The Sun was setting in the colours of wild autumn leaves. The only remembrance of autumn itself, now crystal clear against the snow-white fields of the countryside.

       He sighed, and the steam made his scarf warm and cold and wet.

       Most of his travelling home time he spent in the slight comfort of a bus, with a bad lighting, that made his eyes ache when he read, and his brain stupid from the smell of defrosting cheeks and noses.

       He felt secure in his routine, but in between the lines about society and love and art and science, he looked out of the window, fogged with his own breath, and wished he was lost instead. There was something everything wild in the feeling of unknown. His own being was always too composed to ever feel lost in his surroundings. He feared to call it pride, but there weren’t any better words. At least not yet.

       After his bus left, there was nothing he could hear. Then a car went by. And another. Then a motorcycle, morbid. And then he lifted his leg and pushed his feet through a knee-high layer of fresh snow that felt like a cynic Welcome home.

       His daily journey through the field and back was the most sacred thing he ever accomplished. He almost never had a company and at this solitary moment with nature and his own thoughts, it felt like a prayer. Not only with his unending begging of: Almost home, almost inside. I wish I was at the trees already. This was only his human parts telling him he still craved his biological needs first. No.

       Often, he lifted his head, lifted his eyes and looked how the Sun was doing today. It was bleeding, the poor thing, offering him their own solidarity, that he highly appreciated. The colours were stunning, and he paused in his way, socks drowned in the melted snow, to look at it better.

       In times like this he wished he believed in technologies, so he could take a picture and show it to Keith. He was good with words that came from all the hardcopy books that made home on his bookshelves, but sometimes he thought it probably wasn’t enough to express every part of the way the sky made him feel. He would put his hands on Keith’s shoulders and kissed his eyebrows, using words like metamorphosis and vinaceous and kinetic and when coming from a particularly unpleasant weather, even bellicose. Still. If he presented a picture, it might do the work better. Maybe he was just selfish.

       He sighed. Almost home, almost inside.

       Not to keep thinking about the cold, he chose to think about the warm. He focused on the list of things he has to do tomorrow, the things he has to buy as a last minute wants and needs. He was sure to expect an elaborate list of all the festive We-Need-To-Have-Those-You-Idiot things that Keith was all day preparing to amuse himself. Then he amused himself by listing all the things he was certain to be there. Coke, weed, scotch, that fancy chocolate from Belgium that was so expensive it should be the present itself, tangerines, and You do realise, Keith, I have only two hands? conversation playing like a marionette animated film on the screen of the white unblemished field.

       He smiled, creaking the frozen stubble.

       He had a big backpack on his shoulders. The one made for arctic expeditions. Or any sort of expedition, that is. He was doing groceries every single day, so he would never have to do a big shopping. Today, there was a dead fish in it, which made him slightly uneasy when thinking about it. He didn’t like meat. But Keith had insisted. It should be a feast. And it was frankly all that it took for him to make an extra turn in the aisle and face the only shop assistant he had never spoken to.

       There was also a bag of potatoes and a bottle of apple juice. The really heavy things also including a not so prettily illustrated version of The Kreutzer Sonata. Sue him.

       He made it to the trees, where the layer of snow wasn’t so serious and turned back towards the strawberry-milk sky. Enchanting, omnipotent.

       The road through the forest was clean and easy, man-handled for decades by several occupants. Now, for two years, handled by him.

       It will be their second Christmas like this. And suddenly, he tried to suppress all the traditions he once kept close to his meaning of Christmas joy. They were building new ones. And it was important. Though he couldn’t stop imagining what it used to be and wanting at least some of the heritage to be able to keep.

       To taste his mum’s borscht and tell her no, it is not too spicy.

       There were things he wanted back that weren’t his anymore. He was tired of being angry with himself for feeling like this. For missing things, he should have grown out of already in the emerging of his adulthood.

       He kicked the trunk near the hedge, to shed some of the snow still stuck to his boots. He used to be a fan of the winter.

       He pushed the gate open with a force he wouldn’t need to use in the summertime. For the snow was making a decent resistance, accumulating on the sides of the short path to their door like a half-pipe.

