Bedrooms and Bath Houses

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Fourteen





























“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Ben Forrester was saying

“You don’t look fine,” Mike said. “You look like you’ve been in a car wreck.”

“I… I shouldn’t have even called.”

“Of course you should have called.” Mike aid, pulling up a chair.

Ben Forrester was sitting up in a hospital bed with bruises on his face, a bandage on his head and a drip.

“What happened to the other people?” Mike asked.

“What happened to the car?”

Ben shook his head. “Everyone’s alive. I’m just glad I have insurance.”

“Okay, well, Benny, I talked to the doctor—”

“You talked to the doctor?”

“Of course I did. And he says you’re about to be discharged in an hour, but you’re kind of out of it, so I’m going to take you home Alright?”

“My keys….”

“I got your keys.”

“How’d you get it all?”

“I told the doctor I was your boyfriend and he said, I think that’s wonderful and I’m going to treat you just like his wife, and then he gave them to me.”

Ben, snapped out of his whooziness enough for his blue eyes to roll wide open.

“I told him you were my brother,” Mike said flatly, “And that Mom was worried sick, but in Kansas.”

Ben laughed, and groaned because his head hurt.

“We’re from Kansas now?”

“Tonight we are,” Mike said.

Ben swallowed and looked around the hospital room. Joe and Doug were outside, but Swann and Chris were there.

“I was really, really out of line,” Ben said. “I was so mad.”

He lay back and shook his head.

Then he said, “That doesn’t sound like an apology.”

“It’s apology enough,” Swann said.

“No,” Ben said. “It isn’t. Cause I said a bunch of lies. I just needed to be angry with someone and I shouldn’t have said any of those things to you. Jack wasn’t there for you. I know that. Jack was wrong to you, and there was… I’m embarrassed by the way I acted. If I hadn’t been seeing so much red I wouldn’t have fucking been hit by a car.”

Swann nodded, feeling embarrassed.

“Well,” Ben said, “while I’m still clear headed, tell Sal when you see him—”

“Sal’s in the hall,” Swann said.

“What?”

“We’re all here,” Swann said.

Ben grinned painfully.

“That is really embarrassing.”

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Chris, who was sitting low with his long legs apart in a chair beside Swann sat up now.

“Could you… Damn, I’m thirsty.”

Mike scrambled to get the cup of water and bring it to Ben.

“Could you get Sal. So I can bite the bullet.”

“Bite the… It’s not necessary,” Swann began, but Chris had already gotten up.

The Sal who entered the room after Chris exited looked like the mild mannered Salvador Goode most of them were used to, and he said, a little nervously, “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Ben said, exhaustedly.

“I’ve been in some bang ups for sure,” Sal said. “It can mess you up.”

“Look, Sal, I was an ass and you had every right to say what you said.”

“I… could have been better too. It’s just this guy,” he shook Swann’s shoulder. “He makes me do crazy things.”

“Don’t blame me for your behavior,” Swann said.

“Well, then the way I feel about him makes me—”

“Protective,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Swann felt Sal’s fingers on his shoulder, massaging him unconsciously.

“I was wrong,” Ben said.

“We were all wrong, Benny,” Mike said. “There’s not really anything right about any of this.”

Ben nodded, but as he did, his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose and he rubbed it while blinking.

“I will be glad to get some rest in a bed. I’m glad I’m not concussed.”

Sal suddenly surprised Swann by sitting on his lap, snuggling his butt against his crotch and placing Swann’s arms around him.

“But how are we going to make it right?” Ben said.

“You can worry about it tomorrow,” Sal said,

“Everything isn’t wrong,” Swann said, as he held onto Sal’s waist. “Love is right. It’s always right. I think.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Listen to this shit,” Mike had murmured that first night he and Doug had made love.

“If it had happened properly we’d be in a beautiful hotel room or some house on the lake. Not my ratty old apartment, listening to all the cars drive by.”

Mike’s hand brushed across the inside of Doug’s as they lay together and he kissed Doug’s shoulder, and then kissed him down his back.

“You know none of that matters to me.”

Doug turned around so the two of them faced each other, and the faint light of the city outside shone into the darkness of the room and lit Mike’s hair, his shoulders, made a line down his profile and over his torso.

“It seems to me that we haven’t been proper yet, so why should this be proper.”

Mike grunted and placed Doug on his back, straddling him He bent down to kiss him roughly, and Doug pulled him down. They held to each other, their bodies joining, Doug’s hands fiercely rubbing his shoulders, caressing the line of his spine, going to the small of his back.

“I love it when you touch my ass,” Mike told him.

“I love touching your ass.”

In the bed they turned over and lay on their backs, and on the other side of the door, Doug heard Mike’s neighbors coming down the hallway.

“How did it feel?” he asked.

“When you grabbed my ass?”

“No stupid,” Doug said. “When we… when we got back here?”

Mike giggled like a little boy, and when Doug looked at him, he kept giggling.

“What?”

“It felt… like when you really have to go to the bathroom, and then you finally get to your apartment and its there, and you can go. Like when your bladder’s about to explode.”

“Are you trying to tell me sex felt like going to the bathroom?”

Mike laughed even louder, drawing his knees to his chest so the covers fell away and he lay on his back naked and giggling.

“No… dope. Well. Not really. It’s just that…. It’s just that,” he said, still smiling and touching Doug, “I’ve wanted to be with you so bad I feel like I’m going to explode and then tonight….”

“You exploded.”

“Ha.”

“You really did.”

“I tried to be gentle.”

“You were gentle. We were both gentle. To a point.”

“To the point where we didn’t want to be.”

“Itn’t it funny,” Mike said, turning around, “How we talk about lovemaking, but—”

“In the end it’s fucking.”

“I wasn’t going to put it that way.”

“How were you going to put it?”

“It was kind of dirty, wasn’t it?” Mike said. “I like doing dirty stuff with you. I feel like the safer you are with someone, the more intense it can be. I… the whole time I was talking about patiently waiting for you, I don’t think I let myself think of what I really wanted to do.”

“Well you did this,” Doug turned over.

“Holy crap!” Mike said.

“You turn over.”

Mike did and Doug touched his back. He winced.

“I gave as good as I got.”

“You wanna go out?”

“We’re coming back, aren’t we.”

