Archive of Our Own ^beta

 Disclaimers: I just borrowed the characters, for no profit and nothing but
 fun.

 Notes: This started out as a PWP, but somewhere along the line developed
 vestiges of a plot.  This story is set from Jim's senior year in high
 school through current time.  It is purely a fantasy, and I apologize in
 advance in case any of it squicks you.  My thanks to K for reading and
 commenting, and to Carla for reading, commenting and posting for me.

 Summary: Jim Ellison, this is your life.

Warnings: Kinky football rituals.  Explicit m/m sex, including M/b.  Angst.

(c) 1998
 

         "As the spell of the tree fell away, he remembered his errand and stepped
 closer still. Heart pounding, he lifted squint eyes and whispered, 'When
 shall I see her again?'
            "After a pause filled only with the restless news of the wind,
 the eldest raven spoke a single word.
            "'Never.'"
            "'Never,'" echoed a second.
            "'Never,'" tolled a third and a fourth.
            "For a moment the mole stood motionless, waiting as his heart
 cracked, waiting for the fifth raven to contradict the rest. But the fifth,
 without even glancing his way, repeated the verdict.
            "The last, mournful Never fell upon him, bowing his head. He
 stood gazing at the ground and suddenly felt as old as the tree itself."
                 (Charles Duffie, _The Mole and the Owl_)
 

 It's a championship team.  An undefeated team, a team that is the pride of
 the city.  The state championship is won by an unprecedented score.  47 to
 14.  A massacre.

 No one knows the rituals of the team.  It is a tightly-knit group of
 athletes, with a charismatic coach.  No one questions them.  Not with a
 record of such demonstrable success.  The community doesn't care how they
 do it, and they do not tell.  They are a superstitious lot.  One fullback
 is afraid to wash his right hand, because he is certain he will not be able
 to hold the ball if he does.  Another team member plays the last four games
 of the season in shoes that have holes in both toes.  He doesn't care that
 he re-breaks one toe during every game.  It's worth it, to win.

 You know the secret, but you will not tell, either.  It is cloaked in
 deepest secrecy, and you are at the heart of that conspiracy of silence.
 You are not quite the source, but you are certainly vital.  Without you,
 the conspiracy might not exist at all.

 No one would believe you, anyway.  Sometimes you don't believe it yourself.
  And you're living it, every week of this incredible season of football.

 People know and respect the team meeting before every game.  It is sacred,
 and there are no reporters, or parents, or faculty.  It is the team and the
 coach, and it never varies.  An hour before the game, in the locker room.
 Most people believe this is the time for pep talks.  Win one for the Gipper
 speeches.  Perhaps a prayer; Oak Creek is a very Christian suburb, here in
 Cascade.

 But the hour before the game is the beginning of the ritual.  It is the
 first part.  The second part is the game itself.  And the third takes place
 after the game.  You would no more suggest changing it than any other
 member of the team.  You're proud of the team's success, and you are
 privately proud of your own role in that success, although you realize that
 it has nothing to do with your own athletic prowess.

 One hour before kickoff, the team gathers in the locker room and locks the
 doors.  There is very little conversation.  Expressions are grave, emotions
 high.  The team is usually already suited up.  Except for you, of course.
 You have spent the last hour getting ready for this, this ritual that must
 be observed in precisely the same way every Friday evening.

 You are naked.  You sit in the middle of the team, surrounded by boys who
 have been your friends for years.  Your teammates, your classmates.  One of
 these boys is your best friend, although on Friday evenings he says nothing
 to you, as silent as the rest of the team.  They make room for you to sit
 on the bench.  You are freshly shaved, showered, clean and smelling of Dial
 soap and antiperspirant.

 The coach says a few words.  He is always peculiarly reverent.  There is no
 question that he honors this ritual at least as highly as your teammates.
 It is sacred to him, too.

 When the coach finishes speaking, you stand up.  Two of your teammates take
 your elbows and guide you over to the table.  You are no longer nervous
 about this, although you remember your terror the first time it happened.
 You didn't understand then.  But you do now.  You believe it is meaningful.
  Your teammates help you up on the table, and push you down on your back.
 The same two boys lift your legs and hold them apart while a third boy
 stands between your thighs and touches you.  It is a respectful touch, and
 no longer feels like a violation.  Simply part of the ritual.  His fingers
 probe inside your hairless, spotless opening, spreading slickness inside
 you.  It feels pleasant now.  You have gotten to the point where you look
 forward to this.  It seems to center you.  Familiar.  You are used to being
 vulnerable with these boys; you know that they will not harm you.  They
 seem almost to love you, for what you provide the team.

