This is primarily a love story; sex will occur sporadically, not in every other paragraph.
Love will never abide by religion or by law. Love can be punished, but it cannot be cured. Love is the ultimate anarchist. The term "sin" is meaningless in love's language, as is the term "underage".
If you disagree with this statement, go find another story to read.
If some law says you should not be here at all, it's your own choice to stay or go away.
If you should happen to like my story, please tell me: winterboy@tutanota.com
And please remember: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Announcement
I sincerely apologize for the delay in continuing this story. There are reasons, of course, there always are. I can only hope those of you who read my stories (and like them) aren't lost to me out of impatience or frustration. So here is chapter 8.
THE SOUND OF HIS FOOTSTEPS
Magnus Winter
CHAPTER 8
Darkness. Nothingness. Oh, wait. Something. A boy.
Sander's consciousness peeped out like a stowaway from its hiding place. His chest felt sweaty and warm against the unfamiliar skin that seemed to stick to it. Slowly it all came back to him. Jakob. Jakob is dead. The boy is Stijn, not Thomas. Had they ... No, they hadn't, had they? He felt like he was being strangled. He sat up with a jolt, disturbing the boy who turned over, blinking, mumbling.
"Why are you here?" Sander sounded harsh.
The boy Stijn sat up, his skinny shoulders shivered as sweat evaporated on his skin.
"Ik moet plassen!"
He jumped out of bed and ran for the bathroom. Sander felt relief to see he was in his boxers. He heard the boy piss hard into the water, then he flushed and came back. Sander thought: He didn't wash his hands.
"You were so sad. I thought you needed someone to stay with you. I'll leave if you don't want me here."
The boy stood in the doorway, his slender frame like a black paper clipping. Sander was struck by the frail beauty of the silhouetted boy, but his defenses were up, he needed distance.
"Do you take every sad man you see to bed?" God, Sander, that was unnecessary. And ungrateful.
The boy didn't seem to be put out. He came in and sat down on the chair next to the bed. Watched Sander with his trustful eyes and open face.
"You're not every man."
Sander drew his breath heavily. "I'm sorry. That was mean of me."
"In case you wonder, I wasn't trying to get it on with you. It's just that ... When my mum gets all worked up and crazy, it usually helps to put her to bed and hold her."
The closeness of the boy, the sight of him, the smell, sent a whirlwind of memories, of regrets and pain, of desires and longing through Sander. He felt lost, felt like his sense of reality was leaving him.
"Oh god", he whimpered, "please don't go. Please stay if you can. But you frighten me. I frighten me."
Stijn held his watch up to his face.
"It's not yet four. Get under the covers. You need to sleep."
They crawled back in together, Stijn facing Sander this time. Sander held his face between his hands and gazed into his eyes.
"I once loved a boy like you. No, not like you. Different. I loved him desperately, but I lost him. And now I've lost my brother. Everything is always slipping away from me. I feel like I'm breaking into hundreds of little aching pieces."
He kissed the boy on his forehead, on his eyelids, on his cheeks. The boy didn't pull away.
"Don't think", he whispered. "Just hold me and go to sleep."
He removed the hands from his face, pushed Sander on to his back and crept over to halfway cover him, resting his head in the crook of Sander's neck and his right hand on his chest. Sander put both arms around the boy and sighed. And sighed again.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
→ Sander → → Diary 2018
So it's over. The new owners bought me out today, and my old life is now utter history. Got a good price, too, even though the gallery has been in pretty dire straits lately. About time for some new blood, I'm sure. And the name is well established, so I don't think they made a bad deal. It's more that we didn't bother anymore, and you've got to stay on your toes in this business.
What to do with the money? Go away? South of France maybe. No, Portugal. Yes. Madeira. That's it. Warm up my cold body? Thaw my frozen heart? What drivel! Watch the boys and jerk off alone. That's what I'll do.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nijmegen 1985
Days in a tight, white cocoon. Sander on autopilot, notifying contacts, cancelling appointments, packing a suitcase, driving north through the fog with his aunt beside him.