Mike nodded as he climbed out of bed,

“Oh, we are most certainly coming back. I’m not through with you, Doug Merrin.”

Doug reclined on his shoulder and admired Michael’s body in the night. He climbed out of bed so he could stand behind him and pull Mike onto his lap.

“We’ll never get out if you don’t let me go so I can get dressed.”

“The night’s young, and so are we.”

“That sounds like the kind of line you end a book on,” Mike said.

“Yes,” Doug acknowledged. “And it’s a little bit lame, but here’s the thing. It’s true.”

“Why have I felt so old, then? All this time.”

“You feel old now?” Doug asked.

Mike Buren shook his head and bent so that his soft bottle brush hair touched Doug’s short naps, and their foreheads pressed together.

“I feel like I could die in this place.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am glad Ben is ok and that the characters have somewhat made up. That was some excellent writing and I look forward to more whenever it arrives.

 

[ChrisGibson]

While Mike tried not to cry and didn’t succeed, Doug drove them to Ben’s place. Ben sat in the backseat of Doug’s car, dozing, and Doug said, “Michael, everything’s alright now.”

Mike hadn’t made any noise. He just sat there looking the way he often did, expressionless, a little hard, but tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“I know,” he nodded. “I know.”

“Everything will be alright,” Doug said. “It’s a mess now, but it’ll turn out right in the end.”

Because Mike, in fact, did not know that, he didn’t say anything,

By now they were in the north part of town near campus, driving past the old fancy brick Orrington Hotel and coming toward the first stately buildings of Northwestern.

“You’ll have to direct me, now,” Doug said, and in the empty night where the traffic lights shone on streets with no cars, Michael did and Doug commented, “Well, this is a bit bigger than Saint Damian’s.”

“Yeah, it is,” Mike said.

When they arrived at the high rise where Ben stayed, Mike shook him awake.

“Are you staying?” Ben asked Doug.

“I was headed back home.”

“Don’t do that,” Ben said. “Please stay. I’m not going to be any kind of company to Mike, and he insists on staying.”

Doug nodded.

“If I’m welcome, I’ll stay.”

“I’m welcoming you,” the tall man who was trying not to lean on Mike said, “so please stay.”





The early spring in 1990 was the first time everyone was sure that Eutropius Prynne would be abbot within days. Abbot Merrill came down with pneumonia and no one, including him, thought he’d survive. To his surprise, Prynne was terrified. The time he did not spend at Abbot Merrill’s side, he spent in the little chapel in Northwest Tower. The whole school knew. Ben Forrester and Jack Knapp came, looking solemn, and asked Brother Prynne if they could do anything to help.

Prynne was glad for their coming, because he put himself together in front of the boys, and when he pretended to be together, when he felt like he actually was.

“Your prayers,” Prynne said. “Your prayers are what we need.”

“You know, Father,” Ben, in his perpetual plaid, shrugged, “if canceling class and not giving out homework will help, we can live with that.”

“Get out of here,” Prynne said, “and cut your hair.”

But Merrill did recover, and Herulian said, “We’re out of the woods now, but you’re going to have to be ready when the time-”

“When I need you to tell me to how to be, Benjamin, I’ll let you know.”

He was practically running things anyway. This was a while before he would find out about the abuse later that year, and spend some time dealing with that and getting past his own heartbreak. Benji, who had learned when to shut up, was driving him around the schools of the area to recruit boys for the next few years. It was usually Benji who did the talks. He was handsome and fun and charismatic, good at selling things though, in the end people came to Prynne who was sitting at a little table. Prynne was good at explaining things and grounding people.

They were at Bishop Ward School outside of Benton one day when a young couple he just liked came up to the little table after a talk. The man was curly haired with a large nose and glasses, and the woman was blond and tough looking, pretty but she looked like she enjoyed a good time.

“So here’s the thing, Father—”

“It’s just brother,” Prynne said.

“Brother,” the man corrected himself. “I’m Jewish—”

“You’re half Jewish,” his wife interrupted.

“There’s no such thing, babe.”

“You were brought up Presbyterian.”

“It’s complicated,” the man said. “And Louise over here is a good Catholic girl.”

“I’m not that good,” she said, taking out her lipstick and reapplying it. “I mean, I married you.”

“Brother, one of these days I’m sure my wife will let me finish what I’m trying to say.”

“Excuse the hell out of me,” she murmured.

“What I’m trying to say is we don’t know how we feel about God. Or about church, and we’re kind of wanting to send out son to public school. But he really likes your place. He’s curious about it, and he doesn’t really ask for much. I mean, he’s a good kid.”

“He gets it from me,” Louise said.

“Do you think you could talk to him?” the man asked. “Don’t convince him or unconvince him or anything. Just maybe talk with him?”

“And frankly talk with us, cause I hate the idea of my kid not being home.”

“I’ll be glad to,” Prynne said. “But of course, you know it’s a day school too. It might be a bit of a drive from Benton, but it is manageable. Where’s your son?”

“The giraffe kicking the soccer ball over there. Ronald, get him.”

Ronald put his hand to his mouth and Louise said, “Don’t you dare shout.”

He got up and crossed the gym and a few minutes came back with one of those boys who was always moving and who was already six feet tall.

“Get that silly look off your face,” Louise said to him with no malice and handed him a stick of gum, “Say hello to Brother Prynne.”

“Hi, Brother Prynne!” the boy said, thrusting out his large hand. His voice was high and reedy and ready to crack, and he was almost growing out of his jersey, but he was handsome and eager.

“I’m Chris!” he said. “Chris Navarro.”



“I know that kid,” Benji said as they headed back to Saint Francis. “He’s an altar boy over at Rosary when Andy does Mass there.”

Prynne laughed and said, “I imagine he’d be hard to miss.

“Well, I hope he does come here. He’s a really sweet kid. And I like his parents.”

“Are we really going to their house?”

“They invited us. Of course we’re going.”

When they had parked and come through the back of the school, Prynne said, “Early dinner in the Northwest Tower?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go get Andy. I want to ask him about this Chris.”

In the large lobby outside of the gym, he ran into Jack Knapp and told him he was on his way to find Father Reed.

