by Laney Cairo
“But…” one of the students I only knew by sight said.
“What if we don’t want to?”
“Just be glad it’s not urinary catheters,” Dr. Maynard said.
“This is assessable.”
* * *
We went to the pub that afternoon. It was the only possible response, and honoured the long-standing tradition that, of all students, med students drank heaviest because they best understood how to recover from a hangover.
I wasn’t sure how this fitted in with my personal awareness that man could not live by ramen noodles alone; I was just sure that drinking beer was more important right at that moment than eating was going to be for the next few days.
Nevins and Lin solved the conflict by buying for me.
Seemed that Nevins’s folks had money, and Lin had a scholarship, so we drank pints really fast, settling in at the bar ahead of the rush as the medical system at the hospital cut back to evening staffing levels, but well behind the nurses, whose day shifts ended at 3.30 p.m..
Lin was downing Southern Comfort shooters with her pints, which I thought was a stupid thing to do, but she seemed to hold her liquor well.
Nevins, on the other hand, was a giggler, in the sort of silly, infectious way that only geeky blokes had. I liked him better like that, especially when I noticed it was only Lin that he kept spontaneously hugging.
She seemed sober still, apart from her pink cheeks, but she kept cuddling Nevins back, and fiddling with her hair. We had actual, in the flesh, nerd courtship happening here, and Nevins was so damned pleased with himself that I kind of forgave him for walking back into the storeroom yesterday.
I leaned back against the bar and scanned the room just to avoid intruding upon the eyelash-fluttering and lip-licking that was going on—and that was just Nevins.
I found myself staring at Dr. M.
He’d changed out of the nondescript trousers and shirt he wore on the wards, and was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, looking completely fuckable as he leaned against a wall, pint in his hand, communing with some other doctor types.
Today’s bad mood seemed to have evaporated and he was smiling and waving his free hand in the air as he talked to a man who looked like a psychotic teddy bear in a suit. I guess if I had to face a troop of med students every morning as well as my usual workload, I’d be prone to bad moods, too.
He looked up at that moment, and I must have had an idiotic grin on my face because he smiled back at me, a particularly goofy smile that did great things to me.
Lin pushed another pint into my hands and followed my gaze. She said, “Oh,” under her breath and went pinker, then Nevins hugged her again, distracting her.
I turned back to the bar.
Chapter Six
F was in full flight, describing his close encounter of the obnoxious kind with Human Resources that day, and I felt the tension begin to ebb.
It had been a bad day, with a bad night before it. I couldn’t believe how close I’d come to blowing my career, or at least to blowing something else.
I’d walked onto the ward this morning absolutely determined to keep the barriers in place. They were students; I was a tutor and supervisor. The hospital would have my ass.
Okay, that wasn’t a good place to go in my head, and it certainly wasn’t helping things. F frowned a little and said,
“Andrew, you old bastard, what the fuck is wrong with you?
You look like shit.”
F was probably the closest friend I had on staff. He was hopelessly middle-class, with a full-blown chemical dependency or two, and he claimed he was only working until such time as THC became available on prescription. My sort of person, once I got past the fact he drove a BMW and sent his kids to boarding school.
“I want to ask you a personal question,” I said, leaning forward and dropping my voice.
“I’ve got half a bag in the car,” F said, leaning his head forward briefly, too, so our foreheads were touching.
I had to laugh. Maybe I was blowing this all out of proportion.
There I was again, thinking about blowing things.
“Have you ever fucked a med student?” I asked.
“A student in general, or one of my own?” F sounded far too entertained for my liking.
“One of your own.”
“Yeah, a few,” he said. “Is that what’s up your arse?”
I spluttered beer at him.
“Ah,” he said, wiping ineffectually at his suit jacket. “I prefer the girls myself, but whatever rolls your socks down.”
“So, on a scale of appallingly bad taste lechery, where does it fall?” I asked. “How many of us decide that a power imbalance is no barrier to a really good fuck?”
F surveyed the bar, chewing on his lip in thought. “I can see three registrars or consultants here that I know of.
Moronic residents don’t count; they’re just med students with the trainer wheels off. Say, a third of the quacks here.” He looked at me as I took another mouthful of beer. “Tempted, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning at F. I looked around the bar, trying to imagine which of my colleagues here had got down and dirty with a student.
Blake was leaning back against the bar, beer in his hand, smiling at me and looking utterly gorgeous.
F must have glanced across, too, because he gave a filthy chuckle. “I’m guessing it’s not the tubby guy giving serious tongue to that girl, but the babe with the curls beside him.
My, my, he is cute, isn’t he? I’d swing for him.”
Blake turned back to the bar as Nevins and Lin surfaced for air, and all I could think of was that I actually knew his cell phone number. It was in my wallet, along with his scrawled
‘Matthew Blake’.
“Buy me a beer.” F thrust his empty pint into my hand.
“Now, because you are being flirted with, you idiot.”
“Fuck off, Feargal,” I said, but I took his glass and headed for the bar.
I could have walked to any part of the bar. It was all equally crowded with hospital staff discussing who they’d sleep with if the world was about to end, but I found myself walking toward where Blake, Nevins, and Lin were.
