Cold Was The Ground

by B A Black

  “Ma’am, I hate to bother you two days in a row, but I’ve come to collect the same package—”

  She points at the door leading into the basement with one long and painted fingernail. By now, she’s probably used to shepherds come to round up the errant sheep she caters to.

  Always before, Houston has come into the opium den in the morning, going out of the light and into the deep dark. By then, there’s nothing but the lassitude of the patrons, asleep or drifting in their tired clouds.

  Now the place is in full swing with a Saturday crowd. Houston opens the red door with the coiled, serpentine dragon on it into what seems like absolute darkness. But it isn’t silent—an old Victrola somewhere pours out a new tune. The singers—patrons, Houston supposes, as he descends the steps into the faint glow and haze of another world—are offbeat, off-key, almost unintelligible.

  It’s alright, Houston’s heard the song a hundred times this year.

  My life is a wreck you’re making,

  You know I’m yours for the taking,

  Body and Soul.

  At the bottom of the stairs the smoke is thick and the light is trapped deep in red paper lanterns, causing a sharp disconnect from the rest of the world above. Houston feels unmoored from reality as he descends. A place out of place and a time out of time.

  The den is packed with bodies at this hour of the night, arrayed with no regard for personal space and no higher than two feet from the floor, sitting on their hips on the pillows and pulling from the opium pipes or staring upwards and propped against the walls as if they slid down them. Entranced within their own minds. Men and women, white, black or Chinese, opium has rendered equals of them. They are almost, to a man, singing along to the record of Johnny Green. It’s nearly ethereal. Houston has gone down the rabbit hole.

  He starts looking for a familiar grin.

  He finally spots Sal, spread and slumped in a corner. There is a woman in his lap, her hand working under Sal’s coat, and Houston averts his eyes. He’s not needed here. Sal can take care of himself. Houston turns to go, resolving that he’ll go and talk to Phillips by himself in the morning.

  Something inside drives him to a last, voyeuristic look at his partner in pleasure, but Sal’s eyes are closed, his neck craned against the wall, chin turned mostly away. A flash of metal catching the wan light draws Houston’s attention back down to the woman’s hands.

  She transfers Sal’s watch from his pocket to her own, and Houston is moving before he thinks about it, lunging through the smoky air. He gets hold of the woman by the offending wrist, lifting her firmly but not violently out of Sal’s lap and to her feet. He holds her arm above her head.

  No one in the room reacts until Houston holds the stolen watch up into the light, unwinding the chain from her clutching fingers. Several owlish and blinking gazes take in the scene, with a dull distance that their hazey minds eventually bridge to seeming understanding.

  “That’s not yours, huh?” Houston demands. He jams it into his own coat pocket.

  “Almost was,” she challenges, wild eyes and flashing, desperate teeth. She twists against his grip.

  “You make off with anything else that isn’t yours?” Houston asks, holding tight while she pries at his fingers, digging her ragged nails into the back of his palm. He checks her pockets rudely with his free hand and comes up with Sal’s wallet and keys. What she intended to do with the latter, Houston isn’t sure.

  “Alright,” she says. “That’s all of it.”

  She gives her wrist a violent shake, and Houston lets her free. The music has stopped, the singing gone silent. Houston leaves the thief to the mercies of her fellows—it hardly pays to be a known thief amongst dragon chasers—and then stoops to lift his partner up off the floor.

  ◆◆◆

  The cab ride home is slow torture, with Sal’s hot breath pouring against Houston’s neck, down his collar against his skin. The cabbie gives them the stink eye in the rear-view mirror.

  “He better not lose it in the back,” the cabbie warns.

  “He ain’t there yet,” Houston promises. “It’s just a few blocks.”

  Sal leans across the seat to push his cheek against Houston’s neck, loose limbed and bright eyed and breathing poppy-scented breath against Houston’s collarbone. The heat touches and catches, spreading like hot lava under the topography of Houston’s skin. Sal’s stomach survives the journey as promised.

  “Hobbes,” Sal breathes, as they pull up. “This is your place.”

  Houston pays the man, ignoring the way Sal’s voice affects him like a current running through his veins and down, converging rapids.

