A Friend in the Dark

by C. S. Poe

  When the kiss broke, Sam brought his mouth to Rufus’s ear and whispered, “I think you were going to tell me how hot I am. At length.”

  Rufus laughed, but it sounded like a shaky exhale at best. “Oh, that’s right….” He put his hands on Sam’s face and caressed his stubble with one thumb. “You are, quite possibly, the hottest man I’ve ever had the pleasure to stare at.”

  “Pretty good,” Sam said as he moved down, nipping at Rufus’s collarbone. “B for effort.”

  “Christ,” Rufus gasped before managing, “I finally made the Honor Roll.” He gave Sam’s hair a tug so he could kiss his mouth again. “I stand corrected—you are definitely the hottest man. Maybe since time began.”

  A little rumble worked through Sam. He slid one hand under Rufus’s tee. He wanted contact, yes, but he also wanted to grab. To possess. His hand slid up over smooth skin. His thumb flicked a nipple. “Better, but you know what they say: practice makes perfect.”

  Rufus gulped like a landed fish. “I think I was absent from school during that lesson.” He slid his hands down Sam’s back and under the hem of his shirt. “I can’t believe you look at me like this. You could get anyone. I bet you do.”

  The words caught Sam; they suffocated the gunpowder smoldering in his gut. He pulled back and tried to catch Rufus’s gaze, and then he kissed him.

  “What’s my policy on bullshitting?” Sam asked, his thumb rubbing a slow circle along Rufus’s areola.

  “You don’t,” Rufus whispered. He gripped Sam’s back harder, dug his nails into warm flesh.

  “Not things that are important to me. You are important to me. You’re smart. You’re brave. You’re kind. I can tell you the things that would make most assholes run away, and you find a way to make them better. And you are gorgeous.” Sam slid down to his knees, rucked the tee up, and planted a kiss on the galactic disc of freckles low on Rufus’s belly. “But, gotta be honest, you’re lucky you’ve got all these freckles.”

  Then he worked the button on Rufus’s jeans. The zipper on the fly stuttered on its way down, and then Sam dragged the jeans to Rufus’s knees. His hands came up again, stroking over the cotton briefs, heat radiating through the thin fabric. He palmed Rufus once, the cotton wet and bunching under his fingers, and pulled his hand away. Something was running through Sam, something like the tremors that came on him so often now, but different too. Once, outside Bagram, he had watched a bird plummet from the minaret of a mosque, a black arrow diving toward the sunbaked clay, and at the last minute, its wings unfurled, and the feathers were iridescent in the sun as it skimmed the ground, trailing reddish-brown dust like a fighter jet. This, touching Rufus this way, was like that. Sam looked up at Rufus. He slid the briefs down; the waistband had left red tracks in Rufus’s fair skin. And then he took Rufus in his mouth.

  Rufus knocked the back of his head against the door. A sob tore out of this throat, sounding like protest, like relief, like passion, like desperation. It was a combination of base animal need and an exquisite symphony playing out at the same time. One hand held the back of Sam’s head, keeping him close, never letting him pull back entirely, while the other rested on Sam’s shoulder, as if Rufus needed distance and didn’t know why. Didn’t understand why. Maybe was afraid to consider the why.

  Sam wasn’t exactly watching the clock, but it didn’t seem like it took long. He let Rufus run as much of the show as he wanted. When Rufus slacked, Sam took over again. Sam liked giving a good blow job, but he liked the noises Rufus made a lot more. And then, Rufus was clutching at him, whimpering, thrusting. Coming.

  When Sam pulled off, Rufus sagged against the door, and Sam braced hands on knees and looked up at him. Rufus’s face was blank. Chuckling, Sam ran the back of his arm across his mouth.

  “Ok,” he said. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Come on.”

  Hoisting Rufus over his shoulder, he fireman-carried him to the sofa, where he helped him stretch out. He tugged the briefs back into place but got rid of the Chucks and the jeans, and then he jostled Rufus until he could squeeze onto the cushions. They lay there for a while, Sam teasing out strands of silky red hair, trying to make it stand up in the weirdest ways he could imagine.

  “You alive in there?”