None of them spoke in the car as they rode through dense and lifeless greyness. Just inside the German border, as they were going up a long, gentle slope, a giant power plant rose in the horizon, grew larger and more threatening the closer they came, like a fortress of doom in a sci-fi movie. A burning blend of anguish and hatred took hold of Sander, as if all injustice, all evil in the world had been cast into those walls. He pounded his fist as hard as he could on the steering wheel and screamed all the bad words he could come up with.
His aunt put her hand on his knee. He had to drive the car to the shoulder and stop. He bent forward and cried like he would burst. And then, as quickly as it came, his crying was over. He just sat there under a tight and soundproof lid of resignation. With his aunt behind the wheel, they continued through rain and forests of black trees.
Sander went through the motions with his mother and her sister, observing the harmony, the love and the care they shared. The seamless switch from one language to another. They became a unit, a chord that Sander couldn't fit his note into. Not because of them, it was all his own doing, all his notes jarred.
He trudged the streets, sought out the places where he had been with Jakob when they were kids, looking and not looking, hearing nothing but obscure noises. Past the house they grew up in, past their old school, past the old concrete wall where they once came upon a slowworm. Sander had panicked: a deadly snake! but Jakob wasn't afraid, he tried to catch it, but it slid into a crack and away from them. The crack in the wall had been fixed. No slowworm. No Jakob.
His nights were terrible, like he inhabited a half-world where he passed in and out of scary dreams and waking hours, burning with hopelessness and longing. His yearning for his brother was suddenly run over by a hollow need for Thomas, and Thomas suddenly turned into Stijn, who stood reading incomprehensible poetry in front of porcelain dolls who bled from their eyes. He was drawn and pulled through tunnels to perform something he wasn't prepared for and at the same time his trousers were gone and everyone saw him. Traumatic dreams. Sweaty dreams.
All he could remember from the funeral was the quiet, dimly lit room filled with pale flowers and the scent from his mother's perfume. Not a single word that was said stuck in his mind. Then Jakob was in the furnace. He wasn't even forty.
His sister-in-law stopped him outside the funeral home and put a flat cardboard box in his hand.
"You should have these", she said. "He only used them once."
Inside the box, wrapped in tissue paper, sat a pair of very pale gloves, the softest and thinnest leather he had ever touched. They fit his hands like a second skin. The first days he wouldn't take them off, he even slept in them. He felt like he was holding Jakob's hand, like he had some part of Jakob still with him.
Nijmegen 1985
It was getting on for his aunts 60th birthday . Sander and his cousin sat joking and bullshitting in the innermost corner of the café, trying to come up with some good sarcasm and some rare rhymes, as Sander had decided he would make a rhyming speech at the celebration. He had felt his language wasn't up to scratch, he wanted elegance and originality, poetry just didn't come from messing with the word order. Proper rhythm, proper rhymes. And cousin Ton, his obvious mentor, took some time off work, so there they sat, over coffee and sambuca, heads and mouths full of words.
As he unlocked his bike later, it hit him like a thunderbolt: He'd forgotten the gloves in the café. Heart thumping, he ran back in. No gloves. He shouted frantically for Ton, hurried from table to table questioning the other customers, but to no avail. Nobody had seen anything.
Eaten by distress he raced his bike through the streets. Back home he let his frustration loose, he screamed at the top of his lungs Shit! Shit! Shit! Dejected and consumed with anger, he had failed again, he had failed Jakob this time. Everything he touched vanished, everything he cared for always got destroyed. What had he done, that he deserved fate or karma or God to bite his ass all the time?
He had to get out. He ran along the river, through the park, out on the bridge. Leaned over the railing and stared down at the dirty waters to catch his breath. Fuck! Shit! Resigned, he jogged back in the twilight the same way he came.
Stijn was sitting on his doorstep when he got back, the sleeve of his jacket torn lose at the shoulder, his nose bloody. His heart sank. Oh hell, he wasn't in a state to handle Stijn's trouble right now. He just shook his head.
"You should go home. Fix yourself. I'm sorry, I can't deal with you now."
Stijn rose as he unlocked the door. "I got your gloves for you."
Sander stopped dead. "What?"
"I said I got your gloves for you. I had to fight for them!" Stijn sniggered and wiped blood off his face with his sleeve.
Sander grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him in, sat him at the kitchen table. Stijn drew the gloves out of his pocket and placed them on the table.
