Thursday Night Conversations

On Thursday evenings, the men gathered at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, in the low, golden light that leaked through frosted windows and onto the folding chairs arranged in a circle around a chipped oak coffee table. The coffee was always burnt. The folding chairs always sagged. And the conversation, each week, teetered between the Book of Matthew and mortgage rates.

That evening, however, a peculiar hush fell over the fellowship hall. Paul Hodges, who managed a used appliance store on Route 27 and had recently begun coloring his hair an indecisive shade of brown, arrived early. His fellow supplicant, Raymond Cullinan, a retired school superintendent with a plump figure and a usually withdrawn demeanor, arrived just behind him. The others were late.

It was Paul who noticed the magazine first—left half-tucked beneath the pulpit ledger on the prayer table, beside a loose stack of missal photocopies and a half-eaten pear. The cover was garish and glossy, a throwback to something distinctly unecclesiastical. A young man—shirtless, damp-skinned—gazed outward with such raw and pleading candor that Paul, startled, dropped his thermos. The clatter rang like a bell.

“What in the name of…” Raymond said, stooping to retrieve the fallen item, his eyes inadvertently falling upon the magazine’s cover. There was a long silence.

They stared at the thing as one might regard a serpent coiled in a bowl of fruit—an object so alien, so intimate, that it seemed to breathe.

“Do you suppose,” Raymond began, clearing his throat, “that someone left it…as a joke?”

“A cruel one,” Paul said, though his voice lacked conviction.

Neither moved to pick it up. But neither looked away.

They stood, two men in the cracked light of early evening, the silence between them suddenly thick and alive—charged with something that had no name, but which both recognized from long ago, like a song once hummed in a dream.

Paul was the first to sit down, though he did so with the reluctant air of a man about to confess a misdeed not entirely his own. He crossed his legs and looked at the floor. Raymond remained standing, his arms folded in a manner that suggested he was shielding himself from either cold or judgment—perhaps both.

The magazine, forgotten momentarily, lay where it had fallen: face-up on the laminate wood, provocative and absurd in that dusty, fluorescent-lit room with its crucifixes and faded hymnals.

“It could have been the youth minister,” Paul muttered, eyes flicking toward it again. “They’re always talking about temptations of the flesh.”

Raymond gave a quick, nasal laugh. “That boy? He barely knows where to look when he passes the Women’s Fellowship table.”

They lapsed again into silence, but it was no longer peaceful. Something had shifted. Not just in the room—but between them. It was as if the air had become viscous, laced with a scent neither would name: the faint sweetness of transgression, of something long shut away cracking open.

“It’s funny,” Paul said finally. “Back in the seventies, I was stationed out west—air force base near Tacoma. There was a man there. A fellow I bunked with. He kept a stash of magazines in his locker. Nothing like that—” he nodded toward the glossy cover, “—but... you know. Men in posing straps. Oil. That sort of thing.”

Raymond looked at him, not smiling, not frowning, his face as calm as a pond in windless weather.

“I suppose we’ve all had our… curiosities,” he said. Then after a moment, more quietly: “There was a boy named Lewis in my dormitory at Bowdoin. He used to walk from the shower with a towel barely—well, never mind. That was decades ago.”

Paul glanced over at him, and for the first time in their long Thursday acquaintanceship, he noticed the outline of Raymond’s hands: well-kept, soft, the kind of hands that had known chalkboards and pianos but never soil.

“I always wondered,” Paul said, almost to himself, “if I’d have turned out different, if someone had just… asked.”

Outside, the churchyard glowed with the pale intensity of a late spring dusk. The clock ticked. A car door slammed far off, and still no one else had come.

Raymond stepped forward and, after a brief hesitation, picked up the magazine. He held it between two fingers like a priest holding a wafer, cautious and reverent all at once.

“I imagine the pastor will be mortified,” he said.

Paul didn’t respond. He was watching Raymond’s face, how the light from the stained glass scattered over his features—an accidental benediction. The silence stretched again, but now it was different. It was not uncomfortable, but charged—like the air before a summer storm.

