One Star

So I found this rating of one of my stories.
One star.

I can't say that I blame them.
I'd do that story differently now, and I will.

I could explain why I did the story the way I did then, the concept I had, the plan... *manical laugh* THE PLAN!

I has such plans!

In those plans I forgot about having fun. I forgot about being satisfied with myself.

I ground myself down into dust.

So.. I accept. I'm not going to be great and famous by the force of my will. I might not be great and famous ever.

I might not have family the way I'd planned it.. the way I imagined it.

I have great family thought.  I love writing my stories, making my art. Even if only a few people ever enjoy them other than myself... that's enough :)

So I want to re do The Pet.. from the very beginning.

I want to write the story without explicit sex.

There have been so many times in my life where I've traded sex in one form or another for what I wanted.

Sex for love.
Sex for safety.
Sex for the right to be able to love someone.
Sex for forgiveness.
Sex for roller skates.

I want to save sex... hide it away, treasure it until it flowers into something that only casts the slightest shadow over me now.

Lady Harwood 1

The Lady of Harwood

by Beth Heart
aka Nick Winter


copyright 2009
All Rights Reserved
Do Not Archive


She sat bolt upright, green eyes dancing with angry fire. Long red hair framed her face and drew back into a braid that disappeared under the thick royal blue cloak. Ermine from her hood brushed against flawless cheeks. She glared down at the man reaching for her reigns. “Do not dare,” she commanded. “I will see your commander or no one.”

The man arched an eyebrow.  “We lay siege to your castle, Mistress. We can not allow you to pass.”

“I am Lady Harwood and I will see your Commander, Sir.” She danced her mount a step away from him, while glaring down at him.

He crossed his arms, lifted his chin stubbornly. He wore only dark fabric pants that tucked into black knee high boots. A phoenix lined his right shoulder, black ink tattooed into his skin. His hair touched   the same shoulder, the pony tail resting, clinging to firm muscle. “Lady Harwood have you come to sue for terms?”

“I will speak only to the Commander.”

Amusement colored his pale blue eyes. “Very well, My Lady. Gaius!”

Another man moved forward at a quick jog, from where he'd been holding back. He bowed quickly.  “Yes, My Lord!”

“Fetch the Commander. He is obviously working at something other than his job.”

“My Lord,” Gaius said again, bowing a couple more times before he scurried off. 

Another solider brought a thickly woven towel to the man and a bucket of water.  He set about washing his face, chest. Water ran over hard muscle.

She turned her head to look away. Nervous gloved fingers stroked her mount's mane.

“Your Majesty,” a rumbly voice growled. “Ohhh! At arms!”

“Do not be ridiculous,” the blond man said, waving his hand at the soldiers rising at the commander's orders. “She is unharmed. There are no warriors hidden. My team would have found them if there had been. This is why there has been little progress!” Now clean, he held a hand out to the Lady Hargrove. “My Lady.”

Much paler, she took his hand and dismounted into his strong hands, as he lifted her down to her feet. “You are King Roland.”

“I am,” he said firmly. “What terms does My Lady wish for?”

“I wish,” she said, recovering her nerve as she stepped back from him slightly. She lifted her chin and stared right into his eyes. “I wish that all my people are allowed to live and to be given governorship of my lands. For this, I will faithfully pay reasonable tithes and be loyal only to Your Majesty.”

“What I require, Lady Hargrove, is your unconditional surrender. I will unite all of Alish. All people will be one people.”

“What of my people?”

He reached out, a strong hand brushing red hair back from her face. “I want you. Will you serve me to protect your people?”

“Do I have your word?”

“You have my word.”

“Then, Your Majesty, I surrender and I give you my loyalty and service.”

London Christmas

Get an ebook copy of London Christmas

London Christmas

by Nick Winter
copyright 2008
all rights reserved
Do Not Archive

An ebook of this story is available. There's a link up above.

There were three of them: a disgraced younger son, a soft-spoken doctor with a too pretty face, and a young man from the wilds of Asia who proved science didn’t know everything.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” Dice said, hands in his pants pockets. A clerk in the British Embassy, he should have been at work, his hair should have been shorter, and his violet eyes shouldn’t have lingered on the face of Dr. Black nearly as long as they did.

Standing in front of the store window, Dr. Black hardly seemed to notice his attentions. A slight man with ordinary brown hair, whose eyes only stood out for the keen intelligence and sarcasm that lingered there, the doctor was not usually the center of anything.

The third of the friends wore mittens and scarf, but was most comfortable in the Beijing mid-December. Skin slightly blue, if anything the snow brought more color and an easier smile to his face. Even his blond hair had a blue tint to it. Another of their friends, London’s lover, Jonathan Daily, had assured everyone that London was not unusual for the village he’d come from, and London, not fully understanding the forms and patterns of human speech, had failed to understand why such a seeming lie might benefit anyone.

“So,” Dice said, shoulders a little hunched against the cold he’d sworn wouldn’t bother him at all, “London, what are you getting for Daily?”

“I still do not understand why the lack of a present will cause him distress,” London said. “I asked him. He said that he needed only my company and for the influenza to leave him well enough alone.”

“Here, here,” Dr. Black agreed. “What a sensible man.”

London pulled his cap down a little more, afraid it would blow away, hoping it would. He liked the cold, longed for it with a strength that could only compare to what Dice had called ‘homesick’ when once he’d drank more than his share of rice wine. Jonathan Daily pulled harder though, and now his friends, Dice and Dr. Black. He very much wanted to see them happy. “Gifts cost money,” London pointed out the obvious.

Dice sighed. “We’re a perfect trio. The wicked, the good, and the beautiful.”

“Daily’s right,” Dr. Black said. “Each other is all we really need. I have a ham and some potatoes. Daily has a kitchen, and we can cook there, can’t we, London?”

Before London could reply, Dice leaned forward, those wickedly knowing eyes sorting through Dr. Black. “So you’ll cook for us, Blackie?”

“Sod that,” Dr. Black grumbled, “What makes you think I can cook?”

“You’re…,” Dice said slowly. He bit his lip and whatever word might have been about to present itself. “Irish. I thought all Irish could cook.”

“And you’re English Ton,” Dr. Black said, nose wrinkling. “I thought you lot had money.”

“I guess we’re all the odd man out then,” Dice said with a smirk.

“How so?” Dr. Black gave him a good shove to the shoulder.

Dice skidded on the snow-dusted wooden sidewalk. They might have been the only ones there for all the people around them paid any mind. Two Europeans and an elemental spirit posing as a European didn’t get much notice from Chinese going about their day. It was too cold for the wives of the diplomatic core to be out, and almost everyone else had serious work to be about, with only three days until Christmas.

Dice dodged the second push, a grin on his face. Dr. Black caught up a couple handfuls of snow and threw them at a laughing Dice. London ran after them, feet sure and steady on the building snow. His hat flew off, freeing long silky pale blue hair to dance in the breeze. Snow picked up, swirled in greater density. Laughter, light, and sparkling seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

Dice and Dr. Black froze, stumbling over the now thicker ice. Down the street, onto the bridge, they ran together, acting more like boys than the men they were supposed to be. Dr. Black made it to the top of the arch of the bridge first, turned and made a face, until, quite without warning, ice overcame traction and he slid perilously backwards. Dice lunged and reached for one flailing hand, his boots much more suited to the now thick ice. Within time too small to count, the good Dr. Black was held close to the very wicked Mr. Emile ‘Dice’ Whitehall. Color flashed over bright on Dr. Black’s face, and he looked down, struggling lightly to get out of the arms that held him. “Really, you can let go now, Mr. Whitehall.”

“I suppose,” Dice said through a grin, “But it’s cold out here. I won’t want either of us to catch ill.”

“Not at all,” Dr. Black said tersely, blush bright as summer blazing.

The ground hit London’s feet hard, as if it had jumped up to find him.

Immediately the snow flurries subsided, the ice ran off, dripping over the side of the bridge. He grinned, not at all sure that there should be pale blue sakura blossom petals flitting through the air, but there were, and he was happy.

“I wish to give presents to both of you,” he said, loving them both, though the feeling was quite different from what he felt for Jonathan. He turned to look down the street for his hat, which would keep him warm and keep him from
being seduced by the cold air back into the world from whence he’d come.

Filling his blue eyes with an innocence rare, a perfect treasure, he grinned a little brighter and pulled off his mittens. Slender fingers wiggled, expressing happiness at being free of the mittens, very slightly blue fingers, just like the rest of him, but fluid and comfortable in the snowy cold air.

“What are you on about,” Dice complained, still standing too close to Dr. Black, but he shoved his hands back in his pockets again.

