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Dear reader:

This will probably be the last story I write for Nifty. It's a Christmas story, not surprisingly set in Norway. True to my style it is a slow-paced, almost reluctant romance between a man and a teenaged boy, with a bit of local colour thrown in, some streaks of bad luck, and (of course) the dreams and discoveries of a young boy who learns about his body. (I'll admit I've stolen the title from Swedish TV – I liked the understated drama of it...)

If what you need is detailed measurements and everybody incessantly getting their brains fucked out, you will not be happy with this story. Otherwise, you're welcome in.

 

Incidents near Water

Magnus Winter

 

 

The skinny boy is frightened. Easy to tell, his movements are frozen and his brow is sprinkled with tiny beads of sweat.

His hearing is disturbed by blood ringing in his ears. His heart is beating like a big fat drum, he can feel it in his throat and in his temples and behind his wide open eyes.

He is up against the wall. He is waiting for the first blow.

 

 

Somewhere in Norway, December 1985

 

It is the blue hour.

The fjord lies quiet now, dark and mysterious, reflecting a half-moon that has risen just above the horizon. The moon moves slowly over the patch of indigo sky between the steep mountains where the fjord opens to the infinite sea, silent and melancholy. The mountains carry patches of snow in their cracks and crevices like patterns of cobalt highlights.

The row of red boathouses have changed into their black night dresses, snow on their roofs like blue bonnets, wide open seaside doors like yawns. A small fishing boat is pulled up on the logs of one of the landing places and moored to a big eye hook screwed into the boathouse wall. A 15 foot wooden vessel, pointed at both ends, gunwale painted green. Abandoned and lonely now.

A dark figure carrying a pair of oars appears in the gap between the boathouses. Heavy boots make little dry and creaky sounds in the snow, it is that cold this evening, as the figure moves from the row of low buildings towards the village. To call it a village is a euphemism. It's just a spread out string of buildings on both sides of the road along the long and narrow strip of gently sloping land between mountain and fjord. Something like a hundred houses in all, built where it's possible to build without interfering with the patches of fertile soil in this rather inhospitable landscape.

Closer now, the figure's face can be glimpsed under a knitted cap. A young man's face, unsmiling and closed, like in stifled anger. Dark brows and dark shades of stubble on cheeks bear witness of genes from shipwrecked Italian sailors that centuries ago were saved to shore, genes carried by half the population in this remote and stubbornly alive society.

Another figure emerges out of the boathouse shadows. A smaller creature, looking like a matchstick drawing compared to the sturdy fellow in front, mainly because his clothes are too thin and too tight compared to the roomy and well isolating garb the first young man is wrapped up in. The boy struggles with two zinc buckets, filled to the brim with dead but yet occasionally wriggling cods. Reflexes do go on, even when throats are cut.

The morose young man, however, is not angry. He is just the victim of a continuous and tumultuous inner struggle. The classic war between who you are and who you think you should be. And always, always it is blooming when darkness falls. Not to mention in the presence of this boy.

A sudden agonized cry makes him drop his oars and hurry towards the boy who has let go of the buckets, fish spilling out. The boy has thrown off his soaked mittens and holds his coiled fingers in his mouth, shivering, whimpering and irritated, trying to breathe some warmth into his painfully frostbitten nails.

There's a little distress, and there's a little guilt, but there's also a lot of something else in the young man's face as he unbuttons his heavy jacket, lifts the boy up and, holding him to his chest, wraps him up inside his jacket.

It is December the 19^th. It is the boy's 13^th birthday. You wouldn't know from looking at him.

 

*

 

The young man trudges and ploughs through the snow, his aim is the northernmost building but two. A small, slightly run-down barn by the look of it, definitely in need of a coat of paint. There's a certain impatience in his movements when he fumbles in his pocket for keys, his burden hampers him considerably, but he's not going to let go of the shivering creature clinging to his chest. He unlocks the side door.

Inside you can see it's no longer a barn, it is a home. The two naked light bulbs hanging from the ceiling tells that although spartan, this room contains everything the young man finds necessary in his solitary existence. He carries his load to the rather wide bed in the far corner, gently loosens the boy's grip and eases him down under the thick duvet, boots and all. He leaves the boy there, turns the electric fan heater up to max and hurries out. There's this night's catch to salvage before the gulls get at it.

 

*

 

The young man's hands are ice cold from cleaning and preparing the fish outside. The two largest cods are split open and hung by their tails to dry in a netting cage on the outside wall, the rest of the catch is sliced and portioned into plastic bags and stuffed in the small freezer that every now and then hums rather ominously beside the counter and the small stove.

The ceiling light goes off, the small standard lamp by the bed is switched on and softens every sharp contour as the young man kicks off his heavy boots and crawls under the duvet next to the sleeping boy. His cold hands tremble as he unbuckles his belt and opens his fly, and with a soundless shudder sticks his frozen hands in to thaw in the warmth of his crotch.

By and by the young man's hands lose the sting of cold and the inevitable happens. Careful not to disturb the boy his hands now slip into his underpants to find the waiting hardness there, and very softly, very gently takes hold. And that's all. No movement, he just holds it.

The boy is not sleeping. They boy is not stupid. The boy notices and knows.

In the dark territory of under-duvet secrecy a small hand sneaks like a thief stealthily searching for valuables. The young man lies dead quiet as the small hand slides past the pair of protective hands and meets the silky warmth of a long, hard pole of flesh. Fingers light as feathers explore and assess. In the boys head jumbled pieces fall into place, questions grow into certainty, suspicions turn into knowledge.

But the young man's years of war with himself are not over. Now he brusquely pushes the investigating hand away, frantically buttons up and stumbles out of bed. His voice comes from a forlorn space between yearning and shame.

"You ... no, no. No! You must go now."

 

*

 

The clear and frigid evening air makes the overhead power lines hum a single eerie note. The boy avoids the road, trots along the shoreline instead. For each step the snow under his boots murmur almost like in pain. He listens. When nothing apart from the powerlines and his footsteps can be heard, he starts to sing. He makes up words to a vaguely recognizable version of Silent Night.

"I am the king

This is my road..."

He stops. Because there's somebody up there on the real road. Two somebodies, in fact. He lowers his volume.

"I am the king..."

He stops again. Watches the steam from his mouth for a second.

"No one shall pass

If he does I'll piss up his ass..."

He laughs a small theatrical frost-misty laugh.

"Grandpa will catch them

and fuck them in the ass ... till they die..."

Fitting a few extra syllables into the line works just fine. But then he hears a voice.

"Hoi! Weirdo!"

He starts to run. He trips over a rock, his bare hands softens his fall, but oh! how he's reminded that his mittens lie forgotten somewhere. It's too late to worry about that. If he doesn't get away, they'll catch him. They'll catch him. They'll catch him!

 

*

The boy's there. He stops and looks back. No one has followed him.

There's light in all the windows, even the small cellar peepholes. He breathes hard and watches the clouds he's puffing out sail away and disintegrate. He squints and all the windows become stars, their rays long and beautiful and satisfying.

He makes a lot of noise coming in, it's important to announce that he belongs here. In the small hall his birthday present, a blue puffer jacket, hangs unused and pristine like a virgin. Store's tag with crossed out price is still stuck on one arm. He regrets it now, but he couldn't risk it getting soiled on its first day here.

The cast iron stove in the living room crackles and drones, it tries to drown out Bob Dylan whose voice is also in the room. The boy's socked feet slide over lacquered floorboards like he's on a skating rink, his hands stretch out in front of him as if they can catch and hold the heat.

As usual his eyes come to rest on the painting above the stove. A simple painting, late 19^th century National Romantic interior with a man mending a shoe. He loves the painting. He wants to live in the painting. The painting says home. Peace. Salvation. If you ask him why, he cannot give an adequate answer.

He feels the eyes of the thin, elderly man in the corner on him. He doesn't turn, he knows it's just momentary. Soon the man in the corner will return to his book. It's mostly what he's all about now, reading and listening to his music. Old, familiar songs. The boy sings along.

"...Eyes are fixed upon

nowhere's great rainbow..."

The man in the corner lays his book down.

"Noah. It's Noah's great rainbow."

The boy titters. "Nowhere's great rainbow," he repeats, louder this time.

The man in the corner leaves his corner, comes up and hugs the boy briefly from behind.

"No fish? Just a borrowed sweater?"

The boy turns, looks at the older man. Pensive. Like weighing how much detail grandpas should be told.

"Lots of fish," he finally says. "In his freezer. I got a bit wet. My mittens ran away at some point. Where is she?"

The older man tilts back his head and looks at the ceiling.

"Why?"

The man shrugs.

The boy's refined, narrow face seems to crumple and suddenly there are tears.

"I touched him," he sniffles. "There."

The man screws up his eyes. Analytical and inquisitive.

"His idea?"

