Burdens & Riding With The Wind

by Black, Fabian

  “I don’t want to go to hospital. I hate hospitals. I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse.” He pushed my hand away, trying to prod at the cut as I tried to wrap a bandage around it to stem the flow of blood. “I can’t feel any glass in it. Stop fussing, Adam. I want to find my bike. I want to find Andy so I can kill the slimy little cunt.”

  “I’m not the least bit interested in what you want or don’t want. You haven’t got a clue where Andy is, so there’s no point looking until you do. He’s probably in another county by now.”

  “I’ll find him somehow.”

  “Stop it.” I slapped his hand away from his foot. “You need to have this looked at and properly treated.” I got up trying to take his hands prior to helping him get up.

  He shoved me away, scrambling to his knees. “I’ll manage thanks.” He tried to stand, but his foot obviously hurt too much to put weight on it. He ended up kneeling back on the ground looking distinctly green about the gills.

  My pretence of calm evaporated. I’d had enough of being pushed away. It was time to get tough. I’d been giving him too much leeway out of sympathy for his distress. It hadn’t helped matters one jot.

  Throwing myself down beside him in the dust and dirt I took his face firmly between my hands. “I understand why you’re angry, but you can’t go on pushing me away because of it. I won’t let you. I did what I was morally obliged to do and that’s an end to it. You’re going to do as you’re told and get in the car. We’re going to go to the hospital to have your foot looked at and then we’re going home where we’ll discuss things calmly. If you so much as think about defying me, I promise you, Phineas, public place or not, I’ll pull down your jeans and pants and I’ll flay the backside off you here and now. I don’t care if I get arrested in the process. I mean it. I’ll take off my belt and I’ll blister your bare arse with it.”

  It was the most uncompromising I’d been with him in weeks. It was how he needed me to be.

  The floodgates opened. He released the tears he’d been holding back for too long. He reached for me, clinging to my neck, sobbing disjointed apologies.

  “I’m sorry, Ad. I’m a despicable shit for running out on you and Avril yesterday. I’m sorry for leaving you in the lurch. I’m sorry for what I’ve done today. I hurt an old man. I’ll never forgive myself, not ever. I don’t know how you stand me. I’m a fucking millstone. All I ever do is cause you worry and stress. I wouldn’t blame you for walking out on me.”

  Such words were typical of Phin in crisis. He was always looking for the point of rejection. I hugged him fiercely. “I’ll never walk out on you, so you can score it off your list of things to torture yourself with.”

  There was a rumble of thunder and then the sky came out in sympathy with him. Opening its portals it drenched us both, even as he drenched me with the tears he’d been keeping back.

  “It’s all right, baby.” I murmured into his ear, my heart aching for him. “It’s not the end of the world. Yes, you made a mistake today, but you’ll get through it, if you don’t drown that is. Come on. Let’s get you to the car.”

  I got him settled in the passenger seat, retrieved my wet jacket and climbed into the car, patting his leg. “Hospital. No arguments.”

  ***

  I was right to be concerned about the cut on his foot. An x-ray revealed a point of glass deeply embedded in the wound. It had to be extracted before it was cleaned and stitched.

  I almost laughed at the expression on his face when the attending doctor also prescribed a tetanus booster shot. He looked like he wanted to nominate her for sainthood. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking I would never paddle his bottom when he’d just had an injection in it. He was right. I wouldn’t. Besides, discipline was the last thing on my mind. Phin had other more pressing needs. Being a Dominant is about more than doling out punishment. You have to protect and care for your submissive when they’re vulnerable and too stressed to care for themselves.

  As soon as we got home from the hospital I insisted he go straight to bed. God knows he looked like a week of early nights would do him the world of good. He could count on getting them. He was worn out by the events of the past weeks. His weight had dropped by a good few pounds. It didn’t suit him, or me. I liked to cuddle something more than bones.