"I'm afraid one of them got torn", he said. "Look, the seam of the thumb is ripped. But I think it can be repaired."
Sander was speechless. All he could do was hug this boy and rock him from side to side, it was like his whole inside was deflated and empty, like there was nothing left when his anger and his despair left him. But slowly relief turned to joy, and joy turned to concern. And he found his words again.
"God, you are a marvel! Jeez, you're fucking amazing! Let's get you cleaned up, and you can tell me all about it."
Sander took him up to the bathroom and started to clean the blood from the boy's face. The bleeding had stopped, he carefully felt the nose. Stijn winced. It didn't feel like anything was broken, though.
"I think you're going to have a huge shiner. But I don't think he broke your nose, whoever did this. Looks like he hit your nose at the root, close to your eye."
"He was big, but he wasn't such a good fighter", Stijn smirked. "I kneed him in the balls. Real hard."
"But ... I don't get it. How did you know he had my gloves?"
"I came in to look for you just as you disappeared into the toilet. And I saw this guy pass your table and snatch up a pair of gloves, and I recognized them. And I know how much you cherish them, so I ran after him. He wouldn't give them back, so I jumped him and he grabbed my arm and hit me. That's when I got mad and kicked his balls in. He doubled over and I tore the gloves from him, but one got damaged. I'm sorry about that. Then I came here, but you weren't in. My face hurt and I knew I was bleeding, but I mean, I sort of felt I had to see you. So I just sat here, and the bleeding stopped after a while."
"You're really something else. I don't know how to thank you. I'll buy you a new jacket. I'll buy you anything."
Stijn looked at him, a small, worried crease between his eyebrows.
"I didn't do it to get paid. I did it because I like you."
Sander felt chastised.
"I didn't mean it like that. I just wanted to do something for you in return. In gratitude, sort of."
Stijn was quiet for a while. Then:
"Do you think I can stay here for a while?"
Ringsaker 1988
Thomas crouched and bent forward to clean the udder, leaned his forehead against the cow's warm thigh. A great peace crept into his chaotic mind, these mornings in the barn with the cows were oases in an existence that had offered him too many miles through deserts with too many unexpected sandstorms. Here, in the warm air filled with the smells of silage and cow dung, where the only sounds were the soothing pulse from the milking machine and the slow chewing and occasional scraping of hooves. Here he was free for a couple of hours, here everything was predictable, straightforward, in place.
Not like his inside, where there was much too much grating and growling going on. He was so godawfully tired of all the conflicts in his head, so sick of looking for a meaning he could not find. So he would more and more often insist on doing the morning chores in the dairy barn on his own. To get away, disconnect, empty himself. If only my brain was like a cow's ass, he thought, when the vet drives his gloved arm into her to empty her shit out before insemination. Then maybe there would be more room for the good stuff.
He hadn't thought it would be like this, never asked for or planned for this. And now the cows were the only ones who stirred his heart with kindness, almost love; the rest of his life here on the farm had become a tangle of complicated and conflicting feelings. Inadequacy, anger, jealousy fought the remnants of the infatuation he couldn't quite dismiss and this useless loyalty he couldn't quite kill off. He knew he had to put an end to this pretty soon, get out, find a home somewhere else, but he had no strength, no courage. Out there everything was a huge hole, a dangerous and screaming nothing.
He put the milking machine through the cleaning process and mixed powdered milk with lukewarm water for the calves. Walked around, stood for a while stroking the swollen, pregnant stomach of the cow Chianti, just a few more days now. Suddenly irritation welled up in him: Why couldn't those poor cows have ordinary, classic names? Why did they all have to be named for some alcoholic beverage? Amontillado, Calvados, Palinka ... He knew why. Fuck it.
He had dawdled too long, it was a quarter past seven already. He had to get to the village and pick up the week's time-table before eight, or he would be late on his round.
The back door was open. He heard Ulf's voice before he walked in.
"Mmm..." Low laughter. "Yeah, me too ... Mmm, stiff as a board ... Do you, now?"
Thomas entered in his socks. Hung his overall in the hall. Ulf heard him, slammed the phone down and left the kitchen for the bathroom without looking at him. Thomas walked heavily over and washed his hands in the sink, looked to see if there was coffee left, then sat down and stared out the window.