  Rufus laughed lightly. “I think so. That was amazing.” He looked at Sam. “What about you?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said with a smile. “I liked that.”

  Rufus shifted and propped himself up on an elbow. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I’m fine. Honest. I just wanted it to be about you.” Sam raised an eyebrow at the silence. “Come on? Nobody’s ever done that for you?”

  Rufus looked at Sam once or twice, but the eye contact didn’t linger. “Not really.”

  From the street came the hub and murmur of the city, underscored for a moment by the whup, whup, whup of a helicopter. Sam ran his fingers up the knobs of vertebrae in Rufus’s back, hooked the collar of his shirt, and dragged him back down onto the sofa. Then it turned into a mixture of wrestling and forced cuddling, with Sam trying to wrap himself around Rufus and Rufus laughing and trying to get free.

  Sam ended up on top, and he leaned to kiss Rufus. Then he stopped. “Oh. Yeah. I’ll go brush, I guess.”

  “I know where my dick’s been.” Rufus pulled Sam back down and kissed him.

  For some reason, Sam was blushing after the kiss. But he kissed Rufus again, out of gratitude. And then he kissed him again. That one was for fun. Then, dropping onto his elbows, he framed his body around Rufus’s.

  “Bad news: you’re officially my captive.”

  Rufus snorted and said, “Oh yeah? I fight dirty and don’t regret it afterward. You really want to test me?”

  “I’d be willing to consider an early release in exchange for some information.”

  Rufus hummed under his breath. “Interesting. Continue.”

  “One Rufus thing.”

  Rufus’s carefree expression skipped and stuttered. “I already told you a Rufus thing.”

  “I’m greedy. I want another.”

  Rufus turned his head and said nonchalantly while staring everywhere but at Sam, “Rufus things are pretty dull.”

  The helicopter was still somewhere out there, whup, whup, whupping its way across the whole city, it felt like. Sam tapped on Rufus’s jaw. Rufus swatted at his hand. Sam tapped again.

  “Cut it out.”

  Sam tapped again. And again. Until Rufus turned back and looked at him.

  And Sam wasn’t sure what he saw, but he knew enough to stop. He rolled off Rufus, getting to his feet, and said, “Want to shower?”

  Rufus sat up. He grabbed Sam’s wrist before he could move out of reach. “Hang on.” His mouth worked and his Adam’s apple bobbed a few times. “A Rufus thing…. Three years ago I decided to kill myself. But my building is only four stories—fifty percent probability. So I found a taller one.” Rufus laughed, but it was pure reflex. His grip tightened to the point of pain on Sam’s wrist. “When I was up there… I decided I didn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s shit night.”

  Lowering himself onto the coffee table, Sam locked his free hand around Rufus’s wrist, turning them into a chain, Rufus holding Sam, Sam holding Rufus. “Why’d you want to do it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Thank you for telling me. And, so you know, you can always tell me you don’t want to talk about something. It’s better than trying to figure out if I messed up or if I made you mad.” Sam hesitated. “Are you still thinking about hurting yourself?”

  Rufus glanced up, his green eyes bright and wet behind locks of disarranged hair. His face and neck were flushed. “Sometimes, I guess.”

  Nodding, Sam said, “Are you getting help?”

  Rufus laughed again, but it was very bitter, and very hurt. “You’re kidding, right?” He disengaged from Sam’s hold. “I don’t want to keep talking about it. I just wanted to tell you another Rufus thing.”


  “We don’t have to talk about it right now. You don’t ever have to talk about it with me, not if you don’t want to. But you have to talk about it with somebody. Soon. I want to help you. And I care. And there are other people who care too. That waitress, Maddie, or whatever her name was. She cares about you. Jake cared about you. So you don’t have to talk about it right now, but we need to get you in to see a therapist as soon as we can. And if you talk about money, I swear to God, I will put you over the arm of this sofa and paddle you until your ass is as red as your hair.”

  Rufus had begun to protest, was stopped numerous times as Sam kept talking, then offered a brittle smile. “I might like that.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “That sounds about right. Christ, what day is it? Friday? I mean, we can try to do this tomorrow, but it might not be until Monday. I don’t know. This is a big city. They’ve got to have walk-in places for situations like this even on the weekend.” He glanced back at Rufus. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

  Rufus jumped to his feet and sidestepped the coffee table. “No. Stop. I’m not talking to a stranger about this.”

