc suspiciously. “Only two surgery consultations?”
“You know,” said Del, “every time you complain that our schedule is thin, we end up having to suddenly sew somebody’s hand back on in the middle of the day.”
“Do you ever consider,” replied Doc Hanif, expression blank, “that it is you telling me that I have cursed the day that curses the day, and not me saying that it is quiet?”
Del grinned. “It’s Sunday,” he said idly. “We always gets walk-ins on Sunday.”
Doc Hanif sighed and moved across the room, setting the clipboard down on her desk. “Go,” she said. “Send Ben down when he arrives.”
“Yes, Doc,” Del said and jogged up the stairs, stepping into the backroom of the café.
He’d wanted to be a nurse, growing up — or, he wanted to be a doctor, and then all his teachers pointed out he’d never have the grades, so he’d thought he’d be a nurse, but it turned out he didn’t have the grades for that, either.
Doc Hanif didn’t care about that . He’d done a first aid course on the company dime when he’d been a labourer, before he’d fucked his shoulder, and on top of the stuff he learned from Doc Hanif and her surgical assistants, she sent him on courses to learn other stuff here and there. He knew the basic stuff, knew how to do CPR, how to work the defib, how to intubate someone, how to give an injection, how to set up the drip. He couldn’t medicate most stuff off the top of his head, but he always made sure to listen closely when she needed him to scrub in or help downstairs, and hey, it would never be official, but he was kind of a nurse now, so who needed a degree?
Doctor Hanif, of course, had her degree, but before she’d started doing this, she’d been a GP, and Del was pretty sure that the GMC wouldn’t be keen to license this kind of operation.
When his old boss had gotten him the job — it had been his daughter’s fault Del had wrenched his shoulder, grabbing her before she could go through a loose board in the scaffold she wasn’t meant to be on, and Gaz had felt bad — it had just been to be the face in the café, and be a bit of muscle on the door for when the doc needed it.
Del was fucking scary to look at and he knew it, and that had been the case even with his arm in a sling so he couldn’t move his shoulder. Doc Hanif had agreed to take him on based off that — when he’d said he knew first aid and that he’d wanted to be a nurse, she’d been fucking delighted, although it hadn’t showed in her face. It never did : she wasn’t that kind of woman.
They ordered in a lot of medical stuff through the vet’s, and that stuff never raised an eyebrow, and then the more specific human medication and shit, as well as the occasional kidney, were normally smuggled in with the café inventory.
Del had thought, when he’d first started, that the café would have people in and out all the time, but that wasn’t the case at all. Where the vet had a big frosted window that opened out onto the other street, the café had a tiny window that opened into the little alleyway between this building and the next one, and it had a big, brown wooden door no one ever looked twice at, the sort that looked as though it might just belong to a flat rather than a store or business.
The alleyway didn’t have any lights in it, barely had enough space for a small car to squeeze through, and even when people took it as an ill-advised shortcut, next to no one tried the café — and the ones that did push the door open took one look at the four grotty plastic tables and mismatched chairs, the dim lights, and the big, scowling guy behind the counter, and fucked off again.
They had a few hot plates set up, a toaster, a microwave, but Del only ever used them to cook himself lunch when he didn’t have time to walk out to get something, and most of the time, they weren’t even plugged in. The kettle got a good bit of use, but only for when people wanted a cup of tea when they were waiting for their mate to come out of surgery downstairs, and most of the time, they didn’t want a cup of tea anyway — they wanted vodka, whiskey, or gin, which he kept underneath the counter.
The café was just an entrance, really, and a place to keep excess people without Doc Hanif having to look at them — there was a goods lift for taking people down when they were on a gurney, accessible from alley, for emergencies, and even then, people still had to call ahead for Del to operate it.
What Del typically didn’t have, especially at six in the morning on a Sunday when he was about to start doing stock take, was a little man sitting at the counter beside the till.
Del took a moment to consider this, lingering in the doorway from the café’s backroom. He was sat up on one of the battered bar stools, but Del could see from the guy had his legs underneath him, barely even touching the footrest, that he probably wasn’t much taller than Doc Hanif. He was wearing a grey suit and had a mess of uncombed hair, one elbow resting on the counter, his head leaned on it, as he stared down at his tablet, which was lighting up his face.
The overheard lights weren’t even fucking on.
Del wondered if this was some kind of new fucking intimidation tactic from someone the doc had refused help to, sending a miniature god damn accountant-looking bloke, and flicked the switches beside him.
With a quiet buzz of humming electricity, the lights flickered on in the café, first the ones over the tables, and then the ones over the counter — he turned the switch on for the light in the window, but that was just habit. The bulb in that had died three years ago, and he’d never bothered to switch it out for a fresh one.
The guy at the counter didn’t even look up, although he leaned about an inch or two back from his screen, which he’d been leaned in so close to a second ago his nose was almost brushing it.
“No wonder you need glasses, staring at the screen like that,” said Del as he stepped behind the counter. There was one of them half-counter things in it, that you could click into place to finish the bar, but he never put it down.
Up closer, he could get a good look at the accountant bloke’s face.
He had a very square jaw and a cleft chin, and was so thin he looked gaunt, stubble growing messily on his face and neck and exaggerating the shadows made by the hollows of his cheekbones. His eyes, which were heavily lidded and thickly shadowed, were a dark green-brown, and although his hair was cut short, it was thick and curly with bits of grey in it — didn’t look as if it had ever seen a comb in the guy’s life.
When Del stood directly in front of him, leaning over the counter a little and into his light, the guy looked up. He looked tired — not just from the shadowing around his eyes, but with a kind of defocused gaze, and he didn’t make eye contact. He just sort of looked at Del’s face and then averted his gaze again.
“Black coffee,” the guy said. “Large.”
“Excuse me?” asked Del. He put a lot of attitude in it, emphasising the second syllable, and he watched the accountant guy’s eyes flicker around behind the wide lenses of his glasses, watched his lips move silently. Once again, he looked up at Del’s face and then looked away again.
“Um,” he said, a little more meekly. “Please?”
Del leaned back from the counter, staring at the guy. “What?”
“Oh, you’re not gonna make me do that Italian thing, are you?” the guy asked anxiously, his fingers drumming a pattern on the counter, the other one clutching tightly at the side of his tablet. Del could see the tablet had an Excel sheet open on it, and the guy had some scattered documents underneath his elbows. “I thought this place wouldn’t do that — I wasn’t even sure if you were open, your hours say from seven, but the door wasn’t locked — ”
“So you just walked right in? Opening hours don’t mean anything to you?” Del asked. “Lights were off, mate.”
The guy’s mouth was open for a few seconds, and then he said, slowly, “Were they?”
Del considered himself a good judge of character. He could normally tell at a glance who was going to get ugly, who was going to try and start a fight, who was about to start crying and needed to be treated gentle — and Del, Del could do gentle.
This guy?
Well.
If he wasn’t stupid, he was oblivious.
Del flicked on the kettle.
“Never seen you in here before,” said Del. “What’s your name?”
The accountant wrinkled his nose slightly, like he hadn’t been expecting small talk and was frustrated to have encouraged some. “Uh, Moore,” he said. He had a very quiet voice — he talked crisply, deliberately, but there wasn’t much volume in it, and Del knew that if other people were in here, if there was other noise, he’d probably struggle to understand him. “I moved in. Friday. Upstairs.”
“You’re in the apartments upstairs?”
