\n
\n Part Five

\n Kip reached up and put a hand on Jake's cannonball of a shoulder. He almost expected Jake to pull away, but he stopped in his tracks and looked at him, annoyance and a little bit of insult very visible in his expressive brown eyes. "I'm sorry, Jake. You've been nothing but kind to me, and I do appreciate it. Deeply."

\n Nodding, Jake started back to the truck. "'s alright, I guess," he said. "It's just been a long day, I've had a kiiller leg workout, and I haven't eaten anything in six hours. I'm starved, my blood sugar is low, and I'm turning into Superbitch."

\n "Then let me buy you dinner. Your choice. And while we're eating, I'll fill you in on why I freaked out today."

\n They settled on one of the nearby super buffets, where a man Jake's size could get filled up without requiring Kip to take out a bank loan, and after the bigger man filled up two plates with meat and steamed vegetables, the two men found a quiet corner of the restaurant and sat down to eat.

\n Kip began to tell his story. He started out by warning, "You asked me why I ran out of the shower, and I'm going to tell you that. But to explain it to you, I'm going to have to go into detail that might make you uncomfortable. You still want to know?"

\n By this point Jake was intrigued beyond his ability to withstand. He nodded his head. "Sure, Kip. Whatever you need to tell me, it won't make any difference between us. I'll still want to be your friend."

\n "Just remember you said that," Kip warned. "I'm going to hold you to it."

\n Then he began to tell the story that he hadn't really told anyone, but had rehearsed a hundred times in his head. "Unless I miss my guess, you were on the football team, right?" Jake nodded. "Well, I wasn't. In fact, I was as not on the football team as you can possibly get. I was the guy that the jocks loved to pick on because I was different. I was in drama club, I was on the yearbook staff, the debate team, all that sort of crap. I was a nerd, and they spent four years of their lives torturing me. Every day I had to endure a different humiliation. One day I got swirled in the bathroom, the next day I'd get thrown into a garbage can and have the lid slammed shut, and on another I'd get my pants pulled down around my ankles in the middle of the school patio. And on some days, some of the meaner ones would just beat me up for the hell of it. And nobody did anything to stop it, so it just got worse and worse. I'm not being dramatic when I say that there wasn't a single day of my senior year that I didn't carry at least one bruise given to me by a jock. That's why I flinch almost every time I see a large person walking toward me in the gym." Kip noticed that Jake had stopped eating and was staring at him. "Eat!" he encouraged, "Don't let your food get cold."

\n With a start, Jake realized that it was true, he hadn't been eating. He couldn't remember the last time he'd forgotten to eat. As Kip continued with his story, Jake sawed away at his slab of roast beef.

\n "Anyway, as if that wasn't bad enough, when I was fifteen, a bunch of football jocks caught me alone outside school one day. They harassed me for a while, beat me up pretty bad, and left me crying there with snot running out of my nose. Pretty typical stuff so far, right?"  Kip was surprised that, even after all these years, he could tell his story calmly. "Well, this one ugly, scrawny kid who barely squeaked onto the football team's third string decided to take it to the next level. I guess hitting me stopped being interesting, so he got four of the group to come right back after the others had left. They grabbed me before I could get away, dragged me into the locker room, threw me in the shower, and gang raped me."  

\n Kip's clinical tone even surprised himself.  From inside his head, this sounded like someone else telling his story.  "After they made me their little bitch and made me promise that I'd never tell anyone what happened, they beat me up again, stole my clothes, and left me in the shower. To add insult to injury, the lousy fuckers didn't even have the courtesy to leave the hot water running in the shower. They turned off the hot water valves on their way out and left me laying there, naked, alone, freezing and wet"

\n Jake was beyond horrified. He couldn't begin to imagine that something like this could happen in the modern world, and yet he had no doubt that every word Kip told him was true.

\n "That happened ten more times over the next three years," Kip continued, "And every time it was worse. Those sadistic motherfuckers must have sat up late at night dreaming up new ways to humiliate me." Kip's mouth was dry, and he took a long drink of his soda to wet his lips. "The last time they attacked me, it was bad enough to put me out of school for a week."

\n "Graduation couldn't come fast enough for me, and there was no way I was going to go to any local community college where I might run into anyone I'd once gone to school with. I hopped the first bus to college 200 miles away, and didn't return for anything but family visits for the next four years.

\n "By the time I had my degree, nobody here remembered me anymore and I could start a new life. But no matter where I went, I was always looking over my shoulder to see if someone was sneaking up on me. Eventually I got tired of running from shadows, and decided to get big enough to defend myself in case somebody ever tried doing that to me again. I got sick of being a victim."

\n "I think I can understand that," Jake said, and Kip immediately called him on the carpet for it.

\n "What would you know about being a victim," he asked, bluntly. "You've always been the strong one."

\n "I'm not going to deny that," Jake said, "but I'm trying to understand the way you felt, even if I haven't been through it myself. Give me props for trying, at least."

\n "Sorry," Kip apologized, instantly regretting that he'd pretty much yelled at a man who'd done nothing but help him, "it's a sore subject, and I shouldn't have lashed out at you. You're one of only a handful of people who I've told about this, you know. It's not something I'm proud of."

\n "Dude," Jake said, "are you kidding me? Overcoming something like this isn't something to be ashamed of, it's a tremendous achievement! What you've done is absolutely amazing, and I respect the hell out of you for it."