“It’s just…,” London said. It was hard to come up with the right words. “It’s just that with you as my friends, I’m not homesick like I was. I’m sure I’ll be able to stay and I want to stay. I love Jonathan very much and I never want him to be sad.”

Dice and Dr. Black looked at each other, then back at London. Grins broke out on both their faces at the same time. “Of course,” Dr. Black said, moving to slide an arm around London’s waist, “we’re your friends and not just because it’s Christmas either. You’re a brilliant chap.”

“Don’t go all mushie,” Dice said and slid his arm around London’s shoulder, fingers just happening to be close enough to accidentally touch Dr. Black. “London’s a decent enough chap. No one I’d rather see the city with, except
maybe the fine Dr. Black, but I still won’t go so far as brilliant.”

London held out a mitten to each one of them. “Here then, Christmas presents.”

Dice rolled his eyes. “You can’t give someone one used mitten for a Christmas present.”

Dr. Black took it and gave it a good look over. Handmade, certainly, a nice variegated blue. “I think it’s a very nice gift. Thank you, London.”

“Always a new take on things,” Dice said, pulling the single mitten onto one hand. “Does it mean something, you know, where you come from?”

Walking between them, London leaned his head back to watch the few falling white fluffy flakes. “Where I come from, it’s always cold, always in snow. Everything is ice and rainbows. The sun shatters through the palace walls so
brightly that it’s like walking inside a diamond. There is dancing all the time. Everything is clean and bright. There is no money, and no one has to do anything they don’t wish to do, not like Jonathan having to work so hard to make money so that we have a place to live.”

“Sounds like a sodding fine place to me,” Dice said. “Why’d you leave?”

“I saw Jonathan the very day he arrived at the village below where I lived. He was a new kind of light, and I had to have him.”

“I bet your family was hot over that,” Dr. Black said, sounding like the voice of experience.

“My family wasn’t happy, but I knew I couldn’t leave him. I hear from my family a lot. They want me to come home, but I know I will stay here. That’s why I gave you the mittens. Just because my hands can feel the call of home, does not mean I’ll go home.”

“That’s deep, London,” Dice said, head down a little. “At least your family wants you. Where’d you get the name London?”

“It was a word I got from Jonathan. I thought it was the most beautiful word.”

“What’s your real name?” Dr. Black asked.

London slipped away from them, just at the foot of the bridge. Naked hands danced in the air and formed crystals, rather like Chinese written characters, except more complicated, three dimensional, and gracefully intricate. “It can only be written like this,” London said.

The other two studied the delicate and already fading ice sculpture that hung in the air. “London ain’t nearly as pretty as that, but it’s a damn sight more practical,” Dice pronounced.

“It’s very strange and lovely,” Dr. Black said. He pulled off a glove to reach out and touch the ‘word’. “How do you make it hang in the air like that?”

“It’s just the way it’s done,” London said, not at all sure how to answer.

“It’s like the boxers, you know? Breaking boards with their faces and stuff,”

Dice said, bare hand back in his pocket again. “What is that stuff called? Chi gong? I’m sure it’s like that.”

“I’m certain I could never learn to do that,” Dr. Black said firmly. “What would my name look like in that…language?”

“You,” London said, tongue between his lips, “Um…this.” The ice swirled, spider webbed, made a complex, inside-out structure that seemed to beg to be unwrapped, but really communicated not a thing in any language spoken in

Beijing. Still, it seemed very telling, intimate, in some unspeakable and magical way.

“Do Dice?”

“No,” Dice said, slipping past them both, both hands again in his pockets.

“Hey!” Dr. Black yelled, running along.

All three were brought up short by Mr. Allen Albright, a bent and hawkish man who was eighty if he was a day. With Dice out front, the three of them had the good sense to look a bit abashed by being caught out on the town.

“So here we have it,” Mr. Albright started, his onyx-colored walking stick tapping rhythmically on the ground. “Mr. Whitehall, the never-do-well, that I had the good grace to take in and give a job to. You have brought me poor returns, Mr. Whitehall. Our trickster doctor, who thinks we’re all denser than lead and, yes, as I would expect, the mysterious master of the oriental arts, Mr. London Daily. Allow me, please, to ask if there is any good reason whatsoever that any of you should be gadding about instead of attending to whatever duties I may presume you perform for my school? A school devoted to serving Her Majesty’s diplomatic core deserves the utmost in service and respect.”

“Well,” Dice hedged. “It’s nearly Christmas, and I—we—needed to find some presents.”

Mr. Albright tapped his walking stick hard against the stones of the street. “That, Mr. Whitehall, is what you should be doing during hours when you are not at work for the embassy.”

“It’s just….” Dice stood up straighter, looking much more like a diligent employee all of a sudden. “I know that you wanted Irish whiskey, and as clerk second grade it is my job to procure needed assets at optimal times. With substantial snow predicted, I thought it would be an excellent idea to get needed supplies while we still can.”

“Odd that no one mentioned this blizzard to me,” Mr. Albright said suspiciously. Then, like a cat with feathers between his teeth, the old man smiled, tight-lipped and well too pleased with himself. “I’m sure your sources are very reliable, Mr. Whitehall, but I shall still compose a telegram to your father. Should your blizzard occur, I’m sure I shall be unable to post the letter, and your foresight in caring for the embassy’s needs will certainly soothe my discontent with your service. Otherwise, I’m sure Lord Devon will find some comfort in knowing that his son is as he most feared and there can be no further disappointments. Indeed, I expect that would be quite the holiday celebration for your brother, who would find his own estate no longer to be divided with a wastrel such as yourself.”

Calm as the pretty, fluffy flakes of snow, Dice gave a polite bow and smiled. “I look forward to earning your good opinion of me, sir. Reputations can be frightful things to defeat.”

“Be that as it may,” Mr. Albright said, still grinning as he turned to walk along his way, “If I were you, I’d pray for snow. I hope that you have not become so degenerate that such an act of piety is lost on you.”

“I, sir,” Dice complained loudly to the back of his employer, “rely on science! I shall have no need of prayer to be exonerated in this matter!”

As soon as he was a few steps away, Dr. Black said, “I think you’re good for his health, Dice.”

“How do you come to that?” Dice growled, murder in his voice.

“I’ve never really seen such a spring in his step.” Dr. Black’s head cocked to the side. “He must hate you. What are you going to do, Mr. Whitehall?”

“Buy Irish whiskey and hope for snow.” Dice leaned back to look up at the sky, which now seemed very stingy.

“It’s Christmas,” Dr. Black offered. “It always snows for Christmas.”

“Just what is this Christmas again?” London asked, running to catch up with the other two, who already strode forward.

“It’s a made-over holiday,” Dr. Black said, lecture mode on full. “Mithras done over by the emerging Christian population won over the Pagans with a little holiday redecoration.”

“Uh?” London rolled his eyes. “Jonathan gives me books to study, but English is so hard to pull meaning from.”

In front of the luxury provisions shop, Dice and Black both turned to stare at him. Dice tilted his head a bit. “What do you mean English is hard?”

Thumbs and pointer fingers making a diamond, London squeezed his eyes shut. “The characters are so small and stubborn. It’s an unexpressive language.”

“Maybe compared to yours,” Dr. Black agreed. “I can help you with history studies sometimes. I can teach you Latin.”

“Egghead,” Dice teased, grinning. “Latin, ancient gods, that’s not what Christmas is about. It’s about a whole lot of nice stuff that happens to good people.”

“What kind of good things?” London asked, fingers tapping against each other, eyes wide like a little kid. “We’re all good people! So good things will happen for us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dice shot over his shoulder. “I am a very bad man and deserve everything I get. Besides, as soon as I’m gone, you know he’s going to go after you next, my dear Dr. Black.”

“Then we shall have to keep you around, won’t we?” Dr. Black held open the door. “Come on. No more bleak belly-aching. You’re not gone yet. It’ll snow.”

“I can make it snow,” London offered and followed them inside. “Do you want it to snow a lot? Would that make everything okay?”

“Don’t be a fool, London,” Dice said, throwing a friendly arm over London’s shoulder. “Parlor tricks are one thing, but stirring up a blizzard is out of reach of any man. You’re just a human, a little blue, but just a human, like the rest of us.”

London looked back over his shoulder for a moment, at the white fluff falling towards the ground. “Thank you.”

“Of course, silly,” Dr. Black said, “it must be really hard to be with strange people, but we’re all a little unusual, so we all belong together!”


* * * *


“Jonathan! I’m home,” London shouted. He kicked the door shut, arms loaded down with brown paper wrapped packages.

“Good Lord,” Jonathan cursed, “where did you get all that…stuff?”

“Dice’s father,” London said. He looked back over his shoulder as he set the stack down on the table. “We have ham and apples, sugar, some fancy tea for you, all the things to make a feast. Dice and Dr. Black are coming for dinner on Christmas.”

