Hey friends, when you've completed this, you will have made it to the end of a seven book saga which spans, depending upon how you look at it, twenty or forty years. I am excited for us both. I wrote this story when I was often very lonely, in an often difficult period of my life and now you've shared my friends and become another and at this moment I am happy for us both. Thank you so much for reading. we are now, at last, at the conclusion:
When Todd arrived that night he didn’t tap on the door.
“You didn’t even knock.”
Todd pretended not to hear him as he crossed the room.
“What if I gave up on you?” Fenn said. “You’re taking a lot of chances. What if I said to hell with you and moved on?”
“What if you did?” said Todd
“What if—?”
“Fenn Houghton!”
Todd leaned down and put his mouth on Fenn’s. Fenn cupped Todd’s face in his hands and ran his hand over the thin black beard growing along Todd’s jaw line. They kissed awkwardly like that, catching each other’s waists. Fenn reached up to touch his hair, to hang from the warm pulsing of his neck.
“You’re not pulling back,” Todd said, in wonder. “You always pulled back.”
Fenn held Todd’s face in his hands.
They freed themselves just long enough to get to the sofa, and then continued again, for a long time, tired of all games, finding everything useless but this. A loud car came down Versailles playing mariachi music, and then there was silence.
They parted.
“Is there one reason we shouldn’t just do this shit? Is there one reason we shouldn’t just take this to the bedroom?”
“Or the floor?” Fenn mouthed on his neck.
Todd’s mouth parted and he whispered, “or the kitchen table.”
They nuzzled for a long time. Fenn reached for Todd’s face, and holding it in his hands, staring at the dark eyes ringed by their constant olive shadow, at the straight fall of his slightly hooked nose, at his full mouth, the little beard, the little soul patch under his mouth.
Fenn placed his mouth upon Todd’s, opened to the wetness. He pulled away, he stood up, for just a moment, his knee telling him he wasn’t twenty anymore. No, but he didn’t want to be twenty anymore.
He held out his hand.
Todd took it in his larger one. In the darkening house Fenn could just see the dusting of light black hairs on it, going up his arm.
They didn’t say anything. Fenn just led him upstairs. Head hanging in obedience, penis thick and rising with longing, Todd walked up after him, and followed.
They reclined on the bed, on the pillows, kissing and cradling each other.
“No one’s here.”
“No one’s here,” Todd said, hooking his hands into Fenn’s pants.
“No one’s here,” the word here was crushed by Todd’s mouth on Fenn’s.
They kissed for a long time. No one was going anywhere. Nothing was pressing. No one had better show up. The boy who had always been a fact, and a factor on the edge of his mind was a real thing, and a thing to be made love to, grown up now and free. And maybe he had grown up too.
He unbuckled his belt, and Todd held him. Todd shuffled off his trousers and lay on his side, letting Fenn pull down his dark blue briefs, letting his sex fall slowly out of them. While Fenn pulled underwear slowly down Todd’s thighs, Todd pulled off his work shirt, and pulled off his tee shirt, and lay naked. All of his long body, that olive color, the dusting of black hair deeper, thicker on his chest, toward his groin where his sex was dark as Fenn’s nearly, and he pulled at Fenn now, at his trousers, at his underwear, while Fenn’s hands kneaded him, stopped to kiss him on his hips, on his stomach, stopped to take his penis deep in his mouth, as far as possible. Todd, who had gotten to Fenn’s pants and underwear and now had his hands under his shirt, moaned to receive Fenn’s mouth. He clenched his teeth, hands opening and closing impotently, finally playing with his own nipples, rubbing his own chest and stomach, swearing before he sat up and, laying Fenn down, returned the favor.
That very first time it was early evening, gathering twilight, with not much certainty of what would come after, only what was right now. After they’d been steady at tasting each other’s bodies for the better part of an hour, Todd dipped his finger in the olive oil, slid it into Fenn and then, with deliberation, placed himself in Fenn, and began fucking him. He felt Fenn’s smaller, stronger hands on his waist, Fenn’s body under him.
