Bits and Pieces

[CharmedFan28]

That was a nice conclusion to the chapter. I am so glad Layla and Will worked out. I am also glad that Sheridan and Brendan had such an honest talk. I think it was needed. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm always glad for the triumph of Will and Layla, and it good to see Brendan and Sheridan work things out. I'm glad you came along for their journey. Thank you for reading.

 

[ChrisGibson]

P A R T

F O U R




F I F T E E N




“I have never had a year that was so great that I looked with anticipation to the next.”

-Chay Lewis


On the Last night of the year, Cara walked into Rob’s room, and she was almost standing over him when he shot bolt upright and touched his phone so the light went out.
“You don’t just walk in a guy’s room!” he told Cara.
“I do when the guy leaves the door open,’ she said.
“Oh,” Rob said, smoothing his dark red hair back. “Well… what’s up?”
“Not much, brother. Just came to say goodnight.”
“Goodnight, sis. Can you close the door when you leave?”
“Sure thing.”
When Cara was gone, Rob lay back in bed with only the little golden light over head and he closed his thighs together and then closed his eyes for a moment savoring the feeling before he took up the phone and turned it on again. The message he had not yet sent, he finished. It was short.

MY DICK IS SO HARD IT HURTS… I WISH I COULD GET IT SUCKED.

Rob slipped his hand into his shorts and squeezed himself, closing his eyes until he moaned.
And then he clicked SEND, and reached up to turn out his light.



“I couldn’t tell you,” Dena said. “I wanted to,” she said almost immediately, “But it wasn’t mine to tell, and if I told you, you would have had to tell Will.”
“I understand,” Layla assured her.
“I hated keeping that secret. For all we know, nothing happened. He was just thinking about it.”
“Well,” Layla said, “I’m not going to think about it. I’d much rather think about my life.”
Dena lifted her cup of coffee to her mouth and finished it.
“I’d rather not think about life at all.”
She was quiet a while and then she said, “I need a job. I have to go back to work. The kids don’t need me at home anymore. They don’t need me home all day.”
Layla nodded and Dena said, “You found your niche. You’re so lucky, you know that.”
“How do you figure?”
“You love teaching.”
“I do not love the money,” Layla said. “And I don’t love that every semester they tell you that you may not have enough classes for your winter semester and—”
Layla stopped.
“You know what? That is flat out ungrateful. I have to stop sounding ungrateful.”
Dena nodded, not in agreement with her friend, but because she needed to do something as well.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Dena said. “I’m glad you to go to England, but I’m glad you’re home.”
“Oh, I’m always glad to be home,” Layla said. “England is wonderful, but it doesn’t have my soft bed or my easy chair. Or you.”
“I come after the soft bed and the easy chair?”
“Well, you’re not soft, and you’re rarely easy."



In the tired night, the anger dissolved, the distance dissolved. Sheridan struggled out of his underwear and tee shirt and Brendan did the same. They did not make love. They were too tired for it. But Sheridan climbed onto him, wrapped his arms about him and fell into his arms. They slept like that. Once or twice, Rafe had found them like that, covers off and completely naked. He saw them holding each other, mouths open, and took off his clothes and climbed onto the bed with them, throwing his arms over his sleeping fathers. Sheridan had awaken laughing his head off and Brendan said, “Oh, by God, get a sheet, Sheridan.”
“Get that sheet, Little man,” Sheridan told Rafe in that relaxed voice, Brendan was sure he’d learned from Logan. Rafe brought them the blanket and Sheridan pulled over Brendan and himself. He did not care about being naked in front of his son, and wrapped Rafe up in his own little sheet.
“Chill,” he said to Brendan. “We’re his parents. He saw us loving each other and he just wanted to be part of it.”
Brendan turned over and put an arm over the boy.
“Still.”
Naked, Sheridan climbed under the sheet with Brendan, pressing his body to him, “If he doesn’t learn love from us, where’s he gonna learn it?”

Brendan blinked awake and saw Rafe looking down on him through the crook of Sheridan’s arm.
“Rafe,” he murmured, from under Sheridan, “It may be time to talk about knocking on doors and wearing clothing.”
“Can I go out with Liam?”
And yet, there was something touching about the fact that Rafe had no since of shame, and Brendan didn’t want to put one in him. He was completely unaware of Sheridan’s bare ass.
“Yes,” Brendan said. “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
“I need clothes.”
“I’ll lay some out little man,” Sheridan groaned.
“You’re awake?”
“I am now.”
Sheridan climbed off of Brendan who swiftly pulled a sheet over his middle while Sheridan, stretched, reached for his boxers, pulled them on and then followed his son out of the room.
“You really don’t give a shit, do you?” Brendan said.
“Contrare,” Sheridan said, scratching himself as he followed his son out of the room, “I think I give just the right amount of a shit.”



The knock on the door came the same time the phone rang, and while Todd made what Fenn would consider, “An old man noise,” and sat up turning on the light, Fenn turned to look at the phone and the message said, “It’s me downstairs,” and was from Thackeray.
Fenn climbed out of bed, yawning, and went to the closet to pull out his housecoat.
“It’s the boy,” he said, heading downstairs.
As he descended he hit the light switch that shed light only on the landing and left the rest of the first floor in shadow. By the door a red votive candle burned before an icon of the Virgin, but aside from that there were no other lights.
“Thackeray?”
The boy looked up at him and for a moment, Fenn thought he was looking at Tom. He had to remember the actual Tom Mesda was forty years older than this. It was hard to gauge how much Tom had changed until Fenn was confronted with the small boned, thin, messy haired figure of him at eighteen.
“Can I stay in the apartment?”
“Brendan and Sheridan are here with Rafe,” Fenn shook his head. “What’s up?”
“As in why am I here?”
“Glad as I am so see you, yes.” Fenn yawned.
“Jackie is pregnant.”
“Oh,” Fenn blinked. “Well, do you want tea?”
Now Thackeray blinked.
“Dad, I just said—”
“I am well aware of what you just said,” Fenn told him. “But its twelve o’ clock in the morning, and that isn’t the time for anything terribly heavy. Everything looks better in the morning. Where are your bags?”
“In the car. I’ll—”
“Just sit down,” Fenn said, pulling out the chair. “I’ll put the tea on, and I’ll have Todd go get your bags. When are you going back to Chicago? Never mind, we’ll figure that out—”
“I was actually thinking of staying here for a few days.”
“Of course you can, Son. You can stay as long as you wish.”
As Fenn but the mug into the microwave he said, “Pregnant?”
“Uh,” Thackeray looked very embarrassed, “Yeah, Dad.”
“Hum,” Fenn thought, “I’d always assumed you were a virgin.”


TOMORROW NIGHT.... SOMETHING

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! I am glad Brendan and Sheridan are doing well and seem to be good parents. So Thackeray got Jackie pregnant? I can’t remember if that is new information but it felt new. Great writing and I look forward to more of whatever you post tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, as Fenn said, "I thought Thackeray was a virgin."
So, its news to us all.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE RUN INTO RUTHVEN AND LOGAN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG TIME