Nijmegen 1985
"Mum has company", Stijn said, "and I know they're stoned out of their tits by now. I usually stay out all night when it happens, because one of those guys is more abusive and threatening than I care for."
He looked sad. "So if I could stay with you, it would be nice."
"Of course you can. Right now, I think I'd say yes to anything you ask. Like I almost owe you my life."
"Kletspraat."
Sander suggested they'd go for burgers, but Stijn would rather they went to the small vegetarian place just up the street. Sander couldn't help but wonder about this boy. What teenager preferred health food for junk? And more, what teenager showed such care and responsibility for others as this boy did for him? And at a guess, he couldn't be more than ... what, fourteen? Fifteen?
Their meal was pleasant and Stijn showed a humorous streak in his make up by handing Sander small jokes about his life: The bewildering actions his mother would sometimes get up to, the craziness of her friends, his schoolmates and his teachers. But underneath his irony and lightness, there was an undertow of sadness, of unhappiness, and also a touch of resignation. Like this was the life he had been assigned to, and he had better accept it and not pretend it would change.
Sander felt a strange kind of remorse. Twice now, this boy had gone out of his way to help him, showed him kindness, and what had he done in return? Left him to cope with his junkie mother, left him to fend for himself against the hardship his life must have brought him? And he remembered the many times he had seen the boy somewhere in his vicinity, but never really stopped to think if he needed more than a smile and a nod. And face it, Sander, this strangely mature boy could surely use a friend, an ally, someone to be weak with instead of strong, but can you be that friend?
Sander was pulled out of his reveries by Stijn's voice slightly increasing in volume:
"... and have you ever seen people on heroin fuck? They never ever finish. They lose interest, then they're at it again, on and off forever. And I bet that's the case back home right now."
Sander turned this information over in his mind. It felt all wrong to him that a son should be made to reflect on his mother's sex life.
"If you want to escape it, why don't you get your school things and stay at my place? Not necessarily in my bed, you know. There's the sofa, right?"
Stijn sat lost in thought for a while. Then he rose. "Let's go."
Sander smiled a bit wryly. "Don't you think we have to pay first?"
Stijn suddenly looked panic-stricken. "Oh, fuck. I don't have enough money. I sort of thought you would pay?"
"And so I will. I was just teasing."
Sander waited outside while Stijn tip-toed into his mother's house to get his satchel. The house seemed very quiet, Sander wondered what it was like in there. What the rooms looked like, where Stijn slept since these houses had just one bedroom and an attic. And the people in there, were they all zonked out, or was there a slow and half-hearted orgy going on? Stijn came sneaking out, looking smug.
"I told you. It's just as I said. They didn't even notice me."
They walked the few steps over to Sander's place in silence. Once inside, Sander went to the fridge. Told Stijn he was having a beer, and what would Stijn like?
"Can I have one too?"
Sander looked skeptically at him.
"But you're not old enough for me to give you beer."
"And how old do I have to be to get one?" Stijn laughed.
"I don't know. There's no legal drinking age in Norway, just for purchase, but I think I heard somewhere you have to be eighteen to drink alcohol here?"
"Then let's pretend we're in Norway. How old do you think I am anyway?"
Sander scrutinized him. The skinny body was that of a boy, the face with all it's hidden history was that of a young man. He cleared his throat.
"At first I thought you were thirteen, maybe fourteen. But maybe I was wrong. Fifteen?"
Stijn laughed again. "Actually I'm sixteen. Now can I have a beer?"
Later, much later, and Sander worried. They should go to bed, Stijn had school in the morning. But he kept putting it off, torn between the sensible solution of placing Stijn on the couch and himself in the bedroom, and the tingling hope that Stijn would crawl into bed with him, like he had the first time he spent the night. But circumstances were different this time. If anyone needed comfort and closeness this night, it wasn't him. And he had no clue to where Stijn was at in this. But he had to make a move. He rose.
"It's getting late, Stijn. I'll make up the couch for you. Do you need a shower or something before bed?"
Stijn hesitated. "Well, maybe", he finally said. "Do I stink?"