“You don’t say,” Jonathan said suspiciously. “Mr. Whitehall is not exactly the most reputable of persons, my dear London.”

Starched shirt unbuttoned at the collar, black tie hanging around his neck, slacks tailored and smooth against lean legs, draped in nice curves where slacks should, Jonathan blushed. He pulled his glasses off and glared sternly at London.

“Why are you looking at me like that? It is afternoon, not quite tea even, not the middle of the night.”

Hands under his chin, London’s blue eyes twinkled with mischief, tearing after Jonathan’s blush and very proper sense of timing like a cat after the end of a piece of string. “But when I look at you I feel very happy and I want to unbutton your shirt and I feel desire to hear you make contented, happy sounds.”

“Now, see here,” Jonathan said, fingers buttoning up his shirt, glasses hanging hooked over a finger, “Even with the fact that we’re in Beijing, gentlemen do not engage in certain pursuits until certain hours of the day. I have work yet to do, and London! Gentlemen do not lick their lips in that very, very, um, suggestive manner!”

The elemental bit the tips of his pointer fingers lightly while grinning in a very ungentlemanly manner. “Jonathan, I am not a gentleman.”

They were of a similar height, and with London now improperly close, his hand on Jonathan’s tie, another somewhere unmentionable, Jonathan fell tumbling into to the blue eyes of winter. “Yes, yes, well, now, what if, now…. Oh my lord. Perhaps it would be best to take some private exercise prior to tea.”

“Dr. Black tells me that exercise is very good for the body,” London agreed. “I want to lick you. I like when your face gets so warm and bright. You’re very beautiful, Jonathan.”

For all that he was an English teacher and had never given himself much authority, his arms were strong enough as they wrapped around London and pulled the magical man closer. “I am too common to be beautiful. You are
beautiful and rare. I am lucky to have met you.”

Hands sliding under Jonathan’s shirt, London hooked his leg around Jonathan’s. “Well, if I’m beautiful, it’s because you are, because you drew me into this world. You seduced me into staying in this world where I am a stranger, yet your presence makes me long to be here above all places. Make love to me, Jonathan,” London pleaded, eyes full of genuine feeling, unclouded by any concepts of culture and propriety. “You’re hard for me. Just a little hotter and the kettle will give off steam!”

“You are a wicked,” Jonathan growled, kissing pale blue throat under a silken curtain of blue hair, “wicked, wicked man, and I love you.”

“Say it again!” London jumped a little, easily lifted by his lover, to wrap his legs around Jonathan’s waist. “I love you too! Loving you is so happy! I feel so happy!”

“London,” Jonathan said softly and held him close, face hidden against London’s shoulder. “You are so bright, so full of life. When you’re not here, I slip back into books and verbs, vocabulary, and my red pencil can feel like the most powerful force in my life, but then you come back and it’s like a rolling avalanche swirling around my boring little life. Where is your hat?” Jonathan asked, suddenly concerned. “You didn’t…?”

London touched both hands to the top of his head. His eyes rolled up to look kind of to the side at the ceiling. “The other called me, but now there’s not only you, but Dice and Dr. Black too. I have friends here. I don’t want to go back.”

Jonathan touched a fingertip to the end of London’s nose. “You don’t sleep with Mr. Whitehall or Dr. Black, do you?”

“Am I supposed to?” London asked, pulling away a little, hands on his hips. “I don’t want to.”

London peeled his shirt off as he walked towards their bedroom. “I want you to rub my back and rim me!”

“Is that so,” Jonathan said loudly, smiling though, eyes watching London’s ass sway. For one tiny second, David’s memory grayed out the world, but London’s laughter glittered brighter than any gray could ever manage. With a very fast stride, Jonathan followed his lover down the hall, caught him, and took them both over onto the bed. The bedroom was meant to hold one single bed and a small desk, but they’d need a larger bed, and well, now it held the bed and many good memories.

Jonathan shivered when London’s fingers caressed his cheek. Both of them lay on their sides, so close, legs entangled, clinging to each other.

“It is so,” London nodded slightly. “And then I want you to penetrate me and fill me with heat. I like your heat.”

“I still can’t believe you like me, that you want to be with me,” Jonathan whispered. “I am sure I’m drab in the extreme.”

London smirked. His blue eyebrows rose in an arch as he rolled so that he straddled Jonathan. “English still confuses me sometimes. Does drab mean comfortable, addicting, something that makes a person feel giddy, something that
makes me hard and in need of gentle attentions? Does drab mean that you inspire people to kiss you?”

“Take your pants off,” Jonathan begged. “I want you to ride me, like this.”

“Umm-umm,” London agreed, slipping his pants off to shove them over the edge of the bed without ceremony.

While London was getting rid of his pants, Jonathan took his and his boxers off, hanging them both over the mahogany stand with a minimum of neatness. The brief separation gave a chance for both of them to look each other over again. Coming back together in the center of the bed, now on their knees, chests together, Jonathan ran his fingers through London’s wild blue hair. “You’re paler than you were,” he observed.

“The more I let go of my home, the more I become a man of your world,” London said. His slender fingers took a teasing hold of Jonathan’s nipples, twisted them gently. “I want to be a man of your world. Then you can marry me.”

“We must discuss that,” Jonathan said, voice thin, his thoughts much more centered where their bodies touched. “The intimacies of physical touch are making more prosaic thoughts less possible.”

“I don’t understand,” London said and moved lower with kisses whose trajectory were obviously meant for Jonathan’s hardened manhood. “But the intimacies of physical touch make me want to touch you more!”

“Yes, quite!” Jonathan managed as London nudged him over. “More!”

Jonathan spread his legs, letting the avalanche who was his lover have control. Laying there, naked before tea and waiting for the touch of another man, he knew London had left everything of his old world behind. He wanted very much to believe that London was always going to be with him, would always value him. Like no one Jonathan had ever imagined, found somewhere in the wilds of Asia, from a tribe that held strange ideas, London had more energy and curiosity about the modern world than maybe the entire university that had been Jonathan’s home before. Love filled him, glowed warm, made him feel that he must be as happy as London looked sometimes.

“Your smile is like light snow that swirls in the light,” London said. “Reach the oil?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Jonathan said. He scooted up in the bed a little to reach out and pull over a bottle of very nice olive oil. “Is this for rubbing your back?” he teased.

“Later.” London took the bottle, poured a bit in his palm, then handed it back. “Want something else now.”

“What,” Jonathan started, just getting the stopper back in the bottle when London’s hands encircled his penis, igniting every nerve a British man wasn’t supposed to have. He clenched his eyes shut. “Damn!”

London slid down around him, stealing whatever might have been left of his mind, sheathing his most private self in heat and pleasure.

“Oh certainly,” Jonathan gasped, making the words into a blaspheme, an expression of uncontrollable intensity, then softly rising from love and connection, “London!”

Touching, hands clasped, they moved together, pleasure building and cresting, sweetly braiding them into one person. With a possessive growl, Jonathan rolled them over, an arm around his slighter lover, and held him close as if he’d never let him go. Friction of movement caught London between them, carrying him up into the spiral of pleasure with Jonathan. London wrapped his legs around Jonathan’s waist, head tilted back as he moaned. His breath frosted the air around it, making little dancing rainbow crystals in the air.

“Jonathan,” he cried out; the rush of air disrupted the lingering crystals, surprisingly warm.

“Deeper!” Jonathan groaned, fingers tangled into London’s silky hair. “Fuck,” he swore softly, the word very intimate and loving, as his peak grabbed him. Deeply inside his love, he hid his face and held tight as the milk of life shot out of him in spasms. “Oh, London!”

London’s own release followed very quickly, with only a few strokes of Jonathan’s hand, and they curled there next to each other, the extra blanket over them for a bit. Jonathan combed his fingers through London’s just-past-shoulder-length hair. “You’ll never leave me, right?”

“I want to be here with you,” London promised. “This is my home now.”

“Being with you is my home too,” Jonathan agreed.


* * * *


Home and Christmas equate to turkeys and hams.

“You’re a doctor,” Dice said and stared at the pale, flaccid bird that was their turkey. “You take babies out, you can put stuffing in.”

“Idiot,” Dr. Black said before smacking Dice with the bubble end of the baster, which only managed to shoot white wine and melted butter back. “Ick!”

“Now, really,” Jonathan said, a finger in the now stained and tattered recipe book, “I don’t think that stuffing the turkey is completely mandatory. We could just leave it empty.”

“Now what man leaves such a cavity empty like that? You want the bird to die happy, don’t you?” Dice picked up an almond and popped it in his mouth.

