Winter Heart

by B. G. Thomas

  Now? You want me now? With bad breath and no showers for days and bedhead and….

  “Thank God you put those underwear back on because there is no way I would be able to resist you another moment if you hadn’t. And call me a fucking fool, but I want to wait. I want to wait until it hurts.”

  Then in complete shock, tears stinging his eyes, Wyatt went to Kevin.

  He wants to wait.

  That was a good thing.

  He climbed into the bed, and Kevin swept his arms around him and rolled him back to the spot where he’d slept all night. They kissed. They both got hard.

  And somehow they waited.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THEY HAD hot cereal for breakfast and then decided to head out into the snow. Because “There’s something I want to see,” Kevin told Wyatt.

  They bundled up and found that it was snowing again, big heavy flakes, but when they walked past the caretaker’s cabin, they saw Gryphon and Saffron sitting at their little table (under the roof overhang, of course) as usual (even in the snow). And they assured Kevin and Wyatt that this time they really weren’t supposed to get more than another inch (they did have their fire pit going, and Kevin couldn’t help but be reminded of Cauley’s).

  “I hope so,” Wyatt called down to them. “Otherwise we might never get out of here.”

  “I don’t think that would be so bad,” Kevin said and was delighted when he saw his little bear blush. Wyatt was wearing that cute bear hat and scarf, furthering his little bearhood, and… God. I’m falling, and I am falling hard.

  As if he hadn’t been in love with Wyatt for a long time.

  Since the parking lot was plowed—“Oh, look!” Kevin said as he pointed—doing what he wanted to do wasn’t going to be as difficult as he’d imagined. Gryphon had actually used the snowblower to clear a path as far as the steps. Something most people who came to Camp Sanctuary almost universally came to think of as The Steps.

  There were sixty of them.

  And after a week, or even just a weekend, of walking up and down those fuckers, it seemed a hundred and sixty at least. But it was better than the old way one reached the upper plateau, where most people camped. That way had been “stairs” made from natural rocks and various-sized slabs of stone that crisscrossed up the slope and were scary as hell to climb in the middle of the night. The newer steps, all sixty of them, were steep, but better. Far better.

  Today they were covered in snow, but not as much as Kevin might have expected. Again he’d been blessed. Somewhere he wanted (needed?) to go was located up top on the plateau. And the blessing was that between here and there were a lot of trees growing very closely together, many of them pines with wide, overreaching branches. Pine trees stayed green instead of turning skeletal, and they had blocked a lot of the snow. The steps really weren’t nearly as bad as he had worried they might be. His mission might very well succeed.

  “We can do this,” Kevin said aloud.

  “You want us to climb those in the snow?” Wyatt looked at him incredulously. “Today?”

  “Wait here,” Kevin said and dashed off and was soon back with an oversized push broom borrowed from Gryphon.

  “I can do that,” Gryphon had said. “I was going to anyway.”

  “I got this,” Kevin replied. At least he thought he had it.

  These were The Steps after all.

  Sixty of them.

  Covered in snow!

  But sixty. Not a hundred and sixty. And not all that much snow.

  Thank you, pine trees!

  And then, together, he and Wyatt cleared them faster than they both had expected, and in less than an hour, they had reached the top.

  What they saw before them was breathtaking.

  What was normally a football-field-sized expanse of grass, surrounded by a wall of trees, was now white, white, and white. The trees, usually thick with green, looked like black-and-gray skeletal hands reaching for the sky at the far side of the snowy vastness.

  This was the place they camped every year?

  And it was cold. There was no protection from the wind that swept over that field of white, and their breath swirled around them in smoky plumes.

  “Gosh,” Wyatt whispered.

  Kevin only nodded.

  He looked down to his left, north, to the area where he’d camped the last few years. He no longer set up at Avalon, far to the south. Now his tent was among friends (although he did set up back into the trees a bit; he wanted some privacy).

  He turned back to Wyatt. “I know you’re cold, and the snow is deep, but is there any way you’d go with me down to the end?” He pointed the way he’d been looking. “I want to see what it looks like down where I camp.”