Fenn Houghton, aged sixty-umph, woke fully in the middle of the night, with no traces of sleep and heard the wind rattling the old windows. Todd was asleep beside him, and he felt a curious lightness of heart that was rare. Lying on his back, he went through the reasons, but concluded that, from Todd’s presence, to the presence of the children, it was something different altogether. The new year had never been a thing he’d greeted with pleasure, certainly not excitement, and so the fact that this was New Year’s Eve could have nothing to do with how he felt, but he pushed himself out of bed and began to dress, making sure not to wake Todd. He crossed to the closet and pulled out coat and gloves, hat and scarf. He had eaten and slept the whole day, and listened to the radio, and now it was time to take his daily walk. Never mind that it was past two in the morning.
He went down the stairs Down the stairs into the living room, shuffling into shoes when he heard the kitchen light switch and saw a shadow stretching before him.
Fenn stood up, jamming his foot finally into his left shoe and saw Thackeray standing in the doorway of the kitchen, unshaven, his hair sticking up.
“Put your coat on,” he said.
Thackeray obeyed.
A moment later they were walking up Versailles Street. Though the wind was strong it was warm, nearly fifty degrees. Last night snow had come down, and Fenn had expected more of the same. Tonight most of the snow was gone and they crunched across the thin leftover layer that covered the stretch of grass between the cul de sac and Dorr Road. They did not speak. It was not required. Fenn was surprised by he joy he had in Dylan’s brother, the last boy who had shown up nearly fully grown and reminded him so much of Dylan and in some ways so much of Tom but in the end was wholly himself. How a full grown child should show up and take such a place in his heart was still remarkable. However, Fenn had to admit, for all that Thackeray had been fifteen, he was not full grown. He had been unparented, and he had lived with Fenn for three years before going off to college. The thin young man with dark curls hanging out of his cap who walked beside him was apparently about to give him his first grandchildren, but the girlfriend was not here, and really she was the one pregnant with baby. They had not talked in a week, though Fenn hoped they would, though Fenn had much to say, many questions. Ah, best to speak on that later.
Best not to speak at all, or think at all as they walked up Dorr and one car and now another passed in the night, on its way to who knew? Maybe some other soul that just needed to drive. The wind, steady for a moment, picked up, and they had to lean forward to walk in it. Fenn, glad to concentrate on walking in the wind and push all other thoughts from his mind, was interrupted by Thackeray pointing out: “Saint Barbara’s.”
The old brick church was across the street from them, with the long brick building of the school, and the school yard, and Fenn said, “When I was young the light would always be on, and you could always go in.”
“Do you wish you could go in now?”
“Not really,” Fenn discovered. “So many of the good times of my life happened there, and I think when I’ve gone back it’s been to look for the good times that are in the past.”
“Every Sunday?”
“I haven’t really gone any Sunday,” said Fenn. “The truth is I haven’t really been going at all.”
“Dylan said—” Thackeray began.
“It is the strangest thing,” Fenn said, “for years I went all the time and was not entirely sure I believed. Then I went because I believed. Now I think I believe enough that I don’t have to be burdened by priests I don’t know and silly people I don’t agree with. I spent such a very long time looking for God in other places, but if he isn’t in me, he isn’t really anywhere. Is he?”
They were stopping at the corner of Dorr and Birmingham and beside them was the old all night diner.
“I could eat,” Thackeray said.
“I’ll watch you eat, and I’ll get a paper from that machine.”
It was one of the last paper racks in Rossford, old and red, and Fenn was surprised to see someone else getting a paper when he came there. He was tall and as he worked with the latch and pulled out the paper, he grunted, and said, “There,” then turned in blinked in shock.
“I didn’t see you. Oh…!”
The man stood looking at Fenn and Thackeray, apparently pleased. He was short haired, with brass rimmed spectacles in a grey car coat, and he began to laugh when he understood they did not know him.
“Fenn! Thackeray.”
It was Thackeray who knew him first.
“Logan!”
“Logan Banford,” Fenn said. “I had not expected to meet you at two in the morning on New Year’s Eve.”
“Well, now it’s almost three,” Logan said. “Are you all coming in?”
Logan had gestured to the restaurant, and Thackeray said, “We were,” and Logan said, “Well, alright then.”
They walked across the small parking lot, and pointing to a respectable looking, but winter grimed one time black car, Logan said, “We can drop you off when we leave?”
“We?” Thackeray enquired.
But the door opened and a little man said, “You know how I hate to sit at a booth by myself looking stupid. What in the world is taking—?”
Chay Lewis opened his mouth in surprise.
“Fenn! Thackeray!”
“Well a late night walk is turning into an early morning party,” Fenn noted.
“It’s all the party we’re going to get,” Chay said, hugging Fenn and then Chay, “I’ve always goddamn hated New Years Day.”

“I have never had a year that was so great that I looked with anticipation to the next,” Chay Lewis stated. “I absolutely, goddamned, totally, no doubt, hate New Year. I want to crawl up in bed and forget all about it.”
“But how do you really feel?” Thackeray said.
“It was worse back in the day,” Logan said. Except for around a few people, he called acting in porn, “back in the day.” “They would send us to clubs to ring in the New Year, and there is something soul killing about showing up in a gee string all oiled up at some club where everyone is coked out and thinking, I am doing the exact same thing I was doing last year, except now I am poorer and older. Which is what the motto for New Years should be.”
“I don’t think Dick Clark could sell that,” Fenn said.
“Who’s Dick Clark?” Thackeray demanded.
All three men looked at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Logan said after a while. “They would have to roll out his embalmed corpse. He’s been dead for years.”
“I think the last few years they actually did roll out his embalmed corpse,” Fenn said.
Chay said, “I suddenly feel better.”
“For not being a en embalmed corpse?” Thackeray guessed.
“Well, that’s part of it,” Chay admitted. “It’s only that the New Year has a tendency to get me down. Don’t mean to get the rest of you down.”
“To tell the truth.,” Thackeray said, “I am okay with being a little down.”
They turned to him. They turned to Fenn. Fenn looked at his son.
“It appears I’m going to be a father. Or not. I haven’t heard from Alice.”
“Wow,” Logan said. Then, “That’s awful.” Then, “Or it’s good.” Then, “I’m sorry, you probably didn’t need to hear that.”
Thackeray shook his head, “It’s alright. Everyone gets a rough New Year now and again. Right?”


There was a point when Logan Banford realized Ruthven Meradan would never grow up. He wasn’t entirely sure when it happened, but there was a day that came when Logan knew that he, nearing forty, had not picked up on something Dylan Mesda had discovered at seventeen, and this was that Ruthven would never really be an adult. At first he wanted to chalk it up to Ruthven being younger, He was twenty-eight, but in the end, he had to chalk it up to Ruthven being Ruthven.
And Ruthven was not a bad thing. He was simple. He was uncomplicated. He was blond. He was fun. He was there. He had a great body. The sex was magnificent. With Sheridan there had always been those complications of work and relationship, but Ruthven thought Logan’s work was neat, so long after Logan had returned to Rossford and was running Casey’s old studio, Ruthven was around, helping out.
One Christmas, Ruthven had shown up at the house with a stupid look on his face, and Logan now realizes that the fact that he calls this a stupid look ought to have tipped him off to how he was feeling about his lover.
“I got a treat for us,” he said coming into the large living room, the porch door swinging behind him and letting in a rush of cold air.
Ruthven Meraden lifted up a baggie and Logan said, “Is that what I think it is?”
“Only if you think it’s coke.”
“Oh my…” Logan began, but with Ruthven, broad shouldered, broad chested, California hot, in his snug jeans and tee shirt, standing there smiling, why say anything else?
“I need to finish editing…” Logan began, but he was even boring himself. He didn’t want to be this dull thing, and why in the world be dull and be in porn?
They sat doing lines of coke and Ruthven, white nosed while Logan rubbed coke on his gums, said, “You still run the escort business?”
“I still sort of run it. It’s really Ron’s thing.”
“We should do it.”
“Run it?”
“Naw,” Ruthven looked at him with stupid incredulity. “We should do it. Be escorts. Ask a guy if he wants to tag team or something.”
Because he was high this sounded like a great idea, and Logan said, “We’ve got a webpage of appointments and everything. It’s all very state of the art, now.”
“Only if he’s hot, though,” Ruthven held up a finger primly, and then he bent down over the table, took out a Swisher cigar and, with his pen knife, prepared to roll a blunt.
While the smell of marijuana drifted toward him, Logan went through files and he said, “Wow. Some people schedule this ahead of time. You know… we always say we’re asking for descriptions so we can recognize them when we meet, but the truth is we just want to be set up for what we’re getting.”
His voice, shallow and high pressured as it came out with the smoke, Ruthven said, “Yah right. Nothing worse that realizing you gotta fuck a three hundred pound guy with a wiener the size of a baby’s finger.”
Logan shook his head. Once upon a time he had thought the same thing, but the truth was sex work had a way of putting you out of your body, and out of other people’s bodies as well. Refusing to fuck someone you weren’t attracted to was as crazy as not ringing up someone’s grocery’s cause they weren’t cute. This was work.
Ah, but it was more than work, too, and Logan said, quietly: “This is the guy, Ruthven.”
Ruthven came over with the blunt, and Logan casually took it from him and inhaled as they looked over the profile of one of three men who had written just a few hours ago. He was aged forty-two, married with three children, a resident of Wilmington, the next town over. He’s always, always had the fantasy of being with two men which he knew was crazy because he’d never been with even one. He just wanted to touch someone.
“No one’s taken him yet. I think he just wrote in, and Ron would look it over tomorrow. Or more likely, I would look it over tomorrow.”
Ruthven shrugged. “I guess we could surprise him tonight. I’ve never done this.”
“Are you sure you really want to?” Logan frowned at him. “It’ not for everybody. Really, it’s not for anybody almost.”
“I’m not everybody or anybody. Just ask him if we can bring drugs. I might need drugs for this.”
Logan thought about it then said, “Okay. But you have to shower. We’re professionals.”
“I showered right before I went out to get the coke. Besides, he might like to watch me shower wherever he is. Ask him.”
Within a half hour they had arranged everything and were on there way to Wilmington. The man was even more nervous than they’d thought he’d be, and Logan considered explaining that, very often, you were dealing with very nervous men who had spent money on something they didn’t know what to do with. The man didn’t smoke pot or snort cocaine, but he said he was glad to watch Logan and Ruthven do both. Logan said he was good, but Ruthven did a little more coke and finally the man asked if they would take off their clothes and he could just look at them, or touch them. Ruthven almost tittered, but Logan kicked him under the table.
They stripped slowly, and then sat on the bed, and the man sat between them, touching their thighs, and then, eventually, touching their cocks, and stroking them.
“I’m so nervous,” he said, as he sat there, looking at the wall, but holding Ruthven’s dick in one hand and Logan’s in the other, stroking.
“Maybe you’d be less nervous if you sucked my dick,” Ruthven suggested with a gentleness that surprised Logan.
So the man got up and Ruthven said, “Take off your clothes.”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“You paid for this night so you could feel free. Right?” Ruthven told him. “Well then take off your clothes.”
The man did, awkwardly, and Logan would have been turned off, if he was here to be turned on and off. Ruthven was hard as a rock and thick, waiting, and then the man got down on his knees and attended to Ruthven’s directions until Logan watched his boyfriend, slaming his dick down the man’s throat, grasping his hair, gagging him, watch Ruthven on all fours commanding this man to eat his ass, to suck on his balls. As he watched Ruthven, face enraptured, Logan, already stiff, remembered the men he’d worked with who came to porn in their thirties or even forties, totally in command, completely ready for it. Logan had started off his life in this world as a poor, scrawny stripper who turned into a prostitute. Ruthven, golden bodied, golden haired muscled, apple assed, was a natural.
“Whaddo you want?” Ruthven demanded. “Whaddo you want?”
“I want to watch him fuck you!” the man shouted out, pointed at Logan.
In that sex trance that so often called to him, that kept him in this work, Logan, dickheavy, stood up, and shoved himself into Ruthven. He stood on the edge of the bed until he pressed Ruthven under him, He wanted to fuck him so desperately, and in this room, with this man, it was as if he’d never fucked Ruthven before.
“I want to watch you come inside him,” the man said fiercely.
Ruthven was his boyfriend. They did that all the time. So it happened, and when it was done and Logan lay on his back, he watched Ruthven fucking this man on the floor while the man’s face went red and he hollered in pleasures. In the end, Ruthven pulled his head back and came inside of him, the way he wanted.


