Snowflake: A Love Story - 24. Kakslauttanen

Brian
~~~~~~~~~~~

More than this . . . there is nothing.

Here I lay on this perfect marshmallow bed with the skin of my back pressed against the skin of my lover’s front. I feel his perfect, pert nipples stab me gently into my shoulder blades. I feel his strong arms around my middle and I feel the moist sponginess of his spent love against the hollow of my lower back. His cheek rests easily against the top of my head and I feel him heave with sigh after contented sigh beneath me.

It is so nice and warm in here and in such a way that seems almost unnatural because outside is anything but warm. Outside is the Arctic cold: the real thing and not just a euphemism. The air outside is clearer than crystal and the glass of our funny little ‘igloo’ bungalow is perfectly clean, offering no obstruction to what is at play outside.

“I told you! I told you that you have never seen the Angelsong until you have seen it here.” I feel the depth of his soft, sultry voice rumble out of him. He puts the perfect period on his statement as he picks up my hand in his and kisses it with the lightness of his namesake. The touch of his lips is as gentle as a snowflake landing on my skin.

Even with all of these happy distractions, nothing even he can do can pull me away from the sight that shimmers before me through the glass ceiling of our igloo. He’s right, of course. Why wouldn’t he be? This is where my Baby is from! Who should know it better than him?

Colors light up not only the sky outside, but the snow below it, the trees in that snow, the icy air around the trees, and the bedclothes kicked off of our naked legs. It causes the skin of our legs to glow with those same colors, especially Snowflake’s pale, beautiful, and sculpted legs. His skin seems to be made to capture the reflection.

Bright greens, pinks, and golds flood the sky in endless slow-moving waves that change in color almost imperceptibly from one unearthly hue to another. Sometimes, one of the green bands will ripple and create for itself a bright pink edge making it look like one of the streamers of silk we saw in China during the Olympics.

The Northern Lights do this all in utter silence. They say you can hear them, sometimes. Snowflake says so too, but it is rare. Mostly, the Song of a Million Angels is played out in such a way that only the eyes can ‘hear’ them. They really are music in light!

The more you look into them, the more you fall into them, I’ve noticed. Seeing them out here this bright and this powerful is like looking into another universe. It’s like falling in love: the more you experience it, the deeper it gets.

I snuggle into Snowflake’s arms and just make a contented: “Yeah . . .”

It is more of a sigh than a ‘yeah,’ really, but I think it gets the point across. Snowflake, though, convulses under me with a chuckle.

“What?” I turn and ask his goofy smiling face.

“Rare is it that I can leave you at a loss for words, my Butt Blossom. I am amazed!” Snowflake rasps into my ear. It earns him a short smack on the side of his bare ass beneath me.

“Fuck you, but you’re right too. I really had . . . no idea,” and I really didn’t. Each passing minute the silent passion of those Northern Lights swells! With it my own does as well.

I slowly turn in his arms until I’m facing him and then pull him down flatter on his back. I grind into his hardening member with my own. I devour his mouth and hump him without mercy. Snowflake seems to lose himself in a daze as he moans and yields to me.

“Your turn, Snuffy!” I growl sexily into his ear while lifting his legs around me. Snowflake pants and stares hard into my eyes with that beautifully freezing gaze of his. The soft silicone cream in the tub next to me on the bed comes open with a flick of my thumb as I work him with the middle finger of my other hand. He is so unused to being bottom that his hole clinches tightly against my invading digits.

“Loosen up, Fuck Boy! I’mma pound you senseless!” This is a new game Snuffy and I have gotten into: rough stuff! Never so much that we hurt anything, um, that much, but enough so that we can play around with domination games. Snuffy gets the fuck OFF on it, especially when he gets to be the ‘poor innocent waif!’

