Lives in Brick and Stone

The Hikomori

Some day, he swore he would go outside. He would just not go out today. Today was like the one before it. And that day had been identical to the one before that. The days stretched into the past, on an endless strong of days just like the one before it. It never changed. It never altered. It was slow. It was boring. It was safe. The apartment he lived in was a cage. But it was a cage he had allowed himself to live inside willingly. There was really no need to go outside. There was no need to ever leave that small little area and go into the wild world just outside his door. It was the same world that was hid by heavy curtains and viewed through a clouded peephole. The world he avoided like a flesh eating virus.

He needed to never go outside. He had everything he ever wanted. He had everything he ever needed. Every last thing he desired could be found on line. The necessities for living could all be purchased with the click of a mouse and delivered straight to his door. Groceries, laundry services, even his bill could all be done through the computer. It was all bought for and paid for without his ever having to step a single foot outside of his door. No human connection was necessary for him. And if he desired human connections, the internet provided that for him as well. He had friends from all over the globe. He knew people whose faces he would never see. Those people would also never see his pale face. He never had to exchange names. He could be anyone, anywhere just as the people on the other end of the connection also could be. Only those like himself would have even guessed the truth behind the keyboard. He could even go to work though his computer.

There was never a question of how he got the money to pay for his deliveries or his rent, even though he never left the apartment. So long as he paid for it, it did not matter what he did. Above board, he legitimized his existence by working on line doing data entry for a large company based in some country he would never visit. However, that was not all he did. If he ever allowed anyone into his little closed off world, they would have seen the small network of computers set up in a rather impressive display. Those computers were meant for something else entirely. They were meant for tasks a thousand times harder than mere data entry. The young man that lived in Apartment number 2 was also hacking for a living. That was part of the reason why no one had ever been allowed into his apartment. No one could com past that door. Even groceries were left just in front of it, for him to collect after he was sure the delivery man left for safer neighborhoods. The other reason was far more simplistic. They were from outside. He did not want to deal with the outside. He did not want the outside to come into his place of safety and ruin it. So the outside remained outside. No one was allowed in.

The arrival of his groceries was the only reason he ever approached and opened the door. Even then, it was only for a scant few moments it took to bring the provisions of the week in. Though it was a weekly occurrences, every time he did approach the wooden barrier that separated him from the world outsider, he always panicked, and more than just a little. His heart would start to race the closer he came to the door. The fear would quickly descend a few moments later, and he could only stand there, breath quickening as panic seized hold and refused to let go. The knob would always feel freezing cold when he finally grasped it with sweat slicked palms. It was only after a few minutes of trying to control his gasping breaths that he could actually turn the knob and pull that door open. Those minutes always felt like an eternity stretching before him in an endless ticking. It felt even longer in that time that he allowed only his arms and the very top of his head outside to quickly grab the plastic bags and haul them inside. It felt like a great relief when he slammed the door and turned the deadbolts and replaced the chain. All other times, he never ever approached the door. It never opened. He never went outside. He never saw another person.

Maybe not never. There was one exception. There was one other person he had let inside his cage. It was just one person. It had also taken a quite a bit of time for even that one soul from the outside to come in. It had started simply. He had run into a fellow hacker while on a particularly rough job. They encountered each other on the net. It had been a war of sorts. Him, trying to get in. his rival trying to keep him out. In the end, he had won that war, but only after days of the silent struggle. For moths after, he kept running into the fellow hacker. He’d not realized during that time that the other had somehow managed to break his encryptions until a message showed up hidden in one of his own files, asking for a meeting. He erased it. The tracker had been set and his trail had been traced. The information he had bounced from server to server all over the globe had led the other right to his door. One day, like the one just before it, the other had suddenly shown up at his door. He did not know why.

He supposed it was because of some strange curiosity or perhaps out of some misplaced rivalry between them. It was indeed a chance to meet him when he had so quickly refused all requests. It was an opportunity to meet a fellow nit diver such as himself. He caused so much mayhem, just like his rival. He also did not exist. By all accounts, he was not even real. As no one saw him and no one had ever talked to him outside of the web, he had fallen into the annals of urban legend. The rivals was just the same, almost exactly. Until they had crossed paths that first time in cyber space, he had not even known the other existed outside the same myth he existed in.

