Epilogue
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
“Alittle to the left,” I say.
Milo and Tanner shuffle sideways along the wall in unison, the frame wobbling slightly between them. I’ve made them do this four times already. I know that. But we didn’t get here easily and I’m not about to hang anything crooked.
“Define a little,’” Milo mutters, arms starting to shake.
“You’re fine,” I say. “There. Stop. No… back. Back.”
Tanner huffs out a laugh. “He’s drunk on power.”
“I’m not drunk on power,” I say, stepping back to assess. “I have standards.”
“You have control issues,” Milo corrects.
“Same thing,” Tanner adds.
I ignore them, squinting at the wall. The house smells faintly like fresh paint and cardboard, every surface half-unpacked, every corner holding some version of a life we’re still figuring out how to merge.
“Okay,” I say finally. “That’s… actually perfect.”
Neither of them moves.
“Are you sure?” Milo asks.
“No.” I pause. “But if I say anything else, you’re going to drop it.”
“Correct,” Tanner says.
“Then yes. It’s perfect.”
They hang it. Step back.
It’s a framed selfie from that weekend. Not the whole story. God, not even close, but enough. The three of us by the fire, Milo mid-laugh, Tanner looking at him, me looking somewhere in between.
Milo lets out a low whistle. “We look good.”
“We look sunburned,” I say.
“We look happy,” Tanner says quietly.
I cross my arms, shifting my weight. “Well. Don’t get used to it. Moving day is temporary.”
Milo snorts. “Yeah, because nothing says temporary like a joint lease and three sets of keys.”
“And a couch we argued about for two hours,” Tanner adds.
“That couch was important,” I shoot back.
“You cried in the showroom.”
“I did not cry.”
“You teared up,” Milo says, grinning. “There were emotions.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it again, because… yeah. Maybe there were.
In the weeks after the camping trip, things were awkward in that quiet, careful way where everyone’s pretending they’re not thinking about it while thinking about it constantly.
Tanner got settled back in at his mom’s.
Milo and I went back to our house, back to bills and groceries and full-time jobs, back to a life that looked exactly the same on the outside.
Except it wasn’t.
Somewhere between errands and routine, we had to keep remembering that Tanner was only a short drive away.
It’s not like he called much. I think he was waiting, giving us space to decide what this was, if it was anything at all. Exactly like him, really. Showing up, then letting us choose whether to meet him there.
The problem was, he’d been gone so long that fitting him back into our lives felt… off at first. Like trying to slide a missing puzzle piece into a picture we’d learned to live without.
It wasn’t a full-blown relationship. Not at first.
But we’d been friends forever. That part made it easier. No one questioned it when he started staying over now and then. Then a little more often. Then enough that it stopped feeling like visiting and started feeling like something else entirely.
We found a rhythm before we even realized we were building one, and somewhere along the way, it stopped being complicated and became us.
A fully formed unit.
Figuring it out between ourselves was never the hardest part. It was everything outside of that. We knew from the start it wouldn’t be simple once the rest of the world got involved.
My parents didn’t take it well. Milo’s dad, though, surprised me. So did Tanner’s parents. They didn’t just accept it. They understood it in a way that felt almost unsettling. I suppose they’d been watching this play out for years and were waiting for us to catch up.
My mom and dad came around eventually. I think what mattered most was that we’d found our way back to each other at all. The how of it and the shape of it still confused them though.
Not that it was their job to understand.
It was ours.
Moving in together felt like the obvious next step.
Milo and I had the space, so we offered it to Tanner when things started to feel less tentative and more real.
But it wasn’t about folding him into something we’d already built.
It was about building something new. Something that belonged to all of us.
We didn’t want him to feel like an add-on, some piece hovering at the edges. If this was going to work, it had to be all the way
God knows he could use the stability.
That’s how we ended up here surrounded by new furniture, fresh paint, and the promise of finally unpacking something that felt like ours.