“Be gentle, Mister! I am so-o young!” Snowflake squeaks at me stiltedly. It’s so ridiculous I can’t hold my composure and sputter out a raspberry-laugh and start laughing at him with my face buried in his slightly fuzzy chest.

“What? I am not convincing enough?” Snowflake says with mock-obtuseness.

“You won’t be getting any Academy Award nominations if that’s what you mean,” I reply drolly and then push myself into his succulent tightness.

“Herranjumala!” Snowflake screeches as he grabs on to my hips for dear life! I hope I didn’t hurt him . . . that much.

“You good?” I ask, obviously seeing the slight shock in Snowflakes wide beautiful eyes.

“Isä! You are so-o very bi-ig and I am so very . . . ugngh . . . tiny!” Snowflake grinds me into him deeper and I feel his impossibly strong muscles grip me like a fist. Him doing this with that sick ‘little boy Snowflake’ voice drives me crazy!

“What . . . UNGH…is an Eye-saa?” I have to ask between gasps at having my dick nearly yanked off my body by another tug of Snowflake’s incredible sphincter muscles.

“Oh … ~sigh~ . . . Daddy.” Snowflake answers breathily into my ear.

“You are a . . . AHHH . . . sick fuck, Snuffy!” I manage to squeeze out of my spastic larynx as Snowflake flips me on my back and begins to cowboy-ride me into excruciating glory.

“It takes one to know one, ‘Daddy!’ UUUURRRRGH!” With that, he finishes on my chest which finishes me inside his crushing insides.

“AUUGH! AAUUUGH! AAAARRRRGH!” I twitch and jolt as he squeezes me dry.

“Oh, jeeezus! Stop already! I’m gonna have an aneurysm!” I beg and Snowplow relents and melts off of me and next to my side, one silken leg still holding me in place on my back.

“That was fun . . . again!” Snowflake whispers.

“I think you finally dried me out in there, Sweet Baby. I feel completely spent after that. I love this, but . . . ” I yawn a deep tired and contented yawn.

“. . . I think I need to sleep now, ‘kay?” But my only answer is the low sweet buzzing of my soulmate’s soft snore. He’s already out and then so am I.

~~

My eyes slowly open to a snowy twilight morning.

The glass on our ‘igloo’ is clear of snow somehow, but I can see drifts are all around and snowflakes fall gently from the sky. As I look up into that sky I’m fascinated to see them slowly materialize from way up in the dark slate clouds and catch the artificial light of the surrounding resort. It is 8 AM in the morning, but it might as well by 8 PM for all of me. We’re here in the wintertime and the sun is only a faint glow on the horizon here. In the summer, this is the land of the Midnight Sun. But, in winter, it is perpetual twilight. If it wasn’t for the brightness of the snow with the help of the lights it would be very weird living in a world of constant semi-darkness. But, for some reason, it isn’t depressing. It is definitely weird, but not sad. The whole snowy forest around the resort seems enchanted somehow in a way I can’t completely explain.

Maybe it’s because of ‘Santa’s Home.’ Yeah, I know, no I haven’t gotten Mad Cow Disease and started regressing to childhood . . . yet. There is a place in Kakslauttanen (I swear I get lock-jaw every time I have to wrap my mouth around that word) that they call ‘Santa’s Home’ that they insist is where Santa himself lives. Snowflake has always made it a point to remind me that Santa is Finnish and, more importantly, a Laplander. Somewhere deep in the forest (so the brochure says) is Santa’s house and his Celebration House. It is really deep in the pine forest too! It’s a whole five minutes away by car with the mystery location to his place solved by a well-paved road and numerous signs pointing to the famous Jolly Old Silver Daddy.

According to Snowflake, we have a date there tonight. It is where, and here I sigh deeply and nervously, I’ll be meeting his family for the first time. If meeting them won’t be strange enough I’ll have to be doing it in Santa’s fucking workshop. Well, I did have to choose a complete weirdo as a boyfriend. Why should his family and the circumstances of meeting them be any less weird?

