Marco
Turns out that Akito guy was actually roommates with Dwight. He knows those bullies. After a lot of back and forth, we decide just to take him to my place for now. I have a spare room. So, I go home. To my real house.
"What about your folks' place?"
"And tell my dad what just happened? No way. He'll freak."
"Friends?"
He thinks for a moment. "Sadly, I don't have any. I thought Akito was my friend. I don't really feel comfortable asking to crash at my receptionist's house, either."
"Yet hanging around a guy you just met is perfectly fine."
He lets out a puff of air. "Well, considering you probably just saved my life, yeah."
I chuckle, trying to lighten the air. "It's just bread and cheese. I was going to apologize for having so little."
"It's more than I have."
I purse my lips. "You should go to your folks' place. You don't have to tell them why."
"Ha! You obviously don't know my dad. He'll get the truth out of me, and then he'll freak out, both at me and at them." He takes a bite, chews, and swallows. "No. I'll work on finding a place tomorrow." He looks at me. "Thank you for this. For everything. I don't want to think about how I'd be right now if you hadn't have happened along."
He looks around. "This is a nice place." Guess he wants to talk about something else.
"Thanks. I've done some stuff to it recently, changing things the previous owners did. I haven't gotten to the bedrooms yet, though. Sorry, but you'll be sleeping in a garishly-adorable little girl's room." I chuckle.
"I'll take it." He actually smiles.
I take a breath and decide to tell a half-truth. "I work in security for a pretty large company." I don't need to tell him I'm a police officer because he's from the neighborhood I was working in. "You?"
"I'm a psychiatrist."
"You're what? Then... why was that douchebag your roommate?" I thought shrinks made lots of money.
He shrugs. "I'm not established yet. I can barely afford the rent on my office space, and I have to put the funds my practice brings in pretty much right back into the practice." He thinks for a moment. "Security, huh? Well, considering you handled three of those douchebags all by yourself, I'd say you know your stuff."
We continue talking about random things. In my opinion, he asks too many questions, but I guess that's his way of starting and maintaining a conversation.
Later, he claims he's too jazzed up from his near-death experience to sleep, so we decide to watch whatever is playing on the classic movie network.
"So, George, what were you doing in that area of town?" George Bantle is my cover name.
"That's my business," I answer cryptically.
He leans back. "Whoa. Okay."
"The b*tch slap? Yeah. That's awesome." Darrin liked this movie. Guess he still does. It's a beautiful movie because it sucks that badly--but in a good way.
Darrin would punch me in the face if he found out I brought what might be a suspect right to my f--king house. I sigh.
I tell him what happened. Then I ask him how he got involved with that crowd in the first place.
"Akito used to be cool. Then he started worrying about money, and, um, got some new 'friends.' Listen, if I were you, I'd stay out of that area for a while. Those friends have friends. I don't know who they are, but their numbers are nothing to mess with. I kept trying to get him to get out of it, but he said the money was good." He pauses. "You handled three, which is beyond awesome, but if it were six or something..."
"I get it."
"I mean, unless you're one of the 'friends.' Then forget I said anything because I will too."
I start laughing. If he's the leader, he's damn good at hiding it.
"I don't know. They were, uh, encroaching on your territory or something?"
He's hilarious. And there's something very familiar about him, but I can't put my finger on it. "No, I'm not one of them. And before you ask, I'm not a client either." Well, that's what George would say because George wouldn't want Dwight to know he was pretending to be one. Of course, if Dwight is the ringleader, George just missed a major opportunity. But, I'm starting to wonder if Dwight is. Sure, he's the smart type, and a lot of times, it's the smart type at the head. "So don't worry, Dr. ..." I don't know his last name. "Dr. Dwight."
I pause, blinking. "No sh*t." I laugh. Then I laugh again. "Oh my maker!" I laugh harder. That's why he looks so damn familiar!
"What is it?"
"Yes?"
"Your father wouldn't happen to be Finn Foster, would it?" The corners of my mouth turn up when his face turns red.
"Y-yes. Look, I know he can sometimes be a pain when it comes to working with security companies. He has all these rules he has to follow, and... what?" he asks because I'm laughing again.
"Oh, I know all about it. He's my boss." That was probably a stupid thing to do. I'm racking 'em up tonight.
"He's your... what?" He stares at me as it slowly dawns on him.
"Something like that." Honestly, could the ringleader be Foster's son? I sigh. Yes. I've seen stranger things.
"Or..." He looks around, putting more pieces together. "Detective George."
"Fine. You got me."
"Of course my hero would wind up being a cop." He almost lays his head on my shoulder. Then he kisses my cheek.