  Looping his arm around my neck and my arm around his waist I helped him upstairs, trying to keep weight off his injured foot. He leaned hard against me, showing his willingness to be supported again.

  There was no way he could shower, not with his foot bandaged. I helped into our bedroom and seated him on the bed before fetching a basin of warm water, a flannel, soap and towel. I undressed him and washed him down, wiping grime and sweat from his face and body.

  I felt a stirring of arousal as I administered to him, my cock hardening. There’s something intensely erotic about taking care of your partner’s most basic needs. It’s power wielded through nurture. I experienced a sudden selfish and wholly inappropriate desire to reaffirm my authority by bending him over the bed and fucking him good and hard. I suppressed it. He needed a gentler affirmation of my authority, for the time being anyway.

  After getting him into fresh boxers and a vest top I tucked him between the sheets. “I’m going to make you something to eat.”

  “Not hungry.” He slumped back against the pillows.

  “Just something light for nourishment.” I kissed his forehead. “I won’t be long.”

  I heated soup, his favourite cream of tomato, adding a good dollop of HP sauce. It’s how he likes it. It’s one of many quite disgusting little food quirks he has, such as marmite and scrambled egg sandwiches and, I grimaced as a particularly nasty mixture came to mind, sugar on bacon.

  I took the soup up to him, but his hands were still shaking too much to control the bowl and spoon. I took them from him and proceeded to feed him. He took a few spoonfuls and then shook his head. “No more, Adam. I feel sick. I’ll try later, okay?”

  I nodded and set the soup bowl down on the bedside cabinet.

  He lay back against the pillows. “I’m sorry, Adam, so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For dismissing that Nina meant as much to you as she did to me and for not taking into account that the way she died must have reminded you of your dad’s death. The awful speed of it.” His beautiful blue eyes clouded with grief. “I’m a selfish bastard. Forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “Yes there is.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I don’t know why I did it. Why I took the car I mean, or why I threw the orange out of the window. It all just happened. I never meant to hurt the poor man. I might have killed him. I could have taken a man’s life with one stupid, thoughtless action. I would never harm anyone on purpose, never. You do believe me don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I spoke without hesitation, touching a hand to his face. “It was an accident, Phin, a terrible accident. It wasn’t done with evil intent.”

  “I want to send him flowers, and a letter. Do you think it will be possible? Will the police give me his address? I want him to know how sorry I am and how bad I feel for injuring him. Maybe I can meet him and apologise to his face.”

  “Calm down, Phin.” I rubbed his cheek. “We’ll find out later. You need to rest now.”

  “Are you very angry with me?”

  “No. I think you’re angry enough with yourself, so what possible purpose would my anger serve? I think sadness and regret best sum up my feelings. I wish I’d caught up with you yesterday before you met up with that bastard Blakelock. However, what’s done is done and neither anger nor sadness or regret will change it. What we have to be thankful for is that nobody did get killed or more seriously injured.”

  I took my hand away from his face and gazed at him. “There is something I am angry about though, but it concerns yesterday rather than today.”

  “The car? I’m sorry, but I had to get away.” He gave an imitation of a smile. “I was in no m
ood to wait for a bus.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t say I appreciated you taking the car and leaving Avril and I dependent on the goodwill of others to get home, but what really upset and angered me was getting home to find you’d dumped the car and gone off on your bike, in that state, wearing nothing but the clothes you were standing up in. You didn’t put on so much as a pair of leather gloves, never mind trousers and jacket. That hurt me. I suspect you meant it to. It was your way of punishing me for carrying out Nina’s request. For God’s sake, Phin, jeans and a shirt would hardly have cushioned you in the event of an accident. My mind was running riot until I got your message. All I kept seeing was you as a pulpy piece of road kill.”

  “I wanted to get on the bike as quickly as I could. I wanted to feel free and forget everything.”

  “I don’t care what you wanted to feel. You don’t discard safety. When you ride that bike you put full leathers on. No excuses. How fast did you go, Phin? Tell me the truth. Over the limit?”