And then, with a shrug that was almost playful, Raymond said: “Shall we see what all the fuss is about?”

They examined the magazine with the same curiosity and dread with which boys once dissected frogs in biology class—half in horror, half in awe. Raymond turned the pages slowly, with care and deliberation, as though each leaf might be wired to explode. The images were theatrical, exaggerated to the point of comedy—young men in cowboy hats and nothing else; sailors tied in knots that would have impressed the Navy; languid youths reclining like pagan saints in sun-dappled suburban bedrooms.

Neither man spoke for a while. Their silence was not so much awkward as… suspended, like the held breath before a confession or a plunge into cold water.

Then Paul gave a snort, not quite laughter. “They all look so young,” he said. “It’s almost discouraging.”

“They look like… ideas of young men,” Raymond replied. “No one I’ve ever met looks like that. Not even in their prime.”

Paul leaned over, gesturing at one particular spread—an absurdly staged kitchen scene involving whipped cream and what appeared to be a prayer shawl. “Well, now that’s just sacrilege.”

Raymond squinted. “Is that… is that the old stove we used to have at my parents’ summer house? Christ, it might be.”

They laughed. Quietly at first, then louder. Not cruelly, but with the strange exhilaration that comes from standing just past the line one never thought to cross.

When the laughter ebbed, it left something softer in its wake. Paul looked at Raymond—really looked at him this time. Not as a fellow father or committee member or man-of-faith, but as someone who’d also spent years paddling hard against a current he never quite named.

“You ever been in love with a man?” Paul asked.

It was so sudden, so plainly spoken, that Raymond looked up as though slapped. But then his shoulders relaxed, and his lips formed something not quite a smile.

“No,” he said. “Not openly.”

A pause.

“But there was a man,” he added. “Years ago. My thesis advisor, actually. Dr. Krowley. He once touched the back of my neck in a way that nearly… unmade me. I lived on the weight of that touch for years.”

Paul nodded, staring into his coffee. “Funny, isn’t it? All the things we don’t do.”

They sat like that, in the low golden light that was now slipping toward dusk, the magazine lying open between them like a roadmap to some country they’d heard of in dreams but never dared visit.

At last, Raymond closed the magazine and folded his hands atop it.

“We should put it away,” he said. “Before someone walks in and starts imagining things.”

Paul didn’t move. His face was soft, unguarded in a way that made him look younger than he had in years.

“Maybe,” he said. “But maybe we’re the ones who should’ve started imagining things sooner.”

Outside, a car engine groaned into life, and two red tail lights passed along the gravel path. Somewhere in the church building, a door creaked open. The prayer meeting, such as it was, was about to begin.

But for a moment—just a moment—the two men remained still, bound together not by scripture, but by something stranger and more holy: the shared memory of a glimpse, an ache, a possibility.

Reverend Nathan Bell entered the fellowship hall with a clipboard tucked under one arm and a hopeful prayer on his lips. The Thursday evening men's circle had, over the years, become a reliable affair—half spiritual sustenance, half reluctant therapy for a handful of men who no longer expected to be surprised by life.

The room was as it always was: folding chairs in a loop, an urn of lukewarm coffee near the kitchenette, the musty scent of hymnals and furniture polish. Nathan’s eyes instinctively scanned the long oak side table near the windows where he’d stacked some spiritual pamphlets and his Bible earlier that morning.

And then he saw it.

The magazine.

Not tucked underneath the literature as he remembered, but sitting squarely atop the stack, cover down, slightly askew. Like someone had picked it up. Opened it. Thought about it. And, with deliberation or guilt or both, placed it back—but not quite as he had left it.

His chest constricted.

He moved to the table, arranging papers with exaggerated nonchalance, but there it was: the glossy edge peeking out, the familiar red spine. Veritas Men Quarterly, a name that meant nothing unless one knew what to expect past the first few pages. He had ordered it discreetly, once, months ago—just to understand, just to see what it was that tormented the younger men who came to him for guidance. Or so he told himself.

He’d meant to throw it away.

