The north did not ask Rhys to perform
Rhys had spent most of his life being easy to understand.
At work, he was precise. In restaurants, he knew which fork to use. In Glasgow, he could move through a room in a good coat and give people the version of himself they expected: capable, composed, slightly distant, never difficult to place.
Even his silences had been carefully edited.
Callum noticed this before Rhys did.
He noticed it in the way Rhys apologised to doorways after bumping into them. In the way he arranged his hands when he was anxious. In the way he made jokes about the cold, the ferry, the weather, anything that might prevent a quiet moment from becoming an honest one.
Callum had grown up in the islands, left for years, then returned with the weather still in his face. He was steady in a way Rhys found almost frightening. There was nothing polished about him. He did not fill silence because he was afraid of what might enter it.
That was why Rhys had agreed to come north for Up Helly Aa.
Not because he loved crowds. Not because he had ever felt drawn to Viking history. He had come because Callum had said, “You should see it once,” and because the words had sounded less like an invitation than a door being held open.
Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa takes place on the last Tuesday of January. It is a torchlit winter fire festival shaped by Shetland’s Norse heritage and sustained by a year of community work. Costumed guizers form squads, a replica longboat is dragged through the dark streets, and hundreds of burning torches are thrown into the galley before the night moves indoors to halls, performances and dancing until morning.
Rhys knew the facts.
He did not know what the fire would ask of him.
A costume can be a kind of mercy
By late afternoon, the cold had travelled through his gloves.
He flexed his fingers inside them and felt almost nothing. The air smelled of paraffin, wet wool and salt. Somewhere beyond the buildings, the sea pressed against the harbour in the darkness, invisible but present, like a second night beneath the first.
Callum had given him a costume to wear over his coat: nothing elaborate, only a heavy cloak and a plain mask with dark edges. Rhys held it in his hands for several minutes before putting it on.
The mask was cheap. The paint had cracked near one eye.
He liked it immediately.
For one evening, no one needed to know what he did in Glasgow, what his flat looked like, what he had achieved, or how carefully he had learned to be wanted. He could become a stranger among strangers. He could let the mask make decisions for him.
That was the dangerous part.
He had spent so long hiding from himself that disguise felt like rest.
Callum stood beside him in the procession, his shoulder occasionally brushing Rhys’s. Each time it happened, Rhys felt the contact as sharply as heat.
“You all right?” Callum asked.
“Yes.”
It was the answer Rhys gave automatically. The answer that closed the door.
Callum did not challenge it. He only looked at him for a moment, then faced the dark street again.
That was worse, somehow. Rhys wanted to be questioned. He wanted to be known without having to confess the existence of anything worth knowing.
This was the central terror of loving Callum: the fear that Callum loved the version of him built for the city. The clean lines. The quick intelligence. The expensive coat. The controlled voice.
Rhys was afraid that if Callum saw the man under all that: tired, jealous, uncertain and often mean to himself: he would discover there was no one there worth choosing.
The river of fire
At half past seven, the torches were lit.
The change was immediate and almost violent. Darkness became movement. Flame ran through the streets in long, wavering lines. The crowd fell into a rhythm of boots, breath and smoke. The replica galley moved ahead of them, its wooden shape passing in and out of the torchlight.
The fire made everyone look temporary.
Faces appeared, brightened, disappeared. Wet wool steamed at the shoulders. Paraffin burned in the throat. The wind carried salt between the houses, and the heat of the torches touched Rhys’s cheeks while his hands remained painfully cold.
He understood then why the costumes mattered.
The guizers were not simply pretending to be other people. They were being permitted, briefly, to step outside the boundaries of ordinary life. They could be ridiculous, theatrical, heroic or unknown. They could walk through the city without carrying their usual names in the usual way.
But the permission had an ending.
The costume was a loan.
The mask could be removed.
The life beneath it would still be waiting.
Rhys looked at Callum. Firelight moved across his face, catching the lines beside his eyes and the damp at his temple. He looked entirely himself. Weathered, tired, unguarded.