“This bird is well and truly dead,” Black pronounced. “It’s going to be rotten before it gets cooked. Where’s London? Maybe he knows how they cooked it in his village.”

“I don’t really think ‘cooked’ would be the right description,” Jonathan said. He turned the page and squinted through his glasses at the slightly archaic French text. “What, exactly, is a caper?”

“Yeah, where is he, Jony?”

“He’s gone out on the back steps to talk to his family,” Jonathan said crossly.

“Like ancestor worship or something? I hear the Japanese do that.”

“Must be,” Dice said. “Will the turkey fall in on itself if we don’t stuff it?”

“I don’t think so,” Black said, dark eyes peering into the cavern. “The ribcage is intact, so I think that should hold it up.”

“It’s cold out there. Did Idiot Boy take a coat?”

“You know it’s not going to snow, don’t you?” Black said.

“Why is it so important that it blizzard?” Jonathan asked, closing the book
with a loud clap.

“Because Dice told Mr. Albright that he was out, avoiding his job, because he had to get things because there was going to be a blizzard. If there’s no blizzard, then Dice gets fired and his father is going to disown him.”

“Thanks! Thanks for bringing that blackness to the holiday. Mr. Albright hasn’t shown up to fire me yet, has he? He might forget what with that whiskey I got for him.”

“I doubt it,” Black said, arms folded, mouth tight. “What will you do?”

“Disreputable gambler in Beijing,” Dice said, looking up at the ceiling, “I’ll think of something. At least I won’t just be waiting for the old man to tell me how he really feels. Jonny, where are you going?”

“Hey, get a coat!”

Jonathan was out the door, though. The other two followed just as fast.

London stood in the middle of the yard, wearing only his pants, hair now much longer, flowing around him with a life of its own as it danced with small flurries of snow.

“London!” Jonathan called and ran across the yard, right into more fierce winds. “Don’t you do this!”

Turning, London smiled, but ice glittered over his cheeks, clung to the ends of his eye lashes. “But they can’t hear me. I have to go closer.”

“The hell you do,” Jonathan shouted against the wind, trying to force his way through.

“Stay back, Jonathan! They don’t like you,” London yelled back, skin much bluer now.

“I don’t like them either!” A strong gust of wind threw Jonathan back, landing him hard on his ass. “London!”

Strong arms caught Jonathan up to his feet, Black and Dice to either side of him.

“That is one hell of a ritual,” Dice said.

“He’s going to go away!” Jonathan cried. “He’s going to leave us so that he can make it snow for you.”

“Sod that,” Dice grumbled.

Together the three of them pressed forward against the swirling winds, until Jonathan drew close enough to lunge and grab hold of London, wrapping him in warm arms. “Stay with me!”

“I’m gonna come back,” London sulked, head resting on Jonathan’s shoulder.

Dr. Black draped a thick black coat over London’s bare back. “You’re freezing! You must be hypothermic. We should get him inside!”

“Damn fool,” Dice growled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Making it snow so you don’t have to go away!”

“I won’t go away,” Dice promised. “Unless Jonathan kills me for costing him you, uh?”

“But you’ll get fired!”

“It won’t be the first time,” Dice said with a wink.

“Speaking of fired,” Dr. Black said meaningfully.

The wind and snow had abandoned them, but Mr. Albright strode forward purposefully, a look of satisfaction in his eyes.

“So I’ll take it like a man,” Dice said. He moved to stand between his friends and his soon-to-be former employer. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Albright!”

“Umn,” the old man said, holding out a telegram. “From your father.”

Dice’s hands shook as he reached for the folded sheet of paper.

My dearest son,
I always knew that you would find your place in the
world. I am deeply grateful that Asia has had such a
wonderful influence on you. Your mother and I send
our love. Merry Christmas, Emile!

Father and Mother

Dice read it over three times. “I don’t understand.”

“Frankly, it’s Christmas. Miracles happen. As he’s buying me a new Bentley and funding five more scholarships, I would be an ungrateful lout to discharge his son, however questionable the quality of his work may be.”

“You’re not firing me?” Dice said, blinking. “Why?”

“Probably has something to do with your spending spree. Merry Christmas, Misters Daily and Whitehall, Dr. Black.”

“Merry Christmas, sir,” they all chirped.

As soon as he was out of sight and hearing range, Dice turned on London. “I said you could buy anything you wanted on my father’s line of credit. What exactly did you buy?”

Still held in Jonathan’s arms, London recited, “Fifteen hams, one for each of the teachers, 193 scarves for all the students, new shirts for them all as well, and the carriage driver said that his horse was old and couldn’t keep working, so I bought him a new one, and the two horses seemed to like each other quiet a lot. I paid Xi Hua’s medical bills so she won’t worry anymore about her daughter. I bought shiny copper tea kettles for all the work staff at the school. The woman at the carving shop said that the yellow fat man would be a good gift to send to the Emperor and that there couldn’t be good Christmas unless the Emperor got nice
presents.”

By that time they were just about back inside, Dice covering his face. “Anything else?”

“I bought Jonathan some shiny clear rocks to go in his cuffs and Dr. Black a long red dress.”

Dr. Black meeped like a frightened mouse. “Why on Earth?”

“Most women wear them,” London said. “I thought maybe if we weren’t working tonight, maybe you might like to wear that kind of clothing.”

“Well, Merry Christmas,” Dice said, surprise coloring his voice a little. “It’s just us.”

Dr. Black looked out the window. “I do believe it’s really going to snow. That’s amazing. How about stuffing that turkey now?”

“Are you a woman?” Jonathan asked, working on buttoning London’s shirt up. “Would it matter if I was?” Dr. Black challenged.

“Not at all,” Jonathan said. “We’re about as far from Britain as we’ll ever be. This can be a world as we choose it. Especially on Christmas.”

“Seems like a fair option to me,” Dice said, his smile encouraging.

“Fine. Then I’m a woman.” She crossed her arms. “But I’m a doctor first.”

“I think we’re all in good health, except for the turkey,” London said, face even paler, hardly looking blue at all.

“A toast then!” Dice opened the claret, poured it easily into flutes. “To Christmas and a world of our own!”

“To Christmas and a world of our own!” They all toasted, glasses clinking. Jonathan heard something as they all drank the toast. It was just a moment for him to glance at the window, to see eyes, narrow and jealous, teeth, so tiny like icicles. He shivered, sure completely that such a face had not been pressing hard against the glass of his kitchen window.

London took hold of his hand, and really, it was Christmas, and nothing else mattered.

Live, Love, Laugh

This is just a pretty rock and feather I got. 

a pretty pic :)

I got a new camera... and I was just playing.

Tosh's Next Client

So I had this contest...

I haven't been able to get in touch with the winner.. but I'm still working a new Tosh story to share with everyone.  I added a new poll today for who his next client should be. :) I look forward to seeing people vote! :)

The Rain Does Softly Fall 1

The Rain Does Softly Fall

by Jewls Winter
copyright 2009
all rights reserved




"Murder?" Edward licked his lips, eyes hooded, flickering from the door to the window. Rain trailed down the window, dark in shadow, looking thicker than water.

The detective across the desk, hard eyes, back to the widow, what little light filled in the small office highlighted his short trimmed hair, leaving his eyes dark, full of condemnation. "We know what happened. It's clear. You made," the detective's voice deepened, disgust a fine shadow of dust, "sexual advances to him, repeatedly over the course of your junior and senior years at Harvard. We have witnesses. We have your letter threatening to openly accuse him of homosexual behavior. It was your blackmail, your 'advances', your deviance that caused Mr. Lawrence such emotional distress that he hanged himself. Just the thought of your imagination roaming over him was enough to ruin a good young man. That you threatened to smear his name makes this a homicide."

Edward leaned back against the cold metal chair, closed his eyes. Henry's eyes were blue. Had been blue. With his eyes closed those blue eyes swelled, whitened, like a dead fish and Edward started back up, a hand going to his tie. "It's not like that. We loved each other. I think his brother killed him."

"You would. You fucking faggot. Brother's don't kill each other. Maybe your brother should have killed you. Did you kill your brother? What kind of twisted mind comes up with something like that? It's because of you that Henry Lawrence is dead. Say it."

He blinked, only a second in the darkness, but thick wet slipped down, running down his face with no more emotion than the rain ran down the window, just dripping shadow. "I'm the reason Henry's dead." Those words bled the life out of Edward, his soul dripping away even as his tears stopped without him even knowing they'd started. "I'm the reason Henry's dead."

"That's right. Sign the confession, you sick fuck," the detective demanded as he pushed the gray paper towards his prisoner.

"What am I signing? Why am I signing something? Oh my god, Henry's really dead. He won't have killed himself. He won't. He loved me."

