The Tinder Stories

by Tory Temple

  If Morgan used his teeth even slightly, he knew Chris would come within moments. It was tempting to keep on licking and sucking until Christopher was writhing beneath him, then use his teeth to scrape, but Morgan had set out to make this quick and dirty. He took Chris’s cock in nearly to the root, then pulled up with his teeth grazing the sides of Chris’s shaft.

  He felt Chris take a deep breath and hold it, waiting. Morgan repeated the exact same action, with one slight change: he swallowed just before pulling up, teeth bared.

  “Yes,” Chris whispered, his fingers curling around the edge of the couch cushion. He bucked up once and then shot in three sharp pulses down Morgan’s throat.

  Morgan swallowed it all with ease. Chris was still throbbing in his mouth, so Morgan let him down gently with small, soft licks and kisses. He was vaguely aware of his own erection, but it didn’t much matter. There would be time later, maybe after dinner. Maybe late at night when they were both in bed.

  “You?” Chris asked hoarsely.

  Morgan looked up from where he’d lain his head on Chris’s thigh. “No,” he said with a faint smile. “Not now.”

  There was a stretch of silence, during which Morgan rose from his knees and helped Chris pull his pants back up.

  “I’m sorry,” Chris offered after Morgan was settled next to him again on the couch. “I’m just. I….” He shook his head and made a sound of annoyance. “I guess I’m just anxious to get back to work.”

  The reminder came as a jolt. If there was one thing Morgan wasn’t anxious for, it was for Christopher to get back to work. The same dangers and hazards would be waiting.

  Morgan cleared his throat. “Right,” he said. “I get it.”

  THE CAST came off right on time. No complications had arisen during Chris’s healing, which the doctor chalked up to good health and a fairly young age. Morgan considered anyone under forty a young age.

  “Ten days and I can go back to work,” Chris informed Morgan for the third time, as if Morgan hadn’t been at the doctor with him.

  “You need to strengthen the ankle first.”

  “I know, I know. I have a gym membership for a reason.” Chris grinned and walked back and forth across the living room again with delight. “Man, that sucked so bad. Remind me never to break another bone.” He laughed and took a gentle hop on the weak ankle.

  Morgan scowled. “You’re not being very smart about that.” He wasn’t sure why, but Christopher’s casual attitude was irritating.

  Chris flopped down on the couch and nudged Morgan with an elbow. “The rumors are all true. Firemen are dumb,” he teased. “Come on, lighten up. Another week and a half and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  The twenty-four-hour shifts Chris worked did allow Morgan some quiet time at night to work or watch television, but mostly Morgan found Chris’s shift nights lonely and boring. He much preferred having Christopher at home. “I’d like it if you were out of my hair now,” he said, although it wasn’t exactly true.

  “Fine.” Chris laughed and got up. “I’ll start dinner.” Now that he could stand on both feet for a longer period of time, their dinner menu had expanded past burgers or whatever Morgan could make in the Crock-Pot. “Enchiladas?”

  Morgan nodded and forced a smile. “Sure. Use the chicken, not the beef. Too much red meat this week.”

  Chris rolled his eyes, but Morgan could hear him whistling softly to himself as he began to prepare the meal. It seemed as if the prospect of returning to work had instilled a sense of cheerfulness that had been missing for weeks.

  If only Morgan could feel the same way.

  The ten days passed quickly and slowly by turns. By the end of it, Morgan was ready to shove Chris out the door, although he still harbored secret dread about Chris going back.

  On the night before Chris’s first shift, Morgan found himself in a dangerous mood. Chris had been laughing and joking with him all day, clearly happy about returning to work and wanting to share his joviality. Morgan tried his best to remain civil, but when Chris took a picture of Morgan at his desk and blinded him with the flash, he’d had enough.

  He looked up at Chris over the lid of his laptop. “I’m working,” Morgan snapped. “Not all of us have been out on disability for over a month.”

  “It’s not like I wanted to be here,” Chris replied. “Come on, lighten up. Want to go out for dinner?”

