by Ally Blue
No, no please, his mind screamed. No...
... “No please, don’t, don’t hurt me anymore, Rob, please...”
“It’s because I love you, Joel. You know that.”
“God, no...”
Pain, hot and cold and sickening, skin and muscle and bone giving way, blood and pain and no, it wasn’t real, not anymore...
The vision vanished, leaving Joel trembling in the dark. He tried to open his eyes. His lids fluttered, letting in a faint glimmer of fuzzy light.
Light.
There was no light in the basement, except when Rob tortured him. He had floodlights for that, the better to see Joel’s pain with. But there was no pain now. Aches, yes; his whole body hurt like a toothache, a marrow-deep throb that permeated him right to his core. But not the bright, flaring agony that had finally driven him so deep into his own mind that he hadn’t even known that’s where he was.
Dazed and sluggish as he was, Joel still knew what that meant.
He’d come back home.
It took a monumental effort to get his eyes open, but he managed. The bed he lay in was narrow, with white plastic rails on either side. A thin, dark blue blanket covered him from the waist down. A clear plastic tube ran from a bag of fluid hanging on a pole to a needle in his hand. When he rolled his eyes up, he could see the slow drip of liquid from the bag to the tubing.
He turned his head a little, wincing as his abused muscles protested the movement. The room he occupied was small, with light blue walls and a white tile floor. There was a curtained window in one wall, a sink against the other. The door stood halfway open. He could hear the soft shuffle of rubber soled feet outside.
He couldn’t see Victor anywhere.
Joel’s heart hammered in his chest. “V-Victor?” His voice was a harsh croak, and his throat felt like raw meat. “Where...? Victor?”
He heard a soft rustle from the corner near the head of his bed, where he couldn’t quite see. There was a yawn, the sound of a chair creaking. Then a sudden gasp, the mattress moved, and Victor was there, sitting beside him on the bed, leaning over him, both hands on his cheeks.
“Joel? God, Joel, can you hear me?” Victor’s voice trembled. “Please tell me this isn’t another dream.”
Joel licked his lips. “No. Not a dream. Is it? Am I dreaming you? I dreamed of you, Victor.”
Victor smiled, his dark eyes bright with tears. “I don’t think we’re dreaming, baby. I think you’re back.”
“I... I went to St. Lucia. You remember it? So pretty. I was safe there.”
Victor’s smile faded. He bent and gently kissed Joel’s bruised lips. “You’re safe here now, Joel. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Joel raised a hand to touch Victor’s wet cheek. He could see the bones in his own hand, stark under skin so pale it was nearly translucent. “What happened?”
“Joel, I don’t think...”
“Please. I need to know.” He stared steadily into Victor’s face.
Victor closed his eyes. “You were missing for almost six months. Nobody could find a single trace. Not one clue to where you’d gone. They told me that you’d probably just left, and didn’t want me to know where you were.”
“I’d never do that to you.”
“I know.” Victor laced his fingers through Joel’s, holding on tight, eyes still shut. “I never believed that. But I couldn’t find you. I hired a private detective, and she couldn’t find you either. You’d just vanished.” Those black eyes opened, locking onto Joel’s, thick with anguish. “Then Rob walked into the police station last week, and told them what he’d done, and where to find you. And he shot himself. And they went there, and found you, and brought you to the hospital, and called me. And, and I came, and fuck, Joel, you were... Christ, the things he’d done to you...”
Joel reached up, pulled Victor’s face down, resting their foreheads together. He laid their clasped hands over his heart. He was shaking deep down, with the renewed memories of endless weeks of fear and pain, and the sorrow of seeing his lover hurting for him.
“They said you were catatonic,” Victor continued, his voice soft and ragged. “They said you’d dissociated your mind from your body, to escape the torture. They said you might come back, and you might not. That I shouldn’t get my hopes up. You nearly died, Joel, there were broken bones and infected wounds, and he hadn’t fed you in ages, and... God, Joel. I couldn’t just give up on you. I couldn’t.”
Victor was crying steadily now, his tears falling warm and wet onto Joel’s face. Joel wrapped both arms around him and pulled him close. He ignored the way his wasted muscles shook, blocked out the sharp pains that sliced through him with every little movement. Victor was in his arms again, smooth cheek pressed to his chest, black curls soft against his fingers. Nothing else mattered.
They lay like that for a long time. Eventually, Victor sat up again and met Joel’s eyes. “Joel? You said you dreamed of me?”
Joel smiled. “Yeah. Just the last few nights. Or, well, what seemed like the last few nights.”
“I dreamed about you too, Joel.” Victor’s dark eyes gleamed. “Four nights in a row.”
A strange feeling fluttered in Joel’s chest. “What did you dream?”
Victor’s brows drew together. “The first time, I dreamed I was outside a house, and I looked up, and saw you standing in the window. I wanted to call to you, but I couldn’t make a sound. The next night, I was in the room with you, and you... you touched my hand. I wanted so bad to talk to you, but I couldn’t. And the next night...”
