The Bite
David “Dutch” Reinhard pressed his badge against the scanner, and the red light flickered to green with a mechanical beep. The heavy security door opened into the dim underground garage, and the scent hit him like a soft punch: concrete dust, engine oil, and powdered sugar.
The night shift break room—if you could call a converted janitor’s closet a break room—pulsed with orange-yellow light and the tinny laughter of an old sitcom. The guards were already inside, bodies wedged into plastic chairs, bellies out, legs sprawled. They were watching Honest to Todd on a mounted TV, powdered sugar dusting their uniforms like fresh snowfall.
“Look alive, it’s Dutchster!” Rick hollered, slapping Dennis’ gut like a drum.
“You’re just in time for the Bavarian creams!” Lou called, holding up a pink pastry box as if it were the Holy Grail.
Dutch managed a tired smile and gave a curt wave as he passed the open door and headed toward the patrol log to sign in. He didn’t stop. He never did. He’d developed a system in his first few weeks on the job: walk the beat, check the cameras, and avoid the break room unless absolutely necessary. Instead of sitting around the table watching bad TV and eating donuts, he took his breaks in his car, eating protein bars and staying sharp. Staying loyal.
While Dutch slaved away at home—cop by day and a rent-a-cop by night—Brianna was still in Oregon on her nursing contract. Their lives had become little more than double shifts and brief video chats whenever their schedules synched up. It was hell, but it was worth grinding themselves to dust for their wedding fund. Only three more months, and then maybe their life together could start.
A text pinged on his phone:
You alive? Miss you.
Dutch stared at it, thumb hovering. He should reply. He wanted to reply. But he was too fried to think of what to say. He shoved the phone back into his pocket and exhaled hard.
By midnight, he was sitting at the edge of the break room, forced out of the guard shack by cold and boredom. The guards were in full sugar sweat mode now. Rick and Carl’s belly bumped between bites of jelly donuts, Lou wheezed through a laugh, and Dennis rubbed his gut like it was a Buddha for luck.
And then there was Tony. Big, bald Tony, with the thickest mustache of them all, sat in the corner chair with the best view of the TV. He exuded calm steadiness, his laugh like a purring engine.
Dutch tried not to watch them and mainly tried not to notice their casual touches, but they were everywhere. A palm to the thigh here, a slow back rub there, the occasional fingers brushing over a shoulder while passing the donut box. None of it was sexual. Just… affection. Weirdly open.
Too open.
He clenched his jaw. His own body felt like it was buzzing. He hadn’t touched himself in over two weeks. He didn’t want to betray Brianna, not even in his head. But something inside him was straining, gnawing. And the guards’ sloppy affection, their laughter, and their warmth only made it worse.
Tony noticed.
“You look like you’re about to bite your own tongue in half,” he said, voice low. “Come on, kid. You need this.”
He reached over and plucked a still-warm donut from the box—golden brown, dusted in sugar. He placed it on a napkin and slid it across the table toward Dutch. Didn’t push. Just waited. Dutch shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“Suit yourself,” Tony said, leaning back with a creak of his chair.
But the donut sat there. Dutch stared at it as if it were a lit fuse. He told himself he didn’t care. It was just sugar and dough. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t weak. But it smelled like… relief. Like a warm bed. Like love in a strange, dumb, cheap way.
His fingers moved before his brain did. He picked it up. He took a bite. And the world slowed down.
The sweetness bloomed across his tongue, thick, rich, and obscene. Like every nerve in his mouth had been kissed. The sugar hit his bloodstream like lightning. His shoulders dropped. His jaw unclenched. He swallowed, and it felt like sliding into warm water.
He took another bite. Around him, the guards laughed at some rerun gag. Carl mimed riding a motorcycle with his belly jiggling. Rick slapped his back and nearly knocked him over. Lou snorted powdered sugar and choked. But now, Dutch didn’t flinch. Their laughter seemed warmer, their faces more familiar. Carl’s belly bounce made him chuckle. Even the dim light in the room felt softer.
“Not bad, huh?” Tony said.
Dutch looked up. Tony’s eyes were kind. Not gloating. Just watching him like a proud uncle.
“Yeah,” Dutch said, licking sugar from his fingers. “Not bad.”
Tony reached out and gave his shoulder a slow, firm squeeze. Dutch didn’t pull away.
The Change
The donut box opened with a puff of sugary air, warm and sweet as the cloying sitcom rerun on the break room TV.
Dutch didn’t even hesitate anymore. He reached in, his thick fingers brushing Tony’s as they both went for the same glazed. Dutch chuckled, cheeks round and flushed, and let Tony take it. He chose a jelly instead—they were his new favorites, anyway.
