Santa, Buddy

“Mr. Campbell’s blockaded himself in the supply room and won’t come out,” Joan says. “I wouldn’t complain but we need another case of bourbon. Handle it.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Bob says. “Let me at him.”

“Make sure he hasn’t passed out in there. He can do that on his own time.” Joan passes him that holy of holies, the office key ring — better for her not to know quite how adept Benson is at picking locks like these — and leaves Bob to it.

There’s a mop handle wedged under the doorknob and a half-dozen cardboard boxes that by any estimation must contain bricks, or at least Bert Cooper’s hoard of gold bars — by wedging his shoulder up against the door frame and simultaneously wrenching and jiggling the handle Bob can exert enough brute force to press the heavy boxes back a couple of inches and open the door a crack.

“Everything all right in there, sir?”

“Sweet Christ, Benson, I think I’m dying.”

“Don’t be silly. Come on out, I’ll call you a cab. We’ll say you have appendicitis.”

“As God as my witness, I am not leaving this room. Can’t a man get some damn privacy in this place?”

“What was it? Do you think it was the ham salad at lunch?”

“The catering’s fine, it’s not that — I’m not an animal, Bob. Listen, you don’t want to get involved. I’m in no state to see anyone.”

“Then why don’t you come help me move these boxes out of the way and let me take a look at you? I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think it is.”

Bob wedges his way through the gap, dislodging the metal handle just far enough to admit his passage — the second he sees the state Pete’s in under the ghastly industrial lighting of the storeroom, he presses that handle right back into place and gives the Maginot Line of liquor crates and toilet paper spools a good shove.

Pete Campbell does not look like himself. He looks like he’s been through a full-force hurricane, flushed and panting with his hair disheveled and his necktie abandoned over the side of the industrial sink — his crisp white shirt has been stripped down to hang loosely from his waist, and he looks about ready to deck him. Or kiss him with tongue.

“Bob! I need you to call my wife. No, not Trudy — get Peggy in here, or Joan. I gave Clara the day off. Carol, maybe, oh God—“ Pete cuts himself off with a wordless groan that is equal parts libidinous and painful.

Oh, this is urgent. Bob furrows his brow. “Are you hurt?”

“No, God damn it!” Campbell makes an eloquent gesture at his crotch, and for the first time, it registers that that area is looking suspiciously engorged. “I’ve got a hard-on that’s murdering me!”

That contextualizes everything. Bob puts out a hand like he’s trying to soothe a startled horse.

“Joan’s setting up the Christmas party, and Miss Olson’s taking a call right now. No one’s calling anybody.” Bob takes his temperature the informal way, pressing a hand to Pete’s forehead — he’s not sweating much but there’s a definite heat there that can’t be overlooked. “He takes Pete gently by the chin. “Would you open your mouth for me?”

And instead of a reflexive refusal, Pete does — he shuts his eyes, inclining his head and letting his lips part. Bob’s thumb can trace his bottom lip: healthy gums, good teeth, nothing wrong with his tongue, nothing unusual at all until it registers that he’s taken Bob’s thumb into his mouth and started sucking on it.

“I don’t know about that,” Bob says, withdrawing and hunting for a handkerchief to wipe the spittle from his hand — you can never carry too many for occasions just like these, where your superior is coming onto you in the supply closet forty-five minutes before the Christmas party kicks off.

“Christ, I don’t know,” Pete pants, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. Just help me, would you?”

He’s never seen Pete Campbell in his undershirt before — his finely-drawn collarbones, the naked hollow of his throat. His neat narrow body is flush against Bob’s, his arousal painfully evident — and it would be a lie to say hearing him beg wasn’t a turn-on, even if Bob hadn’t imagined it quite like this before. Bob takes him by both shoulders, holding him at a suitable distance to look him in the face.

“I thought you were off limits. Isn’t that what you said? You wanted me beside you, but not too close. Isn’t this arguably… too close?”

“You know that’s not what I meant!” Campbell grabs at his sleeve but just as soon seems to regret even moving; the sheer amount of blood now located in his erection must be staggering.

“Whatever you may have come to believe, I don’t sell myself cheap. I only do these things for my friends, and you haven’t been acting very friendly lately.”

“Oh, come off it, you were a manservant for Christ’s sake, what else is that supposed to mean? Help me beat this — this thing, and I’ll forget all about Manolo and my mother.”