  “You bet it’s my place,” he says. “I’ll be damned if I pay your cab fare home just to have you wander back to Lee-Lee’s.”

  It comes out harsh, bitter. Houston almost slips up the cement stairs in his rush to be inside, to put Sal down someplace and stop touching him, to get the sensation of Sal’s hands off his skin before real lust takes root.

  Sal chuckles warmly. He reaches out to cover Houston’s hand on the knob when Houston fumbles the door open.

  “Lee-Lee’s nothing,” Sal says. “I’d rather be here with you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Inside, the floor’s in okay shape. Houston makes a hushed apology to Miss Malone when she opens her door with her gun in her hand to give Houston the hairy eyeball.

  “That’s twice this week, Mr. Mars,” she scolds.

  “Sorry ma’am,” he says, hoisting Sal up a little higher when he sags down.

  In the elevator, as it slowly ascends, Sal’s hand eases against Houston’s belly, familiar and intimate.

  He hums a bar, too slow and drifting, and then puts his mouth against Houston’s ear and sings, “I’m all for you, body and soul.”

  It opens a void in Houston’s heart, a big dark place he’s managed to cover over and step around. Houston puts Sal up on his own two feet.

  “You’re high as a kite, Sal,” he says. “Your brains are out there with the birdies.”

  “So I’m floating,” Sal says. “What I want, I don’t need the ground.”

  “Dry up,” Houston says, but he can’t put any force into it. “What if a neighbor hears?”

  Sal straightens up a little, still listing against Houston like a ship in a storm. He lets Houston get the door to his apartment open, lets him navigate them both inside and close the door behind them again.

  Then, in this relative privacy and intimate safety, Sal presses Houston back against his own locked door, running him up against an assurance that there are no eyes to see them here. Sal presses their mouths together, the taste of smoke and faded coffee and something unique and charged with Sal’s energy.

  His hands make a wreckage of Houston’s lapels, his touch lays waste to logic and reason—Houston wants this, has wanted it, in the short years of their acquaintance. It’s not the first time they’ve found themselves here, with Sal pressing a reaction out of Houston’s willing flesh, with his confident kisses and broad, tall body.

  Houston finds his hands in Sal’s grip, pressed at his sides against the door. Sal’s palms are warm, his mouth moving hungry and open against his neck before Houston can get enough air to speak.

  “Sal,” he breathes, and Sal leans into him, whole body and soft, willing. Sal lowers his head to press it against Houston’s collarbone, steadying himself there. Houston’s mouth seems dry somehow. He swallows and tries again, not sure if he’s calling Sal closer or trying to catch his attention away.

  “Sal.”

  “It’s okay,” Sal says, warm breath against wet skin. He tilts his mouth up beneath Houston’s chin and presses a kiss there. “Hobbes, it’s alright.”

  Houston’s next breath is big and shaking, a fragile hurricane in his ribcage. “Sal.”

  For an instant, he doesn’t think it’s enough to penetrate the fog. Houston pulls himself up straighter, willing his knees to hold him up against the do
or. Sal frees his wrists, Houston puts his palms against his partner’s chest, flat.

  “You’re cold, Mars,” Sal says. “Don’t you want…?”

  Houston thinks back, thinks over his time with Sal, to that other near-miss.

  “Not like this, Sal,” he says.

  Houston lifts his hands and curls them under Sal’s chin, against his strong jaw with the day’s growth of stubble and tips it up from his own chest. Sal’s blue eyes are bright, and despite the proximity, they are miles away. Houston presses his mouth to Sal’s forehead. “Not when I don’t know if you’ll regret it in the morning.”

  Sal steps back, sighing and straightening up, scrubbing his hands through his hair until it’s in a disarray. The apartment is cold. Houston takes his shoes off, overcoming inertia with great difficulty. He fixes his gaze straight ahead, aware of the silence that follows like a splinter under his skin.

  At the sink in the kitchen, Houston splashes cold water on his face until his breathing slows and his heart rate is steady. Until his cock is soft. When he looks up, two luminous yellow half circles gleam at him from the inky shadows on the fire escape. Houston opens the window and lets the shivering cat in, then feeds him.