       There was some warm yellow light coming from the frost white windows. He heard some music and, heavens, there was even a smell of peppers. It wouldn’t be noticeable if they would be living in the city, but here? Here, everything was noticeable.

       He pushed open the front door, kicked off his boots on the doormat and hung his keys on the peg. He heard some distant scratches, but he stayed focused on reheating his legs. He pulled the backpack down and with some disgusted lip curl he pulled off his dripping socks. This is getting harder and harder. He almost slid to the floor and set for kipping here but made this elephantine effort to put one foot after the other to finish the way into the house.

       “Keith?”

       He needed some good hug before seeing the foil-wrapped dead fish again.

       Passing the stairs, he entered the empty living room, making a quick scan of the horrid state of it. His tiredness was instantly replaced by worry and his speed took him into the other empty parts of their ground floor. Not until then he noticed the crutches on the base of the stairs.

       With increased confusion he ran up, taking two stairs at a time, and opened the door to the only room they did not use.

       There, on the floor among opened boxes of their old life memorabilia, sat Keith with his legs covered in papers and with his laptop producing some electronic focus music.

       “What are you doing?”

       Keith flinched with a yelp and turned around.

       “You’ve almost given me a heart attack, you berk,” he frowned and turned back to his business.

       “What are you doing?” He didn’t have the energy to fight. He didn’t even have the energy to joke. He sank to the floor beside the mess and looked at the way Keith’s eyebrows met in an exasperated wrinkle.

       “Just some digitalization. Should be done in a half an hour,” he didn’t even give him a glance.       

       Well, fuck it.

       He stood up and went to the door when he called him.

       “Hunk?”

       “Yeah?”

       “Sorry for the mess downstairs. I’ll clean it later.”

       “’S okay…” And it was, but it wasn’t really. Some parts of his brain told him he shouldn’t let him make a mess he wouldn’t be able to clean himself. And the other part of his brain was clearly specialised in self-hatred.

       He hated himself for thinking like this. Especially, when he didn’t even think that.

       Quietly, he closed the storage room and leaned against the door.

       Okay, he told himself, so this was not a good day. And he tried not to make it about himself.

 

       He took out the dead fish. It still had all its parts – blind eyes, open mouth, frigid fins – all of it. He took a knife and pierced through the packing. The smell wasn’t pleasant.

       He took a deep breath behind his shoulder and set for cutting the fillets, once done, he mixed a quick marinade and let it rest until tomorrow in the fridge.

       After unpacking the rest of his backpack, he took the Tolstoy under his arm and stepped into the bathroom. In desperate need of a hot bath that would feel almost as lovely as the hug he didn’t get, he stripped and stared at himself in the mirror, waiting for the bathtub to fill.

       His face was reddish, still not entirely at peace with the abrupt temperature change, and with the paleness of his torso, he underwent a weak moment of insecurity. 

       He sighed.

       The water was scalding hot and the pages of the hardcover were slightly curling in the steam of it. It was okay. The nerves in his skin were prickling and his mind was starting to get foggy in the heat and exhaustion. He put the book down on the washing machine before he would have managed to drown it and sank deeper into the water until the only parts out were his eyes and his knees. Then his knees only.

       He sighed, producing bubbles.

       He emerged and grabbed the citrus shampoo, squeezing the clear liquid on his palm. The scent reminded him of summer, his only comrade in his mourning for warm. He rubbed it into his curls, under his armpits, into the hairs of his chest, everywhere, just so its freshness could envelop him.

       By the time he started washing the lather off, he heard the noises that came with Keith’s making his burdensome way down the staircase. His heart ached with the loud thump sounds of bones meeting hard wood.

       It was a bad day, and quite ironically, he wasn’t allowed to help on bad days. So, he just sat here, knees poking out of the skim stained water, listening for some signs of an emergency. Then the crutches were hearable, screeching against the wet floor. The realisation of his mistake made him wince. Keith wasn’t normally walking around the front door area. He braced himself for the slip and shriek that didn’t come and heard as Keith made it through the rooms, obviously searching for him. So, he dried his hands on the nearby towel and picked the book up again, to appear busy, when he would be reached.

