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“Dad?” Harrison mumbles, voice croaky from sleep. The polyester of his sleeping bag makes a zipping sound as he turns his body to look at the figure in the doorway. Counter to his expectations, he is greeted with his uncle’s face—wrinkles and smile lines sharp and dark, pupils drawn to points like a hungry wolf’s, the wisps of his salt-and-pepper hair in a perpetual state of wild neatness atop his head. Harrison tugs the sleeping bag closer to his chest and rolls back over to face the wall, forcing his uncle onto the fuzzy periphery of his vision. “Fuck off.”
“What a nasty word,” Brian mocks. He leans an elbow into the door frame, sharp eyes raking over the soft outline of Harrison’s form within the sleeping bag. It makes him subconsciously pull into himself.
“You didn’t knock,” Harrison pouts at the wall, “where is he?”
“With Angela, or something…” Brian trails off into a yawn, seeming to lose track of what he was saying for a moment. “He made breakfast.”
The man doesn’t wait for a response before Harrison senses his uncle’s presence disappear from the doorway with slow, creaking footsteps, retreating somewhere within the cabin. The smell of eggs and bacon finally catches Harrison’s nose, and he is made painfully aware of how hungry he is. He’d skipped dinner the night before, not wanting to bear his father and his uncle’s awkwardness around him.
Things might have been different if it was just him and Dexter, Dad, the guy Harrison traveled from Miami to upstate New York for. That would be manageable. Brian was anything but—weirdly passive aggressive towards Harrison, focus never lingering on him, always giving the impression he wasn’t wanted. Even Dad’s assurances weren’t enough to ease the pangs Harrison felt when two sets of eyes bore the same uncomfortable judgement, quiet outrage, othering.
***
“I don’t remember having an uncle.” Harrison’s eyes narrowed, occasionally flicking to the tall shadow of a person looming behind his father.
“I’ve met you, once,” Brian took a step forward, the streaks of grey in his hair illuminated in a halo around his head, backlit by a single lamp. Harrison stepped back, and the cabin’s wooden floor creaked in protest under both their feet. His uncle grinned, teeth glinting, creases in his cheeks like dark crescent-moons. “You’re all grown up now!”
“You got big,” Dexter added simply. As if there was some competition for who could invade Harrison’s personal space, he moved closer too.
“Happens.” Harrison held Dad’s gaze, ignoring the man leering at him beside his father. He fought the tears that swelled in his eyes, anger sizzling uncontrollably beneath his face. Is this why you left? To be with your brother? Why couldn’t you take me with you, what was so wrong with me?
Dexter cleared his throat. “I’m sure this is hard–”
“This? No,” Harrison scoffed, “growing up without a dad, that was hard.”
His words seemed to have no effect, Dad staring motionlessly as Harrison talked, save the one time he swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing prominently in his neck. He was Harrison’s father only in name, as he had done nothing to assert that title besides contributing half his genes at conception.
“And opening up that letter, finding out you let me believe you were dead all those years…” Dad’s eyes flicked up at that, round and guilty like a bad dog’s. “That was brutal.”
“Hannah showed you the letter?” Every word hung from his father’s lips, verging on something, yet remained controlled, not ever letting Harrison breach their meaning. It was something Harrison noticed a lot, in the days afterwards—that restraint.
“No. I found it when she died.”
Brian silently laughed, shoulders shaking, his loose clothes rippling fluidly around his body. Harrison shot him a glare. In the little time he’d known his uncle, he had already formed a strong distaste for the man.
“Hannah died?” The lines in Dexter’s face deepened, and finally a hint of concern became visible. “How?”
“Cancer. Pancreatic.” Brian put a hand on Dad’s shoulder, gave him a knowing sort of look. Harrison felt a childish twinge of triumph when his father’s attention remained on him.
“I didn’t know.”
Of course you didn’t.
Dexter asked a lot, but didn’t offer much himself. He asked what happened to Harrison in the time since Hannah died. Harrison went through the bullet points—the social worker, his flight to Miami and the shitty foster homes, and how he finally decided to search for his dad. In turn, Harrison poked at his father’s alias, Jim Lindsay, asked why he had to fake his death, but he wasn’t given a clear answer. Dexter promised to tell him everything in the morning, but Harrison doubted he’d get anything more substantial than what he’d already been given.
