THEY HAD hot cereal for breakfast and then decided to head out into the snow. Because “There’s something I want to see,” Kevin told Wyatt.
They bundled up and found that it was snowing again, big heavy flakes, but when they walked past the caretaker’s cabin, they saw Gryphon and Saffron sitting at their little table (under the roof overhang, of course) as usual (even in the snow). And they assured Kevin and Wyatt that this time they really weren’t supposed to get more than another inch (they did have their fire pit going, and Kevin couldn’t help but be reminded of Cauley’s).
“I hope so,” Wyatt called down to them. “Otherwise we might never get out of here.”
“I don’t think that would be so bad,” Kevin said and was delighted when he saw his little bear blush. Wyatt was wearing that cute bear hat and scarf, furthering his little bearhood, and… God. I’m falling, and I am falling hard.
As if he hadn’t been in love with Wyatt for a long time.
Since the parking lot was plowed—“Oh, look!” Kevin said as he pointed—doing what he wanted to do wasn’t going to be as difficult as he’d imagined. Gryphon had actually used the snowblower to clear a path as far as the steps. Something most people who came to Camp Sanctuary almost universally came to think of as The Steps.
There were sixty of them.
And after a week, or even just a weekend, of walking up and down those fuckers, it seemed a hundred and sixty at least. But it was better than the old way one reached the upper plateau, where most people camped. That way had been “stairs” made from natural rocks and various-sized slabs of stone that crisscrossed up the slope and were scary as hell to climb in the middle of the night. The newer steps, all sixty of them, were steep, but better. Far better.
Today they were covered in snow, but not as much as Kevin might have expected. Again he’d been blessed. Somewhere he wanted (needed?) to go was located up top on the plateau. And the blessing was that between here and there were a lot of trees growing very closely together, many of them pines with wide, overreaching branches. Pine trees stayed green instead of turning skeletal, and they had blocked a lot of the snow. The steps really weren’t nearly as bad as he had worried they might be. His mission might very well succeed.
“We can do this,” Kevin said aloud.
“You want us to climb those in the snow?” Wyatt looked at him incredulously. “Today?”
“Wait here,” Kevin said and dashed off and was soon back with an oversized push broom borrowed from Gryphon.
“I can do that,” Gryphon had said. “I was going to anyway.”
“I got this,” Kevin replied. At least he thought he had it.
These were The Steps after all.
Sixty of them.
Covered in snow!
But sixty. Not a hundred and sixty. And not all that much snow.
Thank you, pine trees!
And then, together, he and Wyatt cleared them faster than they both had expected, and in less than an hour, they had reached the top.
What they saw before them was breathtaking.
What was normally a football-field-sized expanse of grass, surrounded by a wall of trees, was now white, white, and white. The trees, usually thick with green, looked like black-and-gray skeletal hands reaching for the sky at the far side of the snowy vastness.
This was the place they camped every year?
And it was cold. There was no protection from the wind that swept over that field of white, and their breath swirled around them in smoky plumes.
“Gosh,” Wyatt whispered.
Kevin only nodded.
He looked down to his left, north, to the area where he’d camped the last few years. He no longer set up at Avalon, far to the south. Now his tent was among friends (although he did set up back into the trees a bit; he wanted some privacy).
He turned back to Wyatt. “I know you’re cold, and the snow is deep, but is there any way you’d go with me down to the end?” He pointed the way he’d been looking. “I want to see what it looks like down where I camp.”
Wyatt looked that way and his expression turned contemplative. Finally, he shrugged, looked up at Kevin, and said, “Okay.”
Kevin could see Wyatt wasn’t sure, and he determined then that if the going was even half as tough as it looked, they’d turn around and come back.
“After all,” Wyatt said then, “we’ve come all this way, right?”
Kevin smiled. He took Wyatt’s right hand so that the little bear would be to his left, walking closer to the tree line—what there was of it—and they waded into the snow. It was at least two feet deep here, and the going wasn’t easy. He was afraid it really wasn’t going to work, when Wyatt started laughing.
Kevin looked and saw Wyatt staggering around like a drunk man, a big grin on his face.
“Laughing, baby bear?”
Wyatt nodded. “What do you think?” Wyatt lifted his furry scarf to show his ears.
“What?” Kevin asked.
“My earrings. What do you think of my testicle earrings?” Wyatt weighed invisible testes with the palms of his hands. “Do you think they’ll ever go back down to where they’re supposed to go?”