“Good thing I caught you, Brother. Father Reed and Father Roberts are at that old house across the field. They were headed out to Saint Damian’s, I think. If you hurry you might catch ‘em.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Thank you, Jack,” Prynne said and turned around, heading to the house that had, after all, been his for years and that Andy had grown up in. He’d been talking about fixing it up for a long time, and the paint was old and it was slightly vine grown. It didn’t take long to cross the field and enter his old house. He opened the refrigerator Well, at least they kept it stocked, and got a beer for himself. Andy could get his own beer, and he headed through the old house, but no one was there. For a bit he stood in the old living room and looked at the sofas and the lamps, the chairs which hadn’t been changed since the Fifties. He thought of what it would be like to make this his hermitage again, if things ever came to that. Or better—and less selfish—to make it a place for senior year students or senior brothers, or even postulants.

He heard furniture move upstairs, a bump.

“So I was wrong,” Prynne murmured, and went up the old creaky stair, and after that he would always think, but it was an old creaky stair, they certainly should have heard him.

But they did not. They were on the bed, making love, and it took a moment for Prynne to understand what he was seeing, for them to understand they were being seen. Prynne pulled the door close so the hallway was suddenly darkened, and no one on any side of the door said anything. No one moved.

At last, Eutropius Prynne said, “Get dressed, please. I’ll be in the Northwest Tower.”



When Andy arrived in the Northwest Tower with Ted Roberts, Herulian was sitting at the Abbot’s desk and Prynne was sitting on it. He rose and approached the door as Father Roberts was entering.

“Prynne,” he began, “the thing is—”

“Get out,” Prynne said tonelessly, and closed the door in the priest’s face.

Prynne said nothing to Andrew Reed. He just sat down in a chair by the door.

No one said anything, and finally Andy said, “You weren’t supposed to see what you saw.”

“You weren’t supposed to do what you did.”

“Did you have to drag Benji into it?”

“He’s the prior,” Prynne returned, both of them speaking as if he wasn’t there. “It was either him or the whole house. And I certainly wasn’t going to wake up Merrill for this.”

“What are you planning to do?”

Prynne just looked at him.

“Thomas—”

“How long has this been going on?”

“A while,” Andy said after a while.

“A long while.”

When Prynne’s face didn’t change, Andy said, “It’s… it’s a lot to tell, but am I telling it to my friend or am I telling it to Brother Eutropius?”

“Your friend is Brother Eutropius,” Herulian finally spoke, sounding sad an irritated.

“I…” Andy began, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Prynne said. “Please go. It’s almost time for Lauds. I have to talk with Benji.”

“I don’t think I want to go to Lauds today.”

‘I don’t think any of us wants to go to Lauds,” Prynne said. “I don’t think any of wants to do a lot of the things we do, but we do them, I’ll see you at Lauds,”

Prynne dismissed the priest.

When the door had closed Prynne waited a few moments and then he looked to his best friend who had stood up and rounded the desk.

“You knew,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

“I… suspected.”

Prynne nodded.

“I didn’t want to say anything because all it would have done was brought us to the moment we’re at right now. And you had a lot on your plate. You have a lot on your plate. This is just one more thing.

“And then… who am I? Who am I to judge or to try to get them in trouble. After all… and you know it, I’ve had my own indiscretion.”

Prynne nodded.

Herulian shook his head.

“In that house of all places.”

“We should burn that damn thing down.”

“I loved her,” HErulian said. “She’d never seen me in a habit. She just thought of me as Benjamin, and she was… I almost left the order for her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“She didn’t want me to. And I don’t think I really wanted to. And then, I love you. You know, I almost left this place until you came. You’re almost like my damn wife, Prynne.”

Herulian shook his head.

“But… I know it needed to stop, but I can’t honestly say I regret it. I loved it. I loved her. I miss women. I miss sex. I can’t blame Andy.”

“And yet blame or no blame we have to make a decision.”

“I gave up Lydia and chose this life.”

“Andy hasn’t given up anything. And if we do nothing, then he won’t.”

Prynne pressed his glasses up his nose.

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, Benjamin. You must know. You are the Prior.”

“But you—”

“Am someone who may be Abbot. But there is an acting Abbot. He can’t decide, so you must decide, and I will support you.”

“We do nothing,” Herulian said. “I can’t embarrass them. It will split apart the house, cause unnecessary scandal. I don’t want to be looking under doors and in peoples’ beds. We tell them to not get caught again—”

“Not to stop doing it?”

“You think that’s realistic?”

“No,” Prynne shook his head. “But I wondered if you did.”

“No,” Herulian did. “We keep this between us, and we don’t bring it up again.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Those were great portions! I like getting back to Prynne centred stuff. I am still enjoying this story a lot and look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I feel bad that the posting has taken a hit because of me traveling a lot. I always mean to post twice a week, but it doesn't usually happen that way these days.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Life must move on. Things must keep going. There was the dinner at this Navarro family’s place to get ready for, and he and Herulian could not take an early meal in the Northwest Tower. Andy had seen to that. Herulian would tell Andy and Ted Roberts what the two of them had decided, and however he chose to tell them was his business. Prynne went to find Abbot Merrill, who was still feeling fragile, and accompanied him to Vespers.

“Oh, God come to my assistance,” half of them sang when Father Rouen struck the clapper

“Oh, Lord make haste to help me,” sang the others.

“Glory Be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,” they all proclaimed, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end, Amen.”

But the world would end. The world was ending every day, so was it the praise that did not end, or did praise exist in a different world, in the world of the eternal that, like a tapestry, this was only the messy backside? Was eternity not the stretching of time, but the other side of it, the world where the frayed ends came together and the messy decisions were made unmessy?



Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Lord my God, how great you are,

clothed in majesty and glory,


wrapped in light as in a robe.

You stretch out the heavens like a tent.

Above the rains you build your dwelling.

You make the clouds your chariot,

you walk on the wings of the wind...



No, he did not blame them. If you loved someone, you loved them. He did, however wonder about himself. Why had love never come to him? He loved the order. He loved his place in it and his work, but if even in this house love had come, why in the world had it never come to him? The virginity that was supposed to be a blessing and a calling nearly felt like a failing. No, but that was his to deal with. That was the very reason this thing must remain between him and Herulian and never be spoken about or shone to the rest of the house. It would not encourage holiness, it would encourage jealously. It would raise up the many feelings of inadequacy It would raise up ugly old hatreds and bigotries. No, they had handled it. They had handled it well.