Headshake and more tears.

"No. Mine. He stopped me and sent me home. I didn't want to go."

The man pulls the boy into his arms. Makes little soothing noises, but there's a touch of worry in his aged and weathered face. Together they sigh. Deeply.

 

*

Upstairs the boy stands silently in the doorway, watching his grandmother. Should he laugh or cry? He can't decide.

The woman is standing in front of her open wardrobe. Her petite, spare body is clad in two dresses and a night gown, one on top of the other. More dresses lay scattered on the bed, and she holds a flimsy floral summer dress in front of her.

He steals quietly closer and touches her bewildered face. She smiles a far-away smile. He takes the dress she's holding away from her.

"It's late. It's time you went to bed."

A sudden anger springs up in her countenance.

"But I haven't decided!" she cries out and pouts.

He clears away the collection of dresses on the bed, dumps the load on the nearby chair.

"You can decide tomorrow. Be good now!"

 

*

Last school day before the holidays. The boy wears the borrowed sweater to school. Several sizes too large, but he wears it like a trophy. Something borrowed means somebody likes him, and this silent victory is too sweet to be ignored. Snide remarks are plenty, but in his world insults and sneers are mandatory, and he has lived the sticks-and-stones-rhyme like forever.

He doesn't even hide during recess as he usually does. Could be the cold robs everyone of energy, could be anything really, but he's left alone. No one picks a fight, no one assaults him. The normally so aggressive taunts are few and seem half-hearted and bored. It's like, even if some unwritten law says mockery is obligatory, there's no real commitment in it. And pretty soon the boy is for all purposes invisible.

 

*

The boy's grandfather sits in his car, idling engine, a little distance off the school gates. Like a bodyguard, or maybe a stalker, but in reality just a precaution. Kids mill out through the gates. Some three dozen of them in various groups, the lack of noise remarkably untypical. There should be joyous shouts and thankful relief now that school's out for two weeks, shouldn't it?

The boy, alone of course, makes a small hand gesture as he passes the car. An acknowledgement of either gratitude or annoyance, impossible to say. He does not get into the car.

The boy dawdles until most of his schoolmates are well on their way, then waves to the man in the car, climbs over the compact snowbank on the roadside, like the road is a minefield. He trudges through the snow with somewhat cumbersome yet purposeful steps.

 

*

The jumbled assemblage of houses near the ferry quay doggedly pretends to be a village centre, like it won't forget there once were four shops, a post office, a savings bank and a small cannery here. Now all that's left is a supermarket chain store that also incorporates the post office. The village hall needs some serious maintenance, but it still serves its purpose. Which cannot be said of the white church a couple of stone throws away, the Sunday congregation now reduced from full house to a handful.

A lit Christmas tree sits outside the supermarket. Two houses down the village hall has adorned itself with a festoon of little light bulbs all along the eaves. That's all. This community is not big on Christmas decorations except for seasonal stars and occasional electric candlesticks in private windows.

The cashier lady watches the boy enter. He scans the room furtively like he's on some clandestine assignment. Removes his wool cap and thin gloves and stuffs them his pockets. She nods inwardly at the skinny legs below the oversized sweater. Yeah. That family, or what's left of it, must be the skinniest collection ever. Probably weighing less en masse than her substantial boss alone.

The boy seems to stroll aimlessly between the rows of shelves, trying hard not to be obvious in his intent. The cashier, who knows everything worth knowing about everyone, briefly wonders how long it will take before the boy finds what, or more likely who he is looking for. In her head she laughs at the air of secrecy that surrounds the boy. So pointless, everyone knows the young man who works here has been ... supportive? At least nice to the poor sod, and god knows the kid could use some nice in his troubled life. And how long will it take before he musters enough courage to come up to her and ask where his ... well, his friend is?

He doesn't have to. The desired object comes out of the wide doors to the storage rooms, looks up and halts. His swarthy, southern-looking face travels from unguarded pleasant surprise to quickly land in almost forbidding wariness as the boy approaches. And there they stand, like cats trying to stare each other down before a fight, one so saturnine, the other so lightly drawn in soft pastels. The cashier lady, knowing what she does and guessing the rest, subtly shakes her head and secretly wishes her co-worker would stop his silly pretence. Oh, those two! Having lost so much. They shouldn't lose more.

The boy's slender fingers fiddle with the front of the oversized sweater he's wearing. His big, pleading eyes make the rest of his pale face framed by flaxen, flyaway hair unimportant. Big, hungry, hazel eyes is all there is.

"Can I borrow it a bit longer?"

The young man's face remains immobile.

"Found your mittens. Should be dry by now," he finally mumbles.

The boy takes one step closer. Within reach now. Not that it makes a difference.

"Please?"

The young man suddenly smiles, but the smile is gone almost before it appeared.

"I'm off at five," he says quickly and almost inaudibly. Then vanishes through the storeroom doors.

 

*

Six in the evening and cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. It's been dark for a good two hours already, and dark means shelter, means camouflage, means peace.

The road, although there's only about ten kilometres of it from dead end to dead end, is a danger zone. The boy has been beaten up enough times to feel unsafe here. His choice when possible is his own trodden path among the beach rocks, and this is where he now shuffles along. The moon is not up yet, nevertheless one can clearly see the contours of the slender body moving against a backdrop of pale, cold fog drifting above the dark, calm sea. But he feels invisible, and that is what counts.

Past scattered and lonely boathouses and then the row of them with almost no space in between. They're all closed up now, all boats are safely in for the night. He leaves the shoreline, finds the footprints from last night. It feels good, it feels so oddly right to go trudging along in these deep imprints. The buzz in his veins rises, his heart is like a drum in a parade, you can hear it coming closer and closer for each marching step.

He stops for a second, wondering what's happening inside him. It wasn't like this before. These are all new feelings. Like his whole cursed and despicable being, body and soul, is on the brink of a new dawn, a new birth. But really! Can one touch of a stiff penis create such unease and such awareness, such prickling in his blood, such ... hope? The more he thinks, one thing is dead certain: He must hold that cock again. That gorgeous cock. That silky and rock hard and alive cock.

If he had more insight, if he was wiser, he would have known that there was more to this than body parts. But the boy is 13 and puberty has fastened its grip on him. So cock rules.

*

Once it was a small sheep farm that along with fjord fishery sustained a family, but modern times with modern demands made it unprofitable and vacated a long time ago. The rough stone foundation of the family home is still there, buried under snow for the season. The only building still standing is the barn house with the hayloft above the sheep's pen, converted now to make a home.

The boy circles the building, touching the windowless end wall here and there, strangely apprehensive and insecure because everything inside him has become so unfamiliar to him, and this house has now become so charged with longing, with desire, with things he has no name for. There's soft light from the windows on the other three walls, he burns to sneak up and look in. But no, he can't. Not yet. He leans against the end wall and breathes slowly, deeply.

Finally calmer, but still with a pounding heart, he moves around the house and up to the seaside window. Flickers of blue light tells him the small tv is on. He closes in. He peers through the glass. The young man sits at his kitchen table, downcast eyes, elbows on the unpainted wood tabletop, chin resting on his fists. In the subdued lighting the blue flashes shimmer and change across his pensive face. No person has ever pulled the boy so strongly, so irresistibly towards himself as this lonely young man on his chair now does, he is so beautiful the boy's stomach aches and the distance between them feels unbearable.

Abruptly the young man looks up. It is as if he senses he's being watched. The boy is caught off guard and well, it's too late to withdraw, so he remains there, just staring into the room.

 

*

Someone else is out there now, watching. Spying. Keeping distance not to be revealed, but close enough to clearly see part of the room framed by the windowsills. Like watching some weird arthouse movie with the sound off, filmed with a stationary camera where the actors appear and disappear in and out of the screen. In this case it's the older of the two actors who is the most volatile.

The scene unfolds with the boy in plain sight, standing crouched with hands on his knees, speaking words the watcher can't hear. The co-starring young man passes fleetingly behind the boy, his knitted brow could mean worry, could mean disapproval, could mean not knowing what to say. He avoids looking at the boy, he bites his lower lip as he moves to the right out of the frame.

The boy straightens his back, turns his head in the direction of where the young man just went, opens his mouth wide like he's screaming, then shuts up. Looks like he's about to cry. He starts to pull the oversized sweater he's wearing off.

The young man comes rushing into the frame again, his lips move in fast speech, and now he grips the boy's hands to stop them from removing the sweater. He lifts the boy's hands high up and stares the boy in the face for a long time. Suddenly he pulls the boy in, kisses his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, while he holds the boy's hands down close to his side. The boy struggles to free his hands. The young man now holds the boy's head between his hands, kisses him again, vehemently, like he wants to eat the lower half off the boy's face.