  “A mile or so maybe, but nothing like you saw on telly that time. I promise. Cross my heart.”

  “Given the way you were dressed, regardless of speed, if you’d crashed you would have been badly injured if not killed. You say you met Andy as you were going into The Golden Lion. Why were you going into a pub at all when you were driving?”

  “I was thirsty. I was going to get a soft drink. I wasn’t going to drink alcohol and drive. I’m not that big an idiot.”

  “To be truthful.” I said grimly. “I hope the police never find that damn machine of yours. I hate it. Even if they do find it, let me tell you, Phineas, my man, there’s not a snowball in hell’s chance of you riding it for a good while. You’re on a tight rein and grounded until further notice. You don’t go anywhere without my permission. Are we clear about that?”

  “Yes, Adam, we’re clear.” He clasped my hand. “Are you going to physically punish me as well as grounding me? I deserve it.”

  “I’ll decide what you deserve. Enough now. We’ll discuss the whole thing in more detail when you’re feeling better.”

  “Okay.” He raised my hand to his face, pressing his cheek against it. “I missed you last night. Even when I was sleeping in the spare room I at least knew you were around.”

  “I missed you too. I lay awake most of the night hoping the phone would ring and you’d tell me where you were so I could come and get you.”

  “I didn’t mean what I said about hating you.”

  “I know, love. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “Does it get easier, Ad? Do you ever stop missing someone, does it ever stop hurting?”

  I tried to be honest, using my own experiences of loss. “No, you never stop missing them, not as such. You learn to adapt to their absence. Eventually the pain gives way to an ache. Sometimes you don’t notice it and sometimes it consumes you. I adapted to the absence of my mother and brother. I’m still adapting to the loss of my father. In time I’ll adjust to Nina’s absence, and so will you, pet.”

  “I won’t.” His body convulsed once more with sobs.

  I reached for him, holding him in my arms, rocking and comforting him without speaking. Words would have been meaningless flotsam and swept away in such an outpouring of grief. All he needed was for me to be there, to ride the storm with him.

  Outside, the rain echoed his emotions. It fell heavily, striking hard against the roof and windows, making serious demands on guttering and drainpipes. It eventually gave way to a calmer pace, along with his tears. I eased us both down in the bed so he was curled against my side, his head resting on my chest, my arms around him. It was good to have him by my side again.

  Soon the only sound in the bedroom was the steady rise and fall of his breathing as he slipped into a deep and much needed sleep. I would have liked to join him, but my mind was buzzing with all that had happened.

  Poor Phin. Little wonder he was exhausted. He’d had weeks of hell ever since Nina had calmly broken the news she was terminally ill. Her breast cancer had returned and spread. She and Avril had known for a while, but had held off telling us until Phin got through his cancer ordeal and was given the all clear.

  There would be no all clear for her. She had been given no hope of cure or remission. Her life was numbered in weeks rather than years.

  Typical Nina, she had shrugged and smiled, saying she was glad in a way to be given a timescale. It meant she could tell all the people she loved, how much she loved them. She could tell them how much they meant to her, and how they had enriched her life. As a consequence she wouldn’t die with words in her heart left unspoken.

  Then she dropped another bombshell. She had been in touch with her estranged sister, Joyce, Phin’s mother. They had finally broken a silence of decades. Phin had been almost as shattered by this revelation as by the news that Nina was dying. He couldn’t get his head around it.

  Nina tried to explain how she couldn’t die without trying to make peace with someone she was inextricably linked to via a shared parentage and childhood.

  She met with Joyce only three times before passing away, but she said the meetings gave her a deep sense of peace and completion. It was a link back to her beginnings and to her childhood days with the only family member left alive to remember them.

  Joyce was a girl she had played with, fought with, laughed with, held hands and ran with in the uncomplicated days before adolescence brought changes and they struggled with their emerging adult selves.

