Artifacts

by Bailey Bradford

  “Then why?” Sean demanded.

  “Because I’m more afraid of losing a chance with Aldric than I am of what people might say or do.”

  “But you only just met him.” Sean sat on the edge of the ambulance, looking from Darrell to Aldric. “It’s what, love at first sight?”

  Darrell laughed, then groaned. “Ow. Ribs. Would it make it better if it was? I don’t know, Sean. Do you know, Aldric?”

  Aldric thought about it. Love. They’d barely just met each other! He considered all the things he knew about Darrell and all the things he liked about him. They were one and the same. And Darrell had felt strongly enough about him to take that frightening, life-changing step forward. But was that love?

  “I think that’s what grows. What blooms. Maybe. With luck. But first you have to give the seeds a chance,” Aldric suggested.

  “And all I know is I want a chance. I don’t expect everyone to understand or, God knows, approve, but, Sean…” Darrell shrugged. “I have to try.”

  Was Sean going to say he didn’t want to be Darrell’s partner any longer? Could cops do that? Aldric had no idea and it wasn’t as though he could ask any of the officers on the scene for information. They were starting to show signs of leaving anyway, with their attackers gone, either in an ambulance or a police car.

  It made Aldric aware that this was far from the end, though. They’d solved the case but set so much more in motion. Randa Buckman would be charged with several crimes, which would make the news. He sighed.

  “We should go.” Darrell stepped down and helped Aldric down too, holding his hand for longer than was necessary. Aldric couldn’t resist smiling his thanks, and Darrell returned it. Oh. Aldric’s heart squeezed again and he wondered how long the seeds of love actually took to sprout…and if they’d taken root at first sight, after all.

  “Wait,” Elliot said, holding up a hand. The other held something he was refusing to let a police officer take. “Before you go and before this is taken into custody or evidence or whatever, don’t you think we should have a final chance to open it? To solve it, Aldric?” He passed what he carried to him.

  Aldric was sick of the sight of the Buckman artifacts, this one especially, and almost dropped the puzzle box. “Me? I tried. We all did, remember?”

  “Darrell didn’t,” Elliot pointed out, nodding at him. “Let him try.”

  “I don’t know anything about these things!” Darrell protested to Elliot. “I couldn’t even solve a Rubik’s Cube.” Still, he took the puzzle from Aldric and held it up to catch the light, then turned it around, examining it from all angles and sides.

  “You think it’s the inlay squares that hold the key?” Aldric asked Elliot, who nodded. He stared at the hexagonal box in Darrell’s hands. The pale blue of the police vehicle light played over it, giving it a macabre appearance.

  “These are different colors, right?” Darrell said at last. “I mean, I know they’re white, not brown like the wood. I remember that from seeing the box before. But are some of them yellower than the others?”

  “I think so!” Aldric put a hand around the box, so he and Darrell held it together, one hand each, their free hands touching. “They make a pattern, I think? They go up in a curve around the side here, to the middle of the back and up over the top to stop in the middle of what could be the lid here…”

  “And the same on this side, to meet in the center of the lid. And see what the shape is?” Darrell asked.

  Aldric studied the curvature his fingers were making, and the identical one Darrel’s hand was curled into. “It’s a heart,” he whispered. “Isn’t it?”

  “Looks like it. Shall we try?”

  “Yes. Even though we don’t know for sure, and we might get it wrong, we should try.” Aldric brushed the back of his hand against Darrell’s, trusting that Darrell understood the question and that his answer had been about far more than the puzzle. They were gathering an audience.

  “On three? Elliot, count us in?” Darrell suggested.

  On Elliot’s three, with everyone standing close and holding their breaths, Aldric and Darrell touched their fingertips to the off-white inlaid squares that felt cooler to Aldric than the wood of the box—and nothing happened. They stopped, together. “Elliot?” Aldric asked.

  “Try again,” came his suggestion, and he began the count.

  Still nothing happened.

  “I’ll count,” Darrell said, and they did it again.

  “Anything?” Sean asked, with a sidelong glance at the other patrol officers. “Only they really need to get to the station and process all this in.”

  “I know!” Darrell snapped. “Aldric, you say go.”