 By this point the remainder of the team stands in a silent circle around
 the table.  Speaking is not forbidden, but it rarely happens.  There is no
 need.  The ritual is proceeding exactly as it always does.  The boy
 standing between your legs retreats, and the coach approaches you.  His
 smile is almost tearful, his look filled with what can only be love as he
 strokes your wide-spread thighs reverently.  You are fast approaching the
 beginning of your role in tonight's game.  The thought fills you with
 nothing but anticipation.

 There is no longer any pain when the coach enters you.  He has done this
 many times before, and you are completely relaxed.  Secure in the knowledge
 of your teammate's good feeling, of the coach's caution.  You make a sound
 of pleasure when the coach's hips meet your thighs.  The boys holding your
 ankles stroke your legs, and you look at them with a slow, easy smile.

 The coach moves at first slowly, and then more urgently.  Your own pleasure
 is mounting, but it doesn't really matter.  More than once this season you
 have spurted your own essence at nearly the same moment you feel the coach
 sending warm liquid into your body, but other than causing a few grins
 among your fellows -- warm, never anything but glad -- your physical
 pleasure is beside the point.  It is the coach's seed that matters.  Spent
 inside you.

 The coach never hurries, and as his thrusts slowly increase in pace you
 hear yourself making more sounds of pleasure.  His penis feels hot and
 delicious inside you.  You never hated this act, but you truly enjoy it
 now.  You love this ultimate giving over of control.  Outside the team you
 would be shocked.  But here it feels not only natural but vital, essential
 to the team spirit.  You would not dream of protesting.  You are deeply
 honored to hold the coach's cock inside you.

 With a throttled cry the coach finally spurts his seed into you.  He is
 smiling dazedly as he withdraws very carefully, and with practiced alacrity
 the two boys at your sides raise your legs higher in the air.  The third
 boy comes back, and touches your opening before sliding the plug inside
 you.  It's a different plug than at the beginning of the season, when a
 very small one did the trick.  Now it's larger, fat and heavy.  But it
 keeps the coach's seed from leaving you.  Instead it bottles you up, and
 for the next few hours you play the game with the faint burn of its
 presence, a reminder of the precious essence you have inside you.

 Your teammates help you dress for the game.  Your genitals are not covered
 until the last possible moment, and it always feels a little strange to
 finally cover yourself up.  The coach kisses you on the mouth, a fatherly,
 unsexual kiss, before applying himself to the business of the game at hand.

 There is no fear now.  The ritual has been observed.  They will win tonight.

 And the team does win.  It's a good game; the opposing team is strong,
 canny, and most definitely worthy opponents.  But the outcome is foregone.

 There is the usual jubilation after the game.  Parents, friends, happy
 faculty, flashbulbs and news stories.  As quarterback you are often
 interviewed by the press.  Brief sound bites, showing your radiant,
 terribly handsome face.

 When the press finally leaves, and the locker room is quiet again, it is
 time for the final part of the ritual.  This is the most joyful part,
 because the game is won.  This is the celebration that takes place in
 private, the true celebration.

 Everyone showers, and it is loud with happy voices, jokes, rehashings of
 particular plays, touchdowns.  You shower with your teammates, simply a
 part of the group.  But when everyone is clean again, no one dresses.  They
 return to the locker room and wait for the coach.

 When he arrives, you get back on the table.  You are flushed with the same
 joy you see on the coach's face, and you spread your legs gladly.  The plug
 pops out and the coach dips a finger in the liquid that trickles from your
 ass, raising his hand in the air for all to see.  He licks his own semen
 from his finger and then bends to kiss your wet opening reverently.

 The rest of your teammates enjoy you without hurrying.  Over time you have
 come to know their ways; you think of them as your friends, as your
 brothers, and you recognize the feel of each of them as they push inside
 you.  There is one boy, tall and dark-skinned and soft-spoken, who is your
 secret favorite.  His name is Randall, and the feeling in your heart,
 always warm when it concerns your teammates, is different for him.  It is
 enough to open your legs for the other boys, but when it is Randall whose
 hands push your legs in the air you always wish for more.  For his full
 mouth on your own, his broad, muscled chest against yours.  You want things
 you can't articulate, much less understand.  You only know that when he is
 finished you are always disappointed that he does not take you in his arms,
 kiss you, fondle you and whisper mysterious words in your ear.

