JANUARY 1993. SHORTLY AFTER HIS sixth birthday, Luuk was sprawled on the carpeted floor of his small bedroom. It was soft and blue underneath him, like a cloud, and moonlight streamed in from the small window above his bed.

It was late. But he couldn’t sleep — his room occupied his thoughts. His mama had redecorated it as a birthday present, but he didn’t quite like her choices. He thought about his classmate Jakob, whose room he had seen once, at a birthday party. It was nicer than Luuk’s. Filled not only with car and dinosaur toys, but also things that Jakob seemed to love: posters of the solar system and wall stickers of dogs, the boy even had a lamp that looked like a disco ball. Luuk was too afraid to tell his mam he also wanted such an uncoordinated, but loved, room. Once, he’d seen a miniature python statue — nature was one of his biggest interests — and he had wanted it so badly, but he knew his mam would have never agreed to buying it. His room was supposed to be neat, blue but not too boyish.

That was what he was thinking about, when he stopped being alone. Luuk should have noticed it when someone entered his room. He wasn’t often alone around his bedtime, after all. That night, though, he was particularly tired, and perhaps a bit sick — the cold was spreading around his school like wildfire — so when a man picked him up and took off his thick, woolen sweater, he barely paid any attention. Distantly, he did think that it was nice, since Luuk was never really able to sleep in sweaters anyways.

Years later, he would wonder if that had made him an easy target. His naive complicity.

As his back hit his mattress, a face appeared above him. Thick glasses, a reddish beard, green-blue eyes. It was ugly. Not really a face he would expect to see next to his mother’s. And yet there the man was, every day. He thought about how funny it would be if the man wasn’t a human at all. But a panda, bright blue and his mama’s favourite animal, taking him to bed. Wouldn’t that be better? Sometimes he made his mama put on a nature documentary, and whenever they happened to talk about pandas, his mam would turn around and say: Those big things, we don’t have them here, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had? Once, Luuk had read about a man in China being killed by a panda in captivity. They’re just as dangerous as other bears, he had always wanted to tell her.

So that night, and every night to come, a blue panda put him to bed. For a moment, as bedsheets itched his back, he wondered if his t-shirt needed to be taken off, too. And that wonder, as it often did, led him to many more questions. Why was he allowed to have his clothes off sometimes, but not other times? His mam saw him naked sometimes, when he was too poorly to dress himself, and the Panda saw him naked often. Surely it wasn’t that big of a deal. It even seemed a little silly, paying for thin pants and t-shirts for summer time, when it was hot enough out to just neglect clothes entirely.

Luuk often wished that he could keep his mind where it needed to be, rooted in the moment, even though he never really understood what was happening. Because the Blue Panda occasionally spoke to him, and he always got upset when Luuk didn’t answer fast enough. And yet, he was always busy looking for an escape, a doorway or an open window. He’d slip away, but he never went far. Another boy — one with his face and stature — would take his place. Sometimes, he was jealous of this child — when the Panda was nice to him, Luuk wanted the attention for himself. Other times, he wondered why the boy was still alive, why he didn’t jump in front of a train like his sister had done.

That night, like the others before it, passed in a blur, in silence only occasionally broken by noises he couldn’t quite comprehend. Always, he found himself looking away from the boy with his face. He thought of anything, except for what was occurring in his bed.

✲ ✲ ✲

November 2002. He visited his father. Luuk’s parents had been divorced pretty much his whole life, so his father hadn’t been there a lot while he grew up. His presence especially dimmed once the Blue Panda entered his mother’s life. But one random day he decided that he wanted to try being there more — and wasn’t that just great?

It wasn’t like he and his father never talked. The man lived far away, in the middle of Germany, and never got the opportunity to show up without taking a day off of work. Luuk spoke to his papa at least once a month, so he hadn’t been abandoned, or anything, just left behind. During weekends, he would wait for the phone to ring. Recalling the disappointment he felt when the person on the other line turned out to be one of the Panda’s or his mother’s friends hurt. Once, he got a birthday call delayed by a week — only after his mama secretly called his father up herself, reminding the man to wish Luuk a happy birthday.

His father always asked the same questions: How old are you now? What do you like, I’ll send over a present. How’s school? And Luuk always answered, slow and timid, while distantly wondering if he was really that easy to forget.

That visit in 2002 wasn’t the first, he’d been coming around on and off since the early 2000s, when his pa suddenly moved back to Nijmegen. It was shortly after the Panda left, and Luuk’s mama started to warm up to the idea of seeing his father again — for your benefit, schat. Those visits weren’t memorable, though. They just sat on an old leather couch and watched television shows about the police and pawn shops.. They barely spoke, and Luuk often felt a flare of anger rising up from his heart to his throat. Do you even want me here? He had to stop himself from asking, or was this just mama’s idea?

His father lived in an old flat, probably made cheaply after the tweede wereldoorlog. There was nothing nice about its grey exterior, and the inside wasn’t pretty, either: the elevator had been built in later, an old lady once told Luuk, but it might as well not have been there — it was slow, and only the elderly residents and the lady on the third floor with young children used it. The stairwell reeked of urine, and rat droppings laid in nearly every corner. When he first saw the flat, he almost begged his ma to take him back home.

The surroundings were so depressing that Luuk began to wonder why his father had left. Surely, he couldn’t have afforded any better in Germany. Part of him felt bad for his pa, who worked in a cement factory and suffered from constant shoulder pains. But he also knew that his father could have lived a better life if he had never divorced his mama. He wouldn’t have been happier, but it seemed better to be miserable in a nice home than in a soulless flat. Quietly, his mind reminded him that he would have never met the Blue Panda if his father had stayed around. And maybe he didn’t really care that much about his father, about where the man was suffering. Perhaps Luuk’s pain had taught him how to be selfish.

But, in 2002 his father showed him something that he had never seen before: an old picture album with Luuk’s name written on the dusty, yellowed cover. His papa had found it while cleaning out his storage unit.

“I haven’t picked this thing up in three years,” his pa chuckled and handed him the book. “You were such a little thing back then, look.”

Cards were glued to the first page, some written by family he hadn’t heard from in ages, if ever, others from what he assumed to be old family friends, who he had never known. There were a few with his mama’s handwriting in them, like the ones she must have given to his papa, decorated with balloons on the cover, exclaiming I’M PREGNANT and IT’S A BOY on the inside. After that, the book was filled with images of Luuk — his first bath, his first steps, his old primary school friends celebrating his birthday — looking back at that child, he felt a deep sense of unfamiliarity. It was like waking up in the hospital without any memories, no way to know who you really were, and where you came from, and then looking in the mirror to see a stranger’s face staring back at you.

“Now, where has that boy gone?” his pa laughed awkwardly. What did his father see in him, which characteristic of his had not been there while those pictures were taken?

He automatically flipped through the pages. He saw the party his parents threw after his birth, saw himself sitting in a highchair, watched his hair grow and shorten. His sister’s eyes went from blue to green, something he had never noticed before. She was constantly there, standing next to him, hugging him, looking at the camera as if it could in any way hurt them. If she hadn’t died, he thought, then maybe he would have never changed in ways only his father had managed to pick up. Perhaps the Blue Panda would have never gotten the chance to hurt him. It made him sick, to realize how many things could have been different, how those differences could have avoided the Panda’s existence in his life.

“Luuk?” his father eventually asked.

Sometimes, when the Panda took him to bed, he could hear a voice ringing around his room. It wasn’t coming from him, or the Blue Panda — but from the boy with his face. It sounded like his own voice, but deeper, so harsh that it felt like a pressing in Luuk’s chest. An explosion waiting to happen. The sound, like his baby pictures, was unrecognizable mainly because of its similarity. It was undeniably his, but wrong.

Help, help, help.

Not right now, he’d say to the boy with his face. Can’t you see that I’m all the way over here?

What would have happened if Luuk had responded? Some days, he was tired of wondering, of not knowing what his own life meant, what it would — or could — bring.

The other half of the photo album was filled with old pictures of his sister alone. Many of them were obviously taken before Luuk had been born, others were taken shortly before she died, before she jumped in front of that train coming in from Zwolle. It was clear his pa had put them in the album just so he wouldn’t lose them. It made sense why his father never looked at the book. Three years prior, Luuk had been twelve, mostly ignored, and his sister had been dead for some time; so why had his papa looked at it then, and why had he never done it again?

Was it because he had missed his son, or his daughter, or the both of them? Even though Luuk had always been there, waiting for the phone to ring.

✲ ✲ ✲

August 2007. He finally left his childhood home to study in Amsterdam. He had already finished a biomedical opleiding in Nijmegen, but that was never something that he had actually wanted. It had been recommended by his mam and his teachers when he was fourteen, because biology had been his strongest subject, and everyone told him he was analytical enough to do it — whatever that meant for a teenager. Back then, he hadn’t yet learned that he could doubt his mother’s advice.

Back in high school, he had an acquaintance who ended up going to Amsterdam to become a social worker. She was also patient and attentive, and probably the kindest person he had met during school. They used to run into each other at parties, and she was the only other person his age who got drunk regularly. Luuk didn’t think of her often — they had never managed to become friends — but as he finished up his last year of vocational school he wondered if it was a route he could take as well. It wasn’t defiant to go from science to social work, or anything, so his mama wasn’t too upset when he shared his plans of going to Amsterdam — as long as he got his diploma first. Which had been part of his plans anyways, he hadn’t wanted to waste four years. So he graduated with grades just high enough to pass, and applied to ROC Amsterdam.

Never had he been away from home longer than two days at a time. And yet he hadn’t felt as nervous as he had expected. Finally, he could get away from the constant smell of the Panda — citrussy and woody — which still lingered in his room even after the thing left. It would probably be good for his mama, too. They never got the distance, the chance to take a breather after arguments, and perhaps it would be better if Luuk lived far away. Sometimes, when his mama looked at him, he could see that she knew something about what happened with the Blue Panda. In the lines of her face he could see the kind of hesitation he had only seen before in guilty people — like those mothers he saw in the news, sitting in a courthouse, waiting for brothers or husbands or fathers to be sentenced. Occasionally, the mother herself was being sentenced — for child neglect or endangerment.

But, Luuk had always found guilt hard to identify. It could have been any other feeling; sadness, the kind of shame a person feels only after being caught. An emotion that wouldn’t have been there if the person had never been confronted. It could have been anger, as well, which he hoped wasn’t the case. He didn’t want his mother to blame him, and in some way that kept him from talking to her about the Panda. Some people, he knew, got angry only because the world hadn’t allowed things to go the way they had wanted them to. Did his mother secretly hope that the Blue Panda had stayed, even if it meant that harm would come to Luuk?