He had been frightened of course. Anyone would have been given the situation. It was terrifying to him to have a total and utter stranger suddenly show up standing just outside his door. Even though it had not been all that sudden at all. It had been coming as before that, there had been those messages left for him. The other had left so many breadcrumbs for him to follow upon the paths that paved the inter web. He had followed them diligently, going where they led upon a lark. He followed only because the path had been placed by one who had dared to invade his singular space and interrupt his chosen life of distance solitude. He had done it because someone had dared to enter his closed off world. It had been a merry chase. It had been a grand teasing game of tag between two veritable legends in the field. In the end, he had been led to that first request for a meeting. It had been such a simple request. It was so simple and at the same time impossible. Come outside. Come out and meet. He had erased and refused each request that came his way. The damaged, however, had already been done. He had allowed his rival to locate him.

So, the rival started to show up at his door. It was random at first. The other would knock and he would hide until the knocking had stopped and he was sure the other had left. He remained in hiding still, for long after the other was gone, just in case. He was not going outside. He was also no letting the outside in. So he never answered the knocking. He never spoke. He just hid; the lights turned off, and pretended to not be home. Yet the other persisted. The other continued to come, always at the same time, day after day, knocking on that door. It continued. As it continued, the amount of times they crossed pathways in the inter web increased. They continued to conflict with each other again and again. Each was a long battle. Sometimes he lost sometimes he won. He won more than he lost. But as the knocks kept coming like clockwork, he slowly came from hiding. He never came completely to the door, always sitting in a place so that he could scramble to hiding at any notice. He’d sit there and wonder when the other was leaving. But instead, the schedule had changed and the other started to talk to him through the door.

He sat on the other side of the door and listened. He never spoke back. He just sat on the floor and took in that strange smooth drawling accent from a place he would never see. He would stay on the safe side of the door and listen to the other talk on about everything and nothing. Sometimes, he swore the other was just reading the news paper to him. It made little since to him, yet it continued and he found himself coming ever closer to his door.

Then one day, it stopped as suddenly as it started. One day, at the chosen hour, the knocks did not come. He sat on his floor and started at the door and waited. There was nothing. Then the next day, and still, there was no knocking. There were no more messaged left in the jumble of ones and zeroes that comprised their special secret code. The other had stopped coming to his apartment. The other had stopped leading or asking him. Even upon their mutual playground that was cyber space, the other had not shown up. Not for days, not for weeks. His rival had suddenly dropped off the grid. It became like it had been before the rival had shown up. But it was also so very different somehow. He’s grown used to the strange knocking and that smooth accent just beyond his door. He had started to like having that voice there, anticipating it coming from beyond the door. Not having it now seemed almost strange to him. It seemed almost wring. It seemed almost lonely.
He had never thought about loneliness before. Before this, he had never thought about it. To him, loneliness was a normal thing in life. It was not something he had ever really been concerned over. He had just never bothered to collect with others in a personal way. He always kept his distance, always pushed others away from him. He just withdrew from people as he had withdrawn from society, backing away until he had retreated completely into his own little world. He had fled from the pressure of life to his safe haven. He had retreated into his world that consisted only of himself and his tiny apartment and the world that existed upon the net. He was nothing at all like his rival. He was not on the outside. His life was held in the cage he had made for himself. A cage whose bars he had never really noticed until the knocking had stopped and the strange visits had ceased. Only then did he truly realize just how painful his self imposed solitude was.

It made some since though. His rival did have a life outside. His rival had other better things to do than visit him. There were classes he had been told about in a few of those visits. His rival had classes at a school he had never attended, could never have attended, even now more than ever. Before, when he had been a part of the outside words, before he had locked the door and never come back out, he had also been a student. He had been a productive member of society. He had been just like his rival. Only the differences were still there, they were still staggering. Just listening to the stories spun outside the door had told of a university life he could never have dreamed of affording. It told of places he would never travel. He was regaled with a life he would never lead. He knew each tale of a normal life beyond his doors had been just what had led him ever closer to that barrier. He knew they had been meant that way, carefully spun to entice him. When they had finally stopped, he had felt abandoned. He felt he was lost in a world he had never known, would never know, looming just beyond the chain and deadbolt.