But Andy had asked him “Am I telling it to my friend or am I telling it to Brother Eutropius?”



“Blessed is the man

Alleluia!

who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”



For the Lord knows the way of the just,

but the way of the wicked shall perish.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”







Herulian’s answer was not quite honest. Brother Eutropius was almost Tommy Prynne, but Brother Eutropius was now abbot in all but name, and responsible for the running of a religious house. Tommy Prynne was a boyhood friend, and both of them thought that when Andy had asked this, he was looking for a friend, needing to talk to his friend. But then again, maybe he was making this up, Prynne thought. After all, he’d been wrong before.



By now he had fallen into his comfortable schedule. Compline ended around eight and he came up to the Northwest Tower office to grade papers, and Prynne went from there into the Northeast wing where he was nominally an assistant RA and checked on the boys. This was the year that he and Herulian were keeping rooms on the second and third floor so that when they were needed, they were on hand. Prynne would go to bed around eleven after making sure that the boys were, if not asleep, not obviously out of hand. An hour nap would follow, and then he would head to Vigils. The real sleep, the prized sleep occurred between Vigils and Lauds.

But now, while he was grading, there was a tap of the door and Andy stuck his head in. He was dressed in his priestly black and he entered and sat before Prynne who lifted a finger while he finished reading an essay and shook his head.

“James started the paper so well, and then midway through I was pretty sure he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Well, he’s on the second floor so we may discuss that before the night is over.”

He took out his cigarettes, turned around and pulled out a bottle of brandy. He offered it, and Andy shook his head.

“Suit yourself,” Prynne said, pulled out a glass from the desk and filled it halfway.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“We need to talk,” Andy said.

“Yeah,” Prynne agreed.

“I’m not good at it. I’ve kept secrets for a long time.”

“I guess you have,” Prynne said.

“Ted isn’t new. I mean, this didn’t just happen.”

“I’m guessing that has something to do with why you were so… hesitant when he first came here three years ago?”

“Me and Ted have been together… a long time.”

“How long?”

“Do you remember when Jeff died?”

“Of course I do.”

“You stayed in Chicago and came back the next day.”

“I was feeling very bad, Worse than I let on.”

“I know. Jason told us.”

“Oh.”

“I… That same night I went to Ted.”

“Wasn’t he…?”

“He was a high school senior. We’d always been close.”

“He was your assistant, like he is now.”

“Yes. And we’d discussed our feelings, but I said it was wrong, for a bunch of reasons. But that night I went to him, and that’s when it began.”

“You were about to be ordained. You were a member of this order.”

“I know. And… it went on. It went on when he went to college. Sometimes I went to him. Sometimes he came here. It stopped when he went to seminary, but it started again not long after he came here. And I was happy. We have been happy.”

“I have known… none of this,” Prynne said.

“I wanted to tell you.”

“No one has known, have they?”

“Tommy, I’ve been secret about a lot. I… Jeff was my boyfriend.”

“I gathered that much.”

“And when he died I went out. I went out to the bath house and I was with men and after that it was easier to be with Ted, to break my vow.”

Prynne said nothing, but nodded, and so Andy continued talking.

“Those trips, back when we were in school, the track trips, when you all would go to Chicago, they were the best for me because I wasn’t ugly Andy. I wasn’t Andy who looked like a chicken. I was a runner and I was good looking and that was the start of my sex life. A lot went on in those weekends.”

“You do know that…. If you went to those bath houses, then you slept with Ted, you could have given him AIDS?”

“I’ve….” Andy cleared his throat, “I’ve thought about that. Since. I didn’t understand at the time. I…Tommy, I know it sounds like I’m an awful person, like I’m the very person who is the opposite of the man that stands up in the pulpit on Sunday, but… I just… what was I supposed to do? Tell Benji? Tell Jason? Tell you everything?”

Prynne did not speak. He lit a cigarette which he did not smoke, and sat back in his chair.

“You are one of my oldest friends,” Prynne said. “We are supposed to be brothers.”

“I couldn’t have come to you with this.”

“But you’re coming to me with it now? Aren’t you?”

“I should have told you,” Andy said. “Shouldn’t I?”

Of course there were all sorts of things Prynne hadn’t told Andy, but none of them was nearly as deep as this, and it would be almost a year before Andy told him about being abused. There were things Prynne knew about Herulian that no one else knew, not even Jason, and there were secrets Jason had told him that he hadn’t ever told anyone else. Men were made of secrets, except for the ones who had become too stupid to remember their actual lives and substituted them with false ones. Those men were made of lies.

Andy shook his head and said, “I should have told you.”

Prynne shrugged and noticed his cigarette burned half away.

“You could have,” he said.

 

[CharmedFan28]

I don’t mind waiting for portions, I’m just glad you’re still posting despite how busy you are. That was a great portion! I am glad Andy was finally honest with Prynne. He may have kept part of his life a secret from his friend and brother but it all came out on the end. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I don’t mind waiting for portions, I’m just glad you’re still posting despite how busy you are. That was a great portion! I am glad Andy was finally honest with Prynne. He may have kept part of his life a secret from his friend and brother but it all came out on the end. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

Matthew, i'm so glad you're still reading and patient of my sometimes slow posting. You're right. In the end Andy shared thr truth with his borther, and that is what matters.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Fifteen





























For one of the few times in his life, Douglass Merrin woke up embarrassed.

Ben Forrester was standing over him, his face bruised, and he smiled sloppily, and Doug wiped the drool from his cheek and realized he had been asleep on the sofa on Mike lap with Mike’s hand paused in stroking his head. Mike was blinking awake too, and he looked up and Ben said:

“You all look sweet like that. I get it now.”

“We just… Fell asleep,” Mike said, as Doug separated from him.

“I see,” Ben said. “I mean, I see,” Ben shook his head.

There must be a right way through this. Well, if not a right way, what about a wrong one?

Ben scratched his head and said, “I’m really hungry.”

“I’ll go get us some breakfast,” Mike said. “Burger King’s across the street.”

“I’ll get my coat,” said Ben.

“Don’t you dare!” Mike said. “Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll get my coat. You’ll need help,” Doug said.

He turned around, “Ben, whaddo you need?”

I’m just… I’m fine. Is it alright if I put the coffee on, or is that too much?”