Luuk did not want to live a life in which his mother did not feel sympathy for him. Though perhaps he unknowingly was.

When the Blue Panda took him to bed, Luuk could occasionally hear footsteps sounding from just outside his bedroom. He liked to imagine that they couldn’t be coming from his mama — surely, it couldn’t be his mama walking past his door, hearing the boy with his face, and choosing to walk away.

✲ ✲ ✲

March 1990. A fuzzy memory he couldn’t quite recall. Suzette, his sister, was thirteen and alone with him for a night. His mother was on yet another dinner date with the Blue Panda — who had been there for most of Luuk’s life, in place of his actual father.

He barely had any other memories from that time. Even so, years later, he could recall Suzette: how she sat at the dinner table with a grimace on her face whenever the Panda cooked, how she would always bring her long, pale fingers to her face and bite the tips of them — her nails were too short to properly latch onto — while she did her homework. It made her nails look rough, like a man’s, his mam used to say. Her hair had been blonder in real life than in the pictures his father had. Whenever Luuk looked at old photos of her, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. From what he could remember, he had always looked up to Suzette, and it was painful to realize that the only real evidence of her existence had failed to capture her essence.She managed to get him to bed at a decent time that night, after he had been given an extra cup of yoghurt after dinner. The memory was more like a collection of sensations, rather than a chronological string of images Luuk could watch play out in his mind. He felt himself sitting on a chair, felt yoghurt melt on his tongue, sticky and slightly gross, then he felt cold, fragile arms surrounding him as Suzette carried him up the stairs. Her fingers clutched at his waist so he couldn’t slip away.

Often he found himself trying to imagine how she must have looked that night. Which pajamas she wore, if she put her hair in a bun or kept the long strands curling down her back. Her eyebrows, in the photos, were so light they were practically invisible — though he could vaguely picture them being ginger in real life. Suzette had had the awkward, long arms of a teenager who had not yet grown into herself.

Then he felt his bedsheets beneath him, soft and recently cleaned. This happened before the Blue Panda began taking him to bed, so he did not worry about pain, or those noises he couldn’t understand. He felt Suzette's hair tickle his cheeks, followed by the press of cracked lips against his forehead.

“You know that I love you, right?” she whispered. “And that I’d never hurt you on purpose?”

“Ja,” he mumbled, not quite taking in her words. It had been a tiring day of playing and watching television. “Slaap lekker.”

The night ended there for Luuk, he did not think of Suzette as he fell into a comfortable sleep. The next morning, everyone woke up a little later, except for his sister, who had to leave for school. Earlier in the year, she had asked their mother if she could go to school alone, since she only had to take one bus to get there, anyways. After a few days of begging, their mama agreed, as long as Suzette agreed to leave the house quietly so the rest of the family could sleep. If you want to be so independent. His mam took him and the Blue Panda to church, even though they weren’t religious. Later, his mother would tell him that she had known as soon as she woke up; she felt the loss of her daughter as a pressure beneath her collarbones, threatening to break her. She had only needed a call from Suzette’s school to verify that Suzette had left during morning break — which wasn’t allowed — and never came back. Luuk tried to remember how far his sister’s school had been from the central station. He’d gone to a different school himself, closer to their home.

The call came while they were still at church. After that came many other calls, from funeral directors and distant family members, some from the police because at first his mam couldn’t quite believe that Suzette hadn’t been pushed. Luuk asked his ma why she never called the school herself, if she had known the second she opened her eyes that morning, and she told him that she wanted a few extra moments in which her fears were only in her head, not facts she needed to tell people and things she needed to solve.

While his mam and the Panda got ready for church, Luuk sat in front of the television. On the news, he did hear about a body on the train tracks and that many trains had to be redirected. He knew that a body would get hurt if it got hit by a train, but he couldn’t quite comprehend how the injuries would be different from a person getting run over by a car. His mama once had a little cat, Spinner, who got flattened by a car. She often told him about the thing, about how she found it herself. How it had been as thin as a pancake.

When he got older, he learned that the person on the tracks had been his sister. Luuk wasn’t able to imagine Suzette as just a body, an unknown person only identified by the ID she had put in her pocket, laying on the tracks. He was only able to imagine her as his sister, pale as an angel, someone who would never hurt him.

✲ ✲ ✲

August 2007. He saw a flyer for a party during his first week in Amsterdam. It hung on a streetlamp near his soon-to-be school.

For the past week, he had been stuck in his flat. Which was overfilled with other students, some who lived there, others who had friends who did. The walls of his room were nicotine stained and his shower had no hot water. Which would take at least another week to fix. When he saw the flyer, he knew he had to go, just to escape for a little bit. School hadn’t started yet, and he was still on the lookout for a job, understandably. He had terrible dreams about Suzette, bloody, her hair knotted and pulled out in places, as flat as a pancake. And the Blue Panda, who wasn’t a panda in his dreams, which he tried to ignore.

His ma had called hours before he saw the flyer, and so had his pa, surprisingly. She hadn’t wanted anything from him, she just wanted to hear his voice again. His papa had wanted to come over sometime to see Luuk’s new flat, which he hesitated to agree to. For once, his bedroom was all for himself, and he did not want someone invading his space. Finally, he could go to bed without worrying about the Panda, or about his mama sneaking in to make sure he hadn’t snuck out to go to a party. Even after the Blue Panda left, Luuk still thought about him, because he was still sleeping in the same bed, the one which the boy with his face used to lay on.

So, the Saturday before school started, he went to the party. It took place in a flat near his own, in a big common area that the organizer had rented for the night. He’d been to parties before, mainly during high school, and he had gotten drunk as well, but it was different at twenty. The last time he drank a concerning amount was when at seventeen, not during a party, but while he was working on getting his diploma. The hangover that he was left with made him miss an important test, and after that he decided that it was probably for the best if he never touched another bottle of alcohol again. As a teenager, he partied because there was nothing else to do, but as an adult he had things to worry about, things more important than that test — he would have to pay bills, for which he would need to get a job, and for the first time he had to deal with a broken shower and missing school books that got mysteriously sent to the wrong address cities away. All of these things he would have to fix by himself.

There were things he could have done to set up his life in Amsterdam, and instead he went to that party anyways. Didn’t he deserve to have a little fun before school started? At first, the party was boring, and uncomfortable. There were clumps of people who had already met, talking and laughing, but none of them attempted to include outsiders like Luuk — made worse by the fact that he seemed to be the only new person to the city. They were all either younger, in the middle of getting their first diploma at a vocational school, or older and pursuing higher education. He felt both like a wise old man and a foolish lamb. He had been mediocre at school, and he knew nothing about his new opleiding — except for the jobs that it could later get him. He couldn’t brag about being the best in his class, nor could he complain about research projects or workplace disputes.

The common area looked depressing, with a few mildly coloured balloons floating at the ceiling. There were tables with cheap drinks and bland looking snacks, and two couches with a few chairs near them. Nobody had bothered to sit down, except for two men, sitting closely together. From the previous parties he had gone to, filled with underaged drinking, loud music, and dancing, he had expected something else. They were all adults there, though, so perhaps nobody else felt like they had to be loud in order to be fun. Maybe the party wasn’t even about having fun, but more about gathering with others in order to feel a little less alone in the big city.

Just as Luuk was about to leave — it was foolish, to willingly stand around in a room full of people who did not care about him — someone finally came up to him. A man, seemingly not much older than him, with blond hair that made his head look a little flat. He looked like someone Luuk had met years prior, though this man’s eyes were green, not brown, and soft, rather than annoyed at Luuk’s general presence.

“I suppose you’re new to the city, too?” the man asked, holding his hand out.

✲ ✲ ✲

December 2002. He met Kristiaan at a party. Luuk never had a big friend group in high school, but he met a few people during forced school trips to amusement parks or zoos, and got close enough to them to occasionally get party invites.

He was fifteen, nearly sixteen — the nearly sixteen had been important, a promise, meaning nearly legal or old enough — and he couldn’t even think about how old Kris had been. He had known in the moment, and the months after, but as the years passed he realized that it truly didn’t matter if he had been eighteen, twenty, thirty, or even fifty; all that mattered was that Luuk had been fifteen, nearly sixteen.

Just like with the Blue Panda, he couldn’t exactly pinpoint when the bad things started happening, and he also couldn’t recall when the bad things — the little, easily ignored things — started becoming horrible. It was like he had been waiting for the pain to hit his whole life, and when it finally arrived he could barely pay it any mind. That December day, shortly before Christmas, he was meant to meet Kristiaan, and the suffering that came after was sent to him by God, or whatever else was out there.

Kris had been a friend of someone Luuk vaguely knew, some girl he had talked to a few times during local parties, but then stopped talking to when he discovered that she had been interested. He didn’t want girls to be interested in him, all he really wanted was a boy to love. The kind of love he saw other gay boys write about online, love full of youth and wildness, faster than light. And back then Kristiaan had seemed like the only person who could give it to him.

“How long do you think it will take for her to fall?” was the first thing Kris asked him, nodding towards a girl wearing insanely high heels. They looked good, Luuk thought, and he felt bad for laughing. Kris hadn’t even bothered to introduce himself, he just came up and started talking. Luuk, fifteen, nearly sixteen, had found this attractive.

After the party, the man quickly became a consistent figure in his life. He hosted parties at his flat and mainly invited Luuk and his own, older friends. He took time out of his life to pick the younger boy up from school. After the Blue Panda left, Luuk’s mother yelled at him more often about things that weren’t really his fault: all of her relationships, including the one with his father, had failed, and she hated her job, and she wished they lived in a better part of the city. So he barely noticed it when Kristiaan started yelling, too. But when Kris complimented him? That he did notice.

SEPTEMBER 2007. HIS FATHER HAD been adamant that Luuk visit. So, even though he hadn’t found a job yet — he would have yet another interview the next day, at a restaurant he didn’t really want to work at — he got on a train. Though he could only think about Alex during the ride to Nijmegen.

They started messaging back and forth after the party. His first week at school had ended, but he hadn’t been able to focus on it. Alex had not wanted to pursue a higher education, so he already had a fulltime job that kept him busy. Meaning that they mostly spoke later at night. Ever since the party Luuk had gone to bed giddy, his chest bursting, excited to go through the next day quickly so he could chat with the other boy. He was falling in love too fast, he knew it. He was once again head over heels for a man he met while slightly tipsy. After Kris, he hadn’t dated anyone, because how could he trust himself after having made such a terrible decision in the past?

Still, he felt the need to befriend Alex, who had been so kind to him, who unfortunately lived two hours away from him — he’d only been in Amsterdam because he had some friends there. To him, the other seemed like a promise. A future without someone slipping into his bed or hands pulling at his thin hair. A future in which he would never have to see the boy with his face again. Even so, he really wanted a boyfriend. The life he yearned for was not something he could have on his own, it relied partly on others.

