Raincheck (6 page)

“David?” A heavy pounding rattled the door. “Are you all right? I’m coming in!”

David gripped Rodney by the arms to squeeze past him at the entranceway to the room, his fingers inadvertently caressing Rodney’s warm, silky skin before he called out to Sean.

“I’m fine, damn it. Keep your shirt on, Sean.”

The doorknob was turning even as he reached for it himself. Shit, he’d forgotten he’d given Sean a key. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Rodney standing like a statue against the wall of the living room, wings folded around his body, his tail wrapped around his legs, those amazing, glowing eyes closed.

Sean came barreling into the apartment, key in hand, only to pull up short at the sight of David. “Holy crap, David, you look like shit. Are you okay?” Sean reached out to place a hand on David’s arm before David pulled away.

“I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

Sean made a wry face at him. “I’m surprised you’re agreeing to go. I guess that friend of yours—what’s his name?—Rodney, talked some sense in you. I wouldn’t hold my breath about getting back here soon though. You know what the ER will be like tonight. You want to tell me what happened?”

“I’ll fill you in on the way.” David checked his belongings: cell phone, keys…. He glanced back at Rodney again.

“What the fuck is that?” Sean asked, pointing in Rodney’s direction.

“A gargoyle,” David said with precision, hoping Rodney could hear and appreciate the imitation.

Sean shook his head. “Where the hell did you get that? Doesn’t it give you the creeps to have that in here?”

“I know the sculptor,” David said shortly. “And for your information, I think he’s beautiful.”

One of Rodney’s eyelids jerked, as though Rodney were resisting the impulse to open it.

“He’s certainly… impressive,” Sean agreed, turning back toward the door as David followed. “Anatomically correct too. Dad would be so proud.”

David punched him on the arm as they left the apartment.

Rodney
wasn’t there when he returned. David wasn’t surprised; the first pinkish streaks of dawn had painted the sky as he exited the hospital, yawning. He’d waved off Sean’s offer of a ride back to his apartment, preferring to catch a cab. He knew Sean had to go home to shower and change for work anyway. He appreciated the fact that Sean had stayed with him the entire time. There’d been no need for that.

The scans had been clear, and David had been given some painkillers that looked like they’d choke a horse, with a prescription for more to fill if needed. He envisioned a long, hot shower and a day on the couch in his future. He’d hoped to find some evidence of Rodney in his apartment when he finally returned, something to assure him that Rodney had not been a figment of his imagination, but there was nothing.

The only indication that someone had been there was the fact that the skylight was partially open when David entered his apartment. Even then, David couldn’t be sure he hadn’t left it open the night before. It gave him something to think about during the long day while he alternated between dozing on the couch and searching for anything he could find on the internet about gargoyles. There wasn’t much.

Toward sunset, David climbed the stairs and let himself out on the roof. He’d been up there in daylight before, had admired the view, and even examined the gargoyles mounted there, but never with the purpose of seeing if he recognized one of them before. It didn’t take him long to spot Rodney. Though the stone was disconcertingly more weathered than he’d expected, Rodney’s features were all there, down to the suggestion of that little crooked smile.

He couldn’t wait to see the look on Rodney’s face when the sun set.

He was leaning on the balustrade, wanting to look deceptively casual when Rodney opened his eyes, when he heard the sound. Slight at first, just a faint creak, as though there was the suggestion of something gritty shifting somewhere nearby. David frowned, trying to locate the source, when he heard the groan of a metal support bending and the loud crack of splitting concrete.

He leaned out over the railing and looked down in horror. Rodney’s base was breaking free from the building. Without thinking, he reached out and grasped hold of one of Rodney’s wings, bracing his feet against the balustrade when he felt the large weight shift beneath his hands. Desperate to hold on and knowing it was an impossible task, he felt the roughened surface of Rodney’s body pulling inexorably out from under his fingers, biting into flesh as it dragged away. The stretch across his back and shoulders reawakened every muscle that had been dulled by medication into full-blown agony.

“Rodney!” he yelled. “Wake up!”

The sun was a bright ball of red in the sky, sinking slowly behind the skyline, highlighting the buildings like a row of jagged teeth. David only had to hang on a few moments longer, he was sure. He was equally sure that he could not.

Rodney opened his eyes. Alarmed, he tried to peel David’s hand off his wing. “Let go!” he shouted as the entire base beneath him dropped sharply by half a foot.

“I’m not going to let you fall!” David shouted back, fingers digging in.

“I can fly, you idiot!” Rodney snapped.