“We’ll get them down where they’re supposed to be,” Kevin said with a smile.
“We?” Wyatt asked.
Kevin nodded, and Wyatt grinned hugely, and then they really started to plow their way into the snow.
“Be careful, baby.” Baby? Had he just called Wyatt “baby”?
Wyatt laughed more, despite the fact the snow was sometimes hitting his balls.
“Now what are you laughing at?” Kevin felt a little zing! With everything this man-boy or boy-man had gone through, he was laughing! Howard was such a fucking fool for letting him go.
Could I be lucky enough…?
“Thinking of another joke.”
Kevin grinned. “Tell it, then.”
“You sure?” Wyatt asked and spiraled an arm to keep from falling.
“Of course,” Kevin said, lending his strength to help Wyatt stay on his feet.
“Okay! If you’re sure.” (pant, pant) “These three buddies all decide to go to a ski lodge for the weekend.” (pant, pant) “But when they get there, there’s been some kind of mix-up and there aren’t enough rooms. Not only that, but they’re going to have to share a bed. All three of them!” Wyatt panted again. “Then right in the middle of the night, the guy on the right wakes up and says, ‘Whoa! I had this wild dream that somebody gave me a hand job!’ And the guy on the left wakes up and, unbelievably, he says, ‘I had the same dream!’ Then the guy in the middle wakes up and says, ‘Wow! I just had this really vivid dream that I was skiing!’”
Kevin started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. He realized he’d even heard it before, but with Wyatt telling it, it was just so silly adorable naughty funny. He looked at the little bear, and his expression was so sweet it melted Kevin’s heart.
Just don’t go getting ideas, he thought. Because if I ever get you into my bed, it will only ever be the two of us.
They didn’t get much farther before Kevin saw something he hadn’t expected. It was enough to bring him to a gasping stop.
This part of Camp had always been called the Plateau, but somehow he had never realized how apropos that was. He had always thought the protective circle of trees around the field where most people camped was set right in the middle of a forest.
No.
A ring of trees was exactly what it was. But not a forest.
The land dropped off in a very steep slope, and to his shock he could see for miles. He could see great vastnesses of farms and fields, usually covered in corn and wheat and soybeans, now buried in snow. He could see roads—thin black crisscrossing lines—cleared by plows, and here and there a moving car.
It looked so desolate, and yet at the same time—
“It’s beautiful,” Wyatt said with a gasp of his own.
They stood there for what seemed like a very long time until Kevin noticed Wyatt was shivering and realized his own feet were cold—wet and very cold.
“Let’s go back,” he said quietly.
Wyatt turned to him. “But didn’t you want to go down to the end?”
“I’ve seen what I really came here to see,” he said. How different would the view be down there?
So they went back, as quickly as they dared, and helped each other down the steps to the bottom and then past Main Hall and across the parking lot, and as they were passing the caretaker’s cabin, he heard their names being called.
They both stopped and looked down the small slope and saw Saffron standing at the door to her cabin. “We’ve been watching for you. We have hot chocolate.”
“Oh, yummy!” Wyatt exclaimed.
“We’re wet and cold,” Kevin called back. “We need to change.”
“Take it with you!” She grinned and ducked inside and was out in a moment, all bundled up, and came up the little path and handed them a big Thermos. “Enjoy.”
“You are a goddess,” Wyatt said.
She bowed her head. “You honor me.” Saffron looked back up, a sweet smile on her ageless face. “I but serve the goddess.”
They all hugged, and then Kevin insisted they get back to the cabin before they get frostbite. He hadn’t been able to feel his toes for a while.
The cabin was very warm, and they both saw the huge pile of wood next to the stove.
“Gryphon,” Wyatt said.
“Must have been,” Kevin agreed, because the wood had been nearly gone this morning. He’d meant to restock it with the stack next to the cabin’s steps but had forgotten in his mission to get up top. He opened the stove’s door, and sure enough, it blazed. Gryphon had even built up the fire.
He turned to Wyatt, who was rubbing at his arms despite the warmth of the room.
“Let’s get out of these clothes and into something dry,” he said.
They both stripped down to their underwear, and Kevin couldn’t help but admire the flesh revealed—Wyatt’s legs were sexily hairy, but not overly so—but that’s about all he really saw. Their underwear, his own long johns and Wyatt’s T-shirt and red-and-black boxer shorts, were dry. But their feet, on the other hand, were wet!
