This is a completely rewritten story, April 2026. Thanks to Hayden for helping make it better-and more horny.
Chapter 1: The Drive
"It’s not just stubbornness, Boon. It’s the delusion."
I picked at the edge of my thumbnail, watching the blur of turning leaves banking the two-lane highway. The car heater hummed, fighting the creeping autumn chill as we left the progressive sprawl of Seattle and moved deeper into the flat, rural eastern half of the state.
"He was in basic training for six weeks in the nineties," I continued, feeling my voice go tight. "He twisted his ankle on an obstacle course and got an administrative discharge, but he made it sound like he was Nelson Mandela doing twenty-seven years in a South African prison. Screaming at a teenager in a Denny's because he didn't have his VA card for a free breakfast? What did he want, a parade?"
Boon offered a patient smile, steering the car with the effortless, fluid grace he applied to everything. "A lot of old guys embellish the glory days, Griff. He just wants to feel appreciated."
"He’s obsessed with the physical," I countered, gesturing vaguely. "He’s always on me about whether I work out enough. If I tell him I’m in the gym seven days a week, he starts grilling me on my routine, my reps. Nothing is ever good enough. He has to be the benchmark for everything."
"He’s okay with his only son bringing his fiancé who happens to be a man," Boon noted calmly. "That sounds like a man who wants a relationship with you. That’s not so bad."
"He doesn't want a relationship," I corrected. "A relationship implies interest, engagement, a two-way street. What Sam wants is to do exactly what he wants, and for me to go along with it. He doesn't want a relationship; he wants an audience."
Boon shrugged.
I turned toward the window to frown, watching the fiery blur of foliage flicker past.
Boon’s English was nearly flawless, but there were still tiny gaps in translation—like earlier that morning, when Boon had referred to his upgraded cell phone as the younger model rather than the newer one.
It was an endearing quirk. But it left me wondering if Boon missed some of the nuances in my description of Sam Griffin.
"And the Facebook thing," I added, hoping another example would make my point. "I unfriended him just to avoid the constant political rants, and he acted like I’d committed a public assassination. I thought I’d never hear the end of it."
"Everyone has challenges with their parents, Griff," Boon said softly, trying to bridge the gap. "It’s a common thing."
"Don't minimize it, Boon," I said, looking back at him.
Boon smoothly turned the wheel. "Its only a weekend, Griff. And today is nearly done anyway. We leave on Sunday morning. It’s really just one day.” Boon’s voice dropped into his steady, reassuring cadence. “Ready to go home?"
I looked out the window. "Home is with you. This is just where I grew up," I said quietly.
Boon smiled and extended a closed fist toward the passenger seat.
I looked at the suspended fist for a long moment. It was a Boon thing, the ridiculous fist bump. But it was required that once offered, no matter if one of was mad, sad, anxious, or all of the above, it had to be met.
I let out a slow exhale and grudgingly reached out, tapping my knuckles against Boon's.
"There. Happy?" I muttered.
“Very,” answered Boon.
Looking forward, I watched the landscape of my hometown rise up to meet us.
Chapter 2: Thin Walls
I hadn’t told Boon everything about this place. Boon was too good, too clean to be dragged into the mess of my history.
My memories of my mother were vague—more like impressions of light and soft fabric. Sam hadn’t wanted a partner; he wanted a wife who was as pretty as a model, who cooked like a chef, cleaned with the precision of a Marine, and importantly—most importantly—hung on his every word as if he were the only source of light in the room.
She had been so young.
I could still see a phantom image of her standing at the wobbly ironing board in the hallway, a pair of Sam's white cotton briefs spread out flat before her. I could hear the exhausted tremor in her voice as she pressed the hot iron down.
"He wants a crease," she had muttered, pushing a mascara smear from under her eye as she looked down at the underwear. "Who irons underwear? Who does that?"
And then, one day, she was just gone.
After she left, the house took on a stripped-down quality. Sam rid the place of everything soft or unnecessary, as if comfort itself were a sign of weakness. Meals were just fuel, slapped together and eaten off paper plates to avoid washing dishes.
We ate on the sofa with the TV blaring, or at the small kitchen table. With no other purpose, the dining room was emptied of its furniture and filled with Sam’s rusty weights and a taped-up bench for lifting. A shrine to Sam.
He was pathologically proud of his body—built like a professional wrestler, golden-haired and strong-jawed, with a thick, vascular build that he refused to hide. Clothes were just another luxury he didn't care for; boxers or sweatpants were all he needed, the better to keep the blond fur hugging his pecs on display for anyone in his orbit.
For an introverted boy hitting puberty, it had been a minefield to navigate.
Sam was the only show in town, a constant, looming physical presence that was impossible not to look at, even when the sight of it made me feel small and uncomfortable. I had spent those years hunched over my sketchbooks, trying to channel that burgeoning, confusing energy into my drawings.
I tried to draw superheroes—men who were noble and kind and nothing like the man counting reps in the dining room. But no matter how hard I tried to invent a different kind of hero, the ink always betrayed me. The caped crusaders always ended up with Sam’s arrogant jawline, the same thick biceps, the same golden, glowing power.
I was trying to draw an escape, but I kept sketching my own cage.
Then there were the women. Sam would bring them in for a night or a weekend, and because the walls were thin and Sam didn't believe in the weakness of privacy, I had to live with the soundtrack of my father’s conquests.
It wasn’t just the rhythmic best of the headboard against the drywall—THUD THUD THUD—keeping time with his thrusts, or the high, performative giggles that felt like needles in my ears, though it was those things, too. Worse was the heavy, open-mouthed huffing that echoed down the hall—the crude, breathless commands seeping through the walls: "Yeah, take it," "Right there, baby" "Look at me"—and the wet slap of flesh that followed.
I would lie in my narrow bed, trying to lose myself in the glossy, four-color pages of my comic books, gritting my teeth, turning the pages louder and faster, trying to block out the escalating pitch of my father's grunts and groans, always culminating in a loud, unapologetic groan of release.
"I can hear you in there!" I would shout, banging a fist against the wall when I couldn’t take it anymore.
The response was always the same: a momentary pause, a muffled, feminine titter of laughter, and then the noise would resume, louder and more deliberate than before.
Eventually, Sam would tire of them. They’d start to ask questions about me, or want to put a toothbrush of their own in the bathroom. His charm would shift to indifference and then restlessness, and he’d usher them out the door, whether they wanted to go or not.
I remember him seeing one out have dressed, throwing the rest of her clothes behind her and shutting the door. Sam sauntered into the kitchen, glowing with post-coital satisfaction and the relief of being alone again. I was sitting at the table, eyes fixed firmly on my sketchbook but radiating resentment.
"Jesus, Junior," Sam huffed, tipping back his beer, his blond chest hair catching the kitchen light. "What’s with the face, sourpuss? Who pissed in your cornflakes?"
I glanced up and glared, but the look bounced off Sam like bullets off Superman. I was absolutely sure that Sam Griffin was the most oblivious dad on earth.
Chapter 3: The Arrival
I stared through the windshield as the tires crunched onto the gravel driveway. I’d nursed a dark, desperate hope that time and gravity might have finally done their work—that Sam would be smaller, or perhaps a little frailer, stripped of a portion of his power and arrogance. But as the house came into view, the hope withered.
Sam was right there in the driveway, leaning over the engine bay of his weathered truck. He was wearing a snug, faded thermal that strained across his chest and heavy shoulders. He wore a trucker cap low over his eyes, but as the car pulled to a stop, he reached up and yanked it off to wipe his brow with a greasy forearm. The movement revealed his golden hair, now noticeably thinner at the crown, and a strong jaw shadowed with blond scruff.
"I need to go to a gym," I muttered, my voice tight enough to snap. "I need protein powder. Now."
Boon shifted into park and rested a hand on my thigh. "I have some advices for you, Griff. Transitions are hard. Try to relax. Were only here for the night."
"Advice," I corrected under my breath.
When we climbed out, the cold air felt too thin. Boon stepped forward before me smiling warmly and extending a hand. "Hello, sir. It is very good to meet you," Boon said, his voice breezy and impeccably gracious.
Sam straightened slowly, as he performed a deliberate sweep of the tall, elegant man standing in his driveway. Boon’s hand remained suspended in the air while Sam tracked the line of his expensive coat and the set of his shoulders.
"So," Sam said. I’d forgotten how gravelly his voice was. "You're the one fucking my son."
My jaw locked. For a split second, even Boon’s flawless composure cracked. His polite smile faltered, his extended hand hung awkwardly as he visibly searched for a translation—or a polite response—to the crudeness of the greeting. Despite all of my warnings, Boon was entirely unprepared for it.
Before Boon could attempt a recovery, Sam let out a short, barking laugh. He ignored the hand entirely and hauled Boon into a crushing hug. I watched as Sam’s massive, pro-wrestler frame entirely enveloped my fiancé.
"Just fucking with you, man," Sam grinned, clapping Boon on the back with enough force to make his head jerk.
"Don't be such an asshole, Sam," I snapped, grabbing my overnight bag from the back seat.
Sam pulled back, his expression shifting into a mask of wounded, righteous indignation. "Maybe if I wasn’t a pariah, I’d be better socialized," he said, his tone dripping with manufactured victimhood. "But what can you expect? Your own son unfriends you on Facebook?"
"Not fucking Facebook again," I groaned, rubbing my temples.
"Stop bringing it up," Sam countered, pointing a greasy finger at me.
"Bringing it up? You just brought it up! You—"
My protest was cut short as Sam turned from Boon as if he weren’t there. He stepped forward and wrapped his heavy arms around me in a smothering bearhug. I felt my own lanky body be completely swallowed up by the solid muscle pressing in from all sides. I thought briefly of the mechanical pressure of squeeze chutes they used on cattle to sedate them before slaughter.
And just like a steer caught in that grip, my own tension involuntarily bled out of me. My shoulders loosened and my lungs filled with the scent of my father in an inescapable embrace that reminded me of exactly whose orbit I had just reentered.
"Welcome home, Junior," Sam rumbled, ruffling my hair with a massive hand.
Sam pulled back and effortlessly scooped up both of our overnight bags, completely ignoring our protests. He jerked his head toward the porch, the argument entirely forgotten as he took absolute control of our stay.
"Come on inside. Boon needs the tour."
Chapter 4: Time Capsule
Dinner was surprising—not because we ate at the kitchen table, but because instead of the flimsy paper plates Sam had stubbornly favored since my mother left, we ate off actual ceramic. It was a fact that I immediately added to my list of grievances. It proved Sam was perfectly capable of putting in the effort. He just never thought I had been worth it.
I cringed with embarrassment as I watched Boon push a pale, undercooked piece of pork chop around his plate, politely ignoring the unseasoned greens and boiled potatoes. I couldn't help but compare this bleak, tense meal to meeting Boon’s mother at Boon’s thirtieth birthday.
She’d bought out the most expensive Thai restaurant in the city for an all-night feast, inviting a massive, boisterous crowd of their friends, family, and professional colleagues. I had been there as just another one of Boon's friends back then—an acquaintance, really. I had stuffed myself on so much crab and rice noodles that my stomach hurt, but the food just kept coming—endless trays of tiny folded finger foods, succulent grilled meats and popping bottles of champagne.
