Van’s eyes were surrounded by deep crow’s feet, all of them smiling lines. His forehead was both broad and high, swooping back into a slight widow’s peak. His hair was thick, glossy, very dark brown, but his beard was streaked with gray, and Armin found that oddly moving. He had never been into older men, never had any silver fox fetish at all, but it was hard to think of Van as older, although he so obviously was. How old? Armin still didn’t know. It was impossible to tell. Every time he made up his mind that he must be forty or forty-five, fifty, or fifty-five, Van moved or smiled or frowned, and he immediately appeared younger or older.
And there was an energy to Van that somehow made his age seem irrelevant.
He drew lines on Van’s forehead and cheekbones, and then, throwing all squeamishness to the winds, he left orange streaks in his beard, along his jaw, to the tip of his chin, and even in his moustache. He made trails of dots along his neck, and Van lifted his chin, with his eyes still closed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down when Armin touched it, and once more, Armin found the movement absurdly alluring. He wanted nothing so much as to lean forward and kiss and lick Van’s throat. He swallowed painfully and moved his fingers quickly down to Van’s chest.
****
Van
Van stood with his arms open, his skin rippling with cool wet trails, as Armin painted swirls and dots and lines along his sides and his belly and around his nipples and later all along his arms and back. He could not quite suppress a low moan when the fingertips skirted the underside of his shoulder blades.
“ Er…” said Armin. “That’s good?”
“Very,” whispered Van, aware that that simple little word had shifted the mood and purpose of the evening. The wind was still mounting out there, gust after gust, coming harder and harder. It would soon howl in earnest, and the rain would come. He could feel it. But inside the workshop there was an expectant tension entirely made of silence and stillness, and the smallest sounds made that silence shudder with anticipation.
When Armin reached his waist, Van unbuttoned his jeans and let them fall to the floor, briefs and all.
“Well, mmm,” said Armin. Van could hear the smile in his voice.
“C'est bon?” asked Van.
“Oh, c'est bon, yes,” said Armin.
Van felt Armin’s fingers running down his buttocks, thighs, and calves, leaving cold, wet trails. When he turned to face Armin again, the young man was stumped for a moment.
“Do you want me to paint that too?” he asked, grinning. Van’s cock was half hard. Van didn’t really know what to say. “No, don’t answer,” said Armin, grinning. He made circles around Van’s pubis, and Van closed his eyes, praying for patience, as Armin made dotted lines on the inside of his thighs.
When Armin stood to face him, they both smiled. He ran a finger down the middle of the young man’s chest, paused a moment on his navel, and then trailed it farther down. Armin had not a hair on his breast, but here, under his navel, started a trail of reddish fuzz, almost the same color as the clay paint, though it sparkled with living light, not dull earth but glinting copper.
He heard Armin taking a deep breath. They looked into each other’s eyes, and Armin unbuttoned his jeans and took them off, jeans and underwear in one go. Not so shy, after all, thought Van, amused and thrilled, and finally he looked down, and barely suppressed a gasp.
For such a weedy, flat-chested, skinny thing, the young man was almost alarmingly well-endowed. A flickering half-erection made his long cock twitch.
“Goodness,” Van said, impressed.
“Yes, er, there’s that, ahem,” Armin muttered, a little self-conscious.
“Oh, you know what they say,” said Van as calmly as he could, “if you got it, flaunt it.”
He went to his knees in front of Armin and began painting a tangle of crisscrossing lines down the length of his legs.
Nice legs, he thought, enthralled by the long, long bones of Armin’s body. He’d be unbearably beautiful with a little more muscle on him, as stunning as any young god.
And not to put too fine a point to it, Van was not insensible to the sight of an attractive young man sporting a growing hard-on an inch or two in front of his nose. He was fairly tempted to drop all niceties and just take it into his mouth, fuck it all. We’ll get there, anyway, won’t we? We’d better, or I’ll go insane.