Dad offered him the bed. Brian protested. Harrison watched the exchange with furrowed brows, formed a few hazy theories, and tried to connect the influx of information rattling around his head.
“The couch is fine.”
The brothers, stunned out of their mini quarrel, focused back on Harrison as if just then remembering he was even there. Brian opened his mouth to speak, but Dexter shushed him and went first. “Well, if you need anything else…”
“Where's the bathroom?”
Dexter and Brian, at the same time, silently gestured to a door deeper inside the cabin. Harrison pushed between them to make his way to it, head only slightly turning to catch his father’s expression—his brows creased, the wrinkles around his eyes and curves of his face prominent in the light. Brian remained a hazy shadow behind him.
On his way to the bathroom, Harrison caught a glimpse of the room next to it, its door slightly cracked open. It was a bedroom, glass-block windows frosted over and dim blue moonlight seeping into it. Two sides of the bed were clearly wrinkled from use, the nightstands on either side decorated with distinctly different personalities of clutter.
Something in Harrison’s stomach seemed to twist. The scene felt wrong; this stranger not only living with his father, but sleeping in the same bed as him. It was too much, too familiar, too… affectionate. Was Dad gay? Was Brian not actually his uncle, but Dexter’s lover?
Something didn’t make sense, and it gnawed away at Harrison’s mind.
***
Harrison rubs the crust out of his eyes and kicks his covers off, inhaling the warm, savory scent of eggs and bacon as he shuffles out of his room. He’s still in his improvised pajamas, the single pair of sweatpants he’d been able to fit in his backpack paired with one of the sweaters his father gave him when setting up his cot.
Brian leans against the outer island of the kitchen area, a steaming mug in hand, and his heavy-lidded eyes not-so-subtly watch as Harrison grabs a plate and begins serving himself from a pan on the stove. The silence between them is thick, choking, magnifying every ringing sound of the spatula as Harrison loads eggs onto his plate, every eye-twitch-inducing, bothering sip his uncle takes of his coffee.
Brian’s voice slithers out of his throat, cuts the air. “Don’t you have school soon?” Harrison startles.
“Dad said he’d set up a meeting with the principal soon.” He doesn’t take his eyes away from the eggs.
“Dad,” Brian copies Harrison, sounding out the word as if it were new to him. “It’s weird, Dex being a father. He never seemed the type.”
Harrison isn’t sure if the comment was meant to be backhanded, but it still stings. He knows Dexter isn’t the type—he abandoned his son for a decade doing fuck-knows-what in the butt-fucking wilderness of New York. And Dex. Brian using such a familiar name for his dad feels so immensely wrong, but… they are brothers. It’s normal to have a nickname for your sibling, probably.
The front door opens. Dexter steps in with a flurry of cold air, heavy boots slamming on the wood floor. The hum of people outside, the search for Matt Caldwell continuing, grows louder for just a moment before Dexter shuts it away again. He takes a half-step forward, eyes raking over Brian and Harrison, and gives them a surprised sort of nod.
Harrison is stirred by a flush of competitiveness. “They haven’t found Matt yet?”
“No, they’re… going to bring in trailing dogs.” Dexter exchanges a look with Brian. As if they have some kind of twin telepathy, an understanding passes between them, and a slight smile curves Brian’s lips. It makes Harrison squirm where he stands. Why does he have to use such an archaic form of communication as speech to know what his father’s thinking, when apparently Brian can just sift through his mind as he pleases? There’s a hot flash of a thought—Harrison clicking his straight razor open, kneeling down and slashing across his uncle’s skinny legs in one quick motion. There’d be so much blood, pouring out over the wood, staining it like wine. Without realizing it, Harrison loses strength in his hands and drops his fork, steel ringing against porcelain.
“That’s good, right? They’ll go away soon.”
