“This is your home.” He reached up his other hand and gripped my face, pressing down hard against my cheeks. I nodded. “Say it!” “I won’t run,” I whispered as I watched an angry tear trickling from his eye. I leaned forward and licked it away.”

“He stared up at me, and even as the house fell apart around us, even as drops of fire rained down from the sky, his hand raised and brushed a lock of hair out of my face, and I felt his stomach rise as he breathed in deeply.“You,” he whispered. “You’re a boy?” His hands cupped my face, and a tear streaked down my cheek onto his fingers. “I dreamt of you but… but I never thought…”

“I struggled not to laugh at the brand-new bottle of lube in his left hand and the unopened box of condoms in his right. He watched me, his expression dark.“Just buy those?” I asked lightly.He nodded once.“Had it all worked out in your mind, did you?”He nodded again.“Have you ever fucked a man, Seven?”He shook his head, his right hand squishing the box of condoms as he tightened his grip.“And… this is what you want?” I looked at his face then, watching for any signs of doubt. There were none as he nodded again.I opened my arms. “Come here,” I said softly.”

“Otter pulls me up to the bar and leans over. “What’s wrong? You stink!” he shouts. I glare at him. “I smell fine, you asshole. I used your cologne.” He rolls his eyes and comes closer, his lips against my ear. I shiver. “I said, what do you want to drink?”

“You don’t ever doubt me again,” he said hoarsely before his mouth grazed my nipples, first the left and then the right. His scruffy beard scraped the skin beneath raw as he went back and forth. “I will fucking kill you if you ever doubt me again!” he snarled. My eyes rolled back into their sockets at the weight of his words, the desperation in his voice matching the desperation in my movements. I moaned as he bit my nipple harder, almost chewing it between his teeth. I was trapped underneath him, and even though I knew I could push him away, I also knew I wouldn’t. “You answer me when I’m talking to you! ” he roared.“I won’t,” I breathed, my hands in his short hair. “Oh, God, I won’t.”“You won’t what! ”“I will never doubt you again!”“You’re damn right you won’t.”

“I can’t help it: I laugh.I don’t mean too, it just kinda comes out on its own. I smoosh my hands against my mouth to block the sound, but this causes me to snort, and snot comes out of my nose. I try to cover it up and jerk my left hand up, but it bounces off my nose and I poke myself in the eye. My eyes water as I hiss and knuckle my eyeball, but I’ve still got snot on my hand and gets all up in there, making it burn even more. Ow. I want to turn and run, but I’m temporarily blinded by my own devices and I know, I just know, that this big kid is probably some popular jock and I am forever going to be stuck with the nick-name Booger Eye Snot Face. I ask God quietly if he wouldn’t mind opening the ground beneath my feet and allow me to fall down a chasm to save me from myself. The ground doesn’t open. I’m still laughing, but it’s that high-pitched thing I do when I find something really funny. I hate that laugh. It always sounds like a clan of female hyenas all going into labor at the same time. Yip! Yip! Ayyyyyyyy! Yip! Yip! Ayyyyyyyy”

“I watched the black ocean in his eyes and saw this flash behind them and understood what he had meant the night before, about the insanity that had gripped him. He was not so far gone as to be lost, but he was close, and I knew it had come from me turning my back on him as I had started to flee. Whether I wanted to or not, I anchored him to this world, and I was the only thing he'd known, maybe for his whole life. He had watched me, yes, he had stalked me, oh yes, but it had driven him to the edge. I inhaled sharply at the wildness I saw in him, the despair that was threatening to rise.”