by Kelly Jensen
“I’m sure. Here, let’s get one of these chairs up here for me to climb up on.”
“I could just try to give you a boost.”
Henry cupped his hands down by his knees. After making sure he was positioned well, Marc stepped up and reached for the top of the vent as Henry hoisted him upward. His fingers grazed the metal side, echoing and banging. He thought he was going to miss and drop back down. Then he caught the lip with his other hand and pulled.
“Going to need another lift to get myself over the bend,” he called down.
“Cool. Let me know when.”
“Now would be good.”
Henry poked his head between Marc’s thighs, confusing him until he stood, lifting Marc onto his shoulders. The motion was so sudden, Marc banged his head on the cross duct. White spots danced in front of his eyes.
“You okay?”
“It’s very bright in here all of a sudden.” Marc resisted the urge to rub the top of his head.
“Very funny. Can you get over the edge?”
“Yep, pulling forward now.” He angled forward and began crawling. Henry helped by pushing, and after much grunting and groaning, Marc found himself on his belly in the cross duct. “Okay, I’m in.” Over the echo of his voice, a faint snicker floated up from below. “Are you laughing down there?”
“I wish I was recording this.”
“Ha-ha.”
“What, you had your ass groped and ended up in a dark hole. It’s all very Freudian or whatever.”
“Really, it’s not. Also, you groped my ass in the copy room yesterday.”
“So I did. Which was more fun?”
“The blow job, duh.”
Henry’s answering chuckle was muted, and Marc breathed into the relative quiet a moment before speaking again. “Okay, duct hasn’t collapsed beneath me, but I’ve encountered our first unforeseen problem. I’m going to have to slither like a snake up here to get anywhere.”
Another snicker from below. Or maybe it was a giggle.
“I’d never have guessed you had such an absurd sense of humor.”
Henry was openly laughing now. Between gasps, he managed, “Let’s just say I’m punchy.”
“Good to know.”
Slithering was weirdly difficult. Marc couldn’t figure out if he should use his arms or legs. He settled for mashing his palms against the sides of the duct and pulling while kicking with the aim of propelling himself forward. It worked after a fashion, but it felt slow and clumsy. Wiggling his hips helped. Every time he did it, he thanked providence for the fact he was hidden from view. Crawling through a duct to rescue his date would make a great story, and whether he succeeded or not, he’d be telling this one at Mulligan’s. That was his job every Thursday, entertaining his colleagues at the pub across the street from their offices. Team Building 101.
It’d be different with Henry there. Better, Marc hoped. He didn’t want to overexpose his personal affairs, but neither did he want to hide his preferences. The idea of sitting in a booth next to Henry, one arm casually looped about his shoulders, held a lot of appeal.
His head brushed the end of the duct. Marc lay in a sweaty, heaving heap for a minute, catching his breath.
“How’s it going up there?”
Henry’s voice sounded closer than it should. Marc tried to peer over his shoulder and whacked his head against the top of the duct again. “Ugh.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, it’s just cramped in here. Are you in the duct?”
“I’m standing on a chair.”
“Be careful.”
Henry answered with a soft snort.
Folding his arm back down by his side proved as difficult as glancing over his shoulder. His elbow connected with the duct several more times than necessary before he managed to get his phone out and pointing in a somewhat sensible direction. He activated the screen and turned it around to shed light on his situation. The duct turned again, angling directly up from his position. Another round of bruising maneuvering got him rolled over onto his back. Marc pointed his phone upward. “Hit a bit of a snag here.”
“What’s up?”
“The duct bends upward from where I’m at. I’m guessing I’m over near the wall? And it’s a straight shot up the wall. I can see some light up there, which might be a vent. Maybe into the lobby? But I don’t know if I’m going to get around this corner, and even if I can, if I can reach that high, or climb or whatever.”
“Damn. Would it help if I got in there too and pushed you up?”