  “Go?” Aldric said, and he and Darrell pressed the tips of their fingers onto the ivory squares. “Nothing!” he exclaimed.

  “Maybe nothing’s right.” Darrell dropped his hand from the box. “As in, there is nothing. Or it’s something else that opens it. Either way, we can’t keep doing this all damn night.”

  “Hmm. I wonder.” Elliot coughed. “How many times have you tried that move?”

  Aldric frowned. “Four.” He turned the box around in his hand, feeling its hexagon shape. Hexagon. Five! “So we should do it again! Darrell, five! On three, go. One, two—”

  “Three.” Darrell finished the count and pressed in perfect symmetry with Aldric, and the box lid slid open. Everyone gasped and half of their audience cheered. “Grab that thing inside it,” he ordered and Aldric plunged his fingers in and snatched the many-folded sheet of paper out.

  Before anyone could stop him, he smoothed the paper flat. After all they’d been through, he had to know. The tiny writing was difficult to make out, but he managed, and drew Darrell’s attention to what Buck Buckman had left his son. It was more than just the house. “No wonder Randa was worried and tried to retrieve the items she’d sold.”

  He imagined she’d thought it would be a simple matter of snatching them back and destroying them before anyone found the will, only to discover it wasn’t.

  “Buckman must have told his son, sent him some hints or messages,” Darrell mused. “And his son came to town. Or maybe just for the funeral. Guess we’ll find out.” He dropped the puzzle box into an evidence bag Sean was holding out and grinned at Aldric. “It’s amazing what we can do, if we try together.”

  * * * *

  They were together again for another occasion in which the SAPD was involved, almost a month later. The Buckman funeral had been held, a private ceremony, which his son Nick and the guy he was seeing, Mateo—Darrell’s former hook-up—attended, but not his widow, Randa. The case was ongoing, and Darrell had no choice but to be involved, but preferred to focus on other things, such as changes in his career, and him and Aldric.

  Like now, at the police substation, in the press briefing room. Captain Miller didn’t have as much to say on an occasion like this as Fuentes would have, and the audience was a lot smaller, but Darrell was just as reluctant to step into the spotlight. He did, though.

  “Thank you, Captain Miller,” he began. “I’m pleased to accept the position of LGBTQ liaison officer for the substation.” The enthusiastic applause startled him. This had been a rocky road, but he and Fuentes then he, Fuentes and Miller had hammered it out. “It’s the first, I hope, of similar liaison posts to serve culturally specific communities, including minorities and special needs communities.” He tried not to smile at Aldric in the audience, mouthing the words along with him. They’d practiced together.

  “The last time I was publicly recognized and given an honor here in this room, I was called brave. I didn’t feel brave inside, then, though. I do now. I’ve learned a lot since then about what courage is. I won’t give a long speech”—he tried not to look at Fuentes, although Sean snorted in laughter—“but I want to tell anyone who needs to hear it not to be afraid to try, even if it makes you vulnerable, and that that is not the same as being weak. Being sensitive to needs, including your own, and needing to care
and be cared for, is an honor and a privilege, not a failing or weakness. Thank you.”

  Elliot and Jonas, on either side of Aldric, stood and applauded with him. Darrell knew the older men, looking a little bemused, were his twin brothers. They were sitting with Brianna, who’d become a friend, and Leah, who was putting her foot down about ‘Ryan’s family ruling our lives’. Darrell had the feeling that under Leah’s influence, Ryan would make his own decision about whether to be in Darrell’s life or not. Best of all, Darrell had been in touch with his mother, wanting to rebuild their relationship, to get to know her away from his father’s view of things.

  He left the platform and Aldric, handsome in a new suit, met him. “You look so good in your full uniform,” he said. “Well, more than good, but I can’t tell you here.”

  “Can you tell me later tonight?” Aldric spent so much time at Darrell’s now that he’d practically moved in, and Darrell wanted to talk to him about co-signing the lease with him. Anytime they’d talked about it, Aldric had insisted he’d pay half the rent, but Darrell wanted him to use the salary he made at Intrinsic Value to pay for community college. That Aldric had the confidence to think about studying for his associate degree and was even thinking about one day taking a bachelors at one of the universities in town made Darrell so happy.