What I remembered most about that night wasn't the food; it was watching Boon in his element. Seeing him laughing across the table, effortlessly wielding chopsticks, his handsome face illuminated by candlelight, surrounded by people who adored and respected him—it was the exact moment I fell for him.
That night had been warm, loud, and bursting with generosity. Here, Boon just traced the rim of his plate with silent, wary curiosity, while Sam held court. He delivered a fifteen-minute, uninterrupted monologue about how the country was going to hell because modern men hired out contractors instead of fixing their own plumbing.
Afterward, Sam led us out to the woodshop to show off his latest projects, explaining each in excruciating detail. Boon followed along, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, asking questions about joinery and grain that seemed to perfectly feed Sam’s insatiable need for an audience. It took another hour before I could feign enough exhaustion to drag Boon away.
We retreated to the narrow confines of my childhood bedroom. It was a time capsule of 2010. The walls were still taped with comic book posters. I stood by the corkboard for a long moment, tracing a finger over my old pencil sketches of hyper-muscular men in skin-tight costumes.
Looking at them now, every single hero shared a deeply suspicious, heavy-jawed resemblance to the man in the master bedroom. I sighed, turning my back on the paper evidence of my adolescent psyche, and joined Boon. We lay together on the twin mattress under a threadbare blanket, the air in the room clinging to the chill.
"I'm sorry he made you stand in a freezing garage just so he could flex over a dovetail joint," I muttered glumly. "Everything has to be this performance of how capable he is."
"It’s just stupid hetero macho bullshit," Boon whispered, his voice low. "You know that."
"It’s exhausting," I sighed, rubbing my face.
The door to the bedroom suddenly swung open without a hint of a knock.
Sam stood in the threshold, shirtless in a pair of flannel pajama pants. He leaned lazily against the doorframe, scratching at the blond fur on his chest. He’d grown thicker in the middle since I saw him last, but his still-muscular build was self-evident. Beneath the soft fabric of his pajamas, there was an obvious, heavy heft that he made absolutely no effort to conceal.
"You ladies need anything before I turn in?" he rumbled. There was a mocking glint in his blue eyes. "Maybe some warm milk?"
"Dad, that’s homophobic," I snapped,pulling the quilt to my chest.
Sam let out a short, dismissive laugh. "I don’t have a homophobic bone in my body, Junior. In fact, I have a theory about evolution—about surplus sexual need and how the tribe—"
"No, no, Dad, stop," I cut him off, raising a hand. "If I have to hear one of your 'theories' right now, I’ll be too irritated to sleep. Just go to bed."
Sam shrugged, entirely unbothered. "Suit yourself." He pulled the door shut with a heavy click.
Boon let out a long breath, shifting closer to me. "See?" he whispered. "It’s not that bad. He’s okay with his son having his boyfriend sleep in his bed with him. And," Boon added, a low, playful tone entering his voice, "there is a little thrill to it, yes? Being in your childhood bed with your hot fiancé, knowing your father is right there on the other side of the wall?"
I shifted to lie flat on my back. "I hate to break it to you, but you're not the first guy to be in this bed, Boon."
The bed creaked as Boon propped himself up on one elbow, his dark eyes instantly sharp. The playful teasing was replaced by focused curiosity. "Oh? So there was someone else in this small bed? Before me?"
"There was," I muttered, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
"A scandal," Boon prompted, his voice a conspiratorial velvet. "I want the history of this room, Griff. Who was he?"
I closed my eyes. The memory of the boy who had been a ghost in my life for the last thirteen years rose up to meet me.
"His name was Jake," I said quietly.
Chapter 5: The Inches Between
I stared up at the ceiling, retracing the plaster cracks I knew so well I could draw them from memory.
"We were friends," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Senior year. He lived on the even wronger side of the tracks. Natural jock—you know the type. But… rough. His home life was a disaster. It made living with Sam look like a sitcom."
Boon shifted. "How did you become friends?"
"We were just in school together," I said, my focus drifting. "He was so beautiful. Made it look so effortless. I could hardly look at him straight. I spent most of the year just stealing glances of him whenever I could."
I let out a quiet breath. "But one afternoon, I saw him lingering in the gym after wrestling practice. Everyone else had already cleared out. He just looked so... vulnerable. So burdened. I don't even know where I got the nerve, but I walked up to him and asked if he was okay."
"What did he say?"
"He just shook his head and said he couldn't go back. Meaning his house." I swallowed. "I didn't even think about it. I just said, 'You can crash at my place.'"
"You wanted to rescue him," Boon murmured.
"Maybe. I don’t know," I mumbled. “Anyway, we slept here, in our underwear.” I patted the mattress between us. “Then he came back a few nights later, and a few nights after that. He just kept coming back."
“Nothing ever happened, but not for lack of me wanting it. I would lie awake, listening to him breathe. In my head I’d measure the inches between our shoulders and pray the gap would magically close."
I shook my head. "Looking back, in a completely fucked-up way, Jake was a lot like Sam. The golden hair, the athleticism, even though Jake was a lot smaller—five foot seven, maybe. But it was more than that. They both had this weird, blunt sense of humor. And there was... his quiet. He walked around like he didn't actually need anyone, just like Sam did."
I yawned. "I spent my entire childhood desperately trying to earn that man's attention. So naturally, the second a guy who looked and carried himself just like Sam actually gave me the time of day, I fell for him. I was already imprinted on him."
“We’d hang out and read comic books, watch sci-fi movies, and crash together.”
"But your father did not like that," Boon guessed.
"No. Sam didn't." My jaw tightened. "One afternoon, out of nowhere, Sam told me Jake couldn’t sleep over anymore. He gave me some absolute bullshit about 'privacy'."
I let out a bitter scoff. "Like Sam ever cared about privacy. This place was his personal whorehouse half the week. I pushed back. I was so angry. I told him, 'If you can have whoever you want over, why can't I? Jake is my best friend. Isn't it my house, too?'"
I felt Boon's knee rest against mine.
"Sam just said I was just a kid, not an adult. And then… then he said, 'I wouldn't let you have a teenage girl in your bed either. If you were into girls.'"
Boon leaned in. "Ah. He knew."
"I had never told him," I said, the sting of it still raw. "I hadn't come out. But he knew. He knew I was gay, that I had this pathetic crush on Jake. ‘If you were into girls.’ It felt like he skinned me alive, the way he said it casually, and left it hanging, right there in the kitchen, just to win an argument."
"What did you do?"
"I got heated and defensive," I admitted. "I said, 'You don't have to worry about that. Jake is like you. He likes girls, not me.' And then I stormed off. I must have been pretty heated, because he actually backed off for a little bit.”
I breathed, and Boon waited.
"But then, one night, I woke up and Jake wasn't in bed.” I pushed the pieces of the memory together in a way that still didn't entirely make sense to me. "I wandered out to find him. I looked into the living room, and Jake was sitting there across from Sam. They were talking."
I remembered the strange, heavy atmosphere of the room. The stifling quiet when I approached. "Sam saw me and immediately told me to go back to bed. I refused. I wasn't going to let him kick Jake out. But then Jake turned and looked at me. It was this look, like... 'Go. I got this.' So, I went back to the room. I don’t know how I fell asleep, but I did. The next morning, I asked him what happened."
"And?" Boon asked softly.
"Jake said Sam had just asked him about his home life. Said they worked it out, and Sam agreed he could have three sleepovers a week. No more than that."
"A negotiation," Boon noted gently.
"I guess," I sighed. "But things were different after that. Whatever Sam said worked. Jake pulled away. He seemed less interested in me, more distant. The differences between us just magnified. Suddenly I was just the weird art kid again, and he was the roughed-up, beautiful jock. Sam made it so the gap between us just got too wide to cross."
I swallowed hard.
"I just focused on school. It was hard, after having a friend, to go back to being on my own. But I was getting out, going to college. I heard later through the grapevine that Jake had vanished. Gone up to Alaska." I let out a tired breath. "The absolute last refuge for guys who just can't cope with society. And that was it."
I turned my head, looking at my fiancé in the shadows.
"He was my best friend," I whispered. I turned to Boon, lying on his side. "And my almost-boyfriend. Until Sam ruined it. The funny thing is, he would have been a better son for Sam than I ever was.”
Boon thought about it, shifting to nudging nearer.
"Well," he murmured. "Jake’s loss, my gain."
I looked up at him. “You’re ridiculous.” But still, I smiled.
Chapter 6: Extras on the Stage
On Saturday morning, Sam didn’t ask what Boon or I wanted to do with the day. He simply marched us out to his weathered pickup for his itinerary.
We rode three astride across the cab's bench seat. With Sam driving—his broad shoulders taking up more than his fair share of the space—and Boon’s long legs folded awkwardly over the transmission hump, leaving me pressed tight against the cold glass of the passenger door. I was an afterthought in my own hometown before we even reached our first destination.
Our first stop was the local lumber yard. Sam strode through the aisles wearing heavy Carhartts and a sleeveless tee that put his thick, brawny shoulders and biceps on full display. The tiny, sun-bleached hairs of his tanned forearms caught the light along with the floating dust motes as we passed through shafts of sunlight from the high windows.
Every time a young yard hand approached to ask if we needed help, Sam would just stop and stare them down until they nervously backed away. Whenever he reached up to test the grain of a high board, he flashed a tuft of blond pit hair—like he was marking the territory.
There were bulls in china shops, and then there was Sam: a bull in a lumberyard.
At the front desk, Sam leaned against the counter on one elbow, shaking his head at the printed invoice like it was a personal insult.
“It’s just lumber prices, Sam,” the yard manager sighed, wiping his hands on a rag. “I’m just passing on the costs.”
Sam let out a sharp, mocking smirk. “Gee, thanks. But do me a favor. Next time, I like a reach-around when I’m getting fucked.”
The manager didn't even blink. “Shut the fuck up, Sam. See you for poker on Thursday.”
I cringed, acutely aware of Boon standing beside me. It was humiliating for my fiancé to see this—the crude reality of where I came from. Especially after Boon’s own mother had been the picture of class and generosity at our introduction.
But before I could even process the embarrassment, Sam pivoted slightly to face the cashier—a young girl with mousy hair in a scrunchie. She was just barely pretty, but Sam turned on the charm, treating her like she was Miss America. He leaned on one elbow, shifting his heavy torso toward her, offering a slow grin and a smooth, “Thank you, darling,” as he took his receipt, leaving the girl caught somewhere between flattered and completely embarrassed.
Sam sauntered out into the freezing parking lot with a massive oak beam balanced on his shoulder, showing everyone who cared to look that he still had the strongest back in town.
Sam next pulled into the gravel lot of a faded diner—his usual. There had been no question of where I might want to eat.
As we slid into a vinyl booth, I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater. The diner lighting caught the intricate ink wrapping around my forearms—blooming dahlias on one side, weaving chanterelle mushrooms on the other.
Sam’s eyes dropped to the ink. "So. Flowers?"