 When the season is finally over, Oak Creek High School is the state
 football champion team.  The members of this undefeated, remarkable
 football club are highly recruited by colleges.  You yourself have twelve
 different football scholarship offers before the season is even over.  But
 you have already decided where you are going to college, and your
 scholarship is not athletic but academic.

 Without football you feel lost.  You miss everything about it.  The
 atmosphere of jubilation, the victories, the camaraderie.  The coach seems
 lessened, when you see him in the halls.  He is quiet now, and oddly sad,
 and you know he's grieving that it's over, too.  There is a party, the week
 after the championship game.  It is a private party, at the coach's house.
 For the last time you open yourself for these boys, this one man.  It is
 the first and only time they take turns having you in a real bed.  Each boy
 is allowed privacy with you, and a few of them kiss you shyly on the cheek,
 whisper that they will miss you.  But Randall is the last to enter the
 guest bedroom, where you lie exhausted and sore from the loving of so many
 others before him.

 At his touch all your previous encounters are shoved aside.  He is the only
 one whose hips you wrap your legs around.  He is the only one of his
 teammates who kisses your mouth long and hard, whose tongue meets your own
 and whose body covers you until you feel as if you've melded with him,
 becoming one being and not two.  He is the only one who, when he tells you
 he loves you, hears you say that you love him too.

 You make love with Randall three times that night.  No one disturbs you.
 Perhaps they understand, or perhaps they simply don't know.  You are sore,
 and so tired, but when he slides inside you the third time you rejoice,
 because you were made to hold him like this.  Every thrust of his penis
 inside you is confirmation.  Impaled on his flesh, you become a part of
 him, and him of you.  You adore him.  And he loves you.  Pounding into you
 he screams your name when he comes, and the sound is pure love.

 The next morning you awaken in the coach's guest bedroom, with Randall
 holding you in his arms.  You turn and he kisses you and smiles, and you
 realize you are in love with him.

 The coach has made all this possible, and you love him, too.  You are
 completely, madly in love with the world, because you have found Randall,
 and without the coach you would still be wandering.  The other boys have
 long since gone home, and you eat breakfast with the coach and Randall.
 You are so sore you can hardly move, but it is a sweet, delicious pain that
 you don't mind at all.  When breakfast is finished you slide down on your
 knees in front of Randall and make love to his cock.  It's the first time
 you've held him in your mouth.  It takes you a moment to adjust, but then
 you are blissfully content.  His seed tastes rich and earthy, coating your
 tongue and throat with his flavor.

 In the coach's wide bed you lie pillowed on Randall's strong chest, his
 oddly nimble fingers playing with your nipples while the coach takes you
 once more.  It hurts quite a lot this time, but you know it's the last time
 he will do this, and so you endure the pain, bracing yourself inside
 Randall's arms and letting your legs be raised until they drape over the
 coach's shoulders.  You see tears in the coach's eyes just before he shouts
 his pleasure.

 You endure two weeks without the team, before you realize that it is
 Randall you can't live without.  Somehow he has realized it, too.  One day
 after school you see him standing by the bike racks, and the lost
 expression on his face is the same one you feel inside your heart.  Without
 speaking you get into his battered Delta 88, and drive out to the lookout
 point.  It's broad daylight, and there is danger, but neither of you care.
 You make love in the back of his car.  The first time is fast, frantic,
 fourteen days of confusion answered by sweating flesh and painful hard
 kisses and your own voice screaming his name over and over again.  As the
 sun begins the march down past the horizon, you love again, more slowly.
 You sit astride his muscled hips and lower yourself onto him, smiling with
 disbelieving pleasure as his cock spreads you wide, driving so far inside
 you you believe he will never stop.  He works your cock with his hands,
 dragging your orgasm out of you and licking your semen off his fingers
 before grasping your hips and working you up and down on his prodigious
 length.  After he comes you lie panting on his chest.  His cock stays
 inside you for an hour, until you feel it hardening again and he thrusts
 restlessly again.

