Tigers on the Way Read online

Fran crossed over to our window. Our apartment looked over the Docklands and the city environs, and I used to love sitting in the dark and be lulled into peace by the city lights before me. “I’m going to miss this view.”

  “The station has a pool,” I told her.

  She turned around. “A pool?”

  “Yeah. Think of all the pool parties and barbecues we could have.” I was bribing her.

  It worked, even though I had never really seen Fran swimming. “Sounds good.”

  “Not cool?” Roger asked her, smirking.

  Fran rolled her eyes. “Okay, it’s cool.”

  I was struck by a sudden realisation that I would be leaving this apartment. I had been so caught up in the excitement of getting a house—fire station!—that I hadn’t really thought about it.

  This was the first place Dec and I had together. We had rented out my house for a while, then decided just to sell it and pay out the mortgage, incorporating the small sum left over into this place, so I had already lost the home I had been living in when we first started going out. And now we would lose this too.

  If I had told Dec this, he probably would have just said we would be creating new memories in our next place. He would be right, but it didn’t mean there wouldn’t be pangs about leaving the Docklands.

  I was also shit scared about having kids. I wanted it, I had agreed to it, but the thought of me as a father? In charge of someone else’s life for at least eighteen years? I would be in my fifties by then! My fifties. If this were the 1800s, I would most likely be dead before then.

  At least Dec would also be in his fifties, unless he was secretly immortal. Which I wouldn’t put past him, fucking fine specimen of a human being that he is.

  Fran left me to sit back down with Roger, and Dec speedily took her place.

  “You’re not regretting it already?” he murmured.

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “I asked you first.”

  I grunted, and he laughed.

  “No takesies-backsies.”

  “I’m not regretting it,” I said. “I’ll miss this place. A lot of good times were had here. But that fire station—”

  “We can probably just refer to it as a house,” Dec interrupted. “It makes us sound a little more distinguished.”

  “When have we ever cared about distinguished?”

  “Well, you haven’t.” He prodded me in the ribs to let me know he was kidding.

  “With me, what you get is what you see.”

  He put his beer down and gazed at me intently, as if making sure I wouldn’t miss his subtext. “There’s a lot more to it.”

  “Get a room!” Roger yelled as Dec kissed me.

  “We’re getting six!” I pulled away from Dec to yell back. “And three bathrooms!”

  “Three bathrooms?” Fran scowled. “Now you’re just boasting.”

  OUR OFFER on the house was accepted, as Declan knew it would be. He had one of his brothers, an accountant, help settle on a number that was slightly above the expected price but not enough to break the bank while giving us comfortable breathing space so nobody else could take it away from us. A settlement date lay a month away.

  “That doesn’t give you much time,” Will said when I was dropping in the GetOut offices.

  Will hadn’t been working for GetOut that long, but he already seemed settled. As one of the original kids that first started with Dec’s charity, he now seemed like a member of the family.

  “That’s what movers are for,” I told him. “You can even pay them to pack for you if you want.”

  “Sounds lazy,” Will said without judgement. He never said anything with judgement.

  “When you get old like us, you’re happier to pay for things you don’t want to do.”

  I didn’t hear his response. I was studying the whiteboard in front of Will, upon which he had been working out some of the details of GetOut’s fundraiser the next month. It was the worst bloody time for us to buy a house and have to move, but Dec seemed to think we would be fine. I wasn’t so sure and thought we should probably reschedule until the week after.

  A charity scratch match with retired AFL players was planned, my partner being one of the captains. His old teammate and best friend Abe was the other captain, and it meant they would be playing on opposite teams for the first time. Our friends were already taking bets on who would be victorious.

  A whiteboard listed the team members for each side, with various symbols indicating who was a definite fixture, who was still—a bit late now—unsure, and those who were emergencies.

  As I was filming on the day, I had already been privy to the list so I could arrange interviews and make sure I got enough stock footage of them all.

  There was a new name that made my blood run cold:

  GREG HEYWARD.

  “What. The. Flying. Fuck.” I said it as calmly as I could manage.

  “Oh, that,” Will said, probably wishing he was anywhere but here.

  “Oh, that,” I echoed back.

  “Don’t shoot the messenger, Simon.”

  I finally looked at him. “How long?”

  “How long, what?”

  “How long has he actually been confirmed for?”

  “Three days.”

  I liked that Will never attempted to lie. There wouldn’t be much point to it, seeing as he and Dec were caught red-handed. But the kid always stood his ground.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not shooting the messenger,” I told him. “I’m shooting the boss.”

  TECHNICALLY, THAT boss was one Mr. Declan Tyler.

  After all, he was the one who had hired me for the job. Or rather, hired the fledgling production house Coby and I had set up together. Otterly Productions had only been running officially for ten months, but on the basis of my GetOut documentary, which I had really just made on the sly while I was still at my old job, we had started getting professional job offers, including making some in-house videos for the Western Bulldogs. Dec had made us an offer to shoot footage of GetOut events on an ongoing basis for an eventual minidoco, and despite the rather obvious nepotism involved, Coby and I agreed. We liked the thought of getting some money in when a lot of debt was adding up in the red column. Our official address was a post office box, with our work being done between our houses and the little filming equipment we had stored in mine and Dec’s spare room.