His father hadn’t moved since Luuk began visiting. So he was left following the same familiar route from the train station to his papa’s flat. He tried to think of the man, instead of Alex, to feel excited about his visit, to figure out what he would say and how he would act. Luuk wanted to be a good son who made conversations easily. Even though he barely knew much about his father, despite their efforts to rebuild their relationship.

“Hey, Jongen!” his pa exclaimed, as always, when he opened the door. “It’s good to see you again.”

As he stepped inside, he tried to remember when he had last visited. Sometime after his college graduation. “Good to see you, too,” he mumbled, taking his shoes off.

He was led to the kitchen. His papa lived four floors up, and the weather was nice that day, so the living room would be impossibly hot. Luuk felt a bit childish as he jumped to sit on the counter, but his father did the same thing, so he supposed it was fine. They were quiet for a moment, and his mind wandered once again to Alex. Last night, they had talked about childhood pets, and Luuk never had any so he brought up Spinner and his mam’s obsession with pandas, and the fact that he used to be afraid of butterflies. Alex used to have a Maine Coone that passed away not too long back. It was the cutest thing Luuk had ever seen, and he wished he could have met it.

His father broke the silence.

“Do you want something to drink? Is it also so hot back at your place?”

He shook his head and wondered if his pa had found it weird that Luuk hadn’t invited him over. His fingers grazed his lips and he reminded himself that he shouldn’t bite them. It was a habit that made him look unkempt. He wanted to say something, but his mind was full of blond hair and green eyes. His papa didn’t know him too well, but lately the man was able to notice it when Luuk was stuck in his head, even when they were just calling on the phone.

“Luukje,” his pap hummed, trying to lighten the mood. “We should walk by the kanaal sometime, there’s nice flowers blooming. I don’t think it’ll last long, though.”

His stomach flipped at the mention of the kanaal. “Pa,” he sighed. “I think I’m gay.”

Never had he spoken a word about the Blue Panda, and he certainly never thought to tell his father about it. But the man vaguely, somehow, knew about Kristiaan. Maybe his mama had mentioned the man once, in passing, and his father might have gotten suspicious. So he hadn’t expected the news to elicit any kind of surprise, nor had he expected his father to be angry. If his father disliked homosexuals, he would have made it clear earlier on. But he also hadn’t thought that his pa would hug him. He couldn’t remember receiving one from the man before. His arms felt cold and unfamiliar, nothing like those of Kristiaan or the Blue Panda. Luuk had to do everything not to swiftly remove himself from the embrace.

“That’s fine,” the man chuckled. “I don’t care, you know that. As long as you don’t love someone who hurts you.”

How often had his pa hugged Suzette? She had been ten when he left, and Luuk wondered if he reminded his pa of her, even though they no longer looked alike — because he had gotten older, and his hair was no longer blond because of the sun.

✲ ✲ ✲

July 2008, they were moving fast. After Luuk finished his first year of college he and Alex decided to move in together.

Moving too fast might not be the proper way to describe it. He and Alex weren’t dating, they just quietly enjoyed each other’s company. The move was really just Luuk slowly integrating himself into Alex’s space, day by day, until the man said you know, I have a guest room. You could just live here. It’ll be good for us, money wise.

He had wanted to point out that the lack of guest room wouldn’t have stopped them; they started seeing each other regularly on the weekends since February — before that, they mostly kept talking online, with visits every once in a while — and whenever they spent the night together, whether at his place or Alex’s, they slept in the same bed. Just so they could talk to each other for longer, or so Luuk told himself. It was exactly how he had imagined sleepovers as a child. There was something growing between them, quiet and inexplicit, something they had talked about but decided not to name until both of them were ready for it.

For the first two weeks, he cried in bed at night. He had been right about not needing the guest room — all of his clothes and the little possessions he wanted to keep were immediately stored right next to the other man’s stuff — and he felt a little embarrassed to cry next to someone else. Living with Alex was hard in the beginning, nerve-wrecking, because Luuk had nightmares sometimes, once a month or so, and he got overwhelmed easily when he wasn’t given enough space. He couldn’t handle people invading his space, not after the Panda, but Alex was patient and never crept too close while they shared a bed. In the mornings he was quiet, unlike Luuk’s mom, who had never really cared about waking him up. Every night he cried because he was afraid that the pain would return soon. He was so close to living the life he had wanted , a life in which he was normal, in which he had a loving partner like nearly all of his classmates.

In that way, being with Kris had hurt less. The man hadn’t been kind for so long, it took about two weeks for him to yell, a month for the first hit to come. Alex’s loveliness was in its own way cruel, because Luuk was certain that it couldn’t last.

Alex never brought it up, he just laid next to him and kept his hands to himself. He didn’t fully ignore Luuk, sometimes he traced circles on the pillow right next to the man’s ear, letting his fingernail produce a soft, lilting sound. As if he was trying to hypnotize him. Only by the end of the first week did either say anything.

“I should sleep in the guest room,” Luuk whispered. “If I keep going like this. I don’t want you to go to work tired.” He didn’t mention that he went to school tired himself; all that mattered was that he didn’t want to disturb the blond in his own home — the flat didn’t feel like his yet.

“I don’t want you to be alone like this,” the other man shifted to face Luuk. Day by day, his eyes seemed to be getting greener. “I don’t mind. You can’t help it.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“You can tell me what’s wrong, you know that right?” Alex muttered. “I care about you.”

Luuk closed his eyes, a familiar pressure formed behind his ribs. Most of his nightmares now consisted of telling Alex, of watching the man’s face shift into disgust. He felt a hand, placed carefully, on his neck and the cold fingers reminded him of Suzette, who would never get to fall asleep next to someone she loved. The thing about relationships, he recognized, was that he couldn’t quite control them. Whether or not he would get hurt again depended on Alex. All Luuk could control were his own actions, which were possibly too generous — he could have reported Kristiaan, but he hadn’t. Because he hadn’t wanted to ruin the man’s life, even though Kris had basically done that for himself when he decided to get involved with a teenager.

Sometimes he tried to figure out if there was something about him that made people naturally dislike him. Men on the street bumped into him without apology, kids in his class used to laugh at him whenever he got called on for answers — Miss, tell him to speak up! — and even now he had people in his class, adults who should know better, who giggled amongst themselves whenever he got an answer wrong. They talked behind his back, too, about how he walked, about what he probably liked to do in bed.

How was he supposed to talk to Alex, without explicitly mentioning the root of his problems — the Panda, and what happened to him?

“I know that,” Luuk sniffed. Gently, the blond laid his head on his chest. “I know that very well, but I don’t think I can tell you.”

“And that’s fine,” Alex hummed. Luuk was reminded that the man probably already knew some things, based on past behaviour. He worked in childcare, and his diploma had required subjects that could help him understand humans a little bit better. “As long as you know that I’d let you.”

✲ ✲ ✲

August 2008. They fell into a routine quite easily. The crying eventually stopped, but every night Alex continued to lay his head on Luuk’s chest. Sometimes, slowly and with knowing movements, the blond would hug him. Luuk liked having the weight of the other man against him, it was just enough to ground him, but not enough to make him feel like he was being trapped.

As long as you don’t love someone who hurts you. Luuk knew that if he were to call up his father, the man would be glad that he had found Alex. There wasn’t a proper relationship between them, even after a month of living together, but he didn’t feel like he needed a label. They woke up together, even though Alex started work later than Luuk started school, they prepared breakfast together — he would put slices of bread in the oven, the blond would put the butter and cold cuts on the table, along with crackers and jam — and they ate together. It was special to him, because he never ate breakfast with his mam, except for Christmas or Easter. And most importantly, they loved each other. By the time that Luuk would leave for school, Alex was sitting on the couch with a book. Never did he feel bad about the fact that the other man woke up earlier just so they could spend the morning together. Back with Kristiaan, he felt bad constantly.

School was tiring — he sat through class after class about suicidal people, addicts, abused children and the abusers themselves — and most days he would have to work right after, he was a cashier at a local craft store, which was alright because it wasn’t too busy, but boring for the same reason. So it was nice to come home to a clean flat after being gone for most of the day, which Alex provided with ease. Alex’s job was tiring, too, so Luuk always tried to stay out of the way.

Back in his old flat he had a habit of mindlessly fluttering around like a bird when he had nothing else to do. Or when he had nightmares, or when he knew that his mama would call him that day. With Alex, he tried to keep this at a minimum.

Some days he felt wound up and ended up sleeping in the guest room. Sometimes he knew that a nightmare or a sleepless night would come his way. Usually when he fell asleep there, he would wake up with Alex tucked underneath the blanket beside him. The man didn’t seem too fazed by Luuk’s nightmares, or any of his other habits, which hadn’t lessened in frequency ever since he moved in, but they might have gotten less intense. It was nice to wake up with the blond beside him, and for the first time he was quite satisfied with life.

MARCH 2003. IF HE HAD to tell Alex anything, he would tell him about a certain cold night in the middle of that March.

He went out for a party. One of Kristiaan’s friends was celebrating her birthday, and the man insisted that Luuk join him for the celebration — even though none of his acquaintances would be there, only the birthday woman and the few other adults Kris surrounded himself with, all people who he had never met before himself. And yet Luuk still couldn’t refuse. He lied and told his mam that he would be going out with a school friend — the girl who ended up going to Amsterdam before him — and she had believed him.

If he had to tell Alex anything, he would tell him that Kristiaan used to film him. Not necessarily in a sexual way, he just liked it when Luuk got a little drunk and did embarrassing things. It was utterly humiliating, because the man would show the footage to other people, and nobody would stand up for him, they all just laughed — including himself. No one said You know, leave the poor boy alone, he clearly wasn’t in his right mind.

It was a thing he utterly despised. He didn’t like having a camera shoved in his face as he threw up, he didn’t like stumbling over his own feet while putting his shoes on as Kristiaan laughed right beside him. But he never told the other to stop, and he often thought about what would have happened if he had. Would Kris have stopped? Part of him, that tiny part within himself that never wanted him to leave the man in the first place, liked to believe that he would have.

They didn’t stay at the party for long — just long enough for Luuk to get drunk on cheap alcohol. When they went back outside it was basically freezing, and neither had proper coats on. Kris gave the birthday girl a kiss on her cheek that lasted for way too long. It wasn’t jealousy that rose up in Luuk at that moment, but a slight sense of contempt: the man got jealous whenever he wanted to spend alone time with people his age, and yet Kris was always hugging or kissing someone else right in front of Luuk.

