by E. F. Mulder
“Hey!”
“Are these something you keep around?” Gideon followed the question with a gentle shove, pushing Rudy down onto a white, cushioned bench. Yes. There was a bench. The closet was so big, Rudy probably had to sit and rest when walking from one end to the other to pick out his shirt and tie combo.
“No. I…I got them after that night. I was…hoping we might get to this point someday. It’s happening a little quicker than I envisioned, I suppose.”
“Is that okay?”
There was a full-length mirror at the far end of the closet. They were talking to one another in reflection, since Gideon was at Rudy’s back.
“Yes. As long as there’s something else to look forward to.”
“I think we’re both pretty creative men. We’ll think of something.” Gideon locked the second cuff around Rudy’s other wrist. “I hope you have the key, or maybe I can get Tina to come over with hers, if one key fits all.”
“Imagine Brett seeing me like this if he has to bring the bolt cutters.”
“Yes. Imagine that.” Gideon slapped Rudy’s bare ass.
The night before, he had left ideas on the table. This time, he wasn’t holding back at all. Not a single spot on Rudy’s hairy body went untasted. On his knees, with his back arched and his hands raised over his head toward the ring that held him captive, Rudy’s ass was wide open, and Gideon took it all in. “Mmm. Can I fuck you?” he asked, right at the spot he wanted to shove his dick.
“God, I want you to.”
Gideon wet him good, then opened him slightly with his finger.
“Oh yeah.”
As Gideon slowly entered Rudy—a tease—and also being careful, Rudy moaned. A second one came louder when Gideon bent over him for a kiss, his sheathed cock plunging in deep.
“Like that, ass-hat?”
“Fuck.”
Clothing soon started to shimmy on hangers. The full-length mirror wobbled. Gideon liked watching himself as he slammed against Rudy’s sweaty thighs. Partway through, Rudy had twisted himself around. He was on his back now. His arms were crossed, his cuffed wrists resting on his forehead, his hard-on slapping against his flat gut. The harder Gideon pounded, the more the shoes around him danced in their cubbies, tapping like Fred Astaire or Donald O’Connor.
When a neon blue Gucci sneaker Gideon had seen online for $700 fell and hit him on the head, he could hold back no more. With a grunt, he threw his head back—most of his body, actually—forcing his twitching erection upward. Rudy’s abs flexed, moving his stiff dick, which left a string of shiny clear precum in the sweaty fur there.
“You wanna come?”
“Oh yeah.”
Gideon spit in his hand and grabbed Rudy’s cock. He pumped it fast and noisily, and then let go when every one of Rudy’s muscles pulled taut. Gideon watched Rudy’s face contort in ecstatic agony as the most sensitive spot inside him was teased. Soon, Rudy’s cum flew, without assistance from Gideon’s hands or his own, which couldn’t reach down far enough. Most of it landed on Rudy’s gut, except two salty ribbons Gideon collected—the one on his thigh he got with his finger, and the one on Rudy’s chin he got with his tongue. Both had likely come from the first powerful blasts when Rudy’s cock twitched hardest. They shared both, as Gideon breathed hard into Rudy’s mouth between kisses, and then put his finger in as Rudy exhaled into him.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Gideon worked his way under the manacles and between Rudy’s arms. “Our first day of our first year is off to a pretty good start, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
Rudy’s phone rang. They knew it was Rudy’s by the ringtone. Gideon’s played “Hound Dog.”
“Shit. Where are my pants?”
Gideon found them, and extracted the phone. “Your brother.”
“Dang it. I’ll have to call him—”
Gideon hit Accept Call and held the phone up to Rudy’s ear.
“Hey, Dash. Happy New Year…Nah. I’m not breathing hard.”
Gideon smiled.
“Well, maybe. I had to rush to answer.” Rudy took a beat. “Ha-ha. Yeah. I’m old.”
Gideon pushed some sweaty golden hair from Rudy’s eyes.
“Nothing much. Just hanging around. I have plenty of time to chat.”
Gideon smiled some more.
