Pilgrimage

by Kim Fielding

  “Why?” Goran cocked his head like a curious puppy.

  “Um… cleanliness, I guess.”

  “They don’t look very clean.”

  “They’re not. They’re gross. But if I were back home, I’d have a bunch of pairs and do my laundry regularly so I could put on a clean pair every day.”

  “That’s odd. Your people have a strange obsession with cleanliness, don’t they? And why is there writing on it? Is it your name?”

  Mike looked at the waistband. “It’s the name of the company that makes them.” They’d been a birthday gift from his mother, which was way too embarrassing to admit.

  Goran was still bewildered, scratching his short wet beard as he thought. “Why is that necessary?”

  “Advertisement, I guess.” When he was met with a blank look, Mike added, “So people will see it and want some of their own.”

  “But how will they see it if it’s under your clothes?”

  “I… I don’t know.” Mike skimmed off the puzzling article of clothing and quickly plunged into the water. His balls instantly attempted to tunnel into his body. “C-cold!” he exclaimed when he came up for air. Goran laughed and splashed him.

  They spent a few minutes paddling around. Once Mike got used to the temperature, the water felt wonderful. The last time he’d gone skinny-dipping, he was four years old and playing in one of those blue plastic pools. This was nice. He felt much lighter, as much from the grime washing away as from the buoyancy of the water.

  Dripping and shivering, he hurried out of the pond to fetch the lump of soap he’d bought at the beginning of the journey. He took it back to the water. It wasn’t very sudsy and it smelled a little like steak, but with some dedicated rubbing, it did a reasonable enough job of removing the dirt. Mike used it as a makeshift shampoo too. God, it felt so good to have clean hair!

  When Mike was finished with the soap, he handed it to Goran and then couldn’t stop himself from watching as Goran scrubbed. Goran was beautiful even when he was dirty, but clean, with his long dark hair hanging down his back and water running in rivulets down his pecs and belly, over his groin and thighs…. The pond water was not cold enough to discourage Mike’s cock. He stayed as deeply submerged as possible so Goran wouldn’t see his hard-on.

  “Do you want to clean your clothing now?” Goran asked, holding out the diminished lump of soap.

  “You go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  Which meant Mike got to watch Goran emerge from the pond and then squat at the edge of the water to scour his trousers and tunic. The process took considerable time and did nothing to deflate Mike’s raging erection. After Goran spread his clothing on a sunny patch of boulder, he turned to Mike’s things.

  “You don’t have to do that for me,” Mike said as he treaded water.

  “Consider it an extra service.”

  Oh, Mike was considering extra services all right. He ducked his head briefly underwater in a vain attempt to cool off.

  Goran worked on Mike’s trousers and tunic first and then picked up the briefs. He turned them curiously in his hands, making Mike’s cheeks burn. “Look, Goran, you don’t have to—”

  “Is it so your lovers can see who made your underwear?”

  “Um, maybe.”

  “Do your lovers approve of this maker?”

  Why the hell was Goran so fascinated with the damn things? “I have no idea. I haven’t had a lover in a while.”

  “Oh.” Goran made no move to begin washing the things. He stood at the edge of the water, naked and glorious, lost in thought. Finally he looked over at Mike. “You’re the first person to see me without clothes in… in a long time.”

  There was something strangely tentative about Goran’s statement, as if he feared the response. So Mike kept his voice even when he replied. “Why?”

  Goran traced a long mark that ran from beneath his ribcage to his side, then one crosswise on his left thigh, and another atop the left shoulder. He ran a finger over his right pec too. Goran’s chest hair was thick, and Mike was too far away to see, but he assumed another mark there.

  “Scars?” asked Mike.

  “They’re ugly. I…. People stare at me, like you did when I first undressed. Disgusted.”

  Mike was so flabbergasted he took a few moments to find words. “I didn’t…. Jesus, Goran, I was not staring out of disgust. I barely even noticed the scars until you pointed them out.” That was true. He’d seen them, of course, but they’d hardly registered because he was so overcome by Goran’s overall magnificence.

  “But you were staring. I saw you.”

