The first time I saw him, he took my breath away. 

He’d seemed so young. I knew that really, he couldn’t be more than five years my junior, but he had a softness and delicacy about him that spoke of an easier life. And I couldn’t begrudge him that at all.

I knew it wasn’t true, of course. 

It wasn’t possible for him –for men like us– to reach our thirties unscathed. 

Sitting in front of the fire, the snow falling outside, my bones aching as they always did on cold days, I corrected myself. Forties now, for me at least. 

How did I get here? 

In this domestic scene, eating gingerbread cookies he had made, shaped like stars instead of people and iced with green and red. We sat before an open fire in the house he had inherited from his grandmother – the only one who hadn’t disowned him. It was full of all her kitsch belongings, and paper on the walls that might be older than me. And yet, he seemed so entirely at home. So comfortable that it was comforting to witness. 

We had met at a transmasc social group, and through his persistence, we had become friends. I saw the way he looked at me and stopped myself from returning those same admiring glances.

At first because I thought he was younger than he was. And then after, because there was something in his expression that concerned me. 

He had looked at me with awe.

He had looked at me as though I could be a father figure, an older brother, a mentor, a guide. Someone who had already taken this journey and, in his eyes, was a hero for doing so. 

Perhaps I should have been flattered, but there was nothing heroic about having to live. No matter how many times people might say, “you’re so brave,” whilst their expressions held pity and condescension. 

We sat on the overstuffed sofa that definitely was older than me. 

“Thanks for coming,” he said, picking nervously at the icing on his star. 

I nodded. 

Why had I come?

Because he had asked me, and I didn’t want to say no. 

He had found his grandmother’s old recipe book and didn’t want to try the results alone. He wanted to share them with someone on this wintery evening, the shortest day of the year. Or maybe he wanted to share them as the days were about to lengthen again.

He wanted to share them with me.

I came because, over the weeks and months, after finally letting him in, I found I enjoyed his company. I liked being around him. He made me smile. And now I wanted to spend those lengthening days with him too, basking in the sunlight together.

As we’d grown to know each other his expression had changed. I was no longer his hero, his would-be guide. I was just another man. 

A man like him. 

He sat forward, dipping his ginger star into the cinnamon hot chocolate he had made from a page in the recipe book; hand-written notes with very clear instructions that these two should go together. 

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” I finally said, before sitting forward and copying him. 

His smile was so beautiful it made my heart ache. The hot chocolate dripped from his star onto the threadbare carpet as I put my own in my mouth and savoured the flavours as his grandmother had intended. 

I leaned in and shared the flavour from my own lips in a soft and gentle kiss.

Perhaps as his grandmother had once done with his grandfather and likely hoped someday someone would do with him. A tradition she had left him along with the house.

One that I realised I wanted to be part of. 

Perhaps I had realised that long before this kiss. Long before I even knew about ginger stars and cinnamon hot chocolate. 

Perhaps I’d known it since the day he took my breath away. 

And that’s how I got here.