~~~

So the rest of the twilight day was, um, interesting, I guess. I’m still somewhat shaken by it, to tell the truth. It started out fine enough, but then, well . . . just bear with me for a bit.

I have finally gotten used to the no sunrise above a certain point on the horizon thingie. We did a relaxed ‘orienteering’ ski run around the countryside. This place really does make you feel like you’re inside a snow globe my grandma might have bought. The pines all around almost look artificial they’re so dark green and the fresh powdery snow on them also somehow looks unreal. The reality of this place is that it is so real that it feels unreal. Now, I realize that makes me sound like I’ve been doing ‘shrooms, but I haven’t, honest. It’s just the fact that some places are so beautiful your brain can’t accept it. That is what the Lapland is like: beautiful to the point of being surreal. Even the quality of the snow is bizarrely perfect. It’s so cold up here that the snow stays powder longer which means skiing on it feels like riding on a cloud! Gliding, even through drifts, is a breeze because the snow just ‘poofs’ right out of the way. I can see why nordic style skiing was invented up here. It’s SO much easier than walking (which is virtually impossible without snowshoes).

A couple of things did ground us in reality, though. Firstly, was Snowflake’s weirder than usual mood which I’ll tell you more about in a minute. The other was our helping two English college girls navigate the area on their skis since they clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were both very cute and I think part of their ‘damsel in distress’ routine was a play to get into our pants. Unfortunately, I’m not Bi and I’ve ‘cured (joke)’ Snowflake of his Bi tendencies so their suggestive bumps and playfulness didn’t get them anywhere, which perplexed them to no end, it seemed. Pretty girls aren’t used to having to work for it, I’ve noticed.

“If you don’t mind my asking, are you two, erm, together, by any chance?” The brunette asked.

“Of course we are together! If we were apart we would not be here together now would we?” Snowflake, using his beautifully Finnish matter-of-factness, just blew their question out of the water. Unfortunately, it just made him ‘absolutely charming.’ I couldn’t help but giggle at all of it which gave Snowflake the opportunity to continue his ruse.

“What are you laughing at? They have funny accents, but that is no reason to laugh at them! That is not very nice, Bri Bri!” Hahaha! There is no better way in the WORLD to announce that you are a gay couple than by using silly lovey-dovey names at one another.

“Cool it, ‘Sweetums.’ I was laughing at you. Not them.” Which made Mr. Charm flash me a patented Snowflake Smile at 5000mW which made me blush despite myself.

“Oh-h. Ookaaay, then. Hehehe. You two snowflakes enjoy, then. Perhaps we’ll meet for drinks later, possibly for some ‘girl’ talk. We’ll buy in thanks for your gallantry.” The blonde said, getting it pretty instantly. I’m surprised their supposedly legendary Brit gaydar didn’t go off the minute they saw us.

“Just to clarify, I am Snowflake. This is Brian.” Snowflake said deadpan.

“Oh, hehehe! You two are too much! Until later, my larks.” The brunette said and made for their car.

“You’re too good at that, Snuffy.” I said waving the girls off as they drove back to the resort.

“Too good at what? Telling the truth?” Snowflake continued his ‘deal.’

“Yeah, sure. That’s it.” I rolled my eyes and he flashed me another smile and then kissed me.

As we continued our journey he returned to his unsettled silence. It had its desired effect in that I couldn’t stand it anymore and began the ‘picking’ process to pry it, whatever it was, out of him.

“Ok. We’re supposed to be having ‘fun’ out here, right? So, like this here . . . this isn’t fun. Why are you so fucking quiet?” Not delicate, I know, but Snowflake needs more of a hammer and a chisel over a toothpick to pry things out of him.

Surprisingly, it took very little to get Snowflake to spill. I think that might have been the reason why he brought me to that particular part of the forest. In the short distance, behind some trees, I saw a rough-hewn, but cozy looking, wood house. It wasn’t a log cabin, but just a house that used rough timbers as siding rather than milled slats. It also sported a stone chimney that had smoke coming out of it. The warm light flickering through the windows spoke to the fact that it was occupied, so it wasn’t an abandoned place. I was concerned about being a trespasser but remembered what Snowflake had said before leaving that the Lapland belonged to no one and those that live here understood that.

“Someone I loved when I was very young once lived here. His name was Tristan . . .” Snowflake began and I suppressed my immediate jealous reaction since this was someone he once ‘loved’ not loves. Right, like I have a leg to stand on as far as past loves are concerned. I had my share and then some being the complete man-whore I was once.

“How old were you when you met?” I wanted to know how soon ago this was, however.

“We had been friends since early childhood. He was the first person, outside of my close family, who accepted me as I was and wasn’t afraid or so I thought.” Snowflake stopped as he stared with a heartbreaking look of what must have been nostalgia. I suddenly felt like the selfish idiot I am. I was being treated to something and it was something deep!

“Afraid?” That threw me. I suppose Snuffy could be somewhat intimidating sometimes, but never scary per se.

“All the other children around where I was living at the time thought I was a ghost. When they weren’t running away from me they would throw snowballs at me to chase me away. One day this happened and, like always, I went to my little place. It was an old thicket I’d found that had probably been made by an animal, and there I would go and cry. My brothers often had to find me and they were never too pleased about it. They would call me a crybaby and a delicate little ‘snowflake’ and make fun of me that way. I soon stopped eating and this made my mother very concerned.” Snowflake said quietly as he found an old familiar rock he came to sit on like he’d been doing it all his life. This really was his old world and this world of his was breaking my heart!