"Stalker. That's what a stalker would think, isn't it? Just sign. That's the best thing. You don't want any trouble, do you? A homosexual like you could come to a lot of trouble. Sign right here, Mr. Cording. Everything will be alright."

Shock. Edward ran a hand through bohemian sandy hair. "We're working on a book. I was doing the last edits."

"Sure," the detective said, putting a pen into his prisoner's hand. "Just write your name."

Edward put the pen down, leaned back, his hand going to his loosened tie. "Why are you holding me? I'm so tired."

"Sign, then you can rest. It'll all be over, just sign. It's your fault he's dead."

Edward pressed his knuckles to his mouth, then with rapid movements, he signed. Only then, blinking again, he looked at the paper. 'At nine o'clock pm, I strangled.' 'He begged.' 'I was just so angry!'

"What is this? What did I just sign? Those are lies!"

The detective grabbed him spun him around, slamming him hard against the gray police station wall. "You stupid fuck. Did you think we were going to let a senator's son commit suicide? Or be a faggot. Have you ever heard of Alcatraz? Nothing gets in or out. It's a great place to forget a rotten little shit like you."

"No! Stop! Was Henry strangled? I didn't kill him! Someone killed Henry! Stop! Let me go!" The wall hit his head hard. Black funneled into his vision, leaving him alone with Henry's eyes.

A Knight of Good Wishes 1

A Knight of Good Wishes
1


By Jewls Winter
all rights reserved
copyright 2009




"There can be no more beauty than that which lives within your eyes," Philip said, voice sweet and wicked as spiced ale, "A single glance from your eyes, and I shall be willing to give you all and everything."

Laysh tipped his chin, violet eyes sparkling with possibility. "Fair knight, your hands are the servant of your sword, what need might a poet of little renown have to offer the hands that will one day be king."


"Your sable hair, so long that it trails through my dreams," Philip murmured, drawing his dance partner close, "Your eyes are endless twilight, as if the night were always yet to begin and dawn far distant. Share my bed. Be my beloved."

Lull softened the music, strings and wind slowing, swirling towards quiet as the dance ended. Laysh bowed with the end of the dance, long dark velvet sleeves flowed with his movement. A braid of soft brown hair slipped from his shoulder, hanging heavy towards the floor. "My Prince," Laysh said, by passing the politeness of addressing his unofficial prince as a simple knight yet. Intelligence danced in violet eyes, daring his suitor to deny what all the court already knew. "I cannot be the beloved of a man who's grace must take him far from my bed before my heart has even drawn a second breath."

Laysh stepped back, bowing yet again and a delicately beautiful, wearing the silver circlet showing her nobility. Hair of red and gold, woven around the silver and decorated with pearls. She held out her hand, fully expecting her share of respect from a knight not yet officially named prince.

Philip bowed, knee black hair brushing past a strong and gently scarred face. "Milady."

"Dance with me," she asked, but it was not a request.

It was a full song later that Philip found the long haired poet on the balcony.

"You waited for me," Philip said, the back of his hand smoothing over a soft velvet sleeve. "As I have waited for you for so long. You know that I could not approach you before. When I am announced, I shall ask you formally to be my consort. Will you accept?"

"We are boys no more," Laysh said, voice deep an serious. "With me at your side, holding power will only become more difficult."

"Without you by my side," Philip explained, his touch moving to travel the curve of Laysh's jaw, "what good I could do for people will taste to me as plain porridge and not how long I might continue as a man on such a diet. Kashire brews towards war. I need a consort who can help me nurture peace as well as one who can nurture peace within me. I am a poor man, you've known me all my life, and I would not blame you for rejecting me, but have you not waited for me? Have you not saved such secrets of your flesh and soul for me alone?"

"I have," Laysh admitted, stepping back just out of reach, "And if you announce me, I shall accept, but then you knew this already."

Philip turned, elbows on the railing. He grinned, wicked contentment showing on his face. "I did. I knew you won't share my bed early, but you knew I'd try."

"Of course, my prince," Laysh said, backing away until the shadows swallowed him.

Philip leaned back, looking at a sky with two few stars. He could wait. One more day.

Trust

Trust
by Nix Winter
all rights reserved
copyright 2004Trust


The worst kind of lonely is wishing to reach out, to touch, not being able to cross some invisible line in one's own head.

The therapist stared quietly at Vincent. "Why can't you do this thing?"

Alex Vincent didn't want any more medications. He didn't want something that he couldn't explain. He wanted. He wanted something he couldn't explain. "Why should I do this thing?"

"Because it is truly what you wish to do," she said softly, the sound of her pen flowing over the paper almost louder than her words. "You know whom you wish to trust."

"I'll ruin him," Alex whispered, studying the bland white ceiling for all he was worth. "He's too valuable to me."

"Alex," his therapist said, changing the tone of their session, transgressing some boundary that he'd put in place between them long ago. "Alex, you went to Madrid and you nearly chose not to live. Now you are here, but you can't go home. Home is too dark and too familiar with grief. You are brave, Alex. Go to him and ask him to call you by your name. Ask him to go with you into this new place of understanding. As Aretha did in your last book, you want to make that journey on your own, do you not?"

"Ricky is an idiot." Vincent said coldly, but it felt as if he were trying to drown himself, crushing his own heart as he said it.

"We have agreed not to lie to each other. Do you really feel your lover is an idiot?"

"No." Vincent closed his eyes. "I'm going to have a panic attack right now though. We need to cut this session short."

His therapist nodded. "Are you going to do it then?"

The panic attack grabbed Vincent then, tingles up the back of his neck, breath that wouldn't come. He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the couch and gripped it with both hands. If he wasn't careful, he'd forget how to breath all the way. "I can't live like this!"

"Do you want me to write you another prescription, Vincent?"

"No." He swallowed, closed his eyes and imagined that picture of them, of Ricky so full of life, bouncing like a maniac behind him, imagined Ricky's voice and words and he combed his hair back, great messy blond history. It was hair that he always wrote about, in his novels, people with beautiful hair and beautiful eyes, and beautiful tragic lives that always came out happy by 'The End'. He wasn't like that. Every day he woke up and it still hurt. What he'd done was like a vampire, sucking away any life he might have.

Then there was Ricky pouring life into him, like the sun pouring energy into some damn plant that had been locked in the closet. The sunlight was there. Life was there. He just had to open the god damn closet door!

"How do I open the door? You're so smart. How do I get out of the closet," he asked her, not expecting her to answer or have any idea what he was talking about.

She'd been his therapist for a long time though, and many other clients before Alex Vincent had come into her practice. "Forgive yourself, Vincent. Trust in at least one person."

"Forgive?" He looked up, only then realizing that he'd bowed his head. "Forgive? Alex is dead. Any man I might have been is dead."

"No, he's not. He comes to see me every week at just this time. Trust and forgiveness, Alex. Give someone your name."

It was bullshit and he knew it. And yet, he couldn't live like this. "That's it? That's all you've got to say after all the money I've paid you?"

She smiled, eyes too plain to be in a romance novel, and yet there was something in them that woke something in him, that cracked that door just a little. "Try it."

He stood up then, running thoughtful fingers over the stubble on his cheek. It had been two days since he'd been home. He hadn't even called Ricky, but he knew that his lover would be ecstatic to see him, would rush him and wrap him in his arms. Quite suddenly, he wanted that, wanted Ricky's embrace, his sunlight. "Next week," Vincent said.

Once in his car, Vincent pulled out his phone, dialed the number for Ricky's mobile phone with his thumb. It rang and rang and the light turned green and it rang on more. Each ring was like the light from the crack of the door getting smaller, dimmer. Finally he closed and threw it against the passenger door. Trust? What was trust? He brought his sunglasses forward and hit the gas.

Middle of the day, he hit the on ramp and sailed towards the coast. He didn't know where he wanted to go, or why. He wanted to just to not be here, not alone, not with lies. The panic attack was coming back and he wished it would just kill him, just, something.

Police lights slowed him though and he pulled over, running scenarios through his head. 'Popular Novelist Shot in Police Misunderstanding' 'Formerly Popular Novelist Arrested for Excessive Speeding Tickets.' When the police officer got to his window, he smiled at him and handed him his driver's license.

Then the phone started ringing.

"You can answer that, Mr. Vincent," the officer said, pleasantly smiling before continuing with his ticket.

He didn't want to answer it though. Still he leaned over and picked the thing up. He didn't want to police officer to think he was as upset as he was. 'Novelist Confined in Mental Hospital' was not going to be a headline any time soon. "Yes?"

"VINCENT! Where are you? Oh Vincent! I saw your number and I called right back! Penny had my phone and she didn't answer it! Vincent! Where are you? I miss you so much!"

