by Jules Jones
“Yes.” He put his own hand up to cover Patrick’s. He needed the reassurance of that touch.
“I can see you, Martin.” Patrick pulled his hand away from Martin’s shoulder, but twisted it around a little to take hold of Martin’s hand, keeping that physical contact. “You look different when I see you like this. The buttons on your shirt are hard and bright.” A finger traced down his chest, pushing gently at each button. “And the zip in your jeans.” A hand cupped his cock briefly. “You’re still scared, but I don’t think that’s the only reason your heart’s beating that fast.”
“No.” He was still afraid, but that brief burst of atavistic terror was gone. And he might be in what was absolute darkness to his unadapted eyes, but even normal humans had other senses that could substitute for sight. He could hear quiet breathing in front of him, and the slight scrape of George’s shoes against the floor of the cave. He was aware of the warmth of Patrick’s body directly in front of him. He wasn’t alone in the dark, and the men he was with respected his limits.
George was moving now. Martin turned his head to try to follow his movements.
“You may be blind, but you’re not deaf,” George said. “I’m just going to put the torch down.” Slight clatter from near the entrance to the room. “I’ve put it on the floor just inside the door, on the right-hand side.” Footsteps coming towards him, loud enough that Martin thought George must be deliberately exaggerating them. “Just in case anything happens to us. The torch is still there, and you know where it is. It won’t take you more than a minute to find a wall and then the door in an emergency.”
“Thanks.”
“Martin, if this doesn’t work for you, tell us. We haven’t done this before either.” George was now an unseen but still felt presence next to him. And then he felt another hand taking his.
They stood like that for a moment, a chain with Martin the middle link. Patrick holding his right hand, George holding his left. Or perhaps a circle -- his own rudimentary positional sense could tell only that they were there, not whether they were also holding each other’s hands.
Then someone or something stroked his face. He flinched slightly at the thought that it might not be one of them, but reminded himself that the cave had looked clean and dry in the torchlight, with nothing dangling from the roof to catch the unwary.
As if he’d read his thoughts, Patrick said, “There’s only us here.”
His hand was drawn towards George, laid against George’s chest. “You can still feel us, even if you can’t see us.” Then George let go of his hand, but he still had the physical contact, the reassurance that George was there. Heavy cotton shirt against his hand, a warm body under the shirt.
He stroked his hand across George’s chest, feeling for himself the play of muscles as George shifted position slightly. Feeling the hardness of buttons, hardness that the other two could see in some mysterious fashion. What did the room look like to them, with their extra sense?
He thought he felt one of them scan him again, but wasn’t sure if he was just imagining it. What was he feeling? Pressure? Sound at the very edge of his hearing? Or no physical sensation at all, just a brush with magic?
“That’s better,” Patrick said. “Not so scared now.”
“Will you be all right if Patrick lets go of you for a moment?” George asked.
“Yes. As long as I know where he is.”
“He’s not going to leave. Neither of us is.” A hand over his cock again, squeezing him through his jeans. “But it’ll have to be just hands. I don’t want to leave you long enough to find some condoms.”
“Hands are fine.” He didn’t want to break the mood either. And there was plenty you could do with just touch.
“Good.” Patrick let go of his hand. “Just stand still.”
He stood still, felt hands trace over his body. Heard Patrick saying, “I can see something in your pocket. Coins inside it. Must be your wallet.” A hand settled unerringly over where his wallet lay. “Must be keys in the other pocket. Bits of metal on a ring. Can’t see them clearly through the cloth, but must be keys.”
Patrick was trying to show him what that extra sense was like, reassure him that they could see even if he couldn’t.
George’s voice now. “Your heart rate’s gone down. You’re much less scared now.”
He was. He could even pay attention to other things. He knew they were in a moderate-sized room with hard walls. He could hear it when they spoke. He wasn’t completely blind in this dark world, even if he’d be almost helpless without them.
“Not just hands, of course,” Patrick said. One of them, or both of them, did that trick with focused sound pressure on his cock, and suddenly he wasn’t all that interested in his own ability to interpret echoes. He gasped and thrust his hips forward, and then remembered that there was nothing solid there to thrust against, not unless one of them chose to put his hand there. But a hand would only get in the way of that wonderful pulsing pressure.
George laughed and said, “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“God, yes.”
The pressure increased. “Do you think we can make you come without even touching you?”
“Ah!”
“I think that means yes,” Patrick said. “Though it might be better without his clothes in the way.”
He felt hands on his groin; then the pressure of cloth against his cock eased off as someone pulled down his zip. No fumbling or groping in the dark. Patrick could see what he was doing, could see accurately enough to find the button and undo it without hesitation. His cock was pulled free of his jeans and underpants. Then Patrick let go, and the strange pressure increased again.
He reached to touch his cock, but someone grabbed his hand. “No,” Patrick said. “It doesn’t work as well if you get in the way.”
“Better hold him,” George said.