I pushed through the clump of theatre staff, distinctively reeking of isopropyl alcohol and chlorhex sterlising solutions, and up to the bar beside Blake.
Lin smiled at me. “Hello, Dr. M.”
“Hi, kiddies,” I said, and kicked myself. Stupid thing to say.
“Hi, Dad,” Nevins said, giggling drunkenly.
Blake just grinned sideways at me.
I leaned across the bar and ordered two pints, pushing the empties across to the bartender, and nearly jumped out of my skin as a hand spread itself across my thigh, out of sight, where I was leaning against the bar.
Blake wasn’t looking at me; he was talking to Nevins, teasing him about being pissed, but there wasn’t anyone else’s hand it could be sliding across my jeans slowly.
Regardless of how young Blake might be, he was no innocent.
I paid the bartender, and the hand was firm as it eased between my thighs and pressed up against my balls.
Fuck, but I couldn’t believe how turned on I was by this, but I managed to stifle the moan I gave as Blake’s hand found my cock through the denim. I didn’t know whether to scream, beg for more, or just press Blake up against the bar and fuck him right then. What I really wanted to do was touch him back, but there wasn’t any way I could figure out to do it discreetly.
I squeezed his hand where it was touching me, making sure he could feel how turned on I was, then took the pints the bartender slid across the bar toward me and stepped back out of the touch.
It wasn’t easy getting back across the room holding two full glasses, but I managed it. I shoved F’s beer at him and drank my own down in three long gulps, making F crack up.
“What happened?” he asked once he’d stopped laughing.
“I’m in,” I said, and I took out my cell phone. I text
ed Blake a single word: ‘tonight.’
“Let me buy you another beer,” F said. “If you’re getting laid, we need to celebrate. Let’s see if I can pick someone up at the bar, too.”
F did pick someone up. He was a consultant, he was single, he bathed, and he wasn’t fussy; of course he picked someone up. He came back ten minutes later, holding the hand of a pretty young woman. “This is Lena,” he said. “She works in High Dependency. Lena, this is Andrew.”
“You’re cute,” she said, sliding her hand under my arm.
“Are you good friends with Feargal?”
Fucking hell. Two offers in one night? Obviously two doctors were better than one.
“Not that good a friend,” F said. He handed me both of the beers he was holding and left with Lena, squeezing her ass as they walked toward the door.
I could stay, drink the beers, and ogle Blake across the room. Or I could abandon the beers so I was still sober enough to drive, and go home and jerk off in the shower, then call Blake.
Home it was.
Chapter Seven
In the loos, Nevins pissed like a fire hydrant, then washed his hands and splashed water over his shirt.
“Blake,” he said, hanging onto the wall for a moment.
“Have you got any … you know?”
I pissed, too, and washed my hands carefully. There’s nothing like having done some micro to make you hygienic.
“Sure.” I fished around in my pockets, then handed him a couple of condoms, despite doubting his ability to fuck when he was already green around his gills from the booze. There was no way I was going to give him all of them, though; he wasn’t the only one of us that was on a promise.
“Thanks,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Sorry you’re not going to get laid, too.”
I slapped him back. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, matey,” I said. “The night’s still young. Now go and take Lin home and shag her.”
“Rosanna,” he said. “Her name’s Rosanna.”
“And you just remember that.” I took his elbow and guided him out of the loos to where Lin was waiting for him.
She sat him down on a bar stool and pulled me aside.
“Have you got any condoms?” she asked. “Because I can’t imagine Nevins got any.”
What could I do? I handed over my last couple of condoms. And I had no money to buy any more. Either the adorable Dr. M turned up bearing latex, or there’d be no fucking going on tonight.
“Have a good time,” I said. “Don’t scare him.”
She grinned wickedly. “What about you? Do I smell romance for you?”
“Breathe through your mouth, love, and you shouldn’t smell anything,” I said, and Nevins ambled over to us.
* * *
I rang Dr. M’s mobile while I was sitting at the bus stop. It switched through to his personal voicemail, and I left a brief, discreet message and hung up. I thought for a moment about phoning the hospital to ask for his pager number, but the potential embarrassment of trying to explain why I wanted it deterred me. Better to go home and be disappointed than to chance that.
He rang me back while I was jolting along on the bus.
“Hey, Matthew,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t answer before, but I was in the shower.”
“No problem.” I felt myself smiling.
He was silent for a moment, and it made me smile more.
“Are you busy tonight?” he asked.
“I do have a presentation due tomorrow,” I said. “Apart from that, no plans.”
He chuckled, this deep warm sound, and a matching warmth spread through my belly. “There’s always the chance I’ll be in far too good a mood tomorrow to want to listen to presentations.”
“Do you want to come over?” I asked. “You could relive your student days, admire our beer can tower, meet my scummy housemates.”
There was a pause and Dr. M said, “Um, might not be such a smart move. I could come and pick you up, go grab food, and we could eat at my place.”
Fuck, of course. He was worried I was sharing with someone like Nevins. “That sounds good,” I said. “But you don’t have to worry about my housemates; they’re all disgusting engineering students.”
