"Can I blow you now?"
"Yeah. Fuck, yeah."
Morgan grappled with Hunter's underwear and trousers as he shoved him back against his desk. He managed to free his cock more through luck than judgement, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that he could see it. Touch it. His mouth watered. He dropped to his knees. Hunter's cock was a good fist full, the head plump and already wet at the tip. Morgan's heart pounded. He looked up at Hunter as he stuck out his tongue and licked from root to tip in one slow, broad swipe. Hunter grabbed a handful of Morgan's hair.
Morgan took Hunter's cock in his mouth, and let everything else go. All that mattered was the salty warmth of Hunter's skin, the long, low moan he dragged out of Hunter's throat as he sank down. And down. And down.
"Fuck," said Hunter, as Morgan's lips brushed the root of his cock. Morgan sucked, cradling Hunter's balls in his palm. He kept eye contact, Hunter's gaze brilliant blue, intense, as if he couldn't quite believe this was happening. Morgan pulled back far enough that he could swirl his tongue around; he tasted every inch of Hunter's cock, licked every ridge. When Hunter's cheeks were flushed and his hips were straining with the effort of not fucking himself into Morgan's throat, Morgan took him all the way down again. He paused, breathing hard through his nose, and when he came up again he wrapped his fingers around the root of Hunter's shaft so he could pay proper attention to the head. He flicked his tongue at the slit, tasting precome. Then he hollowed his cheeks, tightened his lips around Hunter's cock and started to fuck him with his mouth. Hunter whimpered, running his thumb adoringly along Morgan's cheekbone. Morgan kept going, merciless, relentless, his tongue flat along the underside of Hunter's dick, while his mouth kept everything hot and wet, matching the rhythm with his fist.
"Morgan, wait, I'm close."
Morgan just looked up at him and winked. He didn't stop. He stroked behind Hunter's balls with his forefinger. He wanted to turn him around. Eat his arse until he begged to be fucked. He'd bet Hunter was usually a top. But Morgan would show him all the pleasures of taking a cock up the arse. And then he'd let Hunter fuck him because fair's fair and this thick, hard cock would feel so good slipping inside him and, oh fuck.
Morgan came. Hard. In his underwear. He must have made some kind of noise or something around Hunter's cock, because Hunter's eyes went wide with recognition and then he threw his head back and filled Morgan's mouth with salty-bitter-slick jizz.
Well. Well.
He rested his forehead on Hunter's firm, tight belly, and gently sucked him through the aftershocks.
Footsteps.
There were footsteps on the stairs.
"Quick," Morgan said, jumping to his feet. He fumbled with Hunter's trousers, trying to pull them up. "Someone's coming."
Hunter batted his hands away and took over, and somehow they were both dressed and not touching by the time the guy who'd been fixing the buzzer came in. Not touching but breathing hard, and Morgan guessed his face was as flushed as Hunter's. He turned away and shuffled the invoices in Hunter's in tray.
"All done, mate," said the buzzer-man. "The micro camera feeds straight to the Internet, and has its own storage of up to four hours should the connection fail. There's all the info you need here to fix up the app on your phone." He passed over an instruction booklet. Morgan glanced at it: the cover bore the message 'Congratulations on your purchase of 'Micro-Visual'.
"Right," said Hunter. "Er, thanks. Thank you."
Common sense jolted Morgan back into the real world. The world where he wished he didn't have sticky underwear; where he wanted to crawl right under Hunter's desk and disappear. Hunter signed a piece of paper to confirm that the workman had indeed installed a buzzer/camera or whatever it was for him. Morgan squirmed with embarrassment and stickiness. And then the man left, and Hunter turned to Morgan and shit, the man was so beautiful Morgan didn't know what to do with himself.
"That was–" Hunter started
"Pretty close, eh? I don't think he saw anything, though."
"I was going to say, amazing."
"Oh. Um, thank you."
Hunter took the invoice from Morgan's hand and put it back on the pile. He gently tugged Morgan towards him, and Morgan couldn't help but go. Hunter gave him a soft, lingering kiss, and hugged him.
"Um," said Morgan, but it was the best he could do. This shouldn't be happening. But it was so nice. He had no idea what he was supposed to do now.