Patrick let go of his wrist and then moved -- he could tell that much. Then he felt the warmth and touch of Patrick standing behind him, just before Patrick reached around him with both arms and took hold of his wrist again.
He still had his hand on George’s chest, but George took hold of his hand and pushed it back towards him. He didn’t resist, but let George do as he wanted. That hand was also given into Patrick’s keeping. Patrick hugged him tightly, holding both of his hands away from his cock.
At least he knew where Patrick was, but he’d lost touch with George. “George?”
“I’m still here.” The pressure on his cock started pulsing faster. “Can’t you tell?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you thought of this, George.” Patrick kissed the back of his neck. “It’s like having a virgin, isn’t it?”
That was uncomfortably close to what he was in this situation. He’d never experienced anything like this before. He’d played with vibrators, but this was utterly new.
And it had turned Patrick on, that much was very obvious from the hard cock pressed against Martin’s arse.
Patrick shifted his grip slightly, taking both of Martin’s wrists in one of his hands. Martin could have broken free if he’d tried, but the light grip on his wrists was only a reminder to do as he was told.
“What are you up to?” George asked.
“Need to get out of these trousers.” And Martin could feel Patrick struggling one-handed with the zip on his own jeans, then the way Patrick’s body relaxed slightly as he managed it. “Ah. That’s better.” Patrick’s cock bumped against him again, settling into place along the seam of his jeans.
“Good idea.”
The beam of sound against his cock faded, leaving him with no clue as to where George was. “George!”
“It’s all right, Martin.” Hands cupped his face. “I’m right in front of you.”
He could smell stone dust on George’s fingers, though it had to be very fine because he couldn’t feel any grittiness where George’s fingers rested against his cheeks. George must have picked up the dust while climbing the
rockfall. Martin wouldn’t have even noticed if he hadn’t been in the dark, but now his senses strained for every scrap of information. “I’m all right.”
“I’m going to let go of you for a moment. But I’ll still be in front of you.”
“And I’ve got you,” Patrick said. “You’re not alone.”
George let go of him, and then he heard the sound of a zip. They must look a sight, all three of them standing here with their flies open and their cocks standing proud. Well, there was nobody to see but George and Patrick, so what did it matter?
He felt George’s hands on his, and George said, “You can let go of him now.”
Patrick let go of his wrists, but kept his arms around him. George pulled his hands forward and down, guiding them so that he could wrap them around George’s cock. He did so, squeezing, and George sighed in contentment.
With his hands on George’s cock, he couldn’t touch himself; but that didn’t matter, because George was using the focused echolocation on him again. It was like being stroked and squeezed by a phantom hand. Then George started pulsing it, a brief burst and then off again.
He squeezed George to the same rhythm, and George responded by speeding up. Then Patrick started thrusting against him to the same rhythm. Curiosity got the better of arousal. “Patrick, can you see George’s echolocation?”
“Yes. You’re obviously not doing a good enough job of distracting him, George.”
“Soon sort that out.” A big hand wrapped around his cock and squeezed tightly. Then George stepped forward and kissed him.
No more sonic pulses, but it didn’t matter. Not with Patrick thrusting hard against his arse, not with George’s cock in his hand and George’s tongue in his mouth. Then George let go of his cock, pulled Martin’s hands away, and moved up against him, crushing their cocks together. Not quite lined up because of the height difference, but good enough. He was pushed into George each time Patrick thrust against him. They both had their arms wrapped around him now.
He was frantic with need, desperate to come. The dark didn’t matter anymore; nothing mattered except the feel of two solid bodies pressed against him and the delicious knowledge that he was almost there, only one or two thrusts to take him over the edge.
“Go on,” Patrick whispered, and with that permission, he shuddered and came.
They held him tightly between them, never letting him go, though George stopped kissing him. He was surrounded by touch, sensation drowning him as he came. He could hear them gasp, and guessed that all three of them must have come together. There was nothing for him to see in the darkness, but he could feel them, hear them. Feel stickiness on his clothes where he and George had come.
At last they loosened their grip on him, and he realised that his legs were shaking. He sat down on the floor, finding it harder than he liked, but he was too drained to get up again. Someone sat down next to him and put his arms around him. He sat panting for breath, content to be cradled in his lover’s arms without wondering overmuch which one of them it was.
Patrick’s voice out of the darkness. “God, but he looks appealing like that. Wish we had condoms in here; when I see him sitting there with his mouth open like that, I want to fill it.”
George laughed. “You’ve got a one-track mind. Leave him be; we’ve got all day.” To Martin, “We do have all day, don’t we?”
“Yes, though I was thinking of spending some of it working. Or at least I was before I was so rudely interrupted.”
George kissed him briefly, affection now rather than arousal. “Thanks. Shall we go and sit somewhere more comfortable?”
“Mmm.”
George let go of him and stood up. A hand patted him on the shoulder. He took it and stood up as well.
“Patrick, get the torch.”
Out of habit, he looked around, even in the dark. Not so dark now. He could see the faint outline of the door, and Patrick silhouetted against it. “I can manage. Just tell me if there’s anything on the floor I could trip over.”