“Don’t be sarcastic. You’re no good at it,” Mike said. “We’ll be back in a minute… well, a Burger King minute. They’re getting slower and slower.”





“Are these all yours?”

“Well, yeah,” Ben said. “Feel free to make fun of me.”

“No,” Doug shook his head while he held the Croissan'wich in his hand. “You’ve got original X men.”

“Benny never tells me about his comic books.”

“I do, you just don’t remember.”

“Amazing Spider-Man. Oh, shit, and am I wrong or do you have the one with Gwen Stacy and the Goblin? Holy shit.”

“Who’s Gwen Stacy?” Mike asked.

Doug and Ben both looked at him.

“Is that a forbidden question?”

“It’s not a forbidden question,” Doug said. “Gwen Stacy was Spider-Man’s girlfriend before MJ.”

“She was friends with MJ,” Ben said.

“It’s sort of how she and Spider-Man meet,” Doug said.

“I didn’t know you read comic books,” Mike said.

“I read a lot of things, Michael. Oh, wow, you’ve got The Invisibles.”

“I meant to read it, but I really haven’t gotten into it.”

“It’s supposed to be the greatest thing ever,” Doug said.

“I know, but—”

“I didn’t get into it either,” Doug shrugged.

“You can’t like everything.”

“Do you like manga?” Ben asked.

“I prefer it.”

“Alright, come over—ouch—”

“Did you take your pill?” Mike asked.

“I did—”

“Doug looked at him too.

“I did not. But—”

“No buts,” Mike said. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

“I can get them—” Ben started to shout and shook his head, looking at Doug before murmuring, “Myself.”





It must have been because he was exhausted with his father that Swann got Doug and they got on the train and went all the way to South Shore. The trip from Evanston to the far South wasn’t a quick one. It’s hard to remember what an irritating man John Porter was, how much attention he demanded, how every word of his was degrading, how he was always in some sort of competition with his son or with the whole world. And now that Rose was beginning to almost act like a human being, it was hard to remember how awful she had been, awful in her passivity, awful in her inability to protect her only child, horrible in the fact that the foolishness that went on in that house was exacerbated by her.

Birches was the refuge. Sefra’s apartment was the refuge, even once she was gone and that must have been why Swann insisted on cleaning it out and making it his own. They were so young. He was just fourteen and so determined. How could he have known things would change in three years? And if he had, didn’t three years feel like forever?

In the midst of cleaning, Doug froze. Swann had looked at him sharply, waiting for him to come back from whatever vision he was having. It had been of Sefra, even more beautiful than he remembered his great-aunt, and she was crying in her room and Christmas music was playing and Rose was sitting on the bed uncomfortably with her.

“At the end of the day,” Sefra said, “when it’s Christmas, when it’s Easter, when it’s the holiday, it doesn’t matter… He will be with her. He will be at their house, with those children.”

The uncomfortable upset stomach feeling in the air when Sefra spoke of Boochie’s wife, Boochie’s other family, the kids Rose had never met.

“I’m just the woman. She’s the wife.”

Rose hugged her mother awkwardly and stood up.

“Get us some beers,” Sefra said, wiping her eyes.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The world returned to itself, though for a long while Doug was wary of Sefra’s apartment and the memories inside. He told Swann this story later and Swann remembered a Valentine’s Day where his mother was complaining about being unloved, and he had gone into the kitchen and made cupcakes. He was not a cook then. He was a child. Possibly the only good thing about them was the pink frosting. He had brought them to his sobbing, miserable mother and said, “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and she had kept crying and said, “It’s not the same.”

“My first brush with what a bitch she is,” Swann would say later, but at the time there was only pain. Thinking of both his mother and his grandmother, the woman who wasn’t married and the one who decided to be married at all costs, sitting around sobbing and feeling sorry for themselves in front of their children who were, apparently, not enough, he wondered why both of those ungrateful bitches hadn’t had the grace to put their sorrow for the love they didn’t have aside for the love they were freely given.

Rose was a shit mother. My father was a shit father.

She was still alive for him to tell her that, and he was so indifferent to his father he didn’t want to tell him much of anything. He had never thought further though. He knew he disliked his Grandmother Porter, who even today was out of the house that he was going to move into that afternoon. But he had loved Sefra. He loved this woman who had never married and been full of flash and beauty, but who had cried in front of her daughter and refused to be comforted, who had admonished her not to be slobbern, to stand up straight, to not eat so much, who had given her a drug dealer for a father and demanded she come home for every holiday, who took up all the air in the room with her personality and perfume. She had been everything to Swann, and when she was gone and he had his mother and father breathing down his neck, the memory of her had been his consolation, but now he realized she was a shit mother too. She was a shit mother and Boochie was definitely a shit father, a long line of vain and stuck up assholes breeding vain and stuck up assholes. Generations of selfishness had led to his parents. It didn’t make him any warmer to the memory of his father, or the current reality of Rose, but he understood them.

Rose he was still wary of it. That budding love Doug was having for Deborah was something else than his relationship with Rose. Between the two of them was a détente, a thawing of the cold war. He knew she was making up for lost time, but he couldn’t help but think there was much more to make up for.



“That was one hell of a night,” Sal said after stretching and turning over while he yawned.

Swann was not in the bed where Chris and Sal slept, but sitting the box window of the house on Judson Street, the window a little open and the scent of lilac’s coming through. He’d already poured his first cup of coffee and Sal, climbing out of bed and reaching for his night shorts, but not putting them on, came across the room and sat in the box window beside Swann, naked.

“Do you ever sleep?”

“I’ll sleep in my house when we go to my house, and that won’t be too far off,” Swann said. “But I was finishing up something.”

He put down his coffee and reached for the bag under his feet. He pressed it to Sal.

“What’s this?”

“You’ll know if you open it.”

Salvador Goode shrugged and unzipped it, and at first he was confused and then he smiled, not entirely sure if he was right, and pulled out a very fat, bright pink pig with winking black eyes.

“Tizzly!”

“I thought he could use some love.”

Sal grinned, bemused by the pig, and then kissed Swann square on the mouth.

“I didn’t even know you could sew.”

“I can do all sorts of things.”

“Tizzly!” Sal squeezed his pig, and said, “You’re going to think I’m a real dope for being this happy about a stuffed pig.”