He also knew it was pointless to want the other back. He had never spoken. He had never showed himself. He had never given any indication that there was anyone living on the other side. The apartment could have very well been empty; a carefully placed red herring to lure would be investigators away from his real base of operations. That was one explanation. The other he came up with seemed the more logical of the conclusions he had jumped to. It was an explanation that was painful. It was sad. It was lonely. His rival was knocking on a different door. His rival was being let in by someone else. It might have been pride or some sort of misplaced jealousy, but he could guarantee that there was no one else in this city that was half as skilled as him. His rival was seeking a partner. He knew that. He was looking for someone equally skilled to team up with for truly difficult, grueling jobs that required at least two people to work it. It had to be that. The whim of his rival had died out and he had been easily replaced with someone half as good, but twice as willing to meet. That was the reasoning he came up with. He did not like the painful truth. It made him withdraw even more.

It returned to what it had been. But it also did not. It was not the same. He could not find the desire to even log back into the web and return to his work. He could not find the want. The idea that he might perhaps run into his rival again hurt and scared him. The idea of not running into his rival hurt and scared him even more. He fear of being shunned, even in his own small little world had chased him away from the one place he most felt like he belonged. He had been forced from the one world he had near total godlike control over. It was only the need for groceries that he finally made his return to the world on the net. But there were no messages waiting for him. There were no more breadcrumbs to follow. It had been his greatest fears come to life and made flesh. His rival had truly forgotten all about him.

He never considered that the police might have tracked his rival down. That was always a threat. Even he lived under that looming fear that he would finally get caught. There was always a deep worry that one day, the presence on the other side of the door would be law enforcement officials, ready to beat his door down. He dreaded the idea that the first time he went outside in years would come through the power of force. He loathed the idea that he could be forced past that barrier for any reason, he it legal injunction or otherwise. However, even with that fear present, he would not stop. He could not stop. He had to eat after all, and pay his bills and data entry did not pay half as well as hacking did. But he never really considered that as a reason behind the disappearance. It could not be that reason. His rival was far too smarts for that. He was far too careful to ever get caught. His rival was untouchable, just as he was. Even though in the back of his mind he knew he wasn’t. After all, his rival had found him.

It took only a half a week for him to give up on the knocking. It took the other half of that week before he returned to the net. Two weeks passed and his rival did not return to the grid. Two weeks and the door remained silent. He knew that was it. He knew that it, whatever it had been, was over. He had just regulated himself to the silence and the solitude once again. As suddenly as it had started, it had stopped. But as soon as he was sure everything had returned to life as normal, as soon as he had grown accustomed to the concept of being alone truly and completely once again, the knocks started once more. There had been no warning letter, left in the code of a hack. There had been no e-mail, secretly inserted into his computer for him to stumble across. There was just that knock and it made him heart stop cold. He had that same panicked fear shooting through him as always. After all, it had finally occurred to him that his rival might have indeed been caught. Would his rival have turned him in to get a lesser sentence? Would his rival had told police where to find him? Had his rival been an undercover officer this entire time? Had he told pretty lies and issued those fake heartfelt demands that he go outside just as a rude to lure him to the police?

The knocking sounded so familiar. The voice was the same as it had been two weeks ago, he did not quite run to the door, he also did not quite hide away. Instead, he stood somewhere between the two extremes. He was torn between the door and the voice just on the other side of it and pretending once again, that this apartment was just as empty as the one four doors down. Instead, he waited, biding his time, waiting to hear the inevitable sound of an officer kicking down his door. It was an idea that made his stopped heart speed up. He could not breathe. He felt light headed and faint. Then the voice came that much louder. It was loud, but it was somehow soothing.

His rival was back as if he had never left. It was just his rival. There was no one else there. There were no authorities prepared to drag him from his cage by force. It was just that smooth voice, disembodied because of the door. Upon just hearing it made the past two weeks suddenly less painful to him. It was enough to finally get him to approach the door. It was enough for him to stand right next to it. It was enough to bring him to stand upon his side of the door and talk through it. It was the first time he had ever spoken to the one who stood on the other side of the door. It was the first time in years that he had ever talked to anyone else. Speaking to no one for so long, not even to himself, words did not come easily. Speaking for the first time in years, he did not even recognize his own voice anymore. It was as if a stranger was standing there, right next to him. It was as if an advocate was talking for him. But there was no one else in that apartment with him. It was just him; it was just his own halting, stammering voice, echoing into the emptiness, strange even to his own ears.