 There is almost no day when you do not make love with Randall, that spring.
  Often it is in his car, on a back seat soon stained with your mingled
 essences.  Other times it is at his house, or yours, and two different
 times there are cheap motel rooms, bought for the evening with money one or
 the other of you has earned at minimum wage jobs.  Spring break is a
 delirious haze.  Your father works, and Randall's family works.  Your
 brother is out with his friends.  You spend your days with Randall.  This
 sudden freedom is intoxicating.  He arrives at your house by nine o'clock,
 and that Monday he takes you in the foyer, your pants ripped off and cast
 aside, kneeling behind you and cursing as he pounds mercilessly into your
 ass.  You come helplessly on the floor, and later you wipe it up carefully,
 while he watches you.

 You use your father's rattling home movie camera to record your lovemaking
 one afternoon.  You watch the film later, lying naked in Randall's arms
 with his fingers sliding lazily in and out of your body.  The spectacle of
 your bodies together, dark and light, a hopeless tangle of arms and legs
 and mouths that seem fused in a permanent kiss, is more beautiful than
 anything you have ever hoped to see.  You crawl onto your knees, facing the
 projection screen, and you watch the images of your lovemaking while he
 grasps your upraised hips and thrusts joyously inside you.

 Friday afternoon your brother comes home unexpectedly.  You expect Randall
 to stop, but he only pauses, putting his hand over your mouth.  Your
 brother rattles around downstairs, tunelessly crooning a song popular on
 the radio, and in a moment Randall grins down at you and shoves deep inside
 you again.  His hand keeps your cries from escaping.  He fucks you
 luxuriantly while your oblivious brother talks on the phone downstairs.
 The little cries as you come can't carry that far.  Later you watch through
 the window as your brother bounces back out of the house.  Randall licks
 the slow trickle of semen from your body, and you can finally say his
 beloved name aloud, bent over and panting while his tongue sends hot
 trickles of electric pleasure down your spine.

 You celebrate graduation with your friends.  Drunk on cheap champagne and
 trashcan punch, you go parking with Randall in the forest and strip naked
 outside the car.  The night air is cool and damp on your hot skin.  Randall
 laughs and pushes you down on the hood of the car, and you chant his name
 to the rhythm of his motion inside your body.

 Faintly you can hear the ticking of an invisible, huge clock.  Time running
 out.  In two months you'll go to South Carolina, to college.  Randall will
 be leaving as well, but for California.  At first you ignore your impending
 separation, and you never discuss it with him.  As the summer wears on you
 slowly notice an increasing urgency to your time with your lover.  One hot,
 muggy night you make love violently.  He fucks you hard, desperately, and
 you keep your eyes on his contorted face and relish the bruises he's
 leaving on your skin, the pain as he pounds relentlessly into you.
 Afterward you burst into startling tears, but he cries with you, silently,
 holding you so tightly it hurts.

 The night before you leave for South Carolina, you slip out of the house
 late and meet him.  He's waiting in his car, and you slide across the bench
 seat and sit fearlessly in the circle of his arm while he drives to a
 motel.  In the antiseptic motel room the two of you make love slowly.  You
 don't speak.  Neither of you has ever been much of a talker.  You prefer to
 let your bodies speak for you.

 An hour before dawn you creep out and Randall drives you back to your
 house.  In the car you kiss desperately.  You are memorizing his taste,
 treasuring the damp feel of his essence still inside you, the last relic of
 your lovemaking only an hour ago.  In contrast to your frantic weeping a
 few days ago, your eyes are dry and hot now.  Leaving the car feels like
 beginning the walk to the death chamber.

 College is busy, confusing and obsessive.  You feel purified by grief,
 washed clean by the clarity of your longing for your absent lover.  You
 make perfect grades.  Your brain is heightened, rarified until classes are
 child's play, easy and compulsive.  You don't make friends.  Your dorm
 roommate is essentially a vaguely pleasant stranger, who doesn't care to
 know you any more than you, him.

 You are not able to go home for Thanksgiving, but Christmas looms like a
 breathless promise of joy.  The transcontinental flight is a blur of
 mind-erasing excitement.  Soon.  Soon you will be together again, and
 complete as you have not been since you left Randall's side.

 You've written letters, so you know that he is coming home the next day.
 He calls, mid-afternoon, and you arrange to meet him at the park.  He looks
 so beautiful that your heart feels as if it has simply stopped beating in
 your chest.  In the secluded shade by a park bench you weep in his arms,
 from sheer disbelieving joy.

