Bird Came Down

by Chris Lewis Gibson

1 Jun 2020 234 readers Score 9.8 (7 votes) PDF Mobi ePub Txt


As our story nears its end, Scott and Felix near their beginning, but have to clear the air.


He had needed Rob. He had needed the on-his-back, legs to -his-chest-ness of being fucked in Kevin and Rob’s apartment, fucked by the one he knew the least and cared for the less. He’d needed the moment with no future, little past and no reflection. Just the moment right where Rob, breathing heavily, arms pinioning him, was pressing into him, harder and harder, and then Rob spasming, crying out, twisting and then making Felix wail as he pressed deep inside, coming.

When Rob pulled out of him, Felix went to his side, feeling an ache deep inside, squeezing himself together, feeling weirdly opened and strangely exultant about it.

“You all right?” Rob had said.

Felix didn’t say anything. He just lay on his side, and Kevin, who had also been on his side, watching, suddenly snaked around to give him head.

Here Felix had been, on his back, burying his hands in Kevin’s thick hair, looking over his hair to the shape of his ass, the ass he would enter before the night was over. Kevin was sucking his penis like a hungry baby, sucking for some life, Felix’s back arched and he gave it to him in a body twist of orgasm, flooding his mouth. And how come it felt so good if it was a sin? How come this openness in his ass, despite the ache, felt good too?

And then, as the three of them lay naked together, and silent,all the questions were gone, and they received the sex blessing. A moment of thoughtlessness, a moment without judgment. Pure feeling. Sensation without story.

In the early morning he placed Felix against the wall, and Felix pressed his face to it and closed his eyes while Kevin kissed his neck and then, pressing his head into Felix’s back sank down to his ass and placed his face there while Felix’s hands opened and he looked up at the ceiling.

I left a man
Asleep in the nude
Name in my pocket
With lipstick and rouge

Sheryl Crow was playing in the background. Kevin turned Felix around and pulled him into his mouth while Felix’s hands sank into copper tangles, kneading his scalp and luxuriating in the thickness of his hair. Kevin came up for breath after a while, kissing his stomach, sucking on his throat and then kissing his mouth.

On the bed, long and half asleep, sprawled out, back and ass to them, was Rob.

Felix lifted Kevin up and pressed him to the bed while Rob obligingly moved over, and Kevin’s legs opened for him as Felix pushed himself into Kevin and Kevin’s hands went over his bald head, down his neck, down his back.

“Felix, Felix,” Kevin moaned in his ear. “Let’s go back to your apartment.. Let’s go upstairs.”

It's just an ordinary mornin'
It's just an ordinary day
And I'm just an ordinary woman
Slippin' away

Felix kissed Kevin deeply on his mouth.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s go.”

—o—

In another apartment, Elias Anderson gripped the lentil of his closet door, and in that confined space, the room only half lit by morning, he made a wounded noise while, ass pushed out, his hands reaching back, he invited Lance Bishop to fuck him. He opened his eyes once or twice and turned his head to see the mirror on the dresser and in it he could see the look on Lance’s face, knitted brows, the almost frown, that look of intensity that was strong as fire. He reached behind him until he seized Lance’s hair and pulled his face into his back.

“Fuck!” he cried out, feeling the sweat roll down his body. “Fuck me.”

—o—

They lay sprawled out in bed, sharing a joint, Felix’s hands caught in Kevin’s hair. He watched Kevin exhale and then hand over the joint, and he took a sharp hit.

“Guess what I got?” Kevin said.

“Laid?”

Kevin gave a wild, half high laugh and said, “Yeah, but you know what else?”

“Huh?”

“I got a car. What time do you go to work?”

“Eleven. But I need to get cleaned up and have clean clothes.”

“Cool, can I shower here? I don’t care about wearing the same clothes as long as I freeball.”

“You know you live right downstairs.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said, turning on his side and handing Felix the spliff, “but right now I don’t want to go downstairs. I want to stay here. Last night was awesome. I think we all wanted it, but I’ve never spent that much time alone with you. Being alone with a person is a special event.”

Felix inhaled too hard, and coughed up pot. He ran a hand along Kevin’s trim side admiring the vein that went down to his copper pubic hair.

“And we’ve got a few hours to do this,” Kevin said, “This we’re going right now. More time if I drive you.”

Felix noted that Kevin was completely right.

“Okay, so you did some really inventive things on your papers,” Felix said, “but one thing you might not want to do—Emely—”

“Really!” Emely cried from the back of the class.