"Yup," I said. I planted my elbows squarely on the laminate table, forearms raised, forcing the artwork directly into my father's line of sight.
"I don’t judge," Sam shrugged. He reached up with a meaty hand and lazily scratched his own ribs, his bicep flexing deliberately with the movement. “You got your canvas. I got mine.”
To me, the unspoken message was loud and clear: I build muscle. You draw flowers.
Boon tried to intervene. “Griff was so tough getting inked. He barely winced. You should have seen it, Sam. One sitting per arm.”
I silently remembered my fingers clenched white around the armrest, sweating through my shirt, my breathing shallow as I refused to show a single ounce of pain to the tattoo artist. I’d learned early not to reveal myself, and especially not to show weakness.
Sam smirked. He grabbed the hem of his tight shirt and lifted it a few inches, exposing a pale line cutting through the thick muscle of his lower abs.
“Ever see my appendectomy scar?” he challenged. His voice boomed over the clatter of the diner. “Now that was pain.”
“Dad, I was there,” I sighed, dropping my arms back down.
Sam leaned forward, eager for the spotlight. “Most guys would be on the floor crying for their mommies. Felt like a hot knife in my gut, but I popped a couple of aspirin. Drove my own damn self to the ER. Doc said the thing ruptured as I walked through the sliding doors. Said he'd never seen a man stay on his feet through that.”
“Dad. I was there,” I repeated, my voice sharp enough to cut glass. “You were in the fetal position, crying on the floor. Enough.”
Boon jumped back in, paddling like a kid who didn’t realize he’d drifted into the deep end. “Junior’s graphic novel is doing really well. Selling a lot of copies.”
Junior?
I shot my Boon a deadly glare. “Don’t you start calling me that.”
I went by Griff in my daily life—with my friends, and on the covers of my books.
Sam puffed his chest up. “Samuel Ulysses Griffin Junior. I gave you my name.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s stupid to name your kid for yourself instead of letting them have their own identity.” I stopped just short of saying it was the height of stupid, narcissistic vanity.
“You know, I’ve got an idea for one of your comic books,” Sam offered, entirely unprompted, leaning heavily on his elbows. “At the lumber yard, there’s this massive stack of timber perched on a high shelf. It tips over. I catch it just in time—save two pretty girls from getting crushed. Retro, you know? Like those old Charles Atlas ‘Hero of the Beach’ ads.”
Sam seemed to flex his bare arms reflexively, openly admiring the imaginary artwork in his own head.
“That’s not my style,” I said flatly.
“It could be,” Sam countered, acting as if he’d just discovered the wheel.
The waitress arrived, dropping our plates onto the table. I looked down at my sad, wilted excuse for a Greek salad, which Sam had already scoffed at as "rabbit food" when we ordered. Across the table, Sam bit into a fat roast beef sandwich, consuming it as readily as he consumed all the oxygen in the room.
I glanced over at Boon, my eyes silently pleading across the table. I want to be somewhere softer. Somewhere where people don’t talk like this. Where Drag Race is running on TV, and rice noodles are steaming in bowls on our table. Where my graphic novel is on bookstore shelves under my own name, and I can just sleep in my own bed.
Boon chewed his food thoughtfully and just blinked back, his dark eyes calm.
Looking at Boon’s blank, pleasant expression, I felt a hollow inking in my chest. I wondered if something vital was getting permanently lost in translation
Chapter 7: Sweet as Cake
The tension from the day’s errands followed us back to the house, settling like a dark cloud over the kitchen table. Sam grilled steaks, and we ate in an awkward silence, punctuated by the scrape of knives against ceramic plates.
Boon, ever the diplomat, tried to fill the gap. “My mother has very high expectations,” he offered with a polite chuckle. “If I brought home anything but perfect marks, she treated it as a profound personal insult.”
Sam chewed his steak slowly, his eyes tracking across the table to lock onto my fiancé, completely ignoring the olive branch.
"What kind of name is Boon, anyway?" he asked, his jaw working.
I stiffened. "It's Thai," I said, trying to cut off whatever fight he was itching to pick.
Sam didn't even look at me, keeping his eyes fixed on Boon. "I know that, Junior. I’m asking what it means."
“That’s not what you said—” I began, but Boon went with the flow.
"It is short for Boon-Nam," he answered, his voice even and polite. "It means good fortune."
Sam chewed on that. I could see the predatory spark lighting up his blue eyes as he rested his heavy elbows on the table. "Let me ask you something, Boon-Nam—"
"Boon, please," Boon interrupted, offering a firm but pleasant smile.
"I don't think so," Sam countered, his voice dropping to a more gravelly rumble. "I like Boon-Nam. It's... lyrical."
"I prefer Boon," Boon insisted, polite but firm.
SMACK!
Sam’s heavy palm suddenly hit the table hard enough to rattle the silverware and to make both Boon and me flinch.
"Don't try to big dog me in my own house, son," Sam warned, leaning in. He held Boon’s gaze for an excruciating moment, establishing absolute dominance, and pivoted smoothly to one of his well-worn grievances. "Now, Boon-Nam. Are you friends with your parents on Facebook?"
"Jesus Christ," I groaned, dropping my fork.
Boon didn't blink. "I am. But I have a different kind of relationship with my parents."
Sam’s brow furrowed, instantly offended. "Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"We’re not here to argue about fucking Facebook, Sam," I cut in, my blood pressure spiking. "Just let it go."
"Oh, spare me," Sam snapped, throwing his hands up in a gesture of exaggerated martyrdom. "What are you punishing me for anyway, Junior? Politics? Is that what this is? Because I don't vote the way your little city friends do?"
“I’m not punishing you! I—”
Boon raised a hand. "If you could both just—"
"SHUT UP, BOON!" Sam and I snapped at the exact same time, a perfectly synchronized father-and-son duet.
Boon closed his mouth. His dark eyes flickered between the mirrored reflection of the father in the son.
I leaned forward, my knuckles going white against the table. "This is why," I breathed, my voice as tight as a knot being pulled closed. "This right here. You make every single thing about yourself. You are such a narcissist."
Sam rolled his eyes and let out a loud, theatrical groan. "What pussy shit is this? 'Narcissist.' You kids and your therapy words. I didn't raise you like this."
"You didn't raise me at all!" I shouted. "I raised myself! You don't even know me!"
Sam turned to Boon, throwing his arms wide in mock defeat. "Wow. What a shitty dad I am. Boon, you’re so lucky to have my prince of a son. Never does anything wrong! Always the victim!"
"Leave Boon out of this," I hissed. "You already—"
I stopped. The words caught in my throat. I felt the ground drop out from under me; I had walked blindly right into the trap.
Sam’s eyes locked onto me, sharp and hungry. The anger vanished, replaced by a deep, terrifying amusement. "Already what, Junior? What did I do that was so terrible?"
"I DON’T EVEN KNOW!" I snapped, my voice cracking. "But it’s whatever you did with Jake."
Sam blinked, his thick brow furrowing in exaggerated confusion. "Jake who?"
"Jake! My best friend when I was eighteen. The only friend I had."
Sam leaned back in his chair, a slow, knowing smile spreading across his face as he casually crossed his arms across his chest. "Oh. Jake. Jake, Jake. Sweet as cake. That one."
"Yes, Dad. That one," I spat, my own chest tight. "The one you had to drive away because you couldn’t stand me having someone in my life who wasn’t you."
Sam let out a low, rough chuckle. He shook his head, looking at me not with anger, but with a profound, condescending pity.
"You got it wrong, Junior," Sam said softly, acting entirely baffled by the accusation. "If I’m so bad... why was he still coming around after high school? You weren’t even living here anymore."
The words hung in the air, heavy and toxic. I froze. Why would Jake come back?
Beside me, Boon sat perfectly still—the outsider whose English sometimes missed the nuances, but whose heart rarely did.
"It’s not what you think," Sam said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, intimate register. "Not by a long shot."
The air in the kitchen shifted. The shouting was over. Now, there was only a cavernous silence, pregnant with something unsaid.
I looked at my father across the table. I felt like a man holding a dwindling candle wick, about to drop it into a powder keg. But I couldn't stop myself. I had to know.
"Dad," I whispered, my voice stripped of all defense. "Tell me. What happened?"
Chapter 8: Win-Win
Sam unfolded, spreading a heavy arm across the top of the empty chair beside him.
"You had this kid staying over all the time," Sam began, his voice taking on a casual, conversational tone. "He had a few strikes against him, sure. Rough home life. Everyone in town knew his mother spent more time on her back than on her feet." Sam paused, letting out a low chuckle. "Hell, fun girl, but as a mother? Complete disaster. So, things could have been better for the kid, could have been worse. Hell, I had it worse when I was his age, and I turned out fine."
I watched my father, keeping my face perfectly blank. I couldn't afford to blow up the story now. I needed Sam to keep talking.
"But after a while, I started noticing things," Sam continued, lazily scratching at his chest. "I could see Jake flirting. Little things at first. He’d come wandering out of the bathroom after a shower wearing nothing but one of my towels, hung low on his waist. Kid had this peaches and cream skin, good build, just leaning against the doorframe. Gave me a look, and say, 'Good morning, Mr. Griffin. In the kitchen, he’d squeeze past me just right—his ass pressing against my johnson.”
Sam let out a snort, shaking his head at the memory. "And where were you, Junior? No idea. You had your head buried in your sketchbooks. The most oblivious kid on God’s green earth. You didn't even see your best friend putting the moves on your old man."
I didn't flinch. I waited.
"I didn't want things getting out of hand," Sam said smoothly. "Anyone could see you were head over heels for him and he was… well, I didn't want him hurting your feelings. So, I took him aside and told him he needed to make himself scarce. I told him I wanted my privacy. That I wanted to be able to walk around my own house in my skivvies without an audience."
Sam paused, a smug smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "And Jake just looks at me and says, 'I wouldn't mind that at all.'"
"And what did you say?" I asked softly, my tone deadpan, coaxing the thread further.
Sam looked at me, as if genuinely bewildered by the question. "Junior, no one has to be forced to take a free blowjob. Jakey-boy was eighteen. A legal adult. He could make his own calls. Hell, I wasn’t that much older when I made you." Sam took a pull of his beer. As he swallowed, his eyes took on a glassy gleam. "And honestly? Blond, fit... firm, but not hard. Had his mother's mouth. Believe me, I recognized the resemblance. Exactly my type, other than being a boy."
I exchanged a brief, silent glance with Boon. A displaced eighteen-year-old trading head to an older guy for a warm bed—for a couple of gay guys, it was a tale as old as time. It was profoundly fucked up that the older guy was my father—but neither Boon nor I were going to clutch our pearls over the mechanics of survival sex.
"So," Sam said, waving a hand dismissively. "He gets on his knees right there. Pulled my PJs down. And the kid was good at it. Too good. I could see right off the bat—he was a pro." Sam laughed, a crude, ugly sound that bounced off the kitchen walls. "I got off. Fast. 'Over the lips, past the gums, look out stomach—here I cum.'"
Boon didn't blink at the crassness. He just took a slow, calculated sip of his water, his dark eyes moving slowly between Sam and me and back again.