"I didn't plan this, you know," Hunter said. "I was just going to suggest dinner." He kissed him again. "Or a movie."
"Yeah. Me too. I don't usually…" Oh God, Hunter probably thought he was a giant slut. "Not on the first, or, I. Um."
"I'm glad you did," purred Hunter.
"We should stop," said Morgan. He sounded unconvincing, even to himself.
"We could go for dinner."
"It's a bit early for dinner, don't you think? I only just got here."
Hunter' picked him up and plonked him on the edge of the desk. Morgan squeaked; he'd nearly sat on something. He retrieved the shoebox lid that he'd almost squished and handed it to Hunter.
Hunter took it from him and picked up a photo from the desk. As he dropped the photo back in the box Morgan recognised it as the one he'd seen when he cleaned out the filing cabinet. The pretty blonde woman with the baby in her arms.
"Someone special?" Morgan blurted out, curiosity getting the better of him.
"My mother," said Hunter, softly. He put the lid on the box and put it back in the desk drawer.
"Oh." Morgan shifted awkwardly. "Is she, um…"
"I haven't seen her since I was a child. She left me and Dad to go off and study magic. Or at least, that's what she said."
"Your mother is majos?"
"Yes. It didn't materialise until she had me."
That happened to women sometimes: the big ol' kick of pregnancy hormones started what adolescent hormones hadn't quite managed to spark. It often caused complications, be they medical, emotional or magical. "I'm sorry," Morgan said. "Must have been hard."
"You could say that. She struggled on for a few years, had another baby, but eventually it was clear the magic meant more than anything else. So she left. Went to live in a commune of majos in California. Never looked back. She wrote to my father once a year to let him know she was still alive and send money for us, when we were kids. But that's all we got. it was easier for her to cut me and my sister off completely, no letters, no phone calls. So that's what happened. I'm told magic often breaks up families, one way or another."
"That's not strictly–"
Hunter looked at him with his serious, no-nonsense expression, all vivid blue eyes and grim mouth. "It broke up mine."
"I'm sorry," Morgan repeated.
"Nothing to be sorry for. Just take my advice, Morgan. Stay well away from majos. Life's easier without."
Oh. Well. At least Morgan knew Hunter hadn't been digging up every bit of his past like Move-U had. And it offered Morgan an easy way out. He could confess that he had magic right now. Then Hunter wouldn't want to employ him at all. He could go back to Pearl and get reassigned without disappointing her - or enraging her - and forget Hunter ever existed. Again.
Because that worked so well the first time.
"Anyway, where were we?" Hunter said, shoving the shoe box away and pulling Morgan in close again. "That's right. You'd just agreed to come to lunch with me."
And maybe if it wasn't for the magic and Hunter's mother and the fact Hunter would hate him if he knew he was majos, maybe if it was just Pearl and her fraternisation clause, Morgan would have gone for it. But he couldn't. It would be hard enough for Hunter to reject him as an employee. If he let himself get involved…
Merlin slid off the table. He felt lightheaded, powerless as everything that had seemed so promising a moment ago slipped away. "Sorry. One time only, remember?"
"You were serious? About the fraternisation bullshit?"
"Sorry." Why did he keep apol
ogising? "Yes. It's a big deal."
"Well." Hunter skimmed his hand over Morgan's arse. "I still haven't signed the contract. What happens if I forget to sign it at all?"
"You'll get a very polite, very convincing phone call from Pearl. And I'll get a very sarcastic, very angry phone call from Pearl. And then I'll get fired. Probably. I've been a lot of trouble today."
"And if I do sign it? How'd she ever know?"
"Pearl? You can't keep anything from Pearl. Caleb swapped shifts in a call centre once with another guy. Call centre people didn't notice. But she knew. We never worked out how. Believe me, she'd know." Hunter didn't look convinced. So Morgan had to bring out the big guns. "Besides. I'd have to lie to Caleb, but he'd guess, because he's my best friend. And I'm a rubbish liar. And then he'd have to lie to Pearl, and that wouldn't be fair."