He’d thought of it just that morning, halfway through his yogurt, when the diocesan office called about the stained-glass fundraiser. In the flurry of admin tasks and his own unease, he must’ve left it on the table, camouflaged in pastoral detritus.

But now, the camouflage was gone.

A muscle twitched beneath his right eye.

He turned to face the circle. Paul Hodges and Raymond Cullinan were chatting in subdued tones by the coffee. Old Delaney was wedged into a chair, fast asleep. Chuck Wentworth was scanning a Bible app on his phone with an exaggerated frown.

Nathan’s gaze settled, briefly, on Raymond. The man wasn’t looking his way—but something in his posture was off. Relaxed. Too relaxed. He leaned back in his chair with the lazy, roguish ease of someone who had been surprised by something and decided to let it play out.

Paul, on the other hand, wouldn’t meet his eye.

Nathan clapped his hands once, too sharply. “Brothers,” he said. “Let’s begin.”

The men took their seats.

But as he opened his Bible and tried to recite the familiar verse from Philippians—whatever is pure, whatever is lovely…—his voice faltered.

He knew the magazine had been touched. Handled. Examined.

His thoughts spun—Had they laughed? Were they scandalized? Were they curious? Did they know it was his?

His palms were damp. He gripped the lectern and smiled thinly, too widely, as he made eye contact with each man around the circle, trying to read the lines of their faces. Paul scratched the back of his neck. Raymond looked serenely into the middle distance, as if contemplating mercy.

And Reverend Nathan Bell, beloved by the congregation, trusted by elders, who had long kept his hungers folded like vestments in the dark drawer of his heart, suddenly felt unbearably seen.

When the circle broke for fresh air, the Reverend moved quickly—too quickly, he realized, when Paul gave him a startled glance as he brushed past the folding chairs. But there was no time for gentler exits.

He slipped into the fellowship hall and went straight for the side table. The magazine was where it had been left—still partially hidden beneath a sheaf of flyers advertising the church’s upcoming chili supper, but unmistakably disturbed. The pamphlets had shifted slightly.

Nathan rolled the magazine tightly, like a decree, and crammed it into the deep pocket of his coat. The printed pages brushed against his side like warm skin.

He walked out the rear of the church, past the edge of the gravel lot, and around the building to the trash bins. Not the recycling—he dared not be poetic now—but the dented, rust-collared green municipal bin that reeked faintly of styrofoam cups and funeral casserole tins.

He lifted the lid and dropped the magazine in without ceremony. It landed on a bed of coffee filters and Styrofoam communion cups.

He stood for a moment, listening to the clatter of his breath. Then he shut the lid, too hard, and turned back toward the church.

The air had cooled. The men were dispersing, some walking to their cars, others standing in loose pairs beneath the yellow light of the streetlamp. Raymond stood apart—leaning casually against the corner of the church wall, as if watching the stars.

Nathan rejoined the group and made the small noises of dismissal: “Drive safe, Paul… See you next week, Chuck…” He was nearly back to equilibrium when a movement behind him made him turn slightly.

Raymond had slipped away.

Nathan looked again.

And saw him.

Behind the building. At the trash bins.

He was standing there, casually lifting the lid. The way one might if they’d tossed something out by mistake.

Raymond reached in without hesitation.

He pulled out the rolled magazine, glanced once over his shoulder—and, for a terrible second, Nathan thought he might make eye contact—but instead Raymond tucked the thing smoothly into the inside of his coat.

Then he turned and walked off across the gravel lot toward his car

And suddenly, Nathan Bell, a man who had given half his life to containing desire, found himself trembling—not from guilt, but from curiosity.

That evening, the town of Brookley settled into its predictable hush: sprinklers ticked across patchy lawns, televisions flickered behind gauzy curtains, and husbands kissed their wives goodnight with a practiced gentleness before parting down long, separate hallways.

In his study, Reverend Bell sat before a pile of open theological texts, none of which he could bring himself to read. His reading glasses hung unused from the neck of his sweater, and the lamp at his elbow cast a golden pool of light that revealed the faint tremble in his fingertips. He had a decanter of sherry, a clergy gift from a Christmas long past, which he now poured into a teacup to avoid the implication of indulgence.