"And...?" I prompted, my voice flat.
"And nothing," Sam shrugged. "You showed up right after. Wandered out of your room in your pajamas. I told you to go back to bed. But it got me thinking. I realized if I forced the kid out permanently, you’d be pissed twenty-four-seven with your fucking teenage drama. And Jake had just sweetened the deal."
Sam smiled, deeply pleased with himself. "So, I said fine. He can stay three nights a week. Win-win. Everyone gets exactly what they want. He got sleepovers, you got Jakey-boy, and I… got that."
My mind ticked through the timeline. Back to the way Jake had pulled away. A negotiation, Boon had called it in the bedroom. And Boon had been exactly right. Jake was paying rent, and Sam was the landlord. And me? I had been left completely in the dark.
"It just had to be a secret," Sam bragged. "And it was. It was perfect. Jake could go from reading comic books with you in the bedroom to blowing me out in the woodshop in a snap. Jesus, what a mouth on that kid. I can’t even tell you how many times you almost caught us."
Sam ran a hand over the scruff of his jaw as he lived in the memory for a few seconds longer.
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the table. I stripped every ounce of emotion from my voice.
"And then what?"
Chapter 9: Mystery Solved
"One week you went off to the city for some fruity art thing," Sam continued, gesturing lazily with his steak knife. "Jake showed up out in the woodshop while I was finishing a set of cabinets. With you gone, we didn't have to rush, and he knew it. He took his time."
A weighty satisfaction settling over his features. "He was on me, with my hand on that bubble butt of his. Not the first time. But this day, he just looks back at me and says, 'Fuck me, Sam.'"
I didn't move—I barely breathed. Beside me, Boon remained perfectly still, a silent sentinel witnessing a multi-car pile-up in slow motion.
"Now, boys aren't my thing," Sam stated, offering a casual shrug as if explaining a dietary preference. "But I’m no saint. And Jake... he was a wrestler, right? Tough as nails. But then he had this skin... soft. Peaches and cream. Pink nipples. Just enough to blur the lines. He had this tight waist you could just wrap your hands around and hold onto. So, I did."
Sam took a slow sip of his beer, completely unbothered by the fact that he was describing the statutory-adjacent sodomy of my best friend.
"I pushed into him nice and slow," Sam said, a note of pride in his voice. "I showed restraint, because he’s what, five seven, five foot eight? He's gonna feel every inch of it. It was my first time with a boy, and I’ll admit, I was surprised by how he took me, and how much I took to it. Felt every muscle lock and clench. And Jake got off, too. Always did." Sam let out a low, breathy laugh. "God, what a slice. Just like cake."
The kitchen was dead silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator.
"So what happened after graduation?" I asked, my voice entirely hollow. I was detached from my own body, just pushing Sam toward the end of the timeline.
"You packed up and left for college," Sam said, waving his fork dismissively. "No college for Jakey-boy, though. Just shit jobs loading trucks at the lumber yard and bagging at the grocery. He’d come over after his shifts in these thin, sleeveless tees, his skin tanning gold from working out in the sun. And still the best lips in town."
Sam dragged his steak knife across his empty plate, the metal scraping against the ceramic.
"So he kept coming around," Sam continued. "He loved getting fucked, and I loved fucking. No secret there. Plus," Sam offered a satisfied, unapologetic grin, "a boy never gets knocked up, no matter how many times you bust in him. So there’s that. It was easy."
Sam paused, and the boastful energy drained out of him. His gaze drifted past me and Boon, fixing on an empty corner of the kitchen.
"It was nice, actually," Sam murmured. "Having him around. He’d just sit out there in the shop while I worked. Didn't need to talk my ear off or make everything complicated. Just... good company. He was a good kid."
Sam paused, and a sudden, irritable flex of his jaw twitched.
"But then things got... complicated," he muttered, a rankling resentment bleeding into his voice. "He had this way of looking at me. Like he knew exactly what he was doing to me. It drove me crazy. Pissed me off, honestly."
Sam’s broad chest heaved as he let out a harsh scoff.
"And he knew why," Sam admitted, his grip tightening on his glass. "I’d stopped closing my eyes to think about girls when I was doing it. And he knew it. Like he thought he had me on a leash. A damn eighteen-year-old kid."
Sam pushed his plate away, abandoning the last bloody remnants of his steak.
"He started leaving his clothes in your room. Started making my coffee in the mornings. Then he started making noise about moving in permanently," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "I got it—he came from a troubled home, wanted a way out, and saw me as the ticket. Just like your mother. And we know how that turned out."
Sam shook his head, looking almost disappointed in Jake’s failure to understand who was really in charge.
"Right when I finally had my house to myself. I wasn't about to be tied down to a girl again, and I sure as hell wasn't going to be tied down to a boy who thought he had my number. No one puts a collar on me. I didn't even have to spell it out. Jake wasn't stupid. He saw what was up. He realized I wasn't going to play house with him, leash or no leash."
Sam paused, his gaze drifting away from me and Boon, settling on the dark windowpane that looked out over the thinning trees.
"So, he just up and took off," Sam murmured. "Didn't even tell me where he was going."
The hand holding his steak knife was suddenly completely still.
"I didn't find out until a couple weeks later. I was down at the bar, and some loudmouth thought it was funny to crack wise. Told the whole room Jake took off for Alaska, and said he probably blew every trucker from here to Anchorage to pay for the ride."
Sam’s voice remained perfectly level, conversational even, but the knuckles of the hand gripping the knife turned white. A tight muscle worked in his jaw.
"I didn't make a scene inside. I just sat there, finished my beer, and waited for him to walk out to his truck. Got him in the gravel alley out back in the dark." Sam’s breathing had grown shallower, his broad chest rising and falling heavily. "Beat him until his jaw felt like a bag of marbles. They had to wire it shut for six weeks. Didn’t talk so smart then."
He let out a crude, satisfied snort. "I mean, I was done with the boy. Obviously. But it's the principle of the thing."
I stared at him, feeling woozy. Underneath the table, I felt Boon’s hand pressing onto my knee, anchoring me to the present.
I knew Sam. I knew the words were a rationalization, to frame the assault as a simple matter of territory and manly pride. But his body language—the white-knuckled grip, the refusal to make eye contact—told the real story.
Sam had beaten that man in the dark not for principle, but because it was the only socially acceptable way for a man like him to grieve. And it had been for Jake—a more true grief than Sam had ever shown over my own distance.
I had moved away, stopped calling, and completely withdrawn from my father's life, and Sam hadn't even blinked. But for Jake, he’d broken a man's jaw.
Sam blinked, pulling himself back to the present, his mask snapping back into place. He looked up at me, offering a casual, empty smile.
"And that’s what happened," Sam concluded, wiping his hands. "Mystery solved."
Chapter 10: Apple, Tree
Sam pushed his chair back with a loud scrape and stood, gathering the empty plates in his huge hands. He turned toward the counter, resting the dishes in the sink with tight, deliberate control.
"You want me to believe," I said, my voice tight as I stared at my father’s broad back, "that my best friend was in love with you?"
"Love, lust, what the fuck ever," Sam answered, turning around and resting his heavy hands on the edge of the sink. "He liked what I was giving him, and he didn't want to leave."
"You are such a goddamn narcissist," I spat, the sheer, suffocating gravity of his ego making me sick. “He didn’t love you. He was a teenager trying to survive. And you knew—you knew exactly how I felt about him!”
Even fourteen years later, the admission made the back of my neck burn.
Sam picked up two bright red apples from a bowl. Without warning, he whipped one across the room.
I flinched, catching the apple against my chest with a hard smack.
"Apple doesn't fall far, Junior," Sam said, his voice dropping into a hard, unforgiving gravel. "Not everything is about you."
"Don't you dare pretend you were hiding it for my benefit," I shot back, my fingers digging into the waxy skin of the fruit. "You’ve never done a single thing for my benefit in your life."
Sam lifted the remaining apple to his mouth and took a massive, crunching bite. He chewed, sucking the sweet juice in audibly over his teeth. He wiped his chin with the back of his thumb, leveling a dark look at me.
"Don't believe me?" Sam asked. He pointed across the table with his jaw, still mulching the apple. "Ask Boon-Nam over here."
Boon blinked, his posture stiffening. "Me? I was not part of any of this."
"No," Sam agreed, swallowing loudly. "But you've been eyeing me up since you got out of that car, haven't you, boy?” He turned to me, a cruel glint in his eye. “And I didn’t lay a finger on him."
My stomach plummeted through the floorboards. I whipped my head around to stare at my fiancé. "Boon?"
Boon held his hands up, palms open. "I have not done anything," he said, his voice entirely calm—which meant it was technically accurate. "But if I am honest... there is an attraction. Yes."
I threw my hands up in the air, a lunatic, breathless laugh erupting from my throat. "Great. Perfect! That is the fucking cherry on top."
Sam’s chest puffed out, deeply satisfied. "See? Oblivious as fuck."
"Hold on," Boon cut in, his voice cracking like a whip.
Sam paused, surprised by the interruption. He leaned back against the sink, shifting his weight just so to keep his chest and arms on full display. "You saying you don't want some of this?"
"I am saying yes, I am attracted to you," Boon said, his tone incredibly precise, treating the admission like a clinical fact. "But so what? Of course I am. You look exactly like the man I love."
I scowled, deeply offended. "We are nothing alike."
Boon turned to me, and then back to Sam. "Not obviously, no. Griff is darker. Slimmer. But it is the same nose. The same laugh. The exact same set of his eyebrows when he is thinking." Boon gestured casually at Sam. "You are simply him—plus twenty years and fifty pounds of muscle."
"HEY!" snapped both Sam and I at the exact same time, a perfect, pathetic synchronization of wounded vanity.
Boon’s dark eyes locked firmly onto Sam again. "Yes, I am attracted to you, because I am attracted to your son. And honestly, looking at you, I am simply looking at the blueprint. I will have the hottest husband in town when he is fifty."
Sam let out a low, rumbling chuckle, his massive ego successfully stroked despite the jab. "Glad you see it that way, Boon-Nam—"
"Sam." Boon cut him off again. This time, the polite, gracious deference was entirely gone. "Your son is not a boy. He is a man. He is the smartest, funniest, most decent man I know. Not that I have seen much of that since we arrived here, to be honest. But how he turned out this way with you as a father is an absolute mystery."
Sam stopped chewing.
"If you want us to stay in this house and not walk out that door this minute and never return,” Boon continued, his words slow and careful, but lethal, “you will stop treating us like this. Now."
For a long, impossibly tense second, Sam just stared at him. Then his blue eyes narrowed in a cool, appraising look. He could see that his hamfisted bullying wasn't going to work on the man sitting across the table. Sam respected power, and Boon had just laid his bare on the laminate.
"Alright," Sam murmured, shifting his weight as he recalibrated his entire approach. "Let's try again."
The fight suddenly seeped out of my bones, leaving me entirely hollowed out. My brain began replaying the history of my life in this house with the agonizing new knowledge of my exclusion.