“I actually did eat, I just did not eat with the family anymore. I ate of the berries I found around a little, but I was growing frailer and frailer by the day. I stopped going to school and went instead to my thatched place where I would sit and dream until my brothers had to come and get me again. One time, I do not know how they got me back. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up in my bed with the doctor standing over me. I did not want to wake up. I felt so tired.” Snowflake said with a thickness developing in his throat.

I came to sit next to him on the cold rock and took his hand and he squeezed it and smiled.

“Then . . . this happened.” Snowflake held up my hand in his which was confusing because I don’t remember being anywhere near here as a kid. I think I would have remembered!

“Um, what happened?” That was going to need an explanation.

“I met someone who cared about me!” Snowflake said as he released my hand.

“I was taken to the hospital which was a long journey away and of which I remember little. There they did painful things to me! I had IVs put in and I was too weak to resist them. They were actually trying to get my glucose up because I had gone into hypoglycemic shock from malnutrition. The state services actually had to question my mother to be sure I was not being neglected as I was showing signs of active starvation. I was not being neglected, of course. My mother was beside herself with worry over me and she grew very angry at my older brothers for their callousness toward me. She was a single mother doing her best, but, without the help of her other sons, she couldn’t keep watch on me all the time.” He paused after this seemingly lost for a minute.

“So you were in the hospital and . . .” I prompted him.

“It was in hospital, while I was recovering, that I met Tristan.” Snowflake’s composure changed and I could tell he was back there in that moment and it glowed in him. This Tristan must have been very special.

“They allowed me to get out of bed and go to the playroom after a few days. Naturally, all the other children avoided me because of my paleness, all but Tristan.” Snowflake took to looking at a small pine cone he must have gotten off a tree earlier. He rubbed it in his hands and brought it to his nose like it was a habit he picked up long ago.

“For the second week I was at the hospital Tristan and I became inseparable. We played blocks and made pretend wars with the little green soldiers. We played board games and made puzzles together. We got each other better. We healed one another. He had come in with pneumonia and had been near death a couple of weeks before. When I first met him he was still too weak to do too much but sit on the floor with me and play pattycakes and I was the same way. But we worked our way up from there.” Snowflake said in a faraway voice.

“It was where I first learned of sisu. I learned it from Tristan who persevered and got better and then . . . had to go home.” Snowflake said with a sad smile still looking at his pine cone.

“I was fairly inconsolable after that. I had made one friend. Just one in this whole world and then he had to go home away from me. I would be alone again. I would be the ghost again.” Snowflake tossed the poor pine cone with a sharpness that made me jump.

“I was ‘better’ so they sent me back home too. There, alone and in the cold once more, I returned to my old ways of hiding and not eating. It was about then that my mother had enough. She could not do any more for me if I would not try to live. She had her other sons to worry about. So, she sent me to my father’s parents farther north. Up here where the snow is almost forever and the sky is almost always glowing.” He said with unexpected cheerfulness.

“That was pretty shitty of your mom, Baby.” I tried to say it in a comforting way, but Snowflake didn’t see it that way.

“Oh, no! No, my mother was heartbroken having to send me up here. Our parting was tearful, but she knew that I was not doing well where she and my brothers were. She seemed to know something about me that finally convinced her of what I needed. I had to be up here where my people come from.” Snowflake said mysteriously.

“You used to talk about your Dad sometimes, but I always thought he was with you for some of your childhood. Did he divorce your mom and that’s why she was a single mom?” I know I was being nosey, but then, this is my Baby I was talking to! I need to know stuff about him to put more pieces into his puzzle. I need to know where it is I need to go . . . to heal him. A doctor to the end, that’s me, I guess.

“That, I’m sure, was part of the problem with me at that time. I was young, five or six years old when this situation occurred. I lost my father soon before all of this started happening to me. He passed away when I was but four, but I have vivid memories of him and how he used to hold me and sing to me, especially in that last year of his life. It was like he was trying to instill as much of his love into me as he could before he left me. That may have been a reason my brothers did not care for me. They may have been jealous of the attention he lavished upon me. I was his ‘little prince’ as I can loosely translate what he used to call me. I remember it. It still hurts.” Snowflake dropped his head and I grabbed him and held him close and felt a heave of a sob come out of him. This was pain long held.