Vincent held the phone away from his ear a bit as the police officer tried not to laugh. "Mr. Vincent, my wife reads your books and my son has posters with your partner all over his bed room. I have to give you the ticket, but I didn't write it for 102 mpg, only for 85. Would you please give me your autograph?"

"VINCENT? A hundred and two?!"

Vincent groaned, but in that groan, he found the door to the closet open, light filling his space. He found maybe not forgiveness, but a reason to value himself and a trust in his pink haired artist partner. He held up a finger to the police officer. "Ricky, take a week from work, go to the coast with me?"

"Yeah, sure Vincent, anything you want. Pick me up at ComicNow?" Confusion, but acceptance hung in Ricky's voice and whatever was with Ricky's phone, Vincent could hear Penny groaning about needed to finish twenty more pages in the back ground.

"I will be there. I want to talk to you, tell you everything," he said, still holding his finger up to the get the police officer to wait. Silently he added, to Ricky, 'I want to tell you my real name, because I trust you.'

After he closed the connection with Ricky, he gave the police officer two autographs and shoved the speeding ticket in the glove box with the other two. He'd pay them, soon even. Today though, he was going to pay for the sunlight with a little trust.


Chapter Two


Depression leaves. The void it leaves comes is just as loud sometimes. Vincent watched the girl make his coffee, but his mind wasn't really following her. His thoughts ran through memories of Ricky.

He started with the first attraction he'd felt. In the park, the energy and excitement, the very life in Ricky had both drawn him and awoke life he'd thought long dead. That first insult had been directed both to the pink haired artist and the young writer that lingered in the shadows of his own heart. It hadn't been about Ricky having talent. In truth, he suspected if the brat had had no talent, that the moment would never have happened between them. That zap of attraction, protection, and insult would not have snapped between them if Ricky had been untalented.

The moment turned in his memory making more facets. He'd shown writing to someone in a park once. Idly, he picked up a coffee stir stick and pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes. That moment in the park with Ricky, that had been a new start.

Of course, it could have all faded away, gone back to the smothering misery he'd had before, if Ricky had not practically killed himself trying to climb up to his apartment building to get in to meet him. Vincent wondered if he'd ever have another rainy night and not think about Ricky, arms out, rain-wet hair in his face, standing below this balcony, screaming his name. That moment in the park though, it was the start of Vincent's darker remembering

How fast old defenses and pain flared, burned through his numb soul, and turned to ashes under the fire that was Ricky's love. Pain had been a constant companion, but Ricky had forced his way into that place in Vincent's heart, forced out the hurt, but not without a fight from the hurt.

Some woman, blond, nicely built smiled at him then, thought she recognized him maybe. He turned away, picking up a mint from the counter, held it up to the clerk and she nodded, that she'd charge him for it. Ricky liked mint kisses.

When he'd told Ricky that he didn't want him because of he sucked in bed, he'd thought it true at the time. Didn't sex just coil around the soul sometimes though? He rolled the mint on his tongue. Ricky made him want, desire, woke his body as well as his memories, made everything messy and too real, clumsy and as he pressed the mint to the top of his mouth, too sweet.

The therapist, his doctor, wanted him to give Ricky his real name, to move away from having his lover call him by the name of his first lover, of the man he'd killed and hated himself for killing for years. Standing in the coffee shop, he found it hard to imagine writing a character who would have his lover call him by the name of a long dead lover, the name of a rapist. How clear things could get in the light of Ricky's fire. Pink fire.

"Mr. Vincent," the girl said, stressing it as if it were the second time she'd said it.

"Yes?" He asked, handing her a couple of notes that paid the bill and then, "Thank you."

Across the street from the café, the afternoon sun was making the ComicsNow building look like it had a halo. Brilliant bronze glass reflected the day like a shroud of redirection, making it almost impossible to see the building directly.  Vincent felt a kinship with the building.

The coffee tasted harsh on his tongue. The light reflecting off the windows of the ComicsNow building seemed harsh as well, and he let the rough rejection in it wash around him, reaching to hope and fragile trust instead.  He was done with shoving both Ricky and his own heart away. Alex, it was just his name, just such a far distant memory of innocence. Coffee in hand, he pulled his sleeve back and looked at his watch. Half an hour until he could pick up Ricky without getting his lover in trouble, or at least not so much trouble.

Traffic seemed light so he crossed, long steps and a cocky mood, maybe from the sunlight now hitting the back of his neck. The automatic doors opened and he moved without hesitation into Ricky's and Marco's domain. Marco. The need to see his sister's lover took him quite by surprise. It wasn't much of a surprise to find Marco in the elevator when the doors opened.

"Alex," the blond said, a look of concern, anxity on his face, growing quickly into alarm and Alex opened his arms and took him into a hug. "Alex?"

"Marco," Alex said. "Thank you."

"Alex," Marco said, real concern in his voice now. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes," he answered in English, a language that had so many meanings layered on it for him. "Yes, everything is fine. I'm here to pick up Ricky. I'm taking him to the coast."

Marco leaned back a little, his hands taking hold of Alex's shoulders, eyes searching his face. "Where have you been? What's happened?"

Alex smiled, taking his sunglasses off. He wasn't ready to be as easy and open with Marco as the blond man might have liked, but he didn't feel like running either. "A little more time, Marco. Lunch when I get back?"

"Yes, of course," Marco said in that soft voice of his and Alex wondered what kind of art Marco was making these days.

"I have things to say to you, but when I come back."

"Yes, yes, of course. It is so nice to see you so changed." Marco tilted his head and smiled.

Such beautiful eyes, Alex thought, if the world had been different. "When I come back, Marco."

He blinked again. "When you come back. Take Ricky then." He said, as if rather bemused by the change in his friend, confused by it almost, as if the void left by Alex's departed misery left him without really knowing what to do as well. "Things have changed?"

Alex shrugged, but there was that bit of smile at the edge of his lips as he took his sunglasses all the way off. If he said something about pink fire to the Marco, his friend would think him mad perhaps. "When I come back."

Marco turned and watched Alex get in the elevator and Alex watched him as the doors closed.

Somehow he thought it was the happily ever after now, at least in this moment. Stories never went far enough. They never showed what to do after the horror, after the tears. People were just supposed to know how to live, how to breath, how to take the ones they loved in their arms. Nervous now for some reasons he didn't take time to explain to himself, he straightened his hair in the chrome of the elevator.

This time when the elevator doors opened it was Ricky that launched through them. "VINCENT! Vincent! I'm so happy to see you!"

He had no time to see what his singer wore or anything else before the ball of pink fire, of vital life energy had him pressed back against the elevator wall, arms around his neck, lips to lips. Ricky's tongue slipped into his mouth, his fingers into his hair. The doors closed behind him and blindly Alex reached for the emergency stop button. Maybe he couldn't wait till they go the coast.

Chapter Three



The trip to the coast was silent. Ricky got more anxious as they went. He loved Vincent. Loved him with all his being, but he was always feeling on the edge of losing him. It upset his stomach, worrying about what it was that Vincent had wanted to tell him.

"Can't you tell me now," he asked, an almost whiny tone in his voice.

"No." Vincent said it coldly, watching the road, trying not to think about how he was going to explain to Ricky what he needed to. It would be so simple. Call me Alex. My name is Alex. It just involved crossing over to trusting Ricky, to showing him his real face, his heart. Being the impeccable prince, writer extraordinaire, cold hearted bastard, well, that, that was just so much easier than being Alex.  "Be quite, Ricky."

"I wish we were still in the elevator," Ricky pouted, sticking his arm out the window to catch the air as they went around the corner. Vincent was driving too fast, but that wasn't anything unusual.

"It would be nice if it were always easy and sweaty," Vincent said, kicking himself for the sting in his words.

Ricky looked down at his bare knees, rubbed the edge of one shoe against the other and thought about the pages of manga he wasn't getting done. "Why did you bring me, if I just irritate you, uh? It's been like this for the last couple of months. Stop being mean, uh? If you're building up to tell me something I don't wanna hear, just do it. Don't make me wait. It'll only make it hurt more."

One hand on the wheel, Vincent ran his other hand through blond hair. This had been so much easier in his plans, even hugging Marco had been easier. "I don't understand why this has got to be so hard. Ricky, I don't want to hurt you."

Sighing, Ricky lay the seat back and stared at the sky. "Like you didn't mean to be driving a 102? Vincent, I love you."

"I know you do," Vincent said, turning off the main road, heading towards the ComicsNow beach house.

Suddenly it felt more relaxed off the main road, on the rougher gravel road, just the two of them. Or maybe it was that Ricky had said he loved him, yet again. "I love you too, my brat."

