Cody Barnard woke from the sweetest dream and wondered how much of it had been a dream, what was real and what was not? The knocking went on, and when he remembered no one else was home, he jumped out of bed and ran to the door. He threw it open and pulled Russell inside, kissing his face.
“Is anyone here?”
Cody shook his head.
“I missed you,” Cody breathed through kisses. “I thought this afternoon might have been a dream.”
“No,” Russell shook his head, smiling. “I’m real enough.”
Cody kissed him again and Russell said, “Let me get my coat off.”
“I’ll get your coat off,” Cody said. He held him tight, and then pulled the jacket from his friend, and from someone who, in certain ways, was still his little brother.
“I am Heathcliff,” Cody said.
“Fuck you, I am Heathcliff.”
Cody laughed out loud and then pulled Russell’s face down, kissing him deeply.
“Fine, you be Heathcliff. I’m just glad you’re here.”
Cody held out his hand and Russell’s heart skipped a dance as he took it and they walked almost solemnly upstairs where Cody pressed him against the wall in that hallway the size of a broom closet, and then opened the door to his little room.
There Cody pulled down his jeans and Russell helped. He lay back on the sofa and greedy for him, wrapped his legs about the warmth of Cody’s waist. There was a little spit, a little lube, a sniff from a bottle that loosened his brain, and then Russell opened, and Cody entered him. Fitting themselves together, they made love silently, Cody’s hands planted on either side of him, a look of dawning exaltation onf his face as he fucked him, nostrils flared, drops of sweat forming under his tee shirt, on the small of his back until, in a mad scramble he and Russell, penetrating, filled with the ache of his brother’s cock, lifted the tee shirt and threw it to the floor for the cat to figure out what to make of it.
Brad fucked him slowly at first, and then quicker and then it seemed like it was never going to end. Nehru clung to him, his hands running up and down his back, cupping Brad’s ass, hot and flexing, thrusting his fingers a little inside. Why did people talk about the difference between making love and fucking, or tell you, oh, you want to be loved when even at twenty-three headed for twenty-four, his legs wrapped tight around Brad, his voice jostled from his body he knew every hard, rapid thrust was love and love and uncontrollable love.
“It’s happening…” Brad gasped, fucking him quicker. Suddenly he hit something, a light in Nehru, and he cried out.
Brad stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“It… it feels so good.”
And then they continued, Nehru’s brown body thrumming with him, running his hands over his back, the small of his back, pulling Brad deeper into him by pulling on the softness of Brad’s ass, now reaching up again, kissing him, kissing his hair, being kissed by him. They pressed harder, lubricated by sweat, moving together. The orgasm hit Nehru like a punch, rumbled all through him, and melted him. His climax radiated into Brad who shivered, teeth chatterind, and looked into Nehru’s eyes as their bodies shook, shook, shook spasmed, then went still.
In the aftermath they were silent, Nehru’s fingers loose on Brad’s neck and in his hair.
The changing world turned all around them. Cody would go to Russell and the two of them would do what they would do. But Cody was their lover, and Nehru couldn’t imagine him never coming to them again. Two in the bed was fine, and the two of them needed to learn to live with no one between them, but Nehru believed the third would return. And Marissa would grow rounder and rounder with Brad’s child, his godchild. The summer would see them in California and the fall would see him in Barrelon, in a van riding up and down, back to Brad and away. Things would change, and yet all would be well. He did not doubt it.
They separated and Brad stretched his beautiful damp body, yawning and as he lay on his side on the thick rug.
“We can go up to bed for a while,” he said.
“Yes,” Nehru said, half dazed as he took the hand Brad offered.
“I think I’d like that.”
Gilead Story’s joy was squeezing himself more compact that the earth, knees lifted nearly to his chest in the heat of that room, thighs, large and strong and brown like a vice around the waist of Marcus J. Young. He used those thighs to urge him deeper and deeper, running his hands over the ivory shoulders like bird’s wings, down the back to the hollow over his flexing ass. Mark pushed deeper into him. Mark’s palms pressed his shoulders, his neck straining above Gilead his face arched up, arching down, going pink as those green eyes bore down into him. Gilead was filled with him. In the same moment that Mark bent to kiss him, Gilead pulled his face down for the kiss.