“Get on the bed!” he commanded, and Wyatt did as he was told. Kevin climbed onto the bearskin-covered mattress on the other side, took Wyatt’s feet into his lap, and rubbed them rapidly.
“Gods, that hurts and feels good at the same time!” Wyatt cried.
Then to Kevin’s surprise, Wyatt pulled one of Kevin’s feet to him and began to rub it as well. Kevin immediately saw what Wyatt meant by the pain/pleasure, and soon he was really feeling his feet again.
It occurred to him then that what they were doing was very intimate. It wasn’t like you held another man’s feet every day. Or rubbed them. Especially in your lap.
He realized Wyatt had very sexy feet. Strong, with cute, almost stubby, toes with just a smattering of hair on top. And the smell was nice. Musk. Man. Clean. Or as clean as they could be when neither of them had been able to shower in a day or so.
God. He thought he might be getting an erection!
Wyatt was on Kevin’s second foot when he stopped and simply cradled it. He looked up and met Kevin’s eyes. “They’re so big.”
Kevin gulped. “Is that a bad thing?”
Wyatt shook his head slowly and then pulled Kevin’s foot closer into his lap. Massaged it slowly. Deeply. “I like them.” Then ever so quietly he added, “They smell good too.”
“They do?” Kevin asked, and blushed, because that was just what he’d been thinking about Wyatt’s feet.
“Oh, yes. They smell like man.”
Yes.
Like man.
They locked eyes then for the longest time, holding each other’s feet like two meditating Indians who had somehow gotten too close together.
And then Wyatt was tickling Kevin’s feet, and Kevin laughed and tried to yank them away, but damn, that little bear was stronger than he looked. So he started tickling Wyatt’s back, and Wyatt shrieked with laughter, and in no time they were rolling about tickling each other everywhere.
Finally: “Stop! Stop!” Wyatt was all but screaming. “Uncle! Uncle!”
They laughed and collapsed back onto the fur and gasped to catch their breath.
Then Kevin remembered the hot chocolate, and they put on some clothes, Kevin reluctantly (and by the furtive glances directed at him, he thought Wyatt felt the same way). He liked the way Wyatt looked in those black-and-red plaid underwear, the crotch full with what they contained and the way the soft fabric clung to his round butt. Dress they did though; blazing stove or not, they didn’t want to catch their deaths of cold. And when Kevin saw Wyatt struggling to put on a second pair of socks, he gave the little bear a pair of his own. These slipped on much easier.
“Your big feet,” Wyatt said with a sexy grunt.
“You like them,” Kevin said, surprising himself.
Wyatt nodded. “A lot.”
And then before they jumped each other’s bones then and there, they had hot chocolate.
THEY HAD sandwiches for lunch. They’d each picked up meat and a loaf of bread on their way to Camp, so there was more than enough. That was when Kevin noticed Wyatt’s book. It was sitting on the little table next to the bed. It had been turned in a way that he could just now see the title.
“Eat, Pray, Love?” he asked.
Wyatt immediately looked wary. “You’re not going to make fun, are you?”
Make fun? “Why would I make fun of you?”
Wyatt shrugged. “There’s a lot of jokes about that book. I don’t know why either. People make fun. They even had an episode of South Park about it called ‘Eat, Pray, Queef.’”
Kevin shrugged. “Huh?”
Wyatt gave him a most curious look back.
“I don’t get it,” Kevin said.
“You don’t get what?” Wyatt asked.
“What’s qweef?”
And he could see Wyatt was about to laugh but then shook his head instead. “Never mind.”
Kevin went to the little table and picked the book up. “Actually I love this book,” he said. “I’ve read it twice.”
“Really?” Wyatt asked. He looked like a puppy, afraid it might be about to get hit.
Then Kevin realized what this was about. “Howard. He made fun of you about this book, didn’t he?” He sat down at the table next to Wyatt.
Wyatt was looking away.
He reached out and touched Wyatt’s hand. “Fuck Howard,” Kevin said.
Wyatt jerked in his seat.
Oh, sweet baby bear. “Don’t let him own you, Wyatt.”
Wyatt yanked his hand away. “Just like that?” he cried, and snapped his fingers. “Just like that? I’m supposed to get over him? Just leap and the fucking net will appear? I’m supposed to believe it’s that easy?”