The boy's right hand sweeps over the young man's crotch, then stays there. It is removed, more roughly than needed. The boy sinks to his knees, mouth open, like flabbergasted. The young man turns, steps away while banging his forehead with his fists. The boy gets up and runs after the young man. Out of sight.

The spy outside moves closer, wants to see more. So close now soft music can be heard, and a murmur of voices. So close a nose touches the windowpane. Thoughtless move, because the young man is facing in the right direction, and with a start and an outburst of expletives he sprints to the door, bursts out and around the corner to find the boy's grandmother in slippers, a light housedress and a thin, delicate dressing gown. Her tongue is out, like she wants to lick the window to see if it sticks.

*

The boy's grandfather leans on the kitchen counter in quiet conversation with the young man. His haggard face looks worn and resigned when at intervals it pops out from behind the young man's broad-shouldered back, checking what goes on in the other end of the room.

On the young man's bed the boy sits with an arm around his grandmother who shivers from cold under a blanket and now weeps. She has a lucid moment right now, overcome by sorrow and despair over her condition, apologizing, softly sobbing, her thin fingers clutching and tearing at the small collar of her dressing gown.

The boy's heart bleeds. It's always hardest when she's aware of everything, he finds it easier to handle her dementia when she's more or less out of reality. And now he feels responsible for what's happened, so he is in acute need to wash the unpleasantness of her depression and his own regrets off them both.

He starts to sing. Tries to bring back the past for them, those times when he was little and she sang strange, grown-up songs to him in a language he didn't understand. Still those songs are nailed to his brain and he can sing them word perfect, he can even understand most of them now.

Her tears stop running. She smiles wanly at her grandson, her hands fall down in her lap. And by and by she joins him, her once strong and clear voice now timid and fragile:

"Und ein Schiff mit acht Segeln

Und mit fünfzig Kanonen

Wird liegen am Kai..."

 

*

 

Grandpa has taken Grandma home. The boy, with uncommon defiance, refused to go with them, and now they are alone again.

Awkwardness lies heavy between them. There are two candles burning on the small table in front of the bed where the boy still sits, fair and ethereal, almost girlishly pretty in the faint light. The black haired young man stands looking out the window as if he expects more people out there prying into his life. His Mediterranean complexion and sombre face seems to belong to a different sphere than the somewhat unworldly creature on his bed.

The young man abandons his lookout post. He comes over. Takes the boy's left hand in his and sits down beside him. And there they sit in silence. Until the boy feels so clogged up and explosive something just has to give.

"It's all my fault," he says, much too loud. "And I feel like shit! Shit!"

He can't bear to look at the handsome fellow next to him. He wants to scream and he wants to hide, and there's no help on the way from the taciturn person on his left.

Oh, but maybe there is ...

A hand lets go of the boy's hand. Instead an arm sneaks itself around the boy's shoulders. Fingers squeeze gently a few times. A mild voice creeps into the boy's ear.

"Not your fault. If anyone's, it's your grandfather's for not looking after her properly."

A moment's silence. The boy squirms. The arm tightens, keeps him in place.

"Sorry about the kissing. Shouldn't have done that. Sorry."

Now the boy looks up. Now he fixes his big nuts-in-honey eyes on the young man's face, lips slightly apart.

"Why not?"

The young man stares back but says nothing. A small chill runs through him.

"I wish you would do it again," the boy whispers. "Honestly."

Arm disappears from shoulder. The young man gets up and walks in a small circle.

"Your grandfather," he begins, "is a strange man. Strange as in remarkable. I'd never have thought my old schoolmaster would have... I mean, I remember him as just strict and very distant. Fair, yeah, but like... old... and strict."

He stops his restless pace, stands stock-still in front of the boy. Just gazing. Like something wants out, but this something is stuck. The room is suddenly thick with apprehension and the boy cringes.

And then:

"Get up."

A wish. Not a command. The boy gets up anyway. The young man reaches out.

"Come."

The boy is led by the hand to the window overlooking the fjord. The young man leaves him, switches off the sharp lamp above the kitchen counter. The two candles are now the only source of light. The boy can count the stars.

"I never thought about curtains," the young man says as he sidles up to the boy. "I never really thought anyone would be interested in spying."

The boy feels a hand lightly on his shoulder.

"First you, and then your granny. Guess I was wrong." A short laugh escapes him.

The boy suddenly wonders why he so seldom hears this guy laugh. But the stars are out there, and the black waters of the fjord, and beside him is the one he yearns for, the one he wants more than anyone else in the world, laughing, and he should be happy. So why does he feel like crying?

"Every time I'm out there..."

The young man hesitates. He's about to reveal something and the realization of this gives the boy unexpected goosebumps.

"I mean, every time, even when you are in the boat with me, I keep thinking of the fire. Eight years, for fucks sake, and I still can't get rid of it."

"The fire," the boy whispers, like in awe.

"They were so drunk. That's why I ran off and took the boat out. But I don't suppose you remember, you were just four or five or something."

"I do remember. Or maybe I just remember people talking about it. It burned down, didn't it?"

The boy's breath is caught in sudden revelation.

"Was it your house? But I thought you came here last year or something. I don't remember you from before."

No answer. Just two people side by side staring out in the starry night. Two people drawn to each other by loss. No, not just that. Something deeper. Something crucial. The young man speaks again.

"I saw the fire from the boat. If I hadn't ran off and rowed out too far I might have got them out. When I got in, it was too late. Haunts me still."

Deep sigh.

"I was about your age then. They sent me away to live with my uncle. Didn't really help, though."

He hauls the boy into his arms. Holds him so hard it hurts a bit, then eases his grip. The boy remains in his embrace, sure he belongs there. Convinced, not just wishing.

The young man, one arm still around the boy's waist, lifts the boy's chin and kisses the boy's lips lightly. Twice.

"That's one from your grandpa. And one from me. And now you must go."

The boy feels bereaved. He was so sure there would be more. Lips, skin, cock. And naked. Like in his dreams. His castle in the sky crumbles. He looks crestfallen. His voice is at breaking point when he asks if he can still wear the young man's big sweater.

Because it still smells of the owner.

*

 

The dark star-dotted sky is now like a magician's coat that suddenly opens and reveals a lining of flickering blues and greens moving unpredictably across the north. Thin, flaring curtains of light that nervously search for where they should hang.

On his way home the boy feels suddenly childishly stubborn and childishly brave. He stops and waves at the fidgety northern lights, something every child learns you should never do, because then it comes down and kidnaps you. He even shouts tauntingly at it to prove he's above this mythical superstition, and yet there's a small sting in his chest that tells him he's doing something forbidden, something dangerous. Strange, isn't it, how silly things you're told as a toddler is glued to your brain.

He starts to run.

 

*

 

When the boy comes in there's a foreign and yet well-known object sitting on the dining table. An old brown suitcase with worn leather embellished corners. He wonders why it's there, they don't usually decorate the house until the night before Christmas.

He opens it and carefully rummages through the ornaments until he finds a tiny, silver winged glass angel, one of a set of three he got from his mother when he was six and everyone was still alive. He holds it up to the light and is squinting through it when his grandfather enters. He turns around and his eyes ask the question.

"I thought it would be nice for her to do something familiar. Something safe and homely. She was so confused and unhappy. You know when she gets like that. Restless. Nothing is right."

"Where is she?"

"I put her to bed with a sleeping pill and a hot water bottle."

"It wasn't my fault! I didn't know she would come looking for me!"

The old man slowly shakes his head.

"Of course it wasn't your fault." He spreads his hands apologetically. "It was me. I didn't know either. Perhaps I should have. But you see, I fell asleep with my book. The phone woke me. When you called, you know."

He leans forward across the table and lays a hand on the boy's arm.

"Don't even for a minute blame yourself."

The boy flops down with his head nestled in his arms. His grandfather gently pries the angel from the boy's hand.

"When I sing, they dance and they kiss."

The boy looks up, suddenly apprehensive and tense. His grandfather's face is unreadable. Not hard, though.

"She said so in the car. I think she thought for a moment we were going to one of those places where she used to perform."

A hasty little smile passes over his lips.

"They dance and they kiss."

And the old man lays both hands on top of his young grandson's head, like a blessing or a healing. A small tuft of pale straw coloured hair escapes between thumb and index finger.

"One cannot choose when there is no choice."

The boy tries to shake the hands away. Half-heartedly.

"Huh?"

The hands stay where they are. Gently caressing, softly soothing. And now the boy feels he wants them there after all.

"Meaning one should take life as it comes. And always strive to be true to oneself. Oh, it's a cliché, I know. But true. It's not only futile, it's a sure way to unhappiness if you want to ... eh, use your energy to change who or what you are. I told your friend that. And now I'm telling you."

He lifts his hands off the boy's head.

"They dance and they kiss," he repeats.

The boy softly, almost unnoticeably, starts to weep.

 

*

 

The boy is in second grade now. He is the smallest of them all. He is everyone's target.