On their way back to the house, on the darkness of Main Road, while Ruthven drove, Logan counted out money.
“Two hundred for the initial appointment. Another two hundred for having both of us. A hundred for fucking. Another hundred for fucking without a condom. And yes, another for you fucking him without a condom. And a fifty dollar gratuity. And you,” Ruthven separated bills, “get half.”
“Holy shit!” Ruthven swore as a snowflake went past them. “Is it always like this?”
“It’s sometimes like this.”
“But…” he shook his head.
“How do you feel?” Logan said.
“Like I’ve never felt before,” Ruthven said. “I’ve never done that. I’ve never felt that. I felt like I was someone else. But… I felt like I’d never been myself until then. No limits or anything. With Dylan I was so nervous, and when we got out of line I was embarrassed and scared. With Kenny it was fun. I always liked fun. But that was…”
“Uninhibited.”
“Yeah,” Ruthven said. “It was like… freedom.”
They kept driving and Ruthven said: “Do you still make films? Like, are you still in the movies?”
“Nope. I just run this shit. I haven’t even escorted in about two years. Until tonight. You know that.”
“I think we should make a movie,” Ruthven said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Not tonight,” Logan jested, making himself yawn. “Tonight I want to climb in the shower and then climb into bed.”
“Then tomorrow. After we get back from Todd and Fenn’s. Or before. Or not go at all. We can make it natural. Take out the camera and just be ourself and fuuuucccccck like rabbits. People’ll love that.”

And people did love it. Ruthven, who had never displayed much in the way of intellect or skill for anything, had a genius concerning porn. He was one of those people Logan had heard of, but didn’t really believe in until then, who did it for fun, who showed up as adults and wanted to get into it. He and a guy named Dave from near Lafayette who came up every month or so, did threesomes with whoever wanted it, and they usually shot a movie, though Logan discovered that, personally, he was done with both. He was certainly more about the administrative end of things now.
He wasn’t even jealous. He was never angry that the man who was now his boyfriend wanted to go out and have sex for money, taking Dave with him. He was dispassionate about watching Ruthven get fucked by Dave, and when this guy, whose name was Finnegan Hussein came to the studios from Miami, and did some scenes with Dave and then a few other guys and lastly, Ruthven, Logan was indifferent to this as well.

TOMORROW NIGHT, WORKS AND DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was interesting to hear from some characters we had not seen in a while. That early morning walk brought a surprise. I wonder what Thackeray is going to do about the pregnancy? We will see. Great writing and I look forward to more Works and Days tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, there was a lot happening in Rossford tonight, and a lot of surprises.

 

[ChrisGibson]

S I X T E E N




“Even in that parking lot where part of you felt ashamed, part of you felt like a god. And at that shitty bar… when you took off your clothes, when you made men want you, it was like that shitty bar turned into heaven.”

-Finnegan Hussein




Rob wasn’t entirely sure why he was doing it, but he didn’t stop to think. When you think too much things don’t happen and he was all feelings, so wound up right now, wound up for the last few days.
“Tired of being a virgin,” Rob Affren groaned.
Sometimes he felt like he was going to explode. He lay on his bed, his hands in corduroys, looking at his dick in his hands, stroking it until it was a large and hard as he could make it. He licked his lips as he took up his phone. It was a good angle. He took the shot. He sent it.
He stroked it a little longer like the guys on webcam did and a few minutes later the message came back.

-NICE
-You like my big dick?

Rob stroked it slower, watching it rise higher, and then as he stop, go lower, turn a little lazily in his hands.

-Can I watch you finish?
-You’re a fucking perv.

Rob kept stroking himself, watching his dick jump in his hands.

-You’re the one stroking your dick.

Rob sat up. He flicked the camera to RECORD.

-Watch.

Rob set the camera up. He pulled off his shirt.

-You gotta nice chest.

Rob had something like a six pack, and appreciated it being noticed, but couldn’t type that back.
Now, gripping his balls, slipping a finger down near his asshole, Rob stroked with abandon, watching his cock rise, excited by someone else watching. He stopped, kept it up, started and stopped again, applied saliva until it felt so good he couldn’t stop. This was the closest to fucking he’d ever been, doing this for someone else, doing this for someone else, someone else… watching…. His big… fat…coooccck.
With a shout that surprised him, while his body seized and quaked on the bed, and the room danced about him, he was relieved the door was locked, hoped no one heard him as the white liquid, geyser like, sprayed out of his cock and onto his open hands and his belly.



Finnegan Hussein. Finnegan Hussein, What the fuck kind of name was that? Was one parent Irish and the other a Muslim, or where there Arabs out there who were totally into Saint Patrick’s day? He wasn’t much to look at. Not bad, but pretty ordinary, and Logan was going over to his dressing room to tell him he could stay in the house for the night as opposed to driving to whatever hotel he had planned to be, when he opened his door and saw this dark haired, small man, legs folded under him, meditating in front of an image of Buddha, a thin line of incense smoke rising from the burner.
He had not noticed Logan, who closed the door quietly, and went downstairs to his office to write a note to stick under the door, completely intrigued by the meditating porn star.