"Not that I've noticed. I thought perhaps it would be relaxing. Your punched face and all that."
Stijn sniggered, grabbed his satchel, rummaged through it and came up with a toothbrush and a clean pair of boxers. And still sniggering left for the bathroom. Sander got some spare sheets and a blanket from his bedroom and made up the couch. He stretched his back and looked down at the make-shift bed, and without much reflection or deliberation picked a daisy out of the vase on the windowsill and laid it on the pillow.
Sander was on the landing when Stijn came out of the bathroom, dressed only in boxers and a towel around his neck. Sander struggled to avoid looking him over, he averted his eyes and mumbled good night as he hurried up the stairs to the safety of his bedroom. He'd sneak back to the bathroom when Stijn was under the covers.
He thought he was in the clear when he stole out of the bathroom, clad for the occasion in his only pair, and never used, pajama bottoms. But no. Suddenly he heard Stijns amused voice:
"Aren't you going to tuck me in and kiss me good night?"
"Aren't you a grown up, beer drinking man?"
And then he was suddenly aware of Stijn standing close to him. Too close for comfort.
"Then I'll come and tuck you in", he giggled.
Sander turned away and elbowed his way around him and up the stairs, his mind locked in a state of foreboding and threatening, impossible wishes, hardly noticing Stijn close behind him. Into his bedroom, down on his bed. Looked up, and finally allowed himself to look at the boy standing in front of him. The bony, but beautifully shaped shoulders, the slimmest of waists with an outie navel, the wide boxer shorts that rode low on narrow hips.
"I'm your friend", Stijn mumbled, "why do you avoid me?"
Sander sighed deeply. "I'm gay. You're not. That's why."
"Listen, I don't label people, myself included." He was very serious now, the giggles long gone. "All I know is that it's been a long time since I liked anyone as much as I like you. And I liked sleeping next to you. So? Please?"
Sander sighed again, and let the arguments in his head drop dead.
"Ok, friend. Hop in."
And then they were side by side under the sheets, and Sander felt uncomfortable and apprehensive. Try to avoid skin contact, his mind said, lie as still as you can. But his nerves itched and his legs quivered. And Stijns hand came up and lay across his chest.
"I like your hair", he said and stroked Sander, almost caressing him. "Just a little bit of fuzz, not too much. You look young for an old man."
"So do you." They shared a laugh at that, Sander still kept his hands close to his sides.
Stijn's laughter died first.
"You can touch me, you know. If you want to."
Sander swallowed hard.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea. I'm afraid I could get carried away, if you know what I mean. I'd want more, see? So we had better keep this at a low level."
Now it was Stijn's turn to sigh. And sigh he did, a long, exasperated sigh. Then rose up on his elbow, facing Sander.
"I'm not good at this", he said. "I don't get much sex, only with myself. Please, I like you so much, could you please, please pet me just a little and see if we both like it?"
"Is it something you want? Not just something you think I'd want?"
"Honestly."
"Honestly?"
"Cross my fucking heart! Stop it!"
Stijn's lips closed on Sanders, softly, tentatively, and Sander felt a small tremor in Stijn's body. That was all it took. He closed his eyes, his hands came up and held Stijn's face as his tongue parted the boy's lips and explored what was inside.
Stijn moved until his body was on top of Sanders, then removed Sander's hands from his cheeks and placed them at his waist. Sander slid his fingers up over the smoothest of skins, into soft-haired armpits, down again along a bumpy spine until they rested on firm, cotton covered buttocks. Stijn sent a low, shivering moan into Sander's mouth. His hips slowly started to grind against Sander's. Then he lifted his head and Sander opened his eyes to find him staring at his face.
"Can we lose the clothes?" he whispered, slightly out of breath.
Sander turned him over, never losing eye contact, fingers stroking the inside of the boy's boxers' elastic band. Pushing them down, but they were caught on Stijn's very hard dick. Sander got up, on his knees between the boy's legs, and pulled the shorts off. Stijn's rather thin, but unexpectedly long cock slapped loudly against his stomach. Sander leaned back to take in the sight of him, marveling at the purity and innocence of his beauty, and the heartbreaking sexiness of his arousal.
