The Rain

The air becomes tangible with the promise of rain- an expectancy that heralds the coming storm as effectively as any cloud upon the horizon, of which there is none. No dark embankment shadowing the bay or the fields that spread across the land beyond it, their caretakers safe in the false belief that they have conquered nature. A breeze blows salt and sand into the face of a young man sitting on top of a low wall that surrounds the bay, into dark eyes that some would describe as holding secrets, though not the boy himself who is more given to wry self depreciation rather than illusions of mystery. He likes to think he has more common sense than that- that he is too objective in his observations to indulge in thinking himself the hero in his very own story with the rest of the world merely the supporting cast. Of course, it is thinking about his own nature in this way that leads to the smirk on his lips and the darkening of his eyes in the first place, so he swings his legs over the wall and stands, headed for home.

Years of salt and summer storms have leant the grey stone buildings of the bay town the strange quality of always seeming wet, even when to the touch they are dry. Grains of sand manage to coat the finger tips that brush against them, no matter how recently or how many times they have been scrubbed. It’s the sort of thing that breeds a perverse sort of pride in the locals of the small village. The gutters along the roads are deep and the roofs above them slanted. Summer brings heavy rains and winter brings heavy snows and each storm is always sudden to arrive and slow in departing. This morning, local knowledge had it that this time there’d be water falling from the sky for three days, you mark my words!

The boy from the low wall saunters up the streets, his dark clothing not out of place with the grey that seems uniform in the bay. He heads away from the bay and the centre of the village, the wind pushing at his back and hurrying his steps. He has no desire to be caught outside when the promised rain arrives, stumbling through sheets of water and wind that are painful to an unprotected body. He knows, though, that he has left his departure too late to avoid it entirely. The buildings around him thin and the road changes gradually from cobblestones to loose rocks on top of dirt. A necessary precaution against mud and bogs, albeit something of an ineffectual one. Likely the road will be impassable before the rain lets up.

On one side of the road lies the smooth, furrowed ground of a struggling crop. The soil here is too hard and rocky for anything the villagers could have imported from another part of the country or shipped in from overseas, though it appears that one farmer has decided to try it anyway. Any other field would show row upon row of small, pale plants so like a thistle most visitors wonder why the fields aren’t kept free of weeds. The other side of the road is not so ordered, or so lifeless. Bumpy ground plays host to a few struggling bushes that grow thicker as they leave the road. Gradually the ground is obscured by their coverage and trees begin to rise, huddling close together and spreading out across the plain. Hidden behind the trees, the boy knows, is a cliff that falls straight down to the sea, surprisingly high given that there is no noticeable rise in the land. The boy walks on, bordered on both sides until the rain begins to fall, and he finds that he was right to worry about not making it home. The clouds that have appeared above him are dark and heavy and low- the wind drives walls of rain into him and the road disappears into the water. He can’t see far enough ahead to keep on the road, and he knows that the failing crop will yield no protection. His only choice is the woods, though he is hesitant to make that choice. The woods are close and dark and dangerous. Strange, without a road or the grey stone of civilisation. Still, he shivers in his clothes, trees are better protection than open sky, and with that he stumbles across uneven and bushy ground towards the shadow now in front of him. The journey from the road to the trees is a perilous one, and too many times the boy finds himself struggling to stay on his feet after tripping across a hole in the ground or a thick tangle of scrub. He almost runs into the first few trees, and only his outstretched hands save him from yet another bruise.

The trees start to provide a little cover from the rain, though he finds his hands and face whipped by branches and leaves that leave a wet scrape or welt across his skin until, finally, the strength of the rain is lessened by the canopy above and around him. He crouches, huddling against a thin trunk as water snakes through the gaps in the leaves and down the trunk itself to land on the ground, slowly coating the dead, brown leaves and sticks that he sits on, reflecting the light, and suddenly there is more colour in the world. He watches the world around him transform until even that miracle is eclipsed by the weather. Bits of dirt and plant matter cling to his fingers, now pale and cold from the rain, and he shivers a little. Pretty, but uncomfortable and growing worse. It is, he thinks vaguely, the state of most things he has come across, not, he amends, that that amounts to much. It is probably not wise to affect a world weary and cynical disposition until one had seen more of life than seventeen years between farm and fishing village. He closes his eyes and hopes that the rain will lessen enough shortly for him to make it home.