“Is not write your papers in purple ink. As cute as it is.”

There was laughter around the class room, but Felix said, “You can laugh if you want, Cody, but while we’re at it, if you put illustrations in your paper they do not take up space from the writing and—in general—we could all afford to go over nouns and verbs again. And if we make it that far….”Felix thought about it and twirled his marker over the white board, “we should probably refresh ourselves on sourcing.”

“What’s sourcing?” Shenerika asked.

“Uh… that’s a yes,” Felix said. “We should work on sourcing.”

A weird ringing song buzzed through the room and Felix said, “Someone should shut that off.”

“Felix,” Nikki pointed out, “that’s your phone.”

“Oh!” Felix looked at the desk, blinking. He went to pick it up and shut it off, but the name said, “Scott.”

“Hold on.” He lifted a finger.

“Hey. Is it possible this can wait?”

“I actually need to talk to you right now,” Scott said.

Felix looked out on his class and said, “Remember all those times you just had to sneak out in the middle of lecture? I’ll be right back.”

He sat on the floor in the carpeted hall and said, “Are you alright? Is anything wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong,” Scott said. Then, “Look, I need you to stay with me tonight. We have to stop leading separate lives.”

“Okay…” Felix said, doubtfully.

“I don’t trust myself when I’m away from you. I do stupid things. I need you, alright?”

“Alright, Kid. I’ll be over tonight.”

“What time do you get off work?”

“Uh, I have one more class so I’m out at around one.”

“I can come and get you.”

“You’ve got work.”

“Uh… fuck work. I’ll be in the circle driveway to get you at one. Okay?”

Felix shook his head, wondering what was going on.

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll be waiting.”

“You look in a bad way,” Felix said when Scott pulled up.

Scott waited for Felix to get into the car and then he said, “I’ve been in a bad way. I realize I haven’t been much fun.”

“Not lately, I don’t suppose,” Felix said.

“Not ever,” Scott said.

They rounded the drive and headed out onto Erie Street.

“You were in love with me. I think you were in love with me a lot when we first met. And I turned around and then I fucked it up.”

Felix said nothing, because this was true.

“And when I turned up years later, I was a falling down drunk with a shit ton of issues and two kids, and now I’ve just got these two kids.”

Again, Felix said nothing. They came to a red light and he felt uncomfortable, as if the time spent sitting there waiting for the light to turn would required him to say something. But apparently Scott also felt it required him to say something, and so he turned to Felix and asked, “Can you love someone like me?”

“Well, you know I love you, but…”

“I think we’re together. I’m sure we’re together, but like to be really together, really, really together. I want you with me. I want us to be an item and I realize that means some things from me, but it means things from you too.”

Felix thought of saying that he had come by the house last night, and that Matt was there, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to bring up Matt, and he didn’t want to talk about being around there and he definitely didn’t want to talk about Kevin and Rob. Nor did he want to talk about the most disturbing of thing, which was how much he loved being with Rob and especially with Kevin.

“Could we have a day?” Felix said. “Just a day at the beach where you splash around and I read a book and we don’t try to be serious about anything?”

“Great,” Scott said turning one of his sunny smiles on Felix, a smile he hadn’t seen in a long time, “I would like to not be serious today.”

“For a while I thought you liked to be serious everyday.”

There was a part of Felix that whispered he could not keep living like this, from day to day, fucking whom he chose then going back to Scott. But about the time the car made it to Route 15 and they were well out of the city, he had told that part of him to shut the fuck up. They rode through New Buffalo and then along lonely roads where the forest that bordered green dunes was to their rights and the trees hiding the road from farm fields were on their left. At last, passing small motels, quaint restaurants and lonely little stores, they were in Saint Joseph and, at last, arrived at Silver Beach, which seemed abandoned on a day like today when all the children were back in school and fall was soon to approach. When they got out of the car, Scott took Felix’s hand, and Felix was surprised. Still more surprised at how good it felt as they came near the beach, as they began walking over the sand, and how good and how strange it felt when he tripped and Scott’s strong hand kept him from falling. Almost forty years of life, and he had never had a strong hand to help him up.

“Look at how blue that water gets,” Scott said when he had rolled up his pants and stood in the water, holding his shoes with the hand that did not hold Felix.

“And it just goes on and on.”

Felix yanked Scott down and the younger man laughed as he fell on his bottom beside his lover and the water swirled around Felix toes.

“You have very brown, very beautiful feet,” Scott observed.