“I’ve been cleaning and stuffing that pig in secret for the last two days, so you’d better be this happy.”

“You’re the best.”

“Mr. Judkins is next,” Swann said.



Swann wondered if they should eat breakfast first and Chris said, “Are you just saying that to make sure you grandma’s gone?”

“Yes,” Swann admitted. “Besides, I’m waiting for Doug to call.”

Deborah seemed to be unconcerned. Of course she knew nothing about Mike and Ben. The phone did ring around ten, and Doug spoke out of obligation to his mother, and from the need to keep a relationship going he spoke to Joe, and then he spoke to Swann.

“We will be at the house. At my house,” Swann said. “Feel free to bring whomever you wish.”

That’s when you knew Swann was being courtly, when he said “whomever,” just like a lord, Chris thought.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! I am glad Swann stood up for himself with his family and getting what I think is rightly his. The scene with Sal at the end was sweet! Great writing and I look forward to more!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Even Chris had wondered if the grandmother would trash the house, but it looked much as it had at Christmas. There was a strange waiting energy to the place and, of course, in the little courtyard the pool was covered as it was still early spring.

“I missed this place,” Sal said as he took off his shoes in the black stone floored foyer. “We had a lot of good times here.”

“And a lot of not so good ones,” Swann noted, putting his bag down beside the sofa.

“Or at least, I did.”

He walked into the long kitchen where the light under the hood of the oven was still on, and slipped off his shoes to walk on the bare linoleum.

“I used to feel so small here,” he said. “I used to feel so unwelcome. And now it’s mine.”

“It’s different,” Chris agreed. “Different from that first time. Different from… It’s hard to believe once you were a little kid with a very big mom and dad who didn’t much want you here.”



“Oh, we were kids then,” Chris thinks. Not that they really thought of themselves as grown, but to be twenty now and look back on the him that was sixteen. He can almost seen them curled up like twins in the womb, really young lovers in his bed, brown and white, huddled together so that when one breathed, the other exhaled, and this summer, the summer when they’d finally decided to be everything to each other, was the best one in the world, where Chris learned everything about himself through Swann. He did not know he was tall and beautiful until Swann’s hands traced his limbs and told him he was. He didn’t know he was white like cream or alabaster. He was just a spotty white boy like a bunch of other white boys. He didn’t know his eyes were deep blue like lakes. They were just blue like half the people he knew. He didn’t know what a miracle his hair was until Swann’s fingers thrust through it, and his hands luxuriated in the softness of his curls. He was getting ready to cut it all off, and then as they were making love in the afternoon Swann held his face and kissed his lips and said, “Don’t.”

There was a soft knocking which made Chris think that his parents knew what was going on behind this door. His mom wasn’t one of those rapid knockers. She could wait for him to get out of bed and pull on his shorts. He knew Swann was a little awake, was watching his long back, watching his ass, watching it disappear into the shorts, pulling the covers over his head.

When he cracked the door, his mother said, “It’s Swann’s mother. She needs to talk to him. I think it’s important.”

Swann heard it and Chris had closed the door so he was climbing out of bed and he pulled on his pajama pants and tee shirt and went into the kitchen, yawning.

“Here you go, Swann,” Louise Navarro said and Swann said, “Thanks. Mom?”

His mother rarely called and never called early in the morning. It must have been something bad. Doug, Meech, Popeye? Was it Pam or Donald? Not one of the elderly aunts and uncles. That wouldn’t have warranted an early morning phone call.

“Your father died this morning,” Rose said. “I need you to come home.”



“Oh, Swann!” Chris cried when he was back in the bedroom. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not,” Swann discovered.

“I know he wasn’t the best and everything, but I’m sure you’ll feel bad about it later and—”

“I don’t want to feel bad about it,” Swann said. “And I don’t. I don’t feel bad. I feel good.”



“Well, of course I’m going with you,” Chris said over breakfast.

“We’re all going with him,” Louise said, almost as a reprimand.

“I’ll call Mom back and see when the funeral is,” Swann said. “I’ll call back this afternoon.”

“I’m really sorry,” Mr. Navarro said. “You’re too young for this. It’s not good at any age, but still.”

Swann sighed.

“It’s no secret how I felt about him.”

“But still,” Mr. Navarro started.

“Everyone’s going to wait around for me to feel bad, and I can’t feel bad.”

Swann dug into his scrambled eggs with gusto.

“The only thing I feel is an immense relief in never having to see him again. I’m sorry if that makes me sound evil. But it’s the truth.”

Chris was visibly bothered by this show of unfilial anti piety, but his mother said, “I never liked my mother, either.”

“Grandma?” Chris looked surprised.

“That’s the only mother I remember having,” his mother said. “She was… a lot. And when she was gone I tried to tell myself to feel bad. But I was relieved. My life got… Bigger, somehow.”

She looked at Swann.

“There’s no wrong way to feel.”



That night he called his mother.

“Why aren’t you here?” she demanded

He thought he’d be afraid of her, of her howling and demanding, of her bitchiness, but instead he said, “Because he’s dead.”

“But I need you here, now.”

“No, you don’t,” Swann said, calmly.

For a moment he feared that the same selfishness that made her send him away might make her refuse to let him go back to Saint Francis, but the next two years were already paid for and nonrefundable, and Rose Portis was never a one to part with a dime easily.

“When is the funeral?”

 

[ChrisGibson]

“It’s on Friday.”

“Well today is Sunday.”

“Your family is grieving.”

“You’re grieving.”

“Swann.”

“I’ll be at the funeral!”

“What kind of son are you? You are an ungrateful little boy—”

He hung up.

The phone rang again.

Feeling dull, irritated and a little tired, he picked it up.

“You can’t keep tying the Navarros’ phone up.”

“Now, you listen here—”

“Now, you listen,” he said in his calm voice to his screaming mother, “if you want this conversation to continue, you should put a reign on yourself.”

“Who the fuck do you think you—”

Swann hung up again.

Next time when the phone rang, Louise Navarro, who had been listening in on the other extension, raised a finger and she answered it. Her words were much less polite than Swann’s, and by the time she handed the phone to him, Rose was subdued.

“The wake is on Thursday night. Can you at least come to the wake?”

“I’ll come to the wake,” Swann said.

He hung up.