Brian’s mouth twitches up like Harrison just told a funny joke, and his eyes remain locked on Dexter, sharp and observant. Dad doesn’t return his expression; he just frowns. “Yeah, it is. So,” he says, clearing his throat, “I have to go to the station.”
“What?” Brian takes an urgent step towards Dexter, a few lines of coffee spilling over the edge of his mug. “Want me to come with you?”
Dad’s eyes flick to Harrison, who has turned from the counter to face the brothers. His eyebrows lift, creasing his forehead ever so slightly. “No, take care of Harrison,” he tells Brian, “he needs to meet with the principal today.”
Brian grits his teeth like that’s the last thing he’d ever want to do. “Right.”
Dexter, apparently satisfied, nods. He opens the door, floods the cabin with a chill, and leaves Harrison alone with Brian again.
***
Today was the longest amount of time he had ever spent with his uncle. He doubted his father would be able to explain many of the inconsistencies in his schooling, much less Brian, but the talk with Principal Strode went unexpectedly smoothly. Brian guided conversations well, clearly a much better socializer than his brother. The mask slipped a little when they were in the car home, though, the top layer peeled off, so Brian’s distaste for Harrison was blatant. He seemed to have a much harder time prompting conversation with Harrison, and Harrison appreciated their wordless agreement not to talk to each other unless necessary.
Harrison now sits on his cot, absently sifting through his backpack. His hand catches on the photo of his father Mom had given him years ago. Despite Harrison’s best attempts to conserve it, deep wrinkles bend the paper. A guilty thrill ripples through his body and, almost unconsciously, Harrison presses a hand to his cock through his jeans, fingers twitching over the rising bulge.
Harrison doesn’t know how it started. He knows it’s sick. He’s conditioned himself to get horny whenever he looks at that picture of his dad for too long. Maybe it was all those nights he would cry over the photo, then that night when he discovered the friction of his groin against the bed, then the combination of the two. Pain, pleasure, anger, all melding into heady arousal.
Though no one else is in the room, Harrison makes a show of disgust on his face, maybe to counteract the buzzing joy he feels in his lower areas. With clumsy fingers he opens his fly, still gripping the photo in one hand, pulls down his pants, and closes around his dick with a hurried pump.
“Dad,” Harrison moans, louder than he expected, hips bucking up into his palm. He almost goes to cover his mouth, but both his hands are busy and he wants more, more friction, more… Dad. Before, he only had the photo and his hazy memories, but now his father is vividly etched in his mind. He’s older, grayer, quieter—unbearably attractive. Harrison closes his mouth tightly around a whine.
“Kid.” The door swings open. Harrison has no time to hide his cock back in his pants before Brian’s stepping into the room.
Something in his uncle’s expression flashes dangerously, eyes lingering for just too long to be normal. He travels from Harrison’s still-hard penis, up to Harrison’s face, then lastly to the photograph. Harrison jerks his arm down, hiding it behind himself, in a futile attempt to save whatever’s left of his dignity.
“Dinner’s ready,” Brian says. He pauses a moment longer before stepping away, leaving the door open behind him.
Harrison’s face burns like all the blood that had just been in his cock swapped places in his body. He worries at his bottom lip, tugging a patch of dry skin until it screams with pain.
Minutes later, Harrison emerges from his room, his erection finally calmed down. The dining table is set with two plates and two glasses of water, one seat occupied by Brian and the other empty.
“Where’s Dad?”
Brian’s mouth tugs into a sneer. Harrison glares back at him as he sits down. “Dex said he’d be out tonight. Just you,” he makes a dramatic gesture to Harrison, then himself, “and me.”
Harrison doesn’t respond, he just grabs a fork and knife from the table, beginning to work on the steak laid out for him. He takes a few bites into his mouth, eyes never rising high enough to bring his uncle into view. He doesn’t realize he’s frowning until Brian laughs and points him out.
“Are we gonna talk about it, or…”
“Or,” Harrison interrupts. He wants to spit out all the insults that roll over his tongue, about how Brian’s intruding on something that should have just been him and his father, that he knows him much better, but he can’t. He holds himself back. None of it is true, is it? This “Brian” guy, apparently Harrison’s Uncle, knows more about Harrison’s dad than he ever did. It makes him sick.