It’s a low blow, bringing up the past at a time like this — Bob’s past, and a time in his life that no one at this agency could even begin to understand. He’s done stranger things before. This is no more morally questionable than helping someone out when they’ve had too much to drink. Bob tries to affect a soothing tone, but his heart is hammering in his chest.

Stay calm. Don’t panic. Propose solutions. At such close range, the familiar smell of Pete’s pomade and his laundry soap is turned into something intoxicating — familiar but different somehow, like the scent of his skin has been amplified.

“You don’t need any of those girls. It’ll help you to take the edge off before you go and make any rash decisions. All right?”

Campbell’s small flushed face is intent. “Just do what you have to do.”

For a moment it seems as if Campbell is going to push past him, to make a break for the door, and Bob braces against him — but that’s not the way he’s moving at all, he’s making a desperate lunge that brings their mouths into collision and their bodies flush one against another. Pete kisses him in a state of desperation — whatever’s gotten into him is utterly unlike the ruthless New York blue-blood Bob has grudgingly come to admire. He’s like a feral animal, hooking his fingers in the cloth of Bob’s shirt and pulling him deeper into it, pressing deeper into his mouth.

Pete’s leg hooks up against Bob’s thigh as if to scale him like one of those tiny exotic monkeys at the Bronx Zoo; Bob pushes him back against the industrial cabinets, stooping so Campbell can pillage his mouth with feverish intensity. When they do break apart — maybe the effort has shaken something loose and a moment of lucidity has pierced through the horny delirium, maybe Pete’s just out of breath — Bob laughs.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now come on. Let’s get you straightened out.”

The old art department couch has migrated into the storage room. Bob displaces several cigarette cartons and German cameras to make an open place big enough to lie down, and Pete follows his lead, grimacing.

“What the hell is this thing anyway? Am I dying? Is this some kind of venereal disease I haven’t heard about?”

“I’m sure it’s just an excess of Christmas cheer. Calm down and have a seat, I feel like you’re going to put my eye out with that thing.”

Bob kneels down between Pete’s legs, peeling away his shirt and setting it aside so it won’t crease — if it comes down to it, he’s got a couple of spare shirts in the bottom drawer of his desk. Campbell would do well to start doing the same.

It’s hard to set the mood with Campbell complaining. “I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried, I don’t know what else to do. That’s why I came here. I can’t be seen like this, I’ll be out on my ass faster than you can say ‘merry Christmas’. Draper will laugh himself sick.”

“Nobody’s laughing at anyone. I’m sure there’s been some kind of mix-up, you can tell your doctor all about it tomorrow.”

“And what, pray tell, am I supposed to do about it—“ Pete grimaces with exquisite discomfort as Bob pulls his belt free from its loops and shucks down his pants, finally liberating his erection. “—Right now?”

This is it — Bob’s finest hour, the culmination of years of thankless work and persuasion. His hands are on Campbell’s knees, and the pale blue cotton boxer shorts are tugged down past his hipbones. Bob smiles gamely. “Pardon me if the solution seems rather self-explanatory.”

“I told you, I tried that! You did this,” Pete hisses, “you rat bastard, didn’t you? You and your Latin friend finished off my mother and now you’ve come for me!”

“Please don’t talk about your mother right now, Pete. Just let me take care of you.” Bob removes his own necktie and pockets it; Pete claws at his face ineffectually. “There are a number of ways we can do this, you know. All of which will be substantially more effective than dry-humping a pack of paper towels.”

“First of all, you need to watch your volume, second of all, we’re not freshmen at Princeton, I haven’t dry-humped anything. I’ve already tried masturbation and I swear that just made it worse. I won’t let you fuck me, I won’t put anything in my ass, and I won’t call a doctor, understand?”

That limits their options significantly, but it’s hardly unexpected from a man like Campbell. Bob knows that kind of man well at this point; the kind who will call you a degenerate and still kiss you on the mouth is just another variation. What he wouldn’t give for a square of carpet to kneel on — but he isn’t twenty-five anymore and a little hardship builds character. Bob palms at him with tender solicitude, looking up at Campbell, and just this once he lets the desire show on his face.

“Let’s try this,” Bob says, as discreetly as anyone could hope for.

He takes Pete in his mouth, lightly cupping his balls with one hand and letting the wet pad of his tongue trace over the head of his cock — he barely has to work on him at all before the familiar slickness is welling up and he can get started in full earnest.

