"Has your brain exploded? Or why aren't you saying anything all of a sudden?" Jonathan growls angrily. I hear my partner's voice as if through absorbent cotton, a veil spread over his head of dark hair. Muffled words and somehow reminiscent of a brollachan, a feared demonic creature from the Scottish highlands. Shapeless, it takes on the appearance of a person or the object it touches and right now I feel like this creature has taken possession of my friend. Red eyes flaming with indignation and rage and a grotesquely distorted mouth. A transformation caused by rage and anger.

Indescribable what is happening to us right now. The blood rushes in my ears, I am hot and the next moment ice cold. My fingertips claw vehemently into the short-cropped grass beneath my body quivering with horror. Fear paralyzes my body, the state of shock has already seized me in full measure. The passivity caused by a constriction of the vessels in arms and legs stops the blood circulation and thus also any mobility of my body. I am trapped in myself, carrying on dialogues and dialogues, feeling at the same time embarrassed and the falseness in reincarnation.

At the edge I perceive a movement, the reassuring heaviness of a male existence, the body of my beloved falls into my mind, detaches from me. But instead of relief, I feel crushing heaviness deep within me.
"Magnus," I hear a concerned voice and hear trembling fingers on my skin. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and the familiar smell of my fantasy image makes my heart beat faster again. But it's not nearly as soothing as it should be. Instead, passionate pain, plagued by the bondage of a predicament. Alec's fingers gently caress my hip and automatically I lift my butt as I feel a fluid movement of soft fabric.

"That's sugary sweet," Jonathan whispers and slowly I open my eyes. Alec glances back and forth between us uneasily, even nervously. I'm still sitting on the ground, grass and dirt under my hands, soothing warmth unfurling a protective cloak and slowly bringing me back to merciless reality. He hands me a shirt and I recognize the color, blue like his eyes. Mechanically, I reach for the piece of fabric, which feels wrong and foreign under my touch.
"JoJo wait," Alec calls excitedly, rising and I follow the scene like a movie right before my eyes. Blinking, I try to sort out the information flooding my mind in vivid images and again six letters fly fluttering through the area. Large and small, printed on old yellowish discolored paper and slightly wavy at the edges. Fraud! Alec grabs Jonathan's wrist before he can disappear in the direction of the house. Both men engage in an eye duel. Troubled blue begs for restraint against blazing green.

"Please. Let's talk," Alec says pleadingly. Jonathan snorts, shaking his head in a disconcerting rhythm, far too quick and easily ticked off. Jonathan is on the verge of losing his cool. I've known him far too long not to recognize the signs. The violent swallowing, the Adam's apple bouncing excitedly in his throat. The first beads sparkle in the green of his eyes and I can clearly hear the whimper in his throat, followed by a frustrated curse.
"Fuck, for real now? Talking? About what? How it was to fuck my husband?", he answers almost tonelessly and in a restrained voice. But the self-control is deceptive. It's pretense, a shell, threatening to burst at any moment to reveal the true core. Relentless honesty, frustration, the duplicity of our words in recent years.

"You're married?" asks Alec in a panic, glancing restlessly back and forth between Jonathan and me again. His self-control is brittle, too.
"No," I whisper, but those four letters don't reach Alec. My voice is far too quiet, and Jonathan's derisive laugh drowns it all out.
"If only it were. Magnus never wanted to get married. At least not me. But who knows, maybe you," he spits at Alec's feet and I see him wince slightly. Jonathan's tone is ice-cold, his eyes sparkle with anger, blazing flames shoot out of his green irises, whose actual color can only be guessed at. His upper body bends towards Alec, his hands clenched into fists, and if I didn't know my partner, I would have long since had images of a wild rough brawl in my mind's eye. A tangle of arms and legs, bloodied skin, growling sounds and me sitting huddled in a dark corner. Shaking, head on my knees, crying and hands pressed tightly over my ears. Locking out reality, escaping into fairy tales and a specially created fantasy world is so much nicer. Easier when the man of your dreams is open to you.

