June 2022
Boston, Massachusetts
"You know, I never really grasped just how much of a 'fuck you' the Boston Tea Party was to the British until I became best friends with an Englishman." Sören gives Anthony a teasing smile. "Dumping a bunch of tea in a harbor is serious business."
Anthony rolls his eyes, but he smiles back. "Yes, it's an insult to perfectly good tea. Though, not quite as much as putting ice in it."
Sören snickers. Mark pats Anthony on the back before taking a long sip of the iced tea bought at a concession stand a little while ago.
"It could be worse," Mark says. "Like making it in the microwave."
Anthony facepalms. When he takes his hand away, his face is still scrunched with annoyance and Mark boops Anthony's nose. "You know I like to get a rise out of you," Mark says. "Especially when you wrinkle that cute little nose."
Anthony scowls even more.
Privately, Sören agrees with Mark that Anthony's nose is very cute. Anthony is just... adorable. And Mark is gorgeous. That's the problem.
Sören is celebrating his five-year "transiversary" with a three-month cross-country road trip, renting an RV for the summer with his two best friends. Anthony was Sören's friend first - when Sören began transition in 2017, he found an online program that paired transitioning trans men with experienced post-transition mentors, with the mentorship lasting two years. Sören is twenty-seven and Anthony is forty-two; Anthony began transition in 2013. Anthony and Sören got very close... close enough for Sören to fall for him. But before the two years were over, Anthony began dating Mark, another trans guy, and Sören didn't want to interfere with their happiness. And after the mentorship contract was done and Anthony and Sören continued their friendship, Sören got to know Mark and be friends with him as well, and developed an attraction to Mark too.
He still hasn't said anything about it, not wanting to ruin their friendship. But agreeing to spend three months with them in an RV is a special kind of hell, even though Sören is glad that they're doing this together.
Sören came here from Iceland in 2018, after his top surgery, to get away from his abusive aunt and uncle who raised him after his parents' death; he lives in Portland, Maine, and works as a curator at an art gallery where he sometimes shows his own work. Anthony and Mark also live in Portland, and Anthony helped Sören find an apartment and a job; Anthony is a British expat, and an archaeology professor - school is out for the summer. Mark is Canadian and runs a vinyl records store called Wax On Wax Off, and his brother Russ keeps it going when Mark goes on vacation. Taking a tour of the US was an idea that appealed to the three immigrants, and they're starting here in Boston, the birthplace of the American Revolution.
Anthony and Sören are both five-ten and of a wiry build, but that's where their appearance similarities end. Sören has been told more times than he can count that he looks like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, with shoulder-length dark curls, a short dark beard framing full lips, and long-lashed brown eyes, and the same sort of sultry smoulder. The short sleeves of his "Meepers Gonna Meep" Beaker T-shirt reveal full sleeve tattoos - flames licking up his right arm, ocean waves crashing down his left, matching a design on his back from one of his paintings of a firebird and water phoenix doing a mating dance. Sören has two small silver earrings in each ear. Under Sören's clothes he has his nipples pierced with captive bead rings, which was his gift to himself a year after top surgery with the chest dysphoria gone. Anthony, on the other hand, has short black hair, green eyes, glasses, a boyishly handsome face, and is clean-cut and preppy, today wearing jeans with a grey henley T-shirt; no piercings or tattoos.
Mark is an inch taller than them, and has wavy blue-black hair to the middle of his back, piercing grey eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, chiseled features like a supermodel, and dresses more similarly to Sören, in jeans and band T-shirts and Doc Martens - today he's wearing a KISS T-shirt. Mark obviously works out, judging from the definition in his arms and pecs that Sören is trying desperately not to notice, but he doesn't seem like a jock at all - Mark is a very talented multi-instrumentalist and singer and every now and again Sören tries to convince him to go on an idol show or pursue a recording career, but Mark doesn't want to be a celebrity. His right hand has what appears to be a second-degree burn scar, but it doesn't detract from his male beauty at all. Sören has never asked him about it, not wanting to be rude.
Anthony boops Mark's nose in return, then gives it a little kiss. Sören smiles fondly, enjoying the affection between them...
...even as it makes him ache. They've done their best over the years to not make him feel like a third wheel, but Sören wishes he was a part of their relationship.
Once again he tries to stifle that longing, looking out at Massachusetts Bay, reflecting the overcast grey sky that matches his internal state of quiet, brooding melancholy. They've spent the morning doing the Boston Harborwalk, and now Anthony checks his watch. "Want to hit the Museum of Science?" he asks.
Sören claps his hands and flaps excitedly, and is once again glad that Mark and Anthony don't judge him for stimming - Anthony is somewhere on the spectrum too, which is part of how they bonded during Sören's mentorship.