\n "Well, thanks, but I'm not quite finished with my story." Kip picked at his own food, but didn't eat any of it. Not just yet. He wanted to finish the story before he got cold feet. "Today in the gym, I had a really great arm workout.."

\n "And chest. You also did chest and traps. 220 pounds on the flye machine, and you did shrugs with four plates." Jake interjected.

\n In spite of himself, and despite his feeling that his revelations would crater his newfound friendship, Kip had to give the man a weak grin. "You're absolutely amazing, you know that? I didn't even remember that." He waved his hands in front of him dismissively. "Anyway! I was completely crapped out, my blood sugar was down in the dirt, and when you guys came stampeding through the locker room, it sort of spooked me. My brain went into some sort of feedback loop, and the more I thought about what jocks did to me in the past, the more I was afraid of you. By the time y'all were hitting the showers, I was in full-blown panic mode. I tried running away, but there was no place to go. And then when I ran into you, I'd have sworn on a stack of bibles that you snarled at me and threw me down, and I was right back in High School.."

\n "You bounced off my back!" Jake protested.

\n "I know, I know," Kip said, calmingly, "but you've got to remember, we're not talking about reality here, we're talking about perception. My survival instincts took over and convinced me that you were about to kick my ass. Whatever I saw only reinforced that perception." He continued. "When I was on the ground, I tried to cover myself, but you blocked me."

\n "I was trying to bend down to help, and my legs gave out. I had to put my hand on your chest to keep from falling on top of you," Jake protested weakly.

\n "And when I saw your other hand coming down over my head, I thought you were going to punch me so I pulled back. That's when I cracked my head on the floor."

\n Jake felt awful. "So I'm really the reason you got the concussion."

\n To Kip's eyes Jake looked distressed, if not damned close to tears. This huge, mean monster of a man, the one who seemed so bulletproof on the outside, had feelings that ran deep. "No! It had nothing to do with you." Kip took a risk and put a hand on Jake's forearm to reassure him. "You were just offering help. My problems were all because my head took all the incorrect perceptions and ran into left field with them. It was MY fault."

\n "Maybe today was, or at least, part of it, " Jake said, "but the whole reason you're scared is because of people just like me, and I hate that!" Jake felt the fury building inside himself. "I've never given a second thought about being bigger and stronger than anyone else, I've just taken it for granted. I know for a fact there were kids like you in our school, and even though I didn't do any of the teasing, I didn't do a goddamned thing to stop what was going on." Kip could see the fur at the corners of Jake's eyes darken with moisture, but his voice was rock steady. Kip didn't have a clue what to do, so he sat there quietly and let the huge man vent his frustrations. "I could have stopped them, but I chose not to. I was in a position to make those guys quit, and I didn't do a single fucking thing to stop them." Jake's voice cracked, and he dropped his eyes to his plate, shameful at his lack of action. "I was just like the people who hurt you, Kip! I was one of them, and I hate myself for that."

\n "You know what?" Kip said, and waited for Jake's eyes to raise and meet his. "You're a good man, Jake, and if you'd truly realized the evil that was being done, I know you would have stopped it." Kip's voice took on a serious tone. "Until now, you were ignorant of the effect the others had on people like me, so you get a pass. But from now on, now that you know, you're responsible for your inactions as well as your actions."

\n He stared into the red-rimmed eyes of his new friend. "Don't be mad at yourself, Jake. I'm not. You've shown me that most of the people I've been afraid of for so many years have really been good people inside, I've just been too scared to see it. As far as I can tell, everyone in the gym I've been scared by," Kip raised his eyebrow, "and that list includes you, has gone out of his way to be kind to me when I was completely helpless. You guarded me when I was unconscious, Sam made sure I was safe, Dunny even gave me his own towel."

\n Kip got up and moved around the table to give Jake the biggest hug he could. Even seated, the top of Jake's massive head was on a level with his own, and Kip's arms barely met around Jake's back. "Thank you, Jake. You're a good man." Kip didn't expect it, but Jake's arms went around him in return, and for a few moments he felt the big morph's breath catch inside him as his emotions played out. The two held each other until the tide of emotions had passed, then, almost reluctantly, they broke apart in a flurry of nose-blowing and eye-wiping. Although physical contact had been broken, Kip had the feeling that there were now invisible threads connecting the two, threads that would be there for a very long time.

\n "Dude, I don't ever do this," Jake said, pressing a tissue against the fur under his eyes.

\n "I hope not," Kip said, after blowing his nose."You're ugly when you cry."

\n Jake laughed out loud and threw the used tissue at Kip, narrowly missing him. "Jerk."

\n "Asshole." Kip shot back.

\n Tension broken, the two friends finished their food and decided that Jake's apartment would be the logical place to spend the night. He had a sleeper sofa, and Kip's guest bed would probably have collapsed under Jake's weight anyway. On the way out to the truck, Kip shared one more thing with Jake. "I might as well tell you something else," he said. He was so tired and emotionally drawn out that this was probably the only time he could have shared this with the other man.

\n "What?" Jake said, engrossed with the task of pulling a shred of meat from between his front teeth with a toothpick.

\n Kip screwed up his courage and, after telling himself one last time that he had nothing to lose, blurted,  "I'm gay."