Kevin pulled back.
“Like you’re supposed to get over someone named Cauley? Just like that?”
What happened?
One minute they were laughing and flirting and rubbing feet—God! That had been sexy, and it was feet, just feet!—and eating sandwiches.
And then he noticed Wyatt’s book.
And then there was something about “qweefs,” whatever that meant.
And then he saw that Wyatt was hurting because of that fucker Howard.
And then he had simply offered some advice and…
God.
I am fortune’s fool.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Wyatt, I’m sorry.
Wyatt looked away.
“I really am.”
And, oh God. Please have that be forgiveness in his eyes. Please, please have that be forgiveness.
“I’m sorry, Kevin,” Wyatt whispered.
“There is no reason for you to be sorry, Wyatt. It was me! I am so sorry!”
Oh, the look in those eyes!
And they’re looking at me!
AND OH, the way Kevin was looking at him!
Wyatt felt ashamed. How could he be angry at this sweet man?
Explain! Explain, you fool!
Howard. “He was like—”
Like what? What was he like? What was the man who had been in his life for ten years like? Sweet? Mean? Funny? Scary? Thoughtful? Thoughtless? So good in the beginning and then for some reason, slowly and inevitably, changing into something, someone, else? Yes. Howard was all those things. And he was…. Oh gods! He was…
“—like a cancer in me, Kevin! Slowly killing me. And you think something is wrong, and you can’t go to the doctor because if you do, then you will know. And you don’t want to know because then what are you going to do? You’ll know you’re dying! Or that you’ll have to go through the hell of treatment before you might survive.”
Wyatt began to cry and cursed himself for it.
“He saved me, Kevin! Howard came to me on a very dark night, and he saved me. He gave me everything I had ever wanted… and then….” Wyatt’s throat seized up and a sob wracked his body. “And then Howard took it away!”
This time when Kevin reached out to take his hand, Wyatt let him. He let that big hand take his, swallow his, and it was warm and soft and made him feel safe, the way a big man’s hands always did.
“I should have gone to the doctor, Kevin! I should have left him years ago. They all said it. All my friends. Some more softly than others. Some louder! Asher made it clear! He told me that I was too good for Howard, and I didn’t believe it. He said I was better off without him. Sloan was nicer about it. Even Scott, who could be a Grade A asshole, was nicer about it!”
Wyatt shook his head. “I should have left him, but I believed him. I believed him when he said that if I left him, I wouldn’t have any friends—”
But I do! I have such wonderful friends!
“—and that no one would want me—”
But gods, the look in Kevin’s eyes! He wants me!
“—and I would be alone for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, sweet Little Bear. Don’t you see it? It is the other way around. No one likes Howard. No one can stand him! They only put up with him because they like you—love you! Not the other way around.”
Wyatt sat bolt upright in his chair.
“What?”
“Oh, sweet Wyatt. None of us liked him. Not anyone that called you friend. They didn’t put up with you. They put up with him.”
Kevin took Wyatt’s hands in both of his and gently stroked the web between his thumb and forefinger as he had done before. Once again it made Wyatt tremble.
“I think the only people who like Howard are the people who don’t know him.”
Kevin was saying these things about Howard? About Big Sir? It couldn’t be true.
“Think about it, Wyatt. You were the one everyone cheered for onstage. Did Howard ever get onstage except for maybe to show off his big cock?”
The time Howard played Pan in my Queen song about wanting to break free.
The whole theme of the act was escaping the enforced rules of organized religion. He’d gotten several of the Men’s Festival attendees to dress up as famous religious figures to be his backup dancers. And Howard had pointed out that he’d been Pan for Halloween a few years ago, and it had shocked Wyatt that he wanted to actually be on the stage with him. That he would be Pan, and Wyatt’s other friends would play Jesus and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha.
Then it hit him.
It had been Howard’s idea that he pull his dick out—
“I mean,” Howard had said, “isn’t Pan’s big cock showing in every picture you’ve ever seen of him?”
—and he had been so thrilled that Howard had actually, for once, wanted to be in one of his acts that he said okay, even though that meant he couldn’t put it on YouTube (and he’d really wanted to put that act on YouTube because it was the best act he’d ever done).
Was the reason he wanted to be in the act to try to give Wyatt second billing to his cock? Wyatt gasped.