"Oh, I forgot, that's not possible. You're already married," Jonathan yells.
"JoJo, please..."
"Don't call me that," Jonathan hisses. Unmistakable is his anger at what we have done, and the fact that Alec calls him by a name that brings back painful memories only intensifies it. I've known Jonathan a long, long time and our relationship wasn't always perfect. But in the beginning it was and except for a few little secrets I never talked about, we were honest and in love too.
"Promise me you'll keep quiet," Alec says. His voice pleading, choked. I see his chest, hectic rising and falling, quick yet steady. Outwardly he seems calm, relaxed, almost impassive. But deep inside, a terrible storm waits. Mercilessly, the vortex forms, in the center of which is the cold eye. Wild roar and thunder, mighty storm clouds, dark gray almost black and no light penetrates through the mighty ceiling.

"Why are you so calm?", I ask him. Slowly the leaden rigidity dissolves, the numb feeling in my limbs fades, nervous tingling sets in. Slowly I stand up, driving loose blades of grass from my hands and jeans.
"Oh believe me, I'm anything but calm. But this isn't my first rodeo. You're not the first guy I've been caught with, and Jonathan's not the first to blackmail me. I'm not calm. On the contrary, I'm almost losing it. But that doesn't help me now," Alec blusters at me. Scheming, deceitfulness, blackmail, always the fear of being discovered. I think I understand what's going on inside Alec.

"Do you promise?" asks Alec again, but Jonathan is anything but willing to comply with his request.
"Why would I do that? I heard you guys. Every word, and I saw you guys. I feel so sick to my stomach. Never have you looked at me the way you looked at him. You have so many secrets Magnus and you don't think it necessary to tell me about them? Eight years Magnus. Eight years and I didn't know you were beaten until today. But you tell Alec. Just like that. I don't understand. Why?" Now I'm the focus of his attack and I can't even blame him. How must he feel? Betrayed, cheated on, his first love and the man in his life. I have kept many things from him, some deliberate and others born out of the situation. Jonathan is not the empathetic type. My former lifestyle, the clothes I wore and my wear and tear on men was not what he wanted. He agreed with my father on that point. For many years I wore a mask, hiding the core of my being, and the Magnus that I actually am was locked away. I'm in my mid-thirties, I have both feet on the ground, I'm the boss of a hundred employees, and yet I can't admit to who I am. And why? The answer is simple, the same reason why the makeup and countless bottles of nail polish have not been used for what feels like an eternity. Periodically I renew my collection and have considered it as such. A collection of old memories just like the jewelry, which unnoticed in the drawer of my bedside table maintains a dreary existence. The shiny cool metal on my skin is an expression of my personality and I have missed to wear this also publicly.

Why? It doesn't conform to the norm, it's poncey and unserious. These words could not be more clichéd. Not every man with a watch collection of astronomical value is also the punctuality in person. No man with manicured nails and light makeup to hide scars or inadequacies is gay or bisexual. It's the old way of thinking, calcified morals, and the head of a multimillion-dollar company, in order to survive in the shark tank of bigwigs, has to represent just that. A black designer suit with matching tie, Italian handmade leather shoes and a high-quality watch. I can offer all this to the gentlemen, for the day. But at night, I'd like to be like Batman with his alter ego and a personality that shits on everything.

"We were best friends. I loved you. JoJo please. I'm just asking you for this one favor. If you go public with this, you will destroy my life and not just mine. Think of my family, what it means to them when you tell everyone I'm gay," Alec replies, and hearing those words come out of his mouth squeezes all the air out of my lungs. My vision blurs and I stagger, instinctively reaching for the first stop near me. It's Alec's arm and I feel the tense muscles and the slight trembling. Anger or despair? Both, in this situation they belong together and my hand automatically closes tighter around Alec's arm. Jonathan's eyes release tear after tear, cheeks wet, and I suppress a frustrated cry.

It's crazy how we're standing here, in the dark of night, and the rose bushes don't provide any protective peace. Instead, I feel like with each passing second of silence, the thorns of the bushes slowly bore deeper and deeper into our skin. Painful is the silence, as are Jonathan's sobs. This is not what I wanted. Not like this, and slowly I walk toward him, reaching for his hand, which tenses to form a tight fist. The pulsing of the veins speaks everything he feels, aggression, indignation, melancholy.