Caressing Stijn's stomach and hips, Sander slowly moved his face into the boy's groin, inhaling the blessed mix of soap and boy musk. His tongue tickled the boy's balls, licked the taint, and then moved up in one slow lick along the hard cock. The boy's body trembled, he covered his face with his hands and whimpered. He'll come if I don't stop, Sander thought, and I want him to. And then his fingers squeezed the boy's nipples as he sucked the lovely cock deep into his mouth. Stijn's body writhed and twisted, his head lifted with a shout and his hips rose as his sperm throbbed through his cock into Sander's throat, then his body fell with a soft thud back onto the bed.
Ringsaker 1988
The road was narrow and full of potholes, the car rolled slowly down it. Beside him in the passenger seat sat the bags of groceries and everything else Thomas needed for his round. The car crept past farms and houses.
Past one small house that stood by itself almost in the middle of a field. That familiar longing: Why can't I live in a house like that? Be spared the confrontations, be spared the demands and the claims he didn't feel up to meet. Be spared the smell from the large kegs of fermenting slop for moonshine in the bathroom. Be spared the army of men coming and going in and out of what was meant to be the two of them. Be spared the waking up at night to loud and drunk phone sex in the next room. Be spared the derisive laughter because he believed in God. Be spared to feel cheated, feel worthless, feel that things would eventually be better. He knew they wouldn't.
First stop: Help wash the old body, see that the pills were taken, and if not, call the nurse. Prepare food for the next two meals, clean the house. Not much time to do it. No time for chatting, just "Make sure you eat and drink enough, now..." and "See you tomorrow".
Then on the way again, down dirt roads with wheel-tracks full of oil spills shimmering like mother-of-pearl, past trimmed hedges like soldiers on parade, past houses with their secretive windows. I could have lived there. Or there.
It was getting dark when he got back home. Home. Well. Ulf was sitting naked at the kitchen table, glass half full in front of him, his strong features slightly blushed, his sinewy body leaning forward, legs spread. He smelled of sweat and drink.
He got up with slow, alcoholic meticulousness, choked back a hiccup and put an arm around Thomas' shoulder and a hand to his crotch. Licked his ear.
"Wanna get married?"
Thomas felt the hairs stand out at the back of his neck. Half of his brain floated back to a year and a half ago, when this had started, when he believed this was his future and nothing would have pleased him more than this question. The other half of his brain congealed from hopelessness, from falsehood, from the sheer conceit behind the question. He withdrew from Ulf. Answered with as much ice in his voice as he could muster:
"Why?"
Ulf stood grinning, hands at his hips, strutting. Stood there with his strong legs spread and his short, fat cock at half-mast. Thomas thought: Would it be easier to answer "no" right out if he were uglier?
Ulf's grin broadened. "Wouldn't that be a good Christian thing to do?" He took one unsteady step forward. "And if we enter into civil partnership, I wouldn't have to pay the state taxes for employing you on the farm."
So. That was what this was about. Thomas turned on his heels and marched out. Had he been a cartoon character, smoke would have steamed from his ears. Ulf came stumbling after him.
"Whaaat?"
Thomas didn't answer. Walked to his car, got in. Called out without looking back:
"You do the cows tomorrow. I'll be away tonight."
He shut the car door with a bang, slammed into first gear and spattered gravel on the way out from the yard. A bit down the road he stopped, leaned in over the steering wheel and let his breath out. And all at once it felt essential to see his father. Talk to his father. Have a father.
Nijmegen 1985
"I don't know what to say," Stijn mumbled as his panting and his trembling calmed down.
"Then don't say anything."
Sander crept up and lay beside the boy, apprehensive and uneasy, suddenly wondering if this was going to result in disaster. His hard-on subsided, but his body felt as tense as a steel spring. He turned his head and tried to see what was going on in Stijn's head without being too obviously concerned. The boy looked preoccupied and a little worried. Then he spoke:
"I don't know what to do either."
"Oh God. I'm sorry, Stijn, I didn't think. I just wanted you to feel good."
Stijn sat up and stared at him.
"You're sorry? Why? You just gave me the most intense orgasm I ever had, and I did nothing for you. Look at you, still in your pajamas." He started to laugh. "I feel so stupid."
