Love You, Gotta Run

"Boredom in aged care is a particular kind of dangerous—it leaves too much room for the thoughts you've been running from."

The afternoon had dragged itself to a standstill, each tick of the clock landing like a taunt. Time moved differently in aged care—sometimes racing when you needed it to slow, but more often stretching into this gelatinous sludge that made every minute feel like an hour. The fluorescent lights hummed their tuneless drone. Somewhere down the corridor, someone coughed. The smell of overcooked vegetables and industrial disinfectant hung in the air like a permanent fixture.

Christ, I was bored.

Bored enough that I'd almost welcomed Mr. Gangley's bullshit earlier. At least his complaints gave me something to push against, something to occupy the parts of my brain that wouldn't stop circling back to Luke. To the silence at home. To the way my partner of ten years had become a stranger who happened to share my bed.

I shifted in my chair, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't exist. The 'Back in 5 minutes' sign sat in my peripheral vision, and my bladder seized the opportunity to remind me it had needs too.

Fine. At least pissing would kill a few minutes.

I placed the sign on the counter and headed for the staff bathroom, my strides quick and purposeful. The corridor stretched ahead of me, familiar as my own reflection—the same scuffed linoleum, the same faded prints on the walls, the same vague sense of institutional despair that clung to places where people came to wait for the end. I'd worked here for years, knew every crack in the paint, every sticky door handle. It was comfortable in the way a cage becomes comfortable once you stop rattling the bars.

The bathroom door swung shut behind me, and I exhaled.

Finally. Solitude. Five fucking minutes where I didn't have to perform for anyone—not the residents, not my colleagues, not myself. I positioned myself at the urinal, let my shoulders drop, and surrendered to the simple relief of an ordinary bodily function. The stream hit porcelain, and for thirty seconds I existed in blissful emptiness. No thoughts. No Luke. No gnawing sense that my life was quietly falling apart while I smiled and nodded and pretended everything was fine.

The door creaked.

I registered it peripherally—someone else needing a piss, nothing unusual. I waited for the shuffle of feet, the rustle of a zipper, the familiar sounds of shared but private space.

Nothing.

The silence stretched, taking on weight. Someone was there—I could feel it, that primitive awareness of being watched that lives in the base of the skull. The hairs on my neck stood up. My stream faltered.

What the fuck?

I tried to continue, but my body had already betrayed me—muscles tensing, that animal part of my brain screaming that something was off. Just someone checking their phone, I told myself. Just someone who walked in and forgot why they came. Just—

The seconds crawled by like they were dying. I became hyperaware of my own vulnerability—cock out, back exposed, the absurd indignity of being observed while taking a piss. Every instinct screamed at me to finish, zip up, turn around and see who the hell was standing there like a creep.

My hands fumbled with my fly, clumsy with adrenaline. The zipper cooperated—small fucking mercies—and I was about to spin around when his voice cut through the silence.

"So, I need a good spanking, do I?"

The words dripped with theatrical outrage, each syllable loaded with deliberate innuendo, and they were punctuated by the sharp crack of palm against arse—Ben's hand on his own backside, the sound bouncing off the tiles like a punchline.

The tension exploded out of me as laughter. Real, full-bodied, the kind that empties your lungs and leaves you gasping. The buildup, the dread, and then this—so perfectly, absurdly Ben that I couldn't have held it back if I'd tried.

"Apparently you do," I managed, still grinning like an idiot, feeling something unclench in my chest that had been wound tight for days. But even as the words left my mouth, something shifted. The laughter had cracked open a door I hadn't meant to unlock. "So, who was it?"

The question hung there, suddenly heavy.

Ben's expression flickered—the theatrical outrage giving way to something more guarded. I watched the walls go up in real time.

"Oh, come on! You don't really believe that old guy, do you?" Light. Dismissive. The kind of deflection I recognised because I used it myself.

"He may make a lot of complaints," I said, keeping my voice steady, "But he is seldom mistaken."

The change was immediate. The playfulness drained from his face, replaced by something I couldn't quite read. Discomfort? Wariness? The vulnerability of being seen when you hadn't given permission?