Our love is long gone, but I never wanted Jonathan to know about us like this.
"Don't touch me," Jonathan says angrily. I've never seen him like this. There is nothing I can say or do at this moment to take his frustration in other directions. His anger at me and Alec is boundless, and yet his subsequent reaction surprises me. He breaks free of my grip, literally tearing himself away from me as if my skin were made of molten lava, burning every fiber of his body. One step is all it takes and Jonathan is close enough to Alec and I hear the loud clap of his hand hitting Alec's cheek painfully. Jonathan has hit Alec and both of us are momentarily too confused to say a word. Alec gasps, I'm still holding his arm and automatically slide lower to firmly connect his trembling hand with mine. His fingers find mine, weaving together as if they've never had any other purpose. Soothing warmth envelops us and Jonathan snorts contemptuously.
"You're not capable of love at all. You only love yourself and your success. You only think about yourself and soccer and that none of the bosses realize you're into sucking dick," Jonathan yells and I'm sure at least one in the surrounding houses heard his outburst.

"Are you crazy? Why are you hitting Alexander? What's the matter with you?", I get indignant as my temporary speechlessness fades away. Desperately trying to stifle the rising panic, I breathe in and out deeply, steering my thoughts away from the dark alley where I once feared for my life.
"What's going on with me? What's going on in your head, Magnus? You cheat on me with my best friend at Jace's birthday party and ask me what's wrong with me? You two, you're... fuck I can't even tell you how much you disgust me. Your hypocrisy pisses me off. I've been so afraid to see you again Alec. Because I wasn't sure if old feelings wouldn't come out again. But that was unfounded. Totally and absolutely unfounded. I trusted you Magnus and you have nothing better to do than fuck Alec."

"That's all I ask of you. That's all I ask," Alec says monotonously and I feel pressure on my hand, see Jonathan's hurt look following mine. He sees our linked hands, heated skin, and last remnants of our desire on our clothes.
"Stop crying. It doesn't look good on you. It's never looked good on you. Mister I'm-better-than-you-and-always-get-what-I-want. It's been that way before and it's not for nothing that you were the most hated player of us all. It wasn't just your talent Alec. It was also your arrogant nature and the fact that you had already gone over dead bodies before. You didn't care if you broke my heart. For you only the success counted. You didn't even have the guts to tell me the news about your first professional contract. I had to hear it from your father, who forced me to sign a piece of paper so that no one would know about our affair. You were an arrogant bitch before. And you still are today."

Alec next to me is suddenly wide awake, grabbing Jonathan by the collar of his shirt, and I hear the telltale crack of overused material about to leave its shape and turn the piece of fabric on Jonathan's body into shreds.
"Oh is that how you come to me now? Is that all there is to it? You my dear, have always been jealous of my talent and the success I've had. Your dream was the same to play soccer in Europe. We were going to do it together, remember? You call me a bitch and you don't even know what that word means. Let alone how hurtful it is. A slut is a messy, careless and unkempt person in their appearance. None of us are, so don't presume to call us that. I have not forgotten what happened then. How many insults I had to listen to, just because every other one of those untalented pissers thought he could make a judgment about me. All these shitty sayings from coaches and players I heard so many times. As a kid, as a teenager and as a professional. I could write a whole book about it and nobody would admit that this kind of racism and homophobia, constant exclusion just because you're more talented than the others, really exists. Nobody would stand up and say, 'I'm envious and I'm a racist, homophobic asshole.' You have no idea what it's like to be alone all the time. To spend twenty-four hours of your day hiding. Making sure not to go too effeminate, playing manly soccer and not looking like a fucking faggot. Not to make suspicious hand movements like the queen of Tuntenhausen, not to cross your legs and always show what a big dick you have in your pants. Or laughing about sexist sayings although you just want to vomit on the designer shoes of the other person. You got out in time to spare yourself this agony. But I can't. I can only play soccer. That's all I can do. So I'm asking you to stick to the agreement."

"You knew about this? You knew your dad was with me? Wow Alec. That's really low. I only did this for you and I didn't even tell Magnus about you. A mistake. That was clearly a mistake. You can't do anything to me. You and your father. I have you in the palm of my hand. Look, Magnus, this is how it will always be. Is that what you want? Him? That self-absorbed actor? You'll never be more important than soccer," Jonathan says with a grin. Shocked at the war of words that the two of them were having, I watch my friend as he takes long strides and disappears with a tear-streaked face in the direction of the house and into the throng of celebrating guests.