“It’s ok, Jösse. I’m here. This is good. Let it out! I’m here, my Darling.” I used a word only my Mom used to use for me: ‘Darling.’ Not ‘darlin,’ but the full phrase ‘my Darling.’ Jösse also needed to hear his real name. The one given to him probably by his dad when he was born. Not the ‘nickname’ that I now know to be a taunt. A word dagger made of ice that Jösse had come to own and make his own to kill its sting.

“~sniff~ Hehe. You know how to properly pronounce my real name now, Jö?” Snowflake said to lighten the heavy mood. I chuckled with him, but, of course, I’ve been pronouncing it just fine for a while now. I think that was his way of acknowledging that I was calling out to his soul. That I was embracing all of him, sorrows and all.

“So you came up here to be with your grandparents on your Dad’s side?” I prompted my Darling, again, to continue his story as there was more to reveal. In response, Snowflake stood up and brushed melting snow off of his well-padded backside. I figured he was done and didn’t want to talk anymore but, such was not the case.

“Jö! I came up here. Their home is not too far from here. I should say our home for it was my home too from then on. The only one I ever had, really. Until I found you . . .” He fixed me with his silver gaze and held me there with it for a second. The look in his eyes was gratitude, want, longing, having, and all of it true love. After the exchange in spirit, he looked away back toward the house in which this Tristan boy once lived. I say once lived because I supposed, as Snowflake spoke of this place having been his home in the past tense, that it wasn’t Tristan’s any longer.

“I had no idea that my one true friend was just down the road from me and so close! I still grieved that I should never see him again. That was until, nearly a year after our release from the hospital, and during summer no less, that I discovered him again!” Snowflake said wistfully.

“It was a strange encounter because, though I saw him and was excited to do so, I did not approach him. I merely watched him from behind the bushes. He was down by the little lake that is not ten minutes walk from here, um . . . that way!” Snowflake pointed in an easterly direction. I’m sure a body of water was probably over there, but it was invisible to me. A whole surreal dark green snow globe pine forest must have laid between me and Snuffy’s swimmin’ hole.

“Geeze, if I had seen my only friend in the world for the first time in months I’d probably have run and tackled him!” Which was true since I’ve never been subtle.

“Yes, I figure you would have. You are much more of a people person than me, though you might have had second thoughts. Tristan was, how shall I say it? Um, yes, he was completely nude!” Snowflake explained and he actually blushed at the memory! It was so cute!

“Well, there again was a big difference between you and me as kids, I’d have first hidden Tristan’s clothes and THEN tackled him with me all in the buff too!” Snowflake giggled at this.

“So, you have always been the ‘Man-Whore’ even when you were seven years old?” Snowflake smirked at me.

“Well of course! It’s like Lady Gaga said, Baby! I was BORN this way!” I cracked and Snowflake chortled.

“Well, I was not and I was embarrassed that I had caught him like that so I ran back home. What was strange was that, even at seven, I could not get that image of Tristan out of my head. I was a bit too young for sexual feelings, but I felt something about Tristan and seeing him like that. To me, he had been so beautiful! Not just because he was the friend I thought I’d lost and found again, but because Tristan, you must understand, was indeed beautiful. His charm only grew as he did.” Snowflake sighed. I know being jealous of a memory is stupid, but there I was again, seeing that look in Snowflake’s face. The kind of look you only get when you’re thinking of your first love. My first love was also a dude and I was just a little older. His name was Jon and he was hawt, but I’ll spare you the details for right now.

“What did he look like?” I was curious now. Does Snuffy have a type?

“It was, perhaps, his very looks that allowed him to befriend me, actually. He was not unlike me in a lot of ways. He was very pale and this was even when he was fully healthy. Unlike me he would ‘rose up’ as he liked to call it. That was to say he would often blush all over with a rosy blush and his skin would take on the character of blushed peach flesh. This happened, particularly, if he got too warm or with, um, exertion. Also, unlike me, he had beautiful red hair. It was a lighter red than a ginger. It was almost like my platinum hair with a bit of a.copper tinge. It darkened as he grew older into a more strawberry blond colour as I remember. His eyes were pale blue like mine but looked a bit darker because of his hair colour. He didn’t have freckles or any other blemish on his face or fair body. Like mine, his skin looked like it was as if he was made from the snow itself.” Snowflake cut his description off as he grinned a bit to himself recalling Tristan.

“Sounds like I’d tap that!” I joked crudely to break the romance a bit. I could only take so much.