"My father and my best friend," I muttered, staring at the surface of the table. "I was sitting in the next room sketching superheroes while you two were out in the woodshop..." It was impossible to stop the imagery. A dirty, grainy movie reel started playing on a continuous loop in my head—Sam’s hips driving into Jake, sweating, shuddering with his release in the boy I thought I loved. "God, what a fucking fool I was."
Sam leaned forward, dropping his heavy forearms onto the back of a chair. "Out of everything I just told you, that's what you got out of it? And you say I'm the narcissist?"
I just shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut against the headache blooming behind them.
"Sam, if you think that age gap is the most fucked up thing I've ever heard... you have no idea," I said, finding my footing in the dark. "I'm a thirty-two-year-old gay man. I have friends who’ve had survival sex. It didn’t ruin them. I've seen age gaps. I’ve been in them. I was fucking men older than you when I was barely eighteen myself."
I glared at my father, throwing the ugly, Freudian truth directly into his face. "And most of them looked exactly like you, or as close as I could get."
Sam didn't speak, but a muscle jumped beneath the blond scruff of his cheek. He was a master at protecting his own ego. He forced the gathering tension out of his shoulders.
"Well," Sam said, his voice a fraction too stiff. "If everyone's an adult, I don't judge.” A beat passed, the tangled knot of my confession coming undone. “You coulda said something, Junior."
"What was I supposed to say?" I demanded, the sheer exhaustion overtaking me. "’Hey Dad, pass the salt, and by the way, I have a recurring dream where you pin me to the workbench?’"
"You think there aren't dads and sons having threeways with girls in a small town like this?" Sam offered, retreating to his crude, folksy pragmatism.
"I didn't want a GIRL!" I shouted, surging forward in my chair. "I wanted—"
I clamped my mouth shut, my teeth snapping together. For the second time that night, I'd walked straight into a trap of my own making. I didn't want a girl. I wanted Jake. But more, and more plainly, I wanted the man Jake had chosen.
Sam looked at me, his blue eyes unreadable. He slowly turned his heavy head to look over at Boon, who in turn was watching me.
"Well," Sam observed, folding one thick forearm over the other. "There's no girl here now."
I froze. My lungs stopped working.
Sam’s gaze swept slowly, deliberately, between us. "And there's not a limp dick in this house right now, either."
My face went hot. My eyes darted from my father’s eyes to Boon’s and back. He was actually suggesting it. And Boon... Boon wasn't shutting it down. Boon was just watching me, entirely willing to follow me into the dark if that was what I wanted.
The weight of how deeply the most fucked up part of my brain wanted to say yes shattered whatever adult composure I had left.
My body acted before my mouth could form a word. I threw my hands up in the air, pushing back from the table so violently the wooden chair tipped over, crashing loudly onto the hardwood floor.
"I'm going to my room," I shouted, my voice cracking humiliatingly down the middle.
I turned and stomped down the narrow hallway, retreating into the faded walls of my childhood bedroom, feeling exactly like the angry, powerless teenager I swore I had left behind.
Chapter 11: Same Same, But Different
I lay flat on my back, staring blindly at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. The faded posters of comic book heroes looked on like a musclebound Greek chorus, seeing me stripped bare. Sam had once skinned me alive in that same kitchen, but this time I did it to myself, with my fiancé watching—laying my most Freudian tangled knots out on the table for everyone to see.
The door clicked shut. The mattress dipped as Boon crawled onto the bed, smoothly straddling my hips, his slight weight physically anchoring me. He planted his hands on either side of my head, but I turned away, my eyes unfocused, my chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.
"It wasn't always like this," I whispered. "When I was a kid... he was so beautiful to me. He was like the sun, and I just wanted him to shine on me. I wanted his approval. His warmth."
Boon didn't move, just kept his weight on me, listening in the dim light.
"And then I got older, and things got more complicated," I continued. "I started to realize there was this other side of him. He'd have his girls over... right on the other side of this wall." I reached up and rapped my knuckles against the headboard. "And I'd hear them. The headboard knocking. Knowing it was his body doing the things that made them scream. The way they'd laugh together afterward—he sounded happy. Generous, even. I understood that there was this whole other side of Sam I didn’t know—that he’d show to any stranger he’d kick out the next morning. But not me. It was for anyone in the whole world but me."
I took a shaky breath. "I'm sorry. My feelings are all twisted up. I don't want you to hate me. Or think I'm gross."
"Look at me," Boon ordered gently. When I finally opened my eyes, his expression was void of judgment. "I do not hate you. And you are not gross. Griff, your feelings about your dad and your friend might be complicated, but it is common as fuck. There are entire porn categories dedicated to that very scenario.”
“Boon—”
"I am serious," he interrupted, pinning me down more firmly. "When you’re a gay kid, drowning alone in puberty and attractions that you can't even talk about to anyone—it is not so crazy that your wires get a little crossed, and you get turned on by the only hyper-masculine man in your orbit. Especially when that man walks around the house looking like… that." Boon gestured toward the locked door, then offered a faint, unapologetic smirk. "I mean, look at him. Objectively? I would."
I rolled my eyes, the suffocating tension in my chest finally starting to crack.
"But you need to understand something," Boon added, his voice losing its teasing lilt. He traced the line of my cheekbone. "You are mourning a fantasy, Griff. You wanted a man who you thought built things and protected his family. But the man out there? He doesn't love people. He consumes them. He consumed your mother. He consumed your best friend. He would have hollowed you out, too, if you’d let him."
Boon leaned in, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "You didn't miss out on his warmth. You escaped the fire. You’re the one who got out whole. And you are building a beautiful life for yourself. With me."
I let my head drop back against the mattress. "Do you really think I’m like him?"
“Darker,” Boon whispered. “Thinner. Hotter.” A startled laugh escaped me, breaking the last of the heavy tension. “And maybe a sliver of narcissism. But the creative, protective man—that’s you, not him. Same same, but different.”
I stared up at Boon, desperate to believe him. I wanted to be the one who got out whole, but I also craved the terrifying validation that I was a sharper, evolved version of my father. The idea that I had inherited a fraction of Sam's ruthless appeal and power—that it was actually inside me—was both disturbing and deeply intoxicating.
"Just do me one favor," Boon murmured, resting his chin on my chest as the tension finally bled out of the room. "Save a little bit of the crazy for the wedding, yes? I can only manage one insane Griffin at a time."
Chapter 12: Thump Thump
Boon inched forward to catch my mouth in a kiss—soft at first, then hungry and breathy, like he was trying to make up for lost time. My hands roamed to the hem of his shirt, shoving the fabric up to his collarbone so I could drag my palm across the hot skin of his chest, grazing a dark nipple.
Boon let out a low groan.
Through the denim, I could feel how hard he was. I grabbed his hips, yanking him down until we were pressed together, grinding in a way that felt both juvenile and necessary. For a second, I wondered if it was possible to actually die of want.
Boon drove his hips forward again, pressing me into the mattress, and the bedsprings let out a creak that was definitely not subtle. The headboard rattled against the wall.
Thump.
Thump. Thump.
"Shhh," I whispered.
Boon paused, lips shining in the dark. A slow, mischievous grin took over his face. He shifted his grip, reaching for the headboard, and rammed the mattress back with a deliberate, obnoxious Thump.
Thump. Thump.
Thump-Thump.
“What are you doing?” I asked, halfway between a laugh and a gasp, and not at all as in control as I wanted to sound.
Boon’s eyes glinted. "Giving him a little bit of his own medicine."
He drove his hips again, this time harder, the bed pounding the wall in a rhythm I’d spent years of my adolescence desperately trying to ignore.
Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump.
We barely had time to enjoy it before the inevitable came bellowing through the wall.
From the other side, a fist hit the plaster.
"I CAN HEAR YOU IN THERE!" Sam’s voice boomed, like some deranged referee.
Without missing a beat, Boon and I yelled, perfectly in sync: "GOOD!"
I started laughing—the kind of sound you only make when you’re winning a battle you never thought you’d get to fight.
Boon dropped onto me, breathless. “God, you’re so hot,” he said. Without even looking, he fished for his dopp bag on the nightstand. “I brought lube. And poppers.”
Of course he did. The man doesn’t travel without a packing list.
He dropped the bag, hands already on my belt. He yanked it loose and tossed it somewhere into the dark, where the metal buckle clattered.
We didn’t bother breaking the kiss as clothes started to come off, less like a movie and more like a frantic, slightly clumsy wrestling match. I kicked off my sneakers so they hit the floor with a soft thud, toeing off my socks.
Boon shoved my jeans down past my hips, and then he was moving down the bed, his face level with my dick. There was a second I thought the comic book heroes on the wall, all square jaws and impossible shoulders, looked down, gasping.
He took me into his mouth—no buildup, no drama, just Boon, efficient as always. My hips jerked up, my hand in his hair. There’s no dignified way to get head in your childhood bed, especially not when he did the thing—the rhythmic, wet gunk, gunk, gunk of his throat.
“Boon…” I managed as the obscene sound of Boon at work filled the quiet room..
The rising rhythm was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. Before we could react, the door swung open, and a wide slice of harsh hallway light cut straight across the bed, leaving me squinting and exposed.
Boon paused, barely, and turned his head. He looked at Sam like he was just another part of the scenery—nothing to hide, nothing to apologize for.
Sam stood in the doorway, filling the frame. Shirtless,navy sweatpants hanging so low it was almost a challenge. All that blond fur and smirk and muscle, the thick cut of his V-line on full display—looking like the world’s most inappropriate bouncer.
Boon just went back to it—burying my cock in his throat, not a hint of shame, relentless. Gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk. I clutched the bedsheet, spine arching off the bed, every muscle in my body gone electric.
Sam cocked his head, eyebrow up, tracking the rhythm of Boon’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed me again and again.
"God damn," Sam rumbled, and I’d swearI could feel envy from across the room. The man had less shame than a golden retriever.
Boon finally pulled off with a wet slurp. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand. He didn't look like a man caught in an embarrassing act; he looked like a man who had just won.
Sam leaned an elbow against the doorjamb, resting his weight on it. A slow, unapologetic smirk spread across his face as his gaze raked over my open jeans, my glistening, throbbing erection and Boon’s wet mouth.
"This a private party," he asked, voice low and predatory, "or can anyone join?"
Some families pass down heirlooms. Mine passes down awkward sexual encounters and a total lack of boundaries. At least I know where I come from.
Chapter 13: The Call
Sam pushed off the doorframe, his barefoot strides silent on the hardwood as he stepped into the dim bedroom. He stopped at the very edge of the mattress, hands going straight to the waistband of his sweatpants. His smirk stretched into something arrogant and crude as he yanked the front out.
"Thought you ladies were never gonna—"
"None of that," Boon snapped, voice like a whip.
Sam stood there, fabric bunched in his fists, his heavy cock resting against the stretched navy material like some weird hammock. He scowled, ego visibly bristling at the tone. "Oh, come on. Don’t be so sensitive."
Boon pulled back from me, sitting back on his heels, hands resting on his knees. He looked Sam up and down with the cool, unshakeable confidence of someone who’s always been sure of his parents’ love, however exacting—never afraid of a bully.