“Uh huh.”
“Top or bottom?”
“Um,” said Moore. “Sixth floor.”
“Those are fucking nice apartments,” said Del. “Cushty. You an accountant?”
“I’m an, an administrative director,” Moore said quietly. “At a bank.”
“You’re a banker?”
“N — No, no, I just, um, I manage in-house facilities, our postal management, branch operations, I, I co-ordinate, um — Well, I, I — ”
“You administrate,” said Del.
Moore let out a breathless sound of relief, and gave a nod of his head. He talked nervously, but somehow, Del got the impression he was nervous about talking, not about Del, which was a real fucking change to the usual — Del didn’t like it. It set his teeth on edge.
The kettle clicked, and after dropping a tea bag into his own mug, he spooned some instant coffee into another mug, and stirred it until it went a sort of dark, murky brown.
He put it, still steaming, in front of the admin, who picked it up, sipped it, and hissed in pain.
“It’s hot,” said Del. “You just saw me pour the fucking kettle.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Moore irritably. He blew heavily on the surface of the coffee, and then took another sip, and then hissed in pain again. Del watched him repeat this motion a few times, somewhere between fascinated and horrified, until the coffee cooled enough that it stopped burning his tongue.
Moore perked up, visibly, with the coffee — his face seemed more awake, his gaze more active, but he didn’t say another thing to Del. He returned to his weird, curved in position, one of his hands fisting in his own hair, and went back to staring at his tablet screen, taking sips from his coffee now and then.
Del didn’t want to take his eyes off the little guy to do his stock take, and instead, occupied himself with polishing the counter tops, the tables, counting the money in the till, even though he knew exactly how much money was in it — sixty-four quid and fourteen pence — because that money had been in the till since he’d started here.
At six forty-five on the dot, a little alarm went off on the admin’s tablet, and he turned it off, packed his shit into his brown leather briefcase, and went to the door. Del watched him, interested, as he froze in front of the door, turning back to look at him.
The admin walked back — he was short, had had to climb down awkwardly from the stool, and at something like five foot three, five foot four, his head was in line with Del’s chest. He had a very particular gait, took a lot of short little steps with quiet taps of his brown leather shoes — and came to stand beside the counter again.
“I didn’t pay you,” he said — he said this, Del felt, to the counter more than to Del himself, his gaze remaining pointed downward.
“Oh, right,” Del said, watching him take a wallet — also brown leather, the same brown leather — out of the left pocket of his suit jacket.
They stood there for a few seconds, him and the admin, the admin with his wallet in hand, Del with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Um,” said Moore. “How… How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Del. How the fuck much did coffee cost? He never bought coffee. “Uh, two quid.”
Moore didn’t argue, didn’t seem surprised — but then, that wasn’t exactly a fucking indicator one way or the other, was it? He fished a two pound coin out of his wallet and placed it on the counter.
He placed his wallet into his pocket, and then, for a little while longer, he stood there rigid with his hands by his sides, still staring down at the counter. Del thought he was going to say something as he took the coin, but he didn’t — he turned neatly around on his heel, and walked out of the door.
“Huh,” said Del, and started his stock take.
The next morning, Del unlocked the door at six AM, because Moore was standing on their doorstep, standing in his funny little folded-in way, his head slightly tipped forward, his briefcase hugged against his chest, his shoulders hunched.
“The opening hours say seven,” said Del.
Moore’s lip twisted into a tiny, pinched little frown, a furrow appearing between his brows as his forehead wrinkled. He looked up at Del and said, with a slight note of defiance, “You were open yesterday at six.”
“The door was open yesterday at six.”
Moore’s scowl deepened.
There was something funny about the little man, though, something that Del found — not endearing, that was the wrong thing to call it, and intriguing made it sound far more exciting than it was. Regardless of what he might call it, he wanted to see more, and so he took a step back and let the administrator inside.
He walked up to the counter with his funny little rapid-tap step, climbed up onto the stool, arranged his papers and his tablet, and hunched over to read just like he had yesterday.
At least the lights were on this morning.
Del poured the admin a coffee.
It was a little busier this morning than others, and as Moore sat with his coffee for the next forty-five minutes, sipping at it and pouring over his work, a few people filtered past him — Charlie G from their med supplies company, who brought in some of the heavy stuff in these custom crates that looked like pallets of cola; Deepanshu from their debtors’ agency, dropping in their reports like he usually did on a Monday morning; a tall woman Del had never gotten the name of but was usually the one who delivered them organs when they were doing transplants and patients couldn’t source them themselves.
Del felt that perhaps his not being told her name was on purpose.
It was only a kidney, but he still hesitated taking a few steps away from Moore to disappear down into the basement. He watched him on the camera as he went down the steps and handed it off to Ben, who wasn’t normally in this early and was still sleepily rubbing at his eye.
Guy barely moved a muscle, except to scroll down on his screen.
When Del walked back upstairs, he looked up at him, and hopefully held up his coffee mug for a refill.
At six forty-five, his alarm went off, he packed his shit up, he left his four quid on the counter, and he left. Del watched after him, bemused, and shook his head as he continued on with paperwork for the day.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday all saw the little man walk in at six and leave at six forty-five. On Saturday, there was no sign of him, and not on Sunday, neither — the first time, Del suspected, had been just a fluke.
There had to be something wrong with him.
Once he got really into his paperwork, it was like everything else was cut off, like he was focused entirely on the little screen or the papers in his hands and the rest of the café, the rest of the fucking universe, ceased to exist.
Something clattered and fell over? No reaction. Someone came in gasping, leaking blood out of whatever new orifice someone had cut into them, and begging for Del to get them help? Little prick didn’t even move.
The only thing that would really break him out was when he went to take one of his sips of coffee — something he did automatically, like he was on autopilot or programmed for it — and found that his mug was empty, or if Del waved his hand in front of his face, between him and the screen of his tablet — and even then, that once hadn’t really worked, and he’d had to press the lock button to actually get him to look up.
Del wanted to believe it was an act, that it was just a piss take or something, or more likely — because what kind of fucking joke was this? — that he was a spy or an insert or some cunt’s hired hand for revenge on the doc, but…
Well.
Looking at him, five foot three and plump in his little grey suits, it was difficult to believe he was capable of hurting anybody unless he was shooting for their wallet, or at least, their accounts sheet.
He didn’t talk much in the beginning, Moore, but some days he’d be willing to chat for five minutes before he zoomed into the exciting world of the tiny numbers on his tablet. Neither he nor Del were good at small talk, but Del couldn’t tell if Moore was aware of this or not.
Moore had moved over here for his job, which was a jump up from his previous position but very enjoyable, because he actually loved his job, although Del could see he had a streak of perfectionism through him — it was visible in his hair, where it was prematurely greying, and the worry lines on his brow and at the corners of his eyes. He was frightened of dogs, and while he respected cats, he found their movements to be suspicious and unpredictable — that phrasing had been committed to Del’s memory whether he liked it or not.
All of the leather things he had were brown — his watch strap, his shoes, his briefcase — because he felt that black leather was “too flashy”. He had three different suits in slightly different shades of dark grey, and a pin-striped one for Fridays.
“It’s more relaxed,” he had told Del when he had asked about it, and then looked down at himself with doubt writ on his face. “Do you think it’s too casual?”
Del hadn’t even been able to laugh. He’d just sort of stared at him, and then poured him another coffee to keep from having to address it.