“If I can get around the corner and if we don’t bring the ceiling down… maybe?”
“That’s a lot of ifs.”
“Yeah. We might be better off watching the ball drop on that dinky little TV in the laundry while we wait for someone to come rescue us. Hey, did you check to see if your text went through?”
Shuffling echoed along the shaft. “Not yet, but it probably won’t while I’m down here. Maybe I should leave my phone up by the door?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“Okay, hold still. I’m going to go do that. Then I’ll come back down and we’ll reassess.”
Marc didn’t do much while he waited for Henry to return. He simply stared up into the darkness and waited for the duct to fall through the ceiling. Then he heard Henry reenter the laundry and climb back up on top of the washing machine.
“Right, going to try and get into the vertical shaft.”
Another snicker.
For Christ’s sake. He was dating a twelve-year-old… and, as newly out, shouldn’t he be the one snickering at all the sex jokes? Marc managed to backward slither into a sitting position. “Okay, sitting. Wondering how in hell I’m going to stand up without breaking my knees.”
The sound of Henry’s struggle to get into the horizontal shaft distracted him for a while. The shaft shook alarmingly beneath him a couple of times and then fell still. Marc angled his phone back toward the laundry room and woke the screen. Henry was in the shaft, some distance away, huffing and puffing.
“Okay, good news and bad news,” Henry said.
“Good news is you’re in the shaft, right?”
“Basically.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“I managed to kick the chair off the top of the washing machine, so it’s a long way down if we have to go out this way.”
“I’m starting to think this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“No kidding. It’s about as dumb as looking for a farmhouse in a snowstorm.”
“You were the one who ran off down the road.”
“After you!”
“Yeah, well….”
After a pause, Henry said, “I was going to say that for our third date, we should just stay home. But knowing our luck, terrorists would decide to take the entire building hostage.”
“So we’re counting the blizzard as our first date now?”
“Terrorists, Marc!”
“I heard you.”
Henry seemed to have an easier time moving through the shaft, probably because he could see where he was going. It was an interesting perspective on the guy, for sure. Watching his brow crease intermittently as he pushed forward in fits and starts. Marc almost laughed when he noted Henry abandoning the hip-wiggling motion as quickly as he had.
Coming to a stop about six inches from Marc’s shoes, Henry dropped his forehead to the bottom of the duct and blew out a breath, then coughed. He glanced up, expression wry. “It was like once I got in here, the only sensible thing to do was crawl up to where you were. Even though I know we’re probably even more stuck than we were before. Why is that?”
“You’re a team player?” Not every guy would have wormed his way through the shaft to help Marc up to the next vent.
Henry chuckled softly. “Okay, I suppose we should see if you can actually manage to stand. Which is something we should have figured out before I got in here.”
“Yeah, well, misery loves company. Here,
hold this.” Marc passed his phone to Henry and prepared to try to stand inside the duct.
The problem would be his knees. If he were double-jointed, he might gain enough flexibility to get them around the corner. Escape wasn’t worth dislocating them, though. Pushing his hands against the wall behind him, Marc began easing himself upward and stopped. He wasn’t a freaking snake. He tried dropping his knees sideways next. Promising.
The sound of his efforts—short breaths and the scuff of shoes and denim against metal—echoed loudly through the duct. A cramp gripped his left thigh, pulling a hiss from his lips. Still, Marc struggled and pushed until he got halfway upright with just one knee caught on the bend.
“Push my knee, will you?”
Henry shuffled forward and put a hand to his leg, just below the knee. He pushed and Marc pulled. His legs looked like broken pretzels, and he had to squash down panicked thoughts twice. With a pop, his right knee slipped through and he was in the vertical shaft. He stood quickly on shaking legs and leaned forward, resting his cheek on the cool metal. “Holy crap.”
“If the duct falls now—”
“Don’t even. Seriously, not going there.”
“Can you reach the vent?”