The Museum of Science is even bigger than Sören thought it would be, with so much to see and do. Anthony's face lights up Sören's whole universe in the Butterfly Garden, admiring the exotic plants and watching the colorful butterflies dancing to and fro. Sören and Anthony fidget together, giddy during the show at the Theatre of Electricity with the huge Van de Graaff generator making lightning. Mark is keenly interested in the exhibit of fossils, dinosaurs and extinct mammals, with the T. Rex and Triceratops models; Anthony makes jokes that "you were there" even though Mark is in his thirties and Anthony is older. And Mark is also fascinated by the Soundstair, a stairway that produces musical sounds with photoelectric cells. At the IMAX theatre they watch Ancient Caves and it feels as if Sören is there, chills down his spine at the beauty and wonder of the world; Sören tears up when the movie shows Iceland, his home country. Sören loves the Rock Garden - he collects gemstones and interesting rocks, and Sören is particularly impressed with a billion-year old boulder from the Grand Canyon and being able to touch a piece of the Rock of Gibraltar. Sören likes The Light House just as much if not more, entranced by the hundreds of cubes reflecting rainbow light, and Mark looks at it wistfully as if it's making him remember something.
Most of all, Sören likes the planetarium, thrilling to the starry sky and exoplanets, thinking about life, the universe, and everything. Anthony seems visibly moved as well and for a brief moment Anthony squeezes his hand, making Sören ache again.
"Aw man," Mark says when they exit the planetarium, looking at the schedule. "If we came here on a Friday night we could have seen Laser Floyd." Sören also looks and sees it's a laser show set to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. While they're spending a couple days in Boston, their itinerary is to hit New York City on Friday. Sören frowns and makes a noise of disappointment, though he doesn't want to change their plans for New York.
Anthony tousles Mark's hair. "We could always do that this fall." Anthony glances over at Sören. "Maybe for your birthday, that's on Black Friday this year?"
Sören flaps happily, touched by the invitation.
Though they've been walking all day and Sören's asthma is wearing him out, he's still cheerful about getting on the Freedom Trail and going to Faneuil Hall, and from there Quincy Market. They decide to eat at Boston Chowda and Anthony gets his "chowda" in a bread bowl, which makes Mark snicker.
"Fancy," Mark says. "It's like you're elven royalty or something." Mark winks, and Anthony gives Mark a look, but then he laughs too.
They watch the sunset together on the Freedom Trail - the sunsets always seem more dramatic on cloudy days, this one with streaks of gold and fiery orange across deepening blue, and the gold city lights reflecting into the bay.
As the blazing sky mellows and fades, Sören hugs both of them, feeling closer to them for sharing the experience of seeing more of the world together, especially the little miracles at the Museum of Science.
Finally they return to their RV for the night, tired but happy. They decide to watch Hamilton on DVD in keeping with the theme of starting where the American Revolution began. As much as Sören loves the musical, he's exhausted enough from a day of walking that he starts to fall asleep.
"I think it's past the kiddo's bedtime," Anthony quips.
Sören lets out a grunt of protest - not for being told to go to bed, but at being called a "kid". Through the heavy-lidded haze of sleepiness he feels a little sting at Anthony's choice of word, like Anthony still sees him as a kid; it feels like a rebuff of sorts. But the sting goes away after he's changed in the tiny bathroom and comes out to see Mark and Anthony have folded out the jackknife sofa and made up the bed, and they tuck him in together.
Then Mark brings over his guitar - he's taken both his guitar and harp on the RV - and Mark plays Sören a lullaby. A non-traditional one - "Breathe" by Pink Floyd. Mark's guitar shimmers like the waves of the bay and his velvet tenor is like a caress, honeying the harsh words:
Long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
Balanced on the biggest wave
Race towards an early grave
Sören doesn't know how long he's slept when he wakes up to a moan and a "shhh." Mark and Anthony have a bedroom in the RV, and though the door is closed and Sören knows they're trying to keep it down, it's pretty obvious what they're doing. He lays there, cunt twinging, nipples hard, as he hears the telltale heavy breathing and wet squishing, slapping sound, knowing they're rubbing together.
The mental image of them grinding, wet and sloppy, inflames Sören with lust, and he finds himself slipping his hands down his pajama pants, as drenched as they sound, and touches himself under the covers, visualizing Mark and Anthony fucking... wishing he could watch or join in, once again entertaining his most delicious forbidden fantasy of being their submissive pet, on a leash, tongue inside one then the other as they rub together, lapping up their flowing juices, savoring, worshiping. The wet suctioning, clapping sounds get louder and Sören hears a deep grunt and a shaky "fuuuuck", and then the slurping, smacking sound gets even louder still, making Sören paw himself furiously, fighting the urge to cry out. When he hears a shuddery gasp that sounds like a climax, Sören comes too, biting his lower lip, shuddering as the contractions throb, hearing another gasp of pleasure from the bedroom, and he gives a soft sigh as the relief floods through him.
Then he cries silently into his pillows, the moment of blissful release chased away by grief. It's just the first night of their summer road trip and he already feels like the Little Mermaid watching the prince marry someone else, unable to hate the prince or his beloved. Feeling his heart dissolving like the optical illusions in the Light House, turning to foam on the bay. He doesn't know how he can endure three months of this, but it's too late to back out, and he knows that might well destroy their friendship.
Tears roll down Sören's face, feeling like he's dying inside, washing out to sea, alone.
Balanced on the biggest wave
Race towards an early grave