Moore was thirty-two years old; he liked astronomy and went for “exciting jaunts” with his telescope when the opportunity arose; he was allergic to bee stings and to penicillin; when anxious, which was almost always, he used to bite his nails, and he was trying to counter this bad habit by putting on a coat of varnish that made them taste foul.
Del never directly asked him the questions that most of these statements were in answer to — if pressed or in the mood to talk, Moore just sort of rattled off facts about himself, and when it transpired that Del wasn’t going to reciprocate, he would nervously put himself back to his tablet.
It wasn’t that Del was trying to make him uncomfortable — for such a weird little man, he actually liked Moore, because he was always direct and never demanding or unkind, just forgot his fucking manners all the time, but remembered them once glowered at.
It was just that Moore’s style of conversation took a little getting used to, and he needed time to adjust.
“I have been decorating my flat,” said Moore, slightly loudly, loudly enough that he made himself wince at the echo it made in the empty café. It was two minutes past six, and Del was leaning back against the other counter, sipping his morning cocoa as Moore sipped at his cup of coffee, which was not too hot today. Del had gotten into the habit of brewing the stuff up about ten minutes before he arrived to keep from having to watch him burn his tongue trying to drink it.
Moore’s lips were pressed together, and he was staring slightly past Del, but he kept glancing at Del’s face and then looking away again. He didn’t like direct eye contact or at least, he didn’t like to sustain it for a while — it seemed to make him uncomfortable, and Del didn’t mind that at all.
“That bother you?” asked Del.
Moore, having been invited to speak further, uncrumpled a little.
His posture fucking sucked, and Del had to wonder how tight and twisted his muscles were under that suit — Moore was plump, enough that he filled out his suits in a way that Del found pretty fucking appealing, but even when Moore walked away and Del could see how surprisingly fat his arse was packed into his suit trousers, Del could barely even think of fucking him. He’d just get distracted wondering what Moore would look like if someone worked some of the many, many kinks out of his back and trained him out of curling in on himself whenever he sat down.
“I find it stressful,” said Moore, pressing his fingertips against the surface of the counter and rocking forward slightly, his toes probably barely reaching the footrest underneath his stool. “You’re meant to be able to pick out what furniture goes together and arrange it attractively and know what complements the shape of the room or your wallpaper and there’s no meaningful way to quantify what is attractive and what isn’t.”
Del took this in. As he tried to process it, tried to think up how to respond, he felt bad for being so slow, because it was like someone was turning a fucking pin in Moore’s tensed up back, and Del could almost see him drawing up tighter and tighter in front of him.
“I think,” said Del, “you’re just meant to pick what you like. Me and my roommates have a sofa bed in the living room, but it doesn’t match the other sofa or the armchair. We just get what’s cheap and decent — but the shit in my room, I got it ’cause I liked it. Waterbed. Great for sex.”
“Ugh,” Moore said, wrinkling his nose, and Del laughed, thinking he was disgusted that Del had mentioned sex, but the admin went on, “what about the noise?”
“The noise?” Del repeated.
“Can’t you hear it?” Moore asked, looking horrified. “Underneath you, the water?”
“Nah, not really,” Del said. “You can’t hear it sloshing or anything — you kinda pack the whole mattress with water, so you don’t hear a noise when you move on it. There’s no air inside.”
Moore looked intrigued, but like he was trying not to show it.
“Isn’t it cold?”
“S’got a heater.”
Moore opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked intrigued, interested, and Del wondered how he’d react if Del offered to put him in it, or if Del said something crass enough to get him to blush or bluster.
Before he could, Moore said, “I have a hard mattress. I bought a memory foam topper because it was in a catalogue but it made me feel sick.”
“They’re not for everyone,” said Del, absently polishing a mug. “I don’t like them either — I’m too big for ’em, really.”
“Well,” said Moore. “I don’t think that’s my problem.”
Del gave Moore a very cold look, and Moore crumpled up like a slinky that had fallen to the bottom of the stairs, his head all but disappearing into his neck. “Because I’m short,” he said, looking at Del’s chest.
“Taking the piss, Moore,” said Del good-naturedly, dropping the hard look in his eyes, and Moore slowly uncrumpled again. “What d’you mean, you bought it ’cause it was in a catalogue?”
“I buy everything out of the catalogue,” said Moore.
“You got all them sleek electronics and you can’t make an online order?”
Moore’s lips moved, repeating the question silently to himself, his brow deeply furrowed.
“I made the order online,” he said, after a minute or so. “I mean… The pictures. In the catalogues. I just copy those.”
“What?”
“I told you, I find it stressful, and I don’t know what goes with what,” Moore said defensively. “So I just picked up some catalogues and I sort of searched through the bedrooms and bathrooms and living rooms until I found ones that looked serviceable, and then I ordered everything in the photos, and arranged it just so.”
Del stared at Moore.
“You know,” Del said, “sometimes I can’t decide if you’re the smartest man I’ve ever met or the stupidest one.”
“Oh,” said Moore, and considered this a moment. “Thank you?”
Everyone got into the habit of greeting Moore, if they tended to be around that early in the morning. Charlie G and Deepanshu had taken to greeting him by name, and although Moore never verbally responded, he tended to wave one hand at them. He never looked up from his tablet to do this, and Del had his doubts as to whether he actually heard them or if it was just some sort of reflexive response.
Doc Hanif had seen him twice, and each time had peered at him, then looked at Del askance, but Del always just shrugged, and the doc never asked any further questions.
One morning, when Del was working with red stains down his apron, still frazzled because he’d just had to carry a bloke struggling to keep his blood on the inside of his neck rather than the outside out of the parking bay, and hadn’t yet changed it, Moore said, “May I have some eggs?”
“What?” asked Del, turning to stare at him.
It was a Tuesday, and three guys were sitting around a table and playing poker, waiting for their gambling buddy’s anaesthetic to wear off so that they could take him home — he’d been doing a magic trick and had managed to get a fucking poker chip lodged in his throat.
Moore never seemed to see the difference in other people being in the café and not, and nor did he, apparently, see the blood streaked down Del’s apron or stuck to his wrists, because he’d washed his hands in too much of a hurry and hadn’t caught the blood staining his forearms.
“Eggs,” said Moore. “Toast?”
Del stared at him, and Moore bit his lip.
“Please,” he added.
“I — Yeah,” said Del, and walked away. “Fine.”
Fifteen minutes later, when Moore was served rubbery scrambled eggs — Del had meant to fry them, but he’d fucked both of the yolks, and had just scraped them into being scrambled instead — on burnt toast — the toaster had seemed confused about being expected to toast something — on a chipped plate, he didn’t even bat an eyelid.
He just ate them, mindlessly, not looking up from his work.
Was it wrong to find that hot?
What was truly remarkable, it seemed to Del, was how Moore didn’t look up even on the Thursday a gunshot rang out and Del had to go downstairs to twist the gun out of a hopped up mob guy’s hand, pulling his arm out of its socket when he kept making trouble over it.
When he came back up, Moore looked up at him and said, “I was wondering where you were. Could I have — ”
Del was already pouring him more coffee, and it made Moore do a nice little smile that Del liked the look of.
He liked the look of most of Moore, except for the posture.
It was a Monday morning, a few months after Moore had moved in upstairs, that Del was on the phone.