His smile grows. "It all makes sense now!" He looks like he just opened his favorite Winterfest gift.
I pull back and look at him strangely.
"Oh my maker. I'm sorry. I thought maybe..." His face turns red again. "Just forget it, okay?" He freezes his head in the direction of the television screen.
"You thought right, but..." But there are so many things wrong with this.
"It's fine."
I decide to pull a leaf out of his book and make a subject change.
"Because he was my friend. I've not had many friends. We grow apart or I do something to screw it all up." He then launches into a story about how he had to leave his school for another one, thereby losing friends. His school roommate was caught cheating on his schoolwork, using Dwight's as his own, screwing up that friendship. There was a girl that wound up having a crush on him but he wasn't interested, so that got messed up. His college friends all seemed to fall away after graduation. Then there came Akito when he was looking for a roommate. "I thought I could just pull him away from it somehow. When looking for him this evening, I found his stash."
"He's not the same person anymore. I just wanted him to go back to the way he was. The stress of life changed him, and I thought I could fix it."
"A friend wouldn't try to kill you," I point out.
"I'm sorry," I tell him, meaning I'm sorry he's had bad luck with friendship.
"Yeah, me too."
He looks so much like his dad that now that I can't believe I didn't see it at first. "I have no idea why you've had such rotten luck."
"Maybe I'm just doomed to be a social pariah for the entirety of my life. Maybe people can never really get to know me because I don't know me. Maybe I push them away because I'm scared they will." He sighs. "You know, 'maybe' is a powerful word. It lets us express what we're thinking without having all the weight behind it."
I'm only about two percent thinking he's the ringleader. If he is, he needs a career on the screen because he's a damn good actor. He'd make a good one of those nerdy science-y types who winds up saving the world. "I guess it is," I reply to his earlier statement.
I can't help but smile back. "Do what?"
"Made me spill my guts like that."
"Don't do that. It's gross, and it would make everything I did earlier for nothing."
He laughs. "And Detective George is funny too."
"Marco." F--k it. "My name is Marco."
His mouth drops. Then he shoves me, not hard, almost playful but also showing a bit of hurt. "You were using a false name this whole time?"
"Well, I wasn't sure how much of a part of everything you were."
"Oh, and now I pass your test, do I?"
"Yeah." I give him a 'what are you gonna do about it?' expression.
Suddenly, the television goes to a kind of blank stand-by screen, the kind that happens when my cable goes out.
Then we turn and look at one another, and the situation suddenly seems hilarious. It's late. Maybe we simply have the late-night sillies.
"We should probably turn in," I say.
His face falls. "I don't want to, but you go ahead." He looks at the floor, all the recent humor gone from his expression.
Dwight leans his head on my shoulder. "I'm tired now." 
He locks my eyes with his. "And I think it's wonderful." Then he leans forward and kisses me. 
He's drunk.
He quickly leans back. "Crap. Sorry." He starts pushing himself off me. "I don't know what's with me tonight. I'm not usually like this."
I kiss him back, apparently using more force than he's used to because he makes a little noise. He doesn't try to get me to stop, though. I wind up leaning into him, and he pulls us back on the couch, putting me on top of him.
I pull up. "I'm too old for you."
My next big mistake: Dwight f--king Foster.
My eyebrows come together. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
My scowl deepens. "That's a b*tch answer." I pause to his continued silence. "Okay. Don't tell me. Thought I might help is all." Why do I care? I get up to head to my room.
To my retreating back, he says, "I just know I won't be able to sleep after everything that's happened. And if I do manage to get to sleep, I'm afraid of my dreams."
F--k. I turn back around. I can't walk away from that. F--k me for being nice tonight. That never works out. "You'll be fine."
His eyes meet mine from where he sits on the couch. "Yeah. Of course I will." He totally doesn't believe it.
I inwardly groan. Why can't I just walk away? This whole 'emotions' sh*t is not my forte by any stretch. Still, I wind up walking back over to the couch.
"Go ahead and go to bed, Marco. I'll be fine. It isn't the first time I couldn't sleep." He watches me sit down.
"No, I've been there." Yeah, when Darrin went back to Michael the Model. That hurt more than I thought it would. Sure, we were never serious, and I knew he still loved the guy. I just didn't expect it to affect me that way. I dealt with it the most mature way I know: I got wasted. "Besides, not to add to your troubles, but I'm going to have to make a report in the morning. Your dad is going to know everything."
He groans and puts his head in his hands. "F--k."
I crack up laughing again. Why is Dwight cussing hilarious?
