5.

I'm not surprised when I wake up that he's not there. I am surprised at who is there. I wake up on my side, facing a blond girl - Barbie doll features, Playboy bunny body. She's naked, and she's got the sheet around her in such a way that I can see pretty much all there is to see. Not covering her, but erotic.

"Uhh," I stammer, trying to blink the dream out of my eyes. Now I know I'm crazy. But there's something about the way her blue eyes glint and flash mischievously at me.

"Siathan?" I ask.

"How do you like it?" she - Siathan - asks me in a breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice.

"Change back," I tell him.

"Isn't this what you want?" she says, reaching out to play a long red fingertip across my chest. I don't feel anything but panic.

"Change back," I order.

"Don't you want to try something new?" she purrs. I grab her hand and hold it still.

"No, I don't, I want you to be Siathan again," I say.

"I'm still Siathan," she says. "Isn't this how it's supposed to be, anyway? Man and woman, James? Isn't that what you like? I watched your tapes, by the way," she adds, grinning. She's wrong. She's not him. Something got lost in the translation. I feel a sinking sensation.

"It's supposed to be how it was. I fell," I start. And stop. Nevermind it. "I liked who you were. And blondes aren't my style anyway," I say. I smile my crooked smile. She smiles back.

"Okay," she says. There's a change. But it's not out there in the world, it's in my eyes. They go blurry. I blink involuntarily, though there's nothing in them. They clear up, and now, instead of the blond, is probably the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life. She's real beauty, the kind that works its way into your heart and mind, as opposed to the blond, who's more like a sharp jab in the eye. Her features remind me of Siathan's. The same cheekbones, but her nose is narrower, her chin smaller, her eyes blue, but somehow doelike. She has long, dark brown hair like him. Full pouty lips too, but on her, it's more of a cupid-like mouth. Her body is small, and delicate. Her breasts are tiny but rounded, her waist narrow, and the curve of her hips draws my eye along it. I find that I'd like to reach out and touch her. I could be happy with a woman like this. If she'd stay, we could be normal. We could live our lives out like everyone else. Get married. Have kids. I could be her protector. I could grow old with her. I could walk down the street with her and know everyone was wondering how I got so lucky. I could kiss her and hold hands with her out in public and not wonder who's looking at the two boys kissing. But these thoughts pass over in an instant. It doesn't matter how beautiful she is, or the sweet look of longing in her eyes. She's not him, and it's Siathan that I want. I'm certain of it. The sick feeling of loss in my stomach is telling me so.

"Quit fucking with me and change back," I say.

"I'm not fucking with you, James, you won't let me," he says sulkily. I'm relieved to hear his voice, to feel the mist in my eyes again, to blink it away and find that he's back.

"You're no fun," he informs me. I'm still holding his hand. I twine my fingers with his and move to lay closer to him. I kiss his mouth, his chin, the line of his cheekbone.

"You're perfect just the way you are," I whisper in his ear. His response isn't a moan of pleasure, a kiss in acknowledgement, but a burst of laughter. He pulls away to look me in the face.

"Perfect?" he says. He giggles wildly. It's making me blush. It feels like he's laughing at me, not at himself. I roll away with a sigh and lay staring up at the ceiling, waiting for him to get it all out of his system. The fit of giggling dies off. He moves around on the bed. I'm ignoring him, counting the pinholes on the ceiling, appraising an ancient watermark. I don't ignore him for long. He leans over me, his hair tickling at my thighs as he leans over and licks my cock. He takes it in his hand, squeezing and stroking me gently, lifting the tip up to his mouth. He licks the underside in delicious little circles before he takes me in his mouth. He slides all the way down, burying his nose in my pubic hair, causing my body to jerk involuntarily. He sucks his way back up, takes me in his hand again, and pulls my cock out of his mouth with a bit of a pop.

"Do you like that?" he asks. His voice drips like honey. Perfect is the word I'm thinking. I don't say that. I don't know if I could speak even if I wanted to. I just nod enthusiastically instead. He flashes a little smile at me and goes down on me again. I find myself idly wondering if fairies even have a gag reflex. Then I wonder if he even has to breathe. Then all thoughts and traces of it are surrendered. I surrender myself to him. He's mirroring back whatever I've done to him over the past couple days, except he's doing it better. He's slow and relaxed, in no hurry. He seems to know how to tease me without putting me over the edge.

