Epilogue
Ihad never returned to that back alley. Unless I had to dump something in that bin for my job, I stayed away.
Some stories ended behind a dumpster. Now I know some relationships do too.
One day when I had emptied the bins, I found something that I kept. It was a scrap of him. Half of Eddy’s coffee-lid crown from when he had become the monstrous Grouch form. In my grief, I thought everything about him disintegrated that day, but I had tucked it into my bottom drawer.
I don’t know why I had kept it. Maybe because it reminded me I had felt something once. Something deep for another person. Someone worth remembering.
In the months following Eddy’s disappearance, I had tried dating again. But no man had ever made me feel the way I felt with Eddy. And given the number of dates I had been on, I thought no man ever could.
But I had stopped chasing ghosts. With the curse lifted, I can finally live a happier existence. And I mean live.
Full breaths, deep sleep. Trips to my bin that no longer make me hard at the smell of thrown vegetables. This is freedom.
I had gone through waves of giddiness and terror.
Claudia helped fix the parts of my life I had thought were unfixable.
Because who else but a medium Binfluencer can solve the rest of my problems?
Only she, my incense-huffing, latte-scrying, psychic miracle of a friend, could.
She had expunged all my records, cleared my fines and made workplace complaints of me getting freaky with trash vanish.
I still don’t know how she did it.
She claimed she had stern words with the universe on my behalf. She also told me I was ‘cosmically overdue’ for a break.
I had asked her what I owed her. She grinned and shook her head. All she had to say was: “You can’t afford me. So, consider your debts wiped and never involve me in your sordid affairs again. Unless you know a balding, chunky bear ghost?” She had a type.
Oh, and I had gotten a job offer within the office.
I left my agency and became the Head of Cleaning Operations.
It was a title they had created for me. Nothing really had changed in my day-to-day; really, it was just a fancy title for a guy with a clipboard bigger than his mop, and more money that he knew what to do with.
With the promotion, the office had stepped away from the agency entirely.
That had meant that I needed to hire someone else to help.
I had left the spot vacant for weeks, maybe on purpose.
Maybe I didn’t want to walk past someone else’s trolley, someone else’s bin-juice footprints. Someone who wasn’t him.
I had rejected every applicant. HR must have got infuriated with me, because they turned to another recruitment company for help. An hour ago, HR had informed me that my new employee is starting today. He is due to arrive any minute now.
I didn’t expect a lot. It’s probs some young twink looking for some quick cash, or some older guy with a bad back who won’t last the week.
People assume that being a cleaner is easy. They never understand the ritual of it like I do. The rhythm and intimacy of maintenance. The power of noticing what others discard.
My door clicks open. I mentally prepare myself and ensure my expectations are low.
Then he steps in.
My heart stops, trips over itself and falls face first into my stomach only to land on the floor.
He has wavy black curls. Same build. Same cheekbones. The same… God, they are the same amber eyes.
“Hi,” he says. He smiles cheekily, like he always had done. “I am Edward James, here for the janitor role? But you can call me—”
“Eddy,” I say simply, and his smile softens with memory. My throat goes dry.
“The Rot had owed me a favour,” he adds with a wink. “Also helps when your best friend in the afterlife is the king. You… look happy, Oscar.”
His voice. It’s softer. Brighter. Not quite the gravel-slick whisper of Ghost-hood but still him. It’s still the one who had haunted my workdays and had made them better.
“You remember.”
“I remember everything,” he breathes. “Even if I’m not him in the same way. I was. I am, and the version I became, with all the same memories… I chose this.” He looks around the dingy janitor's office as if it were a chapel. “I came back here. For you.”
My knees buckle.
I reach for him—gently. Like too fast a movement will break the spell and make him disappear again.
“You don’t have to be around trash anymore,” I whisper. “You don’t owe anyone anything.”
He leans in. “Maybe not. But I enjoy trash. Cleaning it now, anyway. And I like you.” I stop resisting and shut the door behind him. With a grin, I let out an exhale and smile.
“Fuck it!” I throw my clipboard down behind me and drag him closer to me.
We kiss.
It isn’t ghostly. It isn’t cursed.
It was ours.
And that is enough.
There is something sacred about Oscar’s janitor’s closet at night.
Maybe it is the flickering fluorescent light.
Maybe it’s the faint smell of bleach, eucalyptus disinfectant, or the muted yet ever-present rancid scent of old banana peel.
Or maybe it is the fact I am finally here again—alive, warm-blooded, and horny as all hell—with the man who once made my ghost-heart, beat.
Oscar stands at the edge of the mop sink; his jumpsuit is unzipped down to his navel, his brown pubes and belly hair sticking out. The fluorescent lights above us buzz like they know what is coming.
And what is coming would be us both.
“You sure no one’s around?” I ask, nudging the door shut with my foot and clicking the latch.
Oscar just smirks. “Everyone goes home at five. It’s nearly nine.”
“What about those other two?”
“The Fanger and the Feline Accountant?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he tugs the zip lower, exposing a flash of the base of his penis amongst a tuft of hair and then — FLAWP.
His dick pops out in slow motion. Like it had RSVP’d for this moment weeks ago. Thick and veiny, he pulls his foreskin back just enough to reveal his throbbing fat head and a bead of pre-cum oozing out of the tip. I want nothing more than to throat-fuck it. Worship him.
“Not wearing any underwear?” I murmur, dropping to my knees like the reformed Bin-Spirit I am.