“This has been a dream!” Finnegan declared that night.
They ate Indian food, and Logan thought of commenting that it was a good thing they had it after the anal sex scenes and not before, but refrained.
“This?” he said.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,” Finnegan replied, spearing a bit of tandoori chicken with his fork. “You guys were so chill, and the atmosphere is so right and you know… porn. It’s magic. Right?”
“Right on!” Ruthven cheered him.
“I’ve seen both of you guyses work,” Finnegan went on. “You’re newer to this, aren’t you?” he asked Ruthven.
“Yeah,” Ruthven said. “It blew the top off my head off. I’ve never felt so free.”
Logan poured more of the deep red butter chicken over his rice, but said nothing.
“Like, sometimes I’m totally not me,” Ruthven said. “the first time I did sex work it was like—”
“Like this thing in you cracked open!” Finnegan said.
“Right!”
They looked to Logan.
“I don’t know,” Logan said. “I think you both might be kinda nuts.”
“You don’t enjoy it?” Finnegan said. “For real? You look like you’re into it.”
“We’re actors,” Logan said. Then, “Sort of. I mean, do you enjoy every sex scene you’re in?”
“That,” Finnegan told him, “is not what I said. But I do enjoy what I do. In a way it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“Seriously?” Ruthven said at the same time Logan did, but they spoke in entirely different voices.
“Yeah,” Finnegan nodded. “The first time I saw a porn I thought, I wish I could do something with my body like that. I wish I could make that magic. The first time you saw it…?”
“I don’t remember the first time I saw porn,” Logan said. “I started as a stripper and worked my way up. Or down. One night some guy asked me to have sex with him for money. I went from that to this.”
“But it’s all you’ve ever done,” Finnegan said, fixing him with his green eyes.
“I wouldn’t say it’s all I’ve ever done.”
“Logan,” Finnegan said, “It’s all you’ve ever done. For twenty years. Right?”
“That first time I had sex with some old man in a parking lot,” Logan said. “I used to strip at some miserable place called the Butt Hutt.”
“I’ve seen it,” Ruthven chimed in.
“I have been to some shitty places,” Logan continued. “It was a long time getting here. To this comfy house.”
“Yeah,” Finnegan said. “I get you. But what I’m saying is… even in that parking lot with that old man, where part of you felt ashamed, part of you felt like a god. And at that shitty bar… when you took off your clothes, when you made men want you and you felt that… rhythm… it was like that shitty bar turned into heaven. There is a lot of bullshit in what we do, but we do it because there is… something,” Finnegan’s eyes were green slits, and he was on the verge of snapping his fingers. “Something… you can’t touch anywhere else. That thrill you have the first time you see a guy fucking another guy, when you see something you sort of understood, and that you thought you were, but that is just an insult thrown at you on the playground, the first time you see those bodies tremor, those faces change, mouths go slack, come come pouring out, that is a magic, that is a power.”
Finnegan sat back.
“And when its being done to you, or you’re doing it, and the world is going to see it, that’s a power too. That’s why I do it. I’ve got to be near that. And that’s why you do it too. That’s why we’re all here.”


When Logan had begun seeing Ruthven, it put him in contact with all sorts of people he hadn’t known as well before. Ruthven frequently went to visit his uncle, and now that Ruthven was long separated from Dylan, Fenn found him bearable if stupid. For Logan, Fenn was one of the three men who had shown up after Sheridan had killed his rapist, quietly discarding the corpse with no judgment, and for that he was eternally respectful of the older man.
Judging that Fenn and Brendan were close, he’d once confessed, “I don’t think Brendan likes me.”
“He probably doesn’t,” Fenn said. “What’s it to you?”
“It really shouldn’t be anything. Should it?”
Fenn shook his head.
“Brendan is uneasy about you. Milo used to hate him. I couldn’t stand Ruthven for years, and in the end none of it really matters.”
Logan, who had never really talked about porn with Fenn, or anyone, really, related the whole conversation he’d had with Finnegan Hussein.
“I think your friend has a point,” Fenn said. “I remember I told Paul something like that the first time I met him.”
“I forgot that. You were—I mean you still are friends with Paul and Noah.”
“Yes. They were before your time, but…”
“How in the world did you meet them?”
“Guy McClintock hired Todd to do a documentary of his life as a porn producer, and so we went to their house.”
Fenn shrugged.
The fact that Paul had first shown up at his door high as a kite, and Noah had come into his life fucked up on drugs, and the bags of money Fenn had stolen which had involved them in Callan family, Fenn left out.
“I wonder if I could talk to them about this,” Logan sat back and scratched his chin.
“I think,” Fenn poured another cup of tea, “not.”
When Logan did not say anything, Fenn said, “Because I think your friend is only half right. Or if he’s right, he’s right for himself. I feel like Paul would tell a very different story.”
“What stories does he tell?”
‘He doesn’t,” Fenn said. “That’s how I know.”

MORE LATER

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get back to this story. It was interesting to hear Logan talk more about his life. He doesn’t sound like he gets that much enjoyment out of sex work anymore but maybe I am reading things wrong. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT, FENN ENGAGES IN MUTUAL FATHER IN LAW CONVERSATION

“But do you think they’ll be surprised?” Peter Bishop asked.
“Huh?” Fenn said from where he stood over the stove.
“Are you paying attention?” the grey headed man asked.
“To this gumbo,” Fenn said.
“I said—”
“Yes, yes,” Fenn assured him, “They’re going to love the car.”
“Because it’s important for your gay son to know how much you support him,” Peter continued, while Fenn stirred in more file powder. “I was reading this book by a man who has a gay son and he said his son opened him to all sorts of things, and even though he started off thinking he should be tolerant—”
“Bring me that can of crab meat.”
Peter blinked, his blue eyes huge through his spectacles, looked around then, finding the crab meat, brought it over.
“Even though he thought he should be tolerant of gay people he realized he should emulate them, and he did emulate his son, and that’s how I feel about Lance. I just respect the hell out of him.”
Fenn one eyebrow raised, carefully dumped the pink crab meat into the brown gumbo.
“And now the lid.”
“And by the way,” Peter said, “I respect the hell out of you.”
“Of course you do,” Fenn said. “Now hand me that lid, and my cigarettes.”
“My wife never lets me smoke in the house.”
“That’s one of the good things about not having a wife.”
But almost as quickly as Fenn sat down, a black truck rolled into the driveway beside the kitchen and Peter said, “You think they’ll appreciate it?”
“I think they will appreciate whatever you give them,” Fenn said, “and I think they’d better take that truck out of the driveway and to the front of the house before Todd gets back.”

The house was full. Layla and Will had gone to England to visit Pam and their other friends, and Fenn had come as well with Adele and his mother. Though he never spoke of it, Fenn was grateful to still have his mother when he was the age he was, and he was rarely separate from her.
“I did wonder if her heart could survive the flight,” Fenn confessed.
“Anne would never let you leave her in Indiana.”
“I don’t think I could. She’d never seen England. Of course,” Fenn said “I’ve only seen it once.”
There was no Christmas party that year, but for a few years the Christmas parties had been a bust. When they got on the plane to England, and Fenn strapped his mother in, who instead of complaining, kissed him, Fenn wondered how those parties had first started. He couldn’t quite remember the first one. Certainly, in his years with Tom, there had been no Christmas parties, and not in his first years with Todd. Where then? Had Layla been the main instigator? After all it was her generation, her friends, who seemed to dominate the whole thing. They had just gotten bigger and bigger. And then, in the last years, what with Meredith moving away, and Dylan and the boys not being able to reach town until Christmas morning, and then one thing and then another, the parties had become smaller, and then really not worth mentioning.
With no Dan Malloy and no Bick Throbbing, with no Logan or Kenny, no Moshe, it just wasn’t the same. When Brian and Chad went to Pennsylvania with Shelley or Jonah, and Keith and Sean went to New York, it just wasn’t the same
The year that Fenn had decided to go to England was the year he was tired of people apologizing for not coming, and the year that there was no party was the year people really began to feel its absence. In Pam’s house in London, they sat in the living room and listened to Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College. As the strong, thin voice of the chorister at the West Door began, “Once in Royal David’s city…” Fenn lifted the cup of tea to his lips and thought, “There will be no more Christmas parties. From now on, New Year. From now on Epiphany.
“Two parties?” Todd said.
“Yes,” Fenn said, “in one week, and if no one wants to come that’s not my problem. I don’t know how these things started. I don’t know how I had the nerve to be so sad when people stopped coming.”
Todd said nothing. Fenn had never confessed to being saddened by the shrinking of the parties. What was more, he offered no invitations to New Year’s Day.
“Dad, I didn’t think it would be terrible when nothing happened on Christmas but…” Dylan began.
“It sucked,” Thackeray said, simply. “We knew you were coming back, but it still sucked. Things are supposed to happen here on Christmas Eve.”
“You’ve gotten much too used to your dad always being there for you,” Todd said, “and much too used to you being there for you when it’s convenient.”
“Well,” Maia, said, lifting her baby to her breast, “when you’re right, you’re right.”