“You can source your own liver if you want,” he said, “but if you do that and it’s not compatible when she does the partial transplant, we won’t take responsibility for it. There’s only so fucking much the immunosuppressants can do.”
“More coffee?” asked Moore, and Del held the kettle up, scowling at him until he added, “Please.”
“That’s not my problem, mate,” said Del into the phone as he poured. “I’ve given you the information, you can be a stupid prick about it or you can pay extra for us to source a fucking liver for you. We don’t set the market value, but a lot of the money is in getting the right liver, rather than something that’ll kill you three months down the line instead of now.”
The dickhead at the other end swore profusely and hung up, and Del dropped the phone back into its cradle.
Moore was scowling down at his page, leaning back in his seat like a pop-up unfolding, and looking between the sheet on his tablet and the one printed out beside it.
Del thought at first that for once, Moore had actually taken in what he’d heard Del talk about on the phone, but Moore’s brow was very heavily furrowed, his shoulders back.
“Something wrong?” asked Del.
“Yes,” said Moore seriously. “There’s a discrepancy.”
“What, didn’t carry the one?”
“No,” said Moore slowly, opening a new tab on his web browser and bringing up another spread sheet, comparing it to the page. All the rows of numbers looked the same to him, but Moore looked… Well. Del had never seen Moore look quite like this, his tired eyes wide, his lips twisted into a baffled scowl. “It’s too consistent to be from one error,” he said slowly. “I always like to have a paper copy of last quarter’s figures to compare, and this,” he tapped on the paper copy with a slightly abused — but no longer bitten to the quick — fingernail, “is different to the download copy.”
“So they updated it,” said Del, feeling a sort of twist in his stomach.
“This is only a few pounds here and there,” Del said, “but added altogether it’s thousands.”
“You can’t possibly add all that up just looking,” said Del.
“I certainly can. What’s more it’s — it’s regular, too, point seven percent, point five percent, point seven percent, point three, point five, point seven, point three — ”
“Probably just updated it,” Del said again.
“I doubt it,” was the scowling response. “I printed this last night.”
It was, as far as distractions went, a pretty weak one on Del’s part, but he’d grown fond of Moore’s neat, fussy little ways, and maybe it was just his fucking bias, but in his experience, little pricks like him that noticed big cases of embezzlement got their fucking numbers wiped off the sheet.
He reached across the table, fisted his hand in Moore’s thick, curly hair and hauled him half up and out of his chair.
Moore let out a sharp noise of surprise, but it was muffled when Del licked his way into Moore’s mouth, kissing him hard. Quite predictably, he tasted like cheap coffee, but he went sort of pliable and melted in Del’s hand, leaning into Del over the counter, and when his little tablet went off and he pulled back, he was breathing heavily and staring up at Del with wide eyes.
“I have to,” he said breathlessly, “I have to, um, I have to… go.”
“Can I ask you something, Moore?” Del asked, not letting go of his grip on Moore’s hair.
“I’m going to — I’m going to be late, um, I — ”
“Do you know it’s a bank holiday?”
Moore, his lips a little shiny with spit and fat from being kissed, blinked at Del, and then stared down at his tablet, his lips moving silently. Del was fucking exhausted from his night shift, but on Friday, Moore had slipped into the café in a neat little cardigan, a shirt, and a pair of dark blue trousers, and even through his fatigue, Del had clocked that he was wearing a suit instead of casual clothes, and not even his pin-striped one.
“It’s Easter Monday, Moore,” said Del. “You know that, right?”
Moore opened his mouth, closed it, and Del dropped his grip on Moore’s hair, reaching between Moore’s hands and slowly pushing his now locked tablet onto his stack of papers, the way that Moore always did to put everything into his briefcase.
“My shift is over, and my buddy is going to take over for me here,” said Del. “What do you say we go upstairs to your apartment, and I make you feel better about not checking your calendar?”
Moore stared up at him, and then turned around to glance at the men playing poker, who hadn’t even looked up when Del had hauled him into a kiss. He bit his lip, fidgeted.
“To — To have…” Moore trailed off, and when he spoke again, his incredibly quiet voice had dropped to barely more than a whisper, “To have sex?”
“We don’t have to,” said Del. “Sure would like to fuck you ’til you can’t walk, though.”
Moore peered up at him. “Me?” he repeated, sounding mystified.
“You see anybody else here?”
Moore actually looked around, and Del laughed, shaking his head. “Christ, Moore. Gimme one sec.”
When they walked out, they moved out together, and they walked into the fancy little reception that led up to Moore’s fancy little fucking apartment, heading up in the lift. It looked bigger from the outside, what with the mirrors on each wall, but once they were in their together, it was impossible for them to stand without touching, and Moore stood with his shoulder leaned slightly back against the upper part of Del’s belly.
“You — I do need to be able to walk,” said Moore as they went inside.
“I wouldn’t make it permanent,” said Del, but he was distracted, staring around Moore’s apartment. He would never have guessed he’d copied the design out of a catalogue because that shit was fucking unhinged, but there was a sort of display quality about the room, about all the empty surfaces, the bland and unfeeling art, the particular way that the furniture was angled to one another. Standing where he was, this corner of the room felt strangely empty — it was where the camera probably was, in the catalogue pictures, and therefore hadn’t been decorated.
“I like sex,” said Moore.
Del, nonplussed, looked down at him as he set his briefcase down, beginning to unlace his little shoes, and Del unzipped his boots. “Me too,” said Del.
“I don’t have it often,” said Moore.
“There was me thinking you fucked a new girl every night.”
“Oh, I don’t have sex with women. Or — Or do that. I’m not very good at reading signals.”
“I know.”
“Yes. May I suck you off?” Del’s head fucking spun at that, and he stared at Moore, who was looking up at him as he slid his shoes off. After a few seconds passed, Moore shifted the way he did at the bar, and added, “Please?”
“You’re gonna fucking kill me, Moore.”
“No,” said Moore. “I’m not that good. You seem hard now, though.” Moore was looking unabashedly at the bulge in Del’s jeans, and the sheer focus of his attention actually made Del fucking blush.
“Christ,” Del muttered, but he unbuttoned his jeans and dragged them down.
Moore’s eyes widened, and his lips parted, which was cute, and hot, and in many ways, pretty fucking gratifying.
“Still want to?” Del asked.
“I would very much like to try,” said Moore, and Del shoved his jeans down his thighs, stepping out of them as he dragged his hoodie up off his shoulders and pulled off his t-shirt, too. Moore was watching him as though Del’s body was made of gold, staring at him from behind his glasses, and Del saw his tongue dart out to wet his lips. “You’re — You’re very big.”
“Yeah, I got a lot of looks in the changing rooms at school.”
“Hm?” Moore asked distractedly: stood there in his little suit, still completely dressed except for his shoes, he was reaching out and stroking with a featherlight touch the side of Del’s torso, his fingers tickling through the hair there, around the curve of his belly, his wide hips, down to the thicker hair on his thigh.
Del, curious to see how Moore would actually react, grabbed him by the hair again and pulled him closer, so that Moore was pulled right up against his chest, his chin between the swell of Del’s moobs, forced to look right up at him.
Moore gulped. “You’re big,” he said, a little dreamily this time.
“Yeah,” Del said, nodding his head. “Going to see if I can’t split you in two.”
Moore shivered, but he smiled too, and gave a little nod of his head. “Yes,” he said, paused, and went on, “Yes, please.”
“Bedroom?”