This is something Bob knows how to do, and to do well. He can feel Pete stretch out beneath him as the curt coiled tension begins to unwind at last — if he can tease at that he can take him apart and maybe he’ll put him back together again. The man still has a rower’s legs, lean but nicely muscled, and his parted thighs are terrifically smooth as they clamp against him with urgent need. But something’s wrong. Just as Bob begins sliding into the home stretch, slipping down deeper on his shaft in anticipation of the hot flood to come, Pete’s hands ball up into sudden fists on his lap, and he groans with something that is not pleasure.

“You’re killing me here, Benson!”

Bob’s head jerks upward to full attention. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“I’m asking you to get me off, not tease me to death.”

“I’m trying. Nobody’s ever complained before.” Indignant, Bob straightens up, rising off his knees. Manservant, hell. Someone in Campbell’s position, from Campbell’s station in life, can’t even imagine what kind of strength it takes to anticipate another person’s needs completely, to do for them what they themselves don’t know they need.

“And I suppose you’ve consulted with a lot of guys,” Campbell says snidely. His erection is still as solid as ever, swaying loftily as Pete hoists himself back against the cushions. “You’re too gentle. Put a little more backbone in it, you’re just making it worse.”

There’s another way of doing this too, but maybe a less graceful one. Bob crawls over on the sagging upholstery to straddle Campbell’s lap; Pete arches up to kiss him again, right on the salt-wet mouth, grabbing a fistful of his shirt to tug him down. That alone, that oceanic taste of pleasure, should be enough to establish in a court of law that Campbell’s not in his right mind — or at least that the man has depths beyond what his protestations might indicate.

“You can tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.” Looking down at him like this, Bob feels an unexpected pang — Campbell has no idea how beautiful he is, or how unbearably tempting it is to see him coming undone.

“I don’t want you to stop, you hillbilly ingrate! That’s the point.”

The two of them grind together like a couple of teenagers, Campbell’s thin wiry arms locking around him as the springs squeak and sag beneath them — Bob liberates his own erection, already well-past half-staff, and feels Campbell’s startled huff as it slaps against his lower belly.

“You were going to fuck me dry with that? Good God, man!”

“I wouldn’t have fucked you dry,” Bob says, with the absolute earnestness of a man in love, and takes both their cocks in his hand.

Pete’s cock presses slickly against his own — Bob clasps them together, roughly working flesh against flesh until he can find a rhythm that makes Pete arch up into his grip and hiss with pleasure instead of complaining.

The two of them tangle together gracelessly while their hands do their work, Pete’s insistently twining fingers with Bob’s trying to tighten their grip — Bob presses his mouth into the tender corner of Campbell’s jaw and kisses there until Pete shoves him down to a less conspicuous location and lets his head fall back against the raw upholstery. If they could have done this properly, Bob thinks, he’d show him how good it can be between men — two men who love each other. Love might not be the right word for everything he feels for Pete Campbell, but it’s a start.

Bob brings him off a second time, long after his own climax has come and gone, and then a third — Campbell is helpless under him and he’s angry about it, even as Bob does for him with nothing but his hands and his mouth and the press of his body. His nipples make hard points through his undershirt and the flush of sex has spread as far as Campbell’s maturing hairline and as far down his chest as Bob can make out in the industrial lighting. Near-exhaustion has turned him into something uncommonly beautiful and undeniably filthy.

The final climax comes like a fever breaking, and that’s how Bob knows he’s done it right — Pete trembling against him as he spills his come against his belly, against Bob’s shirt-tails, welding them together in a hot seam. The two of them could have done this all along and saved the agency’s money. Bob collapses against his chest, extraordinarily spent, and for an exquisite moment, the two of them lie arm in arm on a filthy sofa without a single complaint.

“This is all Trudy’s fault,” Pete says finally.

“I’m sorry?”

“I haven’t done a thing wrong all day, except there’s this awful cologne she bought me for Christmas. I thought it was a conciliatory gesture. I thought I’d washed it off.”

“Maybe she was trying to do you a favor,” Bob murmurs against his shoulder.

“She could have killed me! I haven’t come like that since I was twenty, I feel awful.”

“Well, you’d better get dressed. I’ll get you a damp paper towel.” Bob pries himself up off the couch, careful to avoid incriminating stains — once everyone’s through with their 90-proof holiday punch and their silly party games and they’re too drunk to see straight, he’ll creep back in and give their impromptu love nest a more thorough going-over. You can never be too careful.

Meanwhile, Campbell looks skinny and winded as a winning racehorse, curled up on his side with his boxers pulled halfway back up; Bob helps him into his pants again, helps him slip on his shoes and fasten up his shirt buttons without a wrinkle. Some things you never lose the hang of.