Chapter 8
Rudy and Gideon did discover new things about one another, and they did make memories, as 2017 unfolded.
“You have a tattoo! How did I miss this our first night, or…or in the closet?” Rudy rolled his eyes. The phrase, Gideon knew it was troubling.
“You and Dash had a great conversation. You’ll get there. You’ll tell him soon.”
“It was the longest we’ve talked in years.” Rudy turned over to face Gideon in bed. “I’m glad you were there. It felt like…almost like I wasn’t hiding, except I kept thinking, any minute now, Dash is going to ask, ‘Are you handcuffed to a closet rod?’”
Gideon pulled him closer. “But he didn’t.”
“No. So…Monopoly…” Rudy touched each icon drawn in ink down Gideon’s arm, starting just below the bicep.
“Yep. Boot, wheelbarrow, little dog. Me, Randall, and Marcus. I, uh, spent a couple years in foster care as a teenager. I was…maybe a little too much for my poor grandmother to handle. I acted out for a while, I guess. My buddy there, Randall, he was like a brother, except…not. We smoked weed, played Monopoly, and had lots of oral sex. That’s all we ever did, it seemed, which was better than getting into more trouble tagging buildings and busting windows, which put me into foster care in the first place.”
“Bad boy.”
“So many regrets. I could have handled things better.”
Rudy offered a tender kiss on Gideon’s shoulder. “You could have handled them worse.”
“I suppose. Anyway, we had this old, beat up set with, like, only four out of the twelve or whatever tokens left. No video games for us. I was always the boot. Randall, he was the wheelbarrow. He didn’t stop at weed and died of a drug overdose at only seventeen.” Gideon cut the story short. “So many people gone.”
“Wow. That…that hurts. I know.”
“Yes. Dondre…”
“Tell me about Marcus.” Rudy stroked Gideon’s short hair.
“Marcus was later.” Gideon shifted. The memories were more uncomfortable than the position his arm was in so Rudy could look at the back of it. “He’s gone, too. Now frigging Parker Brothers is getting rid of the boot and the wheelbarrow. The little dog is the lone survivor. Sometimes it feels like it should be the boot, because I am, too.”
“I’m sorry.” Rudy traced over each ink outline. “I was obsessed with the game myself. Another coincidence.”
“Or not.”
“If I wasn’t such a baby, I might have the racecar on me somewhere.”
“The racecar.”
“Yup. We played almost every weekend, my brothers, sisters, cousins…a whole gang of us.”
“We’ll have to break it out sometime. Do you have one here?”
“No.” Rudy’s answer was short. Gideon understood.
“I don’t have one at the apartment either.”
They were quiet after that. Holding onto one another, that was enough.
* * * *
Rudy traveled a great deal over the first few months of 2017. He always came back, though, to his home, to the bar, to Gideon. In January, he brought a special souvenir from New York in his high-tech, battery powered cooler, one he presented outside in Elvis’s parking lot. “Close your eyes and give me your hand.”
“Mmm. I like where this is going.” Gideon shivered when the cold first hit his palm. “Brr. Oh my God! Snow!”
“I loved those pictures of you and your brother and sister and your lopsided, jacked-up snowman.”
“Hey! That thing was a masterpiece.” Gideon’s smile faded quickly.
“You said you love snow again. I hope I didn’t…”
&
nbsp; “I do.” The smile returned. “I really do.”
“We need a carrot for the nose.”
“How about a radish, Curtis? No one eats those anyway.”
“No, Mom.” Beth stomped her little foot. “It has to be a carrot.”
“Alright. Alright.”
“You hear them giggling?” Gideon asked.
“Maybe. I’m still amazed how resilient you are,” Rudy said.
“I can’t explain it, really,” Gideon admitted. “Maybe their spirits keep me going. All of them. Maybe I learned very young to appreciate every day you have and every person you enjoy spending time with. That includes you, you know.”
“I like it when you get all mushy. And I like spending time with you t—Hey!”
Gideon had caught him with a snowball right on the side of the head.
“Oops. My aim is kind of bad. I was going for the chest.”
