Hapi by Cari Waites

Hapi turned southwhen they reached the highway. They went through Innisfail and then kept going. If it was a test, Jayden didn’t react to it. He probably never would have found what he was looking for in Cairns anyway, and Hapi had promised him forever. That seemed like a better deal than anything waiting for him in Cairns. They drove for a few hours until they reached Ingham, where they discovered that flooding had just cut the highway between there and Townsville. They checked into a hotel. Jayden showered and then crashed out naked under the covers.

He dreamed of rain and floods and smiling gods, who wanted to cut him into pieces to set his soul free. He woke up to Hapi nudging his legs apart with his knee and humming a questioning sound in his ear.

Jayden mumbled into the pillow and shifted his legs wider. He was still half asleep, his dreams still clinging to him like droplets of water hanging from a palm frond, and this place between awake and asleep felt as warm and safe as the place Hapi took him when his hands tightened around his throat.

He sighed as Hapi slid his hands up the planes of his back and then down again to his arse. His dick hardened, and he rolled his hips against the mattress to try to get some friction on it, but Hapi made a warning sound and he stilled again. He sank into the mattress as Hapi rubbed his palms over his arse, his big fingers digging in.

Then Hapi’s touch vanished. Jayden barely had a moment to feel vaguely disgruntled before he was back. This time Hapi’s fingers were slick, rubbing down Jayden’s crease and teasing his hole and then pressing into his taint. Jayden moaned, his dick filling farther and his balls tightening with arousal. He tried to shift and get his knees under him, but Hapi gave another growl.

“Be still,” he said and pushed a finger inside.

Jayden groaned, fighting the urge to move, to both ease the burn and to ask for more.

Hapi removed his finger, and then he tugged Jayden over onto his side. He pushed Jayden’s top leg up, leaving him open, and hummed as he slotted the head of his dick against Jayden’s hole. He pressed inside.

Jayden’s breath shuddered out of him as Hapi filled him. The stretch felt both good and bad at the same time, and it sent shivers through him as his body tried to adjust. Hapi’s body covered his, pressing him into the mattress. He pushed inside slowly but inexorably, and Jayden couldn’t do anything except let it happen and accept it.

Hapi owned him. That had been true from the moment he’d pulled Jayden from the river, but now there were no brothers, no father, and no impending ritual nipping at the edges of Hapi’s claim. Hapi owned him fully.

Jayden turned his face into the pillow, hot tears of relief spilling from his eyes.

Hapi began to thrust, each jolting movement sending reverberating waves of pleasure through Jayden. He let his body go lax, let Hapi use him, and let the sensations roll through him. Hapi pushed small, strained noises out of Jayden with each thrust, the mattress creaking underneath them.

Then, with a grunt, Hapi pulled out. He rolled off Jayden and stood. Jayden twisted his neck to see what he was doing, and Hapi took him by the ankles and pulled him over onto his back. Then, he knelt at the end of the bed, taking his weight on his knees, and pulled Jayden down the mattress and back onto his rigid dick. Jayden’s back bowed, his shoulders pressed into the mattress as Hapi lifted his hips up.

This time the fucking was punishing, each thrust jarring Jayden to the bones. His dick throbbed, tiny spurts of precome painting his abdomen each time Hapi roughly bottomed out inside him.

“Up,” Hapi said, narrow-eyed.

Jayden cried out as Hapi pulled him upright, the sudden change in angle causing Hapi’s dick to sink even deeper. His legs were splayed on either side of Hapi, feet not touching the floor, and his entire weight was taken on Hapi’s dick. He clutched Hapi’s shoulders for balance, fingers sliding on Hapi’s sweat-slick skin.

Hapi put both hands around Jayden’s throat. A corner of his mouth curled up. “Now let go of me.”

Jayden’s breath caught in his throat as he obeyed.

Hapi thrust again, tightening his hands as he did. Jayden hung there, impaled on Hapi’s dick and at the same time hanging by his throat in Hapi’s hands. A burst of pleasure in his balls was followed quickly by a burst of panic when Hapi squeezed harder. Jayden opened his mouth, trying to suck in a breath.

“Your breath is mine,” Hapi said, his dark eyes glittering as he fucked him hard.

Jayden shuddered and black spots crowding his vision, his lungs burning as he tried uselessly to pull in more air. Blood roared in his skull, each thump of his pulse as loud as a drumbeat. His balls tightened and his dick throbbed. Every instinct in him screamed at him to fight back, to claw Hapi’s hands away from his throat so that he could breathe again.

He held Hapi’s gaze for as long as he could, forcing himself not to fight this.

“Yours,” he mouthed back because he didn’t have enough breath to make the word aloud.

Hapi hummed approvingly and began an even more brutal pace.

Jayden’s body sang and screamed at the same time, and he was aware, just before he passed out, of coming harder than he ever had in his life.

When he woke some time later he was curled up against Hapi’s chest. His arse ached and the fresh bruises around his throat throbbed.

It took him a while to notice the strange silence, and a while longer than that to register what it meant.

The rain had stopped.

* * *

They kept movingwhen the weather cleared, staying in cheap hotels and caravan parks, or just pulling over at the side of the road to sleep. Sometimes they drove for hours a day and sometimes they stayed in the same place for a few nights. They ate at fast food places and service stations, and Jayden lost track of the days.