Sander reached out and stroked his cheek lightly.
"Don't. You shouldn't."
"You'll think me stupid now. Because ... You know what I really want to do? I want us to jerk off together. I want to see your face when you come. Can we do that? Is it silly of me?"
"What ... now? But you just came?"
"So? That was just once!" He's eyes pleaded. "Please?"
Sander lost some of his tension. Joined Stijns in his small, shy laugh.
"Instruct us, then. How would you like it to happen?"
Stijn moved them about until they sat cross-legged in front of each other, and started to caress his own cock. "Take yours out."
Sander pulled his half hard cock out of the fly in his pajama pants, stroked it lightly, watching Stijn's eyes that were glued to his rising cock. A small grunt escaped Stijn's lips, then his left hand crept across the sheets, but stopped. He lifted his eyes to Sanders face in a silent question. Sander nodded almost unnoticeably, and Stijn's hand closed softly around his now rock hard cock.
"Oh", he whispered, "it feels so much thicker than mine".
He let go, and for a while they sat like that, facing each other, stroking their own stiff cocks.
"Now take off your pajamas."
Sander got up and removed his pants. Back on the bed, Stijn stretched his legs out and crossed them with Sander's, his hand moving faster, his hips slightly gyrating. Sander watched him fascinated, it was almost as if the boy's skin was glowing, so smooth and shiny, he wanted to lick him, kiss him, devour him, but this was not his scene to direct. Yet there was something extremely arousing in this: Look, not touch. Watch the boy in all his glorious beauty please himself, eyes fixed on Sander's cock. Jesus, he thought, I can come any minute from this.
Stijn lifted his glance, looked with something like wonder at Sander's face.
"Now!" he whispered.
And never taking his eyes off Sander, his mouth opened and a row of short moans filled the room as his sperm shot out high in the air like a fountain. And Sander went over the edge, his thick cum splashed against Stijns stomach and thigh as his body convulsed and throbbed almost in pain.
They sat like that for a long time, looking wordlessly into each other's eyes. Stijn broke the silence at last.
"Your face is amazing when you come. I don't think I've ever seen anything more beautiful."
Sander was embarrassed. Drew his breath in and averted his eyes.
"Onzin", he croaked. "The beauty in this room belongs to you."
He got up from the bed, languorously, almost lethargic, and stretched his body.
"We should clean up."
Stijn shook his head.
"No. I want to go to sleep like this." He shook his head again. "I want to sleep close to you and feel our sperm stick us together. It's part of us both. It's part of something I've never had before. It's part of something I don't understand. Something I don't want to understand."
Hamar 1988
Thomas was slowly waking, feeling shrouded in something familiar and pleasant. The warmth of a body against his back, an arm around his chest. He pushed automatically backwards, wanting an even tighter closeness, until he felt something hard against his buttocks.
Then the explosive shock when he realized where he was. He tore himself loose and jumped out of the bed. Stood breathless and felt icy shivers along his spine as his eyes roamed, taking in the narrow room and finally coming to rest on his father, who with a small grunt embraced himself as some sort of substitute for what his arms missed. He opened his eyes. Yawned.
"Good morning."
Thomas felt like a balloon losing air. His brain started to function again, running through a check list: All his clothes were in place. All his father's clothes were in place. Nothing had happened.
Oh, shit. He felt blood rise to his head. I kissed dad yesterday. With tongue! What the hell got into me?
"Have you seen a ghost? You look terrified!"
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it!"
His father rose, stretched his legs, adjusted his shirt that had come loose from his trousers. Reached out to pat Thomas on the cheek. Thomas recoiled. His father lifted an eyebrow.
"Didn't mean what? What are you on about?"
Thomas bit his lip. Rocked from one foot to the other. Scratched the back of his head, up and down, up and down. His father's face suddenly lit up, like he had a revelation.
"Oh, come here!" He grabbed Thomas by the arm and dragged him out of the room and into the kitchen. Pushed him down on a spindled-back chair by the table. "Now listen."
Thomas flopped down across the table and hid his face in his folded arms.
"Remember when we met again? At the station? Remember how hard you had to work to make me relax, feel at ease? Feel safe? You could have given up, could have let me go away, but you didn't. And thank God for that. Now it's you who are full of disorder, and it's my turn to try and bring some balance into your head, if you'll please listen a little longer."