After a while he lets my cock go and turns his attention elsewhere. He puts a hand on my hips and rolls me over onto my belly. I don't know if I want to do this, but, he did let me do it to him, didn't he? And I told myself I wouldn't say no to him again. I think this is different - he'd understand if I said no, but I find I don't want to. I do have to force myself not to pull away, not to involuntarily run away as he pulls my ass cheeks apart and licks me. Only a brush of his tongue. He turns his head to nip my thigh playfully, but hard. I wince. I wince again as he turns his head and his tongue finds my asshole. It's uncomfortable, at first. Psychologically, I guess. But as I relax, and just let him do it, I feel a whole new slew of sensations. Now I'm the one wriggling underneath him, not quite knowing what to do. Do I actually want to get fucked? Yeah, I do. I realize I want his cock inside me. Even if it hurts. Even if it somehow makes me less of a man...funny the things you think, or you're brainwashed into thinking. He pokes his tongue inside of me. It feels good to be open, to be explored. I want to writhe and twist under him. I want to forget everything else but him. I want him to fuck me.

More. I want more. I don't say it but instead I reach back, fumbling at his wrist, trying to get his hand to go where I want it to go. The sensation abates as he pulls his tongue out of me. Then his finger is inside of me. Just one, slippery wet finger, but I feel myself clench up at the feeling of being entered, invaded. It doesn't hurt, it just feels different. I'm too tense, though. He pulls out of me and finds the lube in the nightstand. He slicks his fingers down and enters me again. It feels better this time. Much better. I reach under me to stroke my cock as he fucks me with his fingers, pressing them deeper inside me as I relax. Then he hits a spot inside me I didn't know I had. I moan in pleasure and he becomes a little more vigorous in his exploration of me. It feels good but I still want more.

"Fuck me. Fuck me, Siathan," I beg him. He pulls his fingers out and I shift up onto my hands and knees, waiting for him. He's kneeling behind me, then he's pushing his cock inside me. I didn't expect it to hurt, to burn quite like this, but it's too late to stop now. I try to relax, to move just so, to find some angle or rhythm that will abate this pain long enough at least for him to get off. But then it abates, fades off giving way to pleasure, a whole new kind of pleasure. Now I'm not trying to wriggle away and lessen the sensation, but I'm backing onto him, with each collision of our bodies I feel less like myself, and more like I belong to him. I'm losing myself to him. I feel sexy. I feel silly saying it, even thinking about it, but that's how I felt - like the pleasure welling up inside me had made me a fit companion for him, not just some nerd who happened to catch his eye. I was his equal, his lover, his opposite. I wanted him to watch me and want me, to see how much I wanted him, to fuck me, make me come, to own me.

I touch myself, biting at my fingers, pinching at my own nipples. I'm dimly aware of his strokes inside me slowing, of him murmuring some encouragement - that he likes the way I look, or he wants to watch me come, or that it's just plain good. He leans over me, his supporting arm braced next to mine on the bed, his other arm wrapping around mine, to take my hand, to guide it to my cock. My hand in his we stroke my cock and a come. I feel him jerking to his own orgasm inside me as he bites at my shoulder, my neck. I turn my head to kiss him, but get more hair than his lips. It doesn't matter. We can't stay like this. We collapse onto the bed, him laying on top of me, gasping for breath, his cock an mine wilting. He twists his hips and we come apart, both wincing as his cock leaves me. Sore. Happy.

He rolls off to lay beside me. We're tangled up, limbs and sheets, We don't bother to straighten either out. My eyes are closing. I'm drifting off. Too happy at this moment to try to stay awake. It doesn't matter if I do, or don't. He'll come and go as he pleases. I let go. I don't have any control over him anyway. I'm not sure that I want any.

"Siathan?"

"Yeah?"

"Be here when I wake up," I ask. He doesn't answer. He kisses me instead. I hope it means yes. We curl up together and fall asleep.

6.

He's gone and it hurts. It hurts in a way I didn't imagine I could hurt. We had a few good weeks together - a few great weeks together - before I fucked it up.

He wasn't always there when I woke up. He wasn't always there if I left the room. I don't have to be asleep for him to disappear. Sometimes I just turn my back and he's gone. He might be back only a couple minutes later. He might be back a couple days later. But so far, he'd always come back. But not this time. This time was different. It was the first time he'd disappeared right in front of me.

We were fucking - yeah, that's what we spend most of our time together doing. Not all of it, but all the in-between times. In-between when I want to show him something new, or he wants to show me something right in my sight that I've never seen before 'til he showed it to me. The world looks different through his eyes. I can't see through them but sometimes I get the feeling of it, of newness and brightness, adventure in the most mundane things. The most mundane of them all probably being me, and, as I said, we spent most of our time exploring each other.