There are still boxes everywhere. Half-built furniture leaning against walls. A kitchen filled with new appliances and cabinets we picked out together after way too much arguing.
We practically stripped the place down to the studs.
A fresh start.
One I think we all needed.
Tanner brushes past me, shoulder knocking mine on purpose, heading for the next box. “What’s next, boss?”
I watch him for a second longer than I mean to. Then Milo bumps my other side, mirroring it.
“Don’t overthink it,” he murmurs.
I huff out a breath, glancing between them, then back at the wall.
The frame’s still straight.
“Kitchen,” I say, pushing off toward the chaos. “Let’s try to get everything put back, and if either of you puts the plates in the wrong cabinet, I’m ending this arrangement immediately.”
“Noted,” Tanner calls.
“Threats already,” Milo says, following close behind. “We’re really settling in.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling when I do it.
Somehow, impossibly, we made it here.
I step into the kitchen, lift a box onto the counter, and crack it open as Tanner slips in behind me, arms wrapping around my middle.
“Do we have to do the kitchen right this second?” he murmurs. “Can’t we take a break?”
He leans in, brushing his nose along the shell of my ear, and I shudder despite myself.
“What did you have in mind?” I ask, already knowing better.
On the other side of the bar, Milo leans forward, elbows propped on the counter. I catch his eye, and he gives me a knowing grin.
“Well, you’re right here,” Tanner says, voice dropping, “and it would be so easy to…” He trails off, fingers hooking into the waistband of my paint-splattered shorts, tugging them down to reveal my tight white briefs.
I huff out a quiet laugh, turning in his arms, and rise onto my toes to kiss him.
“Right here in the kitchen?”
“Why not? We’ve tried beans. This way we’ve got easy access to the rest of the groceries from here in case we wanna try something else exotic.”
I scoff. “Absolutely not.”
“Relax,” he says, laughing, before turning me around, his hand sliding down my front to cup my already aching cock.
Milo is where we left him, leaned against the counter. He’s holding a bottle of lube, which he raises slightly, like an offering.
“Thank God,” I say, reaching over to take it.
Milo grins. “Figured that was surprise enough.”
Tanner’s shorts hit the floor, and he’s pressed flush against me, his hard cock nestled between my cheeks. He plucks the lube from my hand, his mouth hot on my neck, teeth grazing my skin. I glance at Milo, who hasn’t moved.
“You sure you don’t want to join?” I ask.
“Not yet,” he says. “I’m enjoying the view.”
I gasp as Tanner tugs my briefs down, his hands eager. He pushes my legs apart, kneeling behind me. His strong hands spread me open, and then his tongue is circling my hole.
His tongue laps against me, slicking my entrance with warm, wet strokes. I clutch the counter, knuckles white, eyes locked with Milo’s. His gaze doesn’t waver, the green of his irises eclipsed by the black of his pupils.
Tanner’s hands grip my ass, thumbs digging into the tender flesh of my cheeks, holding me open. His tongue is relentless, circling, probing, each pass sending a shiver up my spine.
I can feel Milo’s gaze as keenly as I feel Tanner’s touch, his look a physical caress that heightens every sensation.
“You like that,” he asks.
A whimper escapes me as I nod, bottom lip trapped between my teeth.
”Good boy,” Milo murmurs, reaching up to free my lip with his thumb, dragging it slow across my mouth before pressing it past my lips. I close around it. He watches me do it. “Give him what he needs, Tanner.”
The warmth of Tanner’s mouth against me disappears and I feel the loss of it immediately.
“Think so?” Tanner asks.
“Stop talking,” I breathe, dropping forward onto my forearms and arching my back toward him, hole on full display. “Please fuck me.”
The laugh that tumbles out of him is downright wicked.
“Fucking desperate,” he says.
His hand is steady as he slicks up his fingers. I try to rock back against him, grinding my ass in the air, but Tanner holds me fast, teasing me with the barest brush.
He starts with one finger, twisting in and out, spreading me open and making a show of how little resistance he meets. I whimper and he adds another.