“When did it start?” Brian’s plate remains untouched as he leans forward, his shadow creeping closer across the table.
“I said we weren’t gonna talk about it.” Harrison shoves another cut of steak into his mouth and reaches out to take a sip of water, close to where Brian’s hands rest, as if to say, I’m not scared of you.
“Dex put you in my care while he’s gone.” Brian taps his fingers across the wooden table breezily.
Fuck. “A-are you gonna tell him?” Harrison can’t help the way his voice childishly quivers. “It’s the perfect way to finally get rid of me, right? Since you hate me so much.”
“I don’t hate you, Harrison,” Brian says simply. “Maybe I did, just a little, in the beginning,” he shrugs, “but I find you much more interesting now, to be honest.”
“What are you talking about?”
Brian ignores Harrison’s question and repeats his own. “When did it start?”
“I don’t–”
“Stop being obtuse, you know what I’m asking here.” Brian’s shadow retreats from Harrison’s view. His eyes twitch, but remain locked on the wood and his half-eaten steak.
“I… have these dreams,” he starts, and bites his lip.
“And what do you imagine doing to your daddy, in these dreams?”
“It’s not what you think!” Harrison grits his teeth. “And don’t call him d–daddy. It’s weird.”
Brian doesn’t acknowledge Harrison’s demand. “What am I thinking, then?” Harrison glances up for less than a second to see his uncle grinning wolfishly down at him, all satisfied with himself.
“Something gross,” Harrison’s eyes flick back downwards, “it’s not like that. I just want to be with him.”
Brian holds back a laugh, his chest shaking. “And it makes you horny enough to jerk off?”
“Im a teenager, my hormones are all… hormone–y.”
“Normal teenagers don’t feel that way about their fathers, you know that.” Harrison opens his mouth to try and make up another excuse, but Brian shuts him down. “Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m not trying to shame you—quite the opposite, actually.” Brian sinks lower in his chair and Harrison almost jumps out of his seat when he feels something—a foot—press against his groin, which is already twitching awake again. “I just want you to admit it.”
“What’re you…” Harrison’s sentence is punctuated by a long moan as his uncle squeezes his foot around his bulge. He’s still embarrassingly horny, and it seems Brian intends to take full advantage, cooing and nudging at him through his jeans. A flush rises in Harrison’s face and ears, dying his skin baby pink. He tries to steady himself by gripping onto the table, bitten and uneven nails digging into wood.
Apparently satisfied, Brian’s foot stops its assault on Harrison’s cock. His uncle wraps long, bony fingers around his wrist and brings him to his feet, all while his eyes are squeezed tightly shut. Maybe if he just doesn’t look at it, the angry erection in his pants—because of his uncle—will go away.
“I’ll help you, okay?” Brian’s voice is softer, honeyed sickly sweet, unlike anything Harrison had heard from him before. Maybe his stomach would turn if he weren’t so sexually frustrated, cloudy-brained.
They move. Brian tugs him by the arm. Harrison can’t tell what direction, or where; all the rooms in the cabin have the same kind of wooden floor. He only realizes when he’s tossed onto the bed. The bedroom. Dad’s and Brian’s. Dad’s.
“What did he used to call you…” Brian paces back and forth in the darkness, a single sliver of yellow light from the parted door making him into a silhouette. He tests the shapes of a few words in his mouth, “son, buddy… kiddo?” The last term is punctuated with a sneer, comfortably resting in the harsh lines of his face.
Harrison growls and stands, balling up patches of the man’s sweater in his hands and pulling him close. He has to sit on his toes to reach Brian’s eyeline, and it creates an unsteady swaying motion between the two as Harrison fights to keep his balance. He gets sick of it, pushing Brian to the bed like his uncle had just done to him, crawling over top of him.
There’s a moment where they both stare at each other, Harrison’s breath coming out quick and heavy while Brian’s lips part in anticipation. His mind blanks when Brian takes off his shirt, revealing a pale, gaunt figure, each of his ribs casting heavy shadows over the lower. He’s built so differently from his rugged, muscular brother.