  Dec had said he’d like our spare room back and had even offered us space at the GetOut building in Carlton to form a permanent office, but Coby and I were only willing to mooch on a personal—not a business—basis. That could change in the future, though, if we wanted to get into the black a little faster. In fact, I could already feel myself starting to founder.

  And there was the boss himself—in his office, staring out the window.

  He only had to take one look at my face. “Heyward.”

  “Yeah, thanks for telling me.”

  “I meant to.”

  “Oh, cool, all good, then.”

  “Look.” Declan stood and crossed over to me. “You were all excited about the house, so I didn’t want to ruin it. But we didn’t approach him. He approached us. Probably trying to shine up his very tarnished halo.”

  His attempt at humour made me smile—a little.

  “Besides, it will likely bring a little media attention to the cause, which never hurts.”

  “Really? It sure didn’t help last time we had to deal with him.” And like that, my anger was flaring again.

  “Come and sit down.” He pulled me towards the chair opposite his.

  When I sat down, I winced.

  Of course, that wasn’t missed by Declan. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  He folded his arms. “Come on.”

  “It’s nothing. I just whacked myself on the bum at the fire station. I thought it was better, but it’s not.”

  There was now a twinkle in his eye. “Were you pole dancing?”

  Damn. He knew me too well. “I
may have been.”

  He laughed. “I figured as much.”

  “Go ahead, laugh at me.”

  He leaned closer, his lips almost touching mine. “Not at all. I just wish I’d seen it.”

  “It would have been one of those really awful ‘expectation vs. reality’ memes,” I told him. “You’d be expecting Chippendales and instead getting an elephant that threw itself into a wall.”

  He kissed me and did a pretty good job at distracting me from the reason I was in his office in the first place.

  I broke away. “Hey, hang on—”

  He shut me up with another kiss. This time I let myself be distracted. Heyward had tried to do his damage, and we had survived. We would again, if need be.

  Chapter Two

  BUT THERE were other things we had to deal with that week.

  The first of our “deposits.” And let me just tell you, there is no dignity in this process at all, but I guess this is how we gays have to have a baby unless we actually do the turkey baster or the extremely traditional heterosexual way of taking a girl out to dinner and hoping we get lucky. This visit entailed checking our “levels,” etc., before we started stockpiling the “product” for the intrauterine insemination process itself.

  Dec and I checked in with Nurse Steele at reception, and she gave us a phone book’s worth of paperwork to fill out.

  “I’m going to have RSI by the time this is done,” I told Dec.

  “It has to be done,” Steele told me. “No skipping anything.”

  “I kind of assumed that,” I said. “Just saying.”

  She stared me down. “When the rooms become available, I’ll let you know.”

  “Rooms?” Dec asked. “This might sound a bit strange, but we can just use the one.”

  Steele shrugged; she’d probably seen it all. “Whatever floats your boat.”

  “Hey, at least it will free up a room for another wanker,” I told her, and laughed at my own joke.

  She looked at me coldly. “I’ve never heard a joke like that in here before.”

  This was a tough crowd.

  “He’s a little nervous,” Dec said for me.

  “I’ll call you when your room, singular, is ready.” No hint of a smile played on her features.

  But Dec was laughing silently when he turned away from her, and we made our way over to seats by the window. The view wasn’t that great, just the car park we had walked up from. But at least a tall potted plant would let me hide from the deadpan nurse if I wanted to.

  “You would think she would have a sense of humour working here,” Dec said. “I mean, come on, the wanker reference was gold.”

  I was touched he was sticking up for me. “I thought I was funny.”

  “You can be.” He stretched his arm across the back of my chair, and I leaned against it. “Sometimes.”

  “Oi!” I rested my hand on his thigh and he smiled at me.

  “You know I love you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Do you know, I kept blocking out what would happen at this appointment. And now I’m reminded just exactly what we’re here for. Probably what most of the men are here for.”

  “It’s part of the process.” Dec was very clinical and diplomatic about it all.

  I, however, was skeezed out at the thought of so many men in close proximity wanking at the same time. I had never been to a steam room, so I assumed it wouldn’t feel much different bar darker lighting and nobody being surprised at two men wanting to share one room.

  At first I avoided trying to make eye contact with any of the other guys there. And because they were also guys, they did the same. It was like the opening credits of The Brady Bunch except we were studiously trying to ignore each other. Kind of like The Brady Bunch themselves after the show was axed. Or was that just Jan?

  Nurse Steele called out a name, and the man approached her desk. He looked unhappily at his sample bottle. I nudged Dec, and he began watching as well. It had to be better than the midmorning television talk shows coming from the tiny set hanging on the waiting room wall.

  “I was just wondering,” the guy said. “Do you have any bigger bottles?”

  Nurse Steele stared him down. “There’s only one size, Mr. Dale.”

  “But, you see, that’s the problem,” Mr. Dale said, looking more and more embarrassed with each second.

