"Yet Hope again elastic springs, Unconquered, though she fell; Still buoyant are her golden wings, Still strong to bear us well." --Charlotte Bronte ~~~ Justin’s POV I should have told him. Searing pain, streaks of blood… What if I’d torn or ruptured something? What if it couldn’t be fixed? What if whatever had happened, whatever I’d done to myself, was serious? What if I was bleeding to death inside? I started to panic inwardly. Brian would help me, he’d know what to do…but I couldn’t tell him because then he’d know I’d lied. That would hurt him, he’d blame himself. And the pain of knowing that would be worse… I just couldn’t do it. On autopilot, I leaned forward and kissed Brian on the mouth as zealously as I could, before sliding off the table, trying to give the illusion I’d just enjoyed a fabulous fuck. In a tone as casual as I could make it, I told Brian I was going to take a shower, because that’s what I always did. I thought he’d try to join me, because that’s what he always did, but he didn’t. This only served to escalate my intense unease. Christ…what if he was already punishing me for breaking my promise? Except…I thought I’d decided he didn’t know I’d broken it…Or had I? Fuck…I couldn’t think straight. Worry and panic and self-hatred and despair were rampaging indiscriminately through my mind. The pain had retreated slowly, but the faint, persistent sting remained, and was suddenly joined by that illogical, desperate need to pee. Once in the washroom, I closed the door and stumbled across the room to relive myself. Relief broke over me when I saw there was no blood tainting my urine pink. It meant (logically, because urine and cum came through the same tube), that whatever had been bleeding down there had stopped. Thank God. I turned the shower on icy cold and stepped in, the freezing water making me gasp and fight for breath. After a few seconds, I grew accustomed to it and let the frigid, fortifying water wash over my body as I collected my thoughts. Calm down, I urged myself, think rationally. It wasn’t the first time it had hurt to cum, although admittedly it was the first time the pain had been of that magnitude. May be it had just felt like that because until now, I’d always done the fucking- since I’d left for Hollywood, anyway. But what about the blood? Well, it’s not like it had been a haemorrhage…it was just a few streaks… I was to learn the next day when I’d confided in the oncologist, that swelling caused by the increased blood flow to the area had ruptured several small capillaries running alongside the prostate. It had been so fucking painful because of the sensitive nature of the locality, but mercifully, it had not been serious. But I came to realize, as I stood under the icy onslaught of water, that the real pain I was feeling was in my heart, knowing that I’d lied to Brian. He’d given himself to me utterly, and I had let him- let us- down at the very first stumbling block. He gave me love and I gave him lies… I thought, not for the first time, that I didn’t really deserve him, or his love. I was too weak and fickle. Had I any energy left, any willpower of my own, I might have began to cry again. But I felt so empty suddenly, so alone; condemned into an isolation that was of my own making. I was so fucked up, and with my selfish, childish desire for indulgence, I’d fucked us up, too. My thoughts grew more and more distorted as the stinging caress of the icy fingers began to numb my mind and body. Shivering violently, I thought I should get out of the shower before I froze to death…To Death… I was disturbed to find that some part of me was drawn to that one forbidden word. A part of me that relished the icy, anaesthetizing strokes. I thought vaguely of how people suffering from hypothermia didn’t realize they were freezing to death, but got to a point where nothing mattered to them…their jobs and goals, their friends and families, their own living or dying. They experienced a wave of inner peace because the whole world just ceased to matter. Did I want that kind of peace? Did I want to stray into that world of mind-deadening relieve, where all hardship froze forever and disappeared into the glacial blue hoarfrost? Where everything slowed and stopped, and the only movement was the hypnotic dance and faint crackling of the aurora? It sounded so peaceful…so enticing… So easy…It could be so easy… The way was clear and the path was set. I felt my mind starting down that soundless, timeless trail, mesmerized by the promise of release and eternal tranquillity. But if I looked back…I saw only one set of footprints, my own, marking the way in which I’d come. They would disappear if I continued onward…and then I would know I could never return. I could never go back. And then I’d be alone forever. I turned. I left that passageway leading to the sanctuary of everlasting peace and unending reprieve and went back to the world in which I belonged. Back to the challenge, back to the fight, back to life, and to golden sunshine. Back to him. When I did come to walk this path again, when it was time…there would be two sets of footprints, walking side by side. Brian’s POV I just couldn’t believe he’d thought I hadn’t noticed. I had fucked Justin at least three times for every day we had been together (including, as