“No doubt you would have or at least wanted to. Until I saw you, Tristan was the most beautiful being I had ever laid eyes on. He was the standard. The standard he set and you matched, my Butt Blossom Man-Whore. So, you can stop being so jealous!” Snowflake smirked at me knowingly.

“I’m not jealous!” I know he didn’t believe me so that’s why he laughed at me. I’m glad I could make him laugh while having this bout of nostalgia, though. With that we got back on our skis and continued on up the road past Tristan’s house. Snowflake turned into the trees and we continued along that way for the ten minutes it took us to get to the now infamous little lake, which wasn’t as ‘little’ as I was expecting.

“Here is my old swimming place. With such places, who needs swimming pools?” Snowflake said as he looked out over the frozen lake. It took a lot of imagination to convince myself that this place could be a sparkling lake fit to be a summer swimmin’ hole.

“I see you are skeptical, but I promise you that in summer it can get surprisingly warm up here and this lake if summer is strong, is very refreshing!” I had to take Snowflake’s word for it, because this did not look like summer camp material out here at the moment.

“I suppose. So this is where you saw Tristan for the first time?” I was still interested in Snuffy finishing his tale if he wanted to.

“Yes. This was the place. He stood right over there with nothing on but his gorgeous smile.” Snowflake smiled lovingly at the what must have been a precious memory. I hope he smiles like that when he talks to other people about me!

“More importantly, this is where the tables were turned. Quite purposefully, I came out here on the following day, stripped, and prepared to swim. It was around the same time as I had seen Tristan the day before and I was sure that he would be back. I wanted to surprise him! I just hoped that he had more courage than I had.” Snowflake walked down by the lake’s edge and scanned it in a way that made me think he might be looking for Tristan to be there again. I swore that if he did show up I’d throw Tristan into the frozen lake and steal my Snuffy away pronto!

“I was not disappointed. As I waded into the water I heard the familiar voice. ‘Hello?’ was all he said until I turned around. When I did Tristan’s cute face got this big ‘O’ in it and he looked so surprised! It was just like I hoped it would be. He recognised me immediately and actually ran to me, tackled me, and pushed us both into the chilly water! Neither of us had clothes on, but at that age it didn’t matter.” Snowflake laughed at the memory.

“For the rest of the afternoon until early evening we played and played and played! With both of us healthy, we had the chance to enjoy each other’s company much better and it secured a friendship that promised to be a life-long one.” Snowflake smiled, but then I saw a tear form in his eye and watched it stream down his cheek.

“From that point forward we were virtually inseparable. My family and his thought that they had gained new sons in the exchange. I was as much at his home as I was at mine and he was at mine as much as he was at his.” Snowflake recounted with a touch of brightness in his voice despite the tears.

“We both grew up and entered into our adolescence together. It was during this time, in our thirteenth summer, that we understood that what we had was more than just friendship. The curiosity and the feelings had been building between us for about two years. Our swims together became a bit more awkward and we compared our bodies as they developed in new and strange ways. We introduced each other to masturbation but figured it was crossing a line we didn’t understand if we did anything mutually. But the feelings grew.” Snowflake became more serious and he found a log to sit on. We seemed to sit on a lot of hard wet things today, and I don’t mean dicks.

“One bright day that summer we went to the lake, but we did so with a fluttery nervousness we felt in our tummies. We knew something was different about this familiar trip to our ‘place.’ We stripped, but without the usual awkwardness and without the jokes and playing around we often did to diffuse the tension between us. We entered the warmer than usual water that day with the midnight sun causing our skin to glow because we were both so pale. We took each other’s hands and we gave each other our first kiss.” Snowflake took my hand and kissed it and I wondered if he was kissing me or Tristan at that moment. But, in all honesty, I was so caught up in the romantic imagery of all this I forgot entirely about being jealous. What a beautiful way to start out one’s sexual awakening!

“The kiss set fire to our mutual passions for one another. Passions that had been slowly coming to a boil since our eleventh year. In the water, out of the water, in the sand of the beach, in the forest around, with no one to see us, we took each other’s virginity again and again. I say it that way because each time we had sex that day was like a new virginity being taken and replaced with this sweet knowledge. There could be nothing shameful about how we shared each other It was pure and it was innocent and altogether beautiful.” Snowflake gave a shuddering sigh and squeezed my hand.

“He even said . . . he loved me that day. A word no Finn ever says lightly, even as a child.” Snowflake looked up at the sky and wept openly. I held him then. We were getting close to it now. The real reason he was telling me this story.

