Form 11-B, Kissing Optional

At their abandoned booth, Rufus wrote, in large letters, WHO CAN GET YOU HOME? Merritt added beneath it: WHO HAS THE INFORMATION TO HELP? Rufus drew a small taxi beside the first question. Merritt did not cross it out.

Together they rebuilt the relay: ridiculous situations, clear next steps, room for people to name the person who would answer at three in the morning.

The revised relay required a clean backup binder, three unruined tab dividers, and a printer that had not entered a personal feud with them. The binder was at Merritt’s apartment.

“It is six blocks away,” Merritt said, collecting the orange scenario cards. “I keep it there because this building has a plumbing history.”

Rufus held the edge of the booth. “I know an invitation to retrieve office supplies from a man’s home when I hear one.”

“You are being invited to retrieve office supplies from a man’s home.”

“The precision is doing things to me.”

Merritt gave him a look that ought to have stopped the joke. Instead, it made Rufus want to earn a less guarded one. This seemed a bad moment to discover a preference for danger.

Outside the Annex, late rain had polished the pavement. Merritt stopped beneath the awning, keys looped around one finger.

“I want to be clear,” he said. “You can come for the binder. You can stay for tea. You can kiss me if you want to. You do not owe me any version of the next item merely because you accept the first.”

The sentence gave Rufus nowhere to hide, which was perhaps its elegance. He considered fleeing into a lamp post. “I want the binder, tea, and kissing. In that order, unless the tea is terrible.”

“It is good tea.”

“Then I may lose all professional restraint.”

“We have each had enough professional restraint for one evening.”

Merritt’s apartment occupied the third floor of an old building that smelled of rain and lemon cleaner. It did not resemble an office filing cabinet, though Rufus had privately expected one. Books rested sideways on a low shelf, a blue throw crossed the sofa, and a glass bowl held loose keys. A spare phone charger waited by the couch. A small first-aid kit sat in plain sight on the kitchen counter. Merritt had arranged the place for people who might need something. He simply had the decency to make it look accidental.

“Sit,” Merritt said. “I will find the binder.”

“Your hospitality has a firm but fair tone.”

“It has survived inspection.”

The kettle began its brisk little complaint. Merritt knelt before a cabinet, retrieved a navy binder, and put it on the table. Rufus opened it expecting revisions and found, flattened carefully behind the contact tabs, one of his original paper airplanes. The dotted evacuee still wore sunglasses.

“You kept this.”

“It had the correct route around the east-lift barrier.”

“That is nearly affection.”

“It is accurate cartography.”

Rufus returned the airplane exactly where it had been. His hand rested near Merritt’s on the tabletop. Merritt turned his palm upward.

“Do you still want to kiss me?”

“Yes,” Rufus said. “I have completed an extensive internal review.”

“Any findings?”

“Troublingly favorable.”

Merritt laughed, brief and startled. Then he drew Rufus close by the hand.

Rufus kissed him with nothing clever prepared. Merritt tasted of tea and rain. His cardigan had been an emblem for weeks; taking it off felt almost indecently ceremonial. Rufus touched the first button, then stopped.

“May I?”

“Yes.”

The cardigan came free, then the pale shirt beneath it. Merritt’s skin at his waist was warm beneath Rufus’s palm. At the couch, Merritt eased back against the cushions and opened one hand in invitation. Rufus went with him.

“Slow?” Merritt asked.

“Slow.”

“If either of us wants to stop or change course, we say so.”

“And stop means stop. No sulking, no analysis, no Form 11-B.”

“Agreed. Crispin receives no report.”

“Now that is a binding rule.”

Their kisses lost their careful edges. Merritt slid a hand beneath Rufus’s shirt, moved it over his stomach, and paused at his waistband.

“Still yes?”

“Still yes.”

Rufus unfastened Merritt’s trousers. He found him hard beneath the fabric, and the simple fact made the room tilt pleasantly. “May I?”

“Please.”

Rufus slipped his hand inside and closed it around Merritt’s cock. Merritt shut his eyes for a moment, then caught Rufus’s wrist and guided the pace with a small movement. Rufus followed it, absurdly grateful for direction.