 The three weeks you have together pass too quickly.  There isn't as much
 time alone as you would like, but when you can you see him, and remember
 what it's like to love him, to feel him loving you.  You watch him
 obsessively, cataloging his every expression, his smell, his taste.

 But there is a very small something present that was not here last summer.
 After New Year's you cannot deny that this dark something is here.  It sits
 between you, a small but growing sense of distance.  He holds you close,
 but there is something between you, something you feel in spite of skin
 against skin.  His dark eyes look at you, but they do not completely see
 you.  With a desperation you don't comprehend you close your own eyes and
 try not to notice.

 The spring semester is not as easy as fall.  You're preoccupied.  Your A's
 drop to B's.  You can't seem to concentrate enough to study as well as you
 did before.  You work out obsessively at the campus gym, until you are in
 better shape even than at the height of football season last year.  At the
 end of the semester you agree to do a monthlong stint on a junior ROTC
 event which will garner you extra points upon graduation.  You go home
 late, in mid-June.  You know that Randall has been home weeks now.

 You call him the day after you reach Cascade.  He sounds different on the
 phone, but he comes over.  While he sits at the table drinking a soda Sally
 bustles over and congratulates him on his engagement.  You listen and smile
 with your numb lips.  He's engaged.  He's getting married.  It's as if the
 fact has been spoken in Swahili.  You don't understand.  It doesn't make
 any sense to you.

 Later, when you're alone, Randall tells you about Julie.  His face is
 sheepish, pained when he meets your eyes.  But he cannot hide the glow of
 his happiness.  You hug him, and hear your voice saying that it's okay,
 that you understand.  You don't.  You are paralyzed with shock.  He doesn't
 love you any longer.  He loves someone else, a woman, a woman he is going
 to marry.  He mumbles something about you being in the wedding party, but
 doesn't pursue it.

 After he leaves you go up to your room and lie down on your neatly-made
 bed.  When Sally comes up to ask you if you want dinner you tell her no.
 Calmly you say that you're a little tired, and you're calling it an early
 night.  Your father is out at a function, and your brother is absent, as
 always.  When Sally leaves for the evening the house is almost eerily
 silent.  Nothing but the rustle of leaves on the oak tree outside your window.

 Your mind is curiously blank when you get up.  You don't remember deciding
 to get up, but there you are, walking into the bathroom.  You run a bath,
 the hottest water you can stand.  You survey your naked body in the mirror
 as if seeing it for the first time.  Young, strong, a very beautiful body.

 You sit in the tub until the water is cold, and then dry off mechanically.
 In your bedroom you choose neatly pressed chinos, a crisp button-down
 shirt.  Your favorite old loafers, which you shine with a chamois before
 you put them on.

 In your father's study it smells like sweet pipe tobacco.  You can remember
 when you were very, very small, coming in here and showing your father your
 first report card.  The time when your father told you and your brother
 that your mother would not be coming home.  The day you told your father
 the team was going to the state championships.  You've never been in this
 room without the excuse of a momentous occasion.  Now is no different, for
 all that your father will not be home for hours yet.

 In the top left drawer of the desk your father keeps his gun.  You aren't
 supposed to know about it, but you overheard him arguing with your mother
 one night, years ago, and you learned where he kept it.  It feels
 startlingly heavy in your hand.

 You sit in the study for four hours, until your father's car comes to the
 driveway.  Without any sense of alarm you take the gun with you up to your
 room.  You can't quite remember what you did for the past four hours, but
 the weight of the revolver in your hand reassures you.

 Later you don't really know whether or not you intended to shoot yourself.
 It doesn't really seem all that important.  But you keep the revolver in
 your room the rest of the summer.  Your father doesn't miss it.  He
 probably hasn't thought about his gun in years.  At first you think that it
 will be fine under your pillow, but that seems a little too dangerous, so
 you put it between the mattress and box springs of your bed.  The grip is
 angled so that you can reach it easily.

 You only see Randall two more times that summer.  Both are social events,
 and neither time do you speak candidly with him.  You smile and say the
 things you are supposed to say.  And each time you think of the gun under
 your mattress, and you know that if things get worse, you have an option.

 When you return to South Carolina in August, it is with a profound sense of
 relief.

