Rafe
I really, really don’t like my neighbour.
We’ve lived next door to each other for three years, and we couldn’t be more opposite. I’m a quiet, introverted ghoul with a small friend group and a love of true crime podcasts and tabletop role-playing games. Dan Ewen is a party boy with an endless string of ‘guests’ who likes to blare country music all night. He’s loud, inconsiderate, messy, loud, a total dudebro… did I mention loud?
And when I start my new job as IT manager at Goliaths of Wrestling, an underground supernatural wrestling organisation, I quickly discover that my terrible dullahan neighbour is now my new colleague. Great.
I still don’t like him. It doesn’t change anything. I can avoid him at work. But when I spot him one night through his living room window doing something that is utterly shocking, obscene, really weird… I find myself thinking about my annoying neighbour. A lot.
All the time, actually.
Oh no.
Dan
That neighbour of mine is a cute, surly ghoul whose pretty green eyes and angry scowl just make me want to rile him up even more.
We’ve never really been buddies, despite living side by side for three years. But when he starts working at Goliaths as our IT manager, helping to bring us into a new digital age, our lives begin to become a bit more entangled.
Mainly because he starts watching me each night while I… relax. So I make sure to give him a good show through my living room window.
I’ve always assumed Rafe Hare is straight, but it quickly becomes clear that I might be wrong. And when I propose a fantastic new way for us to get… ahem… friendlier, he’s as all-in as I am.
Which means I get to show him just how weird it can get with a dullahan. And I can’t wait.
– Wordcount: 140k
– M/M pairing – cis male ghoul and cis male dullahan
– Grouchy-neighbour-enemies-to-lovers
– Office romance
– Bisexual awakening
– First times
– Wrestlers in tiny outfits
– Holt in skintight outfits and billowing sleeves
– Funny and lighthearted
Content warnings:
– Explicit sexual content (lots of it!)
– Alcohol consumption
– Incubus character who uses religion in a blasphemous way for his wrestling persona
– MC who was adopted at birth (it is not something he struggles with)
– Some mild voyeurism (fully endorsed by the one being watched)
Other things to expect in Cheap Heat:
– Questionable use of a jack-o’-lantern
– Questionable uses of a cucumber and zucchini
– Extremely questionable attempted use of hot sauce
– MC who can remove his own head and takes full advantage of that
– Frank and Beans
– Juvenile and slapstick humour
– Balls are still mentioned plenty
LILY MAYNE 