It is either a very long time or a very short time before the figure of a man appears before him, standing beneath trees that the boy would have sworn were too low for that sort of thing. His eyes are the colour of wet sand and his skin is the brown of the cones that grow on the scrub along the road. His hair is dark and long and wild and the boy thinks, this is someone who has secrets in their skin and in their hair as well as in their eyes. The boy also thinks that perhaps he is much too cold and tired if he’s thinking things like that already, though this thought is much quieter than the first. The man smiles and holds out his hand, clasping the boys clammy fingers in a grasp that is impossibly warm, drawing his cold body into an embrace. The boy sighs as arms close about his shoulders. The man smells of sea slat without the seaweed and dirt without the sand and he smiles again when the boys head is on his shoulder.

“What is your name?” The man whispers, but he doesn’t seem to mind that there is no answer as he takes the boy back to his home.

The sudden cessation of the sound of the rain coupled with the loss of damp greets the boy through a haze of just departing sleep. He blinks a few times, stretching only a little and tentatively at that before freezing as he notices the weight slung over his stomach. It doesn’t move and neither does he, indulging in a belief from times when instinct held more sway than logic- that if, by chance, the weight is of a mind to eat him it will forget and go away if he just doesn’t move. Perhaps, he muses in a corner of his mind untouched by panic, the weight’s appetite is in direct proportion to its preys movement. It takes him slightly longer than he would have liked to talk himself out of this opinion and find enough common sense masquerading as courage to raise his head from the pillow and see for himself the nature of this carnivorous beast. The answer, he thinks, is relieving as well as disturbing. Someone’s arm is over his stomach. Which means, logically, that the body said arm is attached to is lying next to him.

That would explain the warmth then, and the faint disturbance in the air near his neck and-

The mattress shifts and the boy freezes again. The arm over him tightens and is joined by a torso pressed against his side, a leg over one of his, and a face against his neck. In lieu of the terror the nuzzling, he supposes, might have been quite nice.

Then, of course, the body speaks.

“Hello,” a voice that is very male murmurs. The boy tenses and something wet swipes the curve of his ear. “You’re awake.”

The observation is accompanied by another swipe across his ear, this one lingering as the hand on his stomach begins to move lower over his abdomen. Goosebumps begin to race across his skin as the hand finds his hip, resting there, and the boy realises that he isn’t wearing his shirt.

The words continue. “The storm will end soon, and you can go home. Though you still haven’t told me your name- and I’ve been so very good to you,” and all the while the hand is warming his hip and the air the man breathes is sighing over the skin of his neck. The boy shivers a little and the man laughs, low and soft and delighted. The mattress shifts again and the hand on the boys hip is mirrored by another hand on his other hip. The leg across his slides over until it borders him on one side and another leg borders him on the other side. The face, though, stays pressed against his neck and only moves a little closer.

There is a strange man straddling him, and the boy doesn’t know how to react. He knows what he wants to do, the warmth of the body on top of his and the weight of it pooling in his groin, and for a moment he lets himself think that maybe, finally, something strange is happening to him and maybe, finally, he really will have a secret to darken his eyes. But then the mans mouth snakes from his neck to his chest, leaving a cool, wet trail on his skin and he forgets to think about it.

Warm hands trail from his hips to his shoulders and back down again and teeth scrape over his throat and linger on his nipples. A tongue slides from the hollow of his throat to the waistband of his pants while nails press against his shoulders. He pants and sighs and moans and sometimes finds the presence of mind to thrust weakly against the man on top of him, but he is stilled by hands moulding his sides and a mouth crushed against his and he wraps his hands around the mans neck and sticks his tongue down his throat in abandon.

