Closed

At ten past one in the morning Hal Brandt took his shoes off under the desk for the first time in nineteen hours and found out he couldn’t stand up again.

His feet had swollen and his back had set into the shape of the chair. On the desk the deal book lay open to the signature pages, thick as a phone directory, forty-four of them signed in blue ink, with a cold coffee beside it that he didn’t remember pouring. The Marchetti Street building had closed at eleven fifty-two. It had taken nine lawyers, a lender who changed the terms at four in the afternoon and again at eight, and a seller’s broker who cried in the stairwell, and by any measure it was a good one. He felt like something that had been ironed.

He pushed his glasses back up and rubbed a hand over the grey beard he hadn’t shaved since the weekend. At six-two and fifty-six he had no business feeling this small in his own chair. He sat with his palms flat on the blotter and tried to think about nothing at all.

Around six that evening the whole thing had nearly gone down. The lender’s counsel had slipped a revised indemnity page into the stack, a clause buried in paragraph nineteen that made the buyer liable for the seller’s old environmental claims, and four lawyers had read right past it. Dom hadn’t. Dom, who was supposed to be getting sandwiches, had stood at the end of the conference table with the page in his hand and said, in the flat voice of a man reading a menu, “This isn’t what we agreed to,” and put his finger on the line. Hal had said thank you the way he said it to the elevator and gone back to shouting at the lender.

He thought about the finger on the line now and wasn’t sure why his throat felt tight.

The door opened without a knock. Eleven years of that had made it a habit.

“You’re still here,” Dom said.

“I’m leaving.”

“You’re sitting in the dark with your shoes off.” Dom came in with a paper bag from the Greek place on Third and a glass with two fingers of the good scotch. His tie was long gone, his sleeves shoved up over thick dark forearms, and one cuff carried a coffee stain. He was a head shorter than Hal on his feet, but he’d played linebacker in college and still crossed a room like it owed him money. “Eat the sandwich. Drink that. You had a bagel at six this morning, and I counted.”

“Dominic.”

“Eat.”

Hal ate. It was a turkey club and he finished every crumb. Dom perched on the corner of the desk and watched him chew with the patient look he wore at board meetings, the one that said he’d already read the next three slides.

“Everybody went home,” Dom said. “The junior team toasted you. Somebody made a speech about how you didn’t blink.”

“I blinked a lot.”

“Not where they could see. The night guy downstairs thinks you’ve had a stroke.”

“I’ve had a closing.”

“Same thing, at your age.” Dom took the wrapper out of his hand and put it in the bag. “I want to ask you something. Don’t answer fast.”

Hal wiped his fingers on a napkin. The low, even voice made the back of his neck prickle.

“I’m thirty-nine, and I’ve worked for you eleven years,” Dom said. “I know how you take your coffee and what your blood pressure is on a bad Monday. I booked your divorce lawyer. I sat in the car outside your ex-husband’s funeral because you wouldn’t go in alone and wouldn’t let me come in either. I’ve been in the next room for all of it, and I’m tired of standing on the wrong side of the door.”

Hal’s heart gave a slow, strange knock. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I want to fuck you.” Dom’s face did not change. “Tonight. Here. And I’d like to be the one running it. You’ve given orders for thirty years. I’d like to give a few. I want you under me doing what I say, and I want you to want it.”

The room was very quiet. The city hummed behind the glass.

Hal had imagined it, God help him. In the nights after the funeral, when he couldn’t sleep, he had pictured Dom’s hands, the square cut of his nails, the way he took a pen out of his pocket. He had pictured Dom saying sit down, Hal, and had gotten hard in his own bed and been ashamed of it for a week. He had never meant to do a damn thing about it. Not with the man who held his whole calendar up.

“This is a bad idea,” he said. His mouth was dry.

“It’s a very good idea. It’s only bad for the first ten seconds.” Dom folded his arms. “Here’s the deal. I’m not asking for a raise or a title. My bonus is in my contract, you signed it in January, and it stays exactly what it is. If you say no, or you say yes and change your mind, nothing about my job changes. I’ll be at my desk at seven with a bagel and I’ll never mention it. If you say yes, we pick a word.”

“A word.”

“A stop word. You say it, I stop, no questions.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Something you’d never say by accident.”

Hal was too tired for anything but the truth.

“Closed,” he said.

Dom grinned, slow and wicked, and it changed his whole face. “Closed. I like it. You say closed and the deal’s off. Anything else, it’s on.” He stepped closer. “So I’m asking out loud. I want to fuck you, Hal. Do you want me to?”

His heart was going so fast he could feel it in his teeth.

“Yes,” Hal said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I want you to fuck me.” It sounded insane in his own voice. It sounded, to his horror, like relief. “I’ve wanted it longer than I’d like to say. Tell me what to do.”

“Stand up.”

Hal tried, and his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Dom caught him under the arm and hauled him upright, and for a moment they stood chest to chest, Hal in his stocking feet. Dom took his glasses off his face, folded them and put them on the desk.

“There. Now you can’t read anything. Good.”

