THE PORCELAIN OF THEIR NEW, shiny bathtub was cold as it painfully dug into the protruding hills of his spine. Daan’s feet were cold as ice, nudging against his bony hip, despite the warm water surrounding them.

There was a cigarette in one of his hands, and in the other a nearly empty, red stained wine glass. The bath was smaller than the one they had owned in Cambridge, so they had to sit with their knees pointed up, out of the water and into the wintery air that streamed in from the open window not far above them. It was supposed to have a key, so it would remain properly closed, but they had moved in a week prior, and had not yet found it anywhere.

Adriaan’s arm was uncomfortably propped up on one of the bathtub’s sides, and he was certain that it would soon slip off and drop back down into the water, as it had done earlier in that night. Still, he was lucky to be sitting on the side of the tub without the tap.

“I forgot how cold it could get out here,” Daan sighed, taking a long drag from his cig and puffing the smoke out into the direction of the window. As if they had ever cared about smoking indoors. “But I think it’s only going to get worse.”

“I’m going to the stad soon,” Adriaan shrugged. How could someone forget the weather of their own country? It hadn’t even been that different in Cambridge. “I’m thinking of finding work there. I could buy some thick blankets and jackets. Maybe some new sweaters.”

For a second, he wondered if they would even be able to afford such things. He never really had to pay for his own clothes before in Nijmegen, for they spent most of their adulthood in Cambridge. He couldn't be certain that the old secondhand store his ma used to buy his clothes from still existed. And even in Cambridge, he barely shopped. His old clothes were baggy and properly made. Adriaan and Daan didn't grow much past the age of eighteen. In a way, they seemed to have shrunk. When they first left home, they were friendly boys with roundish cheeks — though only noticeable up close — and soft stomachs. Somewhere along the way, they turned into messes of collarbone and spine, stray muscles clinging to bones like shy children holding on to their mother’s flowy skirt. Nutritious food was hard to come by without dropping significant amounts of money. They, at the time, had other priorities.

Even so, Daan smiled at his offer. It was hard to tell if he had the same worries, or if he was genuinely expecting Adriaan to leave home soon and come back with all kinds of wintery goods. Daan leaned forward and took a painfully long drag from his cigarette, held it for a bit, and blew all of the smoke right into Adriaan’s face. His morbid way to express love. Or if not love, a gentle kind of gratitude.

Neither of them had anybody else they could rely on so strongly, after all.

And yet he couldn’t bring himself to appreciate the gesture. He quickly found himself spluttering and coughing in an attempt to rid himself of the disgusting taste of nicotine sticking to his tongue. Adriaan was never much of a smoker, except during social occasions — thought many of his “social occasions” only included himself and Daan.

In his desperate attempt to clean up his mouth, Adriaan stopped concentrating on his arm. Causing it to slowly slip from the wet bathtub side. In no time, his elbow struck the porcelain bottom of the tub with a dramatic splash and a harsh pain.

“Godverdomme!” He expelled the word like vomit, it felt exhilarating to finally curse in his native tongue again. The small flame of his cigarette slowly dimmed in the water, and he grieved the fact that he had ruined a perfectly good smoke for the second time that night. In the exact same way. He no longer felt like the bath water was comforting. Instead, it had become his enemy.

In a swift move, he brought the wineglass to his lips and finished off the few milliliters clinging to its sides. Then he placed the wet cigarette into it and placed the glass on the soapy tiles next to the bathtub. He threw Daan, who was letting out slow, sarcastic laughs, a dirty look before he got out of the water and shivered in the cold. The fun was over, and all he could think about was getting his clothes on and laying in their warm bed.

“I love you, Aad,” Daan chuckled. “I’ll be there soon, just let me finish this,” he held up his own wine glass, still half-full, and also his nearly burned away cigarette. He, of course, hadn’t managed to drink as much as Adriaan had. “Then we can snuggle up together.”

TO ADRIAAN, THE BEST FEELING was this: lying down in a freshly changed bed, with Daan by his side, underneath a thin blanket just warm enough to remind him of Summer. It almost felt like Heaven, and he wondered if that feeling was the closest he would ever get to that blessed place. More often than not, it felt like something that Adriaan didn’t really deserve.

They both preferred to bathe before bed, since it brought them a certain freshness. Clean skin pressed against clean sheets, wet hair spread wildly over a soft pillow. During the Winter months, a freezing cold clung to their skin, even when they were dressed in thick sweaters. The best way to combat that chill was to lay hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder together underneath a nice blanket.

“I missed this,” Daan sighed.

“We slept together yesterday,” Adriaan mumbled. “And eergister, and the years before that.”

“I missed home,” the other clarified. “Despite the cold. It’s strange that, years ago, we practically lived down the street from here.”

Adriaan tried to remember if he ever saw this exact apartment complex before, all those years prior. It stood ten minutes from his childhood home. From what he could gather, he hadn’t — but that could have been because he didn’t often venture into this part of Hatert. This quiet part away from the trouble. All the important locations from his youth — the stores, school, Daan’s home, his own place — were in the opposite direction. There was a playground nearby, and he was certain that he had never played there as a kid. There were so many buildings that looked the same, though, and they all might just have turned into an unimportant blur.