Rhys suddenly hated him for that.
He hated Callum for making honesty appear possible. He hated him for returning to the islands and becoming recognisable to himself. He hated him because Rhys could not imagine doing the same.
Then the procession reached the burning site.
The crowd grew quieter as the galley was positioned. Guizers formed a circle around it, their torches lifting and lowering in the wind. For a moment, the longboat seemed to float in a ring of fire.
Rhys could hear his own breathing inside the mask.
The truth he could not make beautiful
Callum reached for his hand.
Not dramatically. Not to pull him closer. He simply found Rhys’s cold fingers and held them.
Rhys nearly withdrew.
He was suddenly aware of everything: the stiffness in his shoulders, the sweat beneath his collar, the mask pressing against his skin. He could feel the sentence he had been avoiding for months rising in him without any of the elegance he preferred.
The signal came.
Torches flew.
They struck the galley one after another, and the boat took light.
The flames ran along its body. Smoke climbed into the winter sky. The heat reached Rhys’s face so quickly that his eyes watered. Around him, hundreds of people watched the careful work of months become fire.
He thought of all the things he had built to survive.
The career. The wardrobe. The controlled expressions. The careful distance from anyone who might ask the wrong question.
He turned to Callum.
“I’m afraid you love who I pretend to be,” he said.
The words sounded small beneath the fire.
He tried to continue, but his throat closed. He looked down at their joined hands.
“I don’t know if there’s anything better underneath.”
It was not a declaration. It was not beautiful. It was the truth without its coat.
For a moment, Callum said nothing.
The boat cracked in the heat.
Rhys waited for reassurance. He expected Callum to deny it, to tell him he was wrong, to gather the fear up and return it in a more manageable shape.
Callum did none of those things.
He tightened his hand once.
“I know,” he said.
Rhys looked at him.
Callum’s expression had not changed. He did not look shocked or disappointed. He did not look like a man solving a problem.
“I know you’re afraid,” he added. “I don’t know what you’ll do with it yet.”
That was all.
It was not enough to make Rhys feel safe. It was not a promise that everything would last. It did not turn him into an honest man overnight.
But it left the truth where it was, between them, without trying to improve it.
Rhys breathed in smoke.
Then he took off the mask.
What remains after the fire
The galley burned quickly.
Sparks lifted over the dark field. The crowd sang, and the sound seemed to come from somewhere older than any one person standing there. Around them, the fire consumed painted wood, careful decoration and the shape of a ship that had existed only for this ending.
Rhys did not feel transformed.
He felt cold. His face was damp from the heat. His fingers hurt as sensation returned to them. The inside of his coat smelled of smoke, and the mask hung from his hand by a thin cord.
But something had shifted.
The truth had not destroyed him.
Nor had Callum fixed it.
Later, the squads would move through Lerwick’s halls, performing acts and dancing into the morning. The festival would continue because celebration, like grief, could be made communal. People would keep singing after the longboat was gone.
Rhys and Callum did not go immediately.
They stood at the edge of the field and watched the last beams collapse into embers.
Callum’s hand rested near Rhys’s sleeve. Not holding him now. Just there.
Rhys could still leave. He could put the mask back on. He could turn the night into a story about travel, tradition and fire, something vivid but safely impersonal.
Instead, he kept the mask in his hand.
A mask could be useful. It could offer shelter. It could make a frightened person brave enough to enter the crowd.
But it could never be a home.
That was the relief.
That was the beginning.
This is the kind of MM romance unexpected places can create: not a simple escape, but an emotional journey into the parts of ourselves we have kept carefully out of sight. For readers who look for a gay love story emotional journey, character-driven queer fiction and emotional MM romance literary depth, the burning longboat becomes more than a spectacle. It becomes a question.
What are we willing to say when the fire makes hiding impossible?
For more emotionally immersive gay fiction, heartfelt gay love stories and character-led LGBTQ+ fiction, explore Dick Ferguson’s work through Read with Pride.
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