“Okay,” he said. “Text me your address, and I’ll come over.”
I couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to ask if he had condoms, not with the way the guy sitting opposite me was perving at me, so I said, “Bye,” and ended the call.
* * *
I sat on the front steps and waited for Dr. M to arrive. If I went upstairs and tried to tidy my room, either no one would answer the door, or someone would, and they’d forget my name and that I lived there, too. I’m sure the seven or so people who lived in the house were all academic high achievers, but you couldn’t tell.
A decrepit Morris rattled down the road and parked. Dr. M climbed out and walked back toward the house. I waved and stood up, watching him. He was wearing jeans, still, and a white shirt and leather jacket, and he looked so fucking good it was painful.
He climbed the steps, and when he spoke, I became aware of exactly how much noise was rolling out of the house. I think he said, ‘Hey,’ but I couldn’t be sure, not with the volume at which Nine Inch Nails was being played.
Not that this was a time for conversation anyway. I’d only got to feel his cock briefly in the bar, but it had certainly been promising.
I slid a hand around his neck and pressed my mouth against his.
First kisses, first times, always had so much potential, and, God, this one just exploded. We both groaned. I felt his as a rumble through my body, and he pushed me against the doorframe, then kissed me utterly and completely. I clutched at him, got my other hand under his jacket, hung on for dear life, and we were fucking on the doorstep, but we both still had our clothes on, and it was only with our mouths.
I had no idea that kissing could feel so amazingly good, all hot and slippery and full of promises, leaving me breathless and dazed, and so fucking turned on that coming right there and then was looking more and more likely.
I wasn’t the only one; I could feel Andrew breathing hard as his mouth pressed against my ear. “Your room,” he said.
His hand was strong in mine, the skin smooth from endless washing, something I loved about medicine, the way it made hands feel. I led him into the house and past the door to the lounge room. There really was a beer can pyramid in one corner, and pizza boxes piled on the floor, and a mattress behind the couch, where Clive lived. Jeff was asleep on the couch, despite the noise, Geoff number two was playing PlayStation, and Clive was sucking on the bong. Just an ordinary student household.
We stepped over the looping ropes of ADSL cables that snaked up the stairs, the noise easing a little at the landing as we moved out of direct blast range of the speakers in the kitchen, and I pushed my bedroom door open.
Chapter Eight
The noise was reduced to a muted pounding through the floorboards, and Matthew locked the door. I recognised his room from my own student days; the teetering mounds of textbooks, pages of scrawled revision notes drifting across the floor, sheets of paper covered in sketches of muscle groups pinned to the wall.
He flicked his reading light on, and I turned off the overhead light.
This time we kissed slowly. He tasted of beer, and I threaded my fingers into his curls. When he pulled back and began to unbutton my shirt, his lips shone slickly and he licked them, swiping his tongue across them, sending my imagination spiraling. How could I have had doubts?
I shrugged off my jacket and shirt, and he ran the flat of his hand across my chest, then pulled his T-shirt over his head.
The sight of his skin, so smooth and young, the way his nipples puckered in the cool air, and, oh, God, the bars through the tender skin, just about undid me there and then.
I bent forward, took one bar and the surrounding flesh into my mouth, and sucked.
Matthew groaned, I twisted the bar gently, and we stagge
red backward and down onto his lumpy futon. There was a book or something under my knee, and I found the bar again with my mouth, wondering for a moment if I could identify the book without looking at it. Would it be Davidson’s Principles and Practice? Forbes’ Atlas?
Then Matthew dragged his nails up my back, hitting the spot just under my shoulder blades that sent all thought skittering from my mind, and made me bite down on the bar.
He thrashed beneath me, and our bodies slid sideways so my hip was pressing against his cock, and his thigh was against mine. I began to hope he’d come just from what my mouth was doing.
Matthew grabbed my hair and pulled my mouth off his nipple. I started to complain, but he was so flushed and lovely and hungry beneath me that the words died away. “Latex?”
he said. “Have you got some condoms?”
“Ah, yeah,” I said. “Two in my jacket.”
Matthew nodded. “Good. I donated all mine to a good cause tonight, and I don’t have unsafe sex.”
I scrambled across the room for my jacket, feeling for the inside pocket, and Matthew tossed the book that had been in the way onto the floor. It was Kelley’s Essentials, which had not been on my list of guesses.
Matthew unzipped his jeans and pushed them down. When he pulled his cock out of his boxers I found myself frozen in place, hand in my jacket. He had a large metallic blue bead on the head of his cock, in the centre of the glans, and as he stroked himself I could see that there was a matching bead on the underside and a bar connecting them through the head of his cock.
“Fuck,” I said, crawling back across the floor littered with clothes and books to the mattress on the floor.
“Like it?” Matthew asked, and I nodded mutely. “You think it looks good, you just wait until you feel it inside you.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Naked, Matthew was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and I crawled over his body and lowered myself down onto him.
Skin to skin, cocks sliding together, we kissed again, and God, we were on fire. “Suck me?” Matthew murmured against my ear as I latched onto the skin of his neck.