  “Ok. Hey, come here.”

  But Rufus didn’t. “You’re making this a huge deal, Sam.”

  “It is a huge deal.” Sam stood up faster than he meant. The coffee table toppled behind him, and the crash climbed the walls of the studio. “You’re a huge deal, Rufus. You say stupid things about how you can’t figure out why I like you. I like you because you’re fucking incredible. And then you tell me you’re thinking about hurting yourself. You’re goddamn right I’m going to make it a huge fucking deal.”

  Rufus’s face was red now, fists clenched so tight that his knuckles were white, and his breathing came quick and shallow like a small panicked animal. And then, without warning, huge tears rolled down Rufus’s cheeks and he broke into a sob. “Please stop,” he begged. “I can’t—I can’t.”

  “Christ, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled.” Sam scrubbed his face, and then he took a single step toward Rufus. “Ok, come here. I’m not going to say anything else. Just come here, I’ll be quiet if you’ll just come over here.”

  Sam expected more of a fight, so he was surprised when Rufus immediately closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms underneath Sam’s, and pressed himself against the bigger man’s body.

  “Talking about it makes it worse,” Rufus said between hiccups and tears.

  Wrapping arms around Rufus, Sam lowered his chin into the red crow’s nest. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.” He kept saying it over and over again because he thought he’d been saying the right things, thought he’d been doing it right, and somehow he’d only made it worse. “You’re ok. We don’t have to talk about it. We’re both ok.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Based on the gray-blue light filtering into the studio, rising up toward the loft like incoming tides, Rufus suspected it was close to six in the morning. The sun would cast a whitish-yellow illumination over the city soon, and it’d be the start of a new day.

  Another day.

  It always came.

  Without fail.

  It always came because Rufus had never been able to get over the idea of some poor SOB getting called to Rufus’s self-made crime scene, their night being fucked after having to shovel his blood and guts off the pavement, only to be left unclaimed with the city medical examiner’s office, stuffed into a pine box, and buried with a number instead of a name on Hart Island.

  Rufus O’Callaghan didn’t have anything in life but his name.

  So he wasn’t going to allow himself to take that one last shred of dignity away. Rooftops were still tempting—hadn’t stopped being tempting. The city twinkling from far away, beautiful like a siren’s song, and the asphalt below the rocks his ship crashed into.

  He turned his head on the pillow and studied Sam, still asleep, which frankly surprised Rufus. He had screwed up so hard last night. They’d gone on a real—ok, sort of real—date. And had amazing sex afterward, during which the only sensible thought Rufus had managed to compose was This must be what it’s like to be a prince. Then he obliterated everything built up between them by telling Sam that thing. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the worst truth locked away in his Pandora’s box, but it sure as fuck was up there in the rankings.

  It’d been enough to scare Sam. And that had scared Rufus.

  Only this time, Rufus hadn’t cried alone. Sam had stayed with him, held him, kissed him.

  Rufus dragged his finger along the mattress, tracing Sam’s body without actually touching him. He was a big guy, a strong guy, a handsome guy.

  When Rufus was in sixth grade, he’d gone on a field trip to the Met. His mother had actually paid the fee and everything. It was Rufus’s first time in a museum, and he’d talked nonstop about the experience for at least a week. He still remembered what it had been like to stand in front of a massive statue of Hercules—naked and youthful, holding the pelt of a lion. All those hard planes and muscles. Most definitely the son of a god. That statue had made it all click for Rufus, even at a young age. Sam reminded him of that experience. Sam was the breathing embodiment of powerful, raw masculinity that’d awakened after being entombed in marble for centuries.

  What had Aristophanes written in one of his plays? The Clouds, Rufus thought? A glistening chest, broad shoulders, mighty bottom, and a tiny prong. Well, minus the small dick—Rufus never could quite understand the Greek’s preoccupation with that particular aspect—Sam was a study in the ideal male form.

  But it wasn’t only the physical that Rufus liked about him.