“I thought you’d want to keep it.” Rudy rubbed the spot.
“Snow isn’t meant to be forever. It’s meant to be played with.”
An all-out frozen powder battle ensued, right in the dive bar parking lot in Las Vegas. After that, they made snow angels in gravel.
“Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“Ow!” Gideon agreed. “It kind of hurts.”
* * * *
February was filled with love songs at the Elvis’s Sing-Along Bar piano and lovemaking in Valentine, Arizona, where Rudy whisked Gideon away for a romantic weekend.
“I love you,” Rudy literally counted the days on his fingers after saying it. “December 22nd to February 14th. Fifty-four days. One month and twenty-three days…Seven weeks and five days…Like you said, we can’t take tomorrow for granted, so even if that’s not enough for most people—”
Gideon quieted Rudy with a kiss. “I love you, too, Rudolph Winner.”
* * * *
Irish ditties filled the air in March. The Elvis’s gang sang “Danny Boy,” “Rose of Tralee,” “My Wild Irish Rose,” all throughout the first half of the month. Everyone dressed in green on the seventeenth. There was a tradition, Brett claimed, where someone had to be the snake the others chased out of Ireland while whacking at him with shillelaghs. The drawing was allegedly random—from a leprechaun’s hat. Gideon doubted the authenticity of it when Rudy was given the “honor.”
“You still think they like me?” he asked, slipping into the hideous snake mask Tina had gotten at Party City.
“I’m just grateful they’re using Nerf shillelaghs—foam rubber.”
“They’re still going to leave marks. These people look like they mean business.”
“I’ll kiss every one of your booboos tonight.”
“Let’s get this show on the road!” Jacob started things off with a hard hit to Rudy’s ass.
“Mmm. Starting with that one,” Gideon said.
The gang chased Rudy all the way to the end of the street, then partway up the one perpendicular. Eileen was ready to run some more, even as some of the others tuckered out. “I give,” Rudy said. “I’ll never come back.”
He did, though, and they let him.
* * * *
Two giant chocolate Easter bunnies that sat on Gideon’s kitchen counter were only half eaten by the time the first of May rolled around. Ten days later, Gideon offered Rudy a wrapped guitar for his birthday, which he pulled out from under the bed at Rudy’s after the two made love.
“Mmm. I wonder what it could be.”
Settled back against a whole lot of cream and ecru pillows, Rudy tore it open, and tried to make music. “Like this?”
Pressed against one another, most of Gideon’s bare front was to most of Rudy’s bare back. “Sort of. This is an actual G chord.” Gideon placed his own fingers on the fretboard, but let Rudy pluck the strings.
“Hey.” Rudy tilted backwards, over his shoulder, to offer Gideon a kiss. “Have you added any more to your song lately?”
“I’m not sure. I tend to write things down, and then erase them.”
“Play me as much as you’ve got.”
Gideon took the guitar as Rudy scooted down to rest his head on Gideon’s thigh.
“Only for you,” Gideon said.
The tune was close to country. The rasp in Gideon’s voice, low at first, barely a whisper, gave it an edge. That was what Rudy told him after.
“Here’s what I added most recently,” Gideon said before he started playing. “Boots on the ground marched side by side.
At just nineteen, my buddy died.
As long as he was there…to walk beside me, I could go anywhere.
They say that angels don’t wear shoes, but I believe they can.
I hear your footsteps in the hall. I felt him kick me then.
‘Get up and run, you son of a bitch. I’ll help you if I can.’
‘You’re not a boy in too big shoes, you’re one among the…
“Men.” Gideon had to stop. The emotion swirled like the sand in the wind. “That’s enough for now,” he said.
“You were in Iraq?” Rudy looked up.
“A couple times.”
He came back to Gideon, getting as close as it seemed he could get. “Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for sharing all of you with me, Gideon…even the hard stuff.”
“The next verse is supposed to be the happy one, right? Wedding shoes walking down the aisle, sneakers squeaking on the polished hospital floors as I run to the nursery to see my own kid for the first time. Dot wants to be my surrogate.” Gideon smiled. “She wants me to be a dad.”