But instead, he finished his pattern of knots and dots at Armin’s ankles, gently turned him ’round, and with the briefest hesitation—his breath caught in his throat and his head swam a little—he placed all fingertips at the base of Armin’s buttocks and left four deep parallel lines on each, all the way up the small of his back. Armin’s head was bowed forward, and he was taking deep, deep breaths. When Van touched his ass again, a little closer to the warm crack in the middle, Armin moaned.
“Oh, man,” he said dreamily.
****
Armin
Armin turned to face Van again and put his arms around his neck. His half-hard-on had definitely perked higher.
“And if you just kissed me?” he asked softly.
“I could do that,” said Van, smiling.
“Shut up, then,” said Armin, and he laid his lips on Van’s mouth. It was a bristly, stubbly kiss at first, moustache and beard both stiff with drying clay. It was like kissing a mossy tree. And then Van’s lips opened, and Armin was greeted by a warm, warm wet tongue and smooth teeth, not a careful, playful flicking but a complete surrender, an unreserved welcome.
“Oh,” moaned Armin huskily, mouth open into Van’s mouth, melting into it. “Mmm.”
They stood rooted for minutes, just kissing and hugging, forgetting the fresh clay that covered both from top to toe, which was getting smeared all over, the careful designs lost in the embrace and urgent caresses.
This is the messiest foreplay I’ve ever done or imagined or heard of, thought Armin and laughed a little.
“What?” asked Van softly, the first word spoken in minutes, and it was a caress in Armin’s ear.
“Nothing. You are a weird man, is all.”
“Mmm, does that worry you?”
“No,” said Armin. “Just kiss me.”
“May I leave a mark?” asked Van, his voice so low in Armin’s ear that it was more a vibration than a sound.
Two thoughts ran through Armin’s head in quick succession. Someone will ask questions tomorrow. And, I really don’t care. He bent his head sideway, sighing, “Yes.” Although until then, he had always deeply disliked finding a hickey on his neck after a night of sex. But it was all different tonight. He could not begin to fathom it. Bearing Van’s mark seemed strangely enticing.
Van’s mouth opened on his neck, hot, wet, hungry, biting and sucking and pulling, something so primal and so absurdly erotic that Armin’s back arched and twisted in Van’s embrace while a curling wave of longing, ravening desire ran from the tip of his cock to his stomach, as if someone had brushed a finger deep under his skin. A soft mewl escaped Armin’s lips, and Van released him.
“Did I hurt you?” he whispered, but Armin shook his head and chased his mouth to be kissed again, deeper, deeper. His cock was so hard that it stuck between them like a pointed gun, and he laughed again and pulled it up to his stomach to press himself closer to Van, just to find another erection mirroring his own. He felt Van’s body shudder and tense, and a low moan breathed out of him when he closed his long hand around both their cocks, squeezing them together as he gave them both an up-and-down stroke or two.
“Oh, God,” whispered Armin.
“What?” asked Van earnestly.
“What?” asked Armin, thrown. “What? Nothing. Oh, God. Mein Gott. Just that. General oh god-ness, you know.” He gave a snort of laughter at the absurdity of this exchange at such a time then pulled Van’s face closer to kiss him again and was both dashed and thrilled when Van broke the kiss and went to his knees before him once more.
“Oh, God,” he repeated a minute later, when, after some gentle nuz
zling and kissing, Van’s mouth closed around his cock, firm and soft, wet and warm, all at once. This is crazy, he thought vaguely. What am I doing, covered in mud, standing barefoot on a dirt floor, with a clay-smeared madman I barely know sucking my dick? It was too bizarre for words. It was also entirely right.
Every bit of his skin prickled and crackled with drying mud and excitement, and he had never felt so truly and entirely in his body. His brain finally shut up. He sank his fingers into Van’s hair and pulled his face closer and harder to his groin, not quite fucking Van’s throat but demanding more, more, and more, oblivious of all civilized niceties, just full of animal lust, until he came with a moaning cry, wave after wave after wave, and had to lean on Van shoulders, dizzy and panting, his mind gone from him, utterly breathless.