  “Right. God forbid you should spend some time at home.” Morgan ignored the dinner question. He wasn’t hungry.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Wait, maybe I should ask what the hell is wrong with you today. Since every day it’s something different.” Chris crossed the room and fiddled with the stereo controls, changing the radio station from Morgan’s soft jazz to classic rock. “Calm down, Morg.”

  Morgan hated to be told to calm down almost as much as being told to relax. It wasn’t as if he was flailing about in hysterics. He slammed his laptop shut and stood up. “Maybe if you and I could have a mature conversation, you’d know what the hell was wrong with me. Instead, you’d rather joke with Tucker or act like an asshole about being stuck at home.” The words were tumbling out faster than he could stop them. “Go back to work. The fuck do I care?”

  Chris blinked in surprise, and then his eyes narrowed. “Maybe if you talked to me like your partner instead of an annoying roommate, we could have that mature conversation. Quit treating me like a kid, Morgan. After this damn long, a guy would think you’d learn. It’s been almost five years.”

  That much was true anyway. They’d been together long enough for Morgan to realize that the fifteen-year age difference shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Chris was thirty-four and not a child. But the urge to protect him like one ate away at Morgan like a disease. When Chris rebelled against that… well, it hurt, no matter how irrational.

  “Show me some maturity and you’ll get it in return. I don’t want to fight, Christopher. All I want is….” Morgan ended with uncertainty, unsure of how to convey everything he wanted Chris to know. All he wanted was for Chris to be safe, to stay safe, to come home in one piece, to be careful and cautious and alert and watchful. Everything that Morgan couldn’t do for him.

  “Is?” Chris stood with his hands on his hips, looking mutinous.

  “Is some peace and quiet,” Morgan finished. Not what he had wanted to say at all.

  “Easy enough” came the retort. Chris turned abruptly and left the room. Morgan could hear him in the laundry room, shoving a clean uniform into his gear bag.

  When Chris reappeared a bit later with his gear bag slung over his shoulder, Morgan knew it was nothing less than he deserved. He also knew he could stop Chris with a “don’t go,” but the words stuck in his throat until they burned.

  “I’ll be at the firehouse tonight. If you’ve got some beef with me, Morgan, just fucking tell me what it is instead of pretending I’m nothing more than an annoyance. And while you’re at it? You better figure out what the hell you’re doing with a fireman, if you hate firemen so much. Firemen were the ones who mowed our lawn and brought us food while I couldn’t do it.” Chris was quiet and resigned, and Morgan wanted to reach out to him then, to apologize and beg him not to leave. Not to go back to a job that could take Chris from him at any moment.

  But his pride warred with his fear, and pride won. Morgan merely nodded. “Go to work. I’ll see you in two days.”

  The disappointment on Chris’s face was only there for a moment before he shrugged. “I’ll call you.” He left through the side door to the garage, and Morgan could hear his truck starting up, then leaving.

  Morgan stood in the living room and realized he had not been alone in the house for almost two months. The silence was deafening.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN THE phone rang at nearly ten thirty the same night, Morgan expected it to be Christopher. His heart skipped a beat in relief, and he wondered if maybe he could convince Chris to come back home for the night before his shift in the morning.


  The person on the other end of the line, however, was definitely not Chris.

  “Hi,” said a strange voice. “I’m looking for Matthews.”

  “It’s late,” Morgan pointed out, although he hadn’t been anywhere close to sleeping. He’d been pretending to read. “Christopher’s at work.”

  “Oh,” the other person said. “Sorry about that. I thought he went back to work tomorrow.”

  “He does.” No use explaining to a stranger what happened to make Chris leave the house. “He wanted to get a jump start on his shift.”

  The man gave a short burst of laughter. “Uh, yeah. Okay. I’ll try him at work tomorrow, then.”

  Morgan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Is there a message I can give him? Tomorrow may be a busy day for him.”

  “Well… you can tell him Kent called. Kent Dennison.”

  The name was familiar. Morgan chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. “All right,” he said. “No message?”

  “No, I… you know. I just wanted to say good luck tomorrow. And I hope his shift is good.”