“We continued our relationship in secret as both my grandparents and his parents were more traditional and did not see boy-on-boy sex as a good thing. Mostly, because they figured we were too young for such serious things and leftover feelings of Christian taboos. Our people also have an aversion to homosexuality because it does not bring children and children are a precious thing here. Any new child born is a particularly great blessing as our people are few and far between. Being Gay subverts that ideal.” Snowflake explained.

It sounded like a better deal than the one I had in Texas having to put up with the God n’ Guns set as a teen. But, still, the force of old traditions can be as strong as religious bigotry where homophobia is concerned. I’ve dated enough Asian guys to know what kind of hell they get from their families for their particular life choices. Religion has far less to do with their homophobia than does family integrity, continuation, and honor. To be Gay is to betray all that.

“The following summer, we were fourteen and Tristan and I had become quite comfortable with each other and our relationship. I swear we were more like a happily married couple than friends. Our bond was such that it began to raise suspicions about the nature of our particularly close friendship.” Snowflake continued.

“My grandparents, particularly my grandfather, would make mention as to why I did not invite any of the other boys to come play with us down by the lake. The school was far, but Laplanders were used to traveling long distances to see each other. He also inquired about my luck with finding any girls that might enjoy tea with us or sitting at fire with us. In my rather oblivious way, I would merely shrug and say I knew no other kids from school. Tristan was all I needed.” Snowflake said with a long sigh.

“It was then that a rare occurrence happened. My grandparents invited my mother and brothers up to share Midsummer with us. Midsummer is a great celebration here in Finland and in the rest of the Nordic nations. It is the celebration of the height of summer and the time of the Midnight Sun. I cannot enjoy this celebration anymore. That Midsummer, when I was fourteen, would be the last one I would ever enjoy.” Snowflake said, deepening his voice into that dire tone he has when he is about to announce a new and painful training regimen.

“Tristan and I had gone to the lake which had become our custom. We had become comfortable with our assumed privacy there. Perhaps we had become too comfortable. Being young I could not think of the ramifications of how certain changes in one’s environment can lead to other changes and that these changes could make things worse rather than better.” Snowflake continued his story rather clinically.

“So, we were both naked, of course, and we were waist deep in the water kissing per usual. We had no idea that our habits had been under surveillance that summer. We did not know until we heard a shuffling of the brush at the tree-line and saw two large men appear. They did not look local. Perhaps they were tourists or perhaps they were part of a hunting party. As I recall it today, I gather they were hunters of a kind even if they did not come out to go hunting for deer originally.” Snowflake paused and swallowed hard and I could tell he had started shivering, but not from cold. I went to put my arm around him but, instinctively, he flinched away from me much to my shock and horror.

“O-kaaay. Sorry ‘bout that.” I wasn’t really sorry. I felt offended which made what I would feel later even worse that I would be that selfish.

“We started to run to get away. We ran for our clothes, but that’s when my big brother, Stephan, stepped out in front of us blocking the way. He held our clothes. I demanded he give them to us. He refused and said we wouldn’t need them for the next little bit.” Snowflake then choked back a sob.

“H-he held out his hand with some money in it that the men must have given him and he motioned the two men to come forward. They took us in hand, held us down . . . and raped us both.” He stuttered with a broken icy calmness that I knew was his inner time bomb ticking off the minutes until it would go off.

I stood there with my mouth hanging open as Snowflake slumped down onto the snow on his knees. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t possible! How could it be? This was my Snowflake? Who would ever want to hurt him, especially as a child! I felt something sting cold on my cheek and realized a tear had gone cold on my cheek. I wiped the half-frozen tears from my cheeks since both my cheeks were now covered with the viscous salty water.

“W-what?” Was all I could croak out.

He looked up at me without any more tears, but with a very tired and resigned look on his beautiful pale face. His eyes had turned a dull gray and I could see the redness had puffed up around them from before. I had no idea we had come out here for what amounts to an exorcism of past ghosts. An awful selfish part of me was a little put out that he would dupe me in this way since I thought we were going out for a pleasure jaunt around the surrounding countryside. But, then I thought better of it, of course. This was the precious gift I thought it was. This was the most precious gift of all that Snowflake could give. This was the seat of his pain. This was the wound in his heart that he was offering me. The missing piece that made his crystal puzzle fall into place. The hard-edged disciplinarian, the cold robot, the sudden outbursts of explosive emotion, the iron that would allow him to shoot a man dead to save me, the lingering sadness that always seemed to live just behind all of this: these were the things that came together in this moment of seeing.