New Year’s Eve had been a quiet dinner at Layla’s house. She and Dena had made soup and sandwiches and Jonah had brought wine as well as Keith and Sean. Rob wore a suit all night and Cara said he was stupid for doing it. Their younger sister Barbara made bread and wondered why her older brother and sister couldn’t seem to do anything. Claire and Julian came with their three, and Nell and Bill were there. Meredith had just arrived that night and the house was filled with children. When Fenn and Todd arrived, followed by Maia and Bennett and the baby, Layla hugged her uncle warmly and said, “You are the guest of honor. After all these years it’s my turn to do something.”
Adele was there and Anne was there, and they played dominoes and then, when the kids were departing, poker. And laughter was there, and cigars. Todd and Fenn, Adele and Anne, Nell and Bill left after midnight, and early the next day Fenn began to cook. The house had been quiet and quite empty until around eleven. Thackeray was staying in Dylan’s old room.
Maia and Laurel began bringing dishes over at around twelve. And then Layla arrived with Will and the kids. Dena and Maggie showed up and said their husbands would be coming later. When the television in the living room went on it meant Bennett had arrived.
And now here were Dylan and Lance and Elias and Bennett swung around the door crying, “Is that my less attractive brother?”
“No, Matthew is somewhere else,” Elias said dryly, as Bennett jumped on him.
Dylan kissed his father, and Fenn touched his cheek, then said, “Go talk to your brother.”
“Is he alright?”
“No.”
“Oh,” Dylan frowned.
“Go see your brother.”
Fenn could hear Peter Bishop saying, “Austin has something for you at the house.”
“I can go see him tonight.”
“You can, but it seems a little urgent.”
Lance looked at his father, and then, for some reason, he looked at Fenn.
“Where are you staying tonight?” Fenn asked.
“I thought downstairs in the apartment?”
Fenn nodded. “Then go see Austin now. But make sure you park that truck someplace else.”
Lance nodded, Maia stood up to hit her husband and then Elias in the back ot the heads.
“Stop wrestling with each other in this kitchen. We’re cooking, you idiots. Take that shit into the living room.”
“You’re the best daughter an old man could have,” Fenn told her.
“You’re probably right,” she said while Lance headed out the door, “but don’t call yourself old. That’s my job.”
Lance turned around and asked his father, “Why are you here and I’m the one whose leaving?”
“Your dad and Fenn are attached,” Maia said.
“It’s like a bromance,” Peter Bishop said.
“It is not like a bromance,” Fenn said, putting a bit of potato salad on a small plate and reaching into a box of plastic forks.
“And your father will go with you,” Fenn said, “and bring back some ice. And maybe your brother and sister.”
“Are you sure it’s not too many people?” Lance said.
“No, no,” Fenn shook his head almost absently. “This isn’t like Christmas where everyone shows up for three hours before midnight Mass. This is New Years. People’ll be coming and going and… it’s whatever.”
Lance nodded and then Fenn added, “Besides, if Maia is the best daughter a man could have, you’re the best son.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a different but great portion! It was nice to have so much Fenn content. This story gets more and more interesting with every portion and I can’t wait for more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, Fenn has gotten a lot of attention tonight, and I like his dynamic with Lance's father. I'm telling you something: there are surprises yet to come.

 

[ChrisGibson]

END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN


“Where’s your car?” Lance asked his father.
“I walked, but that reminds me of something,” the tall, grey haired man said, and then he stopped as a black Fusion careened down Versailles and squealed to a halt across the street, and then, with a lurch, wrapped itself around the cul de sac and lunged before the house, coming to a stop.
After a moment, Rob Affren jumped out, shouting, followed by a dizzy Milo and Dena and frankly irritated younger sisters.
“King of the Streets!” Rob called, and then, running up the driveway he hooted, “Ey, Lance!”
“Rob!” Lance said in a voice as shaky as anyone’s would be when a seventeen year old had nearly wrecked his family’s car before his eyes.
“Going away so soon? Ey, Mr. Bishop.”
“Eya, Rob. Lance isn’t going anywhere. He just got here.”
“I’m going to my folk’s house for a second. To see Austin. Wanna come along?”
“Yeah. Would you like me to drive?”
“No!” Peter shouted, clapping a hand over his mouth while Lance wrapped an arm about Rob and said, “Dad means is he prefers to drive.”
Cara was coming up the walk with a pie and she said, “What he really means is—”
“That’s enough, Lady,” Dena said, darkly, as she and Barbara followed.


At the house, Austin shouted, “Lance!”
“I would have left Rossford a thousand years ago if I knew it would make me this popular,” he declared as his brother wrestled him to the ground.
“So, Rob, did you drive?”
“Get off my chest!” Lance groaned, pushing his brother off, “And no he didn’t drive.”
“I drove to Uncle Todd’s, though,” Rob said. “I need a little bit of practice, though.”
“And by a little—” Cara began.
“Look,” Rob told her, “I know I’m not great, but—”
“I’m being a bitch? I know,” Cara said. “I can’t help it. Mom, Maggie, Maia, the women in our family—”
“All have names that start with M?” Austin said.
“Are bitches,” Cara concluded.
“Don’t forget Aunt Meredith,” Rob said.
“She actually fulfills both terms,” Cara said, “and don’t you dare repeat that.
“Grandma’s nice,” Rob said.
“But do you remember Great-Grandma Barb?” Cara reminded him.
“Anyway,” Austin said, “everyone in our family is nice.”
“A little too nice,” Cara noted.
Austin frowned at her through his glasses. “There was something I had to tell Lance.”
“Uh, okay.”
“I’ll be right with you,” Austin told Rob.
“You better say hey to your mother first,” Peter said, and as they all went toward the dining room, Rob said, “I think Austin would make a good boyfriend for you.”
“That’s funny,” Cara returned, “I was thinking he’d make a good boyfriend for you.”

“Sara Dickerson,” Austin said.
Lance frowned.
“Didn’t you used to go out with her? Didn’t things end bad with her?”
Lance nodded, still frowning. Austin was shorter than Lance. In fact, he didn’t look much like his brother at all, blond, pale, round faced, bespectacled.
“How does that work anyway? Are you bi? Were you bi? What is that all about?”
Lance merely raised an eyebrow and Austin shut up.
“Why did she call here?”
“She said she needed to talk to you. Give you something.”
“I think she gave me enough. I haven’t seen her in almost ten years. What could she possibly have to say to me?”
Austin said, “Why did you break up?”
“Because I’m gay, Stupid.”
“Oh,” Austin blinked. “Well, yeah.”
“And cause she was pregnant.”
“She was…”
“Was pregnant.”
Austin frowned, thinking, then said, “Oh… For real?”
“She didn’t want to have it.”
“And neither did you,” Austin said.
“I couldn’t have stopped it anyway.”
Austin said nothing, and made his face blank as possible.
“No one knows,” Lance said. “Just Elias.”
“What about Dylan?”
Lance shook his head.
“Well,” Austin was quiet for a moment. He looked thoughtful, a lot like Peter, Lance thought, “what are you going to do?”
“See her, I guess.”
“When?”
Lance assumed his little brother was getting at something and he said, “When do you think I should?”
“I think, Big Brother, there’s no time like the present.”

