pretty good English too, with only a few mistakes.” Daniël looks at the screen. “You want me to

enlarge the text? Would that help?”

Steve shakes his head. It’s a real effort to keep the rising panic under control. “I can see

everything on the screen clear as anything. No blur. I know those are letters and words and I know it’s

language, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’ll read a few sentences, perhaps you’ll recognise something. You keep looking at the screen

too, okay?” Daniël clutches at straws, but Steve hasn’t got the heart to tell him that.

Daniël reads slowly and articulates every syllable, like he wants to spoon feed the words to

Steve’s mind.

“Steve showed us he’s the master of the Zimmer frame. Looks damn sexy too, him getting

around. I sneak a look now and again while I work on the bike or do my stretches. The last couple of

months haven’t been much good to my condition or muscles and I want to get back in shape before the

wedding. (No date set, but it can’t be soon enough for me.) He works harder on learning to walk again

than any of us ever did to win a match or to get back into the first team after being out with injury. I

know in how much pain he still is and how exhausted he gets. But he never complains about it. How

can I look at this man and not fall in love, over and over again?”

Steve understands every single word Daniël says. And even now they make him smile and

blush a little. But the lines and dots on the screen are just that: lines and dots.

“Hieroglyphs...” he murmurs.

Tears are welling up in Daniël’s eyes. “This is so unfair.”

Steve can’t remember he has ever heard the word unfair used in all of his years as a

professional player. Or perhaps he has, but so infrequently that the word never really settled. Bad luck

and shit and fucked up and the ref should get his eyes fixed and the gaffer mostly knows what he’s

doing but not this time...oh yes, that and so much more, but unfair is too much part of the sport, and

their privileged position within this game, to even mention it. So many boys, equally talented, just as

eager, left behind. Countless careers that have been broken because of injuries, done to them and by

them, or because a new manager has fresh ideas about the composition of a team. Chances never even

given. Or not taken for reasons long forgotten. Always someone else being better, if not now, then in a

few years.

“I don’t know how to deal with this,” Steve confesses. Even with his rational mind telling him

it took him time to be able to recognise and understand speech again, to say Daniël’s name, to learn to

properly speak again, and he’s aware he still sounds slightly impaired; he feels desperation filling

every hidden corner of his body. His lover used the only words meaning anything at all.

It’s not fair.

Steve realises if he doesn’t find a way to restore his ability to read and write he might be able

to stand next to his man when they take their vows, but he won’t be able to sign his own name and

understand what he’s signing, or read his husband’s name on the contract. The endless stream of

paperwork, dealing with the aftermath of what happened in that park, dealing with anything having to

do with insurance and retirement matters, the contract with the club, will have to be read to him. Like

to an uneducated person, a small child, a mentally handicapped person. Always depending on others.

Newspapers and magazines and e-mails and labels on jars and handwritten letters from eight

year old fans and signs in the street and lettering on windows of shops and user manuals and subs with

foreign movies and instructions for appliances and medications and ...

It’s not fair.

Daniël sets the laptop aside. Other than that he doesn’t move, doesn’t say a thing. His hands

don’t find Steve’s. He hardly even dares to glance in Steve’s direction. He looks so helpless, at a loss

for any kind of comfort to offer, or to receive.

“It’s too much, Daniël, simply too much.”

It takes Steve an eternity to find voice for his most urgent need.

“Could you please get on the bed with me and hold me?”

Daniël slowly lifts his head, like he‘s waking up from a dream, and walks to the door. “Just

telling the nurses.” He’s back before Steve even notices he’s gone, and closes the door. Then he helps

Steve to get settled on the bed and gets on himself.

Steve hides his face against his beloved’s neck, safe in strong arms.

They are not ready yet to face this new challenge. This too will pass, in one way or the other.

Time will do its job, showing both cruelty and mercy that cannot be quite foreseen by either of them.

But this night, they give themselves to the simple, honest truth of their bodies.

They share kisses that are gentle, but slowly grow in urgency. Hands find their way over and

then under shirts. Finally buttons and zippers are loosened and fabric gets pushed out of the way.

Warm skin meeting warm skin. The few words that are spoken are used to express love and affection,

but not concern or reassurance.

Daniël doesn’t apologise when his body reacts in the way the body of a young, healthy man is

bound to react when he’s being kissed and caressed by his lover. He does however ask if Steve is okay

with him staying on the bed instead of retreating discreetly to the bathroom.

Steve doesn’t believe the question is even asked, although in some way he can understand it.

No matter how much Daniël tries to control the movement of his hand, the rawness of need –

expressed in panting breaths and the fierce concentration on his face, the pupils of the grey-blue eyes

widening in lust, the blush covering most of his body – is overwhelming in a way Steve nearly had

forgotten about. During all this, he touches Daniël’s body, a gentler counterpoint to the faster, more

and more aggressive pulls and jerks of his lover’s hand.

“God, so beautiful,” he whispers in his lover’s ear while the boy rests in his arms.

Daniël, too much out of breath to say anything, kisses him and it’s by far the most perfect

reaction he could come up with. It is then that Steve, almost timidly, takes Daniël’s hand and brings it

to his filling cock. And Daniël looks at his own fingers around the shaft, looks at his own hand

moving, his own thumb stroking the head. Wonder in his eyes.“I have missed this so much, touching

you like this. Having sex with you,” he sighs. “Let me taste you, please?”

His lover’s mouth is warm and welcoming, so patient and tender the tongue that explores

deeply familiar and yet somehow new territory.

Finally, Daniël takes him as deeply as he’s able to, humming around his cock. Pleasure mixes

with sorrow until he no longer feels the difference. Something has been taken from him and something

has been given back to him. His orgasm and his tears happen at the same time. Finally, he’s resting in

Daniël’s arms, the few tears being kissed from his face. “I don’t know how to say what this means to

me. What you mean to me.”

The next day he asks Daniël to take a piece of paper and a pen.

“Please write your name, so I can learn it again.”

D A N I Ë L.

The key to all other words ever written.

His scent.

The sound of his voice.

The meaning of his words.

His touch.

Steve smiles because he no longer doubts this too will come back to him.

Chapter 17

Steve is, on an intellectual level, able to interpret the struggle of a beaten down man getting on

his feet again as somewhat heroic, even if he thinks it’s a bit presumptuous to think about himself in