---

Dom undressed him slowly, button by button, as though he were opening one of the nine-hundred-page contracts he knew by heart. Hal stood with his arms at his sides and let it happen. Dom pushed the shirt off his shoulders and ran both hands through the grey hair on his chest and belly, and Hal shivered. “You’re a lot of man,” Dom murmured. “I’ve watched you in a suit for eleven years. I had no idea.”

“I’ve gained weight.”

“I like it. Shut up about it.” He pinched a nipple hard and Hal grunted. “Pants.”

Hal dropped his trousers and stepped out of them and his socks. He stood naked in the middle of his own office with his cock thickening under the overhang of his belly and the lights of Midtown spread out behind the glass like a field of coins. He’d never been this exposed in front of another person. He found, to his surprise, that he didn’t hate it.

Dom sat down in Hal’s big leather chair and spread his thighs and opened his own belt, one hand, unhurried. “On your knees.”

Hal went down. The carpet rasped against his kneecaps. Dom pulled his cock out of his trousers, thicker than Hal had guessed, cut, dark and heavy and already hard, and the smell of him, warm skin and soap and a day’s work, made Hal’s head swim.

“Open.”

Hal opened. Dom guided himself in with one hand wound into the grey hair at the back of Hal’s skull. The taste was clean and a little salty. Hal closed his lips around the head and sucked, and Dom exhaled sharply and sank deeper into the chair.

“Yeah. That’s it, with your mouth full. Eleven years you’ve told me what to type.” A hard, slow thrust. “Now you listen.”

Hal made a sound around him.

“Take more. Come on, I know you can. You swallow things for a living.” Dom’s hips pushed and Hal’s eyes watered, and he gagged once and pulled back and went forward again on his own. He was fifty-six years old, kneeling in his own office, and he was hard enough to ache. His cock was leaking onto the carpet. “Shit, that’s a good mouth. Wet. Use your tongue on the underside.”

He did. He worked the thick shaft with his lips and tongue, one hand braced on Dom’s thigh. Above him Dom’s breath went short and rough, and a low string of curses came out in the accent that only showed up when he was losing control, all Bronx vowels, and Hal moaned at it, helplessly.

“You like me talking to you?”

Hal pulled off, drool on his chin. His voice came out shredded. “God help me, I like it.”

“Good.” Dom’s eyes were black. He pulled him up by the arm. “Couch. Now.”

---

The leather couch sat under the window, long enough for a nap, and it had hosted a number of dignified three a.m. naps over the years. Dom pushed him down onto his side and went to the credenza, which held, Hal now learned, lube and a box of condoms in the second drawer. Hal stared.

“Since when?”

“Since March.” Dom came back undressing as he walked. The shirt hit the floor. His chest was broad and hairy, a thick soft stomach over hard muscle, a gold chain with a small medal Hal had never seen him without. “I put them there. I figured one of us might lose his mind sometime. I’m glad it was both.”

“You planned this.”

“I stocked a drawer. The planning was your idea.” He knelt on the couch behind Hal and pushed his top leg forward with the heel of his hand. “Hold the cushion. Water-based, in case you’re wondering. I read the label.”

Hal gripped the arm of the couch. The leather was cold against his chest. Behind him the cap clicked and a slick finger circled him, and he said “Oh,” a wounded little sound he couldn’t have predicted.

“Easy. Breathe.”

“I haven’t done this in nine years.”

“I know. Your ex was the last one. You told me in the car outside the funeral.” Dom’s finger pressed slowly in. “You were very drunk and very sad. I kept it to myself. You can thank me later.”

“Thank you,” Hal said into the cushion, and heard Dom laugh softly.

A second finger joined the first. Hal’s thighs shook. It was snug and hot and much better than he remembered, a pressure he’d forgotten the exact shape of, and when Dom curled his fingers the room went bright and far away. “Dom. Jesus.”

“Right there?”

“Right there.”

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want…” The words wouldn’t come. He closed nine-figure deals for a living, and he couldn’t find a single word. “I don’t know. I can’t decide. I’ve been deciding things for nineteen hours.”

“Good,” Dom said gently, right at his ear. “Don’t. I’ve got it. You just tell me if it’s too much, and otherwise be where I put you.”

Hal’s shoulders dropped an inch, then two. It felt like setting down a briefcase.

“Okay,” he said. His voice broke. “Fuck me. Put your cock in me. Please.”

“That’s what I wanted.” A third finger now, stretching him patiently, and Hal rocked back onto them. “Say it again.”

“Please, Dom.”

“Louder. Let me hear you ask.”

“Please fuck me, Dom!” It was almost a shout. Hal flushed to the collarbone. “I need it. I can’t take another minute, I swear to God—”

The fingers slipped out. A foil packet crackled. Dom lay down behind him on the long couch with his chest against Hal’s back, one arm sliding under his neck, one heavy leg pushing between his thighs and lifting the top one. The blunt head of his cock nudged at the stretched ring. “Word’s still closed. Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Take a breath.”

Dom pressed in. It was a slow push, thick and burning, and Hal groaned and clutched the arm of the couch. His body held on and then opened, and the full length slid in without any rush until Dom’s hips were flush against his ass and Dom’s breath was hot on his shoulder.