       There was a knock on the door.

       “Hey, Hunk, are you there? Can I come in?” And his heart started to ache from an entirely different reason.

       Most of the time, he would swoop him in his arms and made the bath for the both of them. Keith’s back would press against his chest, making his mind exponentially foggy and stupid, so he couldn’t curl his tongue quite right around the words of lugubrious and precipitous.

       It felt ridiculous now, that he felt the need to ask for even entering. Ridiculous and painful.

       “Sure.”

       The door opened, and he glanced above his book to see Keith walking in and closing the door so as not to let the warm steam escape. The tension was weird and almost palpable. His knuckles turned cold white in comparison to the rest of his hands.

       “Hey,” Keith said and balanced his weight against the sink. “Do you have an extra space in there?”

       “Why? Is the aloofness making you dirty?” He immediately winced and averted his eyes with an apologetic frown. He didn’t want to be so needy. He always was so needy, so desperate for attention, for contact. It was hard to push down. Especially when the journey back home took one and a half hour. And it was exactly one and a half hour of longing for those arms that were the embodiment of comfort, safety, and love. The embodiment of home.

       “Sorry.”

       Keith began to strip, his crutches forgotten in the door frame. The slowness of it brought his eyes eventually back and he realised that the way he shed those woollen leggings was entirely deliberate.

       He hid his face behind the Tolstoy, not taking his eyes of the show unfolding before him. When Keith sat on the brim of the tub to pull off his socks, he put the book down again and helped him drag his legs into the water with the rest of his body.

       With a sigh, Keith’s back made a contact with the porcelain on the opposite side, their legs comfortably resting against each other.

       Hunk still didn’t know where they stood. They made an eye contact, emotions mixing like their breaths with the steam, all in the space between them. 

       He put a hand on the brim, palm up. An apology. A peace offering. A demand.

       Keith took it and rested his head against the tiles.

       “I thought I would be done before you would be back,” he muttered, unconsciously pressing his thumb against the blunt nails of Hunk’s fingers. “Wanted to welcome you properly. Those stupid fast legs of yours ruined all the plotting.”

       Hunk snorted. “How’s your arse?”

       He shrugged, feinted a nonchalance. “Been better,” he smiled. “Been worse.”

       “I should nail some carpet down the stairs.”

       Keith shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I won’s go upstairs anymore. It was just a one-time thing.”

       Hunk contemplated to ask again but decided against it. Instead, he pushed his foot up Keith’s chest. The need to touch begun to jab him right behind his sternum.

       “How was your day?” Keith asked.

       “Long. I would tell you about the argument we had about Don Pedro’s jacket, but honestly, I don’t really want to even think about it.”

       “But it seems like a good story.”

       Hunk put on a wry smile and submerged deeper into the hot water. “Well, sure. But you should know, that a good story is made when you let the characters suffer. You don’t want me to suffer, do you?”

       Keith smiled playfully and fooled around with Hunk’s toes. “Not particularly,” he grinned and bit into the big toe.

       Hunk yelped and sat so quickly that the water splashed on the tiled floor.

       “Arsehole.”

       Keith laughed and grabbed a Dove soap. “So, I smelled something fishy in the kitchen? Does that mean you actually bought it?” he asked as he started to wash himself.

       “Yeah, it’s a perch.”

       Hunk hung his head and traced the bubbles against the tub. He did not want to think about this.

       “Excellent.”

       “What have you been doing all day?”

       “Apart from the mess?” Keith smirked and proceeded to quickly finish his bathing.

       “Obviously.” Hunk got the message, stood up and took a towel to dry himself.

       “You are not going to believe it, but I made a rather exquisite trade with some guy online.”

       He stepped out of the tub and took another towel for Keith. “Yeah? What did you sell? Our DVD player?”

       “No, what a blasphemy. I didn’t so much sell as bought.”

       “You bought another DVD player?” Hunk joked and put his arm around his shoulder blades.

       Keith rolled his eyes. “Sure, to rile you up, you wanker.”

       They made all the clumsy movements to get them both up and in their respective bathrobes.