If they ever got together - which they never would, because apparently Hunter hated everything Morgan was - he could never hide him. He'd want to tell everybody. He'd want to show him off.
"You're serious about this," Hunter said.
"Yes. It's for the best."
Hunter sighed. "Oh Morgan."
Yeah. Oh Morgan.
Hunter kissed him on the forehead, then stepped back and shook his hand.
"I'd better sign that contract, then. Welcome back, Morgan."
Somehow, Morgan managed to shake his hand and smile.
Morgan got home to find Caleb lying on the sofa, with his hair in a towel, green mush on his face and a slice of cucumber on each eye. Morgan was sorely tempted to take a photo so he could threaten Caleb with Instagram-exposure if he needed to blackmail him at some point. But Morgan's head was a blur of emotion that whirled around the twin thoughts 'what the hell just happened?' and 'Oh God, Hunter'. So he just said, "You want tea?"
Caleb nodded and gave him the thumbs-up.
Morgan ditched his rucksack by the sofa and went into the kitchen. The washing machine was flashing a green light rather aggressively at him to tell him his laundry was done, so he put the kettle on and took an armful of damp clothes outside. The kitchen door opened out onto a tiny flat space nestled amid the sloping tiles of the roof. There was just enough room for two garden chairs and a small picnic table. The washing line spanned from the kitchen door to the edge of next door's roof. A strange quirk of architecture from whoever did the loft conversion that created Morgan and Caleb's flat, but it was nice to have an outdoors and it allowed for windows that let in sunshine to the living room.
He pegged out his clothes in a nice orderly row, from socks at one end to jeans at the other, and then he made some tea. He put Caleb's mug down on the coffee table near his head, and took his to the other end of the sofa, where he sat, after tickling Caleb's bare feet to get him to move them.
"You're late," Caleb said.
"It's been a long day."
"I thought Move-U closed at five."
"Yeah, well, I left at nine, so I wouldn't know."
Caleb raised his head, plucking the cucumber off his eyes.
"Tell me everything," he said.
"I quit," Morgan said. It felt like such a long time ago.
"Okay." Caleb sat up properly, towel falling off his head. "From the beginning."
So Morgan told him all of it, even about the magic part (kind of, only he played down the turmoil) right up to the part where Pearl offered him the job with Hunter.
Caleb stared at him with rapt attention.
"So," Morgan said. "I went to his office."
"And," said Caleb. "Is he still gorgeous?"
Morgan couldn't answer that straight away.
"Oh my God," said Caleb. "He's still gorgeous. Did you fuck him?"
The words 'don't be ridiculous' were on the tip of Morgan's tongue, but this was Caleb. So he said, "Yes."
Caleb's jaw dropped.
"Kind of. I mean, he didn't bend me over the desk or anything, it was more…" Desperate. Urgent. "It was a one-time thing. It won't happen again."
"Why not?"
"Fraternisation. You know the rules."
Caleb snorted to show exactly what he thought of the rules. "You just have to not get caught."
Morgan could have argued that point, too, like he had with Hunter. But he knew Caleb would see right through him. "Okay, it's not just that. He's got a bit of a thing about magic. His mother was majos and she abandoned him for some kind of commune in California."
"Oh shit. I'm sorry, man. You think you can spot them a mile off, don't you? But there's always one in the pack that just squeaks through seeming like a perfectly normal human being."
Everything caught up at the back of Morgan's throat, and for one horrible moment he thought he might cry. "I really like him."
"Morgan, sweetie."
Morgan stared very hard at the mug of tea cradled in his hands, and sank his teeth into his lower lip. "It would have b-been easier if he'd had a fucking boyfriend."
"You're sure you believe him?"
Morgan nodded.
"If you told Pearl he's a card-carrying majophobe she'd get you out of there so fast the ink on the contract wouldn't have time to dry."
"That's the problem. I don't want to leave. It's not like he's going on rallies or daubing graffiti everywhere. He's just a person who's had a bad experience. A very bad experience."
"I don't have an issue with him hating his mother. I'm not all that fond of mine, either. But it's not your fault. I mean, say she had dark hair–"
"She's blonde. Like him."