  It was as if someone snapped their fingers and the memory broke through. Morgan sat up in bed and pressed the phone hard to his ear. “Are you the one who was responsible for his injuries?”

  The silence on the other end of the line was answer enough, but Morgan wanted real confirmation. After a long pause, it came. “Yeah. I am.”

  “I’ll give him your message,” Morgan said curtly.

  “Mr. Daniels?”

  Being called “mister” made him feel old beyond his years. Even to the firemen in the classes he taught, he was just Morgan. The rookies were the only ones who called him “mister.” This young rookie knew who he was, but Morgan didn’t care how.

  “Yes.”

  “Uh, you taught a class I was in a couple of months ago. The review one on infection control. It was good.”

  That was a bit of a surprise. Morgan knew his classes were tolerated more than enjoyed. The firefighters disliked sitting in class, and most of the men weren’t thrilled with the training.

  “I hope you learned something.”

  “Yessir. The course I had on that in college skipped a lot of stuff. I learned more stats from you in six hours than I did all semester.” Dennison laughed a little.

  “I guess your class on water and hose dynamics skipped a lot of stuff too.” It was a bitchy thing to say, but Morgan didn’t care. He was talking to the man responsible for the tight ball in the pit of his belly.

  There was another long silence. Morgan half expected to hear a click and then the dial tone in his ear. To Dennison’s credit, he didn’t hang up.

  “No, sir. I learned a lot from hydraulic theory. Good enough for them to train me on the ladder truck.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be calling to wish Christopher good luck on his first shift back after being injured on the job.” Morgan could feel his jaw tightening and made a conscious effort to loosen it. Staying calm would give him the advantage in this unexpected conversation.

  Dennison sighed regretfully. “Mr. Daniels, I’m sorry about what happened to Matthews and McBride. I was following orders from my battalion chief. With respect, sir, you weren’t on that roof. You don’t know what it looked like.”

  Although it was the truth, Morgan still felt the need to blame someone, anyone, for something that had been beyond his control. Something that had hurt the one person in the world he held closest to his heart.

  “I’ve seen situations like it. I’ve been in situations like it. There are no accidents in firefighting. Everything can be prevented,” Morgan insisted. He had spent years believing this, so it made no sense that he was doubting it now.

  Dennison cleared his throat and spoke again. “I’m not happy about any of it, sir. I took a couple of weeks off work, and the department made me see a therapist to talk about it. But I was cleared of any fault or error. It was a surround and drown approach, and my chief had told my captain where he wanted me. There was a lot of radio traffic. McBride and Matthews were hidden by smoke, and we just didn’t see them in time, Mr. Daniels. No one was held at fault.”

  Morgan squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want the words to make as much sense as they did. He didn’t want this young rookie to sound so calm and sure. He didn’t want to admit that there were such things as accidents.

  “Mr. Daniels?”

  With a jolt, Morgan realized he hadn’t responded to Dennison in nearly a minute and a half. “Yeah. Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope I don’t ever have to be in this situation again. And I hope Matthews doesn’t either. Have a good night, sir.” The young man clicked off before Morgan had a chance to respond.

  Any thoughts of sleep evaporated. Morgan spent the next few hours alternating between dozing fitfully and following a tiny insect’s path along the bedroom ceiling.

  At four in the morning, he gave up on any pretense of sleep and got up to go for a run. He took Chris’s MP3 player instead of his own and listened to the music Chris had selected for his playlist. Classic rock, mostly, as was his preference. But Morgan noticed that he mixed in a bit of classical piano as well. And near the end of his three-mile run, Morgan was pleasantly surprised when some John Coltrane came through the earbuds.

  Sometimes, the unexpected was good.

  CHRIS CAME home the next morning. Morgan was waiting for him in the kitchen with a brown paper bag.

  “Hi,” Chris said tentatively, once he found Morgan at the table.

  “Hi.” Morgan rose and poured him a cup of coffee, which Chris took gratefully.

  “Thanks. Busy night, of course. Tuck said their last shift was super slow. It figures.” Christopher grinned and took a sip of the steaming liquid.