Silence descended, thick and intolerable. He wondered if the other had heard him. Had his frail, trembling voice carried beyond the thin door? Or had the knocking, the voice on the other side been nothing more than his wishful thinking? Had it been only his imagination, desperate for the human contact he had so easy shunned not so long ago? The silence stretched, hovering over him: the Hindenburg, waiting to explode into hell fore and brimstone, bringing to light the reality of the situation. It would have proven to him that he had always been alone and that his solitude had finally driven him into insanity. But there was no spark to bring about flaming doom. There was no voice of the reporting cracking in the distance, crying over the humanity of the situation. Instead, there was the steady calming drawl of the choice he had slowly come to trust with in the past few months as it passed through the thin wooden doors.

Relief flooded through him. He had not been alone after all. He had not been speaking to imaginary creations supplied by an unstable mind. He had spoke to a real and solid person that stood just beyond his four somewhat solid walls. The other was truly there. His rival had not just disappeared on a lark. His rival had not suddenly found someone else better. He was the only one who was good enough, skilled enough for his rival. But it still did not quite explain why the other had suddenly left him like that. It also did not explain why he had been so driven to finally come to the door. It made no since to him that after so long of being alone he had done something as drastic and desperate as to run to the door and speak though it. He could only explain it as a reaction based on relief. Thoug he knew a part of it was also frustration. Not for himself, but for his rival. For the one who stood just outside his door and attempted to explain why he had not seen the other in such a long time. It had nothing at all to do with his unwillingness to leave the apartment. It had nothing to do with the police. It had nothing at all to do with him. It was his rival who had initiated contact, and it was his rival who had been forced to separate. And it was his rival who had to explain why he had been left alone for so long without even a word.

He felt so stupid for jumping to so many wrong conclusions as he listened to the new tales his rival threaded through the wood. It had been such a simple explanation. He had not thought of it because it would never have occurred to him. It would never have because it dealt with something he no longer knew anything about. It dealt with real life that went on right outside of his small living space. He listened and could not help but feel for the other. He could not help but feel the pressure the other must be under. He heard of exams two weeks in the taking. Such difficult things that he knew he would have ever passed. He would have crumbled under the pressure to succeed and ended up right where he was right now. Listening to someone through a door as they told about a life he would never lead. Exams became need to please parents. He did not have that pressure either. His own parents were done with him. They had given up on him when he had moved to this city to go to university, before he had shut himself away. He was sure they were sure he was dead or barring that, that he was independent and never wanted to see them again. For all purposes, he had no parents to please. Just as he had no friends to go out to bars with and he had no real life to lead unlike the one on the other side of the door.

But he had not accepted apologies. He did not understand why there were needed. All that matter was that he had not been forgotten. All that matter was that his rival was on the other side of that door. Nothing else really mattered. Not even the fact that the dynamic had somehow changed in that moment. He had not even realized that something had changed the moment he had started talking back, though the door. He had not noticed that first day, or the next, or the one after. It was only after a few days of knocking did he realize what the change was. It was not that he was near the door. He had started approaching long before the disappearance. It was not the others words, those had not change. It was not their continual conflicts upon the net. That was as normal as breathing. It was that he had started talking back though the door. Always, he was shy at first. He never knew what to say. He did not have stories of outside life like his rival had. He could not talk about friends or family or this funny thing he had seen on the way over. He could not talk about the news of the day or about things like that. He could not tell his rival about life outside. He also could not tell him about their shared hobby. Work was not something that was spoken of. It was like a taboo between them. His rival never spoke about work, never once made motion of what they did or how many times they had vied for position on the virtual world. He could not speak of school.