 You have no social life, but you don't want one.  You don't date anyone,
 because you can't seem to find interest in anyone.  You do volunteer work
 when your classes are no longer challenging enough.  People begin to
 recognize you as a dependable person: quiet, sincere, dedicated.  You tutor
 students in history, your favorite subject.  You become what you've always
 thought you could be.  A very good person in every way.  People trust you,
 people depend on you.  In their need for you you find a kind of
 identification.  The jagged hole inside you seems to begin to be filled by
 duties, responsibilities, goals and achievements.

 The invitation to Randall's wedding is on heavy cream paper, embossed and
 formal.  The wedding will be in June.  You will not be there.

 You spend the summer after your sophomore year teaching at a summer camp,
 working evenings at a tiny resort grocery store.  And the summer after that
 you attend an intensive eight-week course preparatory to joining the
 military.  You're busy, and you believe you are happy.  There isn't time to
 be unhappy.  There is too much work to be done.

 The men in your Army unit call you Brother Jim, because of your monastic
 ways.  You smile when they say it, because they don't really mean it in a
 jeering way.  They simply don't quite understand you.  But they do respect
 you, and that's enough.

 You have shed many of the habits of your youth.  You no longer drink very
 much, and your brief flirtation with smoking fell by the wayside long ago.
 But you keep your sidearm under the mattress.  You can no longer remember
 when you began doing this.  It's simply habit.

 You meet a man named Ronald White, during Zero Week.  He looks so much like
 Randall that you can't stop staring at him, finding reasons to be around
 him.  He becomes your friend, enduring the two months of arduous Ranger
 training at your side for the most part.  When training is complete you
 have two weeks before you have to report for duty.  He invites you to stay
 with his family in Florida, and you meet his smiling wife, his three
 jubilant children.  You sit on his patio and drink iced tea from a sweaty
 glass, and wonder if this is what Randall is doing right now.  Barbecuing
 burgers on the grill, keeping an eye on his son as he swigs dark brown beer
 from a bottle.

 Ron is kind, and you like him very much.  You say goodbye with genuine
 regret.  You doubt you will see him again.

 One morning you report for duty to be told by the colonel that you have
 been promoted to captain.  The news takes you completely by surprise.  Some
 men from your unit insist on taking you out for a beer to celebrate, and
 you arrive home slightly drunk and astonishingly happy.  On the answering
 machine you hear your father's voice.  Randall and his wife and young son
 have been killed in a car accident.  Your father thought you should know.
 Considering what good friends you two were.

 You get a dispensation to go home for the funeral.  Randall is not a family
 member, but you have leave time before your new posting; it isn't hard to
 get permission to go a few days early.

 The day of the funeral is gloomy, with slow, sad rain that trickles under
 the collar of your dress uniform, making you shiver.  You stand apart from
 the crowd of mourners, staring at the caskets.  It seems so impersonal.
 You don't even know anyone anymore.  Why are you here?

 At home your father tiptoes around you.  He doesn't know what to make of
 this silent, brooding man who is his son.  You don't see your brother.  It
 doesn't bother you.

 The next morning, after your father has gone to the office, you sort
 through the things in your closet.  Your father has said something about
 taking what you want, but there's only one thing.  You have to hunt for
 some time before you find the home movie you made, years ago.  It's hidden
 inside a box that once held the pieces of a model airplane.  One of
 Steven's.

 For an extra fee, the shop can put the movie onto videotape before you have
 to leave.  You wonder if they watch the videos.  You don't particularly
 care one way or the other.  It is ancient history.

 In your spartan new quarters in Virginia one night you take out the tape
 and play it.  You watch two boys making joyful love in a boy's room filled
 with trophies and models and posters of popular athletes.  You masturbate
 grimly, and come whispering Randall's name into the chill air-conditioned
 air.  You turn off the machine and crawl into your bed, and finally you are
 able to cry, although it is so hard it hurts everywhere.  You cry for what
 you had, what you lost.  You cry because you will not ever have that again,
 because he is gone.  You weep for the aching place inside your chest that
 has never gone away but which you always dreamed, somewhere deep inside
 you, would be filled again.  The place that will never fill up again.

 You take the gun from where it lies securely angled under your mattress,
 and you hold it to your head.  You can't think of any reasons not to pull
 the trigger, and so many to go ahead.  You're crying so hard you feel as if
 you're going to vomit, and then you finally do vomit, and for whatever
 reason the bullet that is supposed to go into your brain never quite does.
 Instead you fire it during target practice a week later, unthinking.

