Arran came late in the fall, it is winter now. We didn't talk much. He mostly told me about my son Edge and Adele.

Arran and Adele are getting married, I will be invited to their wedding.

I doubt I will go.

He said I had to decide the next time he would come, because Adele postponed the wedding 9 months, she refused to get married with a big stomach. Arran said I would become an uncle.

I was happy for him, am happy for him. But I don't want to go to the wedding, don't want to ruin their family.

I don't want to meet my son. All I have done in my life is kill and hate, and hate and kill.

And I hate that. I hate I could never be White. Always a half-code, always an outsider.

I don't want to fill my sons life with hate and violence. I want him to be happy. Not to know all the terrible things I have done. I don't want him around a heart eating psychopath.

And most of all, I don't want to leave Gabriel. He said, I should go and he would be here when I got back. He said he would wait here until I came home again.

I don't want to leave him, I cant leave him. Im scared if I do I will never find him again.

It is winter now and it is cold even in the denn. Most days I live as my animal self, hunting, eating and sleeping. Gabriel hasn't been here mutch this winter.

He never is.

But he is here now, laying on my sheepskins with a fire warming him. He looks so soft and perfectly beautiful sleeping their.

I sit on the other side of the denn and looks at him. I know if I move closer I will touch him. I see the fire dancing in his dark hair. I see him breathing in his sleep, which is good because I don't hear it.

He is always so silent these days.

When he sleeping like this he looks peaceful, full of bliss and indecence.

The trick is to stay in the present, get lost in the detail of him and enjoy the time we have together.

I want to touch him but I don't. I keep still. Just watching and drawing him.

—{~$~}—

Winter is over and spring has come. The winter has been hash and spring has been wet, it is wet. But I don't mind, not when sitting underneath a tree with Gabriel watching the grey sunrise.

I can't help thinking back to the war, when we camped out, the two of us alone. I can't help but think of how I treated him back then.

Nathan, you got to stay positive, be careful with your thoughts.

So instead I think of our time in Geneva and how much I enjoyed it. That makes my mind jump to the bunker, kissing and touching.

Focus Nathan you have to stay in the present.

But it doesn't take my trederus mind more than a moment to jump right back to the kissing, the nice stuff and the love making.

"What are you thinking about?" Gabriel asks. Shit I must have drifted of in my thoughts.

"You" I say and look back into his eyes. The gold turning faster now. It must have shown on my face, what I was thinking. Because his eyes darkened, they have a hunger to them.

The last time he had looked that way at me, we had been staying with Ledger. We had had a break and used it to become closer, to map out each others bodys perfectly.

I leaned back with closed eyes and raveled in the memory.

Gabriel has always been perfectly beautiful. But in moments like this I can't stand to look at him. He is too perfect, to hard to look at without touching. So instead I ask something I had always wondered, but never dared to ask.

"Was there ever someone before me, that you loved, I mean."

"I haven't loved you." My breath leaves my lungs and I feel sick. He wouldn't be so cruel to lie to me. "I love you, Nathan. In present tense, not past. There is a differences." He winks at me and I realize I started looking at him again. I truly can't keep my eyes of him.

"Fuck off" I say and pushes him. But when I touch him, he is gone and the only thing my fingers have touched is a memory.

I look back at the sunrise and pretend he's still there when I say the hardest words there has ever crossed my lips.

"I love you too Gabriel. I love you, too" and I smile because, he loves me. The rain must have gotten in my eyes, because they are as wet as the rest of me.

I think about the time with Ledger again and it makes my inside burn. I try to distract myself by thinking of what Ledger had said about the earth will help and what it means.

How to feel the essence, but all I feel is hands on my body and lips ghosting my spine. I revel in it, just a moment longer before I'm changing into my animal skin and is running.

—{~$~}—

It is raining again. I am always wet, we are having a wet summer this year. But that doesn't stop Gabriel in dropping his clothes and going for a swim.

I jump in with him we splash around like children.

I feel real joy for the first time in a long time. I feel 20 and not 80 like I did three years ago.

I has already been two years since I build my home with Gabriel in the denn.

I hunt for meat, fish and forrige for greens. I even trade some game for food with Celia.

"You look good, Nathan" she says when I go and eat with her that night.

It have become a tradition that every new moon, we go to keep Celia company. When I say we, I mean Gabriel and me, even if Celia doesn't see him she doesn't look at me with pity.

Not anymore.

I love her for it. Arran always do, always beating around the bush trying avoid the subject or try to make me see sense, that Gabriel isn't here even when he is.

Arran must think I have gone mad and maybe I have. Maybe i have alway been half mad.

Celia accepts what I have become. She listens to what I tell and even asks about how Gabriel is doing. So I tell her everything about him. I feel my sanity being broken apart peace by peace.

I feel like when Celia had me shackled to the cage, breaking me down to mold me into something else.

—{~$~}—

The more Gabriel is here the longer he stays. He is the only thing that keep me human these days.

When Arran and Adele came to visit with their kid. I just growled at them to stay away. I didn't go to the wedding. I didn't see the reason to go and ruin Arran's big day.

I love Arran, more than he knows. And that is why I stay away, he is better of without me. It is my fault he has no family. No mother, no farther and no sisters. It is my fault has no one beside Adele and his own kid.

I try not to think about Arren to much. It helps that Gabriel comes more often. I would be lost without him.

We talk about everything and nothing. The past, the present and the future. I like it the best when we talk of the future. Gabriel talks about how much me misses reading.

I don't understand who could want more than being free. The kind of free we are.

Even if I don't understand need for books I ask him.

"Which one do you miss the most?" It is a safe topic to talk about.

"The once with a happy ending." He grins. "No just any book. I miss the feel of the pages, the weight in my hands. Escaping the world just for a short while."

That I get.