Moore grabbed Del by the hand and pulled him across the room and through the doorway, and Del stared at it as he stepped inside, fascinated. The living room was decorated in a more neutral palette, mostly light and dark blues with a few cream pieces to offset it, but the bedroom was a lot brighter, surprisingly bright.
Moore’s bed had dark red bedsheets, with a thick red fur throw on top of them, and most of the furniture was black and white — his desk was black, the shelves, his end tables, his chest of drawers; the mirror had a white frame, the curtains white, his desk chair made of white leather, and the cushions on the bed were a mix of red and black.
“Never seen a catalogue like this,” said Del.
“Oh, no, I saw this on Pinterest,” said Moore. “Get on the bed. Please. On your back.”
Del leaned in, grabbed Moore into a kiss again, and Moore let out a breathless noise, kissing him back as he stood up on his tiptoes to kiss him harder, his hands roving over Del’s chest, his belly, before they rested on his thighs and gripped the flesh there.
“You ever taken a dick this big?” Del asked.
“Not attached to someone,” said Moore.
“You mean you have sex toys, or that you go on non-traditional visits to local morgues?”
Moore gave him a funny look. “I have some dildos,” he said, sounding slightly offended, as though Del’s half-hearted necrophilia joke was genuinely intended, and Del kissed him again, took the hand that wasn’t in Moore’s hair and slid it down the back of his trousers, wanting to hook a finger into his arse, but he touched straps instead.
“Fuck,” he groaned, feeling his hardening cock give an excited jump between his thighs, a little wet at its head. “Please tell me you wear lingerie under your fucking suit.”
“They’re shirt stays,” Moore said disapprovingly. “I believe I told you to get on the bed.”
“Okay, okay,” said Del, and he went to climb onto the bed, but before he could, Moore whipped the fur throw out from under him and folded it so quickly he could have been a machine. “Don’t want come on your blanket?”
“No,” said Moore. “Even when you wash it, the fleece clumps. Do you want more pillows?”
“I think I’m good,” said Del, falling back on the cushions and spreading his legs apart, smearing his hand with the pre gathering at his cock head and wetting his hand. As he rolled back his foreskin, his thighs falling a little further apart, so that he could slowly thrust into his fist, Moore went quiet again.
He was staring, mouth ajar, between Del’s legs, and Del almost wished he could see, had a mirror so that he could see his dick without having to try to flatten his belly and crane over to see how it looked, but he supposed it didn’t matter: Moore looked turned on, and that was all that mattered.
“Mmm,” Del hummed, gripping a little bit tighter and twisting his hand, feeling the pleasant squeeze of his palm. “Gonna do a strip tease for me?”
“Yes, of course,” Moore said sarcastically. “Give me a moment and I’ll lower the pole from the ceiling, too.”
“The fuck are shirt stays, by the way? They connected to stockings?”
Moore made a vague, grumbling sound, and Del wanked himself off lazily as he watched him undress. Moore undressed in the fastidious, weirdly particular way he did most things.
First, the jacket was unbuttoned, hung up on a hanger on the back of the door, and then the waistcoat came off too, going on a different hanger. He unbuttoned his trousers, sliding them down his legs, and Del saw as he stood up to fold his trousers exactly what the shirt stays were: a tight band was squeezed around each of Moore’s thighs, a few straps connecting the band to the hem of his shirt so that it came down straight around his belly.
“Not as hot as panties and a corset,” said Del, “but surprisingly hot.”
Moore let out a short little breathless laugh as he undid the fastenings at the hem of his shirt, and Del concentrated on how tight the band was against his wide thighs. He could see more of Del’s fat arse now, with the shirt stays undone: it was rounder, wider, than he’d thought before, and he squeezed his cock a little tighter.
Moore set his tie aside and unbuttoned his shirt, folding each of them and putting them aside, and Del inhaled, his hips jumping so that he thrust into his hand as Moore turned and bent over to drop his cufflinks into a dedicated tray on his desk.
Moore wore plain black boxer briefs, and maybe he’d bought them in the wrong size, maybe he’d put on weight, maybe he just had a gregarious and truly compassionate nature and wore boxers tight enough to make Del’s cock dribble over his fingers, but they were so fucking tight around the fat swell of each of his buttocks that they looked like they might rip with the strain at any moment.
Del wanted to get up off the bed, wanted to shove Moore down against his desk and fuck his cock between his cheeks still with those boxers on, soak through the fabric, nudge against his hole without dragging it aside. How desperate could he get Moore, doing that, wanting for Del to actually fuck him open, his cockhead nudging and dragging at his tight hole, not able to get in more than a quarter of an inch with those fucking boxers in the way?
How much could he work him up, could he tease, could he make Moore go stiff and breathless, grinding back against him, until he tore the fucking things off and fucked into his arse all at once, sheathed himself in one go so that Moore felt like he was going to fuck his lungs out of his mouth?
Del was a big man, could fuck hard enough to leave men almost as big as he was shaky and wobbly after, but Moore was small enough that if Del really fucked him hard over the desktop his feet wouldn’t touch the floor, and wouldn’t that be fucking something, leaving Moore so that the only sure thing keeping him tethered was Del’s tight grip on his hips and his cock shoved in his arse?
“Do you mind?” asked Moore, and Del blinked up at him.
Moore had turned around and stripped everything off except his socks, which Del hadn’t even realised — he had a nice cock, narrow and with a slight curve to it, and he was circumcised, with a very pink head. It was a little longer than Del could take into his mouth comfortably, but he still wanted to try putting it in his mouth, wanted to hum around it and see Moore writhe where he was sitting on his chest.
“Mind? Del repeated.
“I won’t be ten minutes,” said Moore as he pushed open the door to the ensuite. “There’s condoms in the drawer.”
“I have my own,” said Del as he sat up, wiping his hand on the bedspread.
“I have ones that’ll fit you,” Moore called over the running water in the sink, and Del frowned as he leaned over to pull the drawer open, laughing as he looked at the way Moore had sectioned it out. He assumed, based on Moore’s personality, that all the drawers in his house were like this, with little wooden separators creating sections for whatever he had packed away: the condoms were in neat rows by size and texture, and Del rifled through the neat little packets of king size ones, flicking past the regular ones and looking at the ultrathin ones, dotted ones, ribbed ones.
“Thought you said you’d never had a cock this big?” he asked as he pulled out one of the latter.
“I like to put a condom on my toys,” said Moore. “It’s easier to clean after.”
“You’re better stocked than my fucking pharmacist.”
“Your pharmacist probably doesn’t like anal as much as I do,” Moore said sensibly, and Del laughed so hard his diaphragm hurt.
When Moore came back in, he beelined straight for Del, and he kneeled between Del’s legs, sliding his hands down Del’s thighs, wriggling in his place. Lube was shining on Moore’s thighs, and Del handed him the condom, watched the way he grinned a little as he took it.
“No flavoured ones,” Del said as he squeezed the well and slid the condom down over Del’s cock.
“I don’t like those,” Moore said distractedly, wrapping one hand around Del’s cock, and when he found that his prim little hands didn’t quite close all the way around it, he let out a hoarse little sound from the back of his throat. “You — you really are proportional.”
“I’m a big guy,” Del agreed. “You need fingers first? We can six — ”
“No,” Moore said quickly, sharply. “No, I want it, I want it now.”
Del raised his eyebrows. “What happened to sucking me off?”
