by J L Aarne
“Oh,” Ezekiel said. “I like the desk in there to work. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
Jacob frowned at him. “Because I’m such a light sleeper and you haven’t been doing that anyway for years.”
Ezekiel shrugged and ate a piece of buttered toast. “We don’t have a desk upstairs.”
Jacob ate some of his own breakfast and didn’t say anything for a little while. As Ezekiel finished his coffee and stood, he asked, “It feels like something’s wrong. Are you sure you’re not—”
Ezekiel rested a hand on his shoulder. “I’m fine. We’re fine. I’ll see you later.”
He filled his thermos with coffee, gathered his things and left for work. Jacob watched him, still worried, not much reassured by Ezekiel’s answers. And Ezekiel forgot to kiss him goodbye.
At work, Ezekiel stayed busy, but his day consisted mostly of phone calls and paperwork. He had Brockden and Kenner respond to written requests for criminal profiles, sent Crewes to work with Jeong and Murray to look at footage they’d received that was part of a possible serial murder investigation outside of Portland, assigned Gonzales to work with the detectives still investigating The Lamplighter and update the profile and Schechter assisted Brockden, Kenner and Crewes where he was needed.
At one o’clock, Ezekiel left his office and walked toward the elevators. He was thinking Mexican food sounded really good for lunch. He had left the house that morning without even thinking to check for a lunch sack on the counter or in the fridge. Jacob had probably made him something and he would be irritated that Ezekiel hadn’t eaten it, but Ezekiel wasn’t really sorry.
He passed Schechter on his way to his desk and the younger man smiled at him. Ezekiel paused. “Hey, Mason?”
Schechter looked around at him, appearing a bit startled. “Ah… Yes, sir?”
“You had lunch yet?”
“No. Not yet. I was just helping Agent Crewes look at the surveillance footage. You know, from Oregon? You know they’re already trying to call this guy The Invisible Man? That’s a horrible serial killer name.”
Ezekiel had to agree. “He’s not invisible,” he said. “He’s using simple psychology, doing it while everyone’s looking somewhere else. They’ll get him. Anyway, do you want lunch?”
Schechter was nodding his agreement with Ezekiel’s assessment. “Last week he killed a woman and her young daughter at a street fair on—What?”
“Lunch, Mason,” Ezekiel repeated patiently. “I’m going for Mexican food. You like Mexican food?”
“Oh. Oh, sure. I don’t… Um. Yeah, I like some of it,” Schechter said, surprised as what Ezekiel was asking dawned on him. “You mean you want me to go with you? For lunch?”
“Only if you’re hungry,” Ezekiel said. He turned and started walking again. “Put your stuff away and come on.”
They went to a Mexican restaurant Ezekiel liked not far from the building where they worked. Schechter was a little nervous, but it was because he was excited. Ezekiel had never invited him to have lunch with him before. Ezekiel ordered for himself and waited while Schechter read through the menu. He might not hate Mexican food, but he didn’t seem to know what to order. Ezekiel had chicken and cheese chimichangas and suggested the enchiladas for Schechter because even people who didn’t eat Mexican food knew what an enchilada was. They shared appetizers of nachos with sliced jalapeño peppers and an order of fried cheese.
When the waitress brought the check, Schechter asked the waitress how she afforded breast augmentation on a waitress’s salary. Ezekiel laughed as the woman stalked away in a huff without giving him an answer.
“I shouldn’t have said that, I guess,” Schechter said. He sighed and popped the end of a churro into his mouth.
“No, you shouldn’t have, but it’s okay,” Ezekiel said.
He paid the check and they went back to work.
Ezekiel worked late, but not as late as was his habit. At eight o’clock, he went home. As he went up the walk, he was thinking that Jacob would be pleased because for Ezekiel it was early. They could have a late dinner, talk about work and maybe watch something on TV if Jacob wanted to.
Ezekiel didn’t apologize a lot, not even when he was wrong, but like he had done with Mason Schechter by taking him to lunch, he tried to make up for it in other ways. He had been bad to Jacob the last month or so and Jacob had accepted that he was sorry for it without hearing the apology because he was used to it. He knew how Ezekiel was. But his behavior had made Jacob skittish and suspicious of him and Ezekiel didn’t like that.