“Jesus, Wyatt! That is why Howard put you down all the time! He was jealous. He knew everyone loved you. And he hated it. Before you started coming to Festival, he thought he was king of the hill. But once he started bringing you, everyone started paying attention to you.”
Could it be?
“B-but I thought they were just being nice,” he said. “The way you should always be nice when someone you care about gets into a relationship. You welcome their new honey.”
“That’s what you do,” Kevin said. “Because you are a dear, sweet person, and you always want people to feel welcome. But the reason everyone was nice to you was because they genuinely liked you. And within no time, you were the one people wanted to be around. And he couldn’t stand it.”
Wyatt shivered. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Me?” he somehow managed to say.
“You, Wyatt. You. Only you.”
Then Kevin got up and pulled Wyatt to his feet and covered his face with kisses.
AND STILL they waited.
They started by reading to each other. Kevin was first. He opened Wyatt’s copy of Eat, Pray, Love and read out loud the chapter he said was one of his favorites. It was all about the author making a contract with the Universe. How she had physically written up her request and then signed it, and her friend signed it, and then they sat and imagined everyone they knew who would sign it. Her mother and father and sister. Friends. The two of them imagined them actually signing it. Felt it. And then they got into it and thought of other people they didn’t even know that they thought would sign it. Bill and Hillary Clinton. Saint Francis of Assisi. Abraham Lincoln. Nelson Mandela. Gandhi. Mother Teresa. Jimmy Carter. Eleanor Roosevelt. The Dalai Lama. And then, like a miracle, just a few hours later, what the author wanted came true.
“I remember that part now,” Wyatt said. “And it’s like that thing you said. Ask. Believe. Receive.” He was trembling with the idea. Could it be that simple?
“It’s just like that, Wyatt,” Kevin said.
Then Wyatt took the book and leafed through it and found one of his favorite passages and shared it. They were back on the bed now, and they’d pulled the bearskin up around them. There was a little hot chocolate left, and they shared that from the big red Thermos lid. Wyatt read about how Elizabeth Gilbert—the author—fell away from a religious teaching. How she had a friend that said you shouldn’t cherry-pick your religion but Elizabeth disagreed. “I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God.” He read the whole chapter, and Kevin listened to every word, never faded away, never interrupted him to ask if he’d seen that e-mail about “how we can save big on life-extending vitamins.”
Wyatt had Kevin’s undivided attention.
And when he was done, Kevin enthusiastically said, “Yes! I especially love where she says that we have the right to find any metaphor we need as we cross the ‘worldly divide’ so that we can feel elated—ecstatic—or comforted.”
After that, Kevin had more he wanted to share. But first he made sure that Wyatt didn’t mind (when had Howard ever done that?). “Do you mind if I read one of my favorite sections in here?” Kevin asked. “It’s about a page….”
Wyatt didn’t mind at all. He loved hearing Kevin’s rich, deep voice. “Go for it,” Wyatt said. “Why stop now?”
So Kevin read from the book he said was one of his favorites. Leap and the Net Will Appear! by Malcolm Kane.
“In 1957,” he began, “a huge plaster Buddha had to be moved from its temple to another location due to a highway being built through Bangkok. When the crane began to lift it, to the horror of the monks, it started to crack. They had it lowered back to the ground and covered it with a tarp because it was going to rain. Later, when the head monk went to check on it with a flashlight, he was surprised when something shone back at him.”
Kevin looked up from the page. Was Wyatt still listening?
He smiled when he saw he was. He was paying attention to every word!
“He went and got a hammer and chisel and began to chip away at the cement. And what did he find? To his astonishment he found that he had uncovered a golden statue over ten feet tall, two and a half tons in weight and estimated at a value of 196 million dollars!
“Historians believe that a few hundred years before, when Thailand (known as Siam at that time) was about to be invaded by the Burmese army, the monks who ran the monastery covered the Buddha with cement to keep it from being looted. It appears that sometime after that the army slaughtered them. And therefore there was no one left alive who knew about the Golden Buddha. So for years and years, the monks who gained possession of that statue had no idea their Buddha was golden!
“What this story tells us metaphysically is we are like that statue of the Buddha. We are golden. But we have covered ourselves with years and layers of muck. We came to believe that we are common, worthless, and undeserving. And that is most untrue!
“For years I let my stepfather mistreat me. He regaled me with tales of how lucky I was that he’d married my mother. That if it weren’t for him, she and I would be on the streets. That we would have lost our home and our car and everything. My dad had died and left us with considerable debts. My stepfather told me I was worthless. That had it been left to me, we would have been lost. That he had saved us and that I had done nothing, and what was more, I was still doing nothing.