  “What is?” She had obviously heard it all, and I was starting to get scared for the guy. Nurse Steel was a slightly more human Nurse Ratched. Slightly.

  I leaned in to Dec. “Is he trying to humblebrag he has a big dick?”

  Dec shrugged, but he seemed just as riveted about where this was going.

  “It’s just—” Dale looked around him, and Dec and I quickly looked off to the side so he wouldn’t think we were listening in. “I’m a bit of a… well, a gusher, you know?”

  Dec snorted and quickly pretended he was coughing. He started to wince as I tightened my grip on him in an attempt not to laugh myself.

  “I don’t think it will hold it all,” Dale continued.

  Nurse Steele leaned in and faked a whisper. “It’s okay, we don’t need an ice cream tub full. Just scrape off the excess and clean the spill. That’s what the wet wipes are there for.” Of course, all of the men sitting in the waiting room heard every word.

  “Oh, okay.” Dale picked up his brown paper bag and made his way back to the waiting area. He sat across from me and Dec as we tried to assume the air of people who had been lost in their own world rather than hearing about the amount of cum he could produce in one go.

  “It’s a bit funny, this, isn’t it?” Dale said aloud.

  Did we really have to talk about this? But we dutifully nodded.

  “Hey, wait a moment!” He jumped up excitedly and grabbed Dec’s hand before Dec even knew what was happening. “You’re Declan Tyler! Fancy running into you here!”

  “It isn’t the place I would expect,” Dec said politely.

  “Are you here to—?” He mimed the appropriate action, his hand a blur.

  “Uh—” Mr. Cool Declan Tyler was actually lost for words. A rare event.

  “Mr. Dale,” called Nurse Steele. “Your room is ready.”

  Dale let go of Dec’s hand. “Better go. Good to meet you. They need more players like you today, mate! And good luck with the, you know.”

  Thankfully he didn’t do the hand action again.

  When he was locked away safely in his wank chamber, Dec and I exploded with laughter.

  “It’s a good thing he didn’t meet you after he went in there,” I told him.

  Dec actually started to choke, he was so caught between amusement and being grossed out. Which I guess he was used to, being with me for so long.

  “They surely have sinks in the room, right?” I asked.

  “Will you stop it?” Declan asked through his tears.

  “That’s right, get your endorphins up,” I said. “It will make your swimmers more energetic.”

  Nurse Steele glared at us for the ruckus we were making.

  “Sorry,” Dec tried to spit out.

  “Room number three is ready,” she said, glad to get rid of us.

  I grabbed Dec’s hand and pulled him up, grabbing our two super nonsecret brown paper bags in the other.

  “No turning back now,” I announced.

  He grinned at me, and it was so sweet I fell in love with him all over again. “I knew that a long time ago.”

  We entered Room Three and shut the door behind us, making sure it was locked.

  “THAT WAS… an experience,” I said as we got into the car. I started the ignition and began reversing out of the car space while Dec leaned back in his seat with a heavy sigh.

  “I’m not looking forward to doing that again.”

  “Don’t make it sound like a chore! I think I excelled myself in there.”

  He shook his head with a grin. “Yeah, you weren’t bad.”

  “I guess we’re lucky we didn’t need
the ice cream tub like Mr. Dale.”

  “Oh god, I don’t even want to think about that. I’m so glad we didn’t have to go into his room after he finished.”

  “I know, right? The only way I would have gone in there is in a hazmat suit.”

  Dec laughed. “It would have been hard to wank then.”

  “I’m sure I would have managed.” I shrugged. “Years of experience.”

  Dec shook his head, trying not to encourage me.

  “It’s strange, though,” I continued, unabashed.

  “What is?”

  “All those people, when we walked out, knew exactly what we had just been doing.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the whole point of the clinic.” Dec shifted in his seat to become more comfortable.

  “Maybe some of them got excited by the thought of Declan Tyler pleasuring himself.”

  Dec’s reply was incoherent.

  “Do you ever think when you played footy that people got off to the thought of you?”

  “I’m not having this conversation,” he protested.

  He was so easy to tease. “Look who’s getting all bashful.”

  But he also knew how to surprise me. “Did you ever?” he fired back. “Before you knew me in real life?”

  It was my turn to blanch. “I’m not having this conversation.”

  “You did!”

  “No, I did not! It would have been disloyal to my team.”

  “You sinned against the Tigers,” Dec mocked me. “Literally.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure I would have done the same about you. If I even knew who you were.”

  I gasped. “You hurt my feelings, sir!”

  He laughed and pulled his cap farther over his head.

  “You mock my pain!”

  We had stopped at a traffic light, and while it remained red, he leaned in and gently nuzzled my neck. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “I heard old men need time to recuperate between sessions.”

  He fell back against his seat, holding his chest. “Now I’m wounded.”

  “Well, thankfully, you’re not an old man.” I waited for him to smile at me and added, “Yet.”

  Dec took my hand and held it against his heart. As the light turned green, he let it go, and I glanced into the rear-view mirror to check the traffic and for an instant saw a baby seat in the back, a glimpse of our future if all went well.