He instead only spoke of the things he knew. He spoke of books he had read recently on line. He spoke of how the laundry service changed the soaps it was using and of how his cloths now smelled of things they did not smell of before and how he really did not like the new scent or that they had stopped using fabric softener. He would speak of this great new recipe he found on a cooking bulletin board and how he wanted to try and make it, but the grocery store he ordered from did not carry the right things. He spoke of his little singular lonely life. He spoke and the other would listen to his halting and unsure tones. The change was just that. The change was that he indeed did speak. But he had learned not to sound too needy. After such talks about missing ingredients, he had found just what was lacking at the next time the delivery came. When he had complained about the laundry service, he had found a new service picking things up for him instead. It was strange, but he had a feeling it was because he did talk and his rival did listen.

They never talked about his past when the other came knocking. He never told the other why he was always just right there behind the door. He never explained why he hid inside his room and never came out. He did not have to talk about why he had locked the door. He never needed to tell the other why he never went outside. It was just good enough that he said that he just did. Nothing more than that was needed. His rival never pressured for his reasoning. His rival never pushed or demanded. His rival just accepted the fact that he would never go outside. And he accepted the fact that his rival was really not a rival any more. He accepted the fact that his rival was truly a friend to him. A real friend and not one of those mystery individuals he talked to on line in the guise of someone else. His rival, no, his friend had however, never stopped asking, never stopped wanting for him to partner up. Even if he never left the house, that was okay, because he was the best.

In the end, his rival became his friend and his friend became a partner. But even after he had given the other want they desired, his friend still came to his door as always. Sometimes, there would be a stretch of time when his friend would not show up for many days on end, but end the end that was all right. He knew that it was not because of anything he did. It was not because of police or anything frightening. It was because the most frightening thing of all had taken his friend away from him. He knew that when he did not see his friend for their joint jobs or when the knock did not come, that his friend was busy with the horrors of real life. He also knew then those horrors were taken care of, his friend would be back at his door, knocking. His rival never demanded to be let in, but never did anything to discourage him from answering or not. After all, it was clear that at least he was never going to be going anywhere. Not even when the flu epidemic had spread and somehow managed to strike even himself, shut away in his own small little world.

Even then, the other had never demanded to be let in. Instead, he found medicine by his door the next day. Instead of newspapers or storied from outside, his friend would knock and read other things, loud enough that they reached him as he lay on his futon trying to get over the illness that he did not quite know how he got in the first place. They were always stories of some sort. Sometimes when he had been sick, his firmed would read children’s tales it him. He would lay in his futon and listen to that voice tell of the Dragon King who dwelled at the bottom of the sea, or of foreign people with funny names like “Ashenputel”. Other times, his friend would come and read more complicated books, never leaving until there was no voice left to speak or until the book was finished. He was grateful for that and felt guilty whenever the weather turned bad and his friend would sit outside on his stoop in the pouring rain or the driving snow and talk to him, with only the owning of the rooms above him as a shield from the climate. But his friend never complained. His rival had never said anything to indicate any sort of discomfort. His friend endured and he honestly did not understand why it continued.

Surely, by those stories is friend told of the outside world, his friend had better things to do that continue to come and entertain a person like him. There were other friends that could be visited instead. There were family members and school mates. He was just a partner on line that had never shown his face. Never shown anything more than his desire for company than what it took to whisper frailly though the door. Still, his company came. Never explaining why, just as he never had to explain why he never left the place he lived. There was no need for explanations. His friend just wanted to come and visit, and he was not going to tell his friend to stop coming. Besides, it was lonely when his friend did not show up, even if there were good excuses for it.

Then, one day, it happened. The storm was a bad on and the rain was hard enough that it sounded like gunfire against his curtained windows. As usual there was the knock and as usual, he came to the door. As usual, the other started to talk, but this time, he opened the door. The deadbolt sounded like an explosion, like the fireworks that popped and snapped during New Years, and the door felt heavy as it swung open as far as the chain would let it. He peered out of the little crack he had made to the person he’d talked to for moths. The person he’d worked with as a silent partner for moths. He peered at the one he’d only seen through a fisheye view given by a dirty clouded peephole. He stared at his friend, soaked to the bone and shivering but ready with a news paper and a story for him. He stared and his hands moved all on their own accord. Shaking, trembling, he’d shut the door again. He slid that chain out of its hold. He watched it swing for a while, the pendulum awaiting it’s victim to slice. It swing like the pendulum of a clock, ticking away the seconds it took him to once more take the freezing cold knob and open the door. He could not bring himself to do more than open it a few inches and then step back as if tell his friend that the door was open and they were allowed inside.