He kept returning to the image of Raymond by the trash bin: the ease of his hand reaching in, the deliberate way he had folded the magazine into his coat.

Nathan closed his eyes and saw the magazine as it had been the night before, open on the desk in his locked office, underlined in thoughtless moments. He had not read it as much as studied it. There had been a face—soft, boyish, dirty with shadow—and a body like something sculpted to test the limits of skin. He had told himself it was grief that drove him to it: grief for his lost youth, for the old, secret flames he had crushed under scripture and linen. But now there was Raymond.

Across town, Paul Nivens sat on the edge of his bed in a house that still bore the embroidered touches of his late wife—floral curtains, an excess of throw pillows, a faint scent of lavender on the linens. He had been thinking of Raymond too, though not in the way he dared put words to. The conversation they’d had earlier had stuck in his teeth. Raymond had mentioned something—offhandedly—about restlessness. About how hard it is to want something at our age when we’re told we shouldn’t want anything anymore.

There had been no directness in it. But there had been a pulse.

Paul found himself watching the rain trace down the windowpane, his shirt half-unbuttoned, his feet bare on the cool wood floor. He had always been the sensible one—the accountant, the deacon, the one people trusted with keys and budgets. And yet, tonight, he felt dangerously close to a kind of edge..

Raymond kissed his wife watching TV as he walked into the door. He walked up the darken stairs to the barely used bathroom down the hall

He unrolled and opened the magazine to a two-page spread. He traced the curve of the man’s body with one long finger, as if learning something important. Now, with the windows cracked to the early summer breeze and the low hum of distant traffic below, Raymond allowed himself the pleasure of fantasy: not just of the bodies in the magazine, but of hands—older hands, hands that trembled—reaching out to him.

He undid his belt, slow and deliberate. His breath deepened. He turned the page.

In the distance, church bells struck eleven.

The following week’s prayer circle was smaller than usual. A few regulars were out of town. Rain had threatened all afternoon, and the air hung heavy with the scent of wet concrete and pine. In the church's side room—carpeted, windowless, intimate—the folding chairs sat in their usual ring beneath the dull light of a low-hanging fixture. A tray of teacups and sugar cubes waited untouched on a side table. The room was quiet. Too quiet.

Nathan Bell, seated before the circle began, thumbed through a psalter but read nothing. The words blurred in front of him. He could feel his collar tight against his neck, his breath just slightly uneven. He had barely slept since that night.

When Raymond entered, he moved with the same quiet composure he always carried. He nodded to the Reverend, to Paul, who had arrived just before him, and took his seat. No one else had come.

For a time, they prayed. The formal kind. Heads bowed, voices soft, words memorized. But something in the cadence drifted. It was clear none of them was truly speaking to God in the way they once had. When the prayers ended, no one moved.

The silence that followed was different than the usual peaceful quiet of reflection. This was taut, uncertain. Nathan cleared his throat and looked to his folded hands.

Nathan continued. “Last week… something of mine was left out. Something that shouldn't have been. I—I believe one of you found it.”

He paused. The moment seemed to stretch. There was no accusation in his voice, only a raw sort of fear, or perhaps hope.

Raymond didn’t respond at first. Then, finally, he nodded.

“I did,” he said. Quietly. Carefully. “I found it.”

Nathan exhaled, almost imperceptibly.

“I didn’t mean to trespass,” Raymond said.

Paul lifted his eyes then. “You kept it?”

“Yes.”

Nathan looked between them—the honesty in Raymond’s voice, the tremor in Paul’s hand as it rested on his knee. There was a solemnity in the room, like something sacred was being spoken aloud for the first time.

“I’ve prayed over this,” Nathan said, voice low. “Not for clarity, but for permission. And maybe… maybe that’s not what prayer is for. But I don’t know what else to do.”

Raymond shifted in his chair. “You’re not alone in it.”

