Free Deliverance - Hooch and Matt's Story by TA Brown, Marquesate Page A

butt, and then, to all appearances, obeyed and went immediately to sleep.
    Hooch chuckled quietly, eventually got up, but not without running his hand all the way along the smooth, bare flank. Soon after, the sound of the shower running came out of the bathroom, and a few minutes later the mattress dipped when a slightly damp, fully naked Hooch climbed into bed behind Matt. He pulled Matt against his body, holding him. Something he’d never done before the capture.
    The house was silent, and it didn’t take long for Hooch to fall asleep, lulled by Matt’s steady breaths and the warmth of his body.
     
    * * *
     
    Arms, bodies, pain and stench, death, filth and ever more bodies. Fear, all-encompassing; fear he’d never admitted. Fear to give up, just give into the pain and the stink and let himself fall down, far down, down into the darkness.
     
    Hooch woke with a start. He was drenched in sweat, on his back, while the sleeping body beside him lay curled up, making a soft snuffling sound. Hooch lay still, trying to force his wildly hammering heart to calm, while ruthlessly pushing back down the sound of terror that tried to rip out of his throat. The cover was off his body, sweat cooling in the air. The last thing he wanted was to wake Matt. He couldn’t bear for him to know, not Matt, not having to explain to him that there was more of a legacy from his captivity than the scars from cigarette burns and pelvic surgery.
    When he had himself under control, with the same recklessness he applied to anything in his life, he slipped out of bed and searched for shorts and t-shirt. He couldn’t stay in the bed, not with the damp patch of his terror and sweat on the sheets. He padded quietly downstairs and into the kitchen.
    He only dared to switch on a small light above the sink, and while he’d love a hot drink, he didn’t want to wake anyone, nor felt it appropriate to make himself at home in a home that wasn’t his. So he merely filled a glass with cold water from the tap and sat down at the kitchen table, sipping the water while staring into the faint glow of the single lamp.
    A movement in the corridor alerted him to someone approaching. Hooch looked up a few seconds before Anne appeared in the door. She gasped and held a hand against her chest at the sight of him, illuminated in the faint glow. “Oh,” she said, “sorry, you gave me a bit of a fright. Is everything alright? I was just getting myself a cup of peppermint tea  would you like one too?”
    Hooch half stood, but sat back down when she spoke. “Yes, anything, please. Tea is fine. Thanks.” Carefully avoiding her question if everything was alright. What was he to say? Things were okay, of course they were. If only he didn’t dream of that goddamned stench.
    She seemed to sense that he needed silence, as she boiled water and readied the tea. Soon, she had two large pottery mugs full of the brew and placed one in front of Hooch.
    “When my dad came back from the war,” she said in a conversational tone as she sat down, “he had trouble sleeping nights now and then, particularly if it was in a new place. It made for interesting family holidays, to say the least.” She turned the mug in her hands, as though conscious that chatter was the last thing that Hooch needed.
    Hooch looked at her without any expression, until a ghost of a smile crossed his face. “None of your kids could ever hide anything from you, right?”
    She smiled. “No, but we’ve been very lucky with our brood. None of them have felt the need to conceal anything. Discretion, sometimes, of course.” Letting that hang in the air, and allowing Hooch to pick up on it or not, as he chose.
    Hooch nodded. “Fine line between concealing and discretion,” a pause, “and protection.”
    “But a line nonetheless.” Anne’s fingers tapped on the handle of the mug and Hooch was struck by how similar in shape they were to Matt’s. “He never hid from us that there was someone. He simply