We never fought. Never had anything to fight about until that night. That wasn't even a fight. It was nothing and now he's gone. He'd gotten in a nasty habit of reminding me that I thought he was perfect. It was getting on my nerves. Especially since he was doing at all the wrong times, interrupting a blow job or a fuck with a giggle and the remark, 'I'm perfect.' This particular time, I was laying on my back and he was kneeling over me, riding my cock. I was ready to come. I think he was too.

"You're beautiful," I said. It was true. Nothing could have been more true. His face nearly overcome with pleasure. Stroking himself. His long hair partly veiling his face. He looked up from under his long, thick lashes. Blue eyes glinting at me. He grinned.

"I know. I'm perfect," he reminded me with a giggle.

"Yeah. You're perfect, Tinkerbell," I retorted sarcastically. Not very clever - but it was the best I could think of. In fact, it was something I'd had laying in wait for the next time he said it. Honestly, I didn't even know if he'd get it or not.

He got it. He looked as if I'd slapped him in the face. Anger passed in the wake of the slap, briefly contorting his features, blue eyes gas jet fiery. Then there was nothing. His face totally bland and expressionless as he sat there, unmoving, us still joined at the hip.

"I'm sorry," I said. No response. I reached up to touch him, and my hand went through his arm. I gasped in shock. It was unnerving. Disturbing. And then the loss of him was in my eyes. A blue grey haze. And then he was gone. He didn't so much disappear as he faded. And he was gone. I felt a cold chill in my gut.

"Siathan?" I asked. Nothing. I lay there a long time. Waiting. Penitent. I'd learned my lesson. I said his name again, and again. I went into the living room. And the kitchen. And the bathroom. As if there was some chance he wouldn't hear me calling out to him from across the vastness of my 600 square foot apartment. I checked. Twice. But he wasn't there. I went back to the bedroom. Naked, limp and aching. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. I tried to go to sleep. Sleep wouldn't come. So I waited.

7.

Two weeks later finds me in the park. I've given up waiting, because hoping hurts too much. If he comes back, so be it - but in the meantime, I'm just trying to forget. Trying to pretend it was all just a dream. I spend a lot of time here, trying not to think. It's a bitterly cold day today. Winter is lashing out, trying to get in it's last digs before Spring comes. Spring is only supposed to be two weeks away - at least by the calendar. But here, in real time, not in time in neat little boxes, winter holds onto March with a cold white knuckles. It's as cold today as it was the day I met Siathan. Yeah. I keep trying to forget, and I can't.

I look out over the artificial lake, iced over. The park is emptied today. Not even any vagrants. So I'm doubly surprised when someone speaks to me out of the blue. My heart skips as he clears his throat to get my attention. I turn to look. Siathan is sitting beside me. He's wearing a short, frayed little green dress and carrying a glittery wand. Somehow the dress manages to make him look more masculine than normal, making the sight even sillier looking. I don't know whether I'm supposed to laugh or apologize.

"I'm a perfect little Tinkerbell," he announces with an air of contrition. So I laugh. Just a little. Mostly I just smile. I lean over to kiss him and when I pull away he's changed his clothes. Black leather jacket and pants. A new look for him. Must be an antidote to the dress. He takes my hand and gets up.

"Come on. I want to show you something," he says.

"Can't we go to my apartment, and you can show it to me there?" I say slyly. He smiles.

"It's nothing like that, James. We can do that later. But you've got to come with me now, or it'll be gone. Come on," he says again, tugging at my arm. So I follow him. I'm just about ready to complain about the cold - which somehow felt good when I was in mourning for him, but now, it just feels plain cold - but then, I realized I'm uncomfortable, but I'm not cold. In fact I'm warming up. At first I think it's just the walking. Siathan is tugging me along at a pretty good pace. But then I'm not just warm, I'm actually sweating. I unzip my jacket and loosen my scarf as we go. We come around to the woods that encroach on the other side of the lake, and then turn back to face the lake, looking back toward the park bench where I'd been sitting.

"There? Do you see it?" Siathan says, eagerly pointing. I look. I don't see anything odd. It's a winter day. Cold and clear. The sky is cerulean blue, fading to orange as the sun sets. It's unusually quiet. The trees have snow clinging to them from earlier in the day. Snow has cover up the dirty drabness of a winter that's lingered to long and replaced it with some morning in early December when the world is pristine white.

"It's beautiful," I say. I try to be sincere. I'm having a hard time appreciating this with a fever coming on. Even a pristine winter day isn't such a great thrill anymore. We've had too many days. All I want now is Spring. I'd give anything, I think, to see just one flower right now.