That startled something in Nathan. He looked at Raymond fully now—not the man who helped mend the old pews or organized the food drive last winter, but a man who had seen what Nathan tried so hard to bury and had not turned away.

Paul cleared his throat. “I’ve spent nights asking myself if wanting… tenderness, this late in life, is just another vanity. But it doesn’t feel vain. It feels like breath.”

No one spoke for a long moment. The fluorescent light hummed above them, faintly buzzing like a second presence in the room.

Nathan’s gaze returned to Raymond. He studied the lines around the man’s mouth, the quiet way he held himself—like someone bracing for a weight he’d grown used to carrying.

“Raymond,” Nathan began softly, almost apologetically, “when you took the magazine… what did it feel like?”

Raymond didn’t answer right away. His hands were folded, resting on his knees, fingers lightly clasped. When he spoke, it was with the caution of someone walking barefoot over glass.

“It felt like I’d touched something I wasn’t supposed to. But also like I’d come across a mirror I didn’t expect to find. One that showed me… not what I am, maybe, but what I’ve wanted.”

He looked up at Nathan, then at Paul, his voice quiet but steady.

“And not just the bodies. Though that was part of it. It was the gaze. The way they looked back at me—those men. Bold. Open.”

Nathan swallowed. The air in the room felt charged, like a thunderstorm held at bay just beyond the windows.

Paul let out a long, steady breath. “I keep thinking about what you said, Raymond. About how hard it is to want something at our age. How nobody expects it of us. Not joy, not longing. Just a polite fading.”

He paused, then added, “I don’t think I want to fade.”

Raymond nodded, the beginnings of emotion rising in his face—nothing dramatic, just the loosening of some tightly held thread.

“I’ve lived so many years for other people,” he said. “My wife. My children. My neighbors. The church. And I don’t regret that. But there’s a part of me that I folded away like a winter coat. And finding that magazine… it was like opening the closet and realizing it still fits.”

Nathan reached out without thinking, his hand resting lightly atop Raymond’s. The older man flinched—not from fear, but from surprise. His skin was dry, warm, worn smooth by years of labor. Nathan didn’t grip, didn’t clutch, just let the contact linger like a blessing.

Raymond turned his hand, slowly, and their fingers wove together. Paul watched with something close to awe.

Nathan looked over at him, eyes soft. “You said it felt like breath,” he murmured.

Paul nodded, throat working. “It still does.”

Raymond’s hand squeezed Nathan’s gently. “I didn’t think… I didn’t believe anyone would reach back.”

Paul leaned forward now, bridging the narrow space between them. His knee touched Nathan’s. Then, after a pause—he reached over and placed his hand over theirs, the three hands now stacked in the center of the room, trembling but joined.

For a while, that was enough.

Then Nathan said, “It doesn’t have to be all figured out. Or even named. But… I don’t want to keep hiding.”

His voice was steadier now, as if the act of speaking had called some deep part of him to life.

Paul’s thumb brushed lightly over Raymond’s wrist. “Then let’s not,” he said. “Let’s… stay here a while. See what it feels like.”

Nathan nodded.

Raymond looked at them both, his eyes glassy but clear. He rose from his chair first, pulling gently at their hands until they followed.

There was a couch near the wall, faded blue fabric soft with age. They moved toward it, tentative but drawn by something unspoken.

Nathan sat in the center. Raymond beside him, thigh warm against his. Paul took the other side, and for a moment none of them knew what to do.

Then Raymond leaned in. Just enough for his shoulder to brush Nathan’s, his head turned slightly, his cheek near Nathan’s jaw.

“May I?” he asked. A whisper, barely breath.

Nathan didn’t answer in words. He turned his face and let his lips meet Raymond’s in a kiss so quiet it could have been mistaken for prayer.

Paul watched them, his own breath hitching, his fingers curling in his lap. When Nathan pulled back, his eyes found Paul’s.

“Come here,” Nathan said, voice full of something raw and steady.

Paul leaned in, hesitant—but when his lips met Nathan’s, they lingered. Nathan’s hand came to rest on the back of his neck, holding him gently there. When they parted, Paul’s forehead dropped to Nathan’s shoulder, and he exhaled—long, shuddering, like a man laying down a burden.