Eventually they made it to Brisbane, though Jayden had no desire to go back to the suburbs he’d known. They stayed long enough for Jayden to get paperwork from Centrelink to apply for a replacement driver’s licence and bank cards, and then they headed south again, across the border, to small towns Jayden had never heard of that were far enough from the coast that the tourists never found them. They were dry, rundown places with boarded-up storefronts and sun-bleached roofs.

They rented a house outside of Warialda, an old weatherboard place on uneven stumps that sat right on the banks of Warialda Creek. It was far enough from town that nobody bothered them. They picked up work here and there.

Jayden felt truly alive—not in the cold, desperate way he had when death had been hanging over his head every moment, but in a softer, deeper way, like standing outside on a winter’s morning and waiting for the sunlight to slowly warm him. He woke up each day with Hapi’s fingers curled loosely around his throat. Sometimes he moved them off him so he could get out of bed and start breakfast. Sometimes he put his hand over Hapi’s and squeezed, just to feel his breath catch and his vision blur. He would invariably come back to himself to find Hapi blinking awake beside him, mouth twitching in the closest thing he ever got to a smile.

“Your breath is mine.”

“Yes. Forever.” His voice rasped these days.

One April evening, when the weather was starting to cool, Jayden sat on the front steps of the house with a mug of tea in his hands and watched the sunset. The light slanted through the eucalyptus trees surrounding the house and painted everything gold. Jayden had seen wallabies last week and thought they might come out again at dusk. Hapi sat behind him, his legs bracketing him, one hand wrapped gently around Jayden’s throat. His thumb stroked the underside of Jayden’s jaw.

Jayden sipped his tea, shivering slightly at the pressure against his throat as he swallowed.

He loved the quiet moments like these. Most moments with Hapi were quiet, though Jayden could have entire conversations with Hapi’s grunts and the occasional twitch of his mouth. And he could feel whole universes in a single one of Hapi’s dark stares. Moments like these—companionable and comfortable—were softer and newer.

They didn’t talk much about Innisfail or about Duat and Aaru. Hapi’s delusions were a rock that Jayden could spend a lifetime chipping away at and never fracture, and it didn’t really matter. If Hapi thought this was Egyptian purgatory and that Jayden was a dead man’s wandering soul, it made no difference. They still worked and bought groceries, and sometimes they watched the sunsets together.

Jayden no longer had any urge to just hit the road and keep moving. He wasn’t searching for anything anymore. He was happy.

“It’s getting colder at night now,” he said, and Hapi hummed in agreement. “We should buy some firewood before winter. I saw a sign at the side of the road on the way to town the other day.”

Hapi snorted. “Buy it? There’s fucking trees everywhere.”

Jayden laughed softly. “I don’t know how to chop firewood, Hapi.”

“I’ll teach you.”

Jayden leaned back against him, exhaling contentedly. His tea was lukewarm now, and he thought idly about going inside and zapping it in the microwave for a minute or so, but he was too comfortable to want to move.

The sky was pink and orange and purple.

Jayden looked down the dirt driveway that led eventually out to the road. Hapi’s ute, coated in dust, was parked a little way away. On the other side of the ute, where the driveway curved, there was a paddock that belonged to their neighbour. It was full of nothing but clumps of grass and drooping eucalyptus trees, and it was fenced off with lengths of rusted barbed wire. The paddock was where he’d seen wallabies once before, so his gaze kept returning to it now as the afternoon sunlight faded into dusk.

Hapi’s thumb stroked the underside of his jaw again, making him shiver and smile.

It didn’t matter what Hapi believed, only that he owned Jayden and he would never leave him. Everyone was a little bit deluded, probably. Jayden knew that he was. He knew everything about this was fucked up—he just didn’t care anymore.

The brilliant sunset was beginning to fade at last.

“There,” Hapi said, pointing to the paddock with his free hand. “There’s one.”

Jayden grinned as he saw the first wallaby appear, silhouetted against the dying light.

And then he caught a glimpse of movement closer to the ute and leaned forward slightly. Hapi moved with him, not increasing the gentle pressure on his throat yet.

“Is that…?” Jayden’s heart skipped a beat as a small shadow detached itself from underneath the ute.

Jayden’s blood ran cold. “H-Hapi….”

“Mmm?” Hapi squeezed his throat tenderly.

Jayden tried to laugh. It was a cat. Just a grey-and-brown tabby, and there were millions of those in world. There was nothing special about this cat at all. Except then the cat strolled closer, the last of the daylight falling on it in golden rays and illuminating the familiar torn ear and the kinked tail.

Jayden closed his eyes and placed his trembling hands over Hapi’s. He applied pressure, encouraging Hapi to squeeze more tightly. The familiar roar of blood in his skull drowned out his crazy thoughts and the burn in his chest made him feel alive.

He….

He was alive.

He pressed tighter and felt the hum of Hapi’s rumbling approval against his back. He was alive, and Hapi was just a man. When he opened his eyes the cat wouldn’t be there anymore because that would be impossible.

“Good boy,” Hapi murmured in his ear. “Good ba.”

And Jayden sunk into the oblivion that Hapi offered him every time, too afraid to open his eyes.

* * *

Thank you for reading Hapi. Reviews help authors immensely, so it would be greatly appreciated if you could leave a review.