“Later,” Moore said crisply, but he was audibly distracted, staring down at Del’s dick as he squeezed him through the condom, and Del had to wonder if he sucked cock with the same concentration he looked at his papers, if he rode cock with the same concentration.
“Wait a sec,” Del said, leaning back so he could see as he dragged Moore into his lap, and he pushed his cock up against the chubby swell of his almost hairless stomach — Moore had next to no body hair compared to Del — pulling his own back so he could see better. “Fuck,” he said lowly, tapping the wet head of his cock against Moore’s stomach, seeing the smear it left just above his navel. Held together like they were, Moore’s cock was fucking dwarfed by Del’s, and Del frotted against it, enjoying the way it made Moore shiver.
“Yes, yes, it’s very big, I’m sure you’re quite impressive,” he said impatiently, and shoved Del’s hands back, awkwardly shimmying forward with his knees in tight against Del’s sides.
“Sure you want to ride me?” Del asked.
“I want to savour it,” said Moore, not looking at his face and concentrating on his cock, and Del groaned as he pulled his cock up against his arse. His hole was glistening with lube, was ever so slightly open from the douche and his fingers, but it looked fucking tiny compared to Del’s cockhead, and when Moore lowered himself down, Del could feel the tight, hot squeeze of it, almost refusing to let him in.
“Fuck,” Del said, moving to lean up, but Moore shoved him back hard.
“Stay,” he ordered, not tearing his gaze away from where his own hole was stretching wide to let Del in, and Del’s cheeks went hot and flushed red all at once. When his head popped past the tight ring of muscle he cursed under his breath, feeling himself give a hot pulse against the latex — it was so tight he could barely stand it, and if this was how it felt with the condom on, it was dangerous to imagine fucking Moore bareback.
Moore was concentrated as he started to shimmy his hips down, raising himself a half an inch and then lowering himself down a little more. He had one of his hands braced on Del’s belly and the other not even stroking his cock, but holding it and his belly out of the way so he could see, eyes fixed down on Del’s cock as it slowly disappeared inside him — no fucking wonder he’d left his glasses on — and seemed otherwise utterly focused, he was letting out the greediest little keens of sound Del had ever heard, little whines.
“This is — this is nice,” he said breathlessly once he got about halfway down, the muscles in his plump thighs twitching. Del thought he was going to rip the fucking sheets he had in his hands — he’d tried twice to reach for Moore’s hips, because he was going so slowly Del thought he’d die, and each time Moore had slapped his hands away in a sort of commanding, imperious way that made Del’s balls draw up.
“Christ, you’re a fucking tease,” Del grunted, and Moore laughed, sweat shining on his neck, his chest.
“Am I?” he asked.
“Yeah, you fuckijesusfuckfuckMoore — ”
Moore had dropped down the rest of the way all at once, apparently satisfied he wouldn’t be able to see much more, and he gasped raggedly as his fat arse hit down against Del’s thighs. He couldn’t quite get Del all the way inside him like this, but he’d evidently crammed enough in at once that it made him dizzy, because his eyes defocused for a second, and he made a soft keen that was barely audible.
He was as hot as fucking Venus and three times as tight, and when Del experimentally rolled his hips up and into him, Moore whined, his head tipping back.
“Come on, then, Moore,” Del said, out of breath and trying to keep his vision from blacking out with the almost painful — but a good painful — vice grip on his cock. “You wanted to ride me, let me see you ride.”
“I’m trying to get track of myself again,” said Moore distractedly. “Make sure I know where all my organs are now you’ve rearranged them.”
“Sweetheart, by the time I’m done, you’re not going to care if they’re even still in you.”
As dirty talk went, it wasn’t that enticing, but it made Moore laugh, and that made his arse clench in ways that made Del go fucking cross-eyed, Moore’s cock bouncing between their bellies and dripping slickly through Del’s happy trail.
“Am I allowed to touch now?” he asked. “His majesty’s fucking okay with it?”
“You were trying to rush me,” Moore said accusatively, rolling his hips down against Del’s so that he didn’t have to pull back to do it, apparently wanting to keep Del buried as tight in him as he could from his position, and Del wasn’t complaining at all.
“Yeah?” Del asked, and slapped one of his arse cheeks.
The way it wobbled a little, even sat almost on top of him, made Del bite back a moan, but the really hot thing was the way that it made Moore, who’d been curled over like a fucking fishing hook to watch his arse swallow Del whole and even now was craning forward, arch his back. It was a beautiful sight, Moore’s head tipped back, hips grinding down against Del’s, and Del reached up to grab two handfuls of his arse, squeezing and listening to the whimpering noise that eked out of Moore’s throat.
One of Moore’s hands went down to his cock to grip at it, so that he could fuck into his fist with every roll of his hips, and he said in a strained, breathless voice, “I expect — I expect if you had sex with someone as short as I am, but thinner, you’d be able to see the imprint.”
Del laughed, and it made Moore yelp and then gasp, shoving himself down desperately against Del’s cock.
“Yeah, comes out of a guy’s chest like Alien.”
“What alien?”
“The — like the movie, like Alien.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Moore, you’re killing me here, what do you — ”
“Less aliens, more fucking,” Moore demanded, and Del fucked up into him as viciously as he could from this angle, making Moore gasp.
“I want to fuck you properly,” Del said. “Get the whole of my cock in you, see if I can’t make it come out of your throat.”
Moore made a noise that was somewhere between a giggle and a moan, but he was nodding, and Del leaned forward, dropping Moore down onto the bed. Moore let out a sound of loss when Del pulled out, but it became an eager, sharp sound when he was flipped onto his back, and when Del thrust back into him, felt his balls slap against Moore’s, Moore almost screamed.
“Y’okay?” Del asked, leaning his weight onto Moore and grinning at the way it made his thighs quiver and his hole clench, his fingers fisting in the sheets as he shoved his forehead into the mattress.
“Big,” Moore managed to say, and Del laughed, gripping Moore by the hips and dragging him up from where he’d fallen almost flat, positioning him the way he liked, so that Moore was at just the right angle for him, on his spread knees and elbows. “God,” Moore sobbed into the sheets, gasping. “Fuck, fuck — ”
“If you want,” Del said, and slammed into the admin with all he could.
He always liked this bit.
A lot of guys, Del thought it was fair to say, probably couldn’t take a fucking like this, especially guys as little as Moore, but the fact of the matter was that most of the guys Del took up with were size queens anyway, one way or another, and he was usually able to fuck the way that he liked.
He pulled almost halfway out each time he pulled back and slammed back in with a vengeance, felt the wet, tight drag of Moore’s pretty little arse trying to hold him in — fuck, he’d be ruined after this, and the thought made Del shudder — before he fucked back in. After just a few thrusts Moore was already letting out incoherent babbles of sound, scrabbling at his bed sheets, but when he went loose and tried to drop down to the sheets, Del kept him up with the grip he had on his hips, pounding into him like he was a rag doll.
The slap of flesh on flesh was as loud as anything, and Moore’s keening whines were so loud they rang off the ceiling — when he came, it became almost a scream again, his back arching, and when Del didn’t let up, kept on thrusting, Moore choked on air.
It must have been oversensitive, must have edged on pain, but Moore sobbed even louder when Del slowed down a little, and so Del thanked his lucky stars and kept thrusting. When he reached under and grabbed Moore’s almost soft cock tight in his hand, Moore didn’t come again, but he yowled and clenched hard enough that Del tipped over the edge, and he groaned as he thrust his way through it, sac drawn up as fucking tightly as it ever had been.