I studied him properly for the first time. Not as a colleague, not as background noise, but as a person. Ben Almond, twenty-nine years old, with those dark eyes that seemed to hold more than most people bothered to look for. There was something magnetic about him—the residents responded to it, the staff responded to it, hell, I responded to it. His Korean features caught the light in ways that made you want to keep looking, and his body moved with the easy confidence of someone who'd never had to apologise for taking up space.

What's not to love?

The thought surfaced before I could stop it, and I let it sit there without poking at it too hard.

Ben stepped closer.

The distance between us collapsed into something that felt inevitable. His hand reached out, fingers curling around my forearm with a grip that meant something—not rough, not tentative, just clear. He pulled me toward him, and I went. That was the part that scared me shitless. I went without a fight, my body answering his before my brain could list all the reasons this was a catastrophically bad idea.

Our eyes met. The closeness was no longer theoretical—I could feel his breath, see the flecks of darker brown in his irises, count the pulse beating in his throat. I was acutely aware of the height difference, the way he had to angle his chin up to meet my gaze. But the disparity wasn't just physical. We came from different wounds, different histories, different ways of wanting.

And then I wasn't there anymore.

The bathroom dissolved, and I was somewhere else—a school bathroom in Elizabeth, South Australia, twenty-five years ago. Luke's face, still soft with childhood, his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that had terrified and thrilled me in equal measure. We'd been kids—eight, maybe nine—and something had passed between us that neither of us could name. A recognition. A promise. The first stirring of whatever the fuck it was that had bound us together across sixteen years of separation.

Luke's eyes had always been storms waiting to break. Even then, I'd sensed the chaos churning behind them—the dreams he couldn't explain, the visions he refused to discuss, the way he sometimes stared at nothing like he was watching something I couldn't see. His need for safety, for love, had been so raw it practically had its own pulse.

Our reunion in 2008 had felt like the universe finally paying a debt it owed. Ten years together after that. Ten years of building something real—the house in Berriedale, Henri and Duke, the routines that had become the architecture of a shared life. I loved Luke. That fact was so fundamental to who I was that questioning it felt like questioning gravity.

But gravity could shift. Foundations could crack.

Lately, Luke was there but not there. Present in body, absent in every way that fucking mattered. His study had become a fortress, his explanations vague and unsatisfying, his attention fixed on something—someone?—I couldn't compete with because I couldn't even see it. The man I'd loved for most of my life was disappearing into himself, and I didn't know how to reach him anymore.

Did I even want to?

The thought landed like a fist to the gut. Standing here with Ben's hand on my arm and his breath warm on my face, I wasn't sure of the answer. Ten years of love eroding into something I didn't recognise, and here was someone who actually seemed to see me, actually seemed to want me—

Is this what giving up feels like?

Not a dramatic surrender. Just a slow wearing away until one day you realise there's nothing left to hold the walls in place.

"Are you okay? You look a little too serious," Ben said, his voice pulling me back.

I blinked, reorienting. The bathroom. The fluorescent light. The man close enough that I could smell his cologne under the institutional soap. His expression had shifted—concern mixing with the heat that had been building between us.

"Yes! Now turn around so I can spank you!" The words burst out with forced brightness, an attempt to wrench us back to safety. If it was a joke, it didn't count. If it was performance, it wasn't real.

Ben turned slowly, deliberately. Bent forward. Presented himself with exaggerated submission that should have been funny—and it was funny, in a way. Ridiculous. Exactly the kind of stupid shit that had defined our dynamic since Mr. Gangley's accusation.

My hand connected with brown fabric. Once. Twice. The crack of each slap echoed off the tiles, oddly satisfying. Something loosened in my chest. This was safe. This was just two colleagues being idiots in a bathroom. This was—

Ben's trousers slid down. Then his underwear. Fabric pooled around his thighs, bare skin exposed to the cold air.

My hand froze mid-swing.

He gave a small wiggle, hips moving with a deliberateness that left zero room for misinterpretation. "You want it, don't you?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

My brain spun through responses—pull your fucking clothes up, someone could walk in, I have a partner, I love Luke—but none of them made it past my throat. I stood there, frozen between worlds, my cock hardening in my pants while my conscience screamed warnings I couldn't quite hear.