I always did, his time with the fiddler). Did he honestly think that two months- ten weeks, four days, seventeen hours- did he think I could really forget what he felt like; inside and outside and everywhere in between? The fuck had been fine -brilliant, in fact, as always- until the very end. Something had happened to him. He’d seized up, not around me like he should of, but everywhere, his whole body going rigid. And he was a screamer, but he hadn’t made a sound which had never, ever happened before. Something had gone wrong, but I didn’t know what. I was horrified that I’d hurt him, but when I’d hurriedly pulled out and looked down at his face, he’d fucking smiled at me. And I’d smiled, too, because I was delirious with the relief that he wasn’t writhing in agony and bleeding everywhere. But he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t told me what the problem had been; why he was in pain, or what I may indivertibly have done to him. He just pretended nothing had happened. It was so odd, so unlike him, that I had been momentarily rooted to the spot and hadn’t recovered until after he’d closed the washroom door and I’d heard the shower start running. I should’ve gone with him- he would have been expecting that- but for some reason, I felt it was too late. I had missed the moment to ask him what had gone so badly wrong. It hurt that he wouldn’t confide in me. What the fuck had I done to make his think he couldn’t? Caught up in my thoughts, I didn’t register that the shower turning off, and I looked up only when I heard the washroom door open. Justin emerged, having put on the white shirt and black sweats he’d been wearing before. He did something really fucking strange. He got onto the bed and crawled under the duvet, pulling it all the way over his head before curling up like a hedgehog in its den. This was such an unusual thing to do, and again so unlike him, that I was not only worried, but exceptionally curious as well. I went to around to his side of the bed reached down to the lump under the blanket and gently rubbed (what I assumed was) his back. He shifted slightly under the covers, but I was tremendously relived to find that it was towards my touch and not away from it. “Hey.” I put my arms around the lump under the duvet and leaned down to where I calculated Justin’s head must be, “Are you going to talk to me, Little Boy?” “I’m c-cold,” his muffled voice replied from somewhere in the vicinity of his head. “Cold?” I repeated, not sure I’d heard him right. This completely irrational answer alarmed me, and I twitched the covers back from his head and shoulders and pushed him onto his back so I could see his face. His lips were a strange pale violet colour which I’d never seen before, and as I placed my index finger on them, I was surprised and distressed to find them slightly cool to the touch. The rest of his face, neck and shoulders were cool too, not frigidly cold, but certainly not the temperature they should have been. Justin sat up and leaned forwards, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his forehead against the ‘v’ of my ribcage. Instinctively, a put a hand on his head, and felt his hair, cold and wet under my fingertips. I realized then that he was shivering. Confused and frightened, I wanted to ask Justin what the fuck was going on. But when I opened my mouth, the words wouldn’t form. I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask him, let alone where to start. “C-come in with m-me,” Justin’s voice pleaded between his chattering teeth “I-I need you.” Needing him more than he could know, I stripped to my underwear and pulled Justin forward to pull off his t-shirt. I lay down beside him and gathered his body against mine, spooning him into the crook of my body. I crossed his arms over his chest and wrapped mine around them, swaddling him in my body and warmth so tightly he couldn’t move. Our height difference made our bodies fit perfectly together, as if we had once been one entity. All of our differences- blond and chestnut, ashen and tanned, blue and hazel-made us stand out against each other, bold and striking and beautiful. The black and white of the yin-yang, the lightning against the dark thunderhead, a star in a black night. We needed each other, because otherwise there was only white, or only black, or just common shades of grey. “You scare the shit out of me sometimes,” I whispered to Justin, my mouth on his ear, my moist lips and hot breath warming the side of his face. At a loss for thought and word, I could think of nothing else to say. He was silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to reply. “Out of m-me too,” He whispered finally, his words still broken up with shivering. “I thought I wanted to l-leave…to escape everything. But I d-don’t want to. I don’t want to g-go without you. I don’t want to be alone.” A jarring memory, staring down at the flickering lights of cars and buildings and streetlights, hundreds of feet below me. Thinking it would only take a tiny step, a shuffle, and it would be over…I could escape this world and its responsibilities so easily. I’d go down in flames, in flight- the final flight of a phoenix. But I didn’t. I was not afraid of pain or retribution or death... I was afraid of being alone forever. I felt a lump rise