"So why the hell did you put me through all that?"

"It was the only way to get your attention. You’re too darn well guarded by your firewall guys."

"You pay for all that? You must be crazy."

"You don’t know how much I’ve paid out to find you. It’s taken me three years! Why the hell did you never write? Not one answered letter! You know what I’ve been through all this time? Hell, it wasn’t just a one-night stand for you, was it?"

"You know it wasn’t! Anyway, how do you think you got that video in the mail?"

"So why?"

Rod looked down and sighed.

"It wasn’t easy for me either, you know? I hated leaving you behind with Fischer. I just couldn’t bear the though of him having you and not me. Yeah, I got your letters - read some of them - but you were so fucking full of happiness about your contests, your software, your coach, it nearly killed me. Dozens of times I tried to write, but I just couldn’t get rid of the idea of you and Fischer! So in the end I stopped reading your letters. Then I moved out here and didn’t get any more."

" ‘Gone away. No forwarding address.’ You know how much that hurt? I almost killed myself thinking I’d never see you again. It was only Coach who saved me and pulled me together again."

"Shit! Fuckin’ Coach! Fuckin’ Fischer!"

"Jeez! Why do you hate him so much?"

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! What’re you trying to do to me? You know he’s the cause of all this? He hates me so much he gets at me by taking you away from me!"

"Hey! Don’t be an idiot! It was you who went away!"

"Yeah, but he kept you from me. He just wanted to break us up. I told you he hates me!"

"You couldn’t be more wrong, Rod - he really likes you - , "

"Ha!"

"He does - he was just angry with you for breaking training and trying that stupid blackmail stuff!"

"God, he told you all that stuff?"

"Listen, you idiot! He likes you and he loves me! He’s always saying what a good guy you are at heart, and you can’t deny what we all felt after the match when we shook hands. You think that would have happened if he hadn’t liked you a lot? He just wanted to straighten you out so he could bring us together - he wants me to be with you. It was real tough for us both when I moved over here. But he knows how much I love you, he saw how destroyed I was when I thought I’d lost you for ever and he always said some day I’d find you. But all I am, all you first saw of me and all you see now is because of him: all I am is part of him, and all he is, is part of me. And so are you. To both of us."

Long pause, Rod staring into the fire.

Then he suddenly threw himself towards me and grabbed my quads. Tiny voice, not like Rod at all.

"Sorry."

"Hey, pal! No tears, OK? Don’t want to have to wipe you up off my quads, not just yet.

Come ‘ere!"

I hauled him up to lean against me. I shook him by the shoulders, but tears still ran down his face and dripped off his nose.

"Jeez, monster! I love you so much! You don’t know what hell these last coupla years have been - I love you so much and I thought I’d never see you again. Oh, fuck!"

I buried my face in his black curls and we both howled. He twisted himself around and kissed both my eyes.

"Forgive me?"

"Course. All that matters is you’re here, mate. That I can hold you like this once again and just love you to death."

"What about Fischer?"

"He adopted me, you know. Now he’s my legal Dad. So if he’s my Dad you can’t compete with him! He’s going to be your father-in-law!"

That finally broke the ice. Rod roared and cantered round the room. I chased him and leaped up on to his shoulders.

"Hey - which way do I go?"

"Turn right and it’s the first door on the left!"

Whooping like madman he charged into the bedroom and threw me down on the king-size then threw himself on top of me.

"Rain-check time!" he yelled.

"Whoever comes first gets fucked!"

Then things got very serious indeed. He held me by my golden mane and slowly, so slowly leaned in to kiss me on the mouth. Three years of hell slowly drained out of us as our tongues met and our two impossible sets of muscles melted into each other, as they should. His beautiful pecs sighed into mine and my bis squeezed into his wide lats as my hands went round to stroke that strong, muscle-lumpy back.

The rest of that night passed in a slo-mo haze, from kissing to fucking, to exploring each others’ bodies and feeling each others’ muscles as they obligingly flexed on demand. I agreed that his butt-hole had had enough punishment for, say twenty-four hours, so I let him fuck me, slowly, deliciously, in between long bouts of 69. As the dawn began to break, we rolled ourselves into one package in the sheet and fell asleep as happily as, for three years, we could only have dreamed. •