It was nerve wracking. He had never let anyone inside his house. He had never even though that one day he would ever open his door to anyone at all. Yet, he stood there, half ready to run and hide somewhere while he waited, counting down the seconds towards utter invasion of his own personal space. He stared at the open door and at the person on the other side of that yawning void. His friend stared back with a small smile that could have almost been a smirk. The door remained open, his friend remained outside. He sat on the floor of his apartment in dryness. His friend sat outside on the stoop, getting soaked, and hid friend read to him as if the door was still in place. It only occurred to him after his friend had left for the day that he had never verbally invited the other in. the other had sat in the rain, smiling at him, reading to him, never once complaining to him because he had not given permission for the other to enter. He’d made his rival suffer because he had forgotten about things like politeness and common human interaction.

Once more, things changed. Now, when his friend knocked, he opened the door, just a little. They would talk face to face. He would never step past the thresh hold to go out and the other would never cross the invisible barrier to come in. Not until he told the other to come in. Only then did his guest come inside. Only then did his guest enter the cage he’d held himself aloof in. Even then, there was distance, never once did the other come too close. There was always a stretch of room between. His guest would stay in one corner, while he stayed in the exact opposite. Even when he bothered to remember to cook for two instead of just for himself, they would never get closer than a few feet. Only once before his guest half left had they touched. Even then, it was strange and awkward. He did not understand the touch or why it had been given. He did not understand the soft thanks for the good meal that he had made, even though it had only been instant curry. He also did not understand some of the messages he would receive from his partner.

The singular touch at leaving became habit as the knocking had been. As his solitude had once been. Before his guest would leave for the day, there would be a brush of a dexterous hand on his or fingers against his face. When he was working hard at a job of their and could not open the door for the knocking, the other would let themselves in. he had given the other his only key. He did not need the key. He reasoned that because one did not need a key when one never left the place to begin with. When he was working on a hard hack, he would feel that comforting presence behind him and feel hands on his shoulders, rubbing them and taking out all the kinks and stress he had built up hunched over his extensive network. He never questioned why. He never asked why the other did such things. Just as he never asked when the other would purposely grab his rolling chair and pull him away from the computer and demand that he eat something or sleep. He looked forward to those meetings. He looked forward to the knock on the door. He looked forward to it all. He did not look forward to those times when real life took the other away. But he was getting good at anticipating those days. He had begun to monitor his old rival; just as he old rival once monitored him. He started looking for certain patterns over the inter web that were hidden messages just for him. He started even reading those secret journal messages, left hanging into space for those who knew how to read between the lines. He knew when the other was forced to go on vacation with family and he knew when tests were coming and he knew when bad things were happening. He knew even before his friend would show up.

His friend also knew about his somewhat boring activities. He kept his partner updated. He would always let the other know when something was going on in cyber space that the other might not be aware of. He also would let his friend know when he started getting proposition from other strangers to come and meet at places like internet cafes. He could only since the underlying jealousy when the other came after those types of messages accosted him. He knew the other’s stance. He had been told once already, that when he was ready to go outside, his friend wanted to be the one to take him out there. He did not even want to think that perhaps the jealousy might have been because of something deeper. Just as he was starting to realize his concern for his friend was something much deeper than a worry for a friend.

He had never loved before. He had never bothered to love before. Love was a connection with the outside world. It was something he did not want. He did not want to feel love because it was a frightening emotion that made people act in silly ways and do many silly things. It made people let strangers into ones house after months of being stalked by them. Love made one give that stranger a key. Love made strange touches against his shoulders and on his face more welcome than they would have been any other time.
He had never thought about it like that before, but now he could not help but feel that it was what this was to him. He had grown attached to his friend, who was the only other person in his life. He had grown used to the presence in his apartment and he looked forward to each meeting they had. He enjoyed talking about anything and nothing and he had so much fun working together with his partner. They made a frightening team. In the short time they worked together they had truly made an even bigger legend for themselves. They were an unstoppable duo and he sometimes thought they worked so well together because of that love. But he did not know if that was how the other felt. There was always that shadow of a doubt in his mind. It was a doubt because he knew his partner had a real home to go to. Real friends. Real family. His partner might already have someone who was special to them. A pretty rich girlfriend with more body than brains. He would rather that really, despite his initial jealousy. His friend deserved a pretty willing armful instead of a deathly pale, rail thin computer nerd who never went outside.