"Whatever, okay, so she's blonde. Does he hate all blonde people because they remind him of her? What if she was gay?"
It wasn't the same thing at all, but Caleb liked to stand up for minorities, even ones he wasn't part of, so Morgan didn't challenge it. It was nice to feel defended, even if it was for something he didn't care about. The stuff that had happened at Move-U was way worse than Hunter being wary of something that had actually hurt him.
Although, it wasn't magic that had hurt him, was it?
It was all so difficult.
"I just really like him," he told Caleb.
"It must have been a really good fuck."
Morgan nodded. It had been. But this wasn't about sex, not really. He didn't have the words to explain that the kiss afterwards had been even sweeter. The look in Hunter's eyes, the way he'd brightened up when he'd seen Morgan standing there in his office. How kind he was. The way his cock had stretched Morgan's mouth, just enough to give an ache.
Okay, so some of it was about the sex.
"Don't tell me you're really going through with it?" Caleb asked. "Three whole months of celibacy and moping and him being afraid of your magic?"
Morgan looked down at his mug. "He doesn't know about my magic."
"What?"
"He never asked, I guess. It didn't come up. So he doesn't know."
"Yet. What if he finds out?"
"Why would he? I'm there to do paperwork. I don't do magic in the workplace."
"You don't usually fuck in the workplace either."
"And I shouldn't have this time. It won't happen again. It'll just be work." Morgan took a deep, shuddering breath.
A glob of green mush fell from Caleb's face to splat on the carpet.
"Avocado?" said Morgan
"Yeah."
"Nice."
"I've got to look my best. I'm going out to dinner with Jennifer and Dave tomorrow night. Fresh start."
"And you're okay with that?"
Caleb lay back and put the cucumbers back over his eyes. "Sometimes honesty is a work in progress, Morgan."
No kidding.
Chapter Nine
Morgan turned up at Hunter's office the next day to find a piece of card on the reception desk, folded lengthwise into an inverted V shape, so it stood up. It had 'Morgan Kerry' printed on it in big, black letters.
Hunter grinned a lopsided grin at him.
"Labelling me?" Morgan hoped the lame joke would cover how thrilled he was. He s
traightened the sign up so it was exactly parallel to the edge of the desk.
"You know where everything is," Hunter said. "Oh, and I got you this." He put a mug on the desk. It had 'Keep Calm and Investigate' written on it. "Just bring in whatever tea you want. I get milk on the way in. Do you drink ordinary milk? I couldn't remember if you were vegetarian or vegan?"
"Cow's milk is fine," said Morgan. "Thanks."
"I want you to feel comfortable."
"I do."
He really didn't. But not because of the office, or the mug, or the milk.
"You'll need a computer. Do you prefer Mac or Windows?"
"I'm only here for three months."
"You'll need it though."
"I have a laptop I could use."
"You don't have to do that."
"It's no trouble."
"Morgan, what's wrong?"
Morgan stroked the handle of the mug. "I'm fine."
He wasn't. He wanted to run away. He could feel Hunter's eyes boring into him.
"Shit," said Hunter.
"It's awkward, okay?" Morgan forced himself to turn and face Hunter, to look right into those bright, bluer-than-blue eyes and be honest. Well. Sort of honest. "After yesterday, when we… and you're being so kind, it all feels weird."
"Would you rather I was a bastard about it?"
"Of course not. I just want it to be… Ordinary. For you to treat me like a temp. Because that's what I am. For as long as you want my help. Tell me what to do and I'll get on and do it. As a professional."
He watched that sink in a bit. Hunter seemed to get it. He nodded and went back to his own desk. He shuffled a few papers. Morgan cautiously leaned his rucksack against the modesty panel under the - his - desk and sat. He scooted his chair to the sweep of the curved L that faced into the room. To his right was Hunter's desk, under the big windows. To his left was the door; behind him were three filing cabinets. It was a snug, protective sort of space. He put his mug to his right hand side, and thought about getting some plants to go on top of the filing cabinet.
A painful silence fell over the office. Morgan stuck it out until his skin was crawling with the need to do something, anything. And then he said, "Shall I make some coffee?"
Hunter and Morgan: Gatecrasher Page 8