It was a minute or two before he could stand properly. He realized that Van’s firm, strong hands were holding him securely by the hips. “Oh, wow,” he said, and his feverish grip on Van’s shoulders relaxed and turned into a kneading, tender caress.
Van released his limp cock and stood up again. He didn’t spit. He must have swallowed every drop of Armin’s cum, and that made Armin sway again.
“Oh, God,” he said once more.
“Yes, I’m right here,” said Van and grinned.
“Yeah, you are,” said Armin. “Oh, modest, are we?” he added, laughing, and took Van’s cock in his hand.
****
Monet
Monet was leaning into the storm, making his way to Van’s kitchen, where he always found dinner and a bottle of wine set aside for him at any hour he chose to drop in. But halfway there, while crossing the garden, he was sidetracked by tendrils of a velvet-smooth force that twisted and coiled through the air, untroubled by the wind. He followed them to the workshop and peered into the window.
The Antlered One and the New Man stood face to face in the middle of the room, silent to the human ears, although it was like a great cascade or a rushing glimmer-tide to Monet.
The Antlered One—the human children called him Van, but Monet knew his name, all his names, though he never spoke them in any tongue—was made of cords and streams of twisting indigo and jet and malachite, which climbed up his roots and legs and twisted round his waist and flared out at his shoulders, flaming liquid-lime and feather-gold at his fingertips. His antlers were huge. They branched through the ceiling like great oaks, embracing and suspending the sky over the valley. Lightning crackled along their prongs, but as long as he lived, it could never reach the ground, not here, not in the valley. They held all storms at bay, and Monet was not scared. He had never been scared under the Antlered One’s great spreading limbs.
The Antlered One was the bird of dawn and the diamond-fire of the first star and the tree of the world. He spoke the true tongue, and he knew the true way, the bridge across, the before and after. He spanned the worlds, and his end was his beginning and, between those, lay a man’s eternity.
The New Man (Monet did not remember his name—he didn’t even remember his own name. Names were too small a thing, unless they lasted ten thousand years, like the Antlered One’s did) also wore antlers, tiny velvet antlers like tender child-fingers. Monet had seen them the first day, though nobody else could, poor souls, and had known him for what he was and what he was to become. He knew he would be Chosen. The New Man was made of closed fists, top to toe, gravel-hard, tight as stones. But where the Antlered One’s fingers trailed, the stones sizzled and popped one by one, blossoming in vivid turquoise feelers, like sea anemones filled with sunlit, quickening ice-sap.
There was also something else in the room, for which Monet had no good words, and humans, most humans, had no senses.
On the other side, words were muscat grapes, patiently tended, sheltered, lovingly picked and savored, but not necessary. On this side, words gave form to perception, and Monet had to try.
It was the Love Divine, Creation Elemental. And the Roots of Truth.
In utter fact, it was a current of muscular fluid, neither gas nor liquid but more like twisting eels of night-moon, earth-deep, and it sang in deep teal and celadon green and chords of smoky jade, and it smelled like south and under, and it filled the room, coiling round and round, leaking to the garden a little—that was what had drawn him here—and coloring the walls a deep drone. In the troughs and folds of its lush muscular transparencies, it trailed glimmering coruscations of spiky lights, like scales of lemon scent.
Monet nodded. He took in the scene once more and walked back home through the storm. He must paint all of this down properly before the sound faded. Someone had to do it.
Dinner could wait.
****
Armin
When Van had kissed him goodnight, long and lovingly and gone out into the night—there were a few things he really needed to see to before the storm, he had said—Armin wanted nothing so much as to go and wrap himself into his duvet, clay-painted skin, muddy feet, and all. There was also a long dripping splash of sperm on his belly and chest where Van had come in Armin’s hand while they kissed and kissed.
All in all, Armin was as filthy as he had ever been in his life. A total mess. But he didn’t feel dirty.
He was so stunned by what had just happened that the thought of going and having a wash before bed seemed grotesquely mundane. He wanted to carry the smell of Van’s skin on his skin into the night ahead, if only to wake up in the morning with the certainty that this had really happened.