Chagrined, David let go just as the base broke completely free of the wall and went crashing to the sidewalk below. David threatened to overbalance and fall as well, gripping the wall fiercely and pulling himself upright before he did so. Rodney spread his wings and flapped them twice. They both watched as the base went cascading to the ground. There was the squealing of tires and honking horns, even as Rodney hovered for a second midair, before he grabbed the wall and swung nimbly over the edge. He immediately hunkered down behind the balustrade out of sight.

“You look,” he said to David, covering his eyes with one hand. “Tell me what’s going on.”

David peered over the edge and then dropped down beside Rodney, sitting with his back to the wall as well. It could have been worse. A couple of crunched fenders from cars stopping so abruptly, but no one had been crushed by the falling concrete. “Ah, well, that’s going to be on the evening news. Come on, we’d better get inside before the police show up.”

He grinned as he reached down for Rodney’s hand, enjoying the startled look on his face.

It did
not seem odd at all to be inside David’s apartment again. It seemed
right
somehow. At least Rodney was going to live out one of his fantasies before his existence ended, the one where he and David sat around in the evenings, discussing topics of major importance. He eyed David’s furniture. Provided it didn’t collapse under his weight, that is.

“I feel like an idiot,” David said, briefly inspecting his fingertips before rolling a shoulder carefully with a grimace. “Of course you can fly. Have a seat.” He indicated a chair. “You want something to drink?” He headed into the kitchen area and opened the fridge, pulling out a couple of bottles of beer and holding them up by the necks with a questioning expression.

It was all so normal that Rodney wanted to cry.

He silently accepted the proffered beer and watched as David twisted off the cap, flicking it expertly into the nearby trashcan. He took a generous swallow, and Rodney watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed with the movement. Rodney cautiously sat down in the large chair beside the couch, taking a moment to figure out what to do with his wings and deciding it was best to leave them partially spread to hang over the arms of the chair.

David threw himself down on the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “I was really worried about you. I thought you were a goner.” The look on David’s face invited Rodney to laugh at David’s ridiculous assumption along with him.

“Had I fallen in my stone form, I would have died.” Rodney admired the matter-of-fact manner in which he spoke. “As it is, there is nothing for me to return to in the morning.”

David froze in the act of lifting the bottle to his lips again. “What does that mean for you?”

Rodney shrugged. “I cease to exist.”

“What?” David sat up straight, placing his feet back on the floor and setting the bottle down with a thump on the table. “What are you saying, Rodney?”

Rodney sighed. “That this is my last night on Earth.”

“Well, fuck that,” David growled, his previous affability morphing suddenly into something angry and lethal. “Can’t we just get some stuff and repair it? I mean, how hard can it….” His voice trailed off when he realized the impossibility of the task being completed before dawn. There was no way concrete could set in time to hold up something of Rodney’s mass in his stone form. He could see David grappling for ideas and rejecting each one in turn as their flaws became apparent to him. “Rodney,” he said helplessly, when he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Rodney was touched that this affected him so. David’s expression was almost unbearable, however.

“No matter.” Rodney set down the unopened bottle of beer on the coffee table. “I’ve been around a long time. It hasn’t been all bad. As a matter of fact, knowing you has been the best part of it.” Rodney smiled, conscious of how glittering and tight his expression must be. “‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known’
.
”

The look on David’s face at the quotation was painful to see. How was it that he’d never thought about the people that the hero of a story left behind?

You’ve never had anyone to leave behind before.
The realization was a moment of perfect joy and heartbreak.

“Rodney.” David leaned forward until he could rest his hand on Rodney’s arm. “Is there anything I can do?” He smoothed his fingers over Rodney’s skin. No one had ever touched Rodney so intimately before, and it made him tremble slightly.

“I have a few personal belongings hidden in a cubby on the roof. They’re not much, but they’re important to me. I’d like someone to have them. Or do something with them. Or… something.” Rodney trailed off lamely, biting at his lip.

“Of course.” David agreed, his expression shuttered and self-protecting. Rodney couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “What about… I mean, what do you….” David stopped, sighed, and tried again. “What do you want to do? Tonight, I mean?”

There were so many answers to that. Rodney wanted to eat ice cream at noon in Central Park. He wanted to ride the subway like everyone else and sit in the front row of a Broadway play. He wanted to play a pickup game of basketball and go dancing at a club downtown. Rodney snorted. “It might be easier to say what I
don’t
want to do.”

David nodded as though he really understood and picked up his beer again. “Pick one thing. Just one thing. We’ll do it. I promise.” He pointed at Rodney with the bottle before taking another drink.

“I want to have sex with you.”

David spit beer in a fine spray out into the room.

“I take that as a ‘no’,” Rodney said, trying not to let his disappointment show.

David wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and set the bottle of beer down again. “Are you serious? Because it’s not that I don’t want to—it’s that I don’t know how.” David gestured toward Rodney in general with a little uncertain movement of his hand.