Well, I don't really want to revisit that argument. Suffice it to say, we were about to go out for a nice dinner when Fox got a call from Dana, who was crying, and he got angry and dumped me -- for the first time -- and took off for her place.

I just couldn't believe it. To me, this relationship was a marriage, in fact if not in law, and you just don't dump your spouse on the grounds that your friend needs you more.

Which, of course, I realized as I was brooding in my apartment that night. This was just more evidence that Fox was never going to be more than half committed to me, and that Dana's rights in his life were at least equal to mine.

Dare I say I wasn't thrilled? That I thought seriously about getting away from him, finding someone else?

I did. I just knew that someone else was not what I wanted.

What I wanted was for him to love me the way he loved her.

I was pretty sure Dana was thinking the same thing about me.

In the morning, I gathered my courage and went over to Dana's place. I was relieved -- actually relieved -- to see that he had slept on the couch.

We talked, and then Dana and I talked, and I was touched all over again at her concern for me. It was genuine, even loving, although nowhere near as deep as the affection she had for my lover.

She was shocked to find out that Fox hadn't told me what happened, and she very kindly offered to fill me in. I declined, of course; if he wouldn't or couldn't tell me himself, finding out from someone else wasn't going to fix things.

I think I was beginning to fall a little bit in love with her myself. I know I could have cried when she told me that, no matter how difficult it was, she wasn't going to leave him.

I understood. I'm not going to leave him, either, although I think he could do a lot better than to be with me.

But he doesn't think so, and that is the greatest treasure of my life -- although a treasure I don't deserve.

Fox and I went home not long after that, and we spent most of the day in bed. It was good, and I have to admit it -- the idea that he'd practically killed a man the day before excited me at first. He seemed so cool about it, still so self-assured.

And I was still star-struck.

But I didn't know that then, just as I didn't know that he was suffering a hell of a lot over the whole mess, even over shooting that guy, Modell.

Well, I found out. We were lying in bed, savoring the afterglow -- I thought -- when I realized that Fox was crying. It was the first time he'd cried in my presence, and it came as a huge surprise, not to say shock.

At first, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. I lay there for the longest time, completely flummoxed.

Then I gathered my nerve and put my arms around him, acting more out of instinct than anything else, and he grabbed at me with those gorgeous, muscular arms, so hard I was afraid he'd break my ribs.

And I felt like a great big stinking turd. He'd gone over to Dana's last night to comfort _her_, sure.

But he still wanted _me_ to comfort him.

I stroked his hair, and I kissed him, and told him I loved him -- which, God knows, I do.

And then it all came out. Fox talked more that afternoon than he'd talked in all the time we'd been together, and he told me things he'd never even come close to telling me before.

He told me about how Modell, how he'd followed him into Fairfax Mercy, leaving his gun with Dana so he couldn't use it on anyone. Dana didn't want him to go, he said; she was pretty frightened.

I couldn't blame her. It was frightening to me just to hear about it, and he'd already come out uninjured, although certainly not unscathed.

He told me how Modell had "pushed" him to aim the gun at Dana, how he'd felt his finger pressing back on the trigger, against his will, and about that single, silent tear that rolled down her cheek.

And then he told me how she'd run from him, and pulled the fire alarm, and how he'd shot Modell, and then handed Dana the gun, and how she'd taken his hand later and held it briefly and never spoken a single word of blame.

"But I almost killed her, Daniel," he whispered. "I had that gun aimed at her head, and I was pulling the trigger. I almost killed my partner."

And he cried again, overcome with guilt at what he'd been forced to do.

And at last, I began to understand.

That was why he went to her that night even though he knew he had hurt my feelings by going. He knew exactly how upset she was, and how bad she was feeling, and what she had been through that day.

He had to know. He was the one who'd put her through it.

And yet she forgave him, and loved him, and she needed him. She loved him just as much when he failed as when he succeeded.

But he was afraid that I wouldn't.

And I knew, to my everlasting shame, that he had good reason to be afraid.

I don't know if he knew it on a conscious level; I rather think he didn't. But he was always deeply perceptive and insightful; he felt, if he didn't know, that I needed to believe that he was perfectly strong, perfectly capable, and far, far above such petty human failings as fear, indecision or confusion.

And, God help him, he tried to live up to that image, for my sake.

That's why he wouldn't tell me about his work: He couldn't bear the possibility that I would be disappointed in him or, worse, ashamed. He couldn't bring himself to risk falling short of the glamorized, unrealistic picture I had created of him.

I had done just what the chaplain had described; I had seen the badge, and the gun, and in my mind I had made Fox into some kind of super-cool, super-macho James Bond type, had indulged myself in adolescent "licensed to kill" fantasies.

The worst realization of all was that I had done it to him because it was the only way I knew of to make him seem masculine enough for me to hang around with.

Without the goddamn 007 daydreams, I probably would have seen him as just another faggot.

That was how my sick mind worked. Even my need to believe that he was secretly lusting after Dana was part of my fantasy that I wasn't in love with a damn queer. A real man wants to fuck women; he doesn't want another man to fuck him, right?

