Raincheck Read online

  “Hey, it’s cool by me if you don’t drink,” David said, relieved that he’d misinterpreted the situation. “We can get a sandwich instead.”

  He sensed that Rodney was shaking his head. “There’s nothing I’d like more. But I can’t go out with you. I can’t be seen with you. I’m… different.”

  “Different how?” David frowned, taking a step forward. There was a whisper of sound, which suggested to David that Rodney had retreated even farther away.

  “I can’t explain. Trust me on this one, though.”

  “I don’t care about appearances, Rodney. I’ve been living for appearances my whole life.”

  “Easy for you to say, gorgeous.” Rodney’s voice was dry. “You’re easily the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

  David felt heat rush into his face. “Now who’s talking crap? I don’t see why….” His cell phone went off. Frowning, David pulled it out. “Oh, hey,” he said, seeing that it was from Richard. “I need to take this call. We haven’t finished here, though. Will I find you here if I come back again?” He peered into the shadows, trying to see where Rodney was standing.

  “I’m here most nights.” Rodney definitely sounded as though he’d moved farther away and was on the other side of the roof now.

  “Right.” David picked up the call, walking back to the door as he spoke. “Richard. Thanks for returning my call so late tonight. Listen, I had this idea that you might find interesting…. Hang on a second, I’m on the roof, and it’s windy up here. Let me get back inside where I can hear you better.”

  He paused at the door to look back at the alien landscape of shadows on the roof. There was no sign of Rodney. It was as if he didn’t exist.

  Rodney stretched and yawned before moving off of his pedestal, only to feel a slight give to the base when he did so. He hurriedly swung over the wall to the rooftop, breathing heavily as a jolt of adrenaline coursed through him. Cautiously, afraid of what he might find, he crawled back out over the railing, clinging upside down to the wall to get a closer look at the crack in the base. He’d waited longer to move tonight, making certain that the sun had completely set before opening his eyes. Fortunately, he could see very well in the dark.

  The crack didn’t look any worse than the day before. He knew what he’d felt, though; he didn’t think he was imagining things. With a resigned sigh, he quickly pulled himself back up to the roof.

  That was when he saw it. The small table set out in the middle of the rooftop. As he approached, he could see that it really was a packing crate covered with a red-and-white-checked cloth. On it sat a bottle of beer, condensation still beading on the surface of the glass. Beside the bottle was a plate holding a large sandwich, a mound of potato chips, and a pickle slice. Rodney looked around to see if someone else was on the roof, planning to enjoy an al fresco meal, but there was no one else there. That’s when his eye caught sight of the folded piece of paper sticking out from underneath the plate.

  He opened the sheet of paper and angled it so he could read it in the ambient light from the city around him.

  Rodney, it read.

  I’ve been thinking about what you said and decided that despite the fact you won’t come out with me, that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, right? It’s cool with me if you don’t want to leave the building. I’ve narrowed down the possibilities—you’re a reclusive genius with agoraphobia or a wanted fugitive or a superhero. I’m right, aren’t I? Now if I only knew which one.

  David

  PS. Since you won’t grab a bite with me, I brought it to you. Hope you find it in time. Otherwise, I’ll owe you another raincheck. Damn. I should have put this in a cooler, huh?

  Rodney grinned. So, David was an idiot and a bit of a romantic as well, whether he realized it or not. It didn’t mean Rodney couldn’t enjoy the meal. It would make a nice change from pigeon. He peered at the top of the beer bottle, trying to figure out how he was supposed to open it. “Huh. Fancy that,” he said aloud to the night as he grasped the bottle top with clawed fingers and twisted it off. “Screw top. What will they think of next?”

  He’d tasted beer before, in the dregs of bottles left behind in the trash. Never before had he consumed a beer still cold from the fridge, though. It was so unexpectedly satisfying that he’d drunk almost half the bottle before he’d realized it. He quickly turned his attention to the sandwich. The layers of meat and cheese, combined with the crisp bacon and fresh lettuce, exploded on his taste buds in a way that made him moan with pleasure. The only drawbacks were the little wooden sticks embedded within; he didn’t see the appeal to them whatsoever. It was only when he’d eaten three quarters of the sandwich that he realized that the sticks were meant to pin the layers together and that he probably wasn’t supposed to eat them.

  He left the empty plate and bottle on the packing crate, the idea of flying down to ground level to dispose of the trash as ludicrous as his going shopping in the local hardware store for concrete mix and a trowel. He started to leave the note as well but thought better of it. Walking over to the air-conditioning unit, he removed a panel at its base. Inside, he kept a few private things. The playbill from Phantom of the Opera; a cracked snow globe, rescued from the trash and depicting a family setting out from a well-lit home in a horse-drawn sleigh; three different versions of the Bible—well, two and a half, if you considered that the pocket copy contained only the New Testament and Psalms; a crystal pendant, found twinkling in a storm gutter on a frosty winter night; a well-thumbed copy of Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers; and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, snagged out of the fifty-cent box in front of the used bookstore three blocks over and paid for with the dollar he’d found the week before. Pity the bookseller hadn’t made the mistake of leaving the box out overnight again. He never knew if the owner had found the money he’d left under the box.