Headmaster enters the classroom, headmaster who is also the boy's grandfather. This means trouble. Twelve faces show various degrees of fear. Headmaster speaks to teacher, too low for the children to hear. They both look at the boy. The boy notices his grandfather's lips are rigidly closed, like in distaste? But his eyes are moist.

He is taken out of the classroom. His grandfather now lifts him up and carries him to his car. He's frightened because he cannot understand.

They do not drive to his home. When they stop they're at his grandfather's house and his grandmother meets them in a flow of flamboyant colours as usual, but her eyes are red from weeping. She clutches him to her meagre bosom and takes him inside.

In her lap he learns he is now an orphan.

 

*

 

It's Sunday. Sunday that used to be the day of required boredom in church, although not since grandfather retired. The day of visits to the graveyard. The day of tablecloths and silver cutlery. The day of stories and jigsaw puzzles. The day of fluffy white laziness.

Not today.

The suitcase still sits on the dining table. The boy has pulled a heavy armchair across the room and sits in it, still in his pyjamas, tethered to the grey telephone, feet up and arms embracing his knees. Anxious and jumpy.

Twilight creeps in, but if he leaves his post to light the lamps or something, bad things are bound to happen. He knows it. He must stay where he is. The menacing roar of the ambulance helicopter still haunts his ears. So does his grandfather's sombre speech before he jumped into his car to catch the ferry.

"I have to be there with her. She will be utterly confused and frightened when she ... well, wakes up or whatever you can call it. She will need someone she knows with her, you understand that. I'll call you when I get there."

The boy had wanted to come too. Grandfather wasn't having that.

"I don't want you there. I don't want you in the middle of all that gloomy waiting and all that sterile nothingness. I want you to look after our house, that's what I want from you. You're not a little boy anymore."

But he is. A little boy with a chicken's heart and a lump in his chest, sinking like a stone.

His limbs are stiff and cramped. And he's getting cold. He stretches out, yawns. Then feels bad about yawning at such a sinister time. He looks hard at the telephone, willing it to ring. Then sighs, jumps up and runs to the stairs.

He has barely got that big, cherished sweater on when he hears the phone ring downstairs. In a rush he is out of his room. Halfway down the stairs he trips and falls. His hands grab the railing, but his knee hits the sharp edge of the step. It hurts like hell.

He gets to the phone in time.

He learns that, as suspected, it's double pneumonia. He wanders through every room, switching on all the lamps.

 

*

 

The house is eerily quiet. The dark young man has passed here many times before, even stood close watching, god help him, and almost always there's been muted music to be heard from inside. His black hair waves in the wind and his ears are freezing. He forgot his cap when he rushed out.

For some strange reason he feels he should steal in noiselessly. His heart beats in his throat. Stupid heart, always doing this when he's thinking of the boy, when he sees the boy, when he's with the boy. It's not at all pleasant. Not at all what he wants. He wants to stay cool, unaffected. His heart ought not to act like that, dammit.

He stands in the doorway, looking into the living room. The boy sits on the Persian rug beside a checkered red and brown sofa, legs spread with one knee bent and one leg stretched out. The boy is wearing his sweater on top of his pyjamas, and suddenly he feels totally lost, totally inadequate. The boy looks so fragile, so fairylike, so unreal, so like a fantasy. A fantasy wearing his sweater.

Several photo albums lay scattered around the boy, one of them open on the floor between his legs. Old black-and-white photos. They way he sits, the fly of his pyjama pants gapes slightly. Not like there's anything to see, just shadow, but it disturbs the young man profoundly.

He clears his throat. The boy starts and looks up, terrified. Then astonished. Then beaming.

"You?"

The young man takes a tentative step into the room, looks around him, looks everywhere, just not at the boy.

"Your grandpa called. Wanted me to see how you were doing," he says to the wall. "What a lot of books!"

The boy's smile wanes. Uncertainty clouds his face. Why won't he look at him?

The young man's eyes are fixed on the open double doors to the dining room and the suitcase on the table.

"Suppose you're doing all right, then," the young man eventually says. "I won't disturb you."

He turns on his heals and steps away into the hall. The boy calls after him, panic in his voice.

"Don't go! Don't go! Please!"

He jumps up and sprints to the hall. Grasps the hem of the young man's thick jacket trying to pull him inside, but in his eagerness stumbles and almost falls.

The young man grabs the boy's elbow to steady him. Notices pain in the boy's face. Sees the boy lift his leg a couple of times. Like one does when something is wrong.

"What's with that?" he asks and points.

The boy pulls at the young man's sleeve, willing him to stay.

"Nothing. I just fell on the stairs."

A change comes over the young man. Concern fills his face although it's probably nothing to worry about. But he can't stop this feeling. The boy is hurt. This frail and delicate boy is hurt. This boy that he ... that he ... Oh, he doesn't want to go there.

"Let me see."

The boy mumbles something and shakes his head. The young man insists. The boy reluctantly rolls up his pyjama leg. There's a swelling and some light discolouring around his knee cap.

The young man throws his outerwear on the floor and toes off his boots.

*

 

Rummaging through strangers' medicine cabinets was not the young man's favourite enterprise. It felt like intruding. He did find what he was sent to find, though, and now he sits on the sofa with the boy's leg across his lap. A hairless, pale leg, silky to the touch, slender, lovely curves and not the twiggy sticks one would expect from looking at the boy with lose fitting jeans on.

The young man swallows hard to push away the feelings that attack him, but blood pounding in his temples make his head feel too small and his breath constricted. Oh, what nonsense! Get a grip!

"Should have put an ice pack on this," he croaks and coughs. "Probably too late now anyway."

He starts winding the elastic bandage around the boy's knee, carefully, not wanting to touch too much skin, but well, good luck with that. His stiff, reluctant fingers seem to unbend all by themselves, and they touch. They feel, they pat, they softly brush, and suddenly they caress. And everything comes so close. Too close. The young man knows he needs to stop, but his fingers refuse to listen.

His quandary resolves itself. There is no fastening clip with the bandage, and he needs to get up and go look for a safety pin or something. On the boy's instruction he finds one stuck in the cork message board in the kitchen.

Only when bandage is secured and pyjama leg is rolled down does it strike the young man that the boy could have done this perfectly well on his own, his help wasn't necessary at all. He had just wanted ... no, needed to do it, and he doesn't want to recognize why. The demons can't be pardoned and let loose.

Still he stays. Sits beside the boy on the sofa, their speech slow and subdued. One main topic naturally, and grandmother is almost present in the room. The boy moves. Wants to show the young man something.

A very old and rather tattered photo album. The boy opens it on the coffee table in front of them.

"Grandma when she was young," he announces. "Before she met grandpa."

A series of badly exposed black-and-white photos, square with serrated edges. People in a garden, stiffly posing or milling about. Slimline dresses to mid-calf, casual flannel suits and slanting hats. The young man points at the smallest and slimmest of the women.

"That's her, right?"

The boy turns a couple of pages. Here she is modelling for a professional photographer, turned sideways away from the camera, coquettishly looking over one shoulder in a shiny dress cut open at the back, platinum hair carefully waved, nowhere near natural. On the opposite page a German playbill from some long forgotten club, her name only second to the main attraction.

"She used to sing," the boy almost whispers, as if he is afraid to disturb her and have her walk right out of the photo. Just as he is about to turn the page the phone rings. He stiffens. Looks anxious as he gets up and leaves the young man with the album. Limps across the room, the bandage stops his knee from bending.

The young man flips half-heartedly through the pages, his attention mostly on the boy by the phone. One syllable answers only. No tears, can't be all bad then.

The boy puts the handset down.

"He wants to talk to you."

 

*

 

By the time the young man has put the handset back on the hooks, the boy has cleared away all the photo albums. The young man remains standing beside the telephone, dark face doubtful and undecided. The boy watches him, quiet as a mouse.

Then, finally, when the atmosphere is about to self-ignite:

"Your grandfather asked me if I would stay with you."

The boy's shoulders betray that his calm is just pretence. So does his voice. It comes out very small.

"And ... will you?"

The young man draws a finger over his chin and jaw. Back and forth. Takes a deep breath.

"Suppose so."

Unexpected, quick smile

"I'll go get my toothbrush."

 

*

 

Unlike the boy, the young man sticks to the road. The road is not where his trauma is rooted. The road is nothing but a medium to get him from here to there.

He passes the quiet, dark school building, vaguely wondering why he has never missed his time there. So strange that he can't remember what it felt like that day in February almost eight years ago, sitting on the ferry, knowing he'd see neither that building nor his classmates ever again. Maybe he felt nothing at all. Maybe all his feelings about anything else burned down and died along with the house. Maybe the terrifying memory of the fire itself left no room for other feelings.