But he stops me with a hand on my chin. He lifts me back up, eyes soft.
“No. This time, let’s take our time. I want to enjoy this. I want to enjoy you.”
I could’ve melted. Or cummed. Or both.
I kiss him. Slow and sure. No ghosts. No grief. Just us.
He tastes of honeyed coffee and smells of citrus soap.
His tongue curls into my mouth as if it is claiming back something that always belonged to him.
I slide against him, hungry and ready for him to slam me into the wall and for him to enter me.
Look, a bottom boy’s old habits die hard.
I still like to be fucked hard. But I want the heart of that man as well.
He turns me around and gently shoves me against the shelves, right between the bin liners and the scented air fresheners.
“I used to jerk off to the smell of bin juice in here,” he says between kisses to my neck.
“I know,” I growl, bucking back against him. “Watched you from the bin, before I gained the courage to reveal myself.”
He groans in my ear as if that was the hottest thing he had heard, his hot breath turning me on even more.
The mood had flipped from tender to feral in a heartbeat. His hands are on my ass, squeezing, spreading. Swirling his spit-covered finger around my hole. “Fuck, I missed this,” he says, bending down and licking his lips.
“You’ve never done that with your finger,” I tease.
He slides a finger inside me and says, “Now I have.”
I moan—loudly. The air turns thick with heat and memory and the sharp, sour-sweet smell of cheap cleaning product and old lust.
Oscar bends me over, one hand on my lower back, the other guiding himself into me. I hear him spit into his hand, then hear the slick sounds of him coating his cock with it. His thick head rubs up against my hole. He twirls it around it, opening me slowly.
The stretch is glorious. Real.
I’m not a ghost. He’s not cursed. And I can feel the initial pain of a cock going inside of me again. This was magnificent.
We are just two men in a closet, making up for all the time we had lost.
He enters me slow at first—like he is learning my human body.
The warmth of it. The resistance. I’m learning too–everything is tight, and my asshole seems resistant.
But I let myself sit with the discomfort.
Feel myself relax around him. As I had gotten used to him, I tell him I am ready, and he went deeper.
I gasp into the wall as he goes fully in me, the base of his dick pressing against my cheeks.
His balls slapping mine. He gives himself a moment to feel it, then slowly thrusts into me.
As I moan louder and louder with every stroke of him, he increases in ferocity.
Faster, desperate, like he can’t get enough.
My ass stretches and tightens around his length as he pumps in deeper.
“Fuck, you feel—God, Eddy, you feel alive.”
“I am alive,” I gasp. “You brought me back. You trash-loving necromantic wonder.”
The pace gets brutal. Glorious. Our bodies slap together in a rhythm that could summon spirits. My sweaty ass cheeks smack against his waist.
The smell is intoxicating.
Shelves rattle. A mop falls. The scent of pine cleaner mingles with musk and sex and longing.
“Almost there,” he groans into my ear.
“Do it. Fucking wreck me. Make this hole yours, Janitor Boy!”
He reaches around me, shoulder over me, his biceps to my chest, and strokes me. Fast. Hard, he pulls my cock’s foreskin up and down in his fist, which is slick with my pre-cum. I’m so close to bursting. It is too much. I can’t hold it back any longer.
I come with a cry, biting into his shoulder to muffle it. He follows seconds later, hips thrusting into me, slurring my name like a prayer.
We collapse in a pile of limbs, sweat, and misplaced caution signs.
Silence. Breathing. The buzz of the overhead light.
Then — CLUNK.
A bottle of bleach rolls off a shelf and thuds to the ground by our feet.
“Sorry,” I say, chuckling. “That might’ve been me. Gripped on too tight.”
Oscar laughs, deep and full. “We’re gonna have to clean this whole place again.”
“Good,” I say. “I enjoy cleaning as long as you’re here with me.”
“You like me more,” he teases.
I kiss him. “Always.”
Outside the closet, the night carries on.
Inside, it is warm. Sacred. Ours.
There’s a rumour around the office that my new employee, the new janitor Eddy, is a reincarnated soul.
There’s another rumour that he hums to bins, and they hum back. That when he’s happy, the trash bags float into the cart. He makes even the mop buckets blush. But I knew it was because he still possessed some of his Grouch abilities. He can still communicate with the Rot.
But no one can prove it.
Except me, who watches Eddy go about his cleaning. We often sneak off on trips to the janitor’s closet when no one is looking.
All the employees know is that lately, the place shines more. Smells better. Feels lighter. And the Head of Cleaning Operations is finally smiling like he means it.
The finance department is always empty at night, except for two employees who seem to work overtime. I know them and just let them carry on, not disturbing them.
As I lock up the maintenance closet, I pass the breakroom and overhear a peculiar conversation.
“…I’m just saying, Chase, you can’t expense blood bags under ‘client hospitality.’”
A sheepish laugh follows. “But Miles, they’re O-negative, very premium!”
I smirk.
The new accountant is fussy. The vampire intern is a complete himbo. Classic Geek and Jock trope. And judging by the way their voices tangle in the fluorescent-lit air, something messy and undeniably delicious is brewing.
I nudge Eddy with my elbow.
“Wanna place bets on who catches feelings first?”
Eddy grins, eyes glinting like a full moon on bin juice. “Opposites attract, who will cave first.”
We walk off laughing and never wondered if we were good enough for each other.
Sometimes you don’t need a second chance.
You just need someone who sees you.
Really sees you.
And sometimes, miraculously, that someone crawls out of a bin.
The end.