  He trusted Sam like he’d never trusted anyone in his entire life… even Jake. He told Sam secrets he thought he’d take to the grave. And he didn’t think twice about turning his back to Sam, because Rufus knew, instinctively, Sam wouldn’t cut him or cross him—he would only catch him.

  Rufus liked Sam’s presence. He felt drunk on it. Sam had those little smiles that made Rufus’s heart rate speed up, dry wit and limited patience that made him laugh, and a softer, more trusting side that made Rufus feel needed again. And it meant something that Sam was comfortable touching Rufus, when he couldn’t bear being physical with anyone else.

  Rufus kissed Sam’s shoulder, rolled to the edge of the mattress, found his burner in the back pocket of his jeans on the floor he’d dragged upstairs the night before, and got comfortable again as he began typing in the web browser. He’d been awake for a few hours, and in between the self-studies of his own inadequacy and general trauma, Rufus had been thinking hard on what that pickup had been.

  The last thing Jake had given him was Chinese takeout and a tongue-lashing for what he had deemed a dangerous decision on Rufus’s part to get a job done, but it’d put a real piece of shit behind bars and Rufus had been no worse for wear, so he’d shrugged Jake off. And prior, Jake had bought him that book from the Strand.

  Rufus remembered the title, of course. 1001 Buildings to See Before You Die. It’d been on the bargain rack for three bucks. Maybe Jake bought it for him because he sensed Rufus needed… a reason. Maybe because he knew Rufus would never get an opportunity to leave the city and see those wonders for himself. Or maybe he simply wanted Rufus to shut up about needing to borrow five bucks for a new book and bought the biggest and cheapest thing there to keep the punk occupied.

  Whatever the reason had been, Rufus loved the book. He’d show it to Sam when all of this shit was behind them.

  Not taking his eyes off his phone, Rufus gave Sam an elbow nudge. “Hey, wake up.”

  Sam bolted up. “Huh? What?”

  Rufus glanced sideways and made a come-hither motion. “Down here, killer.”

  Wiping his eyes, Sam shook himself like a dog. “What? God, what time is it?”

  “A little after six.”

  “Sleep,” Sam said, dropping back onto the mattress and putting his arm over his eyes.

  “No sleep.” Rufus nudged him again.

 
“What do you want?”

  “Sex, pancakes… oh! I’ve always wanted a pair of red Chucks. Hey, do you think the pickup item was something wild, like the location of Atlantis?”

  A long groan came back as an answer. “No redheads before ten.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Rufus continued, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on an elbow. “About Jake’s phone.”

  “What about his phone?”

  “Heckler has it. And short of a miracle, I doubt we’re going to get it from her. But looking for whatever the pickup was or is or—it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  Wiping his eyes, Sam said, “Ok. So…. Nope, I’m too tired for this. What are you saying? We try something else?”

  “I’m saying, we’re spinning our wheels for nothing, trying to find the pickup without the key information most likely in Jake’s phone. So let’s focus on the phone.” Rufus held up his own and tapped it a few times against Sam’s chest. “There are ways to access phones remotely. Clouds and shit, right?”

  “Yeah. Right. Like a backup, or something.” Sam sat up. “So how do we get to it?”

  Rufus mimicked Sam’s motion. “I saw Jake on a website a few months ago—CallSpy, I think it was. I broke in while he was at home, and he said he was backing up data so if my skinny ass decided to steal his phone, all his info was safe.”

  “Well,” Sam said, scrubbing his face and staring out over the apartment. “Shit. What are you waiting for?”

  “For you to tell me I’m brilliant.”

  “This is why I said no redheads before ten.” Sam pecked him on the cheek, climbed over him, and headed down the ladder. “Get your brilliant skinny ass to work, please.”

  “Make me coffee!” Rufus called after him. He blew out a quiet breath once he was alone in the loft. Sam hadn’t said a word about last night. Maybe he never would. God, Rufus could only hope.

  He looked down at his phone and tapped CallSpy into the internet browser. He scrolled down to Forgot Password on the homepage and followed the prompts for breaking into—that was, recovering—Jake’s account. In the kitchen below, he heard Sam padding around, the sound of his movement soon mixing with the trickle of running water. A minute later, the smell of coffee floated up to the loft. After Rufus had supplied Jake’s personal e-mail, a security question loaded.