Only the thought of what a mess he would make of his bed if he crawled in there covered in flaking dried mud, cum, and assorted garden dirt made him fetch a change of clothes from his bag in the palace and pad in the dark to the summer shower by the side of the house. He had never so much wished he could be a wild creature of the forest and sleep in a bed of moss and bracken with the scent and fluids of Van’s body still clinging to his skin.
As he washed, rubbing clay and cum hard into his skin and rinsing it off, his body tingled with the scrubbing. He didn’t use the soap. The clay scrub made him feel cleaner than he had ever been. And cum is good for the skin, right? He laughed quietly to himself.
Outside, the sky was alive with flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder, which came and went, came and went, always a little nearer, always a little louder. All the gusts of wind had gathered into a steady, howling gale. Then a rushing sound, not unlike sea surf, joined the growl of the thunder and the shriek of the wind, and Armin, fascinated, realized that it was the front of the rainstorm, traveling over the valley, pattering hard on the leaves of the trees, and finally engulfing the garden in a pounding, torrential downpour.
He had never been so intensely aware of the weather as a moving, discrete, approaching mass. He stood rooted in the door looking out on the garden as the first drops hit the plants around him and then all was obscured by an enormous deluge, a wall of vertical water, which was lit white by lightning and then plunged into deeper dark again by contrast.
Armin wondered for a moment if he should be scared. He was visited by quick visions of all the havoc a storm could wreak, lightning strikes, falling trees, flashfloods. But in fact, he felt perfectly safe under the overhang of the thick grass roof, and he sat down in the doorway, waiting for the worst of the rain to pass before making a run for his bed.
He felt strangely at peace, in fact, utterly separate from the mess of his life back home, faced with a perilous element that was nonetheless clean, primeval, and uncomplicated.
It was much later, as he hopped across muddy puddles under heavy drops that pattered down from the sodden trees in the lingering flashing lightning, that he saw, or thought he saw, a tall majestic figure, crowned with immense antlers, which flashed glossily in the flickering light, gleaming and dripping with rain water.
Holy fuck, he thought, alarmed. Are there stags in this forest?
He had a vague memory, from articles that came across the news occasionally, that stags in rut turned into half-starved, testosterone-crazed, exceptionally dangerou
s fighting machines, in perpetual search of another male to massacre.
What do I do if he comes for me? He remembered something about climbing trees and not trying to run or balling up on the ground. Or was that bears?
Was June rutting season for stags? As if I would know.
But as he stared amazed, rooted to the spot, completely oblivious to the fact that all he had to do was take six steps to his right and get into the palace and close a door behind him, the lightning flashed again and he glimpsed the figure of a man—broad shoulders, a pale chest—naked under the spreading antlers.
He shook his head in disbelief, and when lightning flashed again, the figure was gone. He rubbed his eyes.
Absurd, he thought. Must have been a tree of some sort, looking funny in the wind and lightning. Or this house is doing a number on my head. All those sculptures and Van’s weird stories about Gaulish gods. Cerfunnos? Cernonnos? What was the name? One begins to see antlered men everywhere.
That’s all there is to it. A funny tree, in the rain, in the dark, and strange pictures in my head. God, I need a good night’s sleep.
But the next day, when passing the same spot on the way to breakfast in the crystalline morning light, he could not for the life of him find any tree in the vicinity that could conceivably look like an antlered man, even in a wind-blown stormy darkness.
Chapter Seven
Friday
Armin
The hickey, it turned out, was a dark purple mark the size and perfect shape of a large coin, somewhere to the left of Armin’s Adam’s apple. It stood out like nobody’s business, and he gave an inward groan as he looked at it in the small mirror of Van’s summer bathroom the next morning. In winter it wouldn’t have mattered. A turtleneck sweater or a scarf would have hidden it. But in warm June weather, at a cobbing workshop, there was no way of disguising it, and a few minutes later, predictably, it raised some hoots and twinkling looks and embarrassing questions. Only Rebekka remained quiet at her end of the breakfast table but only until Meintje leaned sideways to whisper into her ear and explain what the hoopla was about.
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