  Pulling off his tie and jacket, Houston turns back into the main room to get into bed. He finds Sal already there, sprawled in the mess of blankets. Houston takes pity on Sal’s injured back and pulls off his collared shirt, leaving it in the hamper for the laundromat as he heads for the couch.

  For all that his blood was pounding, exhaustion is quick to rise up. He’s settling on the couch, trying to find the right way to bend himself to fit, and pulling the spare blanket over himself when Sal’s voice cuts the darkness again.

  “Mars,” he says, sounding sleepy but almost sober. “I don’t bite.”

  Houston could argue that the ghost sensation of Sal’s teeth against his neck still haunts him enough to prove that this is a lie, but he doesn’t.

  “Come to bed,” Sal says.

  That ache of desire is real and present, and Houston can’t convince himself to say no to Sal twice in one night. There’s no harm in sharing a bed, not after everything else.

  Sal holds the covers up for him, and Houston eases into bed in his boxers. His instincts remember how to sleep next to another body, and he’s half asleep already when Sal rolls onto his side and flings a comfortable arm over him, pressing in close at his side. Houston feels Sal’s breath even out in sleep, but his thoughts are too stirred up for Houston to follow.

  ◆◆◆

  A year ago they stumbled in with their blood singing, pulse in fast jazz time rather than the slow surge of the blues they’d been listening to. Sal pushed Houston back against the door, then the couch, both bodies keyed up.

  Houston remembers the taste of alcohol in Sal’s mouth, remembers being dizzy with it himself. The feeling of Sal’s broad chest under his palms and the way the hairdressing in his hair broke apart between Houston’s fingers. Heat, touch, and close contact at last.

  It had been years since he’d last seen Lucas, and Houston remembered all the steps to the dance but felt out of practice, his steps out of time. It’s the thought of how deep this went the last time that turned Houston’s blood cold again.

  What am I doing? This is my partner! It was too close, too uncareful. Too likely to leave a hole in him when it went bad, and the odds were too good that it would. Houston knew better than to open his door to someone who could really hurt him. Someone he could really hurt.

  He pulled away from the kiss, pushed Sal back a step. He saw only a dazed and glassy lack of understanding in Sal’s blue eyes, whiskey glazed and wondering.

  “Houston,” he said. Houston pushed him a step further back. It was too close, this ghost standing on Houston’s toes like a bad dance partner.

  “I’ll get some blankets, Sal,” Houston said. “You shouldn’t go out again, all lit up like this.”

  It’s the last they said on it. For a few weeks, they crept carefully around the subject, the big unspoken brickpile that neither wanted to address. Eventually, it faded into the past.

  Houston should have known that nothing unresolved stays quietly where you want it to in the past. He knows now it wasn’t a mistake on Sal’s part, and he feels—it’s a mess of emotions, really. Relieved, mostly. Like he cares, too.

  Of course I do, he chastises himself, coming back to the present. Sal’s not just another momentary contact in the night. It’s that which terrifies Houston—that permanence which is dangerous not just in the world as it is but because experience has taught Houston that nothing lasts.

  He’s not sure if that means he should pursue it anyway. His time with Lucas taught him some, leaves him wary and protective of his injured heart. For all that, Houston can’t make himself lay any of it out straight for Sal. He can’t sit down and explain his hesitancy or close the door of opportunity no matter how much better it would be for both of them. A year ago, it was kicked open when they let go of their inhibitions, and all the while since, Houston’s been waiting for Sal to come around and abashedly close it again.

  The fact that he hasn’t is telling. Houston doesn’t know what to make of it, fully. Sal is lackadaisical on the best of days, and a slow-spiraling maelstrom of self destruction on the worst ones. Is it just another project he’s going to leave unfinished? Something he started, but doesn’t care if he sees it through?

  Sal shifts on the mattress next to him, his arm outflung over Houston’s chest, on his side at Houston’s side, with Houston’s arm curled under Sal’s middle. Houston supposes for all his worrying about how it would turn out, Sal is here now.