Tony leaned back in the big chair, belly rising like a hill under his stretched company polo. “You’re getting quicker, Davey,” he said, tearing the donut in half and handing Dutch a piece.
“Guess I’m finally starting to catch on,” Dutch said, voice a little breathy.
Dutch took the offered half without looking. Their fingers met, sticky with sugar, and didn’t pull away immediately. Tony didn’t make a big deal of it. He never did.
It had been three weeks since that first bite. Three weeks since Dutch the cop, the fiancé, the man with ambition, had taken a back seat to Davey, who wore size 3XL polos now and let Carl rub his belly like it was a department store prize wheel.
The name change had started casually. Lou called him “Davey” after he polished off a third maple bar in one shift. It stuck. Dutch never corrected them. Dutch was stiff. Davey was soft, warm, and sweet.
Like the donuts.
The break room was always the same. Same flickering lights, same battered chairs, same perpetual returns on the little wall-mounted TV. Tonight, it was Mr. Belvedere, the dialogue barely audible over the wheeze of Dennis’ breathing.
But for Davey, each shift and each visit to the donut table felt different. He sat closer to Tony now. He liked the heat of him, the steady warmth of his bulk, and the way his breathing sounded so calming like Davey was falling into meditative sync with the rise and fall of Tony’s barrel chest. Tony didn’t talk much, but when he did, Davey listened like it was scripture.
And then, there was the touch.
It started simply. A palm to the back after a long overnight shift. A hand resting on Davey’s shoulder while they laughed. But lately, Tony touched him with more intention, rubbing circles between his shoulder blades after a donut binge, brushing crumbs and powdered sugar from his chest with slow fingers. Sometimes, out in the guard shack, he’d rest his hand just above Davey’s knee and leave it there for minutes.
It was all so gentle. Safe. Innocent. Davey hadn’t realized how much he needed that—not sex, not even romance—just someone who touched without needing anything in return.
His phone buzzed on the armrest. He didn’t check it. He knew it was Brianna. She always texted before her night rounds started, with brief updates from the ER. He used to live for those moments of connection and their shared daydreams about their future together.
Now, it all felt… far away.
Another buzz. Tony glanced at the screen, then at Davey. “She still writing?”
Davey shrugged. It felt awkward to discuss it. “Sometimes.”
Tony didn’t push; he just handed him another donut, a chocolate-frosted one.
“Eat,” he said simply. “You’ll feel better.”
Davey bit in, sighing softly. The chocolate melted over his tongue, thick and rich. He let his head fall back against the recliner, the weight of his gut pressing comfortably into his waistband.
His mind floated.
Brianna’s voice faded like a radio station slipping out of range.
Later, during the second rerun of the same episode of She’s the Sheriff, Carl slapped Davey’s belly on his way out to make a round. “He’s coming along real good, huh, Tony?”
“He’s right where he belongs,” Tony replied, arm still resting across the back of Davey’s chair.
Carl winked and waddled off, donut in hand.
Davey looked up at Tony. The TV light cast soft blue shadows across his face. His mustache was flecked with powdered sugar, his eyes tired but kind.
“It’s getting harder to go into the precinct,” Davey said, quieter than he meant to. “I’m in the patrol car every day, just thinking about when I can come back to work here.”
Tony didn’t laugh. Just looked at him with that slow, sure expression of his.
“You’ve found your post now,” he said. Then, more softly: “Davey.”
The way he said it made something inside Davey sink. Like an anchor dropped gently into water. He hadn’t heard his real name in days. Didn’t need to.
He leaned over, just slightly, and let his shoulder touch Tony’s. Then his cheek.
Tony didn’t move.
They sat like that, close and silent, as the night rolled on.
Outside, somewhere in the city, a siren wailed.
Davey didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. Tony tore another donut in half and held it up to his lips. Davey opened his mouth and let the piece in.
The Goodbye
The heat hung in the air long after the sun had set, thick, drowsy, and clinging to the walls. Davey sat in the break room with his legs parted wide and his belly resting comfortably in the soft sag of his lap. The flickering light of a Marblehead Manor rerun illuminated the powdered sugar dust on his polo. His breath came slow and shallow. Everything was slow and shallow now.
He hadn’t expected her until Friday.
They’d agreed—if one could call those half-hearted texts and breathless late-night check ins “agreement”—that she’d be back in time for a tasting with the caterer. Friday. It was Tuesday.