Siathan nods eagerly. He's not looking at me, but looking in wonder out over the lake. "It is beautiful, isn't it?" he says. He looks over at me, and I nod. He looks disappointed. I'm trying to be enthusiastic.

"James, what do you see?" he asks. I tell him all that I see - beautiful, mighty winter in all her majesty. Soft virginal winter in her carpet of snow. I do my best to at least mirror back his enthusiasm but my body feels like it's failing me and my words are going along with it. I'm getting dizzy. I make my little speech and hope he's ready to go home now.

He smiles sadly at me. "Yeah, I guess it is beautiful," he says. I'm dimly aware that we're not talking about the same thing, but it doesn't matter any more. I've got to get my coat off. I'm burning up. Siathan watches, amused, then concerned when I don't stop at my coat. I strip off my sweater, then my t-shirt. I kick off my shoes and the snow feels so good, the cold air feels so good on my skin, I unzip my pants and drop them too.

"Is there something wrong?" Siathan asks.

"I'm hot," I say simply. Off go the pants. And my underwear. Fuck it if anybody sees. The cold wind blowing around me seems to blow away some of the fever. I can think straight again. Sort of.

"Are you all right?" Siathan says.

"Yeah, I'm better now," I say. He smiles. He looks me up and down, his eyes lingering a moment on the hard on I'm suddenly sporting. I want him, of course I've wanted him every moment for the past two weeks. But it isn't so much his presence as this feeling that I've been speeded up. Like life itself has lodged in me and I can't hold it.

"It's the break," Siathan says, as if he were answering a question I didn't ask. I must look confused. He explains. "You're sensitive, James. You've never felt like this before? Never noticed anything unusual?"

I shake my head no.

"Seen anything odd out of the corner of your eye?" he prompts.

"No. Except you in that dress," I say. That's not entirely true though. I do see things, now and again, but I put them off to excessive drinking, or impending madness. Or maybe just too many spooky movies. He nods and smiles. I get the feeling again that we're having two conversations. The one on the surface and the one underneath.

"Can you read my mind?" I say, asking at last the question that's been on my mind so many times.

"Sometimes," he admits with a coy little smile.

*I want to fuck you* I think.

"That's very romantic, James," he says.

"I didn't know you cared about romance," I say. *I want to fuck you NOW* I insist.

"Even better," he says, rolling his eyes. But he relents. He unzips the leather jacket. He's shirtless beneath it. He wriggles out of the pants. No underwear. And, of course, he's barefoot. Our clothes lay on the snow, little crumpled heaps of black and tan. He takes me in his arms and kisses me.

*I love you* I think, before my mind can choke it off or take it back. He pulls back from the kiss, opening his mouth to speak. Then he shuts it. He just looks at me.

*I love you too* I hear in my mind, as clearly as if he's spoken it. We stand there holding each other. His hair falls into my face. I brush it away and I see something odd. A bright splash of color on the snow.

"What's that?" I say, squinting at it.

"What?" Siathan says in surprise. He turns to look. "Tell me what you see, James."

I squint at it. "A flower. I think."

"Look again," he says. I screw my eyelids up, as if I could force the world to come into focus. That's what it feel like. Like the world has gone all out of focus. The snow has become a Technicolor splash. Some painter has upended his palette on it.

"No, not like that," Siathan says. He holds his hand over my eyes. "Relax. Just let yourself see everything. Don't try so hard."

"You mean like looking at a stereogram?" I say.

"I have no fucking clue what you're talking about," he says. He takes his hand away. "Just look." So that's what I do. I look. I look at it, defocused, like I'm looking at a stereogram. It isn't a very good tack to take, since I can never see those things anyway, but, this time, it works. There, out where the lake ought to be, out where the park bench ought to be, is a field of flowers. Flowers like I've never seen before. Off in the distance are mountains. I think I can see a city too. But not like any city of ours. I'm reminded of the Wizard of Oz, but not quite. This is fantastic, but more Tolkien, less Technicolor.

"I don't understand," I say.

"It's my world. It's a break between worlds. I can go back. We can go together," he says. I gaze out at the foreign landscape. Even as I watch it seems to be getting smaller, fraying at the edges, as if it were an embroidery and somebody's tugging the thread loose. It seems to shrink more rapidly as the borders of the vision shrink.

"I can go?" I say. He nods.

"Only if you want to, James. I'm sorry but you've got to decide right now," he says. There's no decision to be made. If he goes, I go. I glance down at the pile of clothes on the grass.

"There's no time for that," he says. I don't know if he means dressing, or fucking.