       “I found you a present, or well. Present for both of us.” Keith said when he finally made a grip on his crutches.

       “So, a present I am supposed to drag all the way up here, right?”

       “Yes, well. You know, you could help me out of here and then wait for me incognito and then help me back. Whichever suits you better, my love.”

       Hunk shook his head in a good humour. “You are a plonker.”

       And Keith laughed his giggling biting-his-tongue-out-of-his-mouth laugh.

 

       There were baked potatoes with peppers in the oven and Hunk set the table for two in their living room. He opened a beer and filled their small glasses. The ones with the crown on the top. The ones that fit into his lip almost better than the beer bottle itself.  The ones that Keith called the phallic ones.

       As usual, it was so salty Hunk had to go for a yoghurt to neutralise it.

       It was their version of flirting.

       Hunk filling their phallic glasses.

       Keith making their food so salty they still craved something after.

       Tonight though, Hunk was tired more than usual. And he missed all more common flirty lines Keith threw at him. His head was        down for the most of their dinner and his occasional humming to Keith’s storytelling was ill-timed.

       “I’m sorry. I’m knackered.” Hunk said when they finished their food. “I’m going to bed.”

       Keith frowned at him with his speculative look. “Do you want to read a bedtime story?”

       To his credit, Hunk truly thought about it. He remembered all the times they had curled up in their bed with several layers of duvets to keep them warm till sunrise when the fireplace had died. How warm he had been, snuggled against Keith’s side with his head propped up on his chest, listening to Keith’s smooth reading. He had been wearing his reading glasses that make him look even more sophisticated than usual and Hunk simply loved dropping off to this feeling of absolute peacefulness.

       He was considering it. And then shook his head no. No, he was too tired to last even a simple page.

       Keith nodded his understanding and stood to leave the table.

       Hunk’s family was the type of occasional religious. They had visited the church every once in a while – meaning Easter, Christmas and the time before the fair. They had lighted candles for the dead and prayed for the living. And during Christmas, they would go up the hill to greet Saint Mary in the devotional pillar and slide on the toboggan all the way down. Great fun.

       He didn’t feel safe to say aloud that he missed it.

       He wished for his sister to pull him out of his sleepiness and push him down the hill with a shriek. The adrenaline would make his blood boil through his veins, killing the fatigue away.

       Days were too short in the winter.

 

       After he laid down, printing his shape into the memory foam and pulling the quilt around his shoulders, the light in the hall turned off and Keith rounded the corner into their bedroom.

       The room was dim. The only light was coming out of the whiteness of the outside and of Keith’s mobile phone. In the shadows, Keith put his hip delicately against the door frame, holding his weight on a single crutch. And their staring contest started.

       When it was clear he won’t close his eyes at once, Keith started to come closer. He moved slowly around the room, using the furniture as a support.

       The mattress dipped when he sat down and cold air brushed Hunk’s knees when the duvet was pulled up.

       “What is it, Hunk?”

       Yes, what is it?

       “What?” Hunk’s voice is edgy, almost as if he wanted to keep a distance. He wondered how intentionally he was behaving.

       Keith pushed up on one elbow and bit his lip.

       “Is everything okay?”

       Hunk shrugged and looked away, but almost instantly there was a hand on his face and he couldn’t find it in him to not push into the touch. Keith caught up as quickly as ever. He crawled closer.

       With jerky motions, his lower body pressed into Hunk’s with the dead weight he was so used to. And up above him, Keith was sporting that face that accompanies his awkward seduction. Bit apologetic, bit challenging, bit amused.

       Hunk wrapped his arms around his middle, giving himself the hug at last.

       “Not a good day, eh?”

       “Still undecided.” Hunk whispered.

       “Can I help?”

       With another shrug, Keith kissed him for only the trees to bear the witness.

       “Any better?”

       “I’m getting there.”

       They settled against each other, sharing body heat and planning the holidays one more time. Eventually, Keith was the first to doze off, leaving Hunk to admire his dental structure. He was a piece of work, Hunk thought. Worth tons of that Belgian chocolate that would rotten his teeth sooner than time.