in my throat, and my eyes start stinging with an emotion I couldn’t describe. To lose Justin would be to lose my love and my soul and my life. And so I would fight to the death for him, fight until the last drop of blood fell from my body and the shadows of this world fled forever. I would not lose him. Not to himself. “Justin,” I began, knowing that what I was about to do would mean never turning back. “I love you.” I heard his breath hitch and felt him try to turn in my arms, but I held him tightly close. “I love you, Justin. Please, for God’s sake, don’t ever leave me behind.” The Next Day Justin’s POV “But I don’t understand why I only just found it now…if it’s been there for a year and a half…” Hope had fallen. Clinging though it had been, reality had shaken it down into the cruel world where it had smashed and shattered. That little spark, like a flash of flint on steel, had flickered out and died as surely as if it had been plunged into water. Even Brian’s presence, his nearness in the chair next to me, the warmth of his hand gripping mine, his eyes trained on my face; not even that was enough to console me. Why did this world hate me so fucking much? I wasn’t Brian’s fault he hadn’t found It. Even the oncologist had not been able to locate the lump in my prostate during the physical examination. It had hurt like hell, and had made it abundantly clear the doctor did not share Brian’s ‘magic touch’. At first, I was relived when the oncologist announced that a CAT scan would have to be done instead. But then it occurred to me that the CAT scan image would tell no lies; it was the unrelenting eye of truth. “In this case, the cancer was very slow growing.” Dr. Soffe answered, using his pen to indicate the offending black splotch amid the whirlpool of swirling whites and greys on the CAT scan image laid out before us. “Cells of the prostrate gland, cancerous or otherwise, require testosterone to grow.” Dr. Soffe explained patiently, “As I’m sure you know, 90% of your body’s testosterone is formed in the testicles. Because of your recent orchiectomy, Justin, you have a reduced amount of this hormone in your bloodstream, which meant that the tumour was unable to grow as quickly.” Well, thank God I was a one-balled wonder. At least my ‘surrogate second’ had been good for something. “So where do we go from here?” Brain voice startled me. I think I actually jumped because he squeezed my hand, but kept his gaze on Dr. Soffe. I felt immensely grateful to him. I had been burning to ask that question myself, but was so terrified of what the answer might be that I’d silenced it. “I’m afraid I’m going to need more time with this scan, and the others we took today, before I can really answer that question.” Dr. Soffe told us, tapping the image in frount of us again. “It all depends on how far the cancer has spread; whether it is contained within the prostate, or if it had progressed below it, or to either seminal vessel.” “If it has indeed spread, the only course of action at this point is more radiotherapy treatment. It would be more intensive than last time because it will be actively destroying cells as opposed to preventing their return. The success rate in such a scenario is approximately 75%. If the tumour is restricted to the prostate, however, I will highly recommend its surgical removal.” “Dr. Soffe,” I cut in, so desperate I could no longer restrain myself, “if it has to be removed, I won’t feel anything when Brian and I have sex…I- I don’t want that.” Brain managed to extradite his hand from my sudden death grip on it, and laid it instead along the base of my neck, squeezing rather forcefully and stroking his index finger up the ridges of my neck vertebrae. “I understand your concern,” Dr. Soffe replied professionally, without missing a beat. “However, Justin, the operation can be preformed under special circumstances in which the nerves- the erectile nerves running alongside the prostate- can be spared. It makes the operation rather lengthy and complex, but it can be done be by certain specialists.” “So,” I ventured, not quite daring to believe it, “I won’t lose the ability to experience sexual pleasure?” I felt Brian’s grip on my neck relax a fraction of an inch. “No, I don’t believe so. It may feel slightly different, perhaps be more sensitive, but the sensations should be more or less unaltered. However,” Dr. Soffe warned, halting the wave of relief in mid-swell, “this operation does have a less-than-average success rate.” “How much less?” Brian asked, something of the ad-man coming out in the question. “In eliminating the cancer, the success of surgical removal of the gland is approximately 90%, which is very high,” the oncologist answered, looking first at Brian and then at me, “To preserve fifty percent or more of the erectile nerves, however, the success rate is just under 60%.” And so the cards were on the table, the board was set, the pieces in place. The clock was ticking. Now all I could do was trust to hope. Hope, who was yet now reforming herself from the broken shards and spreading her wings once more, ready to bear me up, for better or worse. Strong enough to bear us both. Hope, though tossed to the ground and trampled…never gave up, and always returned. My hope, my rainbow, would never parish completely.