He didn’t fuck bareback — he wasn’t stupid, and he’d seen way too many fucked up cases of gonorrhoea downstairs to think it was worth the risk, even with Moore — but he had to wonder how Moore would look like, fucked open like this with Del’s come streaking down his thighs and stuffed into him, and he groaned at the thought, lining messy, open-mouthed kisses up Moore’s sweat-salty back.
When he let go of his hips, the admin dropped flat onto the bed like Del had literally fucked him boneless, and Del laughed, slowly pulling back and tying the condom off.
He dragged his thumb against Moore’s rim where he was pink and open, and when he tugged at the lube-slick muscle it made him shudder, his cheek on the bed.
“Did they make you in a factory?” he asked blearily as Del stood up to toss the condom into the wastebin and take a piss. “Is there some sort of hydraulic action hidden under all that muscle? I can’t feel my knees.”
“That mean you don’t want to go again yet?” asked Del, and through the open bathroom door, he saw the genuine fear on Moore’s face, but it wasn’t just fear — he was biting his lip, and his hips rocked slightly against the sheets. “Christ, you’re fucking perfect.”
“I need to change the sheets but I can’t move,” Moore groaned, and Del laughed, flushing the toilet.
“I can move you,” he said, and before Moore could say anything else he dragged him up, holding him bridal style against his chest.
Moore let out a weird little giggle.
“And you say,” he said, stroking through Del’s chest hair as Del deposited him, loose-limbed and fucked silly, into the office chair, “that that’s better on a waterbed?”
“I like it,” Del said. “Can’t fuck quite as hard in doggy like that, because it yields a little more, moves underneath you, but it’s good for cowgirl, if you normally like it like that.”
“I just wanted to see,” Moore said, watching as Del pulled the sheets back.
“What’s your first name?” Del asked, and Moore blinked at him slowly, tilting his head.
“Hm?”
“Your first name,” Del said. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Moore is my first name,” said Moore. “Seymour.”
“Seymour?” Del repeated, turning to stare at him. “You’re called fucking Seymour?”
“You thought Moore was my surname?” Moore asked, and laughed at him. He was a little more with it now, and he’d reached for some body wipes on his desk, cleaning himself up. “What sort of man introduces himself with his surname? No, no, my name is Seymour Marsh. Are you a Delroy or a Derek?”
“Derek,” said Del, reaching into the drawer Moore pointed to and pulling out another top sheet — Moore had a blanket underneath his top sheet, so they hadn’t even soaked down to his duvet, and Del couldn’t help but wonder how many fucking layers the blankets went down to — to throw over the bed. “Derek Horridge.”
“Horridge,” Moore repeated. “You don’t look like a Horridge.”
“No? You look like a Marsh.”
Moore laughed, still boneless and sprawling in a way Del wouldn’t have expected of him.
“Come here, Seymour, lie on your belly.”
“You’re going to fuck me again?” Moore asked, but for all he sounded hesitant, he came off the chair, although Del had made his knees weak, and he wobbled as he reached the bed, stumbling a little as he crawled on top. “Aren’t you tired? You said you’d been working last night.”
“Nah,” Del said, and stroked both hands, hard, down each side of Moore’s back, feeling muscle pop and shift under his palms. Moore hissed in pain, but then made a weird little grunt, and loosened again. “Can’t sleep until I’ve tried to fix some of your back.”
“There’s nothing, ah, ah, oh, with my ba-ack — ”
“Moore, the muscles back here aren’t even knotted, it’s like you’ve fucking braided them. I’ve wanted to do this since I first saw you.”
Moore’s response to that was breathless and incoherent, but definitely a sound of helpless pleasure, and Del kept up his work.
Del fell asleep sometime after he’d turned Moore’s back to liquid, and when he woke up, Moore was sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, paging through an astronomy magazine. He’d had a shower while Del was asleep, it seemed, because his hair was damp and his curls had flattened out a bit, and he was wearing a set of navy flannel pyjamas that Del had previously thought were exclusively made for elderly men spending time in hospital.
A little sleepily, he turned on his side and rested one hand on Moore’s lower back, pushing on his chest with the other to straighten out his back, and Moore let himself be adjusted, but then looked at Del with a scowl twisting his mouth.
“Doesn’t it hurt your back, sitting like a croissant all the time?” Del asked.
Moore’s scowl deepened, and Del laughed at him, shifting to drop his cheek against Moore’s thigh, and Moore stroked over the side of his neck: his fingers were cool, but it wasn’t not nice.
“Time’s it?”
“A little past twelve. You can sleep more, if you like, it doesn’t bother me.”
“Nah, I’m awake,” said Del, closing his eyes as Moore’s fingers stroked over the side of his jaw and up, tracing up his cheek, his brow, his forehead. “Good read?”
“Derivative, and based on outdated research, but it’s written with a certain sarcastic flair. Don’t think I’ve forgotten I asked to suck your cock — you can get it up again, can’t you?”
This was so unnecessarily scathing that Del opened his eyes, and his cock answered for him, perking up from the pleasant morning wood he’d woken up with, a more visible bulge in his boxers as he lay there.
“Good,” said Moore.
“You’re a vicious little prick, aren’t you?” asked Del, and Moore smiled. “You stammer sometimes.”
“Before I’ve had my coffee,” Moore murmured. “When I’m sleepy. When someone grabs me by the hair and hauls me physically out of my chair. You did that to distract me, didn’t you? You thought I’d forget my work?”
“Did it work?”
“No. I don’t know why you thought it would.”
Del shrugged. “My cock is pretty big.”
“Granted, but it hasn’t quite wiped my mind clean just yet.”
“Want me to try again?”
Moore laughed, and Del pulled himself up to look at him properly, unable to pull the concerned frown from his face, the anxiety shifting in his gut. “It’s,” he said, and then sighed, trying to think exactly how to phrase it without bursting Moore’s bubble. “I’ve worked with some pretty rough people in my life. You need to be fucking careful — if this is just what you’ve noticed — ”
“I know,” Moore murmured. “I looked back over my records the past few weeks — they normally have their numbers fixed before I see them, but between the two bank holidays, someone must have uploaded the wrong sheet. Had I remembered it was the bank holiday, I’m sure I’d never have noticed — and the invoices are really scanned very well, I did look through a random selection. It’s quite an impressive operation, and I expect they brought me on as a perfect patsy of course, in the case of a particularly penetrating audit. I did think my salary a bit overgenerous.”
“You could just ignore it,” said Del quietly.
“No, I really couldn’t,” was the quiet response. “I’m not that sort of man.”
Del pressed his fingers into his thigh, and Moore reached to touch his chest, pressing his fingers against Del’s t-shirt, so that his fingers sunk into the flesh a little. When Del made one of his pecs jump, Moore jumped too, and giggled, hiding his mouth behind his magazine.
“You mustn’t worry about it,” said Moore.
“They’ll fucking kill you,” said Del. “If it’s the kind of money you think it is, if it’s the kind of operation — they’ll fucking kill you dead.”
“It’s very sweet of you to worry,” said Moore. “But this is what I do. I know precisely what levers to pull, who to call on to… mend matters.”