“It’s clear between here and the door.”
Hand in hand with George, he made his way back to the main cave and sunlight, leaving behind that strange world of sound and touch.
Chapter Eleven
“So what do you think we should do about the rockfall?” Patrick asked as they were tidying their clothing.
“Clear enough of a gap at the top to climb through and see what’s on the other side. If there are more falls, you should probably give up, but it may be only that one.” More than one fall would suggest that the whole system was so unstable that it would be too dangerous to try, but the main cave seemed to have suffered little damage over the years that the quarry had been abandoned. The original entrance had been blocked by a landslip outside as the cliff receded over the decades, not by internal damage. With any luck there was only the one weak area inside. “You do realise that this whole system could be dangerous?”
George shrugged. “There haven’t been any fresh falls in the time we’ve been coming here. We didn’t even see anything when we started working on the fall in the passage -- though we were careful about what we were doing.”
Martin dug around in the picnic basket for his notebook and sat down so that he could prop it on his knee. “Right. Ideally what we want is a hidden land entrance for you, so you can get things in here without having to swim in with them.” He started making notes. “First thing. Check up top if there’s anything obvious, because if it’s easy to find, it may not be a good idea anyway.”
George sat down next to him and tapped the notebook with one finger. “But make a note to see if it’s something we could block. A lockable grating, something like that.”
There were cave systems with just such gratings, installed either to keep the public out of a dangerous area, or to protect the cave formations from vandals. “You’d have to be sneaky about installing it, but once it’s in, nobody’s likely to ask questions about who put it there.”
“Mmm. You asked about whether we needed the whole passage cleared.” George took the notebook and pen from him and sketched the rockfall, with the big blocks left in place but a blank space where the lighter rubble currently was. Then he sketched in a door. “Was that what you were thinking of?”
Martin was surprised by the neat drawing. George had reproduced the scene very accurately, and from memory. Another, more obscure dolphin talent, or just a naturally talented human? “One of the things I was thinking of, yes. Those big blocks will be hard to shift, but on the other hand they’re a good natural wall.”
Patrick took the notebook and looked at it. “Could be tricky getting the stuff in here without anyone noticing. We really will need to borrow a boat. But if there is a usable passage to the surface ...”
“Would you mind taking us up to have a look, Martin?”
He didn’t mind at all, but it would mean going back to the jetty to pick up the car. “Well, I did bring lunch. Do some planning, read a book, have an early lunch, go out after lunch?”
“Sounds good to me.” Patrick handed the notebook back to him. “George?”
“And me.” George glanced at the cave entrance. “It’s going to stay nice all day by the looks of it. No need to hurry.”
That settled it. He got out the book he’d been reading to them the day before, and found his place.
* * * * *
They sighed as he came to the end of the chapter. “That man has such wonderful control of language,” George said. “And you read it well.”
Which was a good opening for something that had been bothering him. “If you normally stay away from humans, how come you speak standard English?”
George stared at him. “The same way you do.”
“I learnt it as a baby from the adults around me.”
“So did we.”
“But you said there’s not that many of you.”
“Changing runs in pods. For most of us, there are always other adults around who speak English, even if y
our mother isn’t a changer. And once you’re old enough to hang around humans in the ports and on the beach ...” George shrugged.
So they passed it down the generations just as normal humans did, and had enough contact with mainstream society that they picked up changes in the language. “And reading?”
“Same thing.”
Patrick said, “We’ve got a couple of cousins who are getting old enough to learn to read. We’ll take our turn teaching them.” He smiled. “We picked up some nice kids’ books last year -- it was a good summer for the little ones forgetting to take their picture books home.”
A parallel culture. Once one of them learnt something, they passed it on. And if you could read, and had whatever books and magazines you picked up while beachcombing, and anything you could browse or afford to buy in a bookstore -- it might be a patchy education, but they were by no means ignorant. “I suppose they’re going to be told about fossils?”
George hugged him. “Of course.”
He could see a second career as a private tutor ahead of him, if they came to trust him enough to allow the children of their pod near him.
And it was their pod, singular. Patrick had implied as much. “Are you two related?”
Patrick nodded. “His mother and my mother are sisters.”
“Which is why I got the job of looking after him the year I was old enough to be left on my own and he wasn’t.” George grinned affectionately at Patrick. “And a right brat you were, too.”
And they’d been together ever since, Patrick still deferring to George. With there being only a few hundred dolphins in British waters, and the pod family structure besides, it must be common for cousins to pair up. “So you’re still looking after the kids in the family even now?”
“Only when we have to take our turn as teachers,” George said. “If they were our kids, we’d be expected to spend more time with them, but we haven’t been lucky so far.” There was a wistful look in his eyes as he said it.
Half dolphin, half human. They obviously had a strong bond to their mothers’ pod, even if they didn’t live with it, and children mattered to them. He thought of his own family. He saw little of them, although it was physical distance rather than emotional distance. Email and phone calls provided enough contact, most of the time.