He has never allowed himself to dwell much on his past. Whenever something pops up to remind him, he has taught himself a certain technique to circumvent it. But now, spending time with this boy, the same age that he was then, seems to have brought the past closer. Like it holds a clue to something, only what?

Suddenly he remembers sitting in the boathouse trying to count the hairs on his dick, was that the day of the fire? It was cold, that much he remembers, and the weird pride he had felt back then, the satisfaction that his dick had grown so much and felt so good. But sitting in the boathouse with his cock out happened quote a lot those days, so it might well have been another day.

And this boy, does he do the same? Does he feel the pride? The pride in his little hairs, his stiffness, his squirts? Or hasn't it come to that yet? The boy's voice is no real indication, it is neither a child's nor a man's voice, something in between. He tries but can't remember when his own voice changed.

He's picking his keys out of his pocket when his brain, since it's already working in that direction, brings up the sight of the boy's almost open fly. What would his dick look like? Probably tiny and cute, him being such a small guy ...

He curses himself. Moans loudly from pure frustration. Forces his thoughts to go elsewhere. But they won't leave completely, they are stubborn and sit there like accusations. Like desecrations. He rushes in and hastily picks up the things he came for, stuffs them in a plastic shopping bag. Locks the door behind him.

He runs all the way back, as if the effort will cure him of unwelcome thoughts. He's quite out of breath when he reaches the house where the boy waits.

 

*

 

They've eaten. A simple supper, just fried eggs and ham on bread.

Back in the living room the boy is very quiet, and the young man can't really find anything to say either. So they just sit there. Until the young man gets restless.

"All these books! Don't you have a TV?"

The boy giggles self-consciously.

"It's in my room. Grandpa doesn't want it down here because it often confuses and agitates grandma. If you want to watch we have to go up."

He blushes when he says it.

"Or we can play some music."

The young man stretches his legs out in front of him. Looks like he's about to say something, then holds back. But eventually:

"You know, what I really would like was to have a bath. In a bathtub, right? I've only got a basin in the loo at home, you know, washing my hair under the faucet and my ... myself with a flannel. I'm used to it, I mean it works fine, but it would really be ace to have a real bath in a real bathtub. You know, since I'm here, and you have one. If you don't mind."

*

 

It's such a typical boy's room, so very different from the young man's sparsely decorated and in comparison almost naked place. Clothes strewn about, wardrobe doors wide open and a pair of shoes that seem to leave the wardrobe on their own accord. There are shelves stuffed with books and boxes and cassettes, mechanical toys and model airplanes, a tired old teddy bear. End wall covered with photos and cut-outs from magazines, slanted ceiling dominated by a huge Tears for Fears poster and a smaller one of Leonardo's Vitruvian man.

The small desk is spilling over with papers and notebooks, cracked mug full of pens and markers, lidless biscuit tin with a small plastic skeleton peeping out. A Walkman sits on the nightstand by the unmade single bed, surrounded by tapes in and out of their plastic houses. There's a huge inflatable banana hanging from the ceiling above the desk, and on a low shelf under the window sits a television set, boxed in dark wood, a thin cord disappears under the window frame on its way to the antenna on the outside wall.

The boy apologizes for the mess. From the bed he picks up an empty soda bottle and a small plate where crumbs tell their tale of late night snacking. Not sure what to do with these things, he stops in the middle of the room, glances at the young man just inside the door, and finally just drops them on the messy desk.

"You can have the bed," the boy says as he gathers up the heap of discarded clothes between the nightstand and the desk to uncover a bean bag. "I'll sit here."

He trots over and drops the clothes on the floor by the TV and turns the set on. Ingrid Bergman in black and white is just opening a letter. The boy turns the volume down.

"I need to hear the phone. Just in case."

The young man hasn't moved an inch. The boy comes close, smells his grandfather's soap and feels a ridiculous sting of envy. He has to laugh at himself. Envy of soap? Just because he hadn't used his soap? Oh, come on.

He nudges the young man towards the bed with his elbow. Then slips out and turns the hallway lights out. Leaves the door open. In his room he sees the young man on his bed, half sitting, half lying, pillows stacked behind his shoulders and neck. He turns out the light in the room as well and goes to sit on his bean bag.

*

 

The movie bores them, but none of them feels brave enough to say so. But twenty minutes into the boredom the boy abruptly gets up. Blows a small raspberry aimed at no one.

"I so wish we could get more than one channel." And without asking turns the telly off.

The room lies in darkness, only the crossbars of the window are discernible against the backdrop of the blue night outside. The boy anyway navigates easily back to his bean bag. The young man is at a disadvantage, he's in alien territory while the boy is on home ground. The balance between them is upset in some way. He feels that comments or suggestions aren't his to make, this is so totally the boy's show now. Nevertheless there's a voice in his head that tells him he ought to at least ask where he is supposed to sleep or even ask the boy to turn the lights on, but the darkness acts as a warm and pleasant blanket over his slight discomfort, and he will not disturb this new and surprisingly protective noiselessness with questions.

It doesn't take long for their eyes to get accustomed to the dark. The bedclothes rustle as the young man changes his position. He can make out the shape of the boy's head and legs, the middle part of him is obscured by the nightstand, but as far as he can tell the boy has one hand on his knee. He tries not to think of the boy's hand the night he lay beside the boy in his own bed. He fails. The less he wants to dwell on it, the closer it gets.

And to the young black-haired man the air seems to thicken. He has to stop looking at the boy, but the memory lives its own life now. The memory grows. The memory gets physical. Some adjustment is required, but he's afraid to move, afraid the memory will either explode or fade into nothing if he moves, for suddenly he wants to keep it, wants to own it here in the safety of the dark, wants to hold it firmly and let nothing take it away, wants to cherish the discomfort his wild and lawless hardness gives him.

An almost inaudible voice slithers its way into his dreamlike state.

"You can see mine if you let me see yours."

An involuntary sound jumps out of the young man's throat along with a rush of air, and he realizes he's been holding his breath. He laughs. He can't help it, it's like relief.

"No! Don't turn the light on," he begs. " Please! Just come over here."

The young man with the dark face and even darker inside opens his fly, fumbles a bit and pulls out his very hard erection.

"You can't see it. Just feel it. Give me your hand," he whispers.

 

*

 

It's a good thing the boy is such a slight and in most people's eyes insignificant creature, because his bed wouldn't have had room for the two of them had they been of the same size.

The boy fits nicely in with his forehead nestled against the young man's shirt collar. He trembles, for his hand is closed around warm flesh. Warm, smooth surface covering very hard core. The boy's heart beats like hammer, for the cock in his hand feels even bigger than he remembers, and blood pounding in his veins testifies to the vastness of his excitement. The cock in his hand gives a jolt, and thousand needles tickle and prickle the boy's skin. And now gently persuasive words sound above the thunder of blood in his ears.

"I want to feel yours. Please let me."

A sudden stab of panic. Dry mouth tries to swallow.

"But ... I don't know ... yours is so big ... and mine is just ..."

The boy in his inexperience does not know that someone else's cock always seems bigger than your own, nor does he know yet that size is not necessarily what it's about. What he does know, is that his dick is stiffer than ever and shouting for attention.

"Please?"

The boy moans against soft shirtfront and hopes the young man recognizes his small affirmative nod. Oh, yes. He does. Fingers come searching, fingers open and enter, fingers find the treasure hidden in the folds.

The young man's strained and staccato breath dissolves in a long stream of air. The boy shivers and shakes like a leaf as his cock is set free, the sensation is beyond his dreams, and the knowledge that it's this young man's fingers that touch him shatters his brain. And when the hand closes around his slender shaft, any possibility of control goes up in a puff of smoke. His groin explodes, his cock jerks and squirts its young juice into the hand that is now closed around its hooded head.

A sudden movement pushes the boy out of bed, luckily it's a low bed. He hits the floor with a small thud as the young man sits up, snorting through his nose, left hand feverishly jerking his throbbing cock, right hand cupped to catch his spurts. His seed mingles with the small pool of shimmering substance already there.

The young man's hand goes to his mouth. Two doses of warm liquid disappear. The young man's mind fills with awe, with trembling reverence, for he has never done anything like this before. And now he has eaten the essence of their lives, and it feels like he's signed an unassailable contract that binds the two of them together. For always.

And suddenly that's a scary thought. The young man sinks back on the bed with a shaky sigh.

*

 

Darkness still envelops them. The first attack of post-orgasmic tristesse the boy has ever had is dying down. He speaks.

"Why have you always been so kind to me?"

No answer. The boy won't give up.

"I mean ... you ... well, you talked to me and took me fishing with you ... and hikes and cloudberries and everything. But why? Why me?"

The young man is glad his face can't be seen, because there are too many tears in his eyes threatening to break loose.

"I don't know," he finally whispers. Clears his throat.

