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I do it to remind myself why I left him, in the first place—why I ran away, and hid, and haven’t seen him since, even assuming he was still anywhere he could be seen. And I do it to remind myself just how much, how oh so very much indeed, I once wanted—

—to stay.

* * *

So—stones on hide, falling, shifting; rune-magic, poetry and probability conjured together from the empty air. Berkana in air, first reading out of a possible four. Exciting family news quite probable. A birth or a new venture a distinct possibility.

I recognized the kid’s key, of course. Last seen—Christ, ten—years earlier, on a chain around Karl’s neck, swinging hypnotically between his pecs as he labored back and forth above me. Grunting low, right in my ear; saying, over and over:

Oh, baby. Oh, Lee, baby . . . you’re it. You’re . . . the one.

The bulky weight of him, all over me, making me ache and strain with secret heat: Big hands, big muscles, big, rough head. Mica-fine blond stubble of cheek, chin, scalp abrading my inner thighs as he rooted and lapped at me impatiently—forcing me open, willing me wet and slack enough to take all of him in one slick thrust. Karl never had any of the hangups my other nominally-straight tricks clung to; never thought twice about enjoying every part of me he could reach, as long as it made us both moan and snarl and sweat together. From the minute we met, he treated me less like some uppity academic fag he was way too cool to kiss than a long-lost brother, rediscovered at last in the very heart of the enemy’s camp—some fellow warrior who’d fallen amongst thieves and picked up bad habits, not that he didn’t like the result.

“Key to your heart?” I suggested, flicking idly at it, as we lay together after our first encounter. He snorted.

“Ma’s folks left her a cabin, up Gravenhurst way. I go there, sometimes.”

“To get away from it all.”

“Yup.” A pause. “That, and find my bear.”

Uh—

(—’scuse me?)

My key, then, to Karl’s cabin. Where I’m heading, by car, even as we speak—even as I cast my mind back further still, remembering how we first met: At a faculty do, earlier that same evening. I was there alone, bored and horny and single, just one more Media Studies T.A. backing up the Prof of the moment in return for some help with my never-ending thesis; my duties included Pop Culture and Literary Antecedents MMS301, which mainly involved showing up and grading papers.

Karl, meanwhile, was ostensibly “there” with Nini Machen—Barbie’s thinner and far less smiley twin turned program student rep, the female equivalent of those straight guys you hear about all the time who think lesbians only exist because none of these poor, deluded girls has met them yet. She’d already tried that tack on me, only to be rebuffed. And now that I’d been officially erased from her personal radar screen, it just made it all the easier for me to sidle over and cast Karl the narrowed, flirty eye—which he noticed, eventually. And, eventually . . .

. . . returned.

Big and blond and peach-fuzz pink-and-white all over—he looked like me times two, the cartoon super-hero version, cut and solid, utterly unrufflable. Every fetish made flesh, every neo-fascist dr

eam come true. Son of a bitch made my knees knock, and I’m not a knees-knocking kind of guy.

When Nini turned her attention on the Prof, we drifted to the door, swapping names as we went: Karl Speller, Lee Hengist; Lee, Karl. He smiled when he heard my last name— good Swedish stock, fair-skinned and fuckable, with no fear of contagion.

(Not racially, at least.)

“You’re a fag, though,” he said, a minute later, shattering my initial assumptions. “Right?”

No particular revulsion in his voice, just a seemingly genuine interest—a relief, coming from somebody who looked like they could crack my skull and eat my brains for breakfast.

I nodded. “And you’re . . . not?”

A shrug. “I do what—”

(who)

“—I want.” A pause. “You clean?”

I swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “I’ve been, uh . . . tested . . . ”

“Negative.” At my nod: “’S good. Ma always says condoms are a Jew plot to keep us from breedin’, but I just hate the way the damn things feel. That, and I like bein’ able to—taste—”

(—what I’m . . . eating.)

Hunger boiling off him in a wave, too pure to even seem intrusive. He was up against me, looming, so close all I could breathe was his hot musk. I’d never felt so small, so slight, so patently unable to defend myself. Or so—weirdly—