Maybe he could make it up to him over dinner. Or after dinner.
When he opened the door and walked into the house, he found Jacob sitting in wait for him at the foot of the stairs. Ezekiel paused inside the door then closed it and slipped the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder and set it carefully down on a table to the left of the door. It only took him a moment to understand that something was wrong. Jacob’s body language was agitated and there was no telling how long he had been waiting there on the stairs.
“Hey, Jake,” he said.
Jacob stood and dragged a hand through his hair. He hesitated then said, “Ezekiel, we need to talk.”
Then he walked by Ezekiel out of the foyer into the living room. Ezekiel was expected to follow him.
Ezekiel watched him leave and muttered, “Fuck,” under his breath.
We need to talk; a sentence that when uttered was never followed by happy news. He did not want to talk.
He went into the living room to do it anyway. “What’s going on, Jake?”
Jacob turned to face him with his arms crossed in front of him. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Ezekiel?” he said. “You’ve been strange; you’re angry, you snap over nothing, you’re… you’re an asshole. You moved out of our room and you won’t even fucking talk to me about it, so this whole time, I’m driving myself crazy trying to figure out what I did. Then that got a little better and I thought… I don’t know, maybe it was something at work, something bad and you just didn’t want to talk about it.”
Jacob went quiet and paced away from him. Ezekiel watched him with a growing pit of dread in his stomach. He definitely did not want to talk about this. The subject, though unknown to Jacob, was a touchy one and he was self-aware enough to worry about his own responses if talking turned to arguing.
Do not do this right now, he thought at Jacob. Please don’t.
Jacob flicked his eyes over at Ezekiel and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “I hate what I’m thinking right now,” he said. “I hate it. But I can’t help it. You’re… Everything you’re doing—everything you’re not doing—I have to wonder again and goddamn it, I hate it that I’m this person. Again.”
Oh, no, Ezekiel thought, suspecting where this was going because they had been here before not so long ago. “Jacob, let’s not do this. Don’t—”
“I don’t want to,” Jacob said, growling a little in distress. His bright eyes were wide and afraid. “I don’t want to think it, Zeke, I don’t want to be this fucking person. The person who thinks what I’m thinking about the person they love more than anything and trust completely, but I can’t help it. You haven’t touched me in almost two months. You moved out and sure, you moved back, but then last night you got out of bed and slept in the other bedroom again, and while I’m driving myself up the wall wondering what I did wrong it occurs to me that maybe I didn’t do a damn thing.”
“Goddamn it, Jacob,” Ezekiel said. He crossed his own arms and looked at him, tried not be angry or offended, though he was both. He had been tempted and yes, he had slipped a little and almost done it, but he had not cheated. Jacob didn’t have to give name to his suspicion; it was right there between them, big and loud and destructive as a baby elephant. “Goddamn it. Look, I know what you are thinking, okay? It’s pretty fucking obvious. But, Jake, I’m not.”
Jacob lifted his chin, his expression challenging, but his eyes wet and broken. “I don’t believe you,” he s
aid.
Ezekiel threw his hands out in exasperation. “Then I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I’m not cheating, I haven’t cheated, I have no intention of cheating and I wish like hell you would quit accusing me of fucking cheating.”
“I am not dumb or blind. I was trained to read people and behavior the same as you and your behavior lately is that of a fucking cheater!” Jacob shouted back. His eyes teared up and spilled over. He hugged himself, lightly shaking. “You are fucking around on me and have been for a while. I would ask why, but what difference does that even make? I didn’t do anything wrong. I have some issues, but so do you and it’s never been a problem before. I do everything right and I don’t… I don’t understand it.”
Ezekiel’s anger was quick and bitter in the back of his throat like bile. He shoved it back down, gathered his control around himself and took a step toward Jacob. “Jake, you’re not listening to me. I don’t know what you think you know or how you think you know it, but I’ve never cheated. Never. Not once. I’ve looked, I’m not blind, and I’ve even thought about it with other people, but I haven’t done it. In a hundred and forty years, there’s been no one else but you.”
Jacob drew his lips back from his teeth and growled at Ezekiel in warning for him not to close the distance and keep his hands to himself. “I don’t fucking believe you,” he snarled. He dashed at the tears in his eyes, reached into his pocket and removed something pink from it. It was Rainer’s valentine napkin and he gestured at Ezekiel with it. “What the hell is this? Explain this to me, because you know what it looks like?”
Ezekiel’s possessive reaction was instant and instinctive. “That’s mine,” he snapped. He reached to take it, but Jacob snatched it away. “Give it back to me right now.”
Jacob looked at the soft pink paper and Ezekiel watched what he was thinking pass over his face like he was speaking it aloud. “Oh, you want it, do you?”
“Don’t you dare,” Ezekiel gritted out through his teeth.
Jacob glanced at him and a mean light entered his eyes. “What would you do if I tore it up? This little love token of yours?”
Ezekiel’s hand darted out and he seized Jacob’s wrist. He didn’t squeeze hard and he wouldn’t hurt him, but his grip was unbreakable. “Drop it,” he said.
Jacob’s lips quivered before he pressed them together. “Fine,” he said. He opened his hand and let it fall. “Take it.”
Ezekiel let him go and bent at the waist to retrieve it. He folded it neatly back into a square and slipped it away into his inside jacket pocket. Jacob had gone through the guestroom while he was at work and found it. It wouldn’t have been hard to find; Ezekiel had left it laying on the nightstand by the bed because Jacob had no reason to go in there. No reason other than his awful suspicions.
“You selfish, self-centered asshole,” Jacob said.
He said it softly, nearly a whisper, but Ezekiel heard him and that more than anything he had said before was like a punch in the gut. He caught his breath and looked at him to see if he was serious, not quite able to believe that Jacob could really think such a thing about him, let alone accuse him of it. Ezekiel’s whole life was built around Jacob. He’d had to make himself into the man he was because of Jacob. At first, to find him and save him and bring him home, later to put him back together again and make him safe and happy. His obsession with his work was an extension of his deeply rooted need to protect Jacob and save him and punish the wicked over and over and over again.
It was Jacob who had first set the monster inside him loose.
Selfish and self-centered was the last thing he was, but in that moment, Jacob believed it and that hurt. Then the hurt was crushed beneath rage that flashed to the surface so quick and so white-hot that Ezekiel actually had to close his hands into fists at his sides and step back from him until he was too far away from Jacob to hit him. He would not do that, but he wanted to and it took every scrap of control he possessed not to do it, to keep backing away from him until he was in the doorway and there was a room between them.
He stepped onto the tile of the foyer and finally turned away. He grabbed up his bag off the table, took his keys from one of the pockets and slammed the front door when he left the house. His fingers trembled around the key when he turned it in the ignition and he wasn’t thinking straight at all. All he could hear in his head was his pounding heartbeat and Jacob’s whispered words and he wanted to scream.
Chapter 38
Rainer spent the rest of Valentine’s Day feeling pretty okay about the world. He didn’t even mind grading papers the rest of the day, but he did it while thinking about seeing Ezekiel in the coffee shop. He tossed it around and picked it apart while he went for his run and at some point the high started to deflate and he got annoyed. He hadn’t seen Ezekiel in weeks then he showed up at Rainer’s table like no time had passed. They were still on the same page, but Ezekiel left just as abruptly as he arrived without so much as a see you later.
Nothing much had changed except Rainer got the distinct impression that Ezekiel was trying to shake him off completely and that would never do. If anyone was going to end this cat and mouse game of theirs, it was Rainer and he wouldn’t do it in a coffee shop without any bloodshed.
Thinking about it spoiled his mood the next day, which made him a little mean to his students, quicker to snap at them and less inclined than usual to cut them any slack. He assigned them a lot of reading and most of them groaned and grumbled about it as they filed by him out of the lecture hall. He felt mildly better in the face of their misery.