He never asked. He never wanted to. He never asked about relationships. Just as he had never asked what had happened to his friend on the train that brought his friend here. He had read of course. He had known something very bad had happened on that trip. He had never heard his friend so angry and he had done his best to make whoever had hurt his friend on that train pay. He had never asked why that day, his friend had come to his apartment after that event and pulled him from his computer and just grabbed him in a hold that both frightened and warmed him. He did not struggle at that hug, not only out of the panic he felt but out of how nice it felt once the panic had subsided. He did not mind when the other caressed his hair or seemed to treat him like a beloved house cat, there only to sooth his owner. He knew that he could very well be just that to his friend. He could just be a cat. He had been wooed like some wild, feral creature. He had been lured slowly over time. He had been enticed by kind words and constant attentiveness to slowly come to trust the other until he’d let the other in. Then the dance had begun again until he had been coaxed to allow himself to be touched. It hurt him a little to think of himself that way, but it was hard to see himself in any other way.

It never stopped hurting either. Even when his friend came back to himself, once they had their revenge on the perverts who had groped his friend on the train and felt the need to crow about it all over the inter web. He’d done terrible things to that pervert’s computer and every other electronic system tied to that computer. He was sure he was the first person to ever give an iPod a CPU melting virus. He would have done more, but that was enough because his friend had insisted that he’d made him point. It never stopped hurting because that one petting led to more. Massages seemed to get lengthier, more extensive. His friend would leave him flushed and panting on his rolling chair. Leaving him like that for the next next visit when it would start all over again instead of where it left off.

He never followed the other to the door when they left. He always stayed put right where he had been sitting or standing when his friend decided it was time to go. He never followed because he never needed to tell the other to take care. He never said farewells. He knew he did not have to, because he knew his friend would be back. If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow his rival would come, if not then, eventually. No matter how long of a pause went between meetings, his friend always came back. Besides, he knew that if he followed the other to the door, it would be even harder to let the other leave than it always was. If he was the bird in the cage, then his friend was the wild bird that came and went from the cage as he pleased.

Still, even that grew hard for him to deal with. He found himself following his friend and partner of a year to the door to bid them a good day more and more often. Even when he was touched in such ways that he only wanted more he would still get himself to move from his boneless slouch and follow the other to the door to help with shoes and coats and whatever things his friend had brought with him. Things that seemed to always be just for him. It was never things for work. His friend brought better blankets for his futon. Better cooking supplies for his small tiny little kitchen. Even without ever expressing his wants and needs like he had done moths ago, his friend seemed to see them and even anticipate them. He treasured all those small presents. Even the strange presents, such as new clothing or new shoes showed up at his door at strange times. Sure, it made him feel even more like some pet that was being taken care of instead of like a human being, but he also found he liked the small simple gifts. It made him feel spoiled and wanted. It made him feel that even though he was doing nothing at all constructive for the outside world, there was at least one being from out there that wanted to make him life of isolation as comfortable as possible.

It no longer bothered him to open the door, at least for his friend. Any other time, the fear and the dread was still there. He never had any problems talking to his friend, even if after the other left, he would not talk again until the next time they met. He really just had nothing to say to himself, and there was no one else there in the room to hear him. He was happy and contented with the situation. But as always, it was the other who decided when the situation needed to change. It was always the other. From the beginning, it was his friend, his rival, his guest, who had done the leading. The other would lead, stringing him along, making his dance like a master puppeteer, he would follow, and taking each baited hook that fell before him with a starving ravenous hunger. He never bothered to question motives. He just knew that when things changed, he would have the time to adjust once again. He was always allowed to adjust.

It was very very difficult to adjust to the change this time. He almost did not think he could. He had given so much trust to the other. He had allowed the other into his house. He had allowed the other to touch him in ways not even he touched himself. But the other had always left; He’d never stayed more than a few hours at a time. They might enjoy a meal together. They might sit side by side on machines that he had brought. Machines that were a thousand times better than the ones he had made once he had programmed them the way he wanted them. But at the end of the visit, at the end of the day, as the sun outside slipped past the horizon, the other went back to their safe, rich neighborhood and prepared themselves for another day at the university.