"I don't know. I just wanted to, I can't tell you why. I liked you. Liked to be with you, liked to have a friend. A friend who didn't know me from before. Didn't pity me because that's what I feel with everybody else. They talk to me out of pity. I see it in their faces."

The bedclothes rustle as he turns to the wall. The boy, still on the floor, leans in and rests his elbows on the edge of the bed. The young man's voice seems remote now he's talking to the wall.

"It was easy to be with you."

And now it's confession time.

"And then it became sort of difficult ... I had to ... I don't know, hold back because ..."

He stops.

"Don't stop."

Again a rustling of sheets.

"I felt we were alike in a way. I mean, we'd both had some bad stuff ... sort of hanging over us, and I wanted us to have something different, like share something uncomplicated and light, understand? But uncomplicated ... no, it wasn't, because ... because I ... I wanted you. And it shouldn't be like that. Disturbed everything. And now I don't know anything anymore."

The boy reaches out and touches the young man's back. Just one little touch. And knowing the darkness protects him, the young man turns around.

"I just can't help it."

The boy's knee hurts, he has to stretch it out. He moves away from the bed to give his leg some space.

"Grandpa knows about me," he says, his voice sounds casual, detached. "Because I always look in his art books for paintings of naked men. I never felt like I shouldn't, and he never said anything, and I always thought that was ok until the stupid fuckers at school started to add a lot of homo-stuff when they ... well, tease me, you know. But grandpa says one should be exactly who one is ... and it's impossible to change."

He lies down flat on his back.

"He knows about you too."

A resigned oh shit sounds from the bed. The room turns all quiet again. For a long time. No noise from outside, no phone rings, no sounds of movements disturb the silence. Until the boy rises and walks slowly to the window, deftly navigating through the darkness and the mess on the floor. Lifts his shoulders and stretches his neck. Like he wants to be taller than he is.

"I want to sleep naked with you."

The young man on the bed hides his face and weeps. Had the boy been nearer he would have heard a whisper, more like a breath than a pronounced word, but unmistakenly a stifled yes.

 

*

 

The boy is in fifth grade now. School desks are paired, but there are now eleven pupils in his class, and he sits alone.

Art class follows Social Sciences. Social Sciences today was all about families. What the laws say about marriage, about parental responsibilities and about children's rights and blah blah blah. Everything based on the "normal" nuclear family, so the boy doesn't want to hear, doesn't need to be reminded.

Art class now is drawing, pencil on paper, colouring in if there's time. Theme: Home and family. As if it wasn't enough already.

The kids steal ideas and copy each other. There are several drawings of fancy houses with a wall removed, open like dollhouses, some with mothers and kids in kitchens. Drawings of fathers with a son or two and a dog by a car. One drawing of a bride in a voluptuous gown with an insignificant groom and vague guests around.

The boy fills his sheet with couples. White man and black woman, black man and white woman, man and man and boy child, woman and woman and boy child. All standing on a green lawn. No houses, no cars. He erases the boy from the male couple and draws a girl instead. Class is over before he can colour in the sky, so he adds a last-minute heart above each couple.

The drawings are all pinned to the wall.

Teacher searches for words and eventually and very tentatively finds his drawing interesting.

The boy learns very fast from his fellow students that his notion of family constellations is ridiculous, impossible or downright wrong.

The boy's grandfather is no longer the Headmaster. That means no one fears the consequences when after school he's pushed up against the wall, called the ugliest names, slapped in the face and punched in the belly.

*

 

Still no phone call. Still a quiet dark room. Still mysteries to unravel and riddles to solve.

The boy is now sitting between someone else's legs.

The boy is totally absorbed.

The boy is naked.

The boy is deaf and blind to everything but what seems like acres upon acres of skin under his fingers. Bit by bit he investigates, examines and discovers, and what he finds fills him with shivering wonder.

O Rapture! O Delight! He finds an unshaved cheek that feels scratchy like sandpaper, a moving Adam's apple, a smooth and sleek chest. Unbelievable thrills rush through him as he discovers that nipples stiffen under his fingertips. Bewitched his finger gently digs into a navel and then follows a trail of soft hairs leading southwards over flat, tight muscles, muscles that clench and jerk under his touch.

The young man is on his back, his hands pressed against his face like he's trying to prevent his soul from escaping. He is so vulnerable. He is so naked. The small exploring hands feel like thousands of tiny flashes of lightning on his skin.

It's too much. And it's not enough. It's torture. And it's heaven.

So before the inquisitive fingers reach the midship mast that stands straight up like a monument, the young man groans and grabs the boy. Pulls him down to lie on top, feels the boy's silken skin against his. He trembles, and his hold is so firm and tight it's like he's afraid the boy will disappear. Despite the iron grip the boy slides forward until their faces are level.

The boy in a whisper asks to be kissed. He is. Thoroughly. His dick is in a squeeze between them, stiffer than a board, throbbing like a heart. Hips can't stay still, for a boy's body knows what it wants, and these are movements laid down in our genes.

The boy glides down until he feels the mighty pole of hard flesh against his butt, spreads his legs so they embrace the young man's sides. The boy's hips are humping and gyrating in a ritual as old as time itself. Tiny hairs on the back of the boy's neck stand on end when he feels contact with the cock he has coveted for so long, so slippery now against his spread open butt crack. He lifts his hips just enough for the tip of this marvellous cock to brush against his tight little hole, he quivers and moans with pleasure as two firm hands grips his buttocks. Two firm hands that hold him in position as hips below him starts to move, and cock slides up and down, all the way from ticklish backside of balls, across sensitive hole and beyond, and back again.

A strained moan. Cock twitches and jerks. The boy feels rhythmic splashes of warm fluid against his butt crack and up his back. He wriggles out of the grip and humps like a dog against the taut belly under him and cums like a deluge. At least that's what it feels like. In actual fact it's no more than five little trickles. But the feeling!

The boy sinks down in a pond of happy contentment, his body at ease, his breathing calm. He snuggles as close as he can, his face hidden in the hook of his lover's neck.

The young man lies very still, waiting for the regrets and the self-reproach. But they don't come. They don't. All he can think is I will not run away from this.

The boy murmurs something against the young man's throat, half asleep now. The young man holds him tight and turns them on to their sides. Pulls the duvet over them.

And just before sleep sends him off he whispers a faint I love you that nobody hears.

 

*

 

The boy needs to find his mittens in the photo album, but he can't get anywhere because there is some warm viscous stuff all around him and the ambulance is on the beach with a siren going with strange hoots the whole time, and he wakes up with a jolt, realizing it's the downstairs telephone. He bolts out of bed and down the stairs, yanks up the handset the second before the ringing stops.

The young man stretches out under the duvet, amazed at how good he feels. Wonders why he feels no guilt, no regrets, just this languid comfort. This pleasant happiness.

The boy shouts for him downstairs. He jumps out of bed. Almost at the door it hits him that he's naked. Back in, fast, frantically searching and finally finding his long johns. Halfway down the stairs he sees the boy shooting through the hall like a white arrow, diving into the bathroom. He rushes down into the living room and picks up the receiver laid down by the phone.

 

*

 

The call is mostly a monologue. Pleas and instructions from the other side. Luckily it's quickly over because the young man in in dire need of a piss.

The boy is still in the bathroom, standing naked in front of the mirror, scrutinizing himself. No shyness, he only gives the young man a short glance and continues his narcissistic exercise.

The young man stands to the side of the toilet, turns his back on the boy. Struggles a bit to get his morning stiffie out of the old fashioned fold-over fly. By the time his erection has gone sufficiently down to enable him to direct his flow into the bowl, the boy has sneaked around him to watch. The sight of the boy, so fairylike ... maybe angelic would be a good choice of word, what with the untidy halo of pale straw-coloured hair and the almost transparent skin ... well, the sight does nothing to diminish his hardness. He averts his eyes. He has to use force to push his unruly cock down, or there will be piss all over the place.

The boy stands glued to the floor watching his friend. It's the vision he has longed for, the revelation of his dreams, the apparition darkness has hidden from him, and his eyes are saucers. The only thing that would have made it even more enchanting would be no long johns.

The young man giggles self-consciously.

"It's impossible to pee with you watching," he grunts.

A hint? But the boy is going nowhere.

"You're so ..." The boy is choking on a word that hides in his pigeonhole of difficult words, in there with words like love and death, but there is no other word.

"... So beautiful!" he almost sputters.

The young man fixes his eyes on the yellow stream against the white porcelain. Tries to will the rush of goosebumps away. No one has ever called him beautiful.

Finished. A couple of shakes, a pull and a push of foreskin, and then tucked away. The boy still stares.

Then quick as a wink the boy pulls the long johns down. They're halfway down his thighs before the young man reacts. But the boy shouts at him.

"Don't stop me! You have to be naked! Like me! It's only fair!"

Makes sense. The young man let's the boy have his way. And now they just stand there, in the bathroom, two feet apart, gazing at each other.