On the other side of the room he heard Louise murmur: “Bitch.”



They left on Thursday morning and stopped in South Shore. There was the very interesting meeting between the Navarros and the Portises.

Doug came running down the stairs to greet them and, not sure if he should hug Swann of Chris first, threw his arms around both of them.

“Deborah’s with her, of course,” Pamela said. “But we went up on Sunday and came right back. She won’t come down here,”

And of course She was Rose.

“Should I have left earlier?” Swann asked, not so sure of his decision now.

“What for?” Donald said. “It wouldn’t have been good. A boy shouldn’t have to put up with his Mama just crying and crying.”

Donald thought of this and said, “You never knew your great-grandmother. You didn’t know Mama and you didn’t know Daddy. They were both real old, and when Daddy died, Mama wept, but she didn’t weep like this. She didn’t make a show of herself, and none of us were still children. Well, now you’re still a child. That’s why I brought Doug down here. I didn’t think he should be around all that.”

“Are you excited about starting school in a few weeks?” Swann heard Chris asking Doug, and his cousin said, honestly, “Not really.”

They all went up in four cars, then, Pamela riding with Meech and Popeye and Donald going up with Jason while Chris drove Swann. Doug and his parents followed with Prynne, who had showed up the night before.

“Originally I asked him to do the funeral,” Pamela said when they reached the house in Evanston. “But your grandmother and her people had their own plans for your father’s funeral.”

“They’re Episcopalians,” Swann, said, pronouncing every syllable of the word.

“It suits me just fine,” Prynne said. He didn’t like sermons or presiding over Mass and he certainly didn’t want to preside over a funeral. What he liked was socializing, and there would be plenty of it.

“Thanks for coming,” Swann said when he found his godfather.

“That’s what family does,” Prynne said. “And if you really want to be good family—”

“Talk to my mother?”

“I wasn’t even going to say that. I was going to say get me a plate. But I’ll get my own plate, and yes, you might as well get it over with and talk to Rose.”

When Swann sighed, his godfather said, “I know how Rose makes you feel, because Rose makes everyone feel that way and I’ve known her all my life.”

As Swann, in his black blazer, set off, Prynne touched his shoulder.

“Everyone’s going to be telling you how sorry they are, and you’re going to feel bad because you aren’t.”

Swann blinked at Prynne.

“I’ve known you too long and I knew him too long. Just say, thank you kindly, and let them marvel at how contained you are.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

As Swann left the room, Chris, wandering around like Big Bird, found Prynne and said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course you do,” Prynne gestured through the crowd of undulating black and the murmur of chatter, “Go be with him.”

By the time Chris waded through a crowd which contained some of the wealthiest looking black and brown people he’d ever seen, Rose was wailing, “And nobody knows how I feel, or understands .You don’t care! You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone, look at you, you’re so calm….”

“I’m going to leave you,” Swann was saying, and he left his mother to the tender mercies of Deborah and Doug’s father.

The funeral was the next day at an Episcopal church not in Evanston, but a little south in Edgewater. It was more Catholic than anything Chris had ever attended and full of dignity, and a little ruined for the fact that Swan’s eyes were completely dry. He tried to make conversation with his friend.

“I thought your dad’s family was Catholic.”

“They were, once. But they had a bone to pick with the Church—since they’d been it’s slaves—and when they got to Canada they became Anglican. Not my grandmother. As uppity as she is, she just grew up some Baptist sharecropper’s daughter in Alabama. But she was so proud to marry a Porter you’d never know.”

There was no burial, for he was cremated, and Swann wondered, “What do you do with a used casket?”



“Do you mind if I stay with you?” Chris asked Swann after the funeral, when they were in his room with Doug.

“Please stay!” Doug cried.

“Why would you want to do that?” Swann demanded.

“Why would I not, you goof?”

“Swann has a hard time saying yes, or admitting he needs help,” Doug declared as if he weren’t thirteen.”

To spite his cousin, Swann said, “I would love it if you stayed. But I’m not sure I want to stay much longer. Gran is hanging out at the house and Mom is crying all the time.”

“Then we can go to Donald and Pam’s.”

“Birches!” Doug fist pumped the air.

“You are entirely too excited,” Swann shook his head.

Then he said, “Yes. Let’s do that.”

And he said, “You have no idea how much I appreciate you both.”

There was no reading of the will like in the movies. It was a matter of public record, and very quickly Swann learned that the house he was sitting in was his along with a great deal of money and something for which he had never filed.

“Emancipation?” Swann frowned.

Donald said, later, “He probably knew your mother was crazy and didn’t want her to be able to do anything to you.”

“Like keep me around to yell and shout at and be crazy in front of or pull me out of Saint Francis and keep me near her in Chicago. Just like I thought.”

Just like he’d feared.

The Navarros had departed, leaving Chris with Swann and Doug. The three of them stayed at the house on Sheridan a couple of days before heading to South Shore. They came back up for Swann to get his school things and drop off Doug despite him not wanting to stay with his parents now that they were sending him off to Saint Francis anyway.

“I’ll be back,” Swann said. “We can all go together.”

But before he left, his mother handed him a heavy urn.

“What the…?”

“I can’t bear it. You scatter his ashes,” Rose said. “I can’t deal with this anymore.”



Later that evening, back in Benton, Jack Knapp was shouting his head off.

“You didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you tell me your father died?”

They had run into him at the Dairy Queen and Swann said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know my personal sorrow was about you?”

Jack shut up after that, and the three of them were in the newly done basement looking at the urn.

“How strange?” Swann wondered. “He didn’t even like me. And he left me everything. And here he is.”

The urn sat on the table, mesmerizing them, drawing all eyes to its attention until finally Swann opened up the seal and was surprised to find, not loose ashes, but a heavy plastic bag of whitish powder.

“Goddamn,” Jack muttered.

“Get me the scissors, Jack,” Swann ordered.

Jack obeyed and Swann cut into the bag.

Methodically, Swann rose, and because it was high summer and warm outside, Jack imagined they were going to the yard.

“We could go to the beach,” Chris suggested. “Scatter them on the water.”

“We can go to the beach,” Swann consented. “That’s a good idea.”

But right now he went to the bathroom, and a few moments later they heard the toilet flushing and Jack and then Chris followed to see Swann, methodically pouring ash down the toilet and flushing, pouring and flushing, pouring and flushing, till it was all gone.