“Well, that was sadistic,” Cosra said, meeting him in the hall as Rainer left for his office. He fell in step with him as Rainer walked. It was in the same direction as the building where Cosra had his office. “Oh, I wasn’t listening, but I arrived in time to catch many a woebegone layabout whining about the assignment. Homer has never done much for me either, but I commend you, sir, for your creative sadism. The only thing that might have been meaner is Dante. You know, I once held fifteen students after class for an hour and made them read The Divine Comedy and answer essay questions. I still remember their miserable little faces, but you know what? They paid attention in class after that, by God.”
“I know,” Rainer said. “I remember.”
“Oh, right. I suppose you would. Had to grade the damn essays, didn’t you?”
Rainer grunted a yes.
“My, you’re close-lipped today, aren’t you, Rainer, my dear?” Cosra said.
“And you are chatty,” Rainer said. “Alcohol lubricated, from the smell.”
“You shut your mouth,” Cosra said. “I smell like Altoids. I’ve eaten about ten of the things.”
“Mint and whiskey then,” Rainer said.
Cosra scoffed. “We aren’t discussing me. We’re discussing you. I would appreciate the turnaround in your ideas about teaching more if I didn’t know they were the product of discontent. A frightening thing when it occurs in the mind of a psychopath such as yourself, so I hear.”
Rainer turned his head to look at him and frowned.
“Oh, please, darling dear, you are,” Cosra said. “Or perhaps a sociopath. Did you have an unsatisfying home life as a youngster, Mr. Bryssengur? A traumatizing event?”
Rainer smirked and shook his head. They had reached the stairs he would have to climb to reach his office and they paused there. “No,” he said. “I’m just having a bad… a bad day. I’ll get over it and it won’t hurt my students to read Homer.”
“Not physically, perhaps,” Cosra said. “I hate to say this, but maybe you should consider making up with Mr. FBI Man.”
Rainer started up the stairs. “See you later, Cosra.”
“Give my regards to your brother,” Cosra called. “Tell him from me that the next time he’s sending you home with leftovers I wouldn’t mind a nice large slice of that fantastic cheesecake.”
Rainer smiled to himself as he returned to his office. Cosra had cheered him up a lit
tle, which he knew had likely been his intention from the start. He would have to ask Thomas about the cheesecake. The restaurant served a maple smoked cheesecake with burnt sugar sauce that Cosra had discovered one day when he dropped by Rainer’s office during lunch. Rainer hadn’t had any dessert that day.
Wednesday Rainer taught English lit and interpreting literature in the morning, had office hours until two and went home.
He thought less about seeing Ezekiel on Valentine’s Day, but he didn’t forget. It bothered him, but it was a quiet sort of bother in the back of his mind. He didn’t like it, he wasn’t used to it at all, but there it was. Nagging like a sore on the roof of his mouth. He was worried and that was a novel experience, one he did not much appreciate. If this was how regular people went around feeling all the time, they could keep it.
That evening he left the TV on in the living room while he stood in the kitchen making vinaigrette dressing for a salad and tried to remember if the recipe Thomas had given him called for that much oil. It was made with walnut oil and white wine vinegar and he had put everything together in the bowl and was whisking it, but it looked a little too oily to him. Perhaps he should add more vinegar, but the recipe said a quarter cup and Thomas was the chef after all.
He glanced at the landline phone mounted on the wall by the counter and seriously considered calling Thomas to ask him, but he always had to call Thomas to ask him and damn it, it was a simple salad dressing recipe. He put his finger in the dressing and tasted it.
There was a sudden, loud banging knock at his door. A brief pause, followed by more knocking that shook the door in its frame when he did not immediately answer it.
“Hold on!” Rainer called. He put the bowl and whisk down and went to answer it.
He found Ezekiel standing there when he opened the door. He looked pissed off enough that Rainer thought about shutting the door in his face and returning to his salad. “Hello, Ezekiel. Why don’t you—”
—come in, he meant to say, but the words were swallowed when Ezekiel stepped through the door, grabbed him and kissed him. It was not a gentle kiss; he bit at Rainer’s mouth and sucked at his tongue as he backed him up to the doorframe between the kitchen and the hallway. The door crashed closed when he kicked it shut then his hands were on Rainer’s face and he held it while he kissed him. The kiss grew fierce and demanding and he ran his hands down Rainer’s sides, fingers pinching into his waist.