  Wyatt looked that way and his expression turned contemplative. Finally, he shrugged, looked up at Kevin, and said, “Okay.”

  Kevin could see Wyatt wasn’t sure, and he determined then that if the going was even half as tough as it looked, they’d turn around and come back.

  “After all,” Wyatt said then, “we’ve come all this way, right?”

  Kevin smiled. He took Wyatt’s right hand so that the little bear would be to his left, walking closer to the tree line—what there was of it—and they waded into the snow. It was at least two feet deep here, and the going wasn’t easy. He was afraid it really wasn’t going to work, when Wyatt started laughing.

  Kevin looked and saw Wyatt staggering around like a drunk man, a big grin on his face.

  “Laughing, baby bear?”

  Wyatt nodded. “What do you think?” Wyatt lifted his furry scarf to show his ears.

  “What?” Kevin asked.

  “My earrings. What do you think of my testicle earrings?” Wyatt weighed invisible testes with the palms of his hands. “Do you think they’ll ever go back down to where they’re supposed to go?”

  “We’ll get them down where they’re supposed to be,” Kevin said with a smile.

  “We?” Wyatt asked.

  Kevin nodded, and Wyatt grinned hugely, and then they really started to plow their way into the snow.

  “Be careful, baby.” Baby? Had he just called Wyatt “baby”?

  Wyatt laughed more, despite the fact the snow was sometimes hitting his balls.

  “Now what are you laughing at?” Kevin felt a little zing! With everything this man-boy or boy-man had gone through, he was laughing! Howard was such a fucking fool for letting him go.

  Could I be lucky enough…?

  “Thinking of another joke.”

  Kevin grinned. “Tell it, then.”

  “You sure?” Wyatt asked and spiraled an arm to keep from falling.

  “Of course,” Kevin said, lending his strength to help Wyatt stay on his feet.

  “Okay! If you’re sure.” (pant, pant) “These three buddies all decide to go to a ski lodge for the weekend.” (pant, pant) “But when they get there, there’s been some kind of mix-up and there aren’t enough rooms. Not only that, but they’re going to have to share a bed. All three of them!” Wyatt panted again. “Then right in the middle of the night, the guy on the right wakes up and says, ‘Whoa! I had this wild dream that somebody gave me a hand job!’ And the guy on the left wakes up and, unbelievably, he says, ‘I had the same dream!’ Then the guy in the middle wakes up and says, ‘Wow! I just had this really vivid dream that I was skiing!’”

  Kevin started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. He realized he’d even heard it before, but with Wyatt telling it, it was just so silly adorable naughty funny. He looked at the little bear, and his expression was so sweet it melted Kevin’s heart.

  Just don’t go getting ideas, he thought. Because if I ever get you into my bed, it will only ever be the two of us.

  They didn’t get much farther before Kevin saw something he hadn’t expected. It was enough to bring him to a gasping stop.

  This part of Camp had always been called the Plateau, but somehow he had never realized how apropos that was. He had always thought the protecti
ve circle of trees around the field where most people camped was set right in the middle of a forest.

  No.

  A ring of trees was exactly what it was. But not a forest.

  The land dropped off in a very steep slope, and to his shock he could see for miles. He could see great vastnesses of farms and fields, usually covered in corn and wheat and soybeans, now buried in snow. He could see roads—thin black crisscrossing lines—cleared by plows, and here and there a moving car.

  It looked so desolate, and yet at the same time—

  “It’s beautiful,” Wyatt said with a gasp of his own.

  They stood there for what seemed like a very long time until Kevin noticed Wyatt was shivering and realized his own feet were cold—wet and very cold.

  “Let’s go back,” he said quietly.

  Wyatt turned to him. “But didn’t you want to go down to the end?”

  “I’ve seen what I really came here to see,” he said. How different would the view be down there?

  So they went back, as quickly as they dared, and helped each other down the steps to the bottom and then past Main Hall and across the parking lot, and as they were passing the caretaker’s cabin, he heard their names being called.

  They both stopped and looked down the small slope and saw Saffron standing at the door to her cabin. “We’ve been watching for you. We have hot chocolate.”