"I think your sex life’s been thin lately," Boon said softly, dropping the bomb with surgical precision. "It’s a small town. You’ve been scraping the underside of the barrel."
"Bottom," I murmured. "Scraping the bottom."
"Scraping the bottom of the barrel," Boon corrected seamlessly, not blinking. His dark eyes never left Sam's face. "The low-hanging fruit has all been picked clean. You're in your mid-fifties—"
"Early fifties," Sam snapped defensively, his chest puffing out like a prizefighter.
"Mid-fifties," Boon resumed, steamrolling right over the correction. "And you’re checking out women that you wouldn't have even looked twice at a few years ago."
"Everyone hits a dry patch," Sam muttered, shifting his weight. He let the waistband snap back, the heavy weight of his erection fiercely tenting the material.
"Everyone hits a dry patch," Sam muttered, shifting his weight. He let the waistband snap back, the heavy weight of his erection fiercely tenting the material.
Despite my exposed erection and the ridiculous scenario, I couldn't stop the flash of inappropriate pride swelling in my chest—at my elegant, handsome fiancé, half-dressed on my childhood bed, casually dismantling the untouchable Sam Griffin.
For the very first time, I noticed a scattering of wiry silver hairs threading through the blond fur that accentuated my father's chest. The thick pecs beneath them were still solid, the arms still capable of hauling eighty-pound oak beams, but the god of my adolescence was cracking. Sam was an aging man in an empty house, starving for touch.
"You're horny as hell," Boon continued, mercilessly laying out the reality of the situation. "Your hips are twitching like a dog about to hump the couch. And we are not desperate eighteen-year-old kids looking for a place to sleep. We know exactly what we're doing. So, if you're in, you are treating us with respect."
Sam stared at Boon. The internal struggle played out across his rugged face in real time—his massive ego fighting desperately against his overwhelming physical need. He was trying to figure out how to get exactly what he wanted without losing face, his heavy jaw working as he calculated the angles.
Finally, he let out a defeated sigh. His bull shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.
"Okay," Sam grumbled, his voice low and gravelly. "But you gotta do that thing."
Boon didn't answer immediately. He didn't even look at Sam. Instead, he looked down at me. He wasn't going to make this call.
"Your room, Griff," Boon murmured softly, the weight of the question hanging explicitly in the air. "Your call."
I looked at the hulking, demanding man beside my bed. The father who had haunted my adolescence, the man who had always consumed all the oxygen and dictated all the rules, was now standing right there, waiting for my permission.
I looked back up at Boon, my heart pounding like it was trying to escape my ribs.
"Yeah," I whispered, a reckless thrill spiking through my chest. "Let him in."
Boon didn't say a word. He just closed his hand into a fist and extended it toward me. It was his thing—the ridiculous, grounding fist bump that usually signaled an end to an argument or a shared victory.
I reached out, my knuckles meeting his with a soft, solid thud. The deal was sealed.
The second our hands dropped, Sam grabbed the waistband of his sweatpants and shoved them down his hips with an eager, clumsy urgency. He kicked his feet free, picked up the navy fabric, and tossed it blindly over his shoulder.
He stood there, completely bare and unapologetically, fully aroused. His cock stood at attention, thick and veiny, uncut and bobbing with its own weight.
He let out a rough, giddy chuckle. "Fuckin' finally. Thought I was gonna have to finish myself off in the hallway."
It wasn't the most evolved emotional response, I knew. But looking from my father's genuine grin to the thick dick and the big, blond furred thighs, all I could think was you gotta have realistic expectations.
Chapter 14: Liquid Courage
Boon peeled off his shirt, tossing it to the floor and shimmied out of his jeans. I kicked the last of my pants off, flicked my boxers away, and we were down to skin.
Sam climbed up onto the mattress. The old bedsprings wailed under all our weight. Three men in a twin bed—one of them built like an aging pro wrestler. If there was a punchline, I didn’t want to hear it.
Sam’s shoulders swallowed half the available space. Every shift made the frame groan and forced us to knock knees and elbows, as if we were all starring in some x-rated slapstick routine. He palmed Boon’s bare ass, dragging him closer, then caught my waist in a grip that didn’t ask permission. At the dead center: three erections, bobbing together.
"Welcome to the party," I said, shooting for casual, landing somewhere in the neighborhood of bashful.
Sam grinned, a flash of white teeth. "About damn time," he said with a filthy grin.
He twisted and turned between us, claiming space against the wall, dropping with a loud THUMP. He sat propped with his back against the wall, thighs splayed, cock standing at attention like a thick, veiny monument.
The comic book heroes taped above the bed looked down in wide-eyed horror. Or maybe that was just me, projecting. I’m not always the most reliable narrator of my own life.
Boon glanced at me, eyebrow up, asking a silent question. I nodded. He lowered himself, belly flat on the bed, ass up and legs hanging off the side in a spectacularly inelegant arrangement.
I hung back, pulse stuttering, as my fiancé took my father’s dick in his hand. He stroked, once, twice, then swallowed him.
Sam let out a guttural “Oh yeah,” like he’d found a winning lottery ticket—which he had.
His hand found Boon’s hair. Boon went to work, deep, as if he was proving a point to both of us. The wet, rhythmic gunk, gunk, gunk teasing the hard head and the sensitive underside of Sam’s erection, pulling the oxygen out of Sam’s lungs.
Sam’s head thunked back against the wall, as Boon took him into the tight, wet canal of his throat. The sheet in Sam’s grip stretched so tight it pulled the ends from under the mattress. His hips jerked but Boon placed a firm hand against Sam’s core, pushing him down—made him take it slow.
"Jesus H. Christ," Sam choked out, catching my eyes with a look I’d never seen before. I knelt at his side, erection jutting, hard and aching. I’d wanted for my whole life to see that look on his face—to see him undone. And now there it was, in my childhood bed, st the mercy of my beautiful fiancé. And I wasn’t threatened. I was delighted—maybe even a little smug.
The obscene wet sounds filled the room. Sam’s legs twitched, heels drumming the mattress. Boon, ever the overachiever, tried to take him all, but there was a stubborn half-inch left. Drool and spit, collecting at the base, just out of reach—like proof that even Boon had limits.
Suddenly, Boon pulled off, gasping, teary eyed. He was flushed, but determined.He grabbed his dopp bag from the nightstand, rooting around for something. Out came a tiny brown bottle.
Boon uncapped it, held it up to his nose and inhaled through one nostril. He handed it over to me. Sam blinking, dazed. "What's that?" he managed, breathless.
"Liquid courage,” I smirked—because why not add one more bad decision to the pile.
Boon ducked down, throat relaxed. And this time there was no mercy—just a brutal, wet croak as he forced Sam’s whole length down, lips pressed to the blond fur at the root. He held it there, making Sam shudder, helpless.
I uncapped the bottle, pressed the rim to Sam’s right nostril, pinching the other shut. He took a massive drag, as he’d seen Boon do—never one to back down from a challenge.
The chemical rush hit him hard. Color detonating across his chest and face mottling red. His eyes went wide, pupils swallowing the blue. His hand shot out, grabbing my hip like a drowning man grasping for a lifeline.
Between the poppers and Boon’s ironclad throat, Sam lost whatever control he had left.
"I'm gonna—" he managed, shoulders shuddering against the drywall. "I'm gonna—"
He didn’t finish the warning. His body snapped tight, hips bucking, and he let out a roar. Boon didn’t stop—he just rode it out, gulping frantically to take the load.
When the climax passed, Sam slumped, drained and loos. "Jesus," he whispered. "Jesus." Like he was trying to remember the Lord’s Prayer and failing.
Boon stayed on him, milking the last drops, hand wrapping around his own cock with that single-minded, desperate rhythm he got when he was close.
I pushed up, feet braced on either side of Sam’s thighs, standing over him, the poppers bottle still in my hand. I brought it to my nose and took a hit, twisting the cap shut with my thumb.
The rush hit me like a train: heat, sweat, that sharp chemical tang, everything going blurry and stupid for a second. My hand found my own cock, jerking hard, eyes locked on the ruined, blissed-out mess of Sam’s face and the heft of his pecs.
Boon groaned around Sam’s dick in his mouth, hips jerking. He shot—white ropes spattering the edge of the mattress. My vision swam, tracking lines of sweat and hair and muscle. I came, hips stuttering. Hot spurts landing across Sam’s chest in wet splats.
Boon finally pulled off. His face was streaked with tears, lips red. He wiped his mouth, snorted loudly, clearing his airway. He looked like he’d swum an ocean.
I stayed propped against the wall, over my father. The heady rush faded, giving way to a jarring uncertainty. There had never been a manual for being Sam Griffin’s son—but even there had been I doubted even that would have a chapter on what you say after you shoot your load onto his chest, with his dick in your fiancé’s mouth.
Sam sat slumped, looking up at me. He didn’t look angry. Not humiliated or disgusted by what I’d done. Just seeing me. Like I was a Griff, not Junior. It was almost enough to make me believe in progress.
He glanced down at the mess I’d made. He lifted a hand to run his thumb through the thickest streak of cum, where it collected at the center, and—because this was my life—brought it to his mouth and sucked it clean.
My brain short-circuited. If there was a word for that, I didn’t know it.
Sam finally spoke, voice hoarse. "Either of you guys know how to cook?"
I braced for the joke, the homophobic dig—the joke to cover the reality of what we’d done.
But all he did was take a slow breath and add, "I like some protein before round two."
As it happened, my fiancé was an amazing cook.
Chapter 15: Soft Scramble
The cool air of the hallway hit my sweat-slicked skin like ice water. It was a bracing reminder of the world outside the hot bubble of my bedroom. Sam followed—unapologetic as ever in his birthday suit, lazily cupping his balls, his barefoot strides slapping on the linoleum.
I headed straight for the sink, grabbed a glass, and downed a massive, gasping gulp of cold tap water. Boon went for the fridge. He pulled the door open, the yellow light spilling across his golden skin, the lean muscle of his chest, and those sharp, articulate abs.
"Protein," he murmured, voice still low and raspy from all that throatwork. I couldn’t decide if he was serious or just trying to sound intimidating.
He pulled out a carton of eggs and a stick of butter, but his brow furrowed as he scanned the shelves with a judgmental squint. He reached into the back, pulling out the Styrofoam clamshell holding what was left of the Greek salad I’d barely touched at the diner.
He popped the lid open, picking through wilted lettuce and stray Kalamata olives. "Mmm. Feta," he said quietly, pursing his lips at a crumble of cheese and rescuing a few sprigs of fresh dill. He nudged a plastic grocery bag aside to reveal a sad half-onion and a jar of mustard. He let out a small huff of disapproval. "This is a culinary wasteland. But we’ll make do."
Sam dragged a tall wooden stool over to the peninsula, dropping onto it and spreading his thick thighs wide. His cock was spent, chest flushed a deep, post-cum red, the scattered silver hairs catching the fluorescent light like tiny trophies. He leaned his forearms on the laminate, watching intently and unconsciously licking his lips as Boon dropped a generous knob of butter into the hot non-stick pan.