“It’s not a school night,” Peter Bishop said, “so it doesn’t really matter when you go to bed, but,” he placed his keys on an antique bureau, “Lance take the truck and put Elias’s bike in there when you drop him off. He can’t be riding around at midnight. Even in Rossford.”
Lance nodded and grinned sideways at Elias, his eyes lighting up.
“Joy ride,” he whispered behind the palm of his hand as they went up the steps.
Elias knew that he was in love with Lance then. He’d never understood that until now. And he knew he was in love with Dylan too. The only other guy the same age as himself that he was close to was his brother, so it had taken a while for him to understand how he felt around the two of them. But he couldn’t wait to ride around in a car with Lance, and he loved being up in his room, where he had never been.
“I… eh had a girlfriend.”
“Okay.”
“You probably think that’s dumb. Cause you know what you know.”
Elias shook his head. “I don’t judge.”
“I don’t really like to be single, and guys don’t take anything seriously.”
By this Elias assumed that Lance meant Dylan didn’t take their relationship seriously.
“Anyway,” Lance said, “I… she said she was pregnant.”
“What the fuck!” Elias spat out.
Without looking at him, Lance put a hand over Elias’s mouth.
“I haven’t told my folks.”
“How?” Elias said. “Who have you told?”
“I haven’t told anyone,” Lance said.
“How…?” Elias began again, and then said, “You can’t go through this by yourself. That’s crazy. What’s going on now? Is she pregnant?”
“It’s out of my hands.”
“Does she even have a name?”
“Sara Dickerson. And like I said, it’s out of my hands.”
“How?” Elias said. Then, “I’m just going to shut up now.”
“You don’t have to,” Lance said, looking at him, tired.
“She’s not having it,” Lance said, flatly. “She and one of her friends are going to take care of it. And then they’re going out of town for the summer.”
“Then… it still hasn’t happened.”
“It might as well have happened.”
Elias was about to say, “Well, then we can stop it,” or come up with some wild plan, when suddenly he looked at his friend and said, “You don’t want it, either, do you?”
“I’m glad I didn’t have to make the decision,” Lance said. “But… I don’t want a baby.”
Neither one of them spoke for a long time, and then Lance said, “Eli? Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Sure, Lance,” Elias said.
“Do you think I’m some type of a monster?”
“No,” Elias said. “I… just think it’s all kind of sad.”

Because it was all kind of sad, Elias was content to be Lance’s friend, and as he drifted to Dylan, that relationship began. Elias never thought he was Dylan’s boyfriend at the time, and when they were finished having sex, Dylan never felt quite right about it. So in the end, Elias broke it off, and of course, he could not get Lance out of his head. Lance, tall and sad and smelling good. There was no uneasiness between them, and Elias began to spend his Friday nights there, doing his homework on the floor or in the beanbag in Lance’s room while Lance, coming home from the grocery store, sat on his bed grasshopper like, banging a notebook with his pencil and then finally blinking and looking at Elias.
“Get on the bed. It’s more comfortable.”
The first few times Elias protested, but Lance always unwrapped his long limbs and went to the floor or nearly bodily moved Elias from the beanbag and put him on the bed, and so Elias just stopped fighting it.
They slept in the same bed, back to back. Was it three weeks or was it four weeks? Elias knew it was winter, right after Christmas, when they just couldn’t get the house warm enough. It was warm, but not warm enough, and they were under the comforter and Lance wrapped an arm about him, and then he put his head on Elias’s chest, and Elias placed his hands in his hair. They lay like that half the night until Lance turned around and wrapped his arms about Elias’s waist. Before the morning they were kissing, and then coming out of clothes, and then, the bed creaking slowly, making love, hands on flesh, mouths together and their mouths over each other, the silent shuddering, lying together, finally warm under those blankets, saying nothing, holding each other. Elias didn’t mind the semen. Lance said nothing about it as Elias’s hand, touching his hip bone, moving up his flat stomach, touched liquid and didn’t know whose it was. Tenderly they kissed. Tenderly Lance went down on him. They made love silently and came again, almost sleeping.
“You alright?” Lance said to him, tenderly.
Elias nodded, wondering why Lance would say that, thinking Lance didn’t look entirely alright, and then suddenly Lance began to shake and it took a moment for Elias to realize he was crying.
“I thought if I didn’t say anything it was the same as not doing anything. But I didn’t want it, Eli. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
At first Elias thought Lance was talking about them, and he was almost relieved to realize he was talking about the abortion.
Lance shook a couple of times and then wiped the back of his hand over his eyes.
“I’m sorry for that shit,” he said, still not looking at Elias, who wrapped his arms around Lance, who for the first time realized that morning how strong and big and handsome Lance was and how many people would love to be with him, with his Lance.
“It’s just…” Lance said, “you are the first person I’ve been with in a long time. And it brought up some stuff.”
“I love you, Lance.”
He hadn’t meant to say it. He was almost afraid to say it, his arms wrapped around him.
Lance gripped his hand and squeezed it really hard.
“I love you too, Eli. You know that, right?”
“Yes, Elias remembers saying, remembers holding Lance’s hot body, wrapping his legs with his for the first time. There is nothing between them, flesh against flesh, skin against skin
“Yes, I know that you love me. You’re nothing but love, Lance.”
“I’m not,” Lance whispered in the darkness of that room.
“I’ve done horrible things.”
“You’re nothing but love,” Elias insisted, holding him, placing his lips on soft hair. “You’re nothing but love.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

So Lance got a girl pregnant? That was a big surprise. I am glad he told Elias and that was a sweet scene at the end. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

No, it's not a surprise, because at the very beginning of the book in the llashbacks when Lance and Elias were teenagers, before they got together, he told Elias that he'd gotten this girl pregnant, and she'd had an abortion. But yes, it was lovely that he told him.

 

[ChrisGibson]

SEVENTEEN












“I wanted to be normal.”

- Lancelot Bishop





While Lance remembers, the singing from the living room strays into his thoughts.

A-do-nai s'fa-tai tif-tach, u-fi ya-gid t'hi-la-te-cha.
Baruch at atah Adonai:

Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, E-lo-hei-nu vei-lo-hei a-vo-tei-nu, E-lo-hei Av-ra-ham, E-lo-hei Yitz-chak, Vei-lo-hei Ya-a-kov, Ha-eil Ha-Ga-dol Ha-Gi-bor v'Ha-No-rah, Eil El-yon, go-meil cha-sa-dim to-vim, ko-nei ha-kol, v'zo-cheir chas-dei a-vot, u-mei-vi go-eil liv-nei v'nei-hem l'ma-an sh'mo b'a-ha-vah.


Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, ma-gein Av-raham.
A-tah gi-bor l'o-lam, A-do-nai, m'cha-yeh mei-tim a-tah, rav l'ho-shi-a,
ma-shiv ha-ru-ach u-mo-rid ha-ga-shem.


“Yes,“Elias remembers saying, remembers holding Lance to him for the first time with nothing between them, “Yes, I know that you love me. You’re nothing but love, Lance.”
“I’m not. I’m… I’ve done horrible things.”

Beyond the kitchen door in Fenn’s house, Elias hears the voice of Moshe Fromm, hears what he said to Lance in the dark, years ago after the first time they made love.
Moshe had arrived with Laurel and Daniel, and Sheridan arrived an hour before. With the three of them and a reluctant Will, they made four, and now Moshe, no longer Orthodox, had brought his wife for five, Laurel for six, Todd for seven, Melanie for eight and lastly Maia for nine, into Minyan.

M'chal-keil cha-yim b'che-sed, m'cha-yeh mei-tim b'ra-cha-mim ra-bim, so-meich no-f'lim v'ro-fei cho-lim u-ma-tir a-su-rim, u-m'ka-yeim e-mu-na-to li-shei-nei a-far. Mi cha-mo-cha ba-al g'vu-rot u-mi do-meh lach, me-lech mei-mit u-m'cha-yeh u-matz-mi-ach y'shu-ah,

“You’re nothing but love,” Elias insists, holding him, placing his lips on soft hair. “You’re nothing but love.”

A-tah cho-nein l'a-dam da-at, um’la-meid le-e-nosh bi-nah. Cho-nei-nu mei-it'cha choch-mah bi-nah va-da-at. Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, cho-nein ha-da-at.


Only a few minutes ago, the door had opened and Lance came in with Rob on one side and what Elias couldn’t help but think of as the somewhat stupid looking Austin. There was another kid with them though, and Elias frowned. He looked familiar.
“Go into the…” Lance had begun, hearing:
“They’re in the library,” Fenn said, “so tell them to go into the living room.”
Austin and Rob left with the little boy, and Lance said to Elias, “Where’s Dylan?”
“Upstairs with Thack.”
“Oh,” Lance said, taking his hand over his short curly hair so that his skull cap came off in his hand and his brown hair stuck up. “Alright.”

Ha-shi-vei-nu A-vi-nu l'to-ra-te-cha, v'ka-r'vei-nu Mal-kei-nu la-a-vo-da-te-cha, v'ha-cha-zi-rei-nu bit-shu-vah sh'lei-mah l'fa-ne-cha. Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, ha-ro-tzeh bit-shu-vah.