  “Oh, yummy!” Wyatt exclaimed.

  “We’re wet and cold,” Kevin called back. “We need to change.”

  “Take it with you!” She grinned and ducked inside and was out in a moment, all bundled up, and came up the little path and handed them a big Thermos. “Enjoy.”

  “You are a goddess,” Wyatt said.

  She bowed her head. “You honor me.” Saffron looked back up, a sweet smile on her ageless face. “I but serve the goddess.”

  They all hugged, and then Kevin insisted they get back to the cabin before they get frostbite. He hadn’t been able to feel his toes for a while.

  The cabin was very warm, and they both saw the huge pile of wood next to the stove.

  “Gryphon,” Wyatt said.

  “Must have been,” Kevin agreed, because the wood had been nearly gone this morning. He’d meant to restock it with the stack next to the cabin’s steps but had forgotten in his mission to get up top. He opened the stove’s door, and sure enough, it blazed. Gryphon had even built up the fire.

  He turned to Wyatt, who was rubbing at his arms despite the warmth of the room.

  “Let’s get out of these clothes and into something dry,” he said.

  They both stripped down to their underwear, and Kevin couldn’t help but admire the flesh revealed—Wyatt’s legs were sexily hairy, but not overly so—but that’s about all he really saw. Their underwear, his own long johns and Wyatt’s T-shirt and red-and-black boxer shorts, were dry. But their feet, on the other hand, were wet!

  “Get on the bed!” he commanded, and Wyatt did as he was told. Kevin climbed onto the bearskin-covered mattress on the other side, took Wyatt’s feet into his lap, and rubbed them rapidly.

  “Gods, that hurts and feels good at the same time!” Wyatt cried.

  Then to Kevin’s surprise, Wyatt pulled one of Kevin’s feet to him and began to rub it as well. Kevin immediately saw what Wyatt meant by the pain/pleasure, and soon he was really feeling his feet again.

  It occurred to him then that what they were doing was very intimate. It wasn’t like you held another man’s feet every day. Or rubbed them. Especially in your lap.

  He realized Wyatt had very sexy feet. Strong, with cute, almost stubby, toes with just a smattering of hair on top. And the smell was nice. Musk. Man. Clean. Or as clean as they could be when neither of them had been able to shower in a day or so.

  God. He thought he might be getting an erection!

  Wyatt was on Kevin’s second foot when he stopped and simply cradled it. He looked up and met Kevin’s eyes. “They’re so big.”

  Kevin gulped. “Is that a bad thing?”

  Wyatt shook his head slowly and then pulled Kevin’s foot closer into his lap. Massaged it slowly. Deeply. “I like them.” Then ever so quietly he added, “They smell good too.”

  “They do?” Kevin asked, and blushed, because that was just what he’d been thinking about Wyatt’s feet.

  “Oh, yes. They smell like man.”

  Yes.

  Like man.

  They locked eyes then for the longest time, holding each other’s feet like two meditating Indians who had somehow gotten too close together.

  And then Wyatt was tickling Kevin’s feet, and Kevin laughed and tried to yank them away, but damn, that little bear was stronger than he looked. So he started tickling Wyatt’s back, and Wyatt shrieked with laughter, and in no time they were rolling about tickling each other everywhere.

  Finally: “Stop! Stop!” Wyatt was all but screaming. “Uncle! Uncle!”

  They laughed and collapsed back onto the fur and gasped to catch their breath.

  Then Kevin remembered the hot chocolate, and they put on some clothes, Kevin reluctantly (and by the furtive glances directed at him, he thought Wyatt felt the same way). He liked the way Wyatt looked in those black-and-red plaid underwear, the crotch full with what they contained and the way the soft fabric clung to his round butt. Dress they did though; blazing stove or not, they didn’t want to catch their deaths of cold. And when Kevin saw Wyatt struggling to put on a second pair of socks, he gave the little bear a pair of his own. These slipped on much easier.

  “Your big feet,” Wyatt said with a sexy grunt.

  “You like them,” Kevin said, surprising himself.