"You do?" Ricky sat up, tripping the lever on the seat so quickly that the seat almost smacked him into the dashboard. "Say it again, Vincent! Tell me you love me again!"

Vincent looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, but pulled the car up beside the beach house and cut the lights. There in the dark they sat, Ricky vibrating in his seat, Vincent shivering deep inside so that it didn't show. "I love you, brat."

"Vincent!" Ricky said, launching himself across the small foreign car. Vincent opened the door and let Ricky almost sail right out the door, but at the very last moment he caught his floating lover and pulled him close, holding him like a bride in his arms as he stepped out of the car, Ricky's arms around his neck. "Say it again, Vincent!"

"Don't call me that and be quiet, Ricky, just for another moment, please."

"Sure," Ricky said, leaning back a little, so blue eyes could look into brown eyes, "You sure you'd okay?"

"I saw the therapist today." Vincent set Ricky down on his feet and walked away as he drew the key from his jacket pocket.

"So you're okay, right? You don't have to take any more medications, right?" Ricky followed along hands shoved in the pocket of his shorts. He wanted the sexual tension back that they'd had in the elevator. He wanted anything but this drain on his feelings. Without warning, Vincent rounding on him, leaving the door unopened and caught him by the shirt, pulling him close, until they were nose to nose.

"My name is Alex. That's my first name. Don't call me Vincent anymore. You're too important to me. My name is Alex."

Ricky tilted his head just a little, their eyes still locked. "Alex," he whispered, leaning closer. Lips to lips, familiar lips, and yet completely brand new. His breath fluttered in his throat, his chest and he rose up on the balls of his feet, one arm going around Alex's back. "Alex. I love you, Alex."


Chapter Four

Alex stood on the back porch, watching the waves roll in. The sky was blue, the beach white and the ocean endless.  Alex Vincent felt American, felt like he belonged in this picture. Behind him, in their beach house, he could hear Ricky's muffled singing. Alex didn't even have to turn around to see him to know that he was dancing in the kitchen, headphones on, shorts mostly dusted free of sand and no shirt at all. The singing was muffled because Ricky was trying to sing without making any sound and he couldn't hear himself. The music was so loud in those headphones that Alex could hear it all the way out on the porch. Ricky fit into this picture of Alex's life too.

The tide was slipping away, pulling at the wet sand each time it fell back. Alex had expected it to hurt more, this letting go of Vincent, of the shell he'd protected himself with. When he'd torn the photo, dropped it into the ocean that day at the airport a kind of pain had swelled in him, taking the pain that ate his stomach away and banding his heart until his whole body ached. Surviving can break the heart.

And yet

Here he was. Ricky loved him. "Hey Brat!"

Pink hair and violet eyes peeked out the open door. "Vin..," he paused, "Alex?"

"So you can hear under those things. I don't know how you manage it. You're going to damage your hearing." Alex turned, leaning against the railing, ocean breeze picked up his hair. "Come here?"

Ricky shoved his headphones off and stepped out on the porch. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It showed in the tension in those slender shoulders, the way his feet took an almost defensive posture.

"It's my fault," Alex said, tilting his head, taking in all of Ricky, from the sun burn started on his shoulders and nose to the way his knee had started a very slight nervous twitch. "It's my fault you're nervous now. It was because I had to be Vincent and no one can  really have Vincent, no one could love him."

"But I love you, Vi... Alex. I love you, Alex." Ricky said, looking if anything a little tenser now.

Alex Vincent had never backed down from anything. He hammered his plots until they worked, he forced smiles and faced people who despised him because he didn't live the straight fairy tale everyone seemed to want for him. He'd survived that hurt. He'd faced the grief he felt over the real Vincent, the really dead one, once he'd made the decision to live. "I know you do, Ricky. I love you too."

"Alex!" Ricky nearly screamed before

Alex found himself wrapped in blue eyed comic artist. "Say it again, Alex!"

"I love you," Alex repeated as he scooped his lover up in his arms. One arm under his knees, the other hugging Ricky close, "I want to put lotion on your shoulders. You're going to burn as pink as your hair."

"Is it going to be lemon flavored lotion," Ricky asked, nuzzling Alex's shoulder. Lemon, in the manga, graphic novel world, meant sex scene.

"Not really." Alex said as he set Ricky down on the bathroom counter and opened the medicine cabinet. "I just wanted to talk, about, uh, why I'm such an asshole sometimes."

"It doesn't matter, does it? I mean, just be nice from now on." Ricky smiled, but it only lasted a moment before it twitched away. "Alex, it feels weird to call you that, but if you wanna talk, we can talk about whatever you need to. I'll listen."

"Vincent's dead, I stabbed him." Alex said, feeling that band tighten around his heart again. Outside on the porch, he'd felt so good, so much like he belonged. Now, now he wondered if he could trust Ricky at all. The world wasn't fair, giving him a lover he loved with all his being, but maybe couldn't trust. "And then I couldn't let him die, even though, he was already dead. He was my lover."

"Why? Alex, why did you stab him?" Ricky asked. His voice had lost that summer at the beach lightness, had lost some element of frivolous Ricky.

There it was. The Big Thing Between Them. They'd been dancing around it, from the day Ricky had showed up in the park that night, from the screaming for him outside his apartment. It was between them, this history of Alex's. Not that Ricky didn't have his own history, his own share of bruises that Alex could feel responsible for too.

Bottle of lotion in on hand, hip against Ricky's knee, Alex laid his head on Ricky's shoulder. Ricky wrapped an arm around Alex's back, and they both looked at each other in the mirror because they couldn't look at each other directly.

To be raped is to be told in a language so deep that the soul understands even if the mind doesn't, to be told that you are less than worthless, that your pain brings another pleasure. Ricky brought his fingers up and combed them through Alex's hair.

It was a hole in both their souls. A hole too large to cross, as they stared at each other. Tears came easily to Ricky, as if blue could slide right down his cheek.

"Alex," he said the name slowly, as Alex's fingers came up to touch the tears on Ricky's cheek. "We were talking about trust earlier, and you said I should call you by your real name. You gave me your name, I'll show you my heart, my whole soul, every thing I am."

"You always do, Ricky," Alex said, bringing his fingers back to his mouth and licking the tears away. "I know what that bastard did to you."

"How do you know," Ricky asked, his voice gone deadly thin. "The photos?"

"Never developed. No one will ever see them," Alex promised. "I know, because I see myself in you. I see it in the way you wince in your sleep. In the way you freeze when we make love. I see it in the way you struggle to write. Now listen to me, please."

"Okay," Ricky squeaked, his knees drawing together even as he held tighter to Alex.

"I thought, just now, when you asked me about lemon lotion, if I trusted you or not. I thought maybe I had a choice, but I don't. I trust you more than any one I've ever known and if I can't show you my whole heart and soul then I'll never show them to anyone."

Ricky blinked, bits of information finally catching up to one another. "That's why you stabbed him. Because he raped you?" Color drained from Ricky's cheeks as he said that and Alex reached up to touch his face again, caress his cheek.

"I didn't plan it. He raped me and he had a knife," Alex said, eyes closing, then opening back as if the dark were too present. His words sounded to him like something on a late night talk show, something cheesy and unbelievable. "I got the knife away from him. Just one of those stupid kitchen knives.  I Marco covered it up. I came back to Seattle."

"Alex," Ricky said one hand holding Alex's hand to his face.

"Do you know how I learned that I wasn't," Alex couldn't say it, couldn't say or find a word that meant dangerous, worthless, vile, diseased.

"How?" Ricky asked, like he wanted to know the answer too.

Alex pulled back and took Ricky's chin between his fingers, looking directly into his eyes. "Because when you were raped, I loved you just as I had. What he did to you did not change how valuable you are to me, how precious and innocent and creative you are… I love you just exactly the same. So I began to understand that what happened to me didn't ruin me either. Can you really love me, knowing I was raped by my first lover and that I stabbed him to death? Really look me in the eyes and love me?"

"Alex," Ricky started, laying a finger over Alex's lips. "I thought a part of me died that night. Just stopped. I didn't know how anyone could hate me that much, that I had to have done something real bad, and at first I thought it was because I loved you so much and that it was wrong for me to, to love you, cuz you were a guy. Marco said it was my fault that you went away and I should have," Ricky stopped talking eyes dropping until Alex's finger lifted his chin.

"Did you think about dying?"

Ricky grimaced his nose wrinkling, "No. I mean, I thought I ought to consider that. It would have honorable. But mostly I just kept thinking I'd be okay if you were near me. I'm bad and greedy."