  “I…. Do you have any idea what you look like?” Mike had to ask, because the only mirror he’d seen in this world was the reflective surface of the pond before they’d hopped in.

  Goran shrugged. “Big. I’m not so young anymore. Scars everywhere.”

  “You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” Mike said.

  That made Goran blink. “Either the men in your country are ugly or you’re teasing me.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Mike splashed inelegantly toward the shore. He stopped when the water came to midthigh, revealing his bobbing hard-on. He gestured at his crotch. “Does this look like I’m lying?”

  Goran’s mouth split into a huge and delighted grin—and, Mike couldn’t help but notice, Goran’s cock jerked a little too. “You find me attractive?” Goran said. He sounded absurdly like an insecure teenage girl.

  “I find you extremely attractive,” Mike said firmly. And then, slightly mortified over the entire exchange, he turned and headed back to deeper water.

  Goran wasn’t mortified at all. In fact, he seemed very happy, humming and singing as he washed Mike’s briefs. As he worked, he kept flashing smiles in Mike’s direction. Mike decided the humiliation had been worth it.

  After Goran was through with the laundry, he lay down on a springy spot of grass and moss, offering himself to the sun. Mike swam for a while but eventually got out. When he did, Goran leaned up on an elbow and smiled. “Do you feel better now?”

  “Much.” Then Mike reached up to rub his cheek. “Wish I had a razor, though.”

  “I can shave you if you like. I was going to scrape my own beard away.”

  “Using what?”

  “My knife, of course,” Goran replied with a chuckle. He hopped to his feet, walked over to his belt, and bent to retrieve the weapon—giving Mike a mouthwatering view of his upraised ass. Mike suspected he might be doing it on purpose. Mike’s hard-on might have made a return appearance, except Goran was waving his very large, sharp blade.

  Mike swallowed. “Um, I don’t know.”

  “If I wanted to slit your throat, I would have done it a long time ago. Come on, Mike. Trust me.”

  Oddly enough, Mike did trust him. Out of necessity, Mike had put more faith in Goran than he had in anyone from his previous life, and Goran hadn’t let him down. So even though his legs felt a little shaky, he walked to the large smooth rock Goran was pointing at and he sat. The sun-warmed stone felt nice under his water-chilled ass.

  Now he wasn’t sure what made him more uneasy: the nearness of that knife to his neck or the nearness of Goran’s bare belly to his face. He tried to remain statue-still, and he concentrated on Goran’s scars, which were now very evident. There were a lot of them—not just the large ones Goran had pointed out, but many small ones. Most looked to be the result of straight cuts, although a few were irregular. He found himself wanting to touch them as badly as he wanted to run his fingers through Goran’s body hair and stroke the big, soft cock.

  Goran handled him firmly but gently, turning Mike’s head this way and that as he manipulated the blade over vulnerable skin. It was more intimate than any sex Mike had experienced for a very long time, although it wasn’t precisely sexual. Goran frowned with concentration as he worked, and just the very tip of his tongue stuck out from his full lips.

  “You have so many colors in your hair,” Goran said softly, scrapi
ng the knife along Mike’s jawline. “Yellow and red and brown. Pretty, just like the rest of you.”

  Mike wanted to protest again that he wasn’t pretty, but he decided that arguing with the man wielding a dagger close to his Adam’s apple was unwise.

  Goran squinted at him and then, nodding with satisfaction, moved to the other side of the rock to work on the rest of Mike’s face. “I used to shave Pavo like this. My husband. But his hair was almost as dark as mine.”

  Hoping Goran would reveal a few more hints of his past, Mike made a noncommittal noise. He was relieved when Goran gave a small smile. “Pavo always had trouble sitting still for so long. He was always in motion, even when we were both hardly more than babies.”

  “So you knew him a long time?”

  “Since I was born. He lived in the castle. His father was our lord’s head groom, and they had a room over the stables. My family lived just outside the castle in the lord’s woods, and whenever one of us could get away from work, we’d run to find the other.” He grinned. “Pavo escaped more often. He was very fast. His father would yell for him, and we’d only laugh and run faster.”