“And then I began to really think about what he’d said.
“First, I realized that there was nothing I could have done to help me and my mother out of the predicament we were in. I was little. I was a kid! What was I supposed to do?
“But to my surprise, the rest… rang true. As an adult I still wasn’t doing anything with my life. And whose fault was that? Certainly not his. Unless I really was worthless. And I sat down in the park and thought about it more. What could I do?
“Then this… voice whispered in my ear. I heard it. Clear as crystal. And it said, ‘Why not pursue your dreams?’
“And to my surprise, the only answer I could really give was, ‘Yeah. Why not?’
“Of course, I didn’t do it overnight. It took me a while to unbelieve my stepfather. But with friends and teachers and wonderful books, I did learn.
“What’s more, I learned that under the muck I was golden!
“We are golden! Each and every one of us!
“I began to believe in myself. Take care of myself. I made mistakes. But I was chipping away those shards of cement.
“And soon the gold began to shine.
“It is important that we know that we are all gold.
“But sometimes we must first chip away the cement, so that at last, we can truly shine.”
Kevin looked up from his book to see Wyatt watching him. He saw Wyatt swallow. Neither of them said anything for what seemed forever.
Then Wyatt said, “Wow…,” and Kevin couldn’t help but smile.
SOMEHOW THAT turned into them reading the new Stephen King book to each other for several hours until Wyatt’s stomach growled rather fiercely and Kevin decided it was time for dinner.
Hamburgers.
Even though there were no buns, there was plenty of bread and there was cheese and chips, and Wyatt couldn’t remember when he’d had such good burgers.
And it was right in the middle of dinner that the lights came on!
“Yippee,” Wyatt shouted and jumped to his feet and did some twerking right there. To his surprise, Kevin joined him—and gods, it was hot to see the big muscular man bouncing that big muscular man-ass and being so damned silly—and they made a complete circuit around the table before bursting into laughter.
They finished their burgers—but not before Wyatt jumped up and plugged in anything and everything that he felt needed charging. Some things the world revolved around, and needing to listen to P!nk was one of them. Wyatt then pulled some pudding cups from one of his bags and declared, “Dessert! Butterscotch, and unlike Walter, I love butterscotch pudding!”
Kevin looked at him blankly.
Did he explain what that meant? Did he tell him about Fringe, one of his favorite shows of all time? “Never mind, it would take too long to explain.”
Then to his surprise, Kevin’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “Are you talking about Walter on Fringe?”
Wyatt grinned near to splitting. He knew. Kevin knew!
And to his surprise Kevin did a passable imitation of John Noble as Fringe’s elderly crazy man. “They have this horrible pudding here. Butterscotch pudding on Mondays; it’s dreadful.”
“It’s Thursday,” Wyatt responded gleefully, quoting the next line from the episode.
“Oh,” Kevin responded. “That’s fantastic news.”
They both burst into laughter.
Wyatt pulled open his container, and realizing the spoons were half a room away—and feeling a tad lazy—he stuck his finger into the cup and pulled out a glob of golden-brown pudding and stuck it in his mouth. Did he suck it off sexily, or not? Uncharacteristically, he decided on “not” and then began happily blathering about one unimportant thing or another, most of it somehow revolving around how happy he was that Ben Franklin flew a kite in the rain and Thomas Edison invented light bulbs.
But then something hit him.
He sat bolt upright in his chair. “Oh, gosh.”
Kevin looked up from his pudding. “What?”
Wyatt swallowed and wondered how to bring this up. Because he found himself not wanting the logical answer.
“What?” Kevin asked, with a growing expression of concern drawn on his face.
Well, shit on a stick. Wyatt sighed. “Now that the electricity is back on… will you be going back to your cabin?” He couldn’t believe how much he wanted Kevin to say no.
A startled look came to Kevin’s face. “Oh!”
So he hadn’t thought about that either.
“I guess….”
Was that disappointment in his voice?
“I mean, you came here to be alone, right?”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said reluctantly. “B-but….”
“But?” Kevin said, sitting up straighter in his seat.
“I…. That doesn’t seem as important anymore. For me.” But then, hadn’t Kevin come to Camp to be alone as well? “But….”
“But?” Kevin repeated.
