He wiped away the tears, tenderly, and I forgot to weep as he told me silently everything I always wanted to hear.

I wasn't sure if the word boys should mean dim or incomprehensible. I was hovering between the two, with a healthy dose of testosterone-poisoned.

Christophe, with the careful tone of an adult telling a kid not to pet the nice foaming-rabid pooch.

His thumb stroked my cheek. My eyes half-closed. When he spoke next, it was very softly, his voice an almost-physical caress against my whole body. My flesh tightened like a harpstring. I swallowed hard against the wave of liquid heat. "How can I possibly be jealous when I know you spent your time grieving for me, Dante?

His smell—the scent of a demon, cinnamon incense, amber musk—wrapped around me, filled my lungs. I felt like I could breathe again, without every breath being tainted by the stench of dying cells. The smell of him seemed to coat my abused insides with peace, and flow down into the middle of my body to spread through my veins. I filled my lungs again. While I could, before what was undoubtedly a hallucination vanished.

I was feeling safe. Not the kind of safe where you know there are still bad things howling outside the door waiting to get in. No, it was the kind of safe where you sink down in your bed at the end of the day and know you can go to sleep and everything is going to be the same tomorrow.

If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences Ive had, that need to be transformed.