Wrong. A real man could, and does, want that because he loves me and he wants me and that is how we express our love physically.

And it was Dana, the straight, innocent, almost virginal-seeming Dana, who gave me the key to understanding that, to understanding Fox -- and myself.

"You can be proud of him, Daniel," she'd said when we talked that morning. It took all his courage and all his strength, she said, but he had gotten them out alive.

I thought she was just being kind, and she was, but she was being far kinder to me than I knew.

As I held Fox that day and listened to him -- really listened to him, for the first time -- it was as though I could finally hear what Dana was really trying to say to me.

He's just a man, Daniel, she was saying. He's strong and he's brave and he's committed, and he will risk anything for what he thinks is right, but he fails sometimes. Love him anyway. For all his intelligence, all his beauty, and all his courage, he's just a man, after all.

Just a man. That was the one thing I had never let him be.

Somehow, Dana knew it. But being Dana, she didn't condemn me, just reached out to me with that same self-sacrificing love she'd always given Fox.

You take risks when you give that much of yourself to someone. Dana had taken a tremendous risk with me, but a much bigger one with Fox -- and she lost. By letting herself see him as a man, she made herself vulnerable to him -- because if he's a man, she's also a woman.

And so she fell in love with him.

Oh, I knew all along that she was in love with him, sure; I mean, that wasn't exactly news.

I guess there was just a corner of my mind that refused to accept that her feelings for him were as real and as deep as mine. I found out better when Fox told me more about that night.

When he got there, he said, she was still crying. He told me he'd held her until she calmed down a little and then he kissed her, just to comfort her, and she'd responded as though that kiss were the first step in a seduction. And that's when he realized how she really felt about him.

It was, I imagine, a horridly painful moment for them both.

Knowing Dana, I'm sure she was terribly ashamed of what she saw as her own weakness and foolishness, and terribly afraid of losing his friendship forever.

Fox, on the other hand, told me that he was in agony because he loves her but he can't ever feel for her what she feels for him.

But I think that -- for the first and maybe the only time in his life -- he wished that he could.

I cannot find it in me to dislike Dana or be jealous over this. I really doubt that she ever meant to tell him, let alone try to do anything about it. I think her guard was down because of the stress and fatigue of their day, and she was desperately lonely -- Fox was her only friend, and he'd stopped coming around.

Because of me.

But he stayed with her that night instead of coming home to me. On her couch.Daniel the Dumb-ass finally got the message.

I did everything I could to reassure him. I told him that if he needed to spend more time with her, he should. I told him that a kiss or a hug from him would mean a lot to her, and it wouldn't threaten our relationship at all.

I told him I would understand if they wanted to share a bed sometimes, just for comfort.

And I do, at last, understand. I understand that the odds are overwhelmingly against anything sexual happening between them. I also understand that, if it did happen, it would be brief, awkward, incomplete, never repeated and born not of desire, but of the purest and best love I have ever seen between two friends.

And I know that Dana would guard that memory like a treasure for the rest of her life. I could almost bring myself to hope that it happens.

Because I know now that I have the better half of Fox.

The sad thing is, I know that Dana thinks so, too.

I remember the last thing she and I said to one another on that morning after the Modell shooting. She asked me if Fox is beautiful when we make love.

Yes, I told her; very beautiful. And I thought she might cry. I thought I might, too.

If I could think of a way that she could see that for herself, I would, but I know it's not possible. And she knows it. She always did. That was why she asked.

It wasn't long after the Modell shooting, I think, that Dana began her active sexual pursuits. Neither she nor Fox ever mentioned it to me, but I'm not that stupid. I knew she was out there targeting men who looked a little like Fox -- a little being the operative phrase, because there is no one as beautiful as he is.

Dana is possibly the most loving and understanding woman on earth, and she is truly pure-hearted, but she is also a woman who wants and needs what Fox can't give her.

So he accepts her one-night-stand lovers and he tries, as best he can, to fill her emotional needs. He needs her too much to risk letting her fall in love with any of those Fox-like men she sleeps with.

I don't want her to, either: I have begun to love her, too, in my own way.

They touch each other more now, I think, than they used to. They embrace more, hold hands more, and they kiss sometimes, and if it's not quite the passionate kiss of lovers, it's not the kind of kiss you'd give your sister, either.

And he kisses and touches and embraces me in her presence which, strange as it seems, appears to reassure them both.

I know it reassures me.

He seems happier with me now; more open about work, less tense, less guarded. I am still trying to deal with the guilt of having put such a huge, unbearable burden on him.

And I am still trying to deal with the final understanding I have gained from all this -- the understanding that had eluded me for years: why Jill was so deeply hurt, why she cried so much when I left, even though she knew by then, and had known for a long time, that I was never really hers anyway.

Sometimes, I'm more than a little afraid that I may find myself crying someday for exactly the same reason.

And if that day ever comes, I know what I'll do. I'll go find Dana, wherever she is, because I know she will hold me and comfort me -- and that she will understand, as no one else on earth ever could, all the reasons that I cry.