“Didn’t you come here to be alone too?”
Kevin slumped ever so slightly. Pursed his lips. Looked away. “I guess I did.”
There was a long pause.
Kevin looked back at him, eyes deep and unreadable.
Again, neither said anything for a long time. But wasn’t this Kevin’s turn?
Finally, unable to stand it any longer—please say you don’t want to leave, please say you don’t want to leave—Wyatt said, “If you need to….” Please say you don’t want to leave….
Another pause as all kinds of things seemed to flash over Kevin’s face. “I don’t know, Wyatt. Because to tell you the truth, I’m not fully sure why I came.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“It was lots of things, Wyatt. It was this strange and deep calling of the Land.”
Wyatt nodded. He understood that call. Luckily he was less than an hour’s drive from Camp Sanctuary. There were a lot of people, like Kevin, for whom that wasn’t the case.
“It was the fact that… someone died.”
It was Wyatt’s turn to sit up. “Died?” he asked. “Oh gosh, Kevin. You didn’t say anything about someone dying.” Did you? Had he, and Wyatt had been too self-absorbed to hear it? “Did you?”
Kevin shook his head. “I didn’t.”
Because I was going on and on and on about myself? Wyatt wondered.
“But not because of you.”
Wyatt breathed an inward sigh of relief.
“I…. It was private. And you and I talked about so many other things.”
“My things,” Wyatt said. “I’m sorry.”
Kevin’s eyes flickered. “Why? I’m an adult. If I needed to talk about something, it’s my responsibility to bring it up.”
Really? Because you’ve asked me all kinds of questions about myself. From throwing baby Jesus out with the bathwater to whether the better version of P!nk’s song “Perfect” included the word “fuck.” Kevin, surprisingly, liked the cleaner version of the song.
“Really?” he asked.
“Really,” Kevin stated.
Pause.
“So you don’t want to talk about it, then? Like your… friend dying?”
“I don’t know what to say, Wyatt.”
Pause.
“Was this someone close to you? I mean… to make you drive to Camp. Don’t you live out east? New York or something?”
There was a slight smile on Kevin’s face. “Yes. New York City. Rosebank in Staten Island to be precise.”
That didn’t mean anything to Wyatt, but he nodded anyway.
“Cauley was my ex,” Kevin said.
“Oh.”
“We haven’t been together in quite a while. But we stayed friends. I found out I could be friends with him when I wasn’t worried what he was up to.”
“Up to?” Did that mean what it meant when it came to Howard?
There was pain in Kevin’s eyes now, and Wyatt wondered if he should have let this go.
“We were together for quite a while. I fell for him fast and heavy. We met at a birthday picnic for a mutual friend in Central Park.” A flicker of a smile passed over Kevin’s face. “He was funny and crazy and wild and did the silliest things.” The smile grew a bit. “I was hooked.” He looked at Wyatt. “I guess I—no, I know I lived vicariously through him. He was insane.” Kevin laughed. “But in a good way. Dressed up in crazy outfits. And he was an activist. A really well-known one in New York. Did you know he once—with some cronies, of course—painted some closeted senator’s house in the rainbow colors while the man was out of town? I don’t know how the fuck he did it.”
No, Wyatt didn’t know that. It sounded cool, though, and he told Kevin so.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. Why would you?”
The sadness came back and Wyatt immediately wished there was something he could do about it.
“The problem with Cauley is that he just burned too bright, do you know what I mean?”
Wyatt wasn’t sure. But then a scene from a movie came to him. Rutger Hauer playing an android replicant about to murder his maker.
“It’s like that line out of that movie Blade Runner,” Kevin said as if reading his mind. “‘The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.’ And Cauley burned really bright, Wyatt. People loved him too. Trouble is, he didn’t believe it. This was a man who traveled all over doing education on safe sex and the dangers of meth. And what happens?” Kevin took a big shuddering breath. “He somehow got mixed up with a bunch of meth heads!” Kevin shook his head and then his voice dropped to a whisper. “He doesn’t even know how he got HIV. Doesn’t remember. He started doing drugs and cheating on me, and he got HIV and doesn’t even remember how. He had no idea who gave it to him. And I couldn’t deal with it. I think I could have forgiven a mistake or two. I could have helped him deal with the drugs. I did, in fact. I could have forgiven him for an infidelity. No one is perfect. But putting my life in danger and then lying about it?” He shook his head.