Tony was beside him, as usual, solid and vast, one arm resting on the chair back behind Davey’s shoulders. Every once in a while, Tony’s fingers would wind their way up the back of Davey’s neck. There was a kind of rhythm to the way they sat, not quite touching, but not formally apart, either. Their bodies were like two pieces of furniture that had lived in the same room too long to question their orientation. Tony’s cheap, piney aftershave mixed with the sugar rising from the donut box, and Davey’s mouth watered reflexively.
Friday seemed like a million years away.
Then the door burst open.
No knock, no warning, just the click of the latch and the harsh rectangle of fluorescent hallway light cutting into their humid, sugar-frosted sanctuary. Brianna, hair pulled back in a messy knot, still in her airport-wrinkled scrubs and bag slung over her shoulder, filled the door frame. Her clenched jaw made it clear this wasn’t going to be a happy reunion.
Davey didn’t rise. He didn’t breathe.
“Oh my god,” Brianna said.
Her voice wasn’t angry, just awestruck, as if someone had stolen a painting of the man she loved and replaced it with a parody. Her eyes flicked down his body—the 4XL polo stretched taut over his gut, the doughy pale slope of his arms, the glint of sweat on his shaved scalp, and the constellation of powdered sugar across his chest, and the mustache, of course, thick and bushy, curling slightly at the edges just like all the others’.
“Dutch?” she tried again.
The laugh track on the TV burst into the room like a shriek. Someone’s trousers had fallen down. No one in the break room was laughing.
“I didn’t think you were coming ’til Friday,” Davey said, his voice soft like it had to pass through syrup to reach her.
He made no move to stand. He felt, somewhere beneath the softness, that if he tried to stand, he might just tip forward and keep going. Roll, maybe. He blinked.
“What is this?” she said, stepping inside now, stepping into the haze of sugar, sweat, and the slow rot of it all. “What the hell is this?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer.
“You were so—God, Dutch, you were so fucking hot. Do you remember that? In that dark blue uniform? You had definition. You were purposeful. You used to get up before dawn to run five miles, and now—” she gestured toward him, almost helplessly, “now you’re… sitting in a room full of mustaches and carbs watching… whatever the hell this is.”
Davey blinked again. Something about her tone made him itch, not in his skin but under it. It was the sound of expectation, of effort, of a future being placed squarely into his lap like an object he no longer had the hands to hold.
Tony shifted beside him but didn’t rise. He was unhurried in all things. He reached into the donut box, selected a cruller, and began to tear it in half. The motion was deliberate, almost tender. His thick fingers moved with quiet reverence, making Davey feel a small, glowing heat in the pit of his belly.
“Is this him?” Brianna said, eyes snapping to Tony now. “Are you two… what? Are you fucking?”
Tony didn’t flinch.
“You don’t get it,” he said, and it wasn’t cruel. It was quiet, like a truth that had been waiting in a corner for someone to notice it.
“Then explain it.”
Tony glanced down at Davey, then back to her.
“It’s not about sex. It’s not even about love. It’s about something else. Men like us, we get tired. We spend our whole lives being sharp, being strong, being watched. Then, one day, we just want to hang it all up. We want to stop posing. We want to be held without being asked for anything.”
He extended one half of the donut toward Davey without ceremony.
“He gets that. You don’t.”
Davey looked at her. Her face twisted with disbelief. Her knuckles turned white on the strap of her bag. Then he looked at the donut, its ridges glistening in the low light.
And then the TV. The butler was setting up for a gag. Something about a wine cellar. The punchline was coming. Davey leaned forward slightly as if that might help him catch it.
“Jesus Christ, Dutch—look at me,” Brianna hissed.
He looked. But it was like looking through fog. He couldn’t make the pieces fit. He knew her scent, her fingers, and her voice in the early morning, but it all felt like knowledge from a previous life. Like knowing the shape of an old uniform you hadn’t worn in years.
“Say something,” she demanded. “Tell me this isn’t real. Tell me you still want me.”
Davey blinked slowly. Then turned to Tony.
“Can you… just hold me for a second?”
Tony set the donut aside and opened his arms without a word.
Davey shifted, belly lifting slightly, then settling against Tony’s chest with a quiet sigh. The arms around him were immense, warm, and unshakable.
Brianna didn’t move; she just stood there like a statue. Then, with an almost imperceptible inhale, she turned and left. No final word. No sob. Just footsteps.
The door swung shut behind her with a heavy, echoing click.
Tony adjusted his hold slightly and reached down to retrieve the half cruller. Brought it to Davey’s lips without breaking the embrace.
Davey opened his mouth. The taste was honey and surrender.
On the TV, the punchline landed. The audience howled. Davey didn’t laugh. But he smiled.
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