 When morning comes you shave carefully, and report for duty.

 For ten years nothing touches you.  Nothing enters the shroud of isolation
 you have erected about yourself.  There is a woman who is interested in
 you.  She courts you, an odd role-reversal so surprising to you that you
 can't think of a reason to object.  Your marriage, you think, will fill the
 void.  But you look at her while she sleeps one night, and you know that
 you're only pretending to feel something.  The feeling you are supposed to
 have died on a rainy Washington highway in a resounding crunch of plastic
 and metal and glass, and no amount of pretending will bring it back to life.

 You have grown tired, and bitter.  You can't see the point in continuing.
 At night you take your sidearm out and clean it obsessively.  Fairly soon
 now, yes.  You aren't quite sure when, but soon.  After all, you've only
 been delaying it, haven't you?  Years and years now.

 The noises and smells and strange flares of vision come suddenly.  They
 terrify you, but you learned long ago that anger is a better feeling than
 fear, so you mask your terror with harsh words.  You are so tired.  This is
 too much.  No one can understand it, least of all you.  Not your captain,
 not your ex-wife.  No one.

 You look up in the hospital MRI lab and you see a doctor come in.  Maybe he
 has the answer, but he looks so terribly young.  How could this guy
 possibly be a doctor already?  You're ready with a cutting comment,
 prepared with your physical presence, your looming bulk.

 You look into his staggeringly blue eyes and something inside you stirs.
 Something old, and weak, and as frail as brittle antique glass.  You take
 the card he offers and you stand stock-still after he leaves, frozen in
 place for an unbreathing moment.

 When you find out who he really is all your fears come to the fore.  You've
 been fooled, you've been had, and you don't really know why you suddenly
 remember that dreadful afternoon in your father's kitchen, listening to
 Sally congratulate your lover on his engagement.  You just know that you
 were wrong.

 But his quiet, energetic voice won't let you go.  It holds you, not the
 words but the tone, and somehow you start to believe him.  You try not to,
 and try to escape what can only be a trap, a lie, a trick that you're too
 canny to fall for again.  He knocks the breath out of you and the truck
 passes over you both.  He is as stunned to have saved your life as you are
 to be saved.

 He is a whirlwind that changes everything.  Your defenses don't work.  He
 infuriates you, and you long for the sound of his voice.  He moves into
 your home, and changes your environment until you almost don't recognize it
 yourself.  Everything is changing, you are changing, and you can't decide
 whether to be ecstatic or horrified.

 One night you lie listening to the steady beat of his heart downstairs.
 You take out your gun and study it in the blue moonlight.  You smile,
 because you no longer need it.

 The next evening you listen to him talk, and your silence finally makes him
 pause.  He looks at you cautiously, all enormous eyes and pure
 concentration.  You reach out without thinking, tracing the line of his jaw
 with one trembling finger.  You can't hide the feeling inside you.  It has
 filled you up, brimming over the terrible chasm that once was your heart,
 overflowing and trickling through you until there is no part of you
 untouched.  You can't think of anything to say, but you watch his eyes
 widen, darken, and you know that he already knows.

 Later, much later, you lie on your broad bed in the darkness, your legs
 entwined with his, his breath soft and slow on your chest.  He looks up at
 you and smiles.  What are you thinking about, he asks quietly.

 You pause, and then smile reflectively.

 Oak Creek won the state football championship my senior year.  Did I ever
 tell you about that?

 No, he says.  You never told me.

 I want to tell you.

 I want to hear.
 ---

 "There is no nurse like beauty, he mused to himself, tears flowing. Save
 perhaps love. And between the two, the soul can never be sick."
         (Charles Duffie, _The Mole and the Owl_)

 END

 
 some sources say she protected men favored by Frigg, while others say she
 and Frigg were one and the same.  Hlin "kisses away the tears of mourners."

 The novel _The Mole and the Owl_ was originally posted to the website of
 the Realist Wonder Society in 1995, after years of looking unsuccessfully
 for a publisher.  Thankfully, this past fall Hampton Roads Publishing
 Company decided to publish the book, with new illustrations.  You can find
 the first five chapters of this transcendent, magically beautiful love
 story at http://www.wondersociety.com/.  And the book should now be
 available at your local stores.  Quotes used without permission.