“That’s an amazing thing to offer someone.”
“Yes. She keeps reminding me she’s not getting any younger. I always imagined three or four…maybe five kids…all those slippers, all those feet padding down the stairs on Christmas morning…seven pairs…fourteen feet…two dads and five kids.”
“You should write that down.”
“You think?”
“Sure.” Rudy reached across Gideon to open the nightstand drawer for a pen. He made a kissing sound to Priscilla there—”Mwah!”—and that made Gideon’s heart melt. “You can make it rhyme later. Wait.” He passed the paper and pen, but didn’t move his body from Gideon’s. “Stairs and pairs…it already does. I’ll be needing songwriter credit for that.”
Gideon smiled. “I give you credit for almost making me believe it might happen someday…in this moment, anyway.”
“Just almost?”
“You never mentioned having kids.”
“Oh. I love big families. I’m just…I’m afraid I might mess one up.”
“Never.”
“I don’t know. I still have issues. My mother is begging me to come to my father’s big sixtieth birthday bash next month.” Rudy rolled his eyes. “And their thirtieth anniversary is in November. That’s a lot of family time.”
“I’ll be there for you. I’ll be here, I mean.”
Rudy rolled away. “I hate that. You’ve become such an important part of my life since last Christmas, and I can’t even share it with anyone.”
“Someday.”
“You keep saying that, but when? It’s been five months already.”
“I don’t know, Rudy. That’s up to you.”
Rudy grunted.
“I don’t mean that in an accusatory way. I’m just saying.”
“I know. It’s so frustrating. Where’s my manhood, Gideon?”
“It’s complicated. Do you want to throw a shoe?”
That got Gideon a smile, and also made Rudy come closer again. “Maybe a sock.”
* * * *
Rudy skipped his father’s birthday party, and spent most of the second part of June in a bad mood because of it. He didn’t take it out on Gideon, but it was obvious it was still with him weeks after the gathering was over. He was quieter than usual, at least with his voice. He was often quite noisy with cupboard doors and drawers.
* * * *
July was brutal in both V
egas and Arizona. Rudy had a pool. Though the commute from his place to the bar was a bit much sometimes, Gideon spent a great deal of time there. The end of that month was heated as well, and not just because of the weather. Rudy received a postcard from his sister, Connie.
“A little passive aggressive, don’t you think?”
Gideon never knew what to say. The postcard was combative, but it wasn’t his place to agree or disagree, he figured. Connie had decided to start taking her two children, ages five and six, to a few different states each summer, so by the time they graduated high school, they could see the whole country.
Hello Uncle Rudy,
We began our tour of the US in Washington, Oregon, and California. We should be down to Arizona next July. I figured if we give you 12 months’ notice, you might be able to make some time for us.
Love, Connie, Adam, Raine, and Sonny.
The note precipitated another shoe hurling incident. Actually, the first thing Rudy threw was a lamp.
“I don’t think I can get you over this.” Rudy was in Gideon’s arms by then. Gideon had stopped him from tossing a heavy bookend that would have done some damage to the wall by grabbing his arm. “Look at me, Rudy. Look into my eyes,” Gideon had said, until Rudy had. “When I was little, when my parents and siblings died, my grandmother took me for counseling.”
Rudy looked away.
“Come back to me, like you promised you always would.”
Rudy honored that promise.
“It was hard, I won’t lie, but it also helped. I’ll come with you.”
Rudy agreed to go.
* * * *
His leg never stopped bouncing as they sat in the therapist’s waiting room, or even once they got into her office. There was a bubbling fountain, crystals hanging in the window, and a tiny little Zen garden in there with an itty, bitty rake.
“There’s a possibility the relationship with your father will never be repaired,” Kellie said bluntly, no more than four minutes into the session. “I would never encourage anyone to work at something with an abusive partner.”
“Oh.”
“Does it feel that way to you? When he says the things he does, do you feel abused?”
“Well,” Rudy said. “He doesn’t know I’m gay…so maybe…”