“You know,” he slurred as they walked along the kanaal. It wasn’t too far from his papa’s flat. He had wanted to go home after the party, but Kris was reluctant to let the night end early. “I think I should go home. Instead of coming around to yours.”

It was cold, and the older’s flat didn’t have a working radiator. “Come on, maat,” Kris spat on the dirt path beneath them. “You’re always cancelling.”

“I don’t like it when you call me maat,” Luuk complained.

They continued to walk in silence, until he nearly slipped and fell over a pile of wet leaves. Kris tightly gripped his upper arm, probably harsher than was needed, and for a second it seemed like he was floating above the dirty ground before he was pulled back up. “I told you not to drink so much.”

Had he? From what Luuk could remember, the man had never told him anything like that. His actions had reflected the opposite message — Kristiaan kept pressing cups of strong smelling drinks in his hand. While they played a game of bussen the man kept making him drink! Which was another reason why he didn’t want to go to the man’s flat, he had been too persistent, and the last time Luuk went to his place while drunk he woke up the morning after without any memories of going to bed — all he could recall was the press of a body against his own.

“You didn’t,” he pointed out. “You kept giving me drinks, like you wanted to get me drunk.”

He hadn’t meant for it to sound accusing. He had never mentioned the things that happened at Kris’s flat to anyone. Maybe, if he kept it a secret, he would be able to forget it. It happened more than once, and during the second time he had thought about asking the man to stop, though the words never passed his lips. Because he knew that Kristiaan wouldn’t listen. He felt ashamed for having wanted to ask, for nearly giving Kristiaan even more power over him. He tried to ignore it instead, still mortified at the image of himself saying no, only for it to be disregarded. If he never asked for it to stop, then it wouldn’t be — it wouldn’t quite be anything.

The Blue Panda used to pinch him while putting him to bed. He enjoyed, for some reason, making a child squeak in pain. He liked letting Luuk know that he could do whatever he wanted. The Panda had viewed the word no as encouragement — something he could ignore in order to make Luuk feel weak.

Kristiaan had taken his words as an accusation anyways, and Luuk could barely even register what happened before he began floating. The boy with his face was down there, and Luuk wondered why he always had to have the last word, why he never listened. For the first time he could see the boy clearly, and never before had they looked so alike. Those dirty sneakers and that dark, curly hair with a glint of red from the last time he had dyed it. He could see the boy being dragged by his arm, closer to the edge of the kanaal. Had the boy with his face always looked so young, so afraid?

Luuk would have felt bad for not helping, but in the sky all emotion was drained from him. He could only hear his own name, and he tried to figure out where it was coming from, but when he couldn’t find the source he wondered if it was really his name at all. Perhaps it was just the sound of the boy with his face’s head hitting the ground with a squelch and then a thud as it knocked back against the thick roots of a tree.

Suddenly, he looked back up. It was unbelievably cold. The blur of Kris’s face was right in front of him, overlaid by rippling water.

If he had to tell Alex anything, he would tell him about how he had been certain that he was going to die at that moment. That the older man, who had put himself in danger by crouching so close to the edge of the water with wet grass and rocks beneath his feet, could have easily made a mistake. He would tell him about how it had felt when Kris finally allowed him to rise out of the dirty kanaal, how it felt to hate himself because he had been grateful that Kristiaan hadn’t murdered him, he had apologized, even! Luuk went home after that, and he never saw the older man again. He never told his mam, either. For months, he kept seeing the boy with his face whenever he closed his eyes.

✲ ✲ ✲

August 2009. It was nearly dinner time when Luuk came home from work, and yet the bedroom light was already off — or it could have never been turned on in the first place.

Most Saturdays Alex would spend his afternoons sitting at the desk in their bedroom with an old typewriter his papa had gifted him the previous Christmas in front of him. He loved writing, and he was busy every other day of the week — technically, he was off on Sundays, but he always needed a day to prepare for the week ahead. So it was strange that the light was off. There wasn’t even a small glint of light coming from a candle.

He placed his bag by the front door and headed into their room. It was stuffy and hot, the window was closed and he tried to remember if it had been open when he left for work or not. Alex was still in bed, blankets messily thrown over his body despite the warm temperature. For a moment, Luuk was unsure of what to do. The other seemed to be asleep — his eyes were closed, his body relaxed — but his breathing was normal, and whenever Alex slept he always made a light snoring sound.

“Luukje,” the blond whispered when he came in. Never before had he used that nickname. “How was work?”

“Are you alright?”

“Come sit here.”

Alex patted the empty side of the bed with a lazy hand. Luuk couldn’t do anything but comply, even though he usually didn’t like being told what to do. The bed creaked underneath him and he tried to see if the other was sick, but there seemed nothing off about his appearance at all. He just looked like he had recently woken up from a nap. They remained in silence for a bit, in search of something to say, and Luuk began to play with the window handle, unsure if he should open it to allow some fresh air in. His hand twitched — this was what he had feared for: silence, uncertainty. Would the other get mad if he opened the window without permission?

“Are you alright?” he repeated instead. “You don’t seem sick.”

“I’m just tired,” Alex sighed. He was nearly three years older, and Luuk had always wondered what the man had learned in those extra years. “Really tired. And a bit sad.”

“Okay,” he’d never been good at comforting people. He’d never really been asked to. “Do you want to…you can tell me what’s wrong, if you want?”

Again, silence, and he decided to open the window anyway. The cars were always loud, he could hear them stop and start at the traffic lights near their flat. Luuk had always admired the fact that so many people had routines similar to his. Most people he knew at school also worked during the weekends, and later he would have to work a nine-to-five, just like Alex, and he would then also be surrounded by other people working nine-to-fives. He was never really alone taking the bus, even though everybody was a stranger to him. Because whenever he overheard someone having a conversation on the phone complaining about their tiring day at work or school, he couldn’t help but relate.

Yes, he thought, I would also rather be in Spain, or at a concert. Yes, life does go on. When Alex didn’t get upset over the open window — was it something Kristiaan would have gotten mad over? Or was he just overly cautious? — he moved to lay down beside the man.

While he was on the bus that day, he thought about telling the blond about something. Not about that night in 2003, but something smaller, to teach himself to get more comfortable with opening up. Perhaps something about his mama, or the Blue Panda, or Kris — nothing graphic, though. About the months after 2003, maybe, in which he felt like he’d been emptied out. But Alex was sad, so he couldn’t.

“Tell me a story,” he asked instead. “About anything — fake or real. Something to cheer you up.”

✲ ✲ ✲

February 1998. Alex was four, his brother ten. Even though they lived far away in Doetinchem, his family often frequented a kinderboerderij in Nijmegen — which turned out to be the same one nearby Luuk’s childhood home.

Alex’s words were full of admiration as he described his brother, his hazel eyes, the scrapes he got from roughhousing with friends in the park. The boy always looked after Alex and their younger sister. Luuk tried not to think too much about Suzette, because he didn’t want to make the blond’s story about him by bringing up his dead sister. And yet he couldn’t help but listen with an absent mind, stuck in the memory of Suzette, of the boerderij.

“We would always go to the zandbak, there were two: one was normal, and we’d play with plastic trucks in there, but my favourite was the other one. It had thick tree stumps sticking out from the sand,” Alex explained, even though Luuk could picture the scene all by himself. “My brother, he’d help me jump from stump to stump. When we got older, he’d help my sister instead, and he’d let us race. We always let her win, of course.”

Suzette had liked those stumps, too. Wasn’t it strange that Alex had visited the same kinderboerderij, played on the same pieces of wood as Luuk and his sister, most likely a few years apart, even though he lived in another city? That was the story — Alex and his siblings playing together. Luuk was in awe of how easily the other was able to speak about his childhood. He didn’t know much about the blond’s younger years, mainly because he didn’t speak about his own. Good things had occurred while he was a child, of course, before his sister died, before the Panda began hurting him, before Kris — and good things had also happened after and during those things, but everything was overshadowed by the fact that he used to wait for his papa’s calls, by the image of his sister as flat as a pancake laying on train tracks, by the times that the Blue Panda took him to bed, the times he got drunk and went to Kris’s flat. All of those experiences were always there, so he couldn’t talk about the good, in fear of then having to talk about the bad.

Alex could have gone through things as well, or maybe he was so tired and sad for no reason at all — did it matter? Luuk often liked to remind himself that not a single person lived without at least one horrible day in their life, it made him feel less alone. Even though many people had not gone through the things he had gone through for so long.

Sometimes Luuk wondered if the love he had for Alex stemmed only from an extreme admiration at the fact that the blond wasn’t like him.

“I used to have a sister,” he eventually spoke. “I don’t talk too much about her, but we used to do the same thing. With the stumps.” A hum sounded from beside him. “Are you a bit less sad?”

“Sure,” the blond sighed and pulled him closer. “I love you.”

I love you, it was said in a way that barely sounded romantic, like it was a fact that Alex couldn’t help but utter. Luuk smiled. They had exchanged love yous before, and the phrase was no longer as scary as it had been back when he loved Kristiaan. With the blond, he knew that he wouldn’t get in trouble if he didn’t say it back. But he always wanted to say it back, so he did, and then he whispered those words to himself again, and again, and again, tasting the words and hoping that they would feed him until he was full.

“If something’s going on at work, or anything, you can tell me,” he reminded the drowsy man beside him.

“I love you,” Alex whispered. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. He was certain he was losing his mind.

Alex continued to go to work as if nothing was happening. He came home tired and obviously sad, even though he never voiced these matters. He stopped writing on Saturdays, and he also barely prepared for the work week ahead on Sundays. All he did was lay in bed, most of the time not even sleeping. It was a sad sight. Luuk knew that it was partially his fault that the man wasn’t speaking up about his problems — he was the one who had made secrecy the norm by keeping quiet about his own troubles, and the blond had just adjusted to this new normal. Despite it being his fault, Luuk was put on edge by it. He didn’t like not knowing what was going on in other people’s heads.

Most of Alex’s time outside of work was spent in silence, and when he did speak he did so just to complain about being tired, though he refused to tell Luuk any stories, or to do anything that could perhaps make him feel better. He was suppressing himself. Deep down, Luuk knew that he wouldn’t fight back if Alex suddenly decided to take his emotions out on him. He’d just take it. He began to tiptoe around the flat and slept mostly in the guest room, just in case. Sometimes he slept on the couch, because in the bedroom he kept waiting for the sound of his door opening, for the sensation of his sheets being lifted away, and it made sleeping impossible. After the first few days he stopped bothering Alex, except for bringing him food and the occasional check-up to make sure he was still alive.

