Set Aflame (Four Mercenaries 2.50)

“Err, more like they kicked me out and told me not to come back until I’m straight.” Boar felt daring about saying it out loud, but Matt’s attitude suggested he was at least sexually flexible.

The smiling mouth pressed into a tight line. “Fuck them, then. Cutting ties with my toxic family has been the best thing I’ve ever done. Never looked back!”

Boar let out a bitter laugh. “So you’re saying I could be just like you and fall asleep on the pavement in a few years’ time? Yay,” he said before biting his tongue. “I mean… sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” he tried to soften his earlier comment. Why did he always have to fuck up a good thing?

But Matt didn’t seem offended and lay still, as if the floor was the comfiest of beds. “Damn right! You can sleep wherever you want, with whomever you want, and there won’t be any of that ‘be back by 10 p.m. shit’.”

Boar snorted, and his heart sped up again as he watched Matt speak with such confidence. “Yeah? You had that too?”

Matt rolled his eyes, his lips briefly making a pout. “My dad treated us like a military unit. It was crazy. He’d check every crevice in the room for dust with a white glove.”

“Oh yeah? That why you now like dirt so much?” Boar ran his thumb down Matt’s scruffy cheek.

“Nothing wrong with getting a little filthy.” Matt wiggled his eyebrows, making the inked flames come alive, and rolled out of their makeshift bed. He offered his hand to Boar. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

Boar assessed him in silence, for once unsure if he should follow Matt’s lead. This guy was the kind of person Boar’s family, friends, and Church would have called a ‘bad influence’, but, he wasn’t obliged to follow their rules anymore. What was the worst that could happen when Matt, regardless of the state he’d been in last night and his provocative exterior, was the first person to show Boar kindness since he’d left home?

They’d lain together all night, but somehow the voluntary squeeze he gave Matt’s hand held more weight. Boar was ready to carry it nevertheless and stood so fast the momentum sent him bumping into Matt’s chest. He took a step back, flustered when his new friend offered him a wide grin, as if this was exactly what he’d been going for when he tugged Boar to his feet.

“So… where are we going?” Boar asked, certain that he shouldn’t continue walking with another man’s hand in his but couldn’t make himself let go yet.

“My place.”

Boar swallowed. Was he being invited… for sex? “Oh. So you have a place?”

Matt shrugged. “Yeah, I’m sharing with some friends. Need a bath,” he said, pulling his top to his nose and revealing an inked, ripped stomach that made Boar’s eyes grow wider.

“Would it be weird if I took one too?” After three days in the street, shame lost to the need to be clean.

Matt grinned. “One thing you need to know about our community: we like to save water.”

Heat erupted in Boar’s chest first, but then rose until it bloomed on his face. “Y-you usually this forward?” he asked, yet wouldn’t let go of the hand in his. His head spun with the insanity of the emotion it triggered, but something was changing in his doomed life, and he would grab it… by the balls if necessary.

A somber expression passed over Matt’s face. “Holding back is a waste of life.”

Boar’s heart skipped a beat. He was shocked by Matt’s openness to a man he’d just met, but they had spent a night together, so maybe that warranted sincerity in Matt’s book. “I’ve been holding back my whole life.”

Matt winked at him. “Then you haven’t yet lived.”

Boar hunched his shoulders, walking alongside him in constant fear of what would happen if they were confronted over their joined hands, but there were barely any people about, even though the air was crisp and the sun—already high in the sky.

Matt’s thumb drew small circles on Boar’s hand, but neither of them addressed it on the way through small streets. Boar’s brain was working overtime, keeping him in a frenzy until they reached a blocky building covered in graffiti.

Matt led him in through a broken window, and it occurred to Boar that he would either lose his virginity here or get murdered for the ten dollars in his pocket. He discreetly scanned Matt from head to toe. Their interaction was making fireworks explode in his heart, but Dad had always said to watch out for people with colored hair.

“So… I’m guessing you and your friends don’t actually own this place?”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Who needs papers? If it’s unused, why let it rot?” he asked and helped Boar inside. The corridor they entered was long but clean, with some mismatched furniture offering a place to rest, but Matt put his arm across Boar’s back before he could have asked anything. How many people lived here? Was this a drug den? Did they all use marijuana?