  “Oh yes.” Aldric’s brown eyes shone bright. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “More than that.” Darrell didn’t even think, just let the words fall. “I want you to fuck me.”

  “What?” Aldric never had, because Darrell had always topped. Always.

  “I said—”

  “I heard. But”— Aldric waved a hand around the room—“you pick your moments! What, now?”

  “Well, let’s get home first, okay?” Darrell suggested. He’d thought he’d feel nervous, and he did, a little, but the buzz of arousal had him feeling almost high. And so fucking horny. And shit, he had the rest of this goddamn event to get through, before he could even think about hightailing it home…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was Darrell’s habit to open doors for Aldric and usher Aldric ahead of him, but that evening, with Aldric’s cute ass wiggling in front of Darrell, he almost pushed Aldric into his apartment with his cock, which was straining in his jeans.

  “Oh.” Aldric pressed back a little in that way of his that Darrell was never sure was deliberate or not. “You seem ready to go. Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Darrell turned Aldric round. “I know you love me fucking you, but—”

  The image of Aldric writhing under him, those beautiful big brown eyes closed tight and his small white teeth biting down on his bottom lip when Darrell penetrated him, robbed Darrell of speech mid-sentence. It also had him weak at the knees. They’d discovered Aldric loved toys almost as much as he loved Darrell’s cock—“and it’d better never be more”, Darrell had told him gruffly at least twice. Aldric’s favorite dildos and vibrators varied from day to day, and Darrell laughed at the cute names Aldric gave them. The blue meanie had been supplanted by the purple monster as Aldric’s current fave.

  “But I’m ready to get fucked in the ass. If that’s okay with you?” Darrell added, deliberately using the kind of language that got Aldric juiced.

  They’d discussed it—sort of—as in, it would happen when Darrell was ready, and that maybe Aldric wasn’t a switch or a top. “If it’s not working for you, we stop. Simple as that,” Darrell assured Aldric, stripping his coat from him. Aldric’s slim chest in that eggplant-colored button-down, the shade chosen to bring out his deep brown eyes, had Darrell’s balls filling.

  Aldric dropped his gaze and bent his head in that way he did when he wanted Darrell to come in close. Darrell obliged, and Aldric whispered, “‘To get to savor you, to spend as long as I want, as long as you need, getting you ready? Oh, Mama!’”

  “Hey!” Darrell objected. “I never said ‘Oh, Mama.’ When have I ever said ‘Oh, Mama’? And if you reply, ‘You will tonight’, I’ll…” He couldn’t go on for laughing. Sex with Aldric was both earth-shattering and life-affirming.

  “Don’t worry,” Aldric continued, and it took him adding, “‘You’re gonna love this. Be begging for more. Wondering how you got through life without a cock up your ass,’” for Darrell to catch on that the sly little bastard was still quoting his words back at him. “But why now?”

  “What can I say?” Darrell shrugged. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

  “It’s not exactly the heart we’re talking about, though, is it?” Aldric’s eyes gleamed.

  “I’m giving you a head start of five.” Darrell raised an eyebrow. “Then that cheeky ass of yours is gettin’ spanked.”

  Laughing and calling for mercy, Aldric raced to the bathroom. He was half-naked when Darrell got there, having peeled off some clothes on the way, and Darrell helped him with the rest, cupping his balls just to see how quickly he could make Aldric’s cock fill. Darrell started the water and motioned for Aldric to go first. Showering together was something they both liked, exchanging long, slow kisses and caresses under the hot water, wreathed in the steam that rose all around them, Darrell finding new spots to bite Aldric and make him squeal with the sound going straight to Darrell’s dick.

  This evening, he bent his head to give a quick bite to Aldric’s nipple, then a lengthier suck of the distended flesh.

  “I think I’d want rings,” Aldric murmured.

  It took Darrell a nano-second to flick to an ongoing conversation of theirs about Aldric getting piercings. “And they’d look fuckin’ sexy. Wash me?” As much as he loved taking care of Aldric, today he wanted Aldric lathering up his hands and spreading foamy soap on him, because he had a surprise for him.