The boy sees a serious face under dark hair still tousled from sleep, corners of the mouth twitching bashfully. Wide shoulders and smooth chest, skin a warm tan colour even in winter, big brown nipples. Chest tapering to narrow waist and hips, black hair in a trail from the navel, widening, getting denser to end in a thick forest of black pubes above a long, semi-hard cock, darker in colour than the rest of his skin, foreskin not quite covering the egg-shaped head. Dark balls that peep out of their nest of black hairs, black hairs that continue down sturdy legs. To the boy the young man is like summer. Warm. Big. Strong. And so handsome. So handsome a small whimper escapes him.

What he young man sees is something completely different, but not less tantalizing. Now he can really see the boy in full, not in glimpses, not guessing in the dark. The boy is skinny, yes. But it's such a nicely proportioned slenderness, so right, in a way. Like that white and hairless velvety skin belongs with the undeveloped chest and the bony shoulders, for the shape and the lines are so harmonious, so perfect. And the flat, almost concave belly and the two shallow furrows forming a V leading down, down ... like they're inviting, no, urging his eyes down to fasten on the boy's dick. Pale as the rest, and as cute as he had guessed, and longer than he had imagined. It looks so clean and pristine, so innocent, even if it like a compass needle is pointing straight northwards, skin covering the tip completely.

There is something the young man has never done. Something he has heard lewd comments about. Something he has seen in magazines. Something he has always thought must be a bit ... if not directly disgusting, at least unpleasant, and has never quite understood why it's so ... well, significant. Or so high on people's lists ...

He kneels in front of the boy, takes the boy's cock between thumb and index finger, gently pulls the skin back and uncovers a pink head, almost as pale as the rest of the boy ... and he can't resist the urge, his whole body screams for him to do it. So he puts the boy's cock where he suddenly feels it belongs: In his mouth.

The boy's body jolts. The boy yelps like a little puppy. The young man's lips close and his tongue pushes the hard spike up against his palate. And he sucks. Sucks like a lamb that has finally found the teat. Inside him every doubt dissolves, every question is answered. Now he knows why.

 

*

 

Although the thermometer shows a lot less that two days ago there's now a wind in from the sea. It whips against them, they turn their faces away as they huddle along. The sky looks heavy, a snowstorm is on its way, a proper blizzard by the look of things.

The church sits dark and forbidding in the middle of the old graveyard where scattered lanterns adorn a few graves. They pass by towards the new graveyard, about a hundred meters further along, on the fjord side of the road.

It is the first time the boy is not with his grandfather when performing this short and simple ritual. Now he is with the young man instead, and although that feels nice, he is afraid he will be embarrassed. But grandpa's instructions were clear: Do it the way we always do it.

Paths are cleared between the graves. The boy leads the way, crisscrossing from the gates to the upper corner. Under a naked birch, branches swaying in the wind, he stops and looks behind him. Sees the young man hesitating, like he does not want to intrude. But the boy signals he wants him close, wants him to share in this. The young man takes the hint.

Together they bend down, wind tearing at their clothes, and with their hands dig the headstone out of the drift. Three names. A father, a mother, a brother.

The young man takes a step back as the boy wriggles his small satchel off his shoulders. Takes out a battery driven lantern in the shape of a lighthouse. Clicks it on and puts it down in front of the stone. And then, up from the sack comes a small porcelain figurine: A reindeer calf, lying down, lifting its head with huge innocent eyes. Carefully he sets it down to the lee of the lantern.

The boy rises. Looks around him, worried furrow between his brows. Insecurity is written all over his face when his eyes fasten on the young man. Because now comes the difficult part.

"Don't laugh at me," he pleads, voice feeble and shy. "Please."

He has to go through with it, no matter what the young man thinks. He promised grandpa.

So very softly he sings. Sings a lullaby for his little brother.

The young man stands very still. Swallows and bites his lip. And not to prevent laughing. Quite the opposite.

 

*

 

The Christmas tree vendor outside the supermarket is about to pack up and leave, figuring there will be no more sales since the weather's getting so fucking filthy. His stock is considerably thinned out anyway, only a few straggly and regrettable items left.

The young man and the boy catch the vendor in the last minute and pick out the least lamentable of the trees. At first they try to carry it between them, because they both, without having to say anything, feel a need for togetherness, feel the importance of sharing now. Sharing something practical, even if it's just the burden of a pitiful Christmas tree.

But the weather is not on their side. The wind has increased, it howls around them and wrenches the tree out of their grips, sends it over the roadside snowbank and into someone's garden, And now the snow comes, lashing and stinging their faces like whips.

The young man runs after the tree, to the extent that the deep snow allows running. He gets it, and with his back to the wind and his gloved hands clasping the stem lugs and drags the sorry tree along the road as they fight their way back to the boy's home.

 

*

 

The storm outside wails around the corners, makes the building tremble with each gust. These houses are built to withstand such weather, although roofs have been known escape in particularly heavy storms. But the experience and skills of generations has resulted in how and where to build, and the boy and the young man and the unkempt tree are now safely in and under a roof that has no plans to go astray.

The door of the cast iron stove is open. They've pulled chairs close and sit staring into the flames that dance and sizzle and consume the firewood. The boy has had a bath and is sitting in his pyjamas, of course with the young man's sweater on top. The young man has also had a bath, and furthermore has washed his underwear for lack of clean clothes. For, as he said, no fucking way he's going out in this goddam weather again. So he sits under a thick plaid blanket with a towel around his hips.

The electric heaters are all on max, the fire burns cheerfully in the stove. The two of them are warm now, their stomachs are full, their tired bodies are resting. Life would be totally sweet if it wasn't for the recent phone call from the hospital. So ... the way it looks, there will be no grandparents home for Christmas.

The boy feels his heart torn in half. Or maybe more correct, like he has two hearts, one of these belongs to the two persons who have been there for him since that day when everything he knew and loved broke and crumbled, the two who cared for him, who loved him, who were a haven for him when everything else was meaningless and full of pain, and it is as though this heart wants to fly away to look for them and bring them back.

But the other heart belongs here, with the young man who has been his friend for a year, his first real friend, and now the one who ... maybe loves him too?

His chest is two narrow for two hearts. It's not pleasant at all. It almost hurts, and he has no idea how to cope with this load of feelings. He breathes heavily and bites his thumbnail.

"She's not going to die." The young man tries to soothe him. "Your grandpa said so. She's just ... you know, frail. So she needs a lot of care. For some time."

"I know that."

Slurred words with a finger still in his mouth. The boy sounds irritated. He's heard the same thing from his grandfather, and repetition is obviously not the kind of reassurance he needs. The young man is uneasy, wondering how to deal with the boy's mood. In the end he finds it best to just put another log in the fire and continue staring at the flames.

The boy draws his knees up, wraps his arms around them and stare at the young man with a strange light in his hazel eyes.

"Do you love me?" he suddenly asks. "Just a little bit?"

The young man is taken aback. He doesn't at all know what to say. He has never said the word love out loud, nor has he ever before he met the boy thought about love as something real. Love was something you read about or heard thrown about in American movies. Too far off. Too vague.

The boy notices his reluctance. The boy looks away.

"You don't have to answer. I'm being stupid. Sorry."

The young man instantly feels inept, insufficient. So achingly helpless. He throws the blanket away and stands up, his olive-skinned torso and hairy legs dark against the snowy white towel. He shuffles on his bare feet out in the hall, puts his jacket on and comes back in carrying the tree.

"Got a stand for this?"

The boy gapes at him and bursts out laughing. He looks so weird with his towel and bare legs showing under that big jacket. Words come out almost like hiccups in the middle of his guffawing.

"I ... I think ... there's one ... in the ... in the cellar or something ...I'll go look..."

And as he hurries past the young man he yanks the towel off, and laughing his head off disappears out in the hall. The young man hears a door open, and the now softer chuckles and the flap-flap-flap of bare feet fades.

The young man looks around for a place to put the tree down so he can retrieve the towel. But then he thinks twice. If this is how the boy wants him, bare from the waist down, that's what he gets. Anyway that's less embarrassing than having to answer questions about hard stuff like love and such. So he just remains where he is, rests the stem on the floor and holds the tree at arm's length, waiting.

 

*

 

The pathetic tree us up and decorated, and honestly doesn't look too bad. The living room is decked with little Santas, glittering red hearts and golden stars, and so is the dining room. Fresh candles in all the candlesticks, big bowl of red apples and oranges on the dining room table.

The boy surveys the rooms.

"It's not as good as when grandma does it," he pouts. "This looks like we just threw stuff around and it landed anywhere."

He stands in the doorway between the two rooms. Sadness creeps up, and before he can pull himself together he's overwhelmed by misery. Tears run down his cheeks as he leans his back on the door frame and slides down.