Kristiaan used to take him to the bathroom during parties — he liked to hit him in there with the door unlocked, so close to other people. Once, Luuk got his nose broken and he had to face Alex’s friends as if nothing had happened. Not that they would have cared much either way. He stupidly believed that the man would stop after that, at least to let the bone heal. But of course he didn’t — Kris would hit him even when he was already hurt. But maybe, Luuk thought, the man wouldn’t have hit him if he hadn’t been annoying.

So he was sick with anxiety most days, waiting to see if Alex would soon snap out of his depression. His hands shook while he prepared dinner and placed a plate of it in what used to be his and Alex’s bedroom. He flinched whenever customers at work approached him. When he was away, he dreaded going home, but when he was home, he dreaded leaving again. The only reason he got out of bed was because he didn’t want to lose his job or get kicked out of school. He assumed that was why Alex kept working, too. It was easy to convince himself that it wasn’t that bad — as long as they got out of bed and pushed through the days one by one. It didn’t matter that, whenever he crossed a road, he wished for a car to appear out of nowhere and hit him. He didn’t want to die in a vehicular accident, but it seemed like an injury was the only thing that would allow him to rest for a bit without losing everything. Maybe Alex would get better once Luuk got injured, just so he could take care of him.

Surely, things would change soon. Something had to give — whether that was good or bad.

Luuk wondered if his kind-of relationship with Alex was even worth it. The blond hadn’t hit him, yet, hadn’t even yelled — so why was he waiting? Why wasn’t he leaving before things got bad?

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. The intensity of his nightmares increased. Luuk began losing track of time during the day, he walked around the flat constantly and avoided going outside. It was easier to stay in bed, where he knew he was safe, than to face the world that still held the men who hurt him. He worried that he would bump into Kris, which didn’t make sense, since the man had never liked busy cities such as Amsterdam. Alex still worked, but Luuk could no longer muster up the energy. It was more important for him to stay safely indoors.

One night he woke up, his face still pressed against his wall. He had a nosebleed and sweat was sticking to his back. He was never able to fully remember his nightmares, but he never forgot the split second of fear he felt when he woke up without yet realizing that nothing was happening to him. It was an intense, all encompassing terror that left him with a headache and with the smell of cheap men’s deodorant lingering in his nose — more chemical than anything else. The bloody nose left a trail of red behind on his pillowcase, on the edge of his blanket, some of it had smeared on the wall. When he looked in the mirror, he could see it tangling his hair, along with some light bruising across his nosebridge.

Somehow, he must have caused the bleeding himself. He didn’t want to take off his clothes to get in the shower, and he stood by the mirror like an idiot — a kitchen scissor laid by the sink, Alex must have forgotten to put it back.

Since he was a teenager, he had wanted to grow his hair out, but he did nothing to stop the boy with his face as he cut the bloody edges off. The boy had trembling hands, and the haircut was choppy and ugly. Luuk was quietly grateful — how else could he have cleaned himself without getting in the shower, without having to face his pale, wretched body? Could he ever get clean?

His mam once told him that he should have been a twin, but his other half had been too weak, so he selfishly absorbed his brother and formed into one being. A little monster. Sometimes, when the Panda took him to bed, Luuk wondered if the bear was trying to split him apart — maybe then his mother would have a son she could be proud of.

Stuck on the ceiling, he watched as the boy with his face entered Alex’s bedroom. Luuk wondered what he was doing, why he wasn’t worried that the blond would get angry at him for disrupting. All he wanted was to go back to the guest room, but suddenly he was back to himself, standing at the foot of Alex’s bed.

Luuk wasn’t in complete control as he gently shook the other man awake, his fingers lingered against the blond’s warm skin. All he could think about was his nightmare: flashes of blue fur, glasses, the way the Panda stood beside his mother, his paw large and threatening against her thin arm. As far as he knew, the Panda never hurt his ma — but he could have. He could have broken her. Luuk wished that he had met Alex before Kris had completely ruined him. Perhaps he would have already been over it, if it had only been the Blue Panda.

“Luukje?” the blond whispered, his eyes roaming over Luuk’s face. “What happened?”

The blond got out of bed, his soft hands roamed over him and eventually found their place on the sides of his head. He was trying to find out where the blood came from, Luuk realized, and he wanted to be reassuring about it, but no words left his mouth. Only a low, pathetic sound, something in between a sniffle and a sob. Something’s going wrong, he thought. There was a noise outside — a car or a motorcycle starting — and he found himself pushing the foreign hands away so he could cover his face with his own, safe ones. Everything was too much, had been too much for a while. He wondered why he ever tried to get into a relationship after what he did with Kristiaan, all of the mistakes he had made. It was hot, and he was uncomfortably aware of the cold sweat still on his back. He should have showered.

“Do you want to lie down with me?”

Alex didn’t wait for his response, he just maneuvered Luuk’s body to lay on the bed. Usually, he would have protested. Ever since Kris, he hated being moved around like a doll. But after nearly a month of barely speaking to Alex, of feeling alone and crazy, it didn’t make him feel like a possession at all. It made him feel cared for. When the blond left the room, he stayed in bed, though it was impossible for him to relax. He was afraid of seeing the boy with his face again — he had always felt bad for the boy, that naïve little thing.

Had his naïvity made him go after Kristiaan? He often felt that this was indeed the case. Rarely did he feel sympathy for his younger self, who had just wanted a nice stepfather while his own father seemingly did not care about him. And when that failed, he had wanted a boyfriend who loved him. His chest constricted as he thought of himself as a teenager — he had been naïve, yes, but he had also been nice, and outgoing, which had made him an easy target for Kris.

It was quiet, and while he waited for Alex to come back he awkwardly positioned himself to lay under Alex’s thick comforter, not caring that the remaining blood on his face and hair would get the bed dirty.

SEPTEMBER 2007. HE HAD HIS first video call with Alex. They’d spoken via messages ever since the party, shy but eager, and for those days the blond only existed as a mess of black pixels on Luuk’s computer screen, and finally he would become a grainy image Luuk couldn’t fully make out. And yet, even though they hadn’t seen each other physically, he had found himself wanting Alex.

He was convinced that even if he hadn’t gone to that party, even if he had stayed far away in Nijmegen, he still would have found the other man some day. He would have fallen in love with those blond curls and green eyes no matter what.

It was late on a Sunday night, and Luuk couldn’t sleep even though he had an important class early the next morning. His flat was silent, unusually so, and he first thought about calling his pa. But he knew that the man would either not reply, or he would worry about his son randomly calling in the middle of the night. His mama wouldn’t answer for certain — she always went to bed at ten, even when she had nothing to do the next day. Often when he was lonely at night, he felt the need to call his parents, despite the fact that he would never allow himself to do that. He hadn’t yet gotten used to sleeping in a flat without his father’s snoring coming from down the hall. Part of him missed his mother’s home, which had been a little too big after Suzette died and the Blue Panda left. His mama had been in Amsterdam once in her life, and she had hated the pigeons and the nightlife and basically the entire city, so he hadn’t seen her since he left — he could have stopped by when he visited his father, he knew, but it hadn’t felt like the right moment. He needed to prepare for his mother, needed to come to terms with the furrow of her brows and the high pitch of her voice.

She would never admit it, but Luuk knew that she had blamed him when the Blue Panda finally left. She believed that he hadn’t tried enough to be a good stepson, a welcoming presence, even though he was always polite, even when he could have ruined the Panda with just a few words. So seeing his mother wasn’t something he could suddenly do. Especially when, half of the time, she obviously wished that he was someone else entirely — she would have rather kept Suzette, or his twin brother that never got the chance to grow into a real baby.

He couldn’t understand how his mother became religious. Luuk could have been a whole other person, just with the same name, if he had been the weaker one in the womb. He could have been born with his sister’s hair and his father’s eyes. It was entirely up to chance, nothing predestined. Even the Panda could have been a different being, if another sperm had reached his mother’s egg first. This was the biggest evidence for him that God did not exist — if the Panda had been different, Luuk could have gotten a different childhood, a good childhood. And his entire life, by extension, would have been better as well. And yet he got this. This endless torture.

Wasn’t it insane that he could have gotten a different life, if only a few little things had been changed — were they even changes if they occurred before anything else, if nobody would have even noticed? Maybe that was where his mam was coming from: everybody could have been somebody else, and yet they weren’t. With those thoughts, he messaged Alex and asked if he could call, knowing that he would be interested in the topic. Sometimes Luuk would go to his school’s library and read short research articles just to send summaries of them to Alex. Most of the articles were about science, filled with things he vaguely understood because of his past education. Some were more philosophical, others were short, older pieces that he found about male homosexuality that he couldn’t completely relate to because of the time difference, but it had felt important to send them to Alex anyways. Then, the blond would send him news stories about a truck full of pears getting torn in half by a train or a woman in Minnesota who lost her teenaged son to heroin. They would exchange information during the day so they could have something to talk about at night. It felt special. Like they were constantly saying I saw this and immediately wanted to talk with you.

Video or just voice? He quickly got a message back.

Video, Luuk replied without thinking. The thought of seeing the other’s soft face and curly hair made him excited. He hadn’t seen anyone as beautiful as the other man in a while. His laptop began ringing seconds after he sent his message. His heartbeat sped up as he accepted with nervous fingers and watched his screen slowly shift from black to skin coloured pixels to the clear image of the man he was beginning to adore.

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. He asked: “Did anything happen at work?” before anything could be asked of him.

The day after his nosebleed, he and Alex sat on the couch. He had woken up many times during the night, and he’d been too tired to notice the blond leaving for work and coming back home. He was vaguely aware of being guided into the shower, still in his underwear and t-shirt — wasn’t that a sign that the other man knew? Knew that some days Luuk couldn’t handle looking at his unfamiliar form, naked and vulnerable, without feeling sick to his stomach. It was admirable, how much patience Alex was willing to give him, even while he was himself going through something.

The shower had been painfully cold, an attempt to bring him back to his mind and body. He wasn’t sure if that would be possible, nor was he sure if he even wanted to be aware of himself. Something had happened to his brain after the nightmare, something had been broken. Certainly he would find himself no longer interested in anything at all in no time. After his shower, he was led to the couch, a little more awake.

“This isn’t about me,” the blond huffed, and Luuk felt bad for making things all about himself once again, even when he hadn’t meant to. “For days, you’ve been sleeping in the guest room, and every night I can hear you scream your head off. You’ve been avoiding work and school, too. I’m worried — you know that I worry.”

“You stopped coming out of your room first,” he said, petulant. “So I reckon this is about you. How do you think I feel when you have a bad day and you don’t tell me?”