Suddenly, instead of going towards the door after their task for the day was done, the other had strode over to his futon and flopped down into it. He’d received that same smile he’d gotten on that first day he had opened the door to the other, that knowing luring smile. The situation changed because that night, the other insisted upon staying the night. He had never had anyone stay the night. This was his space. His place. His cage. The wild bird could visit, but he was not supposed to stay for more than a few hours. The other insisted and he could not convince the other to leave. He spent the rest of the evening huddled in the opposite corner of the room, staring at this invader to his space like they were a stranger, while his bed was stolen from him.

It was not the first night the other stayed. It would not be the last. It was always random. It was never when he expected it. It seemed almost a whimsical decision for the other to suddenly decide they were staying. It was maybe once every other month that such a decision was made. But before half the year was over, he found himself sick of sleeping in corners when the other stole his bed. Instead, he found himself next to the other.He slept next to his friend’s warmth only to wake in the morning to their absence as they’d left while he’d still be sleeping. Though sometimes, they did not sleep. He would be touched like before, when he was getting massages only this time, the other would not stop. He’d wake in the morning, groggy and strangely sated after what seemed like dreams that seemed too much like some of the questionable pornography he sometimes downloaded for when his purely physical male needs cropped up and demanded to have attention. And each time the other stayed, it took them longer to leave. He would wake at first when them gone completely, but as it progressed, the other would wait to leave to that he could get his farewell for the day.

Slowly, once more, he fell into the traps the other set, anticipating those whims, when the other’s hunger hit and caused the other to stay the night. Once more he started getting lured into security. He had not bothered to bring the other to the door, but now, he found himself following. Now he found himself trailing his partner to the door, so that he could tell the other to have a good day. Even if after those special visits, the other might not come back for a few days. He never did understand why that was, but he knew that after, it would be days but the other would always come back again. It seemed odd that it seemed so easy now for him to do that sort of thing. It seemed even easier to trust the other in such a way. When once he might not have come anywhere near that door now he was going to it twice. Once to let his guest in and once more to let him back out when it was time for them to go. Even easier was it to accept the day that the goodbye touch became a small kiss on the cheek.

They never kissed. When the other stayed because of his hunger, there was no kissing. Maybe after he was drifting into post-coital sleep the other might have, but as far as he knew there had been no such contact. After all, he was always too tired after. His partner was quite the passionate one. It had been proven when it was just touching. But when touching had grown into something more, it had just gotten even more so. He never question when it happened. He never questioned why it was that his partner would strip him bare and lay him out on the futon. He never questioned why the other seemed to enjoy touching his too pale skin. He really didn’t understand why it felt so good when his partner would lift his leg over a shoulder and do things to his body that made him cry out. And how his partner liked that. His fellow hacker seemed to greatly enjoy when he lost his shy, hesitant quiet for shaking moans and pleas. He didn’t like that he somehow turned into someone like those girls he saw sometimes on line, but he knew he liked the feeling that came from having his partner inside of him, and he knew that he sort of felt empty and missed the feeling when it was gone.

Still, unlike those images on the web, they had never once kissed. That was why a small peck on the cheek seemed almost indecent at first. Even after those nights, it seemed dirty. He felt almost like he was tainting his friend for that pretty girl with the big breasts and the nice ass. But he never stopped it, just as he never stopped what happened on those nights with the other decided to stay. This was his cage, his place, his world, and he was in control, even when the other had been controlling him so well this entire time. It was nice though and he accepted each time it happened, no matter how rare. He didn’t even say a word when that kiss of the cheek slowly, yet surly drifted to his lips until the day the other had left after placing a searing kiss to his mouth. It was one that used too much tongue and too much teeth and too much hunger and left his breathless. It was a kiss that was followed by a request that he had not heard in months. The other wanted him to come outside with him.

They kissed again, more desperately and he felt himself get pulled past the door outside. It was just a step out beyond the door. A single step. Then he was moved back inside as if it had never happened. They parted, letting the panic and the shock die down. He lightly shut the door and watched his friend disappear down the block though the peephole. Some day, he swore he would go outside. Just not today. Today was like the one before it.