“Tristan and I were raped repeatedly at gunpoint here on this beach by two ‘sex tourists’ who paid my brother to bring them to us when we were most vulnerable for my brother knew of our activities. He had been watching us, planned this, and waited for the opportunity. When they were done I expected them to kill us and throw us into the lake like the Children of Bodem, but they just got dressed and went their way. My brother threw our clothes at us and ordered us to get dressed and that if either of us said anything about what happened, he would tell our parents and grandparents of what we were doing. He would then allow these men to kill us to silence us.” Snowflake looked back down on the snow, possibly the very place he had been violated all those years ago.

“I revealed nothing, even though my strange change in behaviour and the secretiveness of my laundry habits baffled my grandparents for I bled for quite a while after the attack. My visiting mother and my other brothers didn’t seem to notice my new frightened and pain-soaked ways. Only my older sister, Helga, could sense there was something terribly wrong with me. She was much older than we boys at the time. She was in her 20s already. She had cared for me as a baby in those times when my Mother had to work away from home. Helga was more a mother to me than my own mother and yet I hadn’t seen her in a long time because she was away working through university. I would not tell her. I honoured my older brother’s orders. He would know if I told Helga. So I did not say anything.” Snowflake continued.

I was, understandably, horrified and felt myself sink down next to my Baby in total anguish. I love Snowflake in ways I thought I could never love another human being. To hear this, was and is almost more than I can bear. No wonder he is the way he is. How very amazed I am that he survived that and even transcended it with his sports career.

“The greatest pain of the incident, however, would not be from the injuries the rape left or the crack it put in my soul, but what it lost me. The only one from who I could gain comfort for my trauma was Tristan who shared it with me. But, when I went to see him a day or two after the event, his mother, who looked worn and ragged with worry, said that Tristan could not see me. He was far too ill for that. I knew what ailed him, but he would not reach out to me because he would not see me. Later, I tried again and was likewise sent away by his mother who, by that time looked half-mad. By some instinct, rather than go back home, I walked around to the woods there behind their house. There I saw him standing to stare at a tree, but not seeming to see it. I came up to him, so glad to see him, but he turned on me so fast and the face he made was so feral it was like he wasn’t Tristan anymore. He shrieked at me to ‘Get away! Leave him alone’ he never wanted to see me again. When I wouldn’t move he charged me and pushed me down into the snow hard and ran away.” Snowflake sniffed as his tears did finally come back.

“. . . . It would be the last time I’d ever see Tristan alive again. A few days later, when I got up the courage to try once more to see my first love, for whom I would never give up, I would see the house there with police officials around. Tristan’s mother was nowhere to be seen and neither was Tristan. I asked one of the officers what had happened and after I told him that I was Tristan’s best friend the officer told me what had happened.” Snowflake paused and gagged a bit on the lump in his throat. I reached out to touch his back which he allowed.

He brought from his thermal vest something red. I recognized it as a single red rose that he laid in the white snow there in the place where Tristan’s and Snowflake’s childhoods had ended.

“The officer said . . . that my friend was found dead. He had hanged himself from the very tree he had been looking at the few days before when he pushed me away. He was gone. He had abandoned me. That is when my heart froze in me, Brian. That is why you found me as you did at Auburn. That is why I became a snowflake. I was frozen and brittle from then on. Shortly after that, I left this place to train in Italy with Maestro Filippi. My sister helped me . . . after I finally told her the truth about what had happened. I never saw Stephen again, thankfully, and this was because I pursued skiing which took me away from his clutches. It was all I had left anyway. It was the only thing that brought me any joy at all and I focused on it as my life. It would be my only true love with Tristan gone.” Snowflake rose and took me up with him.

“That was until I met you! You, Brian, have saved me!” Snowflake froze me with his gaze that blazed with a penetrating fire I had never seen there before. It was frightening in it’s intensity and yet, I knew it to be the prelude to my ultimate reward for my time loving him.

“Minä rakastan sinua. I love you, Brian Chesney!” With that, we locked into a kiss that I would never leave even with my lips parted from his.

“I love you too, Jösee Halla. With all of my heart!” We embraced and kissed again and finally, through all that anguish, when Snowflake released me to look into my eyes once more, I saw that smile again aglow like the Northern Lights themselves.