“You cannot be the one to talk about silence!” Alex stood up. “I — it must be difficult, whatever you’re dealing with,” the man’s shoulders slumped at the sight of Luuk, pressed further back into the couch. “I shouldn’t have yelled, sorry. I just want the best for you, for us. Because I love you. Though I can’t see this going much further when you won't talk to me. You can’t complain about me not saying anything when you haven’t been honest yourself.” There was a great silence in the room, because they both knew that they could go around in circles forever, neither wanting the blame. Luuk kept his mouth tightly shut, still thinking about I love you and then about maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I was less annoying, less stupid. He knew he should be easy and take the blame, but really he had been quite fine until Alex started getting bad. He gripped his legs tight and closed his eyes when he began to see the boy with his face again — you never admit when you’re wrong, just like your pa, his mother had once told him. He wanted to deal with his problems himself — compromise, the boy with his face chirped in anyway. And yes, Kris had taught him to compromise, though never in his own favour.

“Perhaps I should have been more honest. But I don’t understand how I can have a conversation with you now. After I’ve been coming into your room every day, asking you what’s wrong, and only getting answers that I can’t do anything with.”

“Am I asking you to do anything with it?” Alex retorted. “Sometimes, I get sad for no reason, and I don’t want to get out of bed — but I do so anyway, because I can’t lose my job. This is something I have to live with, and you’ll have to live with it, too. If you want to stay with me. That’s that. Now it’s your turn to tell me something.”

He sighs and thinks of what to say. How could he possibly explain what had happened to him when Alex started getting bad? “I freak out. When people get emotional, but won’t tell me why. I can’t handle the thought of someone — of you — being angry, or annoyed, or anything, and pushing it down. It makes me afraid that you’ll let it spill over, that you’ll hurt me.”

Because it’s happened before. Someone hurt me remains unsaid, but he can tell that it registers in the other’s brain by the way his eyebrows pinched together. There were so many words he could use to describe what had happened, to explain how he had been damaged and changed. The words swam around so fast in his mind that, despite knowing them and shaping them around his tongue, he could never manage to string them together into a coherent sentence. Always, there was something stopping him. “I couldn’t hurt you.” the blond whispered. His eyes had started tearing up. “I’ve been thinking of seeing a therapist, and I think it could really help me. Maybe it could help you, too. We can’t let it end like this.”

Luuk didn’t want to end it in such a way either. But it felt too desperate. He liked the idea of Alex talking to a therapist, of him turning into the same old boy he first met. The boy who did the dishes with a song playing from an old mp3 player, the boy who wanted to go on walks around the city to see nice clothes in stores he couldn’t afford. But everything seemed impossible, like a goal so important that it almost wasn’t worth fighting for — because surely, all they could do was fail.

“I’m thinking of going home for a week or so,” he shrugged. “To Ma, or Pa, whoever will take me. I probably got fired anyway, and school — I don’t even want to think about it. Some distance might do us good, and I need time to figure things out. I promise that I’ll come back and talk to you.

Alex sighed. “I just want you to feel better.”

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. He ended up going to his father — which his mam hadn’t been pleased with when she heard. Though he felt no guilt. After everything, he couldn’t stand the idea of sleeping in his old bedroom.

He had missed his father, and yet he felt bad for suddenly asking the man if he could stay over for a bit. Alex had requested a vacation a while ago, without telling Luuk, so he had been able to say goodbye to Luuk when he left early in the morning. It was strange, because he was still so certain that he wanted to make it work with the blond, but he had woken up without the desire to talk. He hated that he had made Alex wait for so long. He really needed to think about their relationship, about whether or not to take the next step — but what if he decided that he didn’t want to be the other’s official boyfriend? Could he even do that? Or would their relationship be destroyed by that decision?

As he walked up the stairs to his pa’s door he could tell that the flat had been cleaned recently. All he could smell was lemon, sour and chemical. When he left, Alex had given a hug, the man had been teary-eyed and he said I love you as if he had already decided that they would never see each other again. But Luuk would come back. He had to.

His pa greeted him with his usual enthusiasm. The train ride had been tiring, and all he wanted was to get in some sleep. But his papa wanted to talk, since Luuk had only visited that one time after moving to Amsterdam. Luuk hadn’t called, either, since before things got bad with Alex. So he sat on his papa’s couch, with his coat still on because it had rained overnight and the cold hadn’t left the flat yet. His father had gotten new furniture, and he kind of missed the look of the old, chipped, coffee-stained table that they used to eat dinner at together. The living room had no space for dining chairs, so their dinners were eaten on the edge of the couch, and sometimes on the floor. There was a new television, too, from someone at his pa’s work — there was a dark brown streak running across the screen. “How’s it going with Alex?” his father eventually asked. He had been confused, at first, when Luuk told him that he’d be living with the blond. He had never met Alex, and immediately assumed that they were dating. It’s complicated, Luuk had said over the phone.

“It’s rough,” he admitted. “He’s going through some things…mentally. And I suppose I am, too.”

He expects his pa to reply, to ask what’s wrong, but his father had never been the kind of man to ask important questions. He wondered if the man knew how to ask him things that didn’t have anything to do with school and work or his relationship with Alex and his mam. It was something he needed to accept: if he wanted his papa to know something, he would have to tell him. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Luukje.”

“Why did you never say anything to me about Kristiaan?”

Why wasn’t I told that it was wrong? Why did nobody stop it, why did nobody help me after he nearly — why?

“It wasn’t my place,” the man sighed. “Well, I called your mama, cause a colleague came up to me, told me my daughter’s seen your boy hanging around with a grown man, bit strange, isn’t it? And she told me it wasn’t my place.”

“She didn’t think it was your place to tell me that I shouldn’t have been —” shouldn’t have been what? Dating, messing around? The problem was that he had no idea what his father knew. “He was what, twenty-something, and you thought it wasn’t your place?”

“Of course it was my place! But these things — it wasn’t the same back then. You have a son and it’s like thank God, I don’t have to worry about him getting raped, or anything. I wasn’t there for you, I barely spent time with you. I was a failure — would you have listened to me?”

As a teenager, he would have listened to anyone. Luuk was certain that all he had needed was an adult to tell him how sick Kristiaan was. He had just needed an adult who believed him, who saw how it hurt him. Near the end of his relationship with Kris — what else could he call it? — he was covered in bruises constantly, skipping school and drunk most of the time. Really, a stranger could have encouraged him to leave and he probably would have done it.

“Is this something you want to talk about?” his papa asked.

“No,” he mumbled. Deep down, he knew it wasn’t a conversation he needed to have with his pa. Especially not when he had to tell it to Alex first, and maybe his ma. If she was willing to listen after his years of silence. “It’s something I’ve been struggling with. My mind, it’s like that drawer you have, filled with a bunch of old, tangled wires. And now I finally need to untangle them, but I have no idea where to start. Alex wants me to see a therapist, and he wants me to talk to him.”

“Well,” the older man clapped his knees. “I cleaned up that dirty drawer ages ago. I had no idea where to start, either. I just found a starting point, and went from there. It seems like Alex has already offered you a starting point that you can use.”

✲ ✲ ✲

March 2003. He came home from the kanaal with a massive headache. He was still wet, his hair was dripping droplets of murky water on the doormat in their hallway. He wondered if he was bleeding from where his head thudded against the forest floor — he couldn’t remember if he had hit a rock or not. All he could recall was the look Kris had on his face while he pulled Luuk out of the kanaal, and how certain he had felt that the man was going to kill him.

The kitchen light was on, and he knew that sneaking up the stairs while avoiding his mama wouldn’t be worth the effort. He looked at his old watch, which used to be his pa’s. It was three hours past his curfew. When he entered the kitchen, his mam didn’t attempt to hide her sigh. It wasn’t one of relief, he could only find annoyance within it. He sat down on the table in front of her, wincing when the wood creaked. His legs were still shaking from either the cold or the fear, his ribs were on fire — he wished that his mama could feel his pain. If she could shoulder it for him, would she?

“Mama —”

“I don’t want to know what you’ve been doing,” she snapped. “I have work tomorrow, Luuk, and just look at me sitting here, waiting for you at —” she glanced at the clock, seemingly for the first time that night. “Jesus Christus! For all I knew you could have been hurt, you could have been dead!”

She used the kind of tone that had always made him want Kristiaan. Dismissive, angry. As if he had asked her to stay up for him. Kris always told him that his ma was too mean, too overprotective. And he had to remind himself that the older man had almost killed him. He should not — would not — go upstairs to call the man and complain. From that night on, he would never contact Kristiaan again, nor would he go to any party where the older might also be. So he just sat at the kitchen table, looking at his mama while she sighed and yelled words he barely registered. Work, tired, why do I have to take care of you all on my own?

His soul was sitting behind his body, and he watched her over his shoulder. Her eyebrows were thick, her makeup wiped off half heartedly. At the end she said: “You’re not seeing any of your friends again, especially not that —”

Not that man. He could tell she wanted to say that, but she couldn’t. It would be bad if she admitted that she knew her teenaged son was regularly meeting up with a grown man. Shame curled in his stomach — it was wrong, so wrong, what he’d been doing. When she finished she got up and stomped to her own bedroom, slamming doors on her way. Luuk went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. He appeared ruined, like a wild animal had managed to get to him. Half of his face was swollen and bruised, a smudge of blood coloured his hairline. It was impossible that his mother hadn’t noticed. And yet she hadn’t mentioned it. She hadn’t even asked if he was alright.

For all I knew you could have been hurt. He wanted to ask, if this isn’t hurt, then what is?

You’d tell me if something was wrong, right? his ma had once asked him, right after a parent-teacher conference when he was twelve. The Blue Panda hadn’t left yet, though he was taking Luuk to bed less often than he used to. His grades had been slipping for a while, which his teacher had mentioned without much care. None of his teachers had ever had high expectations of him. Yes, of course. Perhaps that was why she never mentioned the Panda or Kristiaan: she expected him to do it, and she had probably taken his silence as confirmation that nothing was truly wrong. Or maybe she did understand what happened — the hitting, the sex — and instead took his silence as acceptance. God, did she think he had wanted it, liked it? That night, he decided that he could never tell his mama the truth.

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. He did nothing at his father’s place but think. He would lay in bed for a large part of his days, taking in the smell of the lavender air freshener his pa had standing on the little bedside table, which kept the room from smelling dusty. Luuk enjoyed the fact that his papa cared about the smell of the guest bedroom. Because only he stayed there, from what he knew, and he enjoyed the idea of his papa caring about his comfort. Ever since he was a kid, he had wanted his pa to think about him. It was still strange to know that he did, that he had done so for a long time.