"Yes, thanks. Please, add to my stress level. Apparently, I don't have enough."
"Sorry, but as you said, if I try to exclude anything, he'll catch it and get the truth out of me." I watch him for a second. Stress, huh? "Hey. Let's see if I have anything in my worthless liquor cupboard." I get up and check. I have a sip of Bailey's, but that's it. I haven't replenished my stock. Then I remembered seeing a previously-opened bottle of cheap red wine in the fridge. Showing it to him, he says we could give it a try.
We do. It's awful. We still manage to empty it, though.
"Good. It worked. You should try to sleep."
"I can't."
"You should try."
"Okay, but right here. You can keep the boogeymen away." He snuggles into me.
"Dwight..." I have no idea what to say.
He starts laughing, even if he doesn't move. I'm starting to think he's a featherweight. "Well, I think you can probably do anything. You came out of the darkness just like the hero in a story and risked your own skin, outnumbered, for someone who really needed your help."
"That's what I do." I really like the way he described it, though. I look down at him where he rests his head on my chest, but then he picks it up and looks at me.
Guess I'm not thinking clearly. Maybe I'm lonely.
Have I lost my mind?
He scowls. "I'm thirty."
"Oh." I'm thirty-eight. Eight years isn't much, but I thought he was much younger. I look at him. "Really? Because you barely look twenty-two." Chief Foster is in his mid fifties. I guess it kind of makes sense, especially if Dwight's the older son.
A smile replaces the scowl. "Thanks." He sits up and kisses me again. Dammit.
"Oh, I'm not?" he asks like he doesn't believe a word of it.
I'm kissing my boss' son. Oh f--k, this is messed up. I whine because he won't stop and I don't want him to. He's drunk, but I'm not.
I pull up again. "You're not my type."
F-------------k. But I have to keep up the argument I have. "Yeah. You're too... sweet." Sh*t. That's the best I could come up with? But then, I could make it work. "I only date as*holes." If I 'date' at all, that is. Lately it's been a steady stream of one-night stands.
"Well that doesn't sound like a very nice way to live." He's still smiling like he can see right through me. F--king psychiatrists. "Why not try someone," he smirks, "'sweet' for a change?"
This isn't happening. This is even weirder than falling for Darrin, someone I was convinced I despised. Dwight really isn't my type. He's too good.
He whispers, "And if I'm not your type, why are you getting turned on right now?"
Damn him.
Oh, f--k! He's too pure. I can't pinpoint how I can tell, but I can tell. It's the way he kisses, probably. He may be thirty, but it's almost like kissing a teenager.
I speak against his lips, not really ready to give them up yet. "I'm bad for you."
"What are you afraid of?"
I pull up more this time. "Nothing! I'm trying to spare you." But I just need more right now, so I go back to kissing him.
"Stop it, Marco." Instead of pushing, he pulls me more into him.
This is so messed up. I'm deeply kissing Chief Foster's son. I can taste the awful wine he drank earlier. It's not awful anymore. No, it's so sweet that I want to cry.
What the f--k is wrong with me? I fully pull back from the kiss and rest my head on his chest.
"Don't do that," I grumble.
"Do what?"
"Psychoanalyze me. All you'll discover is one huge mess."
I can hear a smile. "I'm not psychoanalyzing; I'm just trying to get to know you. If I were psychoanalyzing," he chuckles, "I might say something like 'tell me about your father.'"
I groan to his continued laughter. He starts lightly running his hands up and down my back, not helping me telling myself to get off him.
"Dwight, please ask me to get off you."
"That stuff doesn't always work, anyway." Especially with someone as closed off as I am, he means.
"Well, I can tell you about my father. My parents. They're dead. Died in a car crash when I was eighteen. Before then, my life was perfect. Everything died with them." See? F--ked up mess.
He squeezes me. "I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine. And you were so young."
"Don't."
"Don't what? I'm not doing anything. You offered that up on your own."
I wilt. He's right. "Dammit."
"No," he replies stubbornly. "If you're doing that, you're doing that on your own." He plants another kiss on my head. "Why are you so afraid?"
Dammit! It was him being afraid to go to sleep that got me into this mess to begin with. Now, he's asking me why I'm afraid? "If I'm afraid of anything, it's that I'm an as*hole and I'll hurt you." This is a mistake. This is a huge mistake. He's too good for me.
"I'm willing to risk it." He wraps his arms and legs around me.
"F--k," I moan, and he yawns. I decide we should sleep here, and I tell him so. What I don't tell him is that we're sleeping here because my bedroom is too dangerous. I'm worried about how things will seem in the light of morning.
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