The young man, still trouserless in his jacket, moves tentatively towards the boy. Cursing himself for being such a klutz at handling emotions, other people's as well as his own.

The boy sniffles.

"I wish they were here. I miss them so much."

The young man's fingers move restlessly. He presses them against his thighs.

"They'll be back soon," he mumbles. But his voice doesn't sound convincing.

The boy looks up. Wet cheeks, hands balled into fists.

"I'm not so sure."

The young man reaches out. The boy takes his hand and gets up. Now it's back to the chairs by the stove. The young man is fidgety and nervous, obviously fighting to get something off his chest.

And finally:

"You'll have to make do with me, then. Until..."

He can't finish the sentence, for the boy is suddenly in his lap, peeling winter jacket away from smooth chest, thrusting wet face against warm skin as if trying to break in.

Without pushing the boy away the young man wriggles out of his jacket and enfolds the boy in his arms. For a minute it's like he sees them from outside, him without a stich on holding the boy in pyjamas and sweater in his lap, and the image it soothing and disturbing at the same time.

The room is more than warm enough. He gently lifts the boy off his lap and starts undressing him.

"Ok," he whispers. "I love you just a little bit."

 

*

 

Unlike most countries where Christmas is celebrated, all the Nordic countries' have their big day on Christmas eve. Church bells chime at 5 o'clock in the evening to mark the start of the feast, and churches are half full of people who normally won't set foot anywhere near. Families dress up and gather for traditional meals, and of course the distribution of gifts. Some even sing carols and trot around the tree at home, which is probably the last remnant of the Christian content tied up with this holiday. Because all in all, in these rather secular countries it is a purely a commercial event rather than a spiritual one.

And no matter how much the church has tried to steal this ancient heathen feast and make it a Christian holiday, they never quite managed. These countries even kept the old heathen name for the mid-winter bash: Jul. Or J"l as the Vikings called it. And the old Norse guys didn't celebrate the feast with temperance or moderation, the idioms were "drikka J"l" and "ta opp Freys lek", meaning "to drink J"l and play Frey's game", and Frey being the god with the hard-on, that should tell you something.

 

*

 

The wind has dropped a bit now.

But it had been snowing all through the night, and when in the morning they tried to open the front door, it wouldn't budge. A compact snowdrift across the whole front of the house blocked it. The boy had climbed out the window and spent the best part of an hour to clear a passage from the door to the road. You'd think a strenuous task like that was too much for a puny boy like him, but he is a tough little creature, stronger than you think.

The young man has gone to pick up some clothes and do some last minute shopping, the store closes at two on this day. The boy is alone in the house, trying not to think to much. Everyday chores help, he has done the dishes, tidied the kitchen, vacuumed the downstairs rooms. He is trying to make his bedroom look a bit more presentable when he's interrupted by the shrill sound of the telephone.

The boy is still on the phone when the young man returns, laden with rucksack and shopping bags. He can see telltale streaks down the boy's cheeks. Sorrowful compassion pierces its way into the strange joy and the ... well, he supposes love is the word, that has filled him on the way back from his mission.

The young man dumps everything by the door, comes over and just very gently takes the boy's free hand in his, his thumb caresses the palm. The boy hands him the phone, jerks his hand abruptly loose, goes to the bathroom and locks himself in.

 

*

 

They manage some sort of Christmas dinner despite both being lousy cooks. The young man had got some already roasted pieces of pork ribs at the store, and with some tiny sausages they create a meal as close to the tradition as they can. The young man thinks they should lay the dining room table and eat like proper gentlemen, but the boy refuses. That will just be another reminder that two people are missing here, so he wants to do it differently. Do it a way that is just theirs and has nothing to do with the way things usually are.

But it's impossible to avoid everything. And thinking twice, the boy is not certain that he wants to. Not completely. He puts on Ramirez' "Navidad Nuestra" to bring the spirit of grandfather into the room. As the music fills the rooms, the boy walks around lighting all the candles.

They haven't really spoken since the young man stood banging at the bathroom door urging the boy to come out, but they have gazed into each other's eyes a lot, touched hands a lot, hugged a lot, and felt closer than ever, despite the boy's unpredictable and changing moods.

They bring their plates from the kitchen and sit down, plates in their laps, in front of the open stove. Sitting here watching the flames has become something they feel belongs to them, and only them. And the young man, whose relationship with flames used to be so disturbing and traumatic, is baffled to find the flames don't hurt that much anymore. It's like the flames in there have become one with the boy. Well, not exactly that. Rather like those flames tie them together and underline their bond, a bond that started as a tiny sprout some time ago, and even if still fragile has become so much stronger, so much more beautiful than the young man could ever imagine.

And, with almost a small shock, the young man realizes that he no longer fears his own feelings. He wants to be with this boy in every possible way, to love him and cherish him, to share everything with him, to feel the boy's body against his own and take them both to blissful heaven. And it does not scare him at all anymore.

 

*

 

The boy is weeping again. Not heavily, just a few tears trickling down his cheeks.

The young man touches his hand.

"They'll be back soon. Probably in two days, your grandpa said."

"I know."

The boy gets up. Goes off to turn the record over. "Missa Criolla" fills the air. Then he sighs.

"It's not that," he says to the wall, then turns to face the young man. "I don't know ... but when they come back, this will stop." He spreads his hand as if to embrace everything around him. "I mean, you and me here. You and me."

He walks away and stops in front of the tree. Squints, and the little lights turn into stars.

The young man comes after him. Without a word pulls him in and holds him to his chest. Strokes those fluffy blond locks of hair, rests his lips against that clear, smooth forehead.

The boy wraps his arms around the young man's waist.

"No presents," the boy mutters. "I haven't got anything for you."

"Not true. You've ... you've given me ... a lot, you know." The young man sounds bashful. Still not quite comfortable with talking feelings and such.

The boy wriggles out of the embrace. Walks towards the stove again while wringing his shirt off, then his T-shirt. Pants follow, and white underpants. Now, with his socks on and nothing else, he turns towards the young man. The flickering light from the many candles and the dancing red flames in the stove turn his skin into a harlequin suit of shadow and light.

The boy's voice is thick with want.

"For you, then. If you want it. Merry Christmas."

The music in the room seems to radiate from him.

Gloria a Dios

En las alturas

Y en la tierra

Paz a los hombres ...

The young man swallows. Yes. This is my religion, he thinks.

 

*

 

There would have been better places, a bed perhaps, but it can't wait. It's urgent, it's here and now. It's all hunger. So it has to be the floor.

The boy holds the young man's erect cock to his face, rubbing it against his cheek, pushing the tip against his closed eyes, slapping it against his lips. His whole body is tingling, all his senses are focused on this one object. He looks at it, marvelling at its beauty, its hardness, its silky surface, its moving skin. Wonders how to get a big thing like this into his mouth, but he knows he will try. He needs it, he craves it.

He feels lips close around his hairless balls. His tongue comes out, a bit hesitantly, this he has not done before. The tip of his tongue explores the still sheathed head of the cock he is holding, pushing, trying to get tongue under the skin. But it's too tight. He peels the skin off, licks the dark head all over, joy fills him when he feels the body under him jolt and shiver as his tongue moves along the flared ridge and stops at the frenulum, teasing and tickling. The cock contracts and jumps in his hand.

The boy parts his lips, trembles as he slide them slowly down over the gorgeous piece of flesh in front of him. And at the same time his own harder than ever and ready to burst dick is enveloped in moist warmth. He shakes like a leaf, tries so hard not to explode, but he's thirteen and his hormones rule, so when a whole cockhead fills his mouth, and lips move down his own cock, he can't help it. Deep in his throat a hoarse moan tears loose, his body convulses and his thirteen-year-old cock pulsates and throbs and sends his teenage juice into the mouth that holds it captured.

The young man gets up from under the collapsed boy, picks him up, and with his mighty stiff cock leading the way carries the boy upstairs.

 

*

 

By a hospital bed miles away, a grandfather sits watching a frail grandmother, remembering how she looked that first day he saw her: Radiant and lively on stage in front of a small combo, her almost white hair framing her beautiful face, her playful attitude, her bewitching voice. Now she just lies there, pale and feeble, eyes without much sparkle, oxygen tubes in her nose. His heart aches.

There's been a small effort from the staff to create a kind of holiday ambiance in the room. There's a star in the window, a knitted Santa on the sill.

The old man bends forward, strokes his wife's cheek. Bends down an kisses her cheek.

"Merry Christmas," he whispers.

She smiles at him. She knows this man, that much is sure.

"Thank you," she whispers back.

 

* * * * * * * * * * *

 

I have two other stories with a Christmas motif here on Nifty:

When a Father Gives (nifty.org)

Mr. Marshall Stops Running (nifty.org)

For my other stories, write "Winterboy", or in one case "Wintermagnus", in the search window, and they come up.