“I wanna see your–your back.”
“Whatever you say, kiddo,” Brian complies, flipping over onto his stomach to face away from Harrison, laughing a little at his responding huff of displeasure for the pet-name. Harrison fantasizes again about ripping across Brian’s flesh with his razor, scarlet running black in the darkness. Instead, he crawls onto the bed, over his uncle’s slender body, and traces a finger along the moles spotting the man’s back. They’re more clustered than the spatterings of freckles Harrison remembers seeing on his father’s, fuzzy memories from when he was a little boy in Miami. They were blacker, too, but in the dark of the bedroom, they would look about the same, he figures.
Harrison’s stomach twists with guilty pleasure, heat squirming in his groin. He realizes late how he’s begun to unwittingly rub himself on his uncle’s back, his clothed erection pressed against two layers of jeans. Harrison dips his head near where his fingers are sprawled out, sucking Brian’s pale flesh into his mouth, leaving marks around each black dot on his skin. Brian lets out a comfortable moan, leaning back to harshen the pressure on Harrison’s cock. Harrison’s humps go from careful and cautious to erratic and wild, seeking pleasure as easily as he can get it.
Harrison’s face moves to Brian’s neck, parting his salt-and-pepper curls to lick and gnaw at the dots hidden beneath them. His uncle turns his head, easily taking Harrison’s drooling face into a quick, fumbling kiss. When they pull apart, Brian whispers into Harrison’s mouth, “you wanna fuck Daddy, don’t you?”
“N-no, I don’t,” Harrison puffs out a moist breath against Brian’s skin. His head jerks back as his uncle shifts, leaning on his elbows, turning to face Harrison again. He spreads his legs out, guiding Harrison’s attention to the hard bulge of his cock, still confined within his jeans.
“You wanna show me how you’d do it?”
Something in Harrison seems to activate. He watches the glee dance in Brian’s eyes as he first tugs his uncle’s pants down, then hastily starts working to pull his own off as well. Harrison fights with his fly’s zipper, which decided to get stuck now of all times, and he catches Brian reaching for something on the nightstand out of the corner of his eye.
Harrison crawls closer, thrusting his cock flush against Brian’s hole, prompting a shiver to pass through the man’s body. Brian laughs. “Be patient, kiddo.” His long fingers come down, nudging Harrison’s penis out of the way to spread his hole. He uncaps the bottle he’d grabbed, pouring a clear liquid over it, making a show of pressing a finger inside himself. Harrison’s eyes flick back and forth from his uncle’s flushed cheeks and gaping mouth down to the way he stretches himself, inviting Harrison closer with each thrust of his fingers.
“You asked me to, to…” Harrison licks his lips. “You told me–”
“I’m not gonna let you tear me open,” Brian’s eyes flutter shut and he sighs as he pushes another finger in. “As much as you might want that.”
Curious, Harrison reaches out, fingertips quivering over the back of Brian’s hand. He’s transfixed by the way he can feel the bones moving beneath his skin as the man works himself loose. Harrison doesn’t know how much time passes before Brian finally takes his fingers out. After he does, he wraps his hand around Harrison’s cock and wordlessly prompts him forward, Harrison’s tip kissing his thoroughly-lubed hole.
Firstly, Harrison slips just the tip inside, already overwhelmed by the new sensation. He’d fucked girls before, but they were never as tight as this, as oppressively hot as this, and it makes him dizzily thrust further inside, already greedy for more of that feeling. He can vaguely hear his uncle cooing at him, purring with pleasure as he sucks Harrison deeper in. Brian places his hands on Harrison’s cheeks, turning his head up to face him.
“Come on, baby,” he thumbs the corner of Harrison’s lips, gently urging his mouth open, “show me now.”
With a whine, Harrison licks over Brian’s mouth and he thrusts, deeply, widely. He feels his uncle fall apart in their kiss after he starts moving, his voice going high in delicious pleasure.
“If he let you fuck him like this, I’d be so jealous,” Brian breathes out between his moans. “You two would never leave this room.”
