Mistleton and Other Men

Woody’s abrupt departure from Mistleton nagged at Sharon. Although she hadn’t known him well, the time spent together over Thanksgiving had opened the door to a deeper connection, one she thought might lead to an enduring friendship. He didn’t even say goodbye. Since her relationship with Mistleton was strictly professional, she didn’t feel comfortable probing him about Woody’s sudden exit.

In contrast, Holly wasn’t surprised. As she’d told Sharon, she had heard from Mistleton about Woody’s mood swings and erratic behavior, particularly after Julian Vex’s death. Mistleton suspected that Woody and Vex had been meeting up at Vex’s apartment for sex, and when he confronted Woody about it one evening, Woody had threatened to make trouble for him—though Holly wasn’t clear on the details. The next day, Woody was gone. “Sometimes you just never know people,” Holly told Sharon one slow afternoon at the Vine. She felt she knew Mistleton well—their families went back generations in the area. He would never lie to her. Her blind loyalty to him and the family’s good name bordered on the grotesque.

Likewise, the Vine’s regulars—and people in East Plainfield in general—accepted Mistleton’s version of events as Holly recounted them from the business side of the bar. In the absence of any counternarrative, and without much thought or reflection, they latched onto anything that could make sense of what had happened. They quickly adopted the moralizing yet memorable line, ‘to excuse yourself is to accuse yourself,’ which gave the story of Woody’s disappearance a veracity—much like the AI-generated poems Woody had added to the Mistleton and Other Mysteries tour. They had no idea of the line’s origins in the French Enlightenment or of its attribution to Voltaire. Frankly, they didn’t care.

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Overnight, the region’s first snowfall blanketed the vineyards and fields in white, softening the edges of the farm and the surrounding landscape. The pale, overcast sky blurred the horizon where it met the icy waters of the lake in the distance. Bare hawthorns, stripped of their leaves but still bearing crimson berries and ominous thorns, stood motionless, their twisted branches frosted in white. Tufts of dried grass poked through the snow, defiant against the cold.

The pale winter sunlight slanted through the window of Mistleton’s bedroom, casting a soft glow on the small vase of mistletoe atop the table de chevet, beside the framed photograph of the two sellers, their faces frozen in time. The delicate green leaves of the mistletoe seemed to shimmer in the weak light, while the white berries caught the sunlight, glistening like tiny pearls.

Mistleton lay awake next to Hunter, who was still asleep, in a position he loved—and had missed—pressed against him, lying on his side with his left leg bent and resting just below Hunter’s groin. He caught himself doing what he loved—and had also missed—tracing small circles around Hunter’s right nipple, pausing occasionally to tug lightly at the caramel brown hairs on his chest.

He reflected on how they had finally arrived at this point—one he had once thought impossible, as if the universe itself had conspired to guide them here. The thought of living entire lifetimes without Hunter haunted him endlessly, a gnawing ache that even the passage of time couldn’t dull. Yet, Hunter had found him again, at a bar in Philadelphia, after nearly a century apart. And in that single, electric moment, Mistleton had reordered everything—his plans, his loyalties, his carefully constructed solitude—just to have him back. The chemistry they shared, both physical and emotional, was as vibrant and timeless as ever.

Now, the small dramas of East Plainfield felt almost comical to Mistleton, like watching shadows play out across a stage from the darkened house of a theater. All the talk about the tour, the Vine, the petty arguments, whispered scandals, and fleeting passions seemed insignificant, as though the actors themselves—little people all of them, living little lives—didn’t realize how trivial their stories were in the face of eternity. From his vantage point, the weight of his own timelessness made their struggles feel both poignant and absurd.

He knew things wouldn’t be the same as when they first met at his father’s speakeasy in the late twenties. They had lived entire lives since then, accumulated wisdom, and experienced things that had shaped them—all of which remained with them, marking the distance between who they had been and who they were now. Nevertheless, he was determined to recreate the context of their previous life together at Mistleton, even if it meant poisoning Stella Stiles with a gift box of potassium chloride-laced homemade pralines to remove her from his path and take back the building where he and Hunter had first met. How fortuitous, then, that Stella received a thorn-pierced poppet the very same day.

As for Julian Vex, he was just becoming a nuisance. How could he have known such precise details of Duchene’s life after Mistleton? The questions irritated him—was Vex one of them? Had he known Duchene during their long separation, only to resurface now, causing trouble? Mistleton’s frustration grew with every unanswered thought.

Turning his thoughts from the mounting weight of his irritation, Mistleton lifted his head and traced a few soft kisses along Hunter’s sculpted upper arm, each one gently rousing him. “Good morning, Duchene,” he whispered, his voice barely above a murmur as he leaned close to Hunter’s ear.

“Good morning, Cerf,” Hunter replied, his deep, even-toned voice as familiar to Mistleton as his own heartbeat. “What’s on your mind?” he continued, sensing the shadows in Mistleton’s thoughts.

“Was Julian one of us?” Mistleton asked, a slight apprehension threading through his voice.

Hunter paused; his gaze steady but unreadable. “I think so,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t sure from when or where. That’s why I shared some of the details of my life after you with him, certain that he couldn’t keep any of it to himself.” His tone softened, a note of faith slipping in. “I knew you’d know what to do.”

Mistleton’s brow furrowed as he considered this. “And did he know about… us?”

Hunter’s lips curved in a faint smile, tinged with something bittersweet. “I think he suspected. He asked me questions no one else would ask unless they were searching for something—or someone—they recognized.”

Mistleton paused his questioning, letting the quiet settle around him. The warmth of Hunter’s body pressed against his offered a solace he hadn’t realized he craved.

But there was one more thing Mistleton had to know—something that concerned Woody. From the moment Hunter had found him, Mistleton had known that his relationship with Woody was on borrowed time. And yet, he hadn’t been able to sever the ties, not then. He still had a use for him.

“And Woody?” Mistleton asked, his voice carrying a note of uncertainty.

Hunter shifted slightly in bed, a flicker of satisfaction crossing his features, though he kept his tone measured. “After I was done with him, he wasn’t feeling a thing,” he replied. “He went with a smile on his face.”

“Cerf, there’s something you have to know about Woody,” Hunter continued, his tone dropping, the lightness gone from his voice. “He was the great-grandson of the man who caught us together in the bathroom and threatened to go to the sheriff. I knew the moment I saw his face on Thanksgiving.”

“Was he…” Mistleton started to ask, then hesitated, unsure if he really wanted to hear the answer.

“One of us?” Hunter interjected, cutting him off before the question could fully form. “No. He had no memory of finding us, or of the speakeasy, or anything from back then. But if left unaddressed, history will repeat itself, Cerf. Eventually, Woody would have come between us and ruined what we had once again.”

The two lay still next to each other in bed for a few minutes, the winter chill in the room drawing them closer, the silence thickening as they sought warmth in each other’s presence. Hunter shifted, sliding over Mistleton until he was on top of him, his rock-hard body fully covering his lover, the weight of him warm against the chill. Using his knees, he spread apart Mistleton’s legs to make room for his. The sensation of Hunter’s manhood against him sent tingles up Mistleton’s spine.

“I will love you forever, Cerf,” Hunter whispered, the intimacy of the moment pulling the words from him, as if he couldn’t stop them.

“And I will love you forever, Duchene,” Mistleton replied. As they stared into each other’s eyes, neither needed to say anything more. Destiny had brought them back together, and now nothing could change what was always meant to be.