As it hissed and foamed, Boon poured in the eggs, immediately grabbing a fork to stir them in rapid, frantic circles.
"You gotta let the edges set before you start pushing it around, Boon-Nam," Sam advised, waving a heavy hand vaguely. "Otherwise, it’s just scrambled eggs. You need a wider spatula if you’re gonna flip it clean."
It was still Sam, dishing out unsolicited advice like it was going out of style, but missing the usual edge that made it bite.
"I’m making a French omelet, Sam. I have standards," Boon said smoothly, ignoring the advice completely. He kept the pan moving, tilting it by the handle and tapping the edge with his palm to roll the pale, delicate egg over itself, like he was painting a masterpiece. "But if it helps your diner-trained palate, the interior is a soft scramble. Omelette baveuse is never stuffed. The feta is already a concession."
"You're a damn food snob, Boon-Nam," Sam laughed, leaning back like he was enjoying the rare moment Boon let his guard down.
I leaned against the counter, refilling my glass, watching them half-heartedly flirt and butt heads like the oddest little family. Boon had just given Sam the blowjob of a lifetime, so naturally the boundaries were a little looser, the usual walls crumbled.
I’d braced myself for the worst. I was sure handing Sam an unearned blowjob would be the ultimate narcissist’s ego trip—that it would make him impossible, more arrogant, suffocating.
But it hadn’t. The dynamic shifted.
That constant need to be the biggest, toughest, smartest man in the room—it had bled out of him along with his cumshot back on that twin mattress. There was a loose ease to the way he sat there, naked and sticky, resting his weight on his elbow as he teased my fiancé like a kid who just got away with something.
Boon had said Sam consumed people. And he did. But right then, the looming physical presence that used to make me feel small and uncomfortable had lost its gravity. He was just a guy on a stool. A guy who’d just been taken down a peg or two in the sexiest possble way.
Boon eased the first perfect, pale-yellow eggs onto a plate. I grabbed a half-eaten loaf of sourdough, pulled a knife from the block, and sliced three thick, crusty pieces. I slid them onto the plates just as Boon turned out the second, then the third omelet in quick succession. He dotted them all with the salvaged feta and dill, passing the plates in a fluid, unspoken rhythm. I grabbed three paper towels while Boon took his seat.
He pressed his bare thigh against mine, while Sam’s knee casually knocked against my other side like a silent white flag in an awkward truce.
Sam took a bite, eyes widening like he’d just uncovered a secret weapon in the eggs. “God damn,” he muttered, shaking his head, blowing steam through his lip He tore the sourdough in half, scooped a trembling forkful of eggs onto the bread, and shoved it in without ceremony.
“You weren’t kidding,” he said around food, scraping every last buttery, feta smear like it was gold dust.
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. "Where the hell did you find this guy, Junior?"
I leaned on the counter, smirking because honestly, this was the first time I’d seen him genuinely impressed by something other than his own reflection. “Gallery opening in Seattle. He was judging the hors d'oeuvres.”
Boon, ever the straight shooter, deadpanned, “I was judging the artist. The terrible food was just a bonus.”
Sam laughed, that booming laugh that filled the kitchen like it owned the place. He gave Boon a once-over, then looked back at me with that crooked grin. “Well. Between what went down in that bedroom and this plate of eggs... you hit the jackpot, Junior.”
“I’m pretty sure you barely survived the bedroom part,” I noted, wearing my own smirk. “Your knees were shaking so hard I half expected you to kick a hole in the drywall.”
Sam snorted, nearly launching a piece of feta across the table. He gave a quiet, self-deprecating chuckle and kept eating.
“Yeah, well. You didn’t warn me he came with a hazard sticker.”
I shrugged again. “Figured you liked a challenge.”
Sam shook his head, a genuine smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“There’s a challenge, Junior. Then there’s getting slammed by a freight train in your own goddamn house.”
Boon finally looked up from his plate, wiping the corner of his mouth with a paper towel. He glanced at Sam, then cast a dark, heated look my way.
“Actually, Sam,” Boon said smoothly, his English slipping into its most precise, formal tone, “you have it backward. Your son is the one. He might look like a brooding artist, but he’s remarkably... resilient. I am simply trying to keep up.”
Sam let out a low, impressed whistle, raising an eyebrow at me as a hot flush crept up my neck.
I guess there’s something about getting head that eases a man like my father, because for the first time in my life, it didn’t feel like a competition in his eyes—just a sort of complicated respect.
I realized then, staring at the man who had cast such a long, cold shadow over my life, that the truth was actually incredibly simple. As a father, Sam Griffin was a disaster—a narcissistic black hole who consumed everything around him. But as a guy to fuck around with, shoot the shit a little too loud, and eat eggs with in the middle of the night?
He wasn't so bad. In fact, he kind of worked.
The quiet hum of the refrigerator filled the space as we scraped the last bites from our plates. It was Boon who broke the silence, looking between the two of us with a rising heat in the fluorescent light.
"So, are we going to fuck, or what?"
Sam and I slowly turned to look at each other, caught completely off guard by Boon’s sheer, matter-of-fact bluntness.
For a split second, there was just silence. Then, Sam let out a sudden, barking guffaw. I cracked right alongside him, a breathless, genuine laugh blending perfectly into my father's heavy, gravelly rumble.
Boon blinked at us, entirely unamused. "What?" he asked.
Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his chest still shaking as he chuckled. He pushed his chair back, the legs scraping against the linoleum as he stood up.
"Son, we’re gonna fuck," Sam declared, wiping his hands on a paper towel. "Kitchen's closed. My room."
Chapter 16: No Going Back
The truth was, Sam was infuriatingly, undeniably good at this. Not just the blunt mechanics, but the way he could claim the room, a body, the moment.
I watched him throw his head back, thigh spread wide as Boon’s mouth took him deep, grinding his hips upward, grunting out filthy, demanding instructions in the dim light.
"Yeah, just like that," Sam growled, his hands burying in Boon's hair. "All the way—use that fucking mouth." He made his satisfaction sound like a birthright.
When Boon pulled off, breathless, mouth slicked, I tagged in. There was no statement, no plan, just me crawling between my father’s legs, taking him in my mouth. As I sucked on his erection, Sam’s hands seamlessly shifted from Boon's head to mine, clamping onto the back of my neck to guide my rhythm.
"That's it, Junior," he rasped, hips bucking up to meet me. “Deep as you can go.”
The name didn't sting, not just then. He laughed, this loose, relieved sound.
He directed us with the same blunt, unapologetic expectation he used to order lunch at the diner—completely unashamed and entirely sure he was going to get exactly what he asked for from both of us.
And then I saw something I never expected—something I don’t think I ever believed he was capable of. Something simultaneously strong and tender.
Resting back on his heels, he held Boon tight against his chest, driving his steel hard cock straight up into my fiancé. Boon was clutching Sam's shoulders for dear life, breathless, pleading, "Right there." And Sam—my impossible, emotionally stunted father—stroked Boon’s hair, whispering, “Right there, baby?” as his hips kept a steady, relentless rhythm.
Boon answered by whimpering and nodding, clutching tighter. He took a dragging hit of the poppers, and they both lost it right then and there. Sam fucked his load into Boon, and Boon shot his out into the heated crevice between them.
I came, too, through my own lubed fingers, the release hitting like a flood.
Boon needed a breather and, in the most Boon move imaginable, ran naked down the hall to wash the omelet pan and dishes. I lay next to Sam, catching my breath, trying to get my heart to slow down. I told him about Boon's irrational terror that his mother in Bangkok would somehow know about dirty dishes he’d left in the sink.
Sam let out a rough laugh, wiping sweat from his brow. "She’s gonna know that, and not that I just rearranged his guts?"
I shrugged, staring at the ceiling. "I guess our parents all fuck us up in their own ways."
The room finally got quiet. All the frantic, nervous energy drained out, and in its place was something softer, something I’d never really let myself feel around him. I let my hands wander—mapping the muscles, the scars, the places I’d spent my whole life wanting to touch. Our cocks slid together, sticky and half-hard.
My fingers drifted down his stomach, where Boon’s cum was smeared in the blond hairs, to the pale line of his appendectomy scar. "Did this really hurt all that much?" I asked, tracing it.
Sam looked down, breathing deep. "Like a son of a bitch."
"Good," I whispered. "Down payment for fucking my fiancé, asshole."
He laughed, hard and real, his blue eyes crinkling. "Little shit."
But when the laugh faded, his voice took on a more serious tone. "You’re a good-looking kid"
I blinked, caught off guard, but I kept it together. “Narcissist much? Boon says I look like you.”
Even his compliments had that edge, like he was admiring a reflection of himself rather than me. Still, when he cupped the back of my neck and pulled me in, I went with it. The kiss was messy, but there was nothing performative about it.
When Boon came back, I watched Sam surrender in a way I never thought possible. All his bluster about it never working, being “tight as a drum back there” went out the window as Boon prepped him, patience and poppers working their magic. Sam’s shoulders dropped, ass up, eyes in a liquid courage haze as he let Boon ride him, strong and graceful. And when Sam finally, shakily took me into his mouth, it was almost too much. I wasn’t the only one learning new tricks that night.
"Mind the teeth, Sam," Boon teased, calm, even as my cock sank again and again into my father’s hot, wet mouth.
Sam pulled off, stroking me by hand, callouses scraping in the spit in a way that made my whole body jerk. "I'm a carpenter, Boon-Nam. I know how to work around the plumbing." He eyed my cock, blue eyes bright. "Damn, that's a big one, Junior."
I nudged his own heavy cock with my foot, watching a drop of precum bead at the tip. I grinned. "Apple, tree."
He grinned at the mutual flattery and got back on it.
And then, finally, there was no more banter. Just the thing we’d all been circling from the start.
I lay back, sheets bunched under me, Sam settling between my legs. He hooked my calves over his arms, bracketing my hips. He knelt, looming over me, his hard cock slicked and ready. How he didn’t just push into me. I wouldn’t have resisted if he did.
Instead he hesitated for just a second, voice low. "No coming back from this, Junior."
I looked up at the man who had cast a shadow over my entire existence, and I reached out, gripping his thick biceps. "There's nowhere I want to go back to."
He leaned forward and set his jaw. When he pushed inside me, it was—I won’t lie, it was a lot. It was Sam, and it was everything I’d ever fought against and wanted, all at once. I let him in, all the way, and as he bottomed out, leaving no room for anything in me but him, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
He rode me hard, one arm braced against the headboard for leverage , knocking out that old, familiar rhythm. THUD THUD THUD. It was the exact rhythm that had tortured me through the drywall. I’d hated it for years, but now that I was on the other side of the wall, it was the only thing in the world that made sense.
We were all so close to the edge, suspended in that agonizing, perfect space where you're desperate for the release but terrified for it to end. Boon hovered beside us, poppers in hand. He uncapped the little brown bottle and held it near Sam’s face, offering the sharp chemical rush to push him over.
Sam shook his head—not stopping his thrusts into me, not breaking eye contact. Not this time. He wanted to feel it for real, and so did I. Boon recapped the bottle.