  ◆◆◆

  Sometime in the night, Sal crashes into wakefulness; he climbs, gasping up out of dark opium dreams and wakes Houston by pulling him tighter, clinging to his body like it’s the only solid thing in his world. Under Houston’s palm he can feel the angry, roped up scar in Sal’s back, and how tense the muscles around it are. Absently, cautiously, he eases his fingers over it.

  “Sal?”

  “Bad dreams,” Sal says, gruffly. His whole body is pressed in a trim, straight line against Houston’s side. It would be easy and comfortable in a way that would be dangerously revealing about their relationship with the lights on, if his skin wasn’t flush with heat and sweat.

  Here in the darkness, Houston lets it pass, welcomes it in. He shifts, easing onto his side to face Sal and putting his other arm around him.

  “I’ll be alright,” Sal starts to protest.

  “Stretch out some.”

  Sal shifts, making his back straight under Houston’s touch. Houston digs his fingers in, rubbing at the stiffest muscles around the scar until they start to ease. Sal gasps, and Houston stops abruptly.

  “No, keep it up,” Sal says, pushing back against Houston’s touch like a cat.

  “It doesn’t hurt?”

  “The opposite.”

  Houston begins kneading and rubbing again, working circles over the scar and under it until Sal sighs out in bliss over his collarbone. For just a few minutes, there’s equilibrium and peace. Houston feels Sal slowly relaxing, unwinding like tightly coiled rope.

  “Hobbes,” Sal says, after some long quiet. “I don’t get you.”

  “What do you mean?” Houston strokes his fingers over Sal’s scar, gently, feeling the rough topography of it.

  “You’re outright cold when I’m hot, then this,” Sal says. He lifts himself up, easing halfway over Houston’s chest to pin him in place, as if he expects a confrontation will drive Houston to run. “What way do you want it?”

  Houston wets his lips. “Sal, you were out of your head last night. I didn’t want—I couldn’t risk—not the first time—”

  “Hobbes,” Sal huffs, cutting off his torrent of ineffective words with a chuckle. “It’s alright. I got it.”

  “I just don’t want to assume.”

  Sal lifts himself, just a little. Enough to move over Houston chest to chest and
look him directly, firmly in the eyes. His hair is an indulgent wreck, askew and begging for Houston’s fingers through it; he can’t tell if the instinct is to straighten it or rumple it further.

  “I’m only gonna say this once,” Sal says, breath warm over Houston’s skin. “you can assume whatever you want if I’m the one making the first move. I’m a big boy.”

  “Yeah?” Houston says, unable to hold back his smile.

  “Yeah,” Sal affirms, leaning down to press their mouths together. This kiss is softer, longer. Houston reaches up, looping his hands around Sal’s neck. What passes between them is an easy, electric charge, sweet and slow as Sal presses against him, chest to chest.

  “You always were too good about things, Hobbes,” Sal tells him, shifting up, passing his hands down over Houston’s chest and belly in bold exploration. “Too much conscience.”

  Houston doesn’t argue, instead he reaches up to pull Sal’s hips against his own, arching. “I’m worth the trouble.”

  Sal chuckles. In the darkness, it’s warm air and warm sound, and they don’t say anything else for a while. Each makes use of permission to explore, working tough fingertips over soft skin, opening mouths over pulse points. Sal pushes Houston back down flat on the bed and swings a leg over his hips, and Houston can feel—through Sal’s boxers and his own—how hard he is. For one hissing moment there’s friction and just that is almost enough when it’s finally Sal touching him.

  “Do that again,” Houston suggests.

  “I got an even better idea,” Sal purrs, pushing his palms against Houston’s belly and heading south. Sal presses a kiss, open mouthed and hotly suggestive against Houston’s belly, and then sets his teeth on the top button of Houston’s boxers, beginning to lift.

  The haze of anticipation is rudely interrupted by the sudden pounding on the door that sends every muscle in his body rigid, startling him half out of bed in a guilty reflex. Sal jumps, too, hastening to make a space between them like a couple of teenagers caught necking.

  “Shit,” Sal hisses, grabbing handfuls of blanket.