  “How did it go?” Morgan held the paper bag at his side and studied Chris’s profile. He looked tired, as was the norm after a rough night at work. But he also looked strong and whole and healthy.

  “Went good.” Chris nodded and drank some more. “Had to change four times. The bastards kept spraying me with the hose every time I went out back. Or front.” He chuckled to himself, presumably over the good-natured hazing. Morgan knew Chris had been expecting some sort of ribbing over his accident. Firemen were like that.

  “Are you hungry? I got breakfast for you.” Morgan unrolled the top of the sack he was holding.

  Chris tilted his head. “You did, huh? I’m starving.”

  “Sit down and I’ll get it on a plate for you.”

  Christopher scraped a chair out from under the table and fell into it. “God,” he groaned, scrubbing his face. “I’m out of practice.”

  Quietly, Morgan opened a cellophane package that contained two Day-Glo pink snack cakes. He placed them on a plate and delivered it to the table. “Breakfast.”

  There was silence in the kitchen as Chris stared at the plate. Morgan saw a slow smile spread across his face. “Did you really get me Sno Balls?”

  He’d made a special trip to the convenience store yesterday for the marshmallow-coconut concoction. “I did, yes. Two packs, in fact.” Morgan couldn’t understand Chris’s penchant for the nauseating things.

  Chris picked up one cake and looked at Morgan with a glint in his eye. Before Morgan could stop him, he shoved the entire thing in his mouth and chewed.

  “That is disgusting,” Morgan informed him but was secretly pleased. If Chris’s forgiveness could be bought with pink sponge cakes, Morgan would invest in them.

  “So good.” Bits of chocolate and coconut dropped onto the table. “Whoops.” Chris scooped them up again and ate them. “Two packs, you said?”

  Morgan couldn’t help making a face. “Two packs. But save one for after dinner, at least. Ugh.”

  “We’ll see.” The other Sno Ball was eaten with three bites instead of one, so Morgan was placated.

  “So… how tired are you?” Morgan sat across from Christopher at the table and placed his hands around his forgotten cup of cold co
ffee.

  Chris shrugged and looked as if he was considering the question. “I’m all right,” he answered. “Need a nap later, probably. But I’m fine for a few hours.”

  “I’d like it if we could go for a ride. Just a short one.”

  “I think that’d be good.” Chris was looking at him with the honest, direct gaze that Morgan loved.

  “The bikes are ready. I worked on them yesterday.” It had kept Morgan distracted while also giving him time to think.

  “Let me take a fast shower. Then I’ll get my gear on.” Chris smiled and left the kitchen, but not before giving Morgan a gentle kiss.

  Morgan rinsed the coffee cups and waited until he heard the water running in the shower before following him. The bathroom door was open, so Morgan slipped inside and removed his shirt.

  Christopher faced away from him, one hand braced on the tile wall and his head down. The water cascaded over his shoulders, and Chris was clearly enjoying the hot spray pounding him. Morgan made a mental note to schedule back massages for both of them this week at some point.

  He shed his jeans and opened the shower door with a click. Chris didn’t turn around. “I was wondering,” Chris said, barely loud enough to be heard over the running water.

  “Pass up a chance to shower with you? Don’t ever wonder.” Morgan pressed up against the warm, wet body in front of him. The temperature of the water had already turned Chris’s skin pink. Morgan bent his head and licked at the droplets along Chris’s shoulder.

  Morgan’s cock grew hard, and he fit himself gently between Chris’s asscheeks without actually entering him. It made the perfect groove to rub along, and adding a little bit of soap made things just slippery enough.

  Chris sighed and reached back for Morgan’s hand. He brought it around to Chris’s dick and circled the nice, stiff shaft. Leftover soap bubbles were the ideal bit of lube, so Morgan began to stroke him in time with his own sliding thrusts against Chris’s ass.

  Up and over the head, back down to the base, using strong, firm pressure. Morgan rested his other hand on Christopher’s abdomen and felt the muscles jump and respond to the touch on his cock. Morgan began to squeeze on the upstroke, which had the bonus effect of making Chris drop his head back against Morgan’s shoulder. It left a wide expanse of his neck open for Morgan to suck at.