A silent, stubborn competition settled between Sam and me—locked eyes, fighting to see who could outlast the other, who was going to break first. He slammed into me without pause. His cockhead hit my deepest nerve clusters and then dragged back over the rest. I clenched around him, the intensity of the squeeze showing in the sudden flare of his eyes.
Through gritted teeth, barely holding on, Sam looked down at me completely in his element: fucking hard. Sweat dripped from his face, landing hot on mine.
"Is this it?" he asked, the words rough in his throat. "Is this what you wanted?"
I nodded, almost too far gone for words. "Yes. Give it to me," I managed, and then I was cumming, hard, everything ripping loose. I spewed hot and thick across my own belly. His cock forced it out of me, driving harder and faster with his own final push.
Sam followed, his whole body locking up. He stiffened in me, mouth open, eyes straining to stay open, his body pumping his seed into mine.
I’d seen so many aspects of Sam in that bed that I’d suspected but never known—but seeing him like this—wide open and completely losing control, giving himself to me—he was profoundly beautiful.
Standing behind him, Boon let out a low groan, his hand working fast. He shot his load in thick, white streaks across Sam's broad, just as my father's last short thrusts pumped the last of his cum into me.
Then slowly, very slowly, he slid out. His wet, still pulsing cock dropped onto the mattress.
The air hung heavy with ragged breaths. It was done. We were spent. But as Sam and I exchanged looks in the dim light, I could feel the delirium of the night fading. The window was closing. We both knew it was now or never.
I pushed up on trembling arms, sliding between his sweat- and lube-slicked legs. My cock faltered, the last orgasm charge draining fast. I grabbed the tube of lube, slathered it over my softening length, stroking heat back into the meat.
Sam watched, intense. He hooked his thick arms under his knees, pulling his legs back to bare his rear. Boon caught the cue, moving with quiet efficiency to the bed’s end. He wrapped hands around Sam’s calves, pulling them back, opening him to me.
There was no break. No breather. We were running on fumes, knowing it wouldn’t last.
I gripped myself tight, eyes flicking from Sam’s blue gaze to his wet pucker, ringed by slick blond hair. "Come on, God damn it," I gasped, gritting my teeth.jerking myself to an erection—enough for one last job.
I lined up at his entrance, still slick from Boon’s fuck, and pushed forward.
Post-orgasm, all the stubborn fight and resistance melted from Sam. His sphincter relaxed, insides soft and warm and yielding. I slid in effortlessly, burying myself to the hilt in the loose furnace of my father’s core.
"Yeah," Sam rasped, jaw clenching.
I didn’t have stamina for long, punishing pace. Just a handful of desperate shuddering pumps, driving hips my forward with fading gasps.
Sam coached me. His free hand gripped my hip, pulling me deep into him, the other hand stroking his own semi-hard cock, tacky with lube from being inside me. "That’s it, Junior," he grunted, eyes locking mine. "Fucking give it to me, boy—finish it!"
I gasped sharp, breathless, body locking up. Beneath me, Sam grunted, his hand jerking fast before a final milky shot spilled from his semi onto his stomach. For both of us, it wasn’t clear if it was even a true orgasm or just a violent echo of the last, but I emptied what was left deep in him.
By the time I pulled out, my cock was completely soft.
I dropped to his side, my heart thudding against ribs, leaning in for a slow, exhausted kiss. Boon shifted closer, pressing to Sam’s other side, his lips finding Sam’s jaw, hand resting on my shoulder.
We untangled ourselves slowly, spreading over Sam’s mattress for some personal space, but linked in a sticky constellation of exhausted limbs.
Sam lay flat on his back, chest rising as he pulled what oxygen he could back into the room.
"God damn," he finally breathed, the sound rising like smoke into rafters.
I closed my eyes, running fingers over my flat stomach, trying to commit to memory the ache left by his cock—contented, bruised, longing all at once. "Yeah."
"You guys," he started, voice rough with exhaustion. "You guys are a lot."
Boon’s head turned from my shin, soft, sleepy chuckle escaping. "We have our moments, Sam."
I rolled my head, looking at my father. Lying there in dim light, he looked older than the mental image I carried—thicker in the middle, balder at the top, skin creased around eyes. Tragically flawed, unbearable, but utterly, devastatingly handsome.
I closed my eyes, and the three of us melted together in the dark.
Chapter 17: Unfinished Business
The morning light through the bedroom window was too bright, too early. We disentangled from each other in silence, showering under the sputtering water pressure to scrub away the sweat, the cum, and the emotional residue of the night before. I watched it swirl down the drain in a dirty spiral.
We dressed and packed, restoring order from the fever dream, the walls nearly back up as Boon and I carried our bags out in a silent finality.
Sam was standing by the porch in the brisk fifty-degree air, shirtless—because of course he was. He watched us throw our bags in the back, a steaming mug of coffee swallowed by his hand. The harsh morning sun caught the thinning gold hair on his head and the thick fur on his chest, blurring the lines between the terrifying god of my childhood and an aging, stubborn man who’d left me aching inside. And I’d returned the favor, or tried to.
"So," Sam rumbled. The morning gravel of his voice was thick in his throat. "That's it? You’re just running back to the city?"
"Got a life to get back to, Sam," I said, slamming the rear door shut.
Boon stopped, patting his coat pockets. "Forgot something." He turned back toward the house, his coat swishing, leaving us alone in the driveway.
Sam pushed off the wooden beam, closing the distance. His eyes narrowed into that familiar squint. "So your beef with me’s over?"
I let out a short, dry laugh. "I don't have a beef with you, Sam. I never really did. I just had some unfinished business."
"Then you'll friend me on Facebook," he stated, as if it were a legally binding contract.
I groaned, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "Not this again. I’m not even on Facebook. It’s for old people and conservative conspiracy theories.” I looked away at the treeline, exhaled and turned back to face him. “You shouldn’t use it either."
Sam’s jaw set. "You treat all your relationships like this, Junior?" he challenged, the old, grating edge returning to his voice. "Just cut out the people who disagree with you?"
"I have a fiancé who puts up with me. I have friends. I have a life," I shot back, my voice going dead calm. "You live alone in a house you stripped of everything comfortable. You drove Mom away, you chased off every woman who ever tried to leave a toothbrush in that bathroom, and when Jake actually wanted something real from you, you threw him away too. Between the two of us, I’m not the one who has a problem with relationships, Sam."
I might as well not have said a word.
"I see it," Sam said, smirking. "You still got the beef. Tell you what, Junior. You want to settle it? Go ahead. Punch me. Free hit." He held his heavy arms out wide, puffing his chest.
I stopped, staring at him. "I'm not going to punch you, Sam. That's not going to solve anything."
"Most guys would take the hit," Sam challenged, stepping closer, looming over me. "Most guys would want the satisfaction."
"I'm not most guys," I said firmly, reaching for the car door handle.
Sam muttered under his breath, just loud enough for the thin air to carry it, "Got that right."
My face went hot. My fingers curled. I didn't think. I pivoted on my heel, throwing my entire weight behind it, and swung.
My fist connected squarely with Sam’s heavy jaw with a sickening crack.
The impact sent him stumbling back. He hit the gravel, a flurry of dirt and dust kicking up as the mug in his had sent a dark, steaming arc of coffee splashing across the dirt. Before he could even blink, I was on top of him, straddling his thick hips, my fist coiled and ready for a second strike.
"Why are you such an asshole?" I muttered, the words barely audible. "Why are you always such a goddamn asshole?"
Sam didn't fight back. He just lay there in the driveway. His huge hands clamped down on my hips, heavy and immovable. A slow, bloody grin spread across his face, his teeth stained pink. He held me there, our bodies connecting right where we’d been joined the night before, anchoring me in his gravity one last time.
"I yam what I yam," he rasped, his eyes gleaming with a satisfied light.
The fire in me flickered and died, instantly replaced by the blinding, stinging reality of human anatomy. I scrambled off of him, shaking my hand out, the pain finally registering. "Ow! That hurts! What the fuck?"
Boon came breezing out the front door, entirely unbothered, carrying his dopp bag. He paused on the porch steps, taking in the scene: me nursing my throbbing knuckles by the passenger door, and Sam sitting in the dirt, wiping a smear of blood from his jaw.
Boon’s expression didn't change. "I see we are completing the masculine rituals," he noted smoothly, not slowing his stride.
Sam looked at Boon, then back at me. A dark, purple bruise was already starting to blossom. "You got a tiger here, Boon," Sam called out, groaning as he pushed himself up on one knee.
"I know," Boon said blithely, tossing the last bag in the back. He slid into the driver’s seat without a backward glance.
I knew the tone, the body language. He was ready to go.
I climbed into the passenger side, cupping my smarting fist in my good hand. Sam brushed the gravel off his sweatpants and ambled over to my open window as Boon started the engine.
"See you boys for Thanksgiving," Sam said, leaning his heavy forearms against the doorframe, his bare, hairy chest and belly right at eye level.
"No," I said instantly. "Absolutely not. We are not coming for that. We have our own Thanksgiving in the city with our friends."
Sam processed that, nodding slowly, a dangerous spark in his blue eyes. "Good idea. It's about time I come meet some of your city friends anyway."
My stomach dropped. I winced at the new nightmare scenario—a half-dozen gay guys with profound daddy issues meeting Sam Griffin. "Sam, no—"
"I'm not done with you yet, Junior," Sam assured me, his thumb grazing the edge of the window frame. He gave the metal door a final, solid pat. "Drive safe."
As we pulled out of the driveway, the house and Sam began to shrink in the rearview mirror. We drove in silence but for the crunching of gravel under the tires, until we reached the end of the long path, idling at the stop sign just before the main highway. Boon kept his foot on the brake, doing a final check.
"Phones? Keys?" Boon asked, his eyes scanning the center console.
"Got 'em," I said, patting my pockets, wincing as my bruised knuckles brushed my thigh. "Bags are in the back."
"Excellent," Boon said smoothly, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. "I left the poppers on his nightstand. He needs a hobby."
I turned to stare at him. A massive, genuine smile broke across my face, and then a laugh bubbled up in my chest, spilling out loud and bright into the quiet car.
"Hey. MVP. You saved me back there," I whispered.
Boon offered that patient, warm smile. "I guess we just have to keep saving each other."
I thought about the bruised, complicated man we'd just left in the driveway, the history we’d taken apart and put back together—and the last piece of unfinished business.
"I want to find Jake," I said quietly.
Boon read my face and understood immediately. He didn't ask why. He just closed his hand into a fist and extended it over the center console.
I reached out, bringing my knuckles to his. As bone hit bone, a sharp sting flared up my hand.
"Ow," I hissed, snatching my hand back, shaking it out.
Boon laughed. I could see the beginning of where he’d have smile lines someday.
"Time to go home," I said, wincing through a smile.
Boon hit the blinker, turned the wheel in one smooth, flawless move and we rolled onto the highway, the long dark ribbon unspooling into the future.
END
Thanks for reading Go Home.
Sam’s account of his time with Jake is told in Trading Desire.
And Griff’s search for Jake concludes in Jake's Story.
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