  Wyatt nodded. “A lot.”

  And then before they jumped each other’s bones then and there, they had hot chocolate.

  THEY HAD sandwiches for lunch. They’d each picked up meat and a loaf of bread on their way to Camp, so there was more than enough. That was when Kevin noticed Wyatt’s book. It was sitting on the little table next to the bed. It had been turned in a way that he could just now see the title.

  “Eat, Pray, Love?” he asked.

  Wyatt immediately looked wary. “You’re not going to make fun, are you?”

  Make fun? “Why would I make fun of you?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “There’s a lot of jokes about that book. I don’t know why either. People make fun. They even had an episode of South Park about it called ‘Eat, Pray, Queef.’”

  Kevin shrugged. “Huh?”

  Wyatt gave him a most curious look back.

  “I don’t get it,” Kevin said.

  “You don’t get what?” Wyatt asked.

  “What’s qweef?”

  And he could see Wyatt was about to laugh but then shook his head instead. “Never mind.”

  Kevin went to the little table and picked the book up. “Actually I love this book,” he said. “I’ve read it twice.”

  “Really?” Wyatt asked. He looked like a puppy, afraid it might be about to get hit.

  Then Kevin realized what this was about. “Howard. He made fun of you about this book, didn’t he?” He sat down at the table next to Wyatt.

  Wyatt was looking away.

  He reached out and touched Wyatt’s hand. “Fuck Howard,” Kevin said.

  Wyatt jerked in his seat.

  Oh, sweet baby bear. “Don’t let him own you, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt yanked his hand away. “Just like that?” he cried, and snapped his fingers. “Just like that? I’m supposed to get over him? Just leap and the fucking net will appear? I’m supposed to believe it’s that easy?”

  Kevin pulled back.

  “Like you’re supposed to get over someone named Cauley? Just like that?”

  What happened?

  One minute they were laughing and flirting and rubbing feet—God! That had been sexy, and it was feet, just feet!—and eating sandwiches.

  And then he noticed Wyatt’s book.

  And then there was something about “qweefs,
” whatever that meant.

  And then he saw that Wyatt was hurting because of that fucker Howard.

  And then he had simply offered some advice and…

  God.

  I am fortune’s fool.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Wyatt, I’m sorry.

  Wyatt looked away.

  “I really am.”

  And, oh God. Please have that be forgiveness in his eyes. Please, please have that be forgiveness.

  “I’m sorry, Kevin,” Wyatt whispered.

  “There is no reason for you to be sorry, Wyatt. It was me! I am so sorry!”

  Oh, the look in those eyes!

  And they’re looking at me!

  AND OH, the way Kevin was looking at him!

  Wyatt felt ashamed. How could he be angry at this sweet man?

  Explain! Explain, you fool!

  Howard. “He was like—”

  Like what? What was he like? What was the man who had been in his life for ten years like? Sweet? Mean? Funny? Scary? Thoughtful? Thoughtless? So good in the beginning and then for some reason, slowly and inevitably, changing into something, someone, else? Yes. Howard was all those things. And he was…. Oh gods! He was…

  “—like a cancer in me, Kevin! Slowly killing me. And you think something is wrong, and you can’t go to the doctor because if you do, then you will know. And you don’t want to know because then what are you going to do? You’ll know you’re dying! Or that you’ll have to go through the hell of treatment before you might survive.”

  Wyatt began to cry and cursed himself for it.

  “He saved me, Kevin! Howard came to me on a very dark night, and he saved me. He gave me everything I had ever wanted… and then….” Wyatt’s throat seized up and a sob wracked his body. “And then Howard took it away!”

  This time when Kevin reached out to take his hand, Wyatt let him. He let that big hand take his, swallow his, and it was warm and soft and made him feel safe, the way a big man’s hands always did.

  “I should have gone to the doctor, Kevin! I should have left him years ago. They all said it. All my friends. Some more softly than others. Some louder! Asher made it clear! He told me that I was too good for Howard, and I didn’t believe it. He said I was better off without him. Sloan was nicer about it. Even Scott, who could be a Grade A asshole, was nicer about it!”