  The meetings also made Nina realise that every closed door has two sides. It had shocked and saddened her to realise that she, as much as her sister, had kept the door between them shut tight for so many years. The breach between sisters was bad enough, but the one between a mother and son was even worse. Nina felt wracked with guilt for not having tried sooner to resolve the breach between her nephew and sister.

  Phin’s mother had been eager for news and to see photos of the son she had last laid eyes on when he was a youth of fifteen. She wanted reconciliation. She wanted her son back.

  Phin wasn’t interested. He refused to listen to any details of the meetings, not understanding why Nina had needed to make contact with someone who had rejected her, who had rejected him. He saw her actions almost as a betrayal of their relationship, a relationship that had its roots in this mutual rejection. It confused him.

  In the last conscious hours of her life Nina begged him to remember that when he was small he had loved his mother and somewhere in time that love still existed. She also expressed a sincere wish for her death to be used as an olive branch between the two of them. Phin promised her he would think about it, so she at least died with hope in her heart.

  He did think about it, and rejected it. Deep down inside he was still an angry teenager, conscious only of his own pain. He was unwilling to consider his mother’s pain. Teenagers tend to only ever see one side of an argument, their own. I knew so from sad experience. I had been the same with my father, refusing to see his hurt and confusion.

  At Nina and Avril’s request I agreed in the event of her passing to act as the bearer of bad news. I would contact all their friends and relatives to make the announcement and to give details of the funeral and then later the ceremony to scatter her ashes as she had wished.

  The sad day came when I had to carry out my duty. Phin ordered me not to contact his mother Joyce. He said she had no right to be informed and no right to attend the funeral or the ceremony. He didn’t want her at either. I argued against him. She had the right because Nina had granted it to her. I was carrying out her last wishes.

  I reminded him, perhaps harshly, that it wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about what Nina wanted. He was furious, but I could not in good conscience omit to do something I considered a sacred duty, not even to placate the person I love most in the world.

  From the moment I made the call, all of Phin’s mixed emotions compressed into one. Anger. It was directed at me - Adam the despot, Adam the unyielding and uptight.
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  As things turned out Joyce didn’t attend Nina’s funeral. She spoke to Avril and said she didn’t think it appropriate. She wanted to give Phin space to grieve without distraction.

  He was much relieved. I was too. Her absence meant he allowed me to support and comfort him through Nina’s funeral, as he had supported and comforted me through my father’s. It was a short reprieve.

  Joyce made known her intention to attend the ashes ceremony. She wanted, needed, to say goodbye to her sister. Avril was more than happy for her to be there, but not Phin. He demanded I tell her to stay away. I refused. I also forbade him to tell her. I made clear I thought he was being selfish. His anger deepened. He barely spoke to me in the days before the ceremony. He slept in the guest room. They were hard days. With hindsight I should have taken him in hand then.

  Of course it wasn’t really me he was angry with. It was an old anger reaching back through the years. I realised as much when I saw the look on his face after he’d sung at the ashes ceremony and his mother had made a move to speak to him.

  It wasn’t a man who took flight from St. Leonard’s Hill. It was a boy of fifteen. It was a confused youth struggling to make the transition to adulthood in a way that left him true to himself and who felt betrayed because the parents who should have helped him with the transition had failed him.

  After leaving home he went all out to be the black sheep and to heap disgrace and embarrassment on the parents who had hurt him with their lack of understanding. Taking up with the likes of Andy Blakelock, stealing and wrecking cars, developing a passion for bikes, danger and speed were the devices he had employed to divert his pain.

  He murmured, shifting in my arms. I gazed at him. Even in sleep he looked troubled. His eyelids flickered as his mind chased images. He had loved Nina so much. She had been a mix of surrogate mother and best friend. After meeting his real mother I could see where some of his attachment probably stemmed from. For one painful moment I felt as if I were seeing Nina alive again. The physical likeness was extraordinary. The difference between the women lay in nature and attitude.