At some point the boy feels the mans fingers- long and thin and still impossibly warm- ghosting over the buttons on his pants and leans back just far enough to focus on doing the same. Naked now, and the man straightens to look down at the boys length and smile. The boy feels his cheeks redden and is seized by a desire to pull the pillow from behind him and settle it in his lap but is prevented from doing so as the man leans down and bends forward and the tongue that had started on his ear begins to lap at his cock. He groans and falls back on his elbows, legs spread carelessly wide and twitching occasionally as the cool, wet mouth engulfs him. A rhythm is found and the boy is pumping into the mans mouth, his own lips stretched around his pants as he comes, hard and shuddering, onto tongue and teeth and gums. Limbs limp and weak, the boy watches as the man sits back and wipes his mouth on his hand, grinning now. His own cock is still hard and, the boy sees, dark and long and glistening a little at the top. He worries for a moment- he’s never sucked a guy before- but warm hands return to his hips and slowly turn him over and retreat again. A few moments and the hands are back, smoothing his buttocks and parting his cheeks until- and the boy gasps- a cool, slick finger worms between him and, slowly, into him. He holds his breath and shuts his eyes as the finger is joined by another, and they begin to move inside him- pushing and plunging and stretching him apart until a third finger is added and they brush against something inside him and he sees stars. The man behind him laughs again and the fingers are withdrawn as something blunter and thicker takes their place.

There is pain, at first, and the boy wishes the man had stuck to his fingers for just a little longer, but then an ache replaces the pain and gradually the ache subsides as the man begins to plunge into him, harder and deeper than before, and the boy sees stars again and gasps, rocking back and forth, impaling himself again and again. A soft litany spews forth from the man behind him- asking him his name, but he can’t answer because every time he rocks back and is hit right there his mind goes blank and besides- he couldn’t answer if he wanted to. Gradually, the stars in his head begin to explode and he cries out as something warm is released in him and he convulses around the man, still shooting into him. The pungent smell of drying pines and damp earth surrounds him as air becomes suddenly precious and he gulps it in, lying across the bed with the man lying atop him, their bodies stuck together with drying sweat.

When the man rolls slowly off him, his softened cock sliding from the boys arse, the boy cries out a little, muffled by the pillow, before drifting back into sleep. The man stretches above him, looking more than a little bemused and asks again, softly, for his name. The only reply he gets is a snore and he shakes his head, dark eyes narrowing behind the curtain of his hair.

The boy wakes up in a bed that is rapidly cooling. There are sheets lying across the floor and his clothes have joined them. He sits up and struggles out of the bed, wincing at the movement when his backside complains. He dresses with a little more caution and looks around the room. There is one window and one door, and he supposes it must lead outside. The man from earlier is nowhere to be seen and the boy doesn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed. He settles, eventually, on a compromise as he often does and goes for a bit of both. Glad because now there is no chance for awkwardness, and glad because now he does have a secret. Disappointed, perhaps, because last night (he guesses) had been good and… well.

Dressed now and ready to depart the boy sighs and casts his eye about the room one last time. There is a disc on the table by the bed, small and wooden and almost a perfect circle. He picks it up and puts it in his pocket without knowing why, and leaves, suddenly grasped by a desire to reach the safety of his home. Outside the air is sweet and the sky is clear, no trace left to tell of the previous deluge. Even the undergrowth is recovering from the beating it took, thin weeds straightening after bending to the wind and rain. Behind him, the door he exited fades back into the trunk of a rough barked tree. He looks over his shoulder only once, curious when he can find no sign of where he spent the night.

Behind him, hidden in the leaves, the man watches the boy leave with a frown in his sandy eyes, and suddenly the fact that he didn’t get an answer to his question seems very troubling indeed.

THE END (for now)

AN: So, i kinda like this piece, and i've got this whole fae world mapped out in my head... so maybe this one shot will one day have a sequel. Though it probably won't be based on these two guys.

Ah, the name thing is, like in most fae myths, important becasue it gives the holder of the name power over the named. In my head, the boy never answered either becasue he can't speak, or he just doesn;t have one. You make up your own mind :P And if you happen to figure it out, do tell.

As usual, reviews would be fantasticalness in a bottle with a little paper umbrella stuck in it, especially if you can tell me how to improve this.
3 Sy