Harrison closes his teeth around the man’s lips. “Be quiet.” Brian’s mouth wobbles into a toothy grin, nodding not so much obediently as cheekily.
Through each drive of his hips, Harrison keeps his eyes trained on Brian’s face—wrong hair, wrong eyes, wrong mouth, wrong teeth. If he closes his eyes all those “wrong”s dissipate, and he’s left with the animalistic, hungry moans of the man under him. He is vaguely, just vaguely aware it isn’t his father he’s inside, it isn’t his father who’s crying out his name beneath him. But Harrison doesn’t know what his dad is like in bed, during sex, so it’s possible this is exactly what he sounds like. The notion sends Harrison into a frenzied stupor, thrusts uneven and entirely chasing his own pleasure.
His uncle’s arms wrap tight around his back, clean-cut nails digging into the flesh, keeping their bodies locked together on the bed, a single heap of filthy moans.
“Dad,” Harrison gasps, as loud as he wants this time. He buries himself deep, strangled noises escaping both his and his uncle’s lips. His cock twitches, warm and fuzzy, on the verge of release. Brian’s arms stay firmly locked around Harrison, keeping him from pulling away.
With a violent breath and spasming legs, Harrison feels a release, but it isn’t of orgasm. It’s wet, and sticky, and hot, but acidlike and watery around his cock. A different kind of heat rushes to his face, his stomach turning.
“Aw, buddy.” Brian’s hands pet along the back of Harrison’s neck, fingers running through the hair at his nape. He shifts so Harrison’s still-hard cock can slide out of him, a gush of watery liquid following it. The acrid smell of piss floods the air.
“Daddy’ll clean you up, okay?” Brian kisses his cheek and Harrison, embarrassed but so thirsty for comfort, takes his uncle into a messy, mouthy kiss, whining down the man’s throat. Brian pulls away and thumbs over Harrison’s cheeks. He’s a mess, nose and lips and ears all red, eyes rimmed with tears, shining lines down his face of salty water and snot and drool all mixing together, dripping from his chin.
Brian’s hand wraps around Harrison’s cock and he stutters forward in surprise as his uncle begins stroking him, so slowly, fingers pressing into and dragging over the few veins that pop out. He’s still wet, precome drooling from his delicate head like a sink that was accidentally left on.
“It’s okay, baby,” Brian coos. Harrison moans in response, humping into his palm. “You need to hydrate more.” Brian brings his unoccupied hand up to Harrison’s mouth, dipping a wet thumb in, spreading the salty, bitter taste of his own piss over his tongue. “This isn’t healthy.”
Harrison’s eyelids tug down, becoming heavy, and in his blurring vision Dad takes shape, the sharp angles of his face creased in loving worry, concern, unlike the permanent sneer Brian seems to bear.
“Hn,” Harrison melts into Dad’s touch, tongue pulling his thumb deeper in his mouth so he can suckle on it, taste what his father is giving him. The bony ridges of his tight hands around his dick create the perfect friction, and Harrison begins hungrily thrusting in the tight hole.
Dad seems perplexed for just a moment before his face softens again and he pulls him close, whispers sweet words against his ear while Harrison whines around his thick thumb.
“I love you, d-dad—daddy,” Harrison punctuates each movement forward with the title, hanging onto it for comfort. Dad, Dad, Dad! Dad’s here, Dad loves me.
The dark bedroom becomes smaller, lit by blue ceiling stars. Dad is sitting beside Harrison on the bed, petting through his hair while reading him a bedtime story, then Harrison’s alone in Argentina, sweating through his shorts as he presses his crotch to the bed, eyes meeting the still face in the photo. Now, Dad is holding him, tugging him through a shaking orgasm, his voice in Harrison’s ear, breath hot on his cheek.
Harrison’s vision blinks and he lets out a pathetic cry as he comes, hands gripping onto Dad’s shoulders, digging into the flesh enough to leave deep indents.
“Cute, but you’re never gonna please him like that.”
Brian pushes him away.
He stands and makes a show of wiping his hands. “Be a good boy and go back to your closet before your real daddy gets home.” He’s already working on taking the sheets off the bed. “Next time, I’ll come to you, hm?”