Victor’s voice wavered. He stopped, clearly fighting some powerful emotion. Joel ran his fingers down Victor’s cheek. “You spoke to me. You told me I had to remember.”
“Joel... did you...” Victor’s black eyes held Joel’s. “You dreamed it too.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“All of them.”
“Yeah.” Joel covered Victor’s hand with his own, curling their fingers together. “They seemed to spark my memories. I remembered you, and St. Lucia. And then after the fourth dream, I remembered it all.” He stopped, forcing down the panic that wanted to come when he thought of Rob and the basement and the things Rob had done to him. “And once I remembered, I came back.”
They stared at each other. Joel could read his own thoughts in Victor’s face. There was no need to say it. They both knew what had happened, even if they couldn’t explain how, or why.
Joel moved over in the bed, mindful of his IV tube. He opened his arms, and Victor came to him without a word. Within minutes, they were sound asleep with their arms around each other, Victor’s head pillowed on Joel’s chest.
The nurse’s aid who found them that way a few minutes later smiled indulgently as she tucked the blanket snug around them. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, and turned off the light.
In The Arms of the River God
" is a story I wrote a couple of years ago. It's never been published other than here on my website. I decided to put it here to give everyone a look at the sort of things I used to write.
WARNING: this is a bit dark, though not so much as some of my other older stories.
*****
It’s July, and the Savannah heat sticks to Carl’s skin like pine sap, even at two in the morning. He stretches out on a bench and smiles blearily at the sky. The blotter acid’s just kicked in, turning the susurration of the leaves into green and purple whorls in the soupy air.
Carl haunts this small waterside park most nights. He likes it here, in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, when the traffic is stilled and the only sounds are the whispers of the trees and the slow syrupy roll of the river. He likes to lie on his favorite bench, get high on whatever he’s managed to score, and think. Revelations come easily to him here, no less profound for their tendency to evaporate in the morning sun.
At first he thinks the voice he hears is a hallucination. He hears things a lot when he’s on acid. But then a face appears above him, a hand t
ouches his arm, and he begins to believe someone is really there.
"Hello?" he says to the face. "Who are you?"
The face smiles at him.
"My name is Pete," the face says, each word a bright diamond bubble floating from its mouth into the air. "I am the god of the river."
Carl giggles. Pete seems an inadequate name for a river god, and he says so. Pete the River God shrugs.
"I'm Carl," Carl says, sitting up and holding out his hand to shake.
"I know.”
Pete the River God takes Carl's hand in both of his and licks his palm, then sucks his fingers one by one. Carl laughs at the tickly sensation.
"I came to you," says Pete, "because I need something from you."
"What?" Carl wonders.
“Your body,” the River God answers. “Your love.”
Pete’s eyes glow soft cerulean, shedding fuzzy lavender sparks that float lazily to the ground. Carl’s heart swells with love and desire, and pride at being the chosen one of a god.
“Yes,” he says, and takes the god’s hands.
Pete pulls Carl to his feet and kisses him softly on the lips. Carl opens his mouth and lets Pete’s honey sweet tongue in to slide over his. The kiss plays a vague, jangling music in his mind, like wind chimes and flutes.
They undress each other, letting the discarded garments fall where they might, trailing lips and fingers over newly bared skin. Naked they sink to the grass with limbs wound together and mouths locked. Pete rolls and pins Carl’s body with his, insinuating himself between Carl’s open legs. Carl caresses Pete’s face, staring in fascination at the sparkling scarlet contrails left by his fingers.
“Fuck me,” Carl whispers. “Make me yours.”
Carl smiles to hear himself say such things, but he doesn’t take it back. He belongs to the River God now, and he wants the god to claim him.
“I will,” Pete says, and bends to kiss him again.
Carl sighs when Pete’s mouth trails down his throat, his chest, over his belly, swirling a languid tongue over the head of his erect cock before pushing his thighs up and apart and plunging into the cleft of his ass. Pete anoints his anus with hot slippery saliva, and he cries out loud when Pete’s tongue slips through the loosening muscles and inside.
By the time Pete sits up again, Carl is gasping and shaking with need. He drapes his legs over Pete’s shoulders, looking down at Pete’s dripping cock rubbing against his. Pete holds Carl’s hole open with his thumbs and penetrates him in one swift stroke. Carl moans low. He pulls Pete’s face to his, kissing him deeply.
Their bodies molded together sing a joyful harmonic hymn in Carl’s skull, tethered to the rhythm of beating hearts and the slip-slide of Pete’s cock in his ass. Carl tumbles weeping into orgasm just as Pete spills inside him.
Carl’s vision shines incandescent silver as Pete wraps him in strong protective arms, smoothing the tangled hair from his brow and murmuring words of love. Slipping unafraid into peaceful sleep, Carl thinks he hears Pete saying something to him. The words flash neon in the night for a split second and Carl smiles.
