The hardest part, as he had found out, was not about not touching him. Nor was it sober thinking and talking. The latter had come more easily than expected.

The hardest part was looking at him and not wanting him to come over and touch in some way or form. The idea that maybe he no longer wished to. The perceived rejection, even though he knew from the way his own blood drew him to the other, that wasn’t really there. But unlike other people he could not see it in his eyes. His voice had given away none of it. And he dreaded the attempt of glimpsing the other man’s aura, in part because of what he might see and in the other part for fear he might not see anything at all.

Once the door fell shut behind him it took everything he had to fight down the urge to turn around, knock on that door and be done with a very futile attempt of changing his ways. Then again, that would get both of them killed on the long run. So why was it so hard to leave a house he couldn’t have cared less about, had it not been for that one door.

He had to go back. Resume his work, though there had not been much of it lately with the teams going quietly about their business. Still, appearances had to be kept. A lesson had to be learned. A skin had to be shed.

At home another decision would be waiting for him. One he had started to dread from the beginning and now grown to hate as time went by. He had been pushing it off for too long. And what about her? She, too, had been in love with a child. Would she really desire to be with a man instead? His blood would allow for only one answer. But the answer wasn’t what mattered. It would be all about how she said it. What she did as she said the words. Words that didn’t matter. Giving smiles and promisses that mattered just as little.

Then there would be a path laid out for the future. Then there would be a new dawn. A new era. A new him. And the final answer to the question whether he could in fact like the man better than he had loved the boy himself.