It struck him suddenly — the fact that he could run into his family any day. His mother had a friend that lived nearby, who probably hadn’t moved. It was quite a surprise that he hadn’t already seen any of them. A flow of panic in the shape of his sister, Madelief, crashed into his heart. She had been eight when they left, and he wondered if they would even be able to recognize each other. Maybe he had come across her at some point. Maybe she did play on that playground nearby. Surely, she would know of his existence, of her older brother somewhere in the world. But, by now he could have easily turned into an old photograph in a book, a stray picture his mother sometimes admired alone in her bedroom, a story hesitated to be told. If he ever saw her again, how could he explain why he left?

“I’m glad we’re back,” Daan whispered.

Adriaan nodded, his worry not yet gone. Ever since they returned, he had been afraid that a mistake had been made on his part. They had lived a comfortable life in Cambridge, even though their flat there wasn’t much of a looker, despite the fact that work was hard to come by. Both of them had their problems, and yet Cambridge had felt like a certain kind of freedom. They were young, and didn’t yet feel like citizens of the world, their whole life there — which was supposed to be permanent — had felt like a prolonged vacation.

They were outsiders in Cambridge, and nobody really cared when they walked down the street hand-in-hand. And when people did mind, they usually didn’t say anything. All they did was give, easily ignored, disapproving looks. Daan and Adriaan were nothing but tourists to them. Not family, or potential friends.

It had been Aadriaan’s idea to leave, though he never had a proper reason for it. He had no unfinished business, and he never felt very homesick. Just lonely, and a little lost. When he finally vocalized this to the other man, he suspected that he would have to pack his bags by himself and that that would be the end of things. He would have to leave and allow Daan to remain in their free life. Of course it didn’t play out like that — wherever Adriaan went, Daan followed.

THE WARM BED, IN A way, reminded Adriaan of one of the first lazy Summers he and Daan spent together.

They met in the late winter of 1980, before they were even ten years old. Life back then was simple, so Adriaan never bothered to recall much of it. It was a good kind of boring; the kind people looked back on with regret and jealousy. Those boring days should have been savoured more, but back then Adriaan had not yet realized that things would only get worse.

Their parents easily welcomed the newfound companionship between them, since Daan was new to Hatert and Adriaan never really had any friends in the neighbourhood to begin with. He did spend some time with the kids living in the surrounding area, but only for short bits of time before they got tired of him. Adriaan had never been an interesting child, and he hadn’t been very interested either. He, despite his attempts, had never understood the appeal in endless games of tag and hide-and-seek. The other children — sometimes even their parents — had found him quite dull.

Daan had been similarly reserved. In primary school during recess, they never sat at the desks of classmates to socialize.Instead, they spent most of the time at their own desks, reading books or drawing. When they got to play outside during recess, they would both find the spot farthest away from everybody else. It had been strange for Adriaan to meet someone with a rhythm similar to his own. Even though they hadn’t gone to the same primary school, he found comfort in the fact that, while he was sitting alone at his desk, Daan would be doing the same. It had made him feel less weird.

When they happened to stumble upon each other at the playground, which had been otherwise empty because of the cold weather, they quickly bonded. They enjoyed talking, not playing, and never minded the fact that they never really had much to talk about at all.

The first memory he has of a Summer together with Daan had taken place in the early weeks of a sweltering heat, somewhere in 1982. His Tante always came around to their house during that time, since the sun was shining nicely, but it wasn’t hot enough for sunburn to be almost unpreventable. Tante Lynn didn’t have her own garden, since she lived in a flat, so she always stayed for at least a week. The pool would be set up for her and Adriaan’s parents, but Adriaan himself wouldn’t be able to use it until she got home. Lynn didn’t enjoy sharing a pool with a rambunctious boy. Neither did his parents. He would have the pool entirely for himself after her leave, though.

The memory occurred shortly after Tante Lynn’s departure. The pool had been drained so his mama could clean it properly. It was still wet, causing leaves to stick to its vinyl sides. Dirt caked up around the corners. At the bottom, he and Daan laid together. His parents were only a few metres away, his ma was tending to the bushes while his pa cleaned up their plastic set of garden furniture.

Nothing made that particular memory exciting at all. He had found the furniture to be blocky and an ugly shade of gray, and his mother messing around in the garden was nothing new. Daan barely spoke to him. Yet he decided to remember that day and scratch the details of it into his brain. It couldn’t have spanned more than a few minutes in reality, and yet it had felt like they laid there together for days, years even. They laid there for so long that the other’s body twisted around his own, and became almost as familiar.

Whenever he thought about that day, he could vividly picture the redness of Daan’s skin, the way his light eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks. The boy’s eyes were clenched shut and twitched periodically, his chest was a shade of pink that could have been found in a baby girl’s nursery. A leaf had attached itself to Daan’s calf, but he made no move to remove it.

Was it the sheer proximity that caused him to keep the vivid picture in mind for over a decade? Surely not, they had always laid together like that; shoulder to shoulder, nearly every inch connected. It wasn’t that important, in the grand scheme of things.

The mystic feeling of it all had been broken quickly, though, when his mother shouted his name. The sheer volume of it forced Daan to open his eyes, and when they made eye contact, Adriaan could do nothing but look away in shame.

“I want to start cleaning the pool, boys,” his mam stated. “Go upstairs and wash all that dirt away before dinner time comes.”

Daan stood first, and for a split second Adriaan allowed himself to watch the other’s pale, glistening back. It was a rare sensation, but he had found himself to be undeniably curious at the sight of it.