I want it, I want it so bad it almost aches. He curls his fingers, searching, finding, and I yelp, every nerve ending sparking.
I keep my eyes locked on Milo, like an anchor. Behind me Tanner leans in, chest pressed to my back to pepper kisses at the base of my neck as he works his fingers deeper, scissoring me open.
I’m moaning now, not even trying to hide it.
My cock is leaking onto the cabinet. My legs are shaking.
Tanner pulls out his fingers, but then his cock is against me, hot and hard and slick with lube.
He lines up, nudging the head right at my entrance, and doesn’t push forward.
He olds himself there, letting me feel the hunger of it.
“You need this,” he asks.
He doesn’t wait for an answer. One hard thrust and I’m full of him, a broken sound tearing out of me.
He sets a punishing pace, not giving me time to adjust. My shorts and briefs are still tangled at my ankles, my cock swinging heavy and untouched, the head catching the cabinet face on every forward drive.
Across from me, Milo pushes off the counter and rounds the bar into the kitchen. Tanner doesn’t slow, but he does pivot us, turning me to face Milo who takes my face in both hands and kisses me deep, his mouth unhurried against mine even as Tanner drives into me from behind.
Milo pulls back enough to strip his shirt over his head, then steps out of his shorts.
He finds the lube on the counter. Slicks his fingers and wraps them around my cock and I jerk forward into his grip. One stroke, two, three, and then he reaches behind himself, holding my gaze as he opens himself up. He takes his time with it. Makes me watch.
When he’s ready, he turns, takes hold of my cock, and sinks back onto me.
He hisses, and I moan at the tight heat of him swallowing me whole. My hips quickly find their own rhythm, rocking forward into Milo, grinding back onto Tanner, chasing the drag and press of both of them at once.
I’m taking and giving and completely lost somewhere in between.
“I won’t last,” I manage, the words barely coherent.
“Then don’t,” Milo says, pressing back to take me deeper. “Fill me up.”
“I’m close too,” Tanner breathes against my neck.
I stop thinking. There is only this. The three of us, the years it took to get here, the impossible fact of it. I come apart between them, and for a moment the whole long road that led here collapses into a single point of heat and pressure and arrival.
Right now, I’m not sure where my body begins and the others end. It’s heat, connection, the chemical spill of want. It’s new, even after all these years because this time it’s all of us, not only breaking each other but making something whole.
We all come at once, all gasps and curses and clinging for dear life, joined together chasing pleasure and joy and happiness.
I let myself go slack, letting them move me however they want, letting every touch land exactly where it’s meant to.
It isn’t tentative or careful, but that doesn’t make it careless.
If anything, it’s the opposite. Every time they pull me apart and put me back together again, it feels like they’re learning the shape of me by heart.
Like they’re terrified of forgetting it.
My head spins with all of it.
I think about what it felt like when I first realized what I wanted, how I spent years trying to make myself smaller afterward.
Quieter. Easier to ignore. If I took up less space, maybe nobody would notice the ache in me.
Maybe nobody would see how badly I wanted things I didn’t think I was allowed to have.
But this isn’t that.
I’m not hiding anymore. I’m not shrinking myself down to fit inside somebody else’s comfort. If anything, loving them has made me larger. More certain of my own edges.
It’s so obvious now that I can’t believe I ever thought I deserved less than this.
They never ask me to choose. Never ask me to explain why it’s both of them instead of one, or why some part of me has always needed more love than I knew how to hold alone. They take every fractured, complicated piece I hand them and return it multiplied.
I don’t know if that makes me lucky or selfish or some dumb animal that finally found the right place to belong.
I should say something. Something that cuts through the weight of what I’m feeling. But the words never come.
Instead, I breathe.
In that moment I realize I’m not bracing for loss. I’m not waiting for someone to leave.
Maybe this is what it means to finally believe you’re enough.
I only know I’ve never wanted anything more.
THE END