"So am I," Alex said sliding his thumb over Ricky's lips. "I have no right to desire you, to want the pleasures of life. From the moment I met you in the park, the safe numbness I'd been hiding in has faded. Now I either trust you and I learn to live, or I shut down, and I'm lying to myself if I try to believe I have any other options. I love you and that love pulls trust out of me like some happily ever after in one of my books. Don't be angry at yourself for what happened in the garage anymore, Ricky. It wasn't your fault and it doesn't change how beautiful you are to me, how precious. Do you trust me?"

A silence settled between them, with Ricky reaching to touch Alex's face, trace the track of tears he hadn't cried. "Alex," Ricky whispered, "I do trust you and if you say it didn't make me ugly or bad, I believe you. It's not just how my heart got hurt by what happened. It's that it hurt. It tore and I screamed and it hurt." Fresh tears burned down his face and from Alex's eyes as well. "You have to trust me that it's not about you, when I pull away, or when I freeze. It's not about you, because I want your touch, I live for it. I trust you and I crave you."

Alex found his smile again, just a small smile, he reached up and brushed his fingers trough Ricky's hair. "It's this living thing, makes me feel alive when I think about you. I did something auto-erotic once while reading your comics."

Ricky blushed, then laughed, chin to his chest, giggling.

"Come here, let's go watch the sun set," Alex said, pulling Ricky from the counter as the smaller singer wrapped his legs around Alex's waist, his arms around his neck. As Alex carried him back out to the porch, Ricky's head on his shoulder, he promised, "I'll kill anyone who hurts you again."

"No," Ricky said, rubbing his cheek against Alex's, "Just trust me. I can heal from anything, as long as you still think I'm wonderful."

The sun was golden, red, the beautiful Pacific sun over the ocean as Alex sat down on the porch steps. To compliment Ricky so openly, was to say that maybe he wasn't stupid, maybe he was right about Alex being worth being loved. That made him take a couple of slow breaths. "I will always think you're wonderful, brat, my wild little pink haired lover. I will trust you like the Earth trusts the sun, and I'll orbit around you forever."

"Hey," Ricky sat up, then shyly, almost as if he was kissing Alex for the first time, "You be the sun, I'll be the Earth. Cuz you're all golden and I got an Earthy mind."

"Dirty mind," Alex corrected, "Very dirty."

"Whatever," Ricky said, slipping off Alex's lap to sit beside him, holding his hand as they watched the sun slip into twilight. "What if I always flinch, when we have sex?"

"I'll love you and trust you if we never have sex again and I'll be happy so long as we wake up next to each other and you smile at me." He squeezed Ricky's hand slightly, avoiding his lover's searching look.

"If we never have sex again, we'll wear out my collection of your books."

Laughing, Alex teased, "I thought you used Gackt CDs."

"Hey! I have your books on CD. That works good." Ricky laid his head against Alex's shoulder. Alex laid his head against Ricky's head. "Alex."

"Um?"

"Thank you for trusting me."


Chapter Five

It was all there between them. It had to be for this moment. Ricky turned in the hall way that lead to the bedroom. Alex paused. If memories could be photos, sit on the desk, this the one he'd want. Ricky smiling so brightly, a smile that took up half his face. Shirt off, shoulders sunburned, just loose gray shorts and sandy feet, Ricky backed down the hall, hair shaking as he laughed. "Alex! Make love to me!"

Ricky had the most beautiful voice. Along with the happy, very much alive man who was his lover, today, Alex could see, as if it were a superimposed image, the battered and emotionally desperate boy screaming in the rain. They didn't have to be separate. The one did not represent the death of the other.

Alex closed the distance between them, planted his hands on the doorframe, leaning just enough that golden eyes could look right into violet. Ricky's giggle was so clean, so true to him, so deep into him, that Alex felt as if Ricky's laughter could ripple across his own soul, could reach to the boy he'd been so many years ago, so lost and hurt. Lips brushing against Ricky's ear as he spoke, kissing softly, even with his words, "How do you do it, reach so fucking deeply into me, make me into the boy I was once?"

Ricky's fingers slipped under the untucked edges of Alex's shirt, moving over pale skin, skin and body that time had passed over in some breath holding way. "Alex? I'm just me, just who I am. Do you want me to be different? I could try. I could take up writing travel journals, or something."

Hoarse, voice low and razed by emotion, "No. I want you just as you are, brat," he growled as he lifted Ricky from his feet with one hand. One arm around Ricky's waist, he held him close, carried him. "Whatever you are for the world, be yourself for me. I need you," Alex planted one knee on the bed and laid Ricky back on it, arm still under him, pinning him with his body. "I need you, Ricky. I need you as if I'll never find my way back into the light without you."

"Alex," Ricky purred, no more the innocent youth, the man just out of home, but wiser in ways than his lover, less weathered by time though, and the word, three sounds strung together like pink pearls, a spoken kiss, "Alex, I want you."

Alex lifted him with that one arm under him, drew him further up into the bed. They made love; five or six times a week, if one of them wasn't out signing books or too tired. There were so many ways to touch and pleasure a lover. There was one particular thing they had not done since Ricky had come screaming in the rain and Alex had found the bruises on his lover's body. Then they'd coupled, joined, even though Ricky cried in pain and held on for dear life, and Alex had died inside to do it. Nine months later, they had not crossed that line again.

Ricky had offered, begged, seduced, and Alex had distracted, refused, firmly offered other ways to share pleasure. At first it had been Ricky's fear that if he didn't, couldn't give that to Alex that he'd lose Alex's love. Then it had been a fear that Alex thought he was broken defiled, disgusting somehow. Nine months was too small a time to come so far forward, but this day had been special. Alex kissed Ricky's lips, sucked the lower one in between his teeth, licking at it as the smaller man purred, moaned, and wiggled out of his shorts.

Alex had moved onto Ricky's throat as a Ricky moved on to unbuttoning his shirt, getting still more innocent than skilled fingers over skin that Alex thought had turned to marble over the years. "No, I don't want that."

Ricky groaned and lifted his head to kiss, work over Alex's ear. "Okay, what do you want?"

"You take me."

Stillness. Ricky fell back to the bed, and Alex pulled his arm out from under Ricky, one hand resting to either side of Ricky's head. Now that was something they'd never done. "Alex?"

"You heard me," Vincent Alex said, lowering himself so they lay chest to chest. "Do you want to?"

Ricky bit his lip, hooking one leg around Alex's knee, as his fingertips reached up to slide across Alex's blond eyelashes. "You're crying."

"I'm scared." Alex said, the most vulnerable moment of his adult life.

"We don't have to. I'm ready, really, for you to take me though."

Alex drew a slow breath, and one teardrop fell on to Ricky's cheek, rolled down into pink hair. "No, I'm ready and I've waited longer. I'll talk you through it."

"Okay, Alex," Ricky said, knowing that Alex would be able to feel his erection through his pants. "You talk me through it."

"No one has," Alex said, leaving unspoken the scary part, "Not since Madrid."

"I like it when you touch me with your tongue," Ricky suggested, offering.

"Want to start with that," Alex asked.

Ricky nodded. "Want to wash a little and I'll light some candles & warm up the oil?"

Alex nodded and rolled off the bed. "Shower too. You've got sea salt everywhere."

"You're so mean!" Ricky teased, now on his hands and knees.

Shirt open, Alex needed two steps to close back to Ricky and catch his chin between his fingers, to kiss him firmly, controlling. "That mean enough for you?"

Ricky melted, lay on his back, arms hanging over the edge of the bed, head too, as he watched Alex walk towards the bathroom. "Damn, how am I supposed to think, let alone shower after a kiss like that? I could just lay here and float for hours!" If it had been anime, lavender hearts would have floated over Ricky's head, he would have poured off the bed into a boneless pool of Ricky in pink and glitter.

"You'll find a way, if you want to get laid. Use the shower outside. I'm using the one here." Alex said, shutting the door, his voice too tender to really be angry.

The shower outside was cold, nothing more than a way to rinse sand off before going inside and Ricky hopped from foot too foot, making little howling noises as he was being careful to wash every place. There were some parts of his body that never got used to cold water!

When he let himself back into the kitchen, he found a thick fluffy pink towel waiting for him. Slowly, drying off and chasing goosebumps, he went back to the bedroom.

Alex had beat him back and now lay in the center of the bed, on the sheet with the rest of the covers folded and laid over the back of the computer chair. A candle burned on either nightstand. The small candle was warming the oil in their special little warmer thing. Alex lay in the middle of the bed, a fact that Ricky need to think about again, to get his mind around that he was going to penetrate his lover for the first time.

Blond hair on black satin sheets, pale legs bent, spread wide, casting shadows over the golden hair around Alex's soft cock. "Oh, Alex, if you know," Ricky said, crawling onto the bed, on his hands and knees, leaving little drips of cold water. "If you don't want to."

"Ricky, I want to." It was said in a growling enforcer voice, the