“Lance,” Fenn wondered, “who’s the kid with the big forehead?”
And when he said it he stopped, and Elias stopped and looked at Lance and then Fenn looked at both of them, and Fenn said, “Oh.”
“He’s Allen,” Lance said. “He’s my son.”



When Riley arrived with Nina Turner, they brought the largest, thickest, reddest pot of butter chicken anyone had ever seen, and Brian made a comment about how glad he was that Nina had brought something from her culture, but when Nina laughed, Chad said, of her mother, “Radha can’t cook for her life. This is all Riley, I believe.”
The golden skinned young man nodded and Fenn of his great nephew said, “He is a chip off the old cooking block.”
Rob handed Austin a beer, and it went to his head.
“It is always like this here?” Austin asked him
“Only on the holidays,” Rob said, at first, and then he said, “Well, yes. Yes it is.”
While they were drinking, the front door opened an in came Kenny.
“Rob!” the red headed man greeted him.
“Kenny!” Rob hugged the older man. “Have you met Austin?”
The slight blond boy held out his hand and Kenny shook it.
“I smell Indian food.”
“Don’t look at me,” Radha shrugged.
“I wasn’t even about to,” Kenny said.
“I need a nap,” Rob declared.
“My head hurts a little,” said Austin.
“It comes of being underaged and drinking strong beer,” Radha said, wrapping a shawl about her.
“Don’t be harsh,” her husband said, but Radha said, “No one’s being harsh. I was just remembering.”
“Did I hear something about drinking?” Rob heard his mother as he headed up the stairs with Austin.
“Relax, Deenie,” his dad said. “It’s the holidays.”
“Damnit, Miles.”
Milo looked to Nell, who was sitting in a chair talking to Adele and didn’t look like she wished to be bothered.
“Sometimes you just have to ignore her,” the older woman said.
“Mom.”
“She was always this way,” Nell continued, and shooed the boys upstairs.
“Okay,” Austin said, as they settled in the guest room. “So who is everyone? I think I understand, but I’m not sure.”
“Well, you know my grandmother and my granddad. Even though he’s really her second husband, Bill. He’s the only grandfather I know, and the real one was supposed to be a snake. Then there’s my Aunt Meredith, her husband Uncle Charlie. They’ve each got six kids, but only two kids together, but they’re all my cousins—to me, which is confusing a little because Charlie’s oldest son is married to my older sister.”
“Maggie.”
“Right. And they’ve got two kids. But Maggie is not my mom’s daughter, and they used to hate each other. However, her husband is Dylan’s first cousin.”
“And Dylan is… to you?”
Rob thought about this as they collapsed on the bed.
“Nothing, really. I don’t think. My grandma’s best friend is Liam, Marla and Archer’s grandmother—which means we aren’t related, but it feels like it. But Todd is my grandmother’s brother, and Maia is my cousin, and Todd is married to Fenn who is Adele’s brother and Dylan is his son, so Dylan is Todd’s stepson and Maia’s stepbrother which still, I guess, doesn’t technically make him related to me. Or Fenn. But they’re almost related like… at three or four different points… which makes them related. I think.”
“I always thought you said Dylan was your cousin.”
“What did you say about me?” Dylan’s voice came from down the hall.
“Uh,” Austin sat up as Dylan came into the room, “I was trying to figure our how you and Rob are related.”
Dylan stretched, yawned, frowned, and said, “I don’t think anybody in this house is really related.”
“You’re related to Maggie.”
“Has either one of you seen Thack?” was all Dylan said.
“I think he’s down in the apartment,” Austin said. “He looks kinda bummed.”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Well, ’m gonna close the door, okay, Just remember it has a lock.
Dylan shut the door on them, leaving.
“Why’d he say that?” Rob said, even though he stood up and locked the door.
Austin didn’t answer, but he was aware that, whether he knew it or not, Rob was holding him, and his hand had been on Rob’s thigh before he’d heard Dylan. Now he put it back, and Rob didn’t seem to mind. He put his hand up, higher.
“Well, now…. We’re not related,” Austin said.
“Nope,” Rob said, sleepily. “I’m pretty sure we’re not.”
Austin pulled at the zipper to Rob’s khakis, and he opened them up, and then leaning over him, suddenly he pulled Rob into his mouth and Rob made a startled noise.
Austin kept sucking his dick, and there was very little noise in the room, except for a small creaking of the bed.
“Oh!” Rob let out a surprised noise and he felt himself growing larger and harder in Austin’s mouth. Austin pulled on his dick, and the same time the lust in his belly descended, a stinging sensation was behind his eyes. Tears pressed from his lids.
“Austin…” he whispered. “Please…”
Austin stopped long enough to say, “You texted me and said your dick was so hard you want ti sucked.”
“Fuck!” Rob almost cried.
He almost sounded frustrated as Austin’s mouth moved up and down on him, His hand went down to Austin’s hair, soft and silky in his hands. He tugged down his trousers a little and Austin got down on his knees between Rob’s legs.
“Oh,” Rob murmured again. “Oh, fuck. I’m about to.”
His body shuddered while Austin’s hands rested on his thighs. From his belly a thrill rolled down. From behind his balls, going over them stiffening his sack to a round globe, ascended a new thrill. Those two thrills and Austin’s mouth and his hands and the perfection of this day and Dylan closing the door all melted together until he made a faint groan and he pulled Austin’s head closer and spilled into his mouth.
Where there had been only his cock, larger, more firm, more desired than Austin had ever thought until a few minutes ago, now there was heat and honey and salt and then he gagged and coughed, his eyes watering before he swallowed it. Rob was still in his mouth, still hard like a missile, and it was when he began to wilt that Austin got back up onto the bed and Rob pulled up his underwear and then his pants.
Neither of them said anything. Austin pressed himself into the crook of Rob’s arm. And Rob’s arm went about him tighter.
“How was it?”
“I can still taste you,” Austin said.
Then Austin said, as he placed his hand on Rob’s stomach, “What do you want me to do?”
Rob reached into Austin’s pants.
“You’re so fucking hard. I always knew you would be. I want you to feel the same way I did. I want you to feel more.”
Rob looked outside to the grey approaching evening. White flakes were beginning to fall. His hand still embraced Austin’s cock, working up and down on it.
“Austin, are you my friend?”
“Fuck,” Austin murmured, while Rob stroked him. “Suck my cock.”
“I will,” Rob said. “But then I want you to fuck me.”

MORE NEXT WEEK AS WE COME CLOSE TO THE END OF BITS AND PIECES

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well meeting Lance’s son Allen was a surprise! I thought that baby was aborted but I guess I was very wrong. Lots going on in this portion but I am still enjoying this story as it comes to a close. Great writing and I look forward to more after the weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Ah, it's the old I thought you were aborted trick from the soap operas. You thought so and so had an abortion, but then this new character shows up as a long lost son. Well, at least that's how it goes in America.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“So, Lance has a son?” Thackeray said while he twisted the edge of his bedspread.
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “But, more importantly, it seems you do to. Or a something.”
I don’t know,” Thackeray shrugged. “And I can’t push her.”
“Dad’s gotta be…? How is Dad?” Dylan wondered.
“Tom doesn’t know cause I haven’t told him. As for Fenn, he’s Fenn,” Thackeray shrugged. “You know he never hits us over the head with his feelings. But he’ll be so glad if the baby is born.”
“That’s so odd,” Dylan thought. “For it to be an option. I was just thinking, she’s pregnant so she’s having a baby. But…”
“It’s her decision.”
“Yeah, apparently you’re not the first person in this house to have that philosophy.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of it is,” Dylan said, “and look, since I’ve never been straight and I’ve never slept with a woman, I don’t have to pretend to be this feminist who just shrugs and says, oh whatever she does it alright with me. It can’t be that simple.
The two of you did this together, and… Lance just wiped everything off of his hands and said the same thing. I dunno. I guess I don’t understand it, but the way I see it you’ve got to feel some way about it.”
“I feel a bunch of ways about it. I want my kid. And… I know I’m not ready. If she decides not to have it, it’s going to be a relief. And if she decides not to have it I know part of me will never forgive her.”
Dylan took a deep breath. He didn’t say anything for a moment and then he said, “I think I just wanted to hear you say that.”
“You wanted me to be sad?”
“I wanted you to be something. And…. Why the fuck don’t you be a man and talk to her?”
“Dyl!”
“No, seriously, go to her and tell her you want you fucking kid. My future niece of nephew. For fuck’s sake.”
“And what about you?” Thackeray said.
“Me?”
“And Lance’s kid.”
“Uh…” Dylan shook his head. “I’m definitely not ready.”