  “He… sounds like a good friend.”

  “I loved him. Always. Always knew we’d marry, even when we were very young. My mother would get angry when I told her so because she wanted grandchildren, but his parents didn’t seem to mind. They had a big family.”

  Goran still shaved Mike, but his movements had grown very slow and his voice sounded far away. “When I was ten years old, my father sent us deep into the woods and told us not to return until we had enough meat to feed us for a month. He told me to teach Pavo to hunt, but we all knew Pavo wouldn’t learn. He missed on purpose. He was like you—kindhearted. Didn’t want to kill anything.”

  “Ten seems young to be in the woods alone.”

  “I knew those woods well. I’d been hunting in them for years already. I think… I’m fairly certain my father knew what would happen. Even I had heard the talk, although I was too young to truly understand it, and I’d seen the lord’s men preparing their weapons.” By now, Goran had stopped his work entirely. The knife hung at his side, forgotten. “Our lord was in a dispute with the neighboring lord, who was much more powerful.”

  Mike’s stomach clenched uncomfortably. Much as he wanted to know more about Goran, he was a little tempted to shut him up. He knew the rest of this tale wouldn’t be happy.

  But Mike said nothing, and Goran continued, quietly and slowly. “Yes, Father knew. But Mother had died that spring, and her new son along with her, and since then Father had cared about very little except drinking. And me. He still loved me. He sent me and Pavo deep into the forest and told us not to come back for a while. We were thrilled. Days with no adult supervision, no chores. We had a wonderful time.

  “But eventually we had to return home. Only, when we did… home was gone. The castle was in ruins, parts of it still burning. Death was everywhere. Pavo’s parents and siblings had tried to hide above the stable, but they’d been killed. Even the baby. I found my father just outside our little hut. He’d been run straight through the heart with a sword. He wasn’t even armed.” Goran laughed without humor. “My father the huntsman had lifted no weapon against the attackers.”

  There were no words of solace for a loss like that, even if it had been long ago. Mike patted Goran’s arm instead, which seemed to bring Goran back to himself. “I’m sorry,” Goran said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “What did you do? You and Pavo?”

  “We left. There was nothing more for us there. I suppose we could have stayed in the woods awhile, but we didn’t know where the other lord’s men were. Perhaps now they’d use the forest to hunt. So we gathered a few things and we left. We walked for… a very long time, until we came to a city. Strazha. Neither of us had ever been more than a few hours from the castle. We didn’t really know how to live in a place like that. Pavo was smart, though. Like you. He found us ways to survive. And we grew up and married, just as we’d always planned.”

  Goran shook his head and again grasped Mike’s head. He returned to his task. Mike waited until Goran was finished, then stood and ran a hand over his cheeks. “Thank you. That feels much better. You make a good barber.” He briefly squeezed Goran’s shoulder.

  Although Goran’s eyes were still filled with sorrow, he managed a small smile. “It’s a shame to hide that pretty face behind a beard.”

  Mike smiled back at him.

  A few minutes later, it was Mike’s turn to warm himself on the bank of the pond while Goran shaved. Mike had thought him very handsome with a beard, but with the whiskers gone he was truly stunning. He had a firm, dimpled chin, just like a Harlequin cover model. It was scarred as well, but the scar added character. Without it, his face would have been almost too perfect.

  After cleaning his blade and returning it to the sheath, Goran flopped down beside Mike. They stared at the cloud-dotted sky, at a few passing birds. “I wish we could just stay here,” Mike admitted after a while.

  “We can, if you like. You’re the master and I’m not in such a hurry.”

  Mike thought of angry gods, of his mother and sister back home, frantic and grieving. “No. I have to get back.”

  “To Calif… Calif….”

  “California. Yes.”

  “And your clean underwear with the words on it.”

  “Yes,” Mike said with a laugh. “Back to that. And… other things. You know, I’m pretty useless here, but back home I’m good at a lot of things. Parallel parking. Tax returns. I can wrangle the ugliest spreadsheet into submission. I can name every World Series winner going back to 1978. I can find anything on Google.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means.”