Del thought of Moore, prim little Moore with his fucking whistle around his neck, blowing it for whatever fucking cop or whoever else he was planning to call for, and calling on the wrong one, or worse, getting one that actually took him seriously, and then… No. No, Del didn’t like that fucking idea at all. Crooked cops were cuntish, true enough, but the bent ones weren’t half as dangerous as the ones who actually gave a shit about justice or whatever and wouldn’t care if their informant got his throat slit in the process. “Moore — ”
“Do I tell you how to do your job, Derek?” Moore asked, and his tired eyes were so cold as he looked at Del over his glasses, his voice so quiet but so fucking hard, that Del fidgeted on the bed.
“I’ll give you my phone number,” said Del. “Anything goes fucking wrong, you know, with the — and if you feel like you’re not safe, or anything, you call me. Yeah?”
Moore leaned back slightly, seemingly surprised. “I’m sure I’ll be quite safe,” he said quietly.
“But if you aren’t — ”
“Alright,” said Moore, and then set his magazine aside. “But in the meantime, I believe I said I wanted to suck your cock.”
Del hesitated, wanting to keep talking, but Moore was already rummaging through the drawer.
“It’s not going to fit in your mouth,” said Del.
“Doubter,” said Moore, and got between his legs.
He didn’t see Moore on Tuesday — Doc Hanif told Del to take the day off, what with how the night shift hadn’t been a planned one, and he had to do his laundry anyway, and called his mother too, did a videocall with his sister’s kids and promised to get them some fucking game for Christmas he’d already forgotten the name of, but Luce would probably text it to him.
The whole day, he was distracted, and whenever he glanced at his phone, he thought some fucking breaking news story would pop up, say some prissy little accountant had been found dead in the street, or something like it.
That didn’t happen.
Nor did something pop up on Facebook about cops swarming the company he worked for, or anything —
Else.
Still, it was a huge relief when Seymour Marsh walked into the café at six AM the next morning, and did his funny little tap-tap step up to the stool and pulled himself up to sit.
He looked fine. Hair as messy as ever, in one of his usual grey suits, still looking tired, but not more than usual. He didn’t look wounded.
“Well?” asked Del.
“Coffee,” said Moore, and Del rolled his eyes, taking up the kettle and making it for him, shoving it across the bar. He waited impatiently as Moore rested his elbows on the table, sipping at it. His briefcase, for once, remained on the seat beside him, and he didn’t put his tablet or his papers up in front of him.
“Well?” Del demanded, and Moore blinked at him.
“What?”
“What the fuck do you mean, what? Spent all day waiting for you to text me, or call, looking online to see if there was some cop thing dropped, or whatever else — ”
“Cop thing?” Moore repeated blankly, staring at him. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“Oh, well, I don’t fucking know who you’d report it to,” Del grumbled, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest, scowling at him. “To the cops or some financial authority or whatever the fuck else — or what, does it take ages? Or are they going to get you to inform, or — ”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” said Moore.
“You didn’t blow your whistle?”
“Blow my whistle?” Moore repeated, staring at him as he leaned right back in his seat, looking disgusted. “Are you mad? What would I blow the whistle for? Del, I asked for my fucking cut.”
Del stared at him.
“Well,” Moore said after a few seconds had passed, fidgeting the way he did when Del made him say please. “They’re going to steal it anyway, Del. If they’re going to set it up so I would take the blame, I hardly see why I shouldn’t receive fair recompense, and in any case, if there’s going to be embezzlement I’m hardly going to allow for such errors to be made in the process.”
Del was aware that his jaw had dropped right down, was aware that he should probably shut his fucking mouth, but his brain was struggling to compute exactly what he was hearing.
Moore was…
Moore was shifting again, looking uncomfortable, and Del knew he was doing it again, that he was going quiet for too long, that he was being too fucking slow.
“So you knew?” was all he managed to blurt out. “The whole time about this place, you fucking knew?”
It was Moore’s turn to look blank, and he glanced around the café front, lips twisted into a little frown. “Knew what?” he asked, and at that moment the door was shoved open and Del set eyes on one of their frequent flyers, Fingers Gibson, who was bleeding from an abdominal wound.
He was holding a bundled up hoodie to it, which was better than usual, because he’d taken a long fucking time to grasp that he needed to hold pressure to a wound, although the hoodie looked fucking scummy with mud and filth, and that made Del wince.
As Fingers stumbled in, the door taking a while to close shut behind him, Del heard the police siren a few streets away.
“Oh, Fingers, you fucking prick,” said Del.
“Where else was I meant to go!?” he demanded, and Del glanced to Moore, who was staring at Fingers as though he’d never seen him before, despite the fact that he’d been greeting Moore every other Thursday for a few months now.
Del picked up the phone as he jogged around the bar and said, “Doc? Fingers, abdominal wound on the left side — you get fucking stabbed? You take the knife out this time? Fuck’s sake, Fingers — yeah, he took it the fuck out. Christ’s sake, yeah, I’ll bring him down to you now.”
He looped his arm under Fingers, keeping him up before he could fall, and tossed the phone to Moore, who caught him.
“If the police come in,” said Moore, “I’ll advise them you’re closed.”
Del’s heart gave a little jump in his chest, and he stopped for a second with Fingers fallen almost against him, aware that he was grinning, and that Moore was smiling too, in a surprised, distant way, like he was still trying to digest everything.
“Sorry, am I fucking interrupting?” demanded Fingers, and Del slapped him upside the head before lifting him right up, taking him into the back.
That Saturday, Moore sprawled on his belly with his face mashed into the pillow, breathing evenly as Del kept working on his back, pressing and rolling over the knots of muscle in his shoulders, and grinning whenever Moore groaned from low in his throat.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t fucking notice,” said Del, pushing his thumb against the back of his neck and laughing when Moore groaned, arching his back and making the mattress shift underneath them.
Moore was a passionate convert to the waterbed.
“Never known anybody with tunnel vision like you have,” Del said, and Moore hummed, turning his face more to the side. “Think you are the smartest man I’ve ever said, and the stupidest one.”
“Flattery,” Moore mumbled. “You’re sure you want to be a nurse, and not a masseuse?”
“If I was a masseuse you’d be a full time fucking job.”
“Fucking sounds nice right about now,” said Moore lowly. “Explain how it works.”
“Fucking?”
“The business.”
“People pay for a shorter line. We do illegal shit, get hard to access drugs, source organs. And people like Fingers, they can’t go to a hospital because there’s already a warrant out on them, they’re guaranteed to get done.”
“Mmm, yes,” said Moore, then mumbled something pleasured and incoherent. “I gathered all that. I actually meant your business model. You know, mmm, client base, capacity for growth, and — haaaa, Del,” he moaned as Moore popped a tightly knotted piece of muscle back where it should be.
“You’re such a fucking accountant,” said Del, laughing, and Moore turned to grin up at him lazily, looking so blissed out it was —
Gorgeous, in a big way. Fucking gorgeous.
“Will you kiss me?” he asked.
Del slid his palms slowly down Moore’s back, pressing at the top of his arse before sliding up again.
Moore added, although he pouted before he did, “Please.”
Del leaned down, kissing between his shoulderblades and Moore laughed, fidgeting.
“No,” he said. “Up here.”
“Up here?” Del asked, and kissed the back of his hair.
“Criminal,” Moore crowed, and as Del fell to the side beside him, tugging Moore to face him as the bed shuddered under the sudden shift in weight.
They laughed into each other’s mouths, until Moore climbed on top of him to kiss him properly.
FIN
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