They did chores around the house together. His father had wanted to paint the living room walls for a while, so they did, turning it from an ugly off-white to a light greenish-blue. After that, they went out on the balcony and ate greasy pepperoni pizza together. A kind husband and wife who owned a big dog lived next to his pa, on the left side, and they had a son around Luuk’s age who lived in Wijchen. He could tell that the son never really visited, based on the way they talked about him. Hurt, like puppies kicked to the side. It made him feel proud for showing up, even though he barely did so. The husband had a small grill, which he stored under trash bags on the balcony. On Luuk’s last day there, they ate barbecue together while the dog scratched at the door, begging to be allowed outside for some meat. A downstairs neighbour came by, too, and talked to his papa about a recent football game. He had never seen his father’s neighbours before, but they were welcoming and asked him about his education and why he decided to get another degree. They weren’t stuck up people, like his ma could sometimes be. They didn’t act like a career in science would have been more impressive of him.

“Life is longer than it seems,” the wife, Jill, said. “We should take our time to figure things out. I barely even know if I want to keep the job I have now.”

“When I was your age, I did job training with multiple thirty-year-olds, and they probably ended up with better careers than me — because they weren’t afraid to try new things a little later than others,” his papa added. Luuk was glad the man had neighbours who he could have conversations and impromptu dinners with. Perhaps his papa hadn’t been as alone as he had thought.

When the time came for him to return home, he gave his pa a hug and said goodbye to Jill when he saw her on the balcony, watching the dog run from one end to the other. It felt like the week hadn’t happened at all, like it took place in some other universe. Finally, he would have to come back to his proper world. The whole thing with Alex had seemed silly in retrospect, but he was still nervous to see the blond again. He would have to explain his actions, and he had only vaguely thought about which parts of his story he wanted to tell, and where he would even start. He felt less afraid to confront Alex than before he left, but things still felt wrong.

MARCH 1990. THAT WAS WHEN the Blue Panda must have first gotten the idea of hurting him.

Suzette was dead, Luuk’s nights were getting longer. He had nothing to do, no one to talk to; because his mama had been busy with the funeral, and after that she was too upset to do anything with him. Without Suzette, he was all alone. Before she died, she used to tell him about the Blue Panda, which was one of the only concrete things he could remember from when he was so young. Suzette had been lonely, his mother told him, so perhaps Luuk had also been the only person she was able to talk to. She certainly didn’t complain to their mama about the blue Panda. Deep down, she cares more about him than she does about us. She doesn’t want to be alone.

As a child, he had always been absent-minded. He walked into furniture, tried to drink from empty cups and eat from empty plates, and it only got worse when the Blue Panda started taking him to bed. But he always listened to his sister. She told him that the Panda had never wanted children, which was why he never bothered being kind to them. He was civil, sure, but he never offered to watch him while their ma was away at work; Suzette always had to babysit. That was, until his sister died and his mother stopped coming out of the bedroom for most of the day.

Immediately after Suzette’s death, the bear began getting him ready in the morning, he made meals and made sure Luuk bathed. At some point the Panda also began sitting with him in the living room, a newspaper spread open on his lap, even though he clearly hated the children television shows Luuk watched. The Blue Panda never offered to entertain him, nor did he attempt to make conversation, and yet Luuk found himself appreciating the Panda’s effort. He no longer felt so alone.

All it took was one night for a seed to be planted into the Blue Panda’s head without Luuk’s knowledge. Maybe the other’s eagerness to take care of him, to bathe him and change him into his pajama’s, was strange by itself. But as he got older he wanted to believe that the Panda’s intentions had been innocent, that he had just wanted to take care of a child who had nobody else. Surely, he didn’t do it only because he had wanted Luuk to trust him. So he began to look for an actual starting point, a moment in time where the Panda’s mind must have shifted to form a more sinister plan.

It happened a little over two months after Suzette’s funeral. The bear took him to bed after a bath like usual, but instead of putting Luuk into his pajama’s, he put the boy in bed wearing nothing but his underwear. At the time, it had made him confused, but Luuk had been too tired and too young to question it. Just like most of the memories he had with Suzette, this one could be summed up mostly in physical feelings.

The bedsheets pressed against his bare back, the Blue Panda’s stubble slightly scratched his chest. He remembered being disoriented, having no idea what to do. The Panda had kneeled beside his bed, rested his head on Luuk for no reason. In that moment, he must have known that things were going wrong. The world had turned sideways, things would change. He had been afraid long before he even knew that there was something to be afraid of. Seconds of silence passed, and the man just kept his head there, like a ticking bomb. Suddenly, something wet dripped against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” the Panda sniffed. “I’ve been lonely lately.”

Then, Luuk felt bad for being afraid, so he picked up the courage and said: “I’m lonely, too.”

Unaware that to the wrong person, the phrase could have sounded like an invitation, like hurt me, hurt me, hurt me, rather than a childish attempt at conveying sympathy and shared grief.

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. The train ride back home was exhausting. The carriage smelled vaguely of urine and fries with mayo. He felt disconnected from the passengers, as if he had just come back from weeks of living in a rain forest or a desert, far removed from anyone else. His mind was numb, he might as well have been sleeping.

It dawned on him that he hadn’t done anything for the past weeks, except for thinking about the Blue Panda, or Kris, and all of the things they had done to him. He wondered how long it would take for him to get over it, if he ever would. What if he couldn’t? Where would he be in a year, in ten, twenty years, even? Soon, he would be the same age Kristiaan must have been, and after that he would be the same age as the Panda. He was so far away from fifteen, nearly sixteen, so far removed he couldn’t understand why an adult his age could have ever found the boy he used to be interesting. Nor could he understand how he had fallen for it. So much of his life had been tainted by other people.

When he thought of himself at three, he thought about Suzette, her angel blond hair fanned over train tracks, and I’m lonely, too. When he thought of himself at fifteen, he thought about his mam yelling at him, still upset about the Panda leaving, making him so ready to fall into Kristiaan’s awaiting arms. And then there was sixteen, and being sure that Kris would kill him. Whenever he thought of himself in the current, he thought about nothing at all, and then he wandered back. All of the memories he could barely recall, where had they gone?

He hoped that one day he could think about 2007 and nothing else before it. Pixels on his screen, creating the face of the man he wanted to love. Late night talks and the countless articles he and Alex shared back and forth.

He nearly missed his stop.

SEPTEMBER 2008. ALEX LOOKED A little better than he had done before Luuk left. Though concern was still heavy in the furrow between his brows and the downturn of his lips. Sleep must have been easier, without the sounds of Luuk’s nightmares ringing down the hall. The thought of sharing a bedroom with the other man again seemed less daunting, too, especially since he got used to his papa’s snores. Perhaps he should have visited his pap earlier, it helped him adjust to the lack of privacy that came with a roommate and a flat with thin walls.

Not a word passed between them as Luuk took off his jacket and dropped his backpack to the ground. He had no idea what he could possibly say, what the blond wanted him to say. His mind was still wrapped around the figures of the Panda and Kris. The living room smelled nice, familiar, and after looking around his eye caught the coffee table. There stood his favourite scented candle. A floral one he had bought ages ago, back in his own flat, and never used because he hadn’t wanted to waste it. Occasionally, he took it out of its box and smelled it, placed it on the desk in the main bedroom, and imagined lighting it while doing his homework. The kitchen was warm, filled with sunlight. He hadn’t bothered to look at the time before he left his father’s flat, and part of him had expected to come back to a quiet home, Alex still asleep. It felt strange to finally focus on the tiny details, on the smell of the candle and the warm glow spread across their floor, instead of on the thrumming of his heart and the shake of his fingers.

“How have you been?” he asked, sitting down on the couch. “The place looks clean.”

Before he left, the flat had been suffocating, stuffy. There had been clusters of dishes by the sink, some carrying abandoned meals, not yet rotten. He hadn’t thought about cleaning, hadn’t wanted to face how quickly he had let things get out of hand. Luuk had been raised in a clean house with a disciplined mother who was quick to complain when things weren’t in the right place. He had taught himself to clean things up immediately, and yet he’d neglected this standard for weeks, or was it months? Years? The television was off, reflecting his image. He felt like he was looking at his old baby photos all over again. How could that person be him?

“I have a therapy appointment next week,” Alex shrugged, a shy smile on his face. “I’ve been off work, and I think I might resign soon and find something else. It’s just been too much lately.”

Luuk imagined Alex at work, caring for kids, some who had been traumatized. Once, early in their relationship he had called, crying, because one of the preteens he worked with had killed herself.

“That’s good.” He had forgotten about the therapy thing, and hoped that he wouldn’t be pressed too much about it. “I haven’t been doing much, except for thinking.”

“Your job sent a letter,” the blond sat down next to him. “They’ve been trying to contact you. You’re officially fired now.”

“Sorry.”

“We were expecting it, I’m not upset.”

Silence stretched between them. He wanted to ask how the blond could stand the idea of therapy, of speaking to a stranger about things he had probably never told anyone else, things he couldn’t understand himself. Even the idea made a sharp twist of dread form in Luuk’s stomach. But maybe that was the point: to start with a clean slate, to let go of expectations and outside perspectives, to have somebody think nothing of you.

Luuk might have told his ma, if she had never asked him you’ll tell me if something happened, right? If he never heard her footsteps outside of his room while the Panda put him to bed. If he never began to wonder if she might blame him. He might have told his pa, if the man had never left. He might have told Alex as well, if the man had never meant so much to him, if they had just been friends. There was so much history to him, Kristiaan had taught him a lot about silence, about not being annoying, and perhaps he would have told someone if Kris and the Blue Panda had just touched him, if the hits had been just that. If they hadn’t repeated again and again all the terrible things that could happen if he opened his mouth — his friends would abandon him, he would be taken away from his ma, he would become nothing but an abused little boy. He closed his eyes, remembered how the Panda used to be so kind to his mother, how Kris once picked him up from school with flowers for his sixteenth birthday. They could have been so much better.

“I used to have a stepfather,” the words spilled out of his mouth smoothly, without thought. “Stefan.”

The Panda’s name shocked him, as if he had not said it himself. Stefan was a man, a human, so much more than the stupid nickname Luuk had given him as a child. He hadn’t been a monster, or a creature beyond understanding — he had been nothing, and yet so much. The same species as him, as everyone he’s ever loved.

Admitting that the Panda had been a human was like admitting that he could have been nice, that he had had the choice to be better, and that he had decided not to be.

✲ ✲ ✲

October 2007. He and Alex tried to have sex, even though they were supposed to only be friends. It happened after a handful of in-person meetings and hundreds of exchanged messages and late night calls.

Luuk hadn’t been able to go through with it, which he should have expected. One second, he was aroused, excited for what was to come. Sex, actual sex with someone he liked so much. They had touched themselves before, while they called, but they never spoke about it, and he never expected that they would some day end up touching each other in real life. Then, suddenly, they got a little lost, and they started kissing — they had gone to the bar near his home together, and perhaps they had had too much to drink.