  The note from David would make a nice bookmark.

  Apartment 14 C proved to be an interesting apartment from Rodney’s point of view. The Freemont was an old building, built back in the early 1920s. Rodney himself had been shipped over from England, from an even older building, to form part of the rainspout system. He shuddered briefly at the memory of waking up in a packing crate and the moment of panic when he’d had to decide whether to break out or wait and see where he ended up. He was glad now he’d chosen to wait it out. The Freemont was a nice building, and the neighborhood had been an interesting place in its heyday.

  The Freemont was thirty stories high, large for its time, and had one main tower and two smaller side towers. Apartment 14 C was essentially a penthouse apartment for the east tower, and as such, was a compact, studio-style living space. It was also one of two apartments that boasted skylights. It was easy enough to wait until full darkness and glide down to the lower level, landing on the wall just above the glassed-in roof, to get a bird’s-eye view into David’s apartment.

  The sheer number of books within made his fingers curl with longing, so strong was the desire to caress the bindings and fold himself into a chair for an evening of reading. He’d never heard of so many books in one place outside a bookstore or library, and he’d only ever seen those collections from the outside of a window looking in as well. He liked to picture himself sitting comfortably in the overstuffed chair, reading by the hour while David sat across from him doing the same. He often created elaborate fantasies about himself and David sharing meals, watching television, playing games of chess.

  Don’t be stupid, he frequently told himself, usually when the first pale streaks of dawn lit the morning sky, and he had to hurry back to his pedestal before dawn actually broke. No one knew exactly what would happen to a gargoyle who failed to return to his base before daylight; no one had ever heard from anyone who had failed. Fred, over at the library, had theorized that the hapless gargoyle would turn to dust and blow away with the wind. He’d talked about it a lot until one day, Fred didn’t return in time. Rodney always believed that it had been a deliberate ch
oice on Fred’s part. Fred had been old, older than any of the other gargoyles that Rodney had known, and increasingly bitter. He was without wings as well; he’d been on an even shorter leash than most of Rodney’s kind.

  There aren’t many of us left, he thought as he took up his position outside David’s windows that evening. So many buildings were being torn down, and no one was commissioning gargoyles anymore. No one seemed to know why only one gargoyle per building would transform into a living, breathing being each night, but the general consensus was that their days as a species were numbered. It had never really bothered Rodney before. Something about David, however, brought out a longing in him for things he didn’t understand, things he’d never known that he needed. Things he’d only ever read about.

  Watching David move about his apartment was like watching a play, Rodney thought. No, more like television. Rodney had hidden in the catwalk of a theater to watch Phantom that one magical night. Sometimes he could still feel the music swirling and vibrating within him. He’d only seen television through the windows of other people’s homes—bright pictures with muted sound telling stories he only partially understood.

  He often felt that way when watching David.

  David was cooking the Asian noodles in the brown broth again, which made Rodney’s mouth water whenever he smelled it. David seemed to make that meal a lot, often varying it by the addition of chopped vegetables. He used to eat mostly out of those little cardboard boxes that Rodney knew to be takeout, but it had been several weeks since the man from Huang’s had made a delivery. For a human of his size, David didn’t seem to eat very much; Rodney wondered how he managed to stay alive. He was sorely tempted to leave David a pigeon or two, if only he could figure out how to get them into the apartment.

  David frequently went days without shaving, becoming progressively more scruffy-looking yet somehow more attractive, until Rodney took his place at the window to discover the stubble was merely a shadow on his face again. There didn’t seem to be any logic to the pattern, and Rodney probably spent too many hours after David had turned out the lights brooding about the reasons and whether he preferred scruffy David or smooth David. He was smooth this evening, and Rodney was reminded of the way David had looked that first night on the rooftop. Even clean-shaven, there was a sort of wildness about David that appealed to Rodney and made him think they had something in common.

  Rodney wondered if David planned to go running tonight, a habit that made Rodney worry about his safety. Fortunately, Rodney’s night vision allowed him to pick out David’s lean form from a height high enough that few noticed Rodney gliding silently above. Rodney had been little disturbed to see a blurry photograph of himself appear one evening on the front page of a tabloid; so much so, he’d actually stolen a copy of the rag when no one was looking. Fortunately, the tabloid’s reputation was so bad that no one cared about the Flying Batman captured on film.

  At least this wasn’t one of the evenings when David brought Richard home with him. He knew his jealousy over Richard wasn’t rational, but he couldn’t help it just the same. He’d been burning with curiosity the first night David had come in late with an older man, their arms full of papers and blueprints that David had spread out on the big kitchen table and weighed down with the salt and pepper shakers. David had been so animated, leaning across the table to point out something on the diagrams, and straightening with a grin to take a seductive swallow from his bottle of beer.

  Over time, Rodney had learned that the other man’s name was Richard, and though he was helping David in some way with his mysterious plans, Richard was more cautious and less optimistic than David was, a fact that Rodney found oddly soothing.