Raymond reached across Nathan then, his hand brushing Paul’s. Paul took it.

There they were: three men no longer young, no longer pretending.

The room around them was unchanged—lamplight still dim, carpet still worn—but something sacred had shifted. Not by force. Not by declaration. But by permission freely given.

And in that dim little church room, they let themselves rest against one another. Breathing. Paul’s breath warmed the crook of Nathan’s neck, steadying now, but filled with a kind of tentative need. Nathan turned slightly, his arm looping around Paul’s waist, pulling him in close. Their bellies pressed together, not taut or sculpted, but soft with years, the kind of softness that made the closeness feel comforting, not performative.

Raymond watched, his own breathing uneven. He reached across Nathan’s chest and let his hand rest on Paul’s shoulder, then trailed it down—fingers tentative at first, then bolder—across the front of Paul’s shirt, where he could feel the rise and fall of his breath, the slight tremble beneath the fabric.

Paul tilted his head toward Raymond’s touch, eyes half-lidded. “It’s been so long,” he whispered, almost to himself.

Nathan’s hand moved between them now, fingers brushing the waistband of Paul’s slacks. He hesitated—but Paul looked up at him and gave a small nod. Nathan unfastened the button slowly, each movement deliberate, reverent.

Raymond leaned in then, kissing Paul’s jaw, then lower, down the side of his neck, where the skin was tender and faintly freckled. Paul exhaled sharply, a sound caught somewhere between relief and disbelief.

Nathan guided Paul to lie back gently against the couch, his head resting on a folded jacket. He kissed Paul again—deeper this time, his hand sliding under the loosened waistband to cup the heat he found there. Paul gasped softly into the kiss, hips lifting just enough to welcome the touch.

Raymond moved behind Nathan, pressing his chest to his back, arms wrapping around his middle. Nathan felt enclosed, held—not just aroused, but wanted. He tilted his head back and Raymond kissed along his neck, unbuttoning his collar with slow, practiced fingers. His hands weren’t smooth, but they were sure. Experienced.

Nathan let out a low moan as Raymond’s hand explored his chest, fingertips grazing the soft curve of his stomach, the flatness of his nipple. He hadn’t been touched like this in years. Not with hunger. Not with care.

Paul’s hand found Nathan’s again, gripping it as his body rocked gently beneath them. His shirt was open now, his undershirt pulled up to expose the pale slope of his belly, the dark trail of hair leading downward. Nathan leaned down and kissed it, lips parting, tongue teasing, and Paul shuddered.

Raymond knelt behind him, pulling Nathan’s trousers down over his hips. His hands paused at the swell of his rear, then smoothed over the flesh with something like reverence. He bent forward and kissed the small of Nathan’s back, the creases at his sides, each kiss slow and deliberate, until Nathan groaned aloud.

"Wait," Paul whispered, his voice hoarse with desire. He sat up slightly, eyes dark and questioning. "Should we lock the door?"

Raymond nodded, rising from his knees with a quiet grunt. He moved across the room, turned the deadbolt with a decisive click, and drew the thin curtain across the narrow window in the door.

When he returned, something had shifted between them. The hesitancy was gone, replaced by a quiet resolve that seemed to emanate from all three men at once.

"I want to see you," Nathan said, his gaze traveling from Paul to Raymond. "All of you."

They stood together in the center of the room, beneath the dim overhead light. Paul's fingers worked at his shirt buttons, revealing a narrow chest with sparse silver hair. Raymond unbuckled his belt, letting his trousers fall around thick thighs, unashamed of his substantial girth. Nathan pulled his undershirt over his head, exposing the soft curve of his stomach, the pale stretch marks at his sides.

Layer by layer, they shed their clothing—the armor they'd worn for decades. Socks peeled away, underwear discarded, until they stood bare before one another, three bodies marked by time and gravity and life.

Raymond's chest was broad, covered in a mat of gray curls that tapered down his rounded belly. Paul's ribs showed beneath his skin, his limbs thin but sinewy, with silver hair dusting his forearms and calves. Nathan stood between them, solid and pale, the hair on his chest gone mostly white, his member already stirring with interest.

There was no self-consciousness in their gaze—only wonder. They looked at each other not with the critical eye of youth, but with hunger tempered by understanding. These were bodies that had lived, had worked, had survived. Bodies that knew pleasure and pain in equal measure.

"My God," Raymond breathed, reaching out to touch Paul's shoulder. "You're beautiful."

Paul flushed, the color spreading down his neck to his chest. "I never thought I'd hear those words again."

Nathan stepped forward, one hand extending to trace the curve of Raymond's side, feeling the warmth and weight of him. "I've imagined this," he admitted. "Not exactly this, but... something like it."

They moved closer, drawn together by a magnetism that seemed both new and ancient. Paul's hands found Nathan's waist, Raymond's palm cradled Paul's cheek, and Nathan's fingers tangled in the thick hair at Raymond's chest.

"Is this alright?" Raymond asked, his voice low, almost reverent.

"More than alright," Paul answered, leaning in to kiss the soft flesh below Raymond's ear.

The room was warm now. Their bodies—creased, heavy, unfamiliar in this kind of light—became something worthy of worship. Not despite their age, but because of it.

Paul’s voice was a rasp: “Please. Don’t stop.”

Nathan turned again, reaching for Raymond, drawing him down to kiss him—deep and wet and wanting. Their bellies pressed, thighs rubbing together. Raymond moaned into Nathan’s mouth as Paul’s hand slid over them both, trembling but eager, needing to touch, to be part of this tangle of warmth and flesh and longing.

And in that quiet, flickering room, they began to show each other everything they'd once folded away.

Nathan’s hand wrapped around Raymond’s penis, thick and flushed and heavy with need. The weight of it surprised him—not just physical, but emotional. Raymond gasped into his mouth, his hips twitching at the first slide of Nathan’s palm. There was nothing hurried in the way they touched, no frantic clawing—just the steady, growing certainty that they were allowed this.

Paul’s fingers explored along Nathan’s spine, down the groove of his back, callused fingertips dragging over skin like they were trying to memorize the shape of him. He kissed the curve of Nathan’s shoulder, then lower, until his lips found the back of his thigh, the hollow behind his knee. Each kiss was slow, wet, and deliberate. Nathan’s body responded—hips rolling, voice cracking in a soft moan.

Raymond knelt now, one hand gripping Nathan’s hip, the other sliding between his cheeks. When his finger found the entrance, Nathan froze—but Paul’s hand came to rest on his back, warm and grounding. Raymond didn’t press in, not yet. He just circled gently, letting Nathan adjust to the thought of being—opened—in this way.

“Tell me if you want to stop,” Raymond murmured.

Nathan shook his head, breath shuddering out of him. “No. Just… go slow.”

Raymond leaned forward and kissed the small of Nathan’s back again, whispering something soft—words that didn’t need to be heard to be understood. Then, his finger slipped inside. Nathan gasped, clutching the fabric beneath him, body tensing, then yielding. Raymond moved carefully, easing deeper, letting his other hand stroke Nathan’s cock, already wet at the tip.

Paul pressed kisses along the side of Nathan’s face, lips trembling. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, as if still surprised to be saying it. “God, Nathan, you’re beautiful.”

Nathan turned, caught Paul’s mouth with his, kissing him deep as Raymond worked another finger inside, slow and patient. Nathan moaned into Paul’s mouth, body rolling between them, utterly surrounded—pleasured, held.

When Raymond finally entered him, Nathan cried out—not in pain, but in astonishment. He gripped Paul’s shoulders, eyes wide, the stretch intense, but so wanted. Raymond was thick and hot inside him, and once buried, he stilled, both of them panting, bodies slick with sweat and breathless need.

“Okay?” Raymond asked.

Nathan nodded, pushing back slightly, adjusting to his congregant penetrating his rectum. “Yes.”

Raymond began to move—slow, deep thrusts, each one sending jolts of sensation through Nathan’s body. Paul watched, mesmerized, his hand stroking himself now, needy and aching. Nathan reached for him, putting Paul’s cock inside his mouth,

Nathan lowered his head, taking Paul into his mouth with a reverent intensity. The weight of him, salt-warm and alive, filled Nathan's senses as he worked his lips along the shaft. Paul gasped, his fingers threading through Nathan's hair, guiding him gently.

Behind him, Raymond's rhythm deepened, each thrust pushing Nathan forward onto Paul's length. The three of them found a cadence together—Raymond pulling back only to press in again, Nathan taking Paul deeper with each forward motion, their bodies joined in a trinity of pleasure.

"God," Paul whispered, his head falling back against the couch. "Nathan..."

Raymond leaned over Nathan's arched back, reaching for Paul. Their mouths met in a kiss that held nothing back—hungry, open, tongues sliding together as Raymond continued to move inside Nathan. Paul's hand reached up, finding Raymond's chest, fingers circling the older man's nipple before his mouth replaced them. He suckled the hardened bud, feeling Raymond's groan vibrate through his lips.

The three of them moved as one now, boundaries dissolving. Nathan hummed around Paul's cock as Raymond hit something deep inside him that made stars burst behind his closed eyelids. Paul's mouth moved from one of Raymond's nipples to the other, teeth grazing the sensitive flesh as Raymond continued kissing him, hands cupping Paul's face with unexpected tenderness.

The air in the room was thick with their breathing, with the scent of their bodies—not young, not perfect, but honest in their need. Nathan pulled back slightly, lips slick, eyes looking up at Paul with a hunger that made the other man tremble.

He took Paul into his mouth again, deeper this time, as Raymond's thrusts became more urgent. Paul and Raymond's kisses grew fiercer, their hands exploring each other even as they remained connected through Nathan. Raymond's fingers traced the line of Paul's jaw, while Paul's hands mapped the broad expanse of Raymond's back, pulling him closer.

The fellowship hall that had witnessed decades of polite conversation and careful distance now held something entirely different—something primal and tender all at once. Three men finding in each other what they'd long denied themselves.

As their pleasure built toward its inevitable peak, there were no more words—only the sounds of their union, honest and unashamed, filling the sacred space with a different kind of worship.

When Raymond came, his body trembling with the release. Nathan held still for him, letting him empty into him, feeling full and claimed and undone.

Paul came moments later, gasping, his release streaking across Nathan’s hand, his chest. He fell forward, resting his forehead against Nathan’s, both of them shaking.

Nathan came last, his cock trapped between his belly and the couch, the friction enough to tip him over. He cried out—not from pain, not from guilt—but from the sheer overwhelming intimacy of it.

Afterward, they lay tangled together on the old couch, slick and panting, fingers tracing gentle lines over damp skin.

Nathan lay on his side, one leg still tangled over Paul’s, Raymond curled against his back. Their bodies had cooled, but none of them had moved far. It wasn’t discomfort that kept them there—it was the gravity of what had passed between them. Something they didn’t want to disturb just yet.

There was a long silence after that—not empty, but full. Each man lay there, letting the warmth of the others seep in, not as proof of lust but as affirmation of presence. They didn’t need to speak the words I needed this—they were written in the way they touched, the way they stayed.

Paul’s fingers found Nathan’s hand. He laced their fingers together, rough and thick-knuckled, but tender.

They stayed like that for a long while—three men, bodies softened by age, histories shadowed by silence, finally wrapped around one another in a warmth that asked nothing more than stay.

There would be questions later. But for now, just the hush of breath, and the closeness of skin.

Hours later, when they finally dressed in the hushed aftermath, something had fundamentally changed. They straightened ties, smoothed hair, but their eyes held a new recognition. They had seen each other—truly seen each other—and there was no going back to the men they'd been before.

"Same time next week?" Paul asked quietly as they stood at the door, his voice trying for casual but landing somewhere far more profound.

Raymond nodded, his hand briefly squeezing Paul