“Do not let me forget to get my copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History back from Fenn,” Dan said when they left their lake house early that morning.
The last two times he has been to Rossford, he has forgotten it in Fenn’s house, and he feel’s suddenly, he must have the old Penguin Classic volume he received when he entered the Episcopal Church. He must have that old friend with him.
Dan Malloy’s crime, well not crime, fault was a better word, was believing that things could be taken care of simply. His cravings for holiness were to be solved by entering the priesthood. His desire to be near Fenn would be taken care of by moving to Rossford. His loneliness and sexual craving, his betrayal of his vows would be taken care of by running off with Keith MacDonald and joining the Episcopal Church.
But his semi disdain for the Episcopal Church was never quite taken care of. He still loved the Catholic Church where he could never properly be a priest. And then he had retired at sixty and settled down to a pension he never would have had in the Catholic church, but with a little stipend from them, and, for the first time, from a distance, he could observe all things.
“An Episcopal priest is really more like am ininister,” Dan said. “It’s like a job. Bur a Catholic priest… ah, that never goes.”
“And it never does go,” Keith reminded him. Not really.
This was to say that a Catholic priest recited the Mass everyday, regardless of employment or congregation. Now, in their house in Michigan, for each other and with each other, Dan and Keith raised their hands and gave themselves up to the liturgy everyday and, what was more, to the Anglican one.
As they drove, Dan murmured:
“Because I do not dare to hope, because I do not dare…”

After all this time, in retirement, there was some solace. There was some becoming something. Now, paid by both churches and under the employ of none, he settled into the joy of priesthood. The Episcopal Church of America meant very little to him, but Anglicanism had come to mean a great deal. There was room for doubt in it, and the older he grew the more doubt ceased to be an enemy, the more he took pity on the rash seminarian he had been.
“Because I do not dare, because I do not dare.”
They drove across the white fields of Michigan, seeing the stark trees, pale brown and naked, tipped in snow under the icy blue sky. Under viaducts, past farms and by the woods they would go.
“Are we wise men?” Dan demanded, half musing as Keith looked at him. “Are we two wise men? And where is the third? And where is the baby?”
Keith shook his head and said nothing. He had not retired. Grey was in his temples.
“Will you serve Mass with me at John Crysostom?” he asked Dan.
“I might.”
“Since I’ve known you you’ve been my rest,” Keith said. “Since you’ve been my man, you’ve been my rest. I had no rest. I had no peace until you.”
While Keith had been in seminary he had also been engaged in pornography, not the watching of, but the actual acting in. The beast had risen in him and only been slaked on the screen in sex acts, putting away who he was until the need rose again. Even after his ordination, past the image his parishioners liked, he’d pursued risky sex in strange places. He’d even hired male prostitutes. Becoming an Anglican priest had not made him less sexual. It was only in Dan, the two of them answering each others desire and loneliness, that the sexuality that had been more of a rough master than a liberation had slaked. In his first times with Dan, they had both been surrendering to great desire, but over time the desire that threatened their friendship had become love. The fire that could kill had been tamed to a home fire.


The blue white sky, so crystal clear it is actually hard like a diamond, fades into a softer, bleaker white and from white to grey, and while grey is going to night, Dan says, “Matthew is the Gospel of darkness.”
“What?” Keith says.
He is coming back to the car in his fur cap, looking like Dr. Shivago or something except he is carrying Cheetos and soda and not medicine.
“Matthew is the Gospel of Darkness.”
“It is the Sermon on the Mount.”
“It is the Crucifixion on the Mount,” Dan says.
“Every Gospel has a crucifixion on a mount.”
“Then every gospel is a dark one,” Dan says, “but Matthew is the darkest.”
He allows Keith to drive into the night. The road sign says that they are only a half hour from New Buffalo, Michigan, which means only an hour and a half from Rossford, Indiana.
“Luke begins in the light. Zechariah comes to the Temple in the presence of all, in glittering Herod’s Temple, one of the wonders of the world, he enters the Holy of of Holies and before a golden altar, amidst white incense, burns the angel Gabriel, named and specific with his annunciation. Only paragraphs later, in the day, while she is doing whatever she is doing— gathering water the stain glass windows seem to say—Mary is interrupted by this same angel. Months later, though there is no room in the end, the sky is filled with angels singing to shepherds. Even at night, all is done in the light.
“Not so in Matthew. It begins with a man called Joseph getting some dim news from the woman he will marry that she has conceived of the holy ghost…whatever the hell that means. A hazy dream from an angel, something dreamed in the dark, and then a birth at night and again, a star in the sky, and look up there, look at how dim a star is, and how many there are, and how impossible it is to follow one across a desert, to Herod’s palace, not an angel at all, not a touch of direct news, only, to at last, reach Bethlehem and be warned in dreams, but not in person not to go back the same way.
“But the warning does not help the other babies. Joseph gets the dream, but the town does not. And again, an angel in a dream. Not an angel standing before him, but a voice in the dark. See, the Gospel of darkness, of dimness.
“I used to think it did not fit,” Dan said. “After all, my favorite gospel was Matthew, but my favorite Christmas story was Luke. Now I see it fits perfectly.”
Keith did not say a thing. To say one thing would have been to say too much. They were a half hour from Rossford now. To say anything would have been to point out the obvious, that God always came in the dark, on the edge of a dream, came so quietly, with so much stealth it was subjective if he even came at all. The power of God was a stealthy one, under the door and not kicking it down. The Holy Spirit was a draft that could be easily ignored. In the middle of the night, as he slept naked in his bed those first times, and Dan had come to him, reaching across the great gulf of two feet, joining to him, that had been the power. Did Dan remember similar things?


At Fenn’s house the laughter and light is so powerful, the smell of the food, buttered chicken, gumbo, jumbalaya, shrimp biryani, is so potent, it drives all the darkness away, a darkness which started in a good and holy place but which has now become entirely too much to bear. He and Keith are separated as they are surrounded by guest.
Brendan has said they need to talk. He said it casually, but Dan understands by now. In another world, Brendan would have been his son, he thinks. Rafe his grandson.
“Do you still have my Ecclesiastical History?” Dan says.
“By Bede?” Fenn says. Then, “By who else? Yes. It’s in Thackeray’s room, Dylan’s old room.”
“I’m not going to forget it.”
“You’re not leaving tonight. You’re staying in town.”
“True,” Dan says. “But I don’t want to forget it.”
Fenn shrugs as Dan heads upstairs, wondering if he even remembers where Thackeray’s room is. On his way up, Todd is coming down.
“Heya, Dan!” he gives the former priest a hug.
It is good to be here. Good to be staying here. Who would have known that, even at sixty, one could still be afraid of the dark. The dark that sets in after New Year’s Day, after the time of magic has ended, can be the deepest darkness of all, Dan thinks as he reaches the upstairs goes down the half lit hall. Thank goodness they all have each other and that now they can huddle together, so to speak.
Here is Dylan’s old room, and here is the book he longs for, another old friend in the dark. The Ecclesiastical History, when Anglican and Catholic were one, when sex mattered little. In the dying light, Dan opens the door just long enough to see the blond boy and the red headed boy naked, their bodies bunching like cords, now untwisting, kissing hungrily, now arms wrapping back together. Desire rises in him, not for them, but for the memory so long ago of the same dark power he thought of earlier that blossomed years ago. He in his button up shirt, sitting next to Fenn on the bed. Fenn saying, “Come with me. This Christmas?” Him saying yes. That Christmas so long ago when they were both boys not even twenty, like this, stripping, kissing, linking together, Fenn’s hands in his hair, his hands on Fenn’s body like this thin blond boy’s on the red headed ones. And all those years later, in this very room, with Fenn it had happened again.
That boy, strong limbed, a man really, is Dena Meradan’s son. That is Todd’s great nephew.
He hears the shudder of pleasure and closes the door behind them.
This is their dark mystery. Their overshadowing of the spirit. He was the witness, not the angel.
Dan whispers, reverently: “I’ll not tell a soul.”