“Easy,” Dom whispered. “All the way in. I’m in your office, I’m in your ass, and I’ve never been more fucking comfortable.”

Hal laughed and sobbed at once.

“It’s so good,” Hal said when Dom rolled his hips, slowly. “It’s so full. Don’t stop.”

Dom started to fuck him in a deep, rolling rhythm, unbothered, entirely in control, one arm banded across Hal’s chest and his belly pressed against Hal’s back. Each stroke pushed out a breathless noise, and Dom answered every noise with something filthy and warm in his ear. He said Hal’s ass was the best-looking thing in the building and he’d been thinking about it in budget meetings. He said Hal took cock like he took everything else, with total seriousness and no apology, and it made Dom want to wreck him.

“Mine,” Dom said into his ear. “This ass is mine till the sun comes up.”

“Christ,” Hal groaned. “Do it again.”

“Dom… faster…”

“No. You don’t get to hurry me. You’ve been hurrying everyone for thirty years.” He slowed down on purpose and ground in deep. “You take it exactly how I give it. Understand?”

“Yes. God. Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.” It surprised both of them, and Dom’s rhythm stuttered, and something rumbled in his chest.

“Fuck. Okay. Do that again sometime.” His hand slid down Hal’s belly and Hal tensed. “No, I’m not touching you. Not yet. Hands on the cushion. I’m not letting you off till I say.”

Hal put both hands on the cushion. He was shaking. The heat in his belly had coiled tight and every stroke tugged it, and his cock hung heavy and untouched and dripping, bumping the leather. Dom’s mouth was on the back of his neck, and his cock dragged across the spot inside him over and over.

“I can feel you clenching,” Dom said. “You’re close, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to…”

“Not yet.”

“Dom, I can’t…”

“You can. You wait.” Dom’s hips snapped, once, hard. “Tell me what you are.”

“I’m yours,” Hal gasped. It came out of him with no thought at all. “Tonight. I’m yours tonight. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“That’s right.” Dom’s voice dropped to a growl. “And I say you’re going to come, Hal, just from this, with my cock in you and my arm around you. Nobody touching you. On the next one.”

“Dom—”

“Come.”

He drove in deep, and Hal broke. The orgasm hit him from the inside like a wave under a pier, and he cried out, a long raw sound that rattled the glass, and came hard, untouched, in thick spurts across the cushion and the leather and his own thigh. His whole body clenched around Dom. He heard himself saying oh fuck, oh fuck, Dom, and then Dom was cursing in his ear and thrusting in short, hard strokes.

“Christ, you’re tight. I can’t… Hal… fuck, here I…”

Dom came with his teeth in Hal’s shoulder, pressed in as deep as he could go, shuddering. Hal felt every pulse through the condom. He lay there with his heart pounding and the leather sticking to his skin and Dom’s arm locked around his chest.

---

They stayed that way a long time. The glass ticked as the building cooled. Somewhere far below, a bus sighed at the corner of Third.

“Okay?” Dom said at last, quietly.

“I’ll need a minute to recover my dignity.”

“I’ll get you a minute.” Dom eased out, careful, and kissed the spot he’d bitten. “You didn’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“The word. At any point.”

“No.” Hal let out a long breath and laughed. “I didn’t want the deal off.”

“Why now?” he asked after a minute. “Eleven years.”

“Because tonight you sat down.” Dom lay propped on one elbow with his medal swinging against his chest. “You never sit. Tonight you took your shoes off and just sat there. I thought, he’s finally tired enough to hear it.” He shrugged. “If you’d said no, I’d have gone home and slept fine.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m an excellent liar. I lie to the other side’s lawyers every week.” He grinned. “But not tonight.”

Dom brought a damp towel from the private bathroom and a blanket from the closet and wrapped them both in it. At some point Hal fell asleep. When he woke the window had gone grey and Dom was sitting on the edge of the desk, dressed and shaved with the razor from Hal’s own drawer, holding two cups of coffee. His hair was combed.

“Six-ten,” Dom said. “The doormen change at seven. I’d suggest a shower.”

Hal sat up in the blanket with his glasses on the end of his nose. “Dominic.”

“Mr. Brandt.”

“Thursday. After the board lunch.” He cleared his throat. “If that’s agreeable to you.”

Dom’s face did nothing at all. Only his left eyebrow moved, a millimeter. “Your Thursday is wide open after two,” he said, in his senior-partner voice, and set the coffee in front of him. “I’ve put a note on your calendar. It says Marchetti follow-up.“

“Does it say anything else?”

“It says you’re not to be disturbed.” He walked to the door and paused with a hand on the frame. “Eat the other half of the sandwich. And Hal?”

“What?”

“Closed was a very good word.”

The door shut behind him. Hal sat in the first light with the city waking beneath him and the other half of the sandwich in his hand and felt more rested than he had in years. Out on the floor the cleaning crew’s vacuum started up, and the first elevator of the day arrived with its small polite chime. At seven the junior team would trickle in nursing their hangovers, and Dom would greet every one of them by name, and nobody on the forty-fourth floor would ever know.