  Aldric started by washing his hair, scratching his nails into Darrell’s crew-cut that he was letting grow a little longer, and making Darrell moan when he massaged his temples. He couldn’t stand still, couldn’t be passive, so grabbed himself a palmful of body wash to spread on Aldric’s neck and shoulders, catching the run-off to rub in small circles into Aldric’s fine underarm hair.

  As always, every touch got them both harder and more eager for the other until they could no longer pretend they were doing anything but rubbing up against each other, their caresses becoming increasingly shorter and harder strokes, just as their kisses went from leisurely to desperate. Darrell slowed things down. He didn’t want them getting off like that, not tonight.

  He turned, his hands against the glass of the cubicle and leaned forward slightly, but enough for Aldric to exclaim in surprise at the butt plug Darrell was wearing. Darrell could feel all the questions beating inside Aldric’s mind. Could Aldric pick the answers from Darrell’s…?

  Yes, he’d been wearing the plug all afternoon and early evening, adding more lube as necessary.

  Yes, it hit his prostate if he got the angle and position right. Jesus, just like the way Aldric was moving it in his tentative exploration.

  Yes, he was preparing himself to take Aldric’s dick, and yes, it was making him horny.

  Aldric whispered a question, and Darrell nodded, granting permission. A second later, Aldric’s fingers tickled around the flared base and pulled to ease the plug loose. Darrell teased Aldric a little, clenching his sphincter muscles to make Aldric work to free the toy. He peeped over his shoulder to see Aldric examining the bulbous black rubber with curiosity.

  “You’ve used one,” Darrell reminded him.

  “Not this size.” Aldric’s voice was almost lost under the cascading water.

  The plug wasn’t that big. Darrell wanted to feel Aldric taking him and the effects of his penetration as long into tomorrow as they lasted. The toy was bigger, though, than the slim starter one he’d eased into Aldric the first time they’d had sex without condoms. Aldric had wanted to hold Darrell’s cum inside him as long as he could, so Darrell had inserted a butt plug after they’d fucked, and Aldric had slept with it in.

  Darrell had pressed into i
t while curled around Aldric, being the big spoon, and the moan Aldric had given in his sleep when the tip pressed on his prostate was a sound Darrell would never forget. Now, he relished the slight looseness of his sphincter and smiled when Aldric unhooked the showerhead and sluiced his ass.

  “Is there any point to that when you’ll be getting me dirty again?” Darrell wondered.

  “‘Don’t wanna be tasting soap in a few, do I?’” Aldric said in a deeper, gruffer tone than his usual one.

  “It’s like living with a goddamn parrot,” Darrell complained of Aldric’s mimicking him. Again. He switched off the water and opened the door for Aldric to exit. Outside, he twisted a towel into a strip and slapped it against the clothes hamper meaningfully, his eyes narrowed, and his mouth set into a thin line.

  His fake threat and just-as-fake scowl worked, because with a squeal, Aldric fled, still patting himself dry. He’d gone to the bedroom. Darrell wrapped a towel around his waist and followed. He snagged a spare towel as he exited, because Aldric never rubbed his hair dry enough by Darrell’s standards, and today was no exception.

  Aldric submitted to having his fluffy brown hair toweled and asked, “Are you stalling?”

  “Not exactly. But, Aldric…”

  “What?”

  “Be gentle with me.” Standing close to Aldric, close enough to feel his breath on his skin, Darrell let Aldric see that while the words sounded flippant, in line with the humor that made up a big part of their relationship, the request was real. That Darrell stood before him, defenses down, vulnerable.

  “Always,” Aldric promised, his voice catching. He patted the bed, and Darrell lay down for Aldric to follow and drop slow, sensual kisses on him, kisses so sweet and yet so scorching that they could only have come from Aldric.

  Darrell stretched out under him, turning his head into Aldric’s hand where it rested in his hair and pushing into the warmth of Aldric’s fingers sliding from his hip to cup his ass.

  He breathed out a half-giggle when Aldric nuzzled into his neck, then took a nip of his collarbone. Aldric pulled away to lean over to the nightstand for the lube.