“Hold on. Just need to convince myself my legs aren’t broken or twisted or permanently damaged in any way.” Marc breathed the close, dusty air for another few seconds, thankful for the slight breeze from the vent behind him. A weird sound tickled his eardrums, a long, low groan. At first he thought he’d made the sound. Maybe his stomach had rumbled? Or Henry’s. Then a whoosh of hot air blasted down the back of his neck.
Swallowing a yelp, Marc called down to Henry. “Well, we know the system’s in use. Heat just came on.”
“Lovely. So if we do get stuck in here, we won’t freeze to death.”
“Right, turning around to try the vent. You brought that tool with you, right?”
Henry fumbled and shuffled. The tool emerged into the space where the duct folded upward, hovering over Marc’s shoes.
Marc stared at it a second before laughing. “Oh, man. Why didn’t we think of this before I tried to dislocate my knees?”
“Because we’re a pair of idiots. Seriously, I’m starting to doubt our cognitive function.”
“I’m blaming your hotness.”
“Don’t discombobulate me while I’m trapped in an air shaft.”
“Okay, before our next date, we need to come up with a serious plan. Contingencies and so on. An emergency call list.”
After a while, Henry answered in a quiet and thoughtful tone. “The hotness comment gets you another date. But maybe we shouldn’t tempt fate or terrorists with an emergency plan.”
Marc started bending toward his feet. “I’m not going to be able to get all the way down there. If I shuffle to the side, can you roll over and sit up?”
“We’re doing tricks now?”
“Very funny.”
Marc revisited the countdown in his head. The large red numbers flickered somewhere between eleven and twelve. They might not make it upstairs for that promised kiss, but he’d have his lips on Henry’s at midnight, dammit. Even if it had to happen in this shaft.
Henry managed to roll and sit. He held up the tool, and Marc grabbed it. “Shine the light up here?”
The feeble glow of his phone barely illuminated the vent, but it was enough for Marc to see they had another problem—and it was something else they should have figured out before crawling into the ducts. “The screws are on the outside.”
Henry’s head banged against the duct. “Dammit.” He looked up. “Try pushing it out?”
Marc rattled the vent, but it was stuck fast. He tapped the vent with the tool, producing a sharp rapping sound. He yelled. He slapped at the vent with his other hand and even kicked the shaft, producing a low, echoing boom. Hot air continued to flow around the nape of his neck. Sweat rolled down his back, making his shirt stick to his skin.
Frustration fizzed and snapped through his veins. Being stuck—and now hot and sweaty—was finally starting to piss him off. “Fuck!”
“Okay, we’re done here,” Henry said. “Back to the laundry?”
Marc slumped against the side of the duct. “Yeah. I guess.” He turned around and looked at the bend behind him, the next horizontal sweep of ductwork, and wondered if it was worth the effort of trying to get up there. A sense of defeat rolled out of the darkness with the steady stream of warm air. Shaking his head, Marc turned away and looked down. Henry had disappeared, and he could just hear him shuffling backward along the lower duct. Returning to the laundry was the safest bet.
Someone would find them soon, right?
Chapter Five
EXITING THE HVAC ductwork proved anticlimactic. No worrying creaks, falling plaster, or skin torn from palms. No broken limbs. Just two dusty and disheveled men patting themselves down in the laundry room. Marc handed the tool back to Henry and received his phone in exchange. He checked the time—11:41.
Depression settled down around his shoulders. In the vent, a happy ending had still seemed possible, even if The Kiss—now in capitals and blinking in his mind like that damned countdown to midnight—had to happen up there, when they were cramped together in a weird place, breathing on each other’s faces. Here, in the laundry, it just felt like he’d got lost on the way to something wonderful.
And he was dirty, sweaty, and hungry.