An orange card escaped from his discarded trousers, drifted onto Merritt’s bare shoulder, and stuck there on the faint sheen of his skin. WHO CAN GET YOU HOME? it asked.

Merritt looked at it, then at Rufus. “Your paperwork has followed us.”

“It has attachment issues.”

Merritt laughed. Rufus joined him, and the terrible vulnerability of being half-undressed on another man’s sofa became manageable enough to survive. Merritt peeled the card away and set it on the coffee table.

“We can stop,” he said.

“I do not want to.”

“Neither do I.”

Merritt guided Rufus’s hand away and lowered himself to the rug. “May I use my mouth?”

Rufus’s answer broke into a laugh before it found words. “Yes. God, yes.”

Merritt drew Rufus’s trousers down, pressed his mouth to the inside of Rufus’s thigh, then took his cock in. He moved slowly, watching Rufus’s face for any change. His hand stayed light at Rufus’s hip. When he looked up, Rufus managed, “Like that. Exactly like that.”

It was impossible to make a joke out of being handled with such deliberate attention. Rufus held the sofa arm with one hand and left the other loose at Merritt’s neck, there only because Merritt had placed it there. He came with Merritt’s name caught in his teeth, not elegant, not useful, and entirely his own.

Merritt rose before Rufus could apologize for the noise. Rufus drew him down, kissed him, then looked at the open line of his trousers.

“Your turn?”

“Only if you want it.”

“I do.”

Rufus guided him back to the cushions. “May I?”

“Yes.”

He took Merritt in hand, keeping the rhythm Merritt had shown him: patient, then firmer when Merritt’s hips lifted to meet it. Merritt came over Rufus’s knuckles with a sharp sound and hid his face briefly against Rufus’s shoulder.

The tea had gone cold beside the binder. The orange card waited on the coffee table with no useful opinion on what came next.

Merritt lay back, one knee against Rufus’s. He seemed to be arranging a sentence, which Rufus recognized as a serious event.

“I need to say this now,” Merritt said, “before I arrange it into something less embarrassing.”

Rufus’s first impulse arrived wearing a party hat. He sent it away. “All right.”

“I want you on my side after judging. Not occasionally, not as an amusing professional irritant. I want you to be the person I call when something is wrong. I want to be the person you call. I do not want this to end when Niles names a winner.”

Rufus touched Merritt’s wrist. He had spent years making sincerity wear a fake mustache before letting anyone see it. Merritt had asked for clarity, so clarity was what he got.

“I won’t turn that admission into a joke,” Rufus said. “I want it too. You on my side. Even when you are wrong about pigeons.”

“I am never wrong about pigeons.”

“See? We already have longevity.”

Merritt’s laugh this time carried no surprise. He kissed Rufus once, then reached toward the table. “The binder?”

“The binder,” Rufus said, though he did not move for another minute.

They worked in partial dress at the small table, shoulders touching when they leaned over the pages. Merritt changed TRUSTED PERSON WITH ACCESS TO RESIDENCE to WHO HAS YOUR KEY? Rufus added a tiny key wearing a safety helmet.

“The helmet suggests occupational risk,” Merritt said.

“The helmet suggests preparedness.”

Merritt let it remain.

Rufus replaced a long medical-information prompt with: WHAT SHOULD SOMEONE KNOW TO HELP YOU WELL? Merritt added, beneath it: MEDICATIONS, ALLERGIES, DOCTOR, OR NOTHING YOU DO NOT WISH TO SHARE YET.

“That last part is good,” Rufus said.

“It is accurate.”

“It is kind.”

Merritt considered him, then put a clean tab beside the card. “Those are permitted to coexist.”

They built a final page around a question Rufus had written in block letters: WHO CAN GET YOU HOME? Merritt made room for names, numbers, keys, and boundaries. Rufus drew a telephone with little legs beside the instructions. Merritt added an arrow: CALL, DON’T GUESS.

For once, neither addition required defense.

At 10:17 Friday morning, the motorized binder began to scream.

It had only just processed the title page when its feeder spat out the emergency-contact cards in a white, orange, and blue gale. Rufus, crouched behind the glass display case to retrieve a dropped tab, found the rear access panel locking on him. Across the lobby, Merritt held the master key and looked appalled in a way that did not excuse him nearly enough.