  Rodney watched David eat alone at the table, imaging himself sitting across from David and sharing a light dinner conversation. He hoped this would be one of the nights that David would decide to come up to the roof looking for him. Those were the best nights. David would grab a beer out of the fridge before heading up to the roof. Rodney would flee back to the safety of the shadows, breathless with anticipation as he waited for David to make an appearance. They always kept the conversation casual. David was cagey about revealing his plans (“I don’t want to jinx myself”), so he and Rodney usually spoke of the books that they’d read. The conversations were short, usually lasting no longer than it took David to finish his beer before he headed off on some new endeavor for the evening. Rodney didn’t mind; every moment that David was on the roof with him, there was a chance that David would see what he really was, so as much as he thrilled to the visits, he was relieved whenever David went back inside. Those moments were like bright splashes of color in Rodney’s otherwise black-and-white world.

  Tonight was different. Rodney could tell because shortly after dinner, David stood up and began to shed clothes on his way to the part of the apartment that Rodney couldn’t see, toeing out of his shoes, peeling his T-shirt over his head, and unbuckling his jeans to shimmy out of them and leave them on the floor. Changing clothes clearly meant that David intended to go back out again tonight. Rodney nearly fell into the skylight craning down for a better look as David bent over to step out of his briefs. All that smooth, pale skin with just a scattering of dark body hair for contrast. Rodney wondered what that hair would feel like to his touch and whether it would be soft or coarse. Privately, he could admit to a certain fascination with David’s hair. It looked like it should be springy and with a certain recalcitrant life of its own, and Rodney’s fingers positively itched to know what it felt like. That, and the perpetual stubble on his face, as well as the dark hair on his strong forearms.

  David paused by the kitchen table to take off the chain around his neck and leave it there, his back toward the windows. By determined observation, Rodney had been able to identify the object on the chain as a cross; he often wondered what the significance of it was to David. Rodney couldn’t get over David’s compact perfection, so unlike Rodney’s own towering mass. He felt his mouth drop open as he admired the sleek lines of David’s body, unmarred by great, leathery wings or a prehensile tail that revealed every mood as plainly as though Rodney had spoken. The slope of his shoulder, so different from Rodney’s own, was muscular without being grotesque. Rodney wanted to reach out and touch him, to run his palm down David’s back, to follow the curve from shoulder to hipbones. His torso seemed oddly long, yet it suited him. Rodney thought of the animals he’d read about without ever seeing pictures of them. David reminded him of a cheetah, or at least as Rodney had imagined them.

  A warmth of feeling flushed over Rodney as he watched David move out of sight toward the back of the apartment, and Rodney glanced down at his cock. He was always erect; he never gave it much thought, but there was a different sensation teasing him now. As he watched, his cock made a sort of undulating movement, and the head flared.

  Damn. He’d read about this. He was turned on, aroused, for a better word, by the sight of David in all his casual nakedness. Tentatively, he reached down and grasped his shaft. He gasped slightly at the little shudder of pleasure that ran through him. Damn, he thought again. All this time, and he could have been feeling like this?

  With one hand, he continued to cling to the drainpipe above David’s skylight. With the other, he explored the length of his cock, his eyes closing, and his head dropping forward as he gave into the purely sensual experience of touching himself. His pelvis made a tentative tip forward, and he had to scrabble with his toes for purchase as reality came crashing back on him. As marvelous as these new sensations were, there was a time and a place for self-exploration, and hanging on to the side of the Freemont probably wasn’t the right place. Rodney opened his eyes reluctantly, ready to move back to the roof. Later tonight, perhaps, when David had gone to bed….

  Unbidden, an image of David lying naked in his bed flashed into Rodney’s mind. He could see David as clearly as if there were a photograph in front of him—David sprawled out across his mattress, a sexy smile on his face as the white l
ight of the full moon shone in through the window and coated his body with a silver sheen. Rodney looked down as his cock throbbed in his hand, and it jerked upward at his thoughts. Damn. This was a problem.

  After a hundred and fifty years or so of life, apparently Rodney had discovered an interest in sex. With a human. Well, that was a nice, realistic goal, he thought sourly.

  Rodney could feel a small amount of wetness at the end of his cock, something he’d never experienced before, and there was the smell of something musky and attractive in the air. The wetness served to alleviate the drag of his hand against his skin. Eagerly, he rubbed his palm across the head for more lubrication.

  Rodney watched as he felt the inexplicable urge to roll his pelvis and thrust up into his hand, his thighs tightening and relaxing with the movement. He closed his eyes and let his head loll back, giving in completely to the sensations demanding his full attention. He could feel a mounting urgency build in his body, but he had no idea what he wanted or how to release the tension that he was feeling. It was all mixed up with the desire to run his hands across David’s skin and feel the fine hairs there, to bury his nose in the crook of David’s neck, to thrust up against him and sink his teeth into the muscle between David’s neck and shoulder. Rodney could picture himself doing this, even as his hand moved rapidly up and down his shaft with desperate need. He could hear David’s cry when Rodney’s teeth closed on his skin, could feel David arch up and back against him.