* * *
Carl wakes when the sun burns over the treetops, glazing the rippling river with searing light. He is still naked. That, he believes, is fitting. He remembers what Pete the River God told him only a few short hours ago, and the thought makes him smile. He walks to the edge of the river, leaving his clothes behind. He won’t need them.
“I’m yours,” he says to the dark flowing current. “Take me.”
He closes his eyes, squares his shoulders, and leaps into the river. It folds him in a cool fluid embrace, holding him tenderly but firmly when his chest begins to burn and he tries to struggle to the surface in spite of himself.
The River God’s voice comes to him at last as the silty water fills his lungs. Sleep, the loving voice tells him. Sleep in my arms.
And he does.
Taste of Sun and Sea
," first appeared in author Alyssa Brooks' newsletter, Wicked Escapes. It has also appeared on the website for author Sable
*****
I’m floating. Drifting on a tide of light, lulled by the crash and murmur of the waves.
It’s easy to lose yourself here. Easy to lose the flow of time entirely in heat that presses like a hand, in crystalline sunlight on white sand and turquoise water.
I’ve become a cat, fat and lazy in the summer sun.
I open my eyes when I hear the splash of running feet. Gage jogs toward me, his surfboard tucked under one arm. I watch him, enchanted as always by the sight. Lean muscles shift under tanned skin, tangled sun-bleached curls drip seawater on slightly reddened shoulders. After more than five years together, he’s still the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.
He plants his board in the sand and smiles down at me. “Hi, Aiden.”
“Hello, gorgeous. Finished surfing already?” From my vantage point, flat on my back on a big beach towel, he looks like a god: tall, golden, perfect.
“Yeah.” He sinks down next to me. Clear green eyes hold mine. “Let’s fuck.”
I sit up, wind my arms around him. His wet skin feels cool against mine. He cups my cheek in his palm and kisses me with salt flavored lips.
He’s already erect when I peel his trunks off. I discard my shorts, and he opens those long legs for me. My nutmeg-brown hands form a breathtaking contrast against the delicate pale rose of his cock. The sun rarely sees that part of him. I think she considers herself blessed right now, to look down on the sight of him bare and spread, wanton in his lust.
Suntan oil scents the air with coconut and memories as I slick his hole, pushing my fingers inside. He opens so easily for me. His soft gasps make a music sweeter than the songs of night birds, or swift rivers over stones. I sink my cock into his living heat, and the world rejoices with us. The ocean sings for us, the sun blesses us, as I move inside him, our bodies twined into one. When he comes, the smell of warm semen against salty skin fills my senses, sending me tumbling into a familiar bliss.
We lie there for a while, boneless with heat and post-orgasmic languor. The faint dust of freckles scattered across his nose twists my heart.
“I love you, Aiden,” he whispers.
“And I love you, my beautiful boy.”
His kisses are soft as orchids, sweet as spring rain. He tastes of sun and sea. Somewhere out there, I know, the world rushes on. One day, Gage and I will rejoin that mad dash toward some ephemeral goal. But just now, I don’t care. Nothing matters at this moment but the naked man in my arms. Vibrant joy flows from him like a river of light, and I’m content to lie here for all time, washed in his bright essence.
Floating. Just floating.
Nicky
first appeared in Loose Id's Hurricane Katrina Relief fundraiser blog on LiveJournal. Matter of fact, it's probably still there. This story was inspired by the video for the Sigur Rós song "Vidrar Vel Til Loftárása." There's a link to the band's website on my Fun Stuff page, you can check out the video there.
* * * * *
Nicky didn’t call me this time until a couple of hours before the show was supposed to start. I could tell he’d just woken up, from the roughness of his voice. He always did like to stay up all night and sleep all day. I used to tell him he was born to be a rock star. Prophetic, huh?
“So, Jack, you coming tonight, or what?” He yawned when he said it. I wasn’t fooled.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Like I’d miss one of his shows when it’s right here in town. I’ve been to every last show Bloodlust has played within two hundred miles of Ashville.
He laughed. He can read me every bit as well as I read him. “There’s a ticket and pass waiting for you at will-call. Hey, Jack?”
“Yeah?”
Silence, thick with the things we never say. “Nothing. See you tonight.”
He hung up. I hung up, locked my office door, and jerked off.
Funny, but when I get myself off thinking of him, it’s never the bea
utiful, seductive star I picture in my head. It’s always the Nicky I knew when we were boys. The kid with the dorky laugh and the genuine vintage “Frodo Lives” t-shirt and shelves full of obscure mythology books. The boy who taught me what it was like to take pleasure in another boy’s body. I imagine what he might’ve been like if things were different, and it makes me come every time.
Not that I don’t want to be with him now, the way he is. I do. Very much. I don’t cry for the boy he was, any more than I cry for the man he isn’t. He’s happy with his life. Who am I to argue?
So now here I am, ridiculously out of place in this heavily Goth crowd. There’s lots of Nicky clones here, all black leather and eyeliner and faces studded with jewelry, but I’m the only one in a button-down shirt, slacks, and loafers.