Under him, eyes wide, Fenn pulled him deeper inside. He beheld Todd, neck arched, mouth parted, eyes wide and shining as they looked down on him with a demon light, and them back up to the ceiling. Todd stood on the edge of the bed, fucking him deeply, the long arm reaching down to stroke his cock with a gentleness countering the fierceness of his fucking until, with a startled shout, eyes shut, dry mouth open, hands clenched into fist, they came so hard both all but passed out.
The room went from twilight to darkness while they lay there and, at last, Todd rolled to his side.
“You alright?” he asked.
“Yes,” Fenn’s voice was very quiet, almost a ghost of a voice.
“You’re just so quiet,” Todd said.
“I just didn’t have anything to say,” Fenn told him. “And I am not in a hurry to speak, or move, or do anything,” Fenn continued. “Because…”
“Because I’m here now.”
Fenn nodded and smiling, he agreed: “You’re here.”
“YOU LOOK LIKE THE TWO Wisemen,” Todd greeted Dan and Fenn as they entered the kitchen.
“Why not the Three?” Fenn asked. “Thackeray is with us.”
“I think it’s because we’re old,” Dan said with a crooked smile.”
“Dan, get yourself some punch,” Todd told him, squeezing his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around Fenn and told him, “We are equally grey and equally old now, Houghton.”
“Actually,” Fenn pointed out, “you are grayer than me.”
“You would hold onto that.”
“Of course I would,” Fenn squeezed Todd’s ass.
“He’s grown so big,” Dan marveled over Raphael, and Sheridan said, “Bren’s been waiting for you guys.”
“Me or Fenn?”
“Both.”
Dan looked toward Fenn, and Fenn, beside Todd shrugged.
“I’ll be back in a minute. Where’s Bren?”
“In the apartment.”
“I’m going to the restroom first,” Fenn said.
“You’re back!” Layla cried as her uncle entered the kitchen. She hugged him, but said, “If I know you, you’re on the way to the bathroom?”
“Exactly.”
“When you get out I have to show you something,” Laurel told him.
“Show me now,” Fenn said.
Smiling, Laurel held out her finger and Fenn murmured, “Goddamn, it’s the North Star.”
“I tried to tell her the size of the diamond wasn’t important,” Caroline said.
“But you didn’t believe it, did you?” Fenn asked his niece.
“No,” Caroline confessed. “I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“It’s going to be outdoors. Lane Brown’s doing it,” Laurel explained. “It will be Reform, so everyone will compromise and no one will be pleased!”
When Fenn came out of the bathroom he met Dan, and they left the house to go down to the apartment. The door was open and the place was, if not crowded, well occupied.
“Dad!” Dylan greeted him.
“You need to go over to the Andersons my oldest apple,” Fenn said, wrapping an arm around his son. “In fact, take Thackeray with you. In fact,” Fenn looked around the whole living room, seeing that Brendan was sitting pensive at his old writing desk—
“Take Lance and Elias too.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Lance said.
“It is,” Fenn told him, someone shortly. “Now go.”
And so they did, and when Fenn had put them out of the house and Brendan had turned his chair around, looking a little weary, Fenn said, “So what is the problem, Mr. Miller?”
Brendan stretched out his limbs, yawning like a lion.
“I am so glad to see the both of you,” he said to Fenn and Dan. “I’m almost finished with the story.”
“I thought you were finished when I read it a month ago.”
“I was, but I was putting in some last bits and… now…”
Dan was reading the last paragraph, and he said, “From what I know of books, it seems like a good place to close.”
“But you haven’t actually read the book,” Fenn and Brendan said together, and then they looked at each other. There had always been something between them, Layla’s uncle and Layla’s oldest friend, Todd’s husband and the first boyfriend of Todd’s niece. This was the apartment Fenn had made for him, the first place he and Kenny had lived together. For that matter, the first place he’d made love to Sheridan. Fenn came to the screen and read it saying: “Oh, Bren, I have read the whole book. And I think you’re afraid to let it go.”
“It’s not missing anything?”
Fenn stood straighter. He took a deep breath and said, “Move over, and trust me in this, okay?”
“A’right?” Brendan raised an eyebrow, and scooted his seat over while Fenn bent down in front of the computer and said, “It’s only missing two words.”
And then Fenn Houghton hit the caps lock and smiling, swiftly he typed:
THE END