Ben straightened. Turned to face me.

My eyes dropped before I could stop them, taking in the visible evidence of his arousal. We'd kissed before—quick moments in supply closets, easily dismissed as stress relief, as nothing, as something that didn't count because it never went further. Just workplace tension, I'd told myself. Doesn't mean anything.

But this. This was different. This was a threshold, and I was teetering on the edge, not sure which way I wanted to fall.

It doesn't feel right.

The thought cut through the noise with surprising clarity. Not because I didn't want Ben—my dick was making that desire abundantly fucking clear—but because wanting him felt like losing something I wasn't ready to let go of.

"Pull your pants up before someone else walks in," I whispered.

The vibration against my thigh hit like a defibrillator. I grabbed for my phone with desperate gratitude, hauling it out like a lifeline. Luke's name glowed on the screen.

"Shit. It's Luke."

I pressed a finger to my lips—silence, for fuck's sake—and answered before I could lose my nerve. "Hey, Luke."

My voice came out steady. A fucking miracle.

Luke's voice filled my ear—warm, apologetic for missing my earlier call, asking about my day. Being, in other words, exactly the partner I'd been silently accusing him of failing to be. The irony tasted like ash.

"That's okay," I said, aware of Ben's eyes on me, aware of my half-hard cock straining against my trousers, aware that I was having this conversation while another man watched with knowing patience.

A hand cupped the front of my pants.

My breath caught. Ben's fingers moved with confident pressure, finding the outline of my erection and stroking through the fabric. I should shove him away. I should step back, mouth stop, do something—anything—to preserve what was left of the person I'd thought I was.

I didn't.

"What was the original reason you called?" Luke asked.

The zipper parted. Cool air on heated skin. My mind scrambled for words while my cock responded to Ben's touch with shameful enthusiasm.

"Mr Gangley has had another fall. I'm going to be home late tonight."

The lie slid out smooth as oil. I'd never been good at lying—Luke could always see through me—but Luke wasn't here. Luke couldn't see my face twist as Ben's mouth descended, couldn't feel the wet heat engulfing me, couldn't know that the strain in my voice had nothing to do with work emergencies.

Oh fuck.

Ben's tongue traced slow circles around the head of my cock, each movement sending lightning up my spine. I bit down on my cheek, almost hard enough to taste copper, desperate to maintain the fiction of a normal conversation.

"Is it serious? Do you need to call an ambulance?"

"No. It's one of those annoying semi-bad but not bad enough to call an ambulance incidents. Don't wait up for me."

More lies. Bricks in a wall I was building between us, a wall I hadn't consciously decided to construct but which grew with every fabrication. My free hand found the edge of the sink, gripping until my knuckles went white, trying to anchor myself against waves of pleasure that threatened to pull me under.

"Alright. Love you. See you when you get home."

The words hit like a punch. Love you. Casual. Automatic. The phrase we'd exchanged thousands of times, reduced now to reflex. Did he still mean it? Did I?

"Okay. Gotta run. Bye."

I ended the call with clumsy fingers. The screen went dark. I lowered the phone with the care of someone handling something already broken.

My breathing was fucked—ragged, uneven—and my cock was still in Ben's mouth, his tongue doing things that made it impossible to think about consequences.

"Fuck, you're good at that," I whispered. The words tasted like surrender.

Ben rose, meeting my eyes with something that might have been triumph or tenderness or both. His kiss was light—almost gentle. A question. An offering.

He took my hand and drew me backward toward the cubicles. Each step felt like a decision I couldn't unmake. I could stop this. Pull away. Insist we pretend the last five minutes hadn't happened.

I followed.

The cubicle door closed behind us. The lock engaged with a click that seemed to echo far longer than it should have. This wasn't passion driving me anymore. It was something more tangled—the need to escape, to feel something other than the slow suffocation of a dying relationship, to prove I was still capable of being wanted by someone actually present.

Ben's hands found my waist.

And I let myself fall.