Wyatt shivered, struck by some of the similarities of their stories.
Kevin looked at him again. “And when you were sharing about Howard, I didn’t want to steal anything from it by talking about my troubles. When someone is pouring out their heart, the last thing they want is for someone to one-up them.”
And meth addiction and dying surely topped anything he’d dealt with, thought Wyatt. Gods! A sudden new perception hit him. Even shame.
“I don’t know, Kevin.” He got up and went to him and first laid a hand on his shoulder, and then cupped his cheek. “I mean, when we think we have it rough, sometimes it helps to get things put into their proper perspective. How did you stand listening to me go on about that man after what you’ve been through?” Wyatt went to one knee and gazed into the face of this beautiful man. “I am so sorry.”
“For what?” Kevin asked.
“What I was blathering on about must have seemed so fucking petty!”
“No!” Kevin cried. “And see? This is why I didn’t talk about Cauley. I didn’t want you to feel that way. That’s why I shouldn’t have said anything just now.”
“Isn’t that what friends are for?” Wyatt said. “To talk to? My mom has this movie she loves. And the big line in that one is, ‘ln a cold world, you need your friends to keep you warm.’” He glanced out the window. “It’s certainly cold out there. And Kevin, I haven’t felt as warm as I have with you in a long time.”
Kevin smiled. “Really?”
“Really,” said Wyatt and he hugged Kevin, and gods, Kevin hugged him back. Hugged him fiercely.
“Oh, Wyatt, you are such a beautiful man,” Kevin said into his shoulder.
They held each other for a long time.
AND IT was shortly after that when Wyatt very abruptly knew it was time.
Thinking about all he and Kevin had in common—who would have thought? And how he had come here to put things behind him. It was time.
He stood up straight, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders.
I’ll be alone all my life without you, Howard? Really? No one would want to be my friend? I have three of the best friends on the planet. And their lovers are becoming best friends as well. I work in a magical place with magical coworkers and a boss who is a mom. I have Men’s Festival and gods, I’ve been so afraid of what it’s going to be like this summer and how I would be treated, but if what this beautiful man says is true, I’ll be welcome. And Kevin likes me, he wants me. Why did you treat me so badly, Howard? Why? Kevin says you’re jealous of me. But why hurt me? Why?
“It’s time to stop asking,” Wyatt said aloud.
Kevin placed his hands on Wyatt’s hips and raised his eyebrows. “Stop asking what?”
Wyatt stood up even taller. “It’s time to say good-bye.”
Kevin’s brows came together. “You’re leaving? Wyatt, just because we’ve got the electricity back doesn’t mean we can still get out of—”
Wyatt shook his head.
“It’s time for me to go to Pax Place.”
Kevin’s mouth opened. Then shut. He nodded. But he didn’t say anything.
“And I need to go now. Before it gets dark.”
He shivered—not so much from the cold, but for what he was about to do.
“Yeah, you don’t want to be there in the cold and the dark.”
“I’ll take my bearskin.”
Kevin nodded. “I think that’s good. You are a bear.”
“Bear is one of my guides,” Wyatt said, and Kevin didn’t laugh. Of course he didn’t, and that gave Wyatt a little more strength.
I’m glad I’m wearing two pairs of socks, Wyatt thought. I’m glad one pair is Kevin’s.
Without thinking anymore—because gods, hadn’t he done enough thinking?—he prepared himself for the cold and for the big good-bye. He tugged a sweatshirt out of his bag and wiggled into it and then climbed into a pair of sweatpants as well. Two layers. Good. He nodded. Then came gloves and his bear hat—which Kevin liked!—and everything he would need for the ritual. Not much, really. His wand that he’d carved himself out of hawthorn from right here at Camp—hawthorn because of its masculine properties and fairy magick—and his athame. He wouldn’t need his chalice or pentacle plate. His fireplace lighter, of course; he’d need that. The tiny bottle of fuel in case the wood was wet, even though he’d prepared for that. Nothing else. It was all there.
Then he went to Kevin, and Kevin met him and kissed his furry cheeks and then his mouth, and the promise of more kisses made him tremble.
Kevin nodded and gave him an encouraging smile, and that was one more boost of strength.
Time.
It was time.
He turned and went to the bed, took up his bearskin, and swirled it around him with great ceremony, glanced one last time at his friend—because Kevin was that if nothing else—and then headed into the snow.