First two he could do something for. Moving over to the tub, Marc washed his hands and pressed a dampened paper towel to the back of his neck. Henry followed suit, washing his hands and splashing water on his face before catching some water in cupped hands for a drink. Leaving him to it, Marc picked up the fallen chair, shook it open again, and set it down. He flopped into it and leaned his head back against the washer behind him, closing his eyes. Footsteps and a rattle indicated Henry had grabbed another chair and settled beside him. Marc didn’t open his eyes. Instead, he watched the ticking numbers behind his closed lids while misery churned in his gut.
He’d been on some crappy dates. New Year’s Eve with Kate might sound like the worst, but only because it made an interesting story. He couldn’t count the number of dates he’d had since—mostly because his memory of them was a blur. None really stood out of the tedium of following a script toward an uncertain conclusion. The dates that hadn’t ended in sex were no less disappointing than the ones that had. He’d been playing a role. All this time, he’d been searching for something, and he’d been looking in the wrong damned place.
Until his date with Gabrielle from the secretary pool at B and M.
When he went to pick her up, he saw Henry jogging along Hull Street. It was the first time he’d seen Henry out of his corporate uniform. The expression on his face caught Marc more than the lean figure in jogging shorts and tank, though. The faraway look, the relaxed smile. It was a different Henry. Not the sober and quiet guy from the office. Suddenly he was more interesting and complicated.
He was… attractive.
Marc couldn’t remember anything about the date with Gabrielle, except a fascination with Henry that had continued for months until they’d ended up stranded in a blizzard together. Now, finally, he was on The Date, counting down to The Kiss.
And the evening was a complete and unmitigated disaster.
Maybe he should forget being gay.
Forget his obsession with Henry.
Could he have a midlife crisis at twenty-eight?
Something touched his hand, and Marc jumped. The yelp he’d swallowed earlier fought its way out. The sound was pathetic in the small space of the laundry. Or maybe that was just his mood. He opened his eyes.
Henry was touching the back of his hand. “Everything okay over there?”
Marc moved his hand away, indulged in a little palm-to-eye action, pressing his lids closed again. “Yeah, sure.” It was instinctive, the urge to lie. “Just beat from our adventure in the ducts.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t find a
way out.”
“Not your fault. If we’d stopped to think…. Well. We probably wouldn’t be down here at all.” He let his hands drop to his lap and peeked over at Henry. “This your worst date ever, yet?”
“No.”
“I think it’s mine.”
Henry gave a half smile and leaned back in his chair. “It’s not so bad. Company is fine.”
“You wouldn’t rather have stayed home?”
“Nope.”
“Even though we’re shut in a basement.”
Henry’s shoulders hitched into a little shrug. “For the past couple of hours I’ve been too busy to dwell.” He smiled again, this time more than halfway. “And the boy I’m kissing is locked down here with me.”
The boy he was kissing. Henry made it seem so sweet and natural. Something loosened in Marc’s chest. “You ever see him again, the boy your uncle caught you with?”
“Nope.”
Marc reached for Henry’s hand, pulling it into his own. “I’m sorry this is such a sucky date.”
Henry squeezed his fingers. “You know, if we’d made it to the party upstairs, we probably wouldn’t have seen each other all night, anyway. You’d have been surrounded by your groupies, and I’d probably have snuck off to check out Shelly’s library. Or found her porn collection.”
“I don’t have groupies.”
“You know what I mean. Your circle at the office.”
Marc grimaced. “My followers.” Usually he enjoyed being the center of attention. Now he couldn’t think beyond the man holding his hand.
Marc’s thoughts took another whirl around the inside of his head, pausing over the small collection of memories he’d already built with Henry. Kissing, touching, getting off. The conversation from this evening. The easy banter they fell into when they weren’t answering the big questions. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
Henry’s brow wrinkled. “The date or the destination?”
“The destination. I wanted a date with you too badly to regret even this. But you’re right. Even if we had made it upstairs, I don’t think it’d have been the evening I wanted. I was so damned focused on kissing you at midnight, I hadn’t thought about the rest of it.”