He held the bag of tough plastic in his right hand and looked a little tired.

“Let’s go to the beach,” he said.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Always a heavy thing to lose anyone. I know Swann felt relief but it’s still hard. I’m glad he has his friends with him. Great writing and I look forward to more.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Always a heavy thing to lose anyone. I know Swann felt relief but it’s still hard. I’m glad he has his friends with him. Great writing and I look forward to more.

The interesting thing is Swann's father died before mine did. I wrote him when I thought all of my grief was processed, so it's very hard to say how Swann will feel in a few years. Often we mourn the parent we never got to have as much as the one we lost.

 

[ChrisGibson]

When Rose called she was desperate.

“I need him! I need him! What did you do with him!”

“He’s gone, Mother.”

Rose let out a bloodcurdling screaming and demanded, “How could you get rid of your father!”

“You gave him to me,” Chris heard him saying, bored. “And now he’s gone, and now I’m gone to, you great, crazy bitch.”

“You motherfucker!” she said, her voice darkening. “I’d hit you if you were here—”

“But I’m not.”

Her voice changed,

“You wouldn’t talk to me this way if you weren’t rich now. You wouldn’t talk to me like this if he was still around.”

“You’re probably right. But I am, and he’s not, and there it is. Please don’t call again.”

When he hung up, they didn’t speak again for half a year, and by the time they did, as far as Swann was concerned it was still too soon.





“I’m going home in a bit,” Doug said as the afternoon was setting in. He looked out of the window over downtown Evanston.

“The days are so short.”

“Don’t go,” Ben said.

“You all can come,” Doug said.

“No,” Ben shook his head. “I made a real ass of myself.”

“Everybody I’m about to see has made a real ass of themselves,” Doug said.

Ben said, “You could take Mike with you. I won’t mind.”

“I would rather take you both,” said Doug.

“I need to apologize,” Ben said. “To a lot of people. Especially to you,” he turned to Michael.

“What for?”

“If you didn’t tell me about the past, then it’s because you thought you couldn’t.”

“I didn’t want to,” Mike said. “I wanted to be who you saw.”

“And with Doug?” Mike gestured to Doug.

“I just can’t hide anything from him,” Mike said.

“I’m sorry, Doug, for that shit I said last night.”

“Let’s not mention it.”

“I’d rather not,” Ben said. “But I can’t forget it. And… we need to talk about Jack. Cause I skipped over that. I didn’t know you knew.”

Mike nodded.

“We were just never officially together,” Ben said. “I mean, I know what you’re saying. We did come together as two people who were just friends who liked sleeping together. I know you’re right. We weren’t this grand love for the ages or whatever, but…”

“But it doesn’t matter,” Mike told him. “There’s no such thing. That’s what couples are, two people who like to be together. It’s just… maybe we could start telling the truth. To each other.”

“Jack was always my best friend,” Ben said. “That’s the truth. And I was always this,” he touched his chest.

“What’s that mean?” Doug said.

“Skinny, long faced, pale, nerdy… ugly.”

“You’re not ugly,” Mike said, his voice heated.

“I’m not hot, either. So when Jack turned to me… And part of me had always wanted him to, yeah… it happened. And you and me hadn’t been together that long so I thought it wasn’t your business. That’s what I told myself. Which is what I didn’t seem to tell myself last night.”

“I wish you didn’t think you weren’t attractive,” Mike said.

“You swim and lift weights to look the way you do,” Ben said. “You’ve always been good looking.”

“For a little person,” Mike added.

“Well, no,” Doug said, suddenly, tilting his head.

They both looked at him.

“I suppose you’re not good looking, not in the way people expect. You’re like an El Greco,” he said, taking Ben’s hand in his and studying it. “Long fingers and limbs, deep sad eyes, the quietness. That’s why Mike fell for you. Jack too, I’ll bet.”

“That’s how you do it,” Ben smiled slowly.

“What?”

“You can make any man feel beautiful, can’t you?”

“That’s because every man can be beautiful,” Doug said, still holding his hand.

Ben shook his head.

“Swann is seriously in a relationship with Chris and Sal at the same time?”

“He is,” Doug nodded. “Hell, for all I know, they’re probably all in bed and Joe’s joined them.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“Why should I mind?”

Ben laughed, but even Mike could tell a change had come over him.

“So, if I were to say let’s all three of us go to bed together?”

“But you wouldn’t say it.”

“But if I did?”

Doug released Ben’s hand, only to take his long face in his own hands. Ben’s eyes were very blue, darker than Chris’s, and his eyelids fluttered as Doug kissed him on the mouth. His kiss lingered and he watched as Doug took Mike’s face in his hands now and kissed him. Mike had wanted Doug all day, all night, and his arms went around him and Ben watched the two of them together, watched Doug separate from him.

Doug said, “I’m not a tame person. I’m not a right person. I don’t say no to things.”

“I am tame,” Ben said, trembling. “I am right. I’m boring. I’m everything I was supposed to be, except straight. I want to be like other people and be liked by other people and that’s nuts. It’s nuts. Cause we’re fags, and that kid, the one that got tied to the fence and killed, that’s us. When I was a kid I saw all those men dying in New York, and San Francisco, all over the country, thrown out by their families, nobody wanting to touch them, I’ve seen what the world is like. It hates us. But I still can’t… I still…”

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up because you have a hard time sharing your boyfriend,” Doug said. “That’s just stupid.”

Ben took Doug’s hand. He took Mike’s. He placed Mike’s hand over his.

“I know you want each other. I see it.”

“It’s not just sex,” Michael said. “We can work it all out later. I mean, it’s not just sex.”

“Work it out now,” Ben said, shaking his head.

He bit his lip.

“You’re going to think I’m a pervert, but…”

“You want us to do it here?” Mike said. “Now?”

Ben lowered his eyes.

“And not shut me out.”

The sky was leaden outside. This high up you saw only layers of grey clouds.

“You don’t have to,” Ben said. “I was just—”

Doug kissed Mike again. This time it seemed like the kiss wouldn’t end, and when he stood up he held out his hand to Mike and Mike rose, an obvious erection in his sweatpants. He took Doug’s hand and followed him dumbly to the bedroom, and silently, as if he were in a trance, Ben followed.

END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN