Spoiler Alert: They Ain't Gonna Make It

Epilogue

(Please read the author's not eat the end after the chapter. It's important! Thank youuuuuuuuu!)

Eric rocked back and forth, grimacing as the old wood of the chair and the deck porch creaked echoed. The noise was so annoying it almost made him want to stop. Almost because he'd be bored if he didn't rock.

Harry was taking forever for his turn. No surprise there. Harry always took a long time. There was no way around it.

Over time, Harry's face had become overwhelmed with wrinkles. Eric guessed that's what happened to eighty-one year olds this day and age. The boy -man's- cheeks hung lower than his lips, wiggling every time he smiled and frowned. It was nearly impossible to see his eyes, not because he was Asian, but because the wrinkles were so close to covering them completely. His shiny, bald head reflected the sunlight like a mirror, blinding Eric if he positioned it just so. As a kid, the man created the habit of slouching and because of that his back was the Hunchback of Notre Dame bent and he had to walk with a long, wooden cane, which was resting against the side of his rocking chair.

"C'mon, Harry," Eric said. "You can do it!"

After forty-three years of waiting on him in every game of go-fish, Eric was getting a little bit irritated. He felt bad for being annoyed with Harry because it wasn't his fault he was annoying. Eric just wished he could have the old Harry back.

Finally, Harry held up three fingers to the guy on his left and across the table from Eric.

"F-five," he croaked, his wrinkles creasing upwards, meaning he was smiling.

The person opposite to Eric, Zach, didn't bat an eye over Harry's numeral confusion, and did what he always did when he played this game with Harry.

"Aw man!" The grey haired man fake scowled. "Got me again, Harold!" He tossed two jacks Harry's way, knowing full and well those weren't the cards Harry had asked for. But Harry wouldn't know the difference.

The bald man took his time collecting his prize, "organizing" his cards. Four decades of playing cards with his best friend, Eric knew about Harry's inability to put his cards in any sort of order. In fact, the man was holding two of his cards upside down and it wasn't on purpose.

Eric could vividly remember the days before Harry had gotten this way. Back in their teens and twenties and thirties. Yeah.

After the Jeff fiasco, Harry took a break on the spy world and lived with Zach and his family for two years. Them and Eric had become nearly inseparable in that time. Always staying at each other's houses, always hanging out in between classes at Rock Bridge, always talking during their classes. They'd started relying on each other.

That was, until Harry left for a mission in Russia and didn't return for nine months. He'd come back, beaten up, but nonetheless, the same. He'd stayed for a month, then left again, this time for Africa. He'd done that routine year after year, well into his thirties, until one day he didn't come back in a fancy private jet but a stretcher. A bullet, the doctors said, skimmed the roof of his head an inch inside, ripping off some of his brain. Since then, he'd been officially stupid, retarded, the doctors said, but neither Eric nor Zach used that word. Not for their best friend. Not for Harry.

This accident was sometime between Eric's wife, Alanine, death from breast cancer and when Kala divorced Zach for some guy she was having an affair with. He didn't know the exact date, but Eric did know how the timing couldn't have been shittier.

However, in a way, taking care of Harry was therapeutic for the men's loss of love. They weren't able to sit around in an empty house and feel sorry for themselves because they had each other and the responsibility of taking care of Harry and Eric's kids, Kai, Eli, and Katie. (They would have also taken care of Katrina, Tannin, and Isabel if Kala hadn't been greedy in the custody battle and stolen them from Zach.) They didn't mind having to help Harry eat and shower because he would have done anything for them if it were them who had lost the ability to be an adult.