It was such an easy thing to do: kissing Alex, and it was even easier to go further. Because the blond’s mouth was so hot as it pressed against his collarbone, whilst his hand was cold against Luuk’s waist. It was so exhilarating that he couldn’t help but soar away, right out of the open window above his bed, and into the cold night. God, he had always loved the wind. It was the good kind of out-of-body experience that he welcomed. Sometimes he was just so happy, so overwhelmed with emotion, that he transcended his body.

The next second, though, he couldn’t help but panic. Being away from his body was nice, Luuk enjoyed focusing on his soul and nothing else; because his soul did not have the same problems as his brain, it had the mind he had had ages prior, before the Blue Panda first took him to bed. It had the mind he wanted back, that carefree way. And yet, there was always a point where being away from his body became difficult, where it began reminding him of how he had felt when he first fell in love with Kristiaan.

The cold night air felt almost like water, and the wind flowed inside of his nose, his mouth — drowning, he was drowning. No longer did he lay on Alex’s soft bed, nor was he flying in the sky, instead he was a weightless corpse, sinking in the freezing kanaal. He was certain that if he didn’t do anything, he would soon be nowhere at all.

“Jesus Christus!"

There it was; sound, the impact of tender skin against his palm. Luuk was on the bed again, confused for a moment, and then the horrifying realization of what he had done fell upon him. He had lifted his hand and he had allowed it to strike down against the other man’s face. Hard, leaving behind a bright red trace. How could he have done that? Automatically, he sat up, tried to blink himself back to reality. He was only partially there, where was the other half of him? He couldn’t figure it out. With shaking hands, he left the bed and made his way to the bathroom.

How could he have done that?

In that moment, he had exposed a part of himself he had never shown before. And it was silly. Nothing in his physical appearance had altered, he did not look like he had tried to have sex. There were no bruises, he wasn’t drunk, his clothes covered his body just like they had done when he left his flat that afternoon. He looked normal, despite his racing heart and mind, which was trying to figure out what he should do next. It felt unfair that he had to carry all of his shame internally.

That day, they wouldn’t have a conversation about it. The emotions were too raw, and once Luuk left Alex’s bedroom — after having to take two hours to collect the courage — it was clear that the blond didn’t want to talk about it. So he decided to leave with an apology and a promise to call later. The way he had managed to ruin what was meant to be a nice day in just a minute was astounding. They had planned for Luuk to stay the night, and then the next day they would see a movie at the cinema and have dinner somewhere nice. They had been so excited, talking about it for days. He had never stayed over at Alex’s flat before, and for the first time their schedules aligned perfectly.

He didn’t end up calling in the morning. He had a terrible nightmare and was practically unable to leave the bed because of the fear lingering in his heart, paralyzing him. It was as if Kristiaan had nearly killed him all over again. Part of him must have been avoiding the call, since he had no way of explaining what had happened to him. Luuk did not want to be seen as the teenaged boy he had once been. The kind of boy that drank illegally and went to parties, the kind that fell in love with a grown man. Maybe his crush on Kris hadn’t been that bad, in itself, but it was terrible that he had acted on it. Nor did he want Alex to see him as the toddler he had been. Naïve, he had been terribly naïve, and his life had been ruined because of it.

Instead, he messaged the boy two days later: I’m sorry for hitting you. I understand if you don’t want to see me anymore. I don’t think I’m ready to have sex. I’ve never dated before.

He neglected to mention the one relationship that had gone terribly, he didn’t say I worry that I deserved it, that I might not be loveable enough to cherish. Immediately, as if he had been waiting for Luuk to finally break his silence, the blond messaged him back: It’s fine, I’m fine. I don’t need to have sex with you. Want to call later?

✲ ✲ ✲

September 2008. The words: “I never wanted to tell you, because for years I’ve felt like I was ruined,” spilled out of his mouth. It felt like exhilaration, like he finally finished the conversation he had wanted to have for ages. “You need to understand that my mama wasn’t there for me after, or during, or ever. I didn’t have anyone to stand up for me.”

There was a stifling silence hanging in the air. Alex’s brows were furrowed, his lips pulled in a tight frown. Luuk had spared the man the details, the I’m lonely, too and the image of Suzette on those train tracks, and the months he spent with Kris, the you wanted to get me drunk, the kanaal. He didn’t tell Alex how it felt to have a body pressed against his own, again and again, how the Blue Panda sounded, those unfamiliar noises pushed into his ear. Because the details were too much, too personal, things the blond could never really understand. But leaving those things out of the conversation didn’t feel like he was still keeping a big, nasty secret: it felt like not mentioning things that would hurt him to say aloud.

But, perhaps some day he could talk about them. In his own time, whenever he wanted. In that way, keeping the details inside felt like a good kind of waiting, of the knowledge that if he ever wanted to talk, there would be someone waiting for him, someone who already knew him.

“Thank you for telling me,” Alex eventually said, biting his nails. Luuk wondered if the man had any kind of anger for Stefan and Kris. He wondered if he wanted him to. “I’m glad you finally feel comfortable enough to tell me the truth.”

The truth. How could he have ever expected any other response? A swirl of warmth traveled through his stomach at the acceptance, at the lack of questions. Alex believed him, didn’t blame him. Almost, he got up to call a therapist for an appointment, just so he could talk more, just to hear someone say thank you for telling me or it’s not your fault over and over again.

I love you, he thought but didn’t say, because it felt inappropriate for the moment. While at his papa’s flat, he did think about his relationship with the blond, and what he wanted it to become. It was yet another thing they had never explicitly talked about. So perhaps he should say it, even though it might not fit perfectly into their conversation. “I really think I love you,” he said, pressing his hands against his thighs and kneading like dough. It was something he used to do to Suzette as they watched television together, when he was a toddler who had no idea what to do with his own body. “For so long, I’ve wanted to be something more than a friend to you. But it was terrible with Kristiaan. I’ve had crushes on other people before we met, but I’ve never felt ready to be in a relationship. I feel like I’m bound to ruin it.”

Finally, he was able to say what he had wanted to say after he and Alex tried having sex for the first, and last, time. He knew that with all the kisses they shared and the I love yous they exchanged, they were practically in a relationship already. But it was different. If things went wrong, he could say we had a falling out or we fought, he didn’t have to use ugly words like we broke up or he abused me. The idea of being stuck with Alex for the rest of his life excited him. He wanted to wake up to the sight of blond hair forever, they wouldn’t need to have sex, they wouldn’t need to have a thrilling relationship full of adventure.

Even so, he was still afraid of committing, of not having the choice to leave when necessary. An irrational fear, really, since his life was entangled with Alex’s ever since they moved in together. Even without the label of boyfriends he’d have a hard time leaving. He wanted to stay, as long as he had the opportunity to leave.

“I don’t think you’ve ruined anything. Ever. I don’ t think you’re ruined. I have no idea who you were before, but I know that I love who you are now. You might have been a different person if nothing had happened, but that’s not your fault, it’s not wrong to change when you’ve been hurt.”

“Could we just…” Luuk shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never allowed myself to want much. It’s silly, because we’re basically dating already, but I suppose that I just wanted to let you know that I love you.”

“I love you, too. We don’t have to label it, or have sex, or do anything. All of that public affection stuff would be an extra for me, something I can live without. I just want to be able to come home from work with you in my home, I want to have my meals with you, I want to go to bed with you. I love having someone beside me, someone who understands me as much as you do. That’s enough.”

✲ ✲ ✲

December 2008. He stood in the kitchen with his pa. They did the dishes and talked about school and the most recent job interview he had at a restaurant in the centrum.

Luuk had made witlof and his pa had made them a nice andijviestamppot, which weren’t exactly Christmas meals, but they were foods that they had wanted to eat that day anyways. Warm and filling and things that reminded them all of home cooked childhood meals and eating while it snowed outside. It was something he had in common with his father, and perhaps nearly every other person in the country: eating a meal made mostly of vegetables, thick and easy to prepare, perfect to heat up the body from the inside out. The neighbours had grilled some meat for them — sausages, hamburgers, kipfilet — that they had left over from their own Christmas dinner the day prior.

His pa had gotten himself a cat to combat the typical winter loneliness the man always felt ever since he left his wife and kids. His and Luuk’s relationship had gotten better, and he had the neighbours as well, but those things were never quite enough. The cat was older, had struggled to get adopted, and siamese. The light parts of its fur matched the color of Suzette’s hair. It meowed a lot, and Luuk couldn’t help but be reminded of the boy with his face, constantly repeating his name while the Panda took them to bed.

Luuk, Luuk, Luuk.

I’m busy, he thought, in the hopes that the boy might hear him from that deep, pained part within himself. I’m safe, he added.

As his pa put the dry cups and plates and cutlery back in their place, he stepped out in the hallway. It felt like a dream to see Alex sitting on his papa’s couch with the cat, Mara, purring on his lap. She wasn’t shy at all, she loved to get attention and whenever Luuk and Alex went out for walks she would sit by the door until they came back. They still had a week of winter break left, and they would spend most of it at his father’s flat.

This would be their first Christmas together, and also the first Christmas Luuk would celebrate away from his mother. He’d called to let her know that he wouldn’t see her for the day itself, that he would visit sometime in January, and she hadn’t seemed as angry as he had expected she would be. She took it as a natural fact, as if she had been waiting for him to pull away. His ma just told him to have fun, and that she would have a friend over anyways — a friend he’d heard about many times, a friend who was probably, secretly, more than a friend. She wouldn’t be lonely. Ever since he told the blond about the Panda, his mama only reminded him of the past, of how he should have been more protected as a kid. Not just by her, but by his papa, too. He loved his mother still, and it was maybe a bit unfair for him to forgive his father more, but he couldn’t help it.

His mama had been there since the beginning, she had stood outside of his door while the Panda touched him, she had kept quiet when he came home wet and bloodied. His papa hadn’t — he’d heard about Kristiaan, and he hadn’t seen the aftermath. His papa had left, just like many other fathers. His father had apologized, recognized that he had done wrong by leaving and barely checking up on him, by not stepping in when he also knew about Kristiaan. All his mam gave him was that guilty look, which he couldn’t do anything with. He would have forgiven his mother just the same, if she had just admitted that she knew, if she admitted that she had failed as much as his father had. Some day, those things might happen, but he couldn’t pause his life and wait for them.

“We should buy her some toys tomorrow,” Alex said, finally looking up. Ever since they talked, there seemed to be a new kind of recognition in his eyes. He never allowed Luuk to stay in his own head for long. “All she has is that aluminum foil ball.”

“Okay,” Luuk said, glancing into the kitchen. “I can’t say it enough — I really love you.”

“Ah, schat,” the other laughed. “I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you.”