  “I know. But it’s all very useful back home. Well, maybe not so much the World Series thing, although I’ve won a few bar bets that way. But my point is, I’m good at stuff in California. Here I’m… helpless. I’d probably be dead already if it weren’t for you.”

  Goran turned his head to look into Mike’s eyes. “You have value here too.”

  Maybe what happened next was inevitable. They were both naked. Mike had recently and very publicly demonstrated his attraction to Goran, and privately he had jacked off while thinking about him. Neither of them had gotten laid in… a long time in Mike’s case, and a couple weeks at least in Goran’s. They were both feeling raw and emotional after Goran’s story. And there was the touching during the shave, the tender grasping of Mike’s face by Goran’s calloused fingers.

  Almost in unison, they rolled into each other’s arms.

  Goran smelled like water, soap, sunshine, and crushed herbs. His skin was soft over planes of hard muscle, and Mike buried his fingers in his long, slightly damp hair. Goran tasted good too. He’d taken lately to stealing Mike’s tooth-cleaning twigs, and they’d had berries for lunch, so Goran’s kiss was sweet. He had plump lips and an agile tongue, and sharp teeth that nipped gently at Mike’s ears and jaw and collarbone.

  Mike found himself flat on his back with a double handful of Goran’s ass while Goran hovered over him like an incubus. Goran’s hair hung in curtains, creating a very private space between their faces. His green eyes glittered and sparked. “I want this so badly,” he said in a voice hardly more than a moan. “Want you. Please?”

  Mike was in no mood to refuse. He gripped those glutes a little more tightly and urged Goran’s hips down so their groins pressed together, their hard cocks finding a bit of badly needed friction. Goran groaned loudly. He licked and nibbled on Mike’s neck and shoulder before moving down to suck on one hardened nipple and then the other. Mike was already breathing hard, pushing up with his hips as much as he was able.

  When Goran left a trail of wet kisses down Mike’s sternum and stomach, Mike expected his cock to be next. But instead Goran gently tugged at Mike’s arms and repositioned them so that they were spread widely on the ground. Goran snuffled under Mike’s left armpit, licked the length of
his upper arm, kissed the crook of his elbow.

  Mike closed his eyes to more fully enjoy the sensations. He hadn’t expected this. He thought they would fuck hard and fast—and he was okay with that—but what he got instead was a tender lover, a man whose lips brushed him soft as butterflies even as their cocks moved together, hard and slick.

  When he reached Mike’s lower arm, Goran paused. “It’s healing well,” he said.

  That was true. Mike had abandoned the wound dressings several days earlier, and new skin had grown over the cut already, pink and healthy.

  “You’ll have a scar,” Goran said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “And you really don’t mind about mine?”

  Christ. Mike never would have guessed a man as beautiful and strong as Goran could be so insecure. With considerable effort, he rolled them over. He took a moment to admire Goran sprawled beneath him, hair fanned on the soft green moss, lips wet and suckable. And then Mike proceeded to kiss every one of Goran’s scars. It took him a long time—there were a lot of them—and sometimes he had to tug Goran’s pliant body this way and that. But when he was finished, Goran gazed up at him with eyes gone soft and wondering.

  Mike couldn’t quite bear to look back. He closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek against the hair on Goran’s chest. Goran purred beneath him like a great cat, in sharp contrast to Mike’s original comparison of him as a Newfoundland dog. Mike was used to his partners being taller than him, bigger and hairier, but he’d never had one quite as monumental as Goran. It was a little overwhelming, in a totally wonderful way. Even better when Goran stroked Mike’s lower back and then massaged his ass.

  “Can I fuck you, Mike? Please?”

  Mike’s immediate instinct was to answer Hell yes!, but he stopped to think about practical matters. There was the safer-sex issue, for one. Mike had always been very careful about that—he insisted on condoms and was tested regularly. He was fairly certain he wasn’t harboring any nasty pathogens. But he didn’t know about Goran. Maybe there was no HIV in this world, but there might very well be other unhappy surprises, and with no antibiotics in sight. Well, he decided, STDs were not the biggest threat he was facing right now. He’d take his chances.