Thomas remained motionless and slung out, only his shoulders showed a weak, slow rise and fall.
"In the first place: I slept better last night than I have slept in a very long time, just because I could hold my arm around you, hear your breath and feel your warmth. I haven't felt you that close since you were ... what, four? Five? To me it really was like coming home, do you see? And secondly, I have no idea why you wanted to kiss me yesterday, but I guess you had some kind of need or motive. I could have stopped you, I didn't, but it makes no difference between us. You are Thomas, my boy, even if you're a man now. My son that I finally got back. And you can't begin to understand how proud, how happy you made me when you came to me with your worries, your conflicts. You trusted me! You were safe with me, you opened up to me. And I don't think I really knew until yesterday how much you mean to me. Don't go anywhere, I just have to take a leak."
Thomas lay there, his sweater arms tickling his face, listening to fluid hitting water, then the whining as the cistern refilled and the rush of water as taps opened and closed. He relived the kiss, remembered how he had pushed his tongue to open his father's lips, remembered how his father had neither stopped him nor participated. He lifted himself up on his elbows and snorted as his father came out of the bathroom. Shouted, as if he needed to destroy something. Strangle. Kill.
"I felt your hard-on! This morning! I rubbed myself onto it! It's sick! It's so wrong! I've ruined everything!"
His father knitted his brow, worried, bewildered. Pushed his fingers through his hair. Then suddenly he started to laugh. Timidly at first, then more freely and openly.
"For God's sake, my little Thomas, is that all that's bothering you? An involuntary bodily reaction? Don't you ever wake up with morning wood? Oh, forget about it. There are other issues that are far more important. If you can be bothered to listen a few more seconds?"
A lazy resignation swept over Thomas. He met his father's look, hesitantly, inquiringly.
"Yesterday your head was so full of shit, you couldn't hear a thing outside the growling and the rumbling in your brain. And I may not be the most convincing person to give advice in a case like yours, but you can't, you just can't go on in a situation that's going to destroy you, you can't remain in a relationship where suffering seems to be the main ingredient. To do so is misguided loyalty, it's murder! Believe me, I know about these things. So Thomas, don't make the same mistakes I made , don't stay with the wrong person in the wrong place for too long. It will kill everything that's positive and good in you. Get out of that relationship! There, I've said it."
"But there's nowhere to go! I was so sure I had found what I wanted, don't you see? I can't just give everything up, it's too much of a defeat."
"Do I need to repeat myself? Get out of it, Thomas! And may I add, from your ramblings yesterday, it seems to me you were never really in love with this guy. I think you were in love with the idea of being in love."
Thomas sat still for a while, turning this over in his mind.
"Honestly, I don't think I can love another person. I think my chances are dead, sort of. There's something really, really wrong with me, isn't it?"
"Nonsense! You're just too deep in the woods to see clearly. There is nothing wrong with you, Thomas. There's nothing wrong with Ulf either, it's just that the two of you are the worst possible combination."
Thomas rose, disappeared into the bathroom. Emptied his bladder, splashed water on his face, rubbed toothpaste on his teeth with his index finger and rinsed out his mouth. Squinted at the mirror: sparse, black stubble scattered across his chin. He wished he had a real beard, not these wisps, and he sighed deeply. Why can't I be satisfied with how I am? he mused. How can anyone love me when I can't love myself? And Dad, does he really care like he says he does? He hardly knows me.
He joined his father in the living room, sank down in one of the deep leather-upholstered chairs. Legs in front of him, hands folded behind his neck, he stretched his full length diagonally out.
"Dad? Was it just something you said, that part about me meaning something to you?"
"I stopped lying years ago."
"I almost feel like kissing you again."
His father burst out laughing, so hard tears came to his eyes.
"I think once was enough, don't you? Although I must admit you seemed like quite an accomplished kisser."
"I had a very good teacher. That's my curse, you know. Nothing has ever measured up to what I had with him."
He sat up in the chair, turned away from his father and gazed out of the window. Faraway look. Faraway voice:
"I loved that man. Really loved him. You've no idea ..."
(to be continued)