All worries fled in these moments when they had the house to themselves and the bed gently creaked back and forth as they kissed while things grew not gentler, but rougher, Mark’s face redder, Gilead’s insistence and shouts, louder, the bed creaking more, the thunderous ache going deeper and deeper inside and, at last, Mark’s fingers sinking like claws while the veins in his red neck struck out and he arched back his head to shoutc.
His shout was followed by a shuddering Holy Ghost incomprehension from Gilead, as the seed was rocked from his body. Mark, out of his him, was still coming, and it was hard to tell whose semen and what wetness jetted over their chests. It hardly mattered, Mark, kneeling between his legs, Gilead, thighs still bunched up, both shook in the aftermanth of things, and it was a long time before either of them moved from their positions.
Now they both panted, Mark reaching down, Gilead up, to rub each other’s arms, to run hands over each other, Gilead bringing Mark down to hold him. They clung together, heat upon heat in the early spring. The only light in the room was a little lamp on the table.
“You were loud.”
“You’re loud too, sometimes.”
“I wasn’t accusing you,” Mark grinned. “I was just…. It’s rare for either of us to be loud like like.”
Gilead Andrew Story took a deep breath. Shuddered. Thought a cigarette would be good.
“I love you,” Mark said.
He loved Mark too, but thought repeating it sounded like… well, repetition.
“I could fuck you all day,” Mark declared. Even after coming, he was still hard.
“I love you, Marcus Julian,” Gilead told him. “I love you so much I think it’s dangerous.
“You should shower before you go,” Gilead said.
“Are you throwing me out?”
“No, I’m reminding you that it’s late and you need to shower before you go home.”
“I wish I could stay here.”
“You could, you know,” Gilead said, turning on his side, and placing a hand on Mark’s cheek. “I assumed you’d want to go home, but I bet if you stayed here every night Mom would be fine.”
“Every night until we leave,” Mark said.
Yes. It still came back to Gilead, the fear of leaving his mother on her own, in this house, that odd nagging feeling that if he left, something would happen to her, and he wouldn’t be there in time to care for her. The night of RL’s watch, Gilead had said this in front of Chayne and Sharon, and Sharon said, “Gilead, you do know you’re family, right? You know we wonldn’t let anything happen to Sharonda. She’s right in the same place she’s been her whole life.”
“And she’s young,” Chayne said.
“I don’t like her in the house all by herself,” Gilead had noted, and this was the one thing Sharonda had said she felt too. That it was a lot of house. So Anigel had said, “What about me?
“Rob and Chayne will need their space. What about me?”
And Cameron had timidly asked, “And what about me? I mean, I loved Dad and everything, but he’s gonna have Lynn, and they may not always want to keep the house and… I’m in college now.”
So that had been decided, and Gilead’s mind was more at rest than he liked to admit, knowing Anigel and Cameron would move into this house with Sharonda once he was gone.
“And can’t you see us,” Mark said, lying naked beside him, stretching out his hand as if displaying a billboard, “Mark and Gil—”
“Or Gil and Mark.”
“Packing a truck, and me driving us—”
“I’m not driving?”
“You’re a decent driver, Gil. You’re not a great one.”
“Well, how am I supposed to get great if you don’t let me drive?”
“We’ll both drive, damnit. Are you gonna let me finish?”
“I let you finish five minutes ago, and you came entirely too quick.”
“You’re hilarious, and I’ll make up for it on the second round. Gilead and Mark, driving off TOGETHER, to start our life… together.”
Gilead kissed Mark’s shoulder, and Mark took him by the chin and returned the kiss. He stretched across Gilead, pressing into him, and felt Gilead’s hands in his hair, knew this was how sex began. It was beginning again. They were young enough for that. As they moved together slowly, Gilead whispered in Mark’s ear: “Together. I like that Mr. Young.”
“Yes, Mr. Story,” Mark whispered as he sucked Gilead’s throat and he began to straddle his waist, “I like that too.”
Through tight shut eyes, Chayne clung to him while Rob, the blankets falling from his beautiful body, fucked him. While the rain clicked its fingernails against the windows, drummed on the roof, the lovers moved as one small creature, Chayne’s hands in Rob’s hair, Rob’s teeth gently biting his shoulder...
They were quiet a long time after. There was no point in saying anything, or even in moving. At last, Rob touched him, and Chayne squeezed himself, still feeling Rob in him long after the orgasm…
“Chayne,” Rob whispered after a while, “what are you thinking?”
“I am thinking that I have never been happy as I am with you right now.”
He rested his head on Rob’s chest and said, “I don’t think I would ever have made a fire until you came.”
Rob laughed as he pulled the covers higher over them.
“Well, you didn’t really make this one, did you?”
Chayne laughed and then groaned as he went to his knees and said, “I have to piss! I would love to lay here forever on this floor forever, but I have to piss.”
“I could bring a bed pan. That way we’d never have to leave.”
“Piss filled bed pans and the heat of a roaring fire,” Chayne said. “There’s an air freshener in that.”
“You have the most beautiful ass I’ve ever seen,” Rob commented reclining on his elbow. “It’s like a chocolate caramel apple.”
“You keep saying that and my feet’ll never touch the ground again.”
“Good,” Rob said as Chayne went into the little bathroom, leaving the door open. “Why should your feet ever touch the ground?”
Chayne peed and flushed the toilet. He ran his hands through the water and said, “Speaking of caramel apples—”
“Yeah,” Rob called, “I want the last of that cider.”
Chayne went into the kitchen and put the cider back on the stove. While it cooked, he pulled out the cinnamon and the nutmeg. He rifled through the mail, hunting for that small royalty check, but now he called: “Rob?”
A moment later, naked as Chayne, his blond hair sticking up, Rob came into the kitchen and Chayne showed him the letter.
Lab Corp
1155 E Paris Ave SE #200,
Grand Rapids, MI
49546
“What the hell is this?”
“Those are…” Rob began, shifting from foot to foot and scratching the back of his neck.
“Those are the test results. For Russell and Cody.”
“But we just saw the test results from…”
“Yes,” Rob said. “But no.”
“You lied. You made a fake report.”
“I did.” Rob said.
The cider was boiling. Rob reached over and turned if off, and Chayne loved the back of him, his small round ass, his thighs, his angel feet, his sticky up hair.
“They read the actual one,” Rob continued. “But I made a fake one.”
“You were going to make them not related no matter what?” Chayne realized.
“And what if I was?” Rob said, suddenly full of heat.
“They were miserable, and it’s not like it matters. It wasn’t helping anything for them to find out they were related. It wasn’t really helping anyone.”
“No one’s arguing with you. I’m not. I don’t think I am at least.” Chayne shook his head.
“It was ingenious really.”
“I steamed it open,” Rob said. “Why chance it? I hated being a liar and a deceiver, but more than that I hated keeping them apart.”
Rob turned around, opened the cupboard and pulled out two cups. Chayne meditated on the line of his spine descending to the small of his back, the cleft of his behind, while Rob filled both cups with steaming cider.
“I never planned to hide the truth from you, Chayne,” Rob said in a softer voice. “Or else that letter wouldn’t even be there. I decided to do what I thought was right, and I assumed you would agree.”
“Do you think you could have sat on that secret forever?” Chayne asked.
“Could you have?”
“We would have tried. I’m just glad—”
“That we don’t have to. Yeah.”
Rob handed Chayne his mug, and he took his own, taking the envelope with him. Chayne followed Rob back into the living room where they sat sipping cider
Chayne opened the flimy envelope and read it up and down.
“Two results where Cody and Russell aren’t related. None where they are.”
He sighed.
“You’re happier than you want to let on.”
Chayne nodded. He handed the empty envelope and the results to Rob.
“Now we move on.”
Rob nodded manfully.
“Yes, my love,” he said, and taking the the papers from Chayne’s hands, he knelt forward and placed them in the fire. He sat back down beside Chayne, and Chayne leaned into him, pressing his head against Robert Keye’s chest.
“And now here is the end of it,” Rob said, kissing Chayne on the top of his head.
Chayne Kanzierski nodded.
“At least for tonight.”
THE END