"Either of them," he answers.

"Okay," I say. He looks confused. I clarify. "I don't mean about the clothes. I mean I'll go."

He's happy - and the world before us continues to shrink; soon the lake will show on all sides of it, and at the rate it's going it will be gone almost before we can cross the distance to it - but happy or not, now it's Siathan that hesitates.

"James, I want you to go, but I don't think you understand," he says. He struggles for the words to explain, and in his thoughts hit me, penetrate me with their intensity, perhaps unintentionally, with the feeling of being lost and alone in some alien world. Or knowing time wasn't passing the same where you came from as it does in the place that you are. Of knowing you might never go back, and if you could, everything and everyone would be different. He'd been lost for a long time. He wasn't new to our world. He was new to me, new to this body, but he was an old soul in a young world. And now he was afraid. Yes, I could sense his fear. For himself, for me. He didn't know what we'd be going back to. He didn't even know what we'd be when we got there.

"Everything's different there," I said. He nodded. "Even us?"

"Maybe. I don't know. But I know you will still be James and I will still be Siathan," he said. The past months came back to me all at once. Getting to know him. Now I would lose what I'd spent so much time learning and loving. His body. Shit, even my body. I felt like I never really knew myself 'til I met him. Now I knew I couldn't go back to the way things were. And seeing his world, his place, I couldn't go back to them, even if he turned his back on the vision and came with me.

"I'll miss this," I said.

"We can stay," he offered. His voice was tinted with a sadness I surely did not want to hear everyday for the rest of my life. Better he go without me. If it had to be that way. But it didn't. Not if we hurried. But I took one last moment to kiss him. He kissed me back. I lingered in that kiss as long as I dared, not knowing if it would happen again. When I opened my eyes, the vision had halved itself. It looked now like some backdrop for a movie or a play. It was framed by the drab snowscape of the park.

"I want to go," I said urgently. Siathan asked, one last time,

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," I said. He nodded. We turned and ran for it. The world before me seemed to grow more vibrant, more real as we got toward it. I wanted to look back, to see what my world looked like from the edge of this one, but Siathan's voice spoke in my head a single word, *Don't*. So I didn't. He stopped short of the boundary, which was not a nice clean edge, not a picture frame or a door you could step through, but a place where the worlds got their edges confused. Flowers sprouted up like too early tulips, and then were sucked back down, as if pulled back into the other world by the roots. Snow fell in the fields of the other place.

Siathan stopped here. And he kissed me. He held me one last time.

"I'll miss this too, James," he whispered. Whether it was a whisper in my mind, or in my ear I couldn't tell you. There was not time left for me to say anything. The rent between the worlds was slipping away fast. Too fast. We had to run to catch up with it. We held hands, not wanting to lose these last few moments of contact together, and not wanting one to leave without the other by accident. So we ran, tugging each other awkwardly along as one or the other stepped out of stride. It receded back out over the lake, having faded back to little more than a door. We skittered out over the icy edge of the lake and jumped for it.

8.

"Sean?" I said as I woke. I realized how hot I was as he put his cool hand on my forehead.

"Shh," he said. "It's all right. You've got a fever. You were having a nightmare." I tried to sit up. I couldn't. I was dizzy. I tried to remember the dream. It came back to me. First in fractured bits. Then all the pieces fell together.

"We didn't make it, did we?" I asked.

"No, we didn't make it, James. You're sick. I wouldn't take advantage of you like that," he said with a grin. But I knew. I knew it was more than a dream.

"Siathan?" I said. A barely noticeable look of sadness passed over his features. But he just smiled at me.

"Go back to sleep, James. You'll forget about it in the morning," he said. I forced myself to sit up.

"Will you forget about it?" I said. He sighed, and nodded.

"I will. If I let myself," he said. He pushed me gently back down onto the bed. "Go to sleep, and you'll forget. I promise you."

"I don't want to forget," I said.

"I don't want to remember," he said.

"Oh," I said. I lay there only because he'd told me to. I didn't want to forget my dream. I didn't want to wake up and have him be gone for good. I didn't want to forget him.

"You won't forget me. I've decided to stay," Siathan - Sean? - said as I felt myself drifting off.

"Aren't you going to sleep, too, Sean?" I asked.

"In a minute, James. I'll join you," he said, pausing, "Just a couple more minutes. That's all."

"Okay," I mumbled into my pillow. I closed my eyes and fell asleep. I heard him say it again, 'just another minute or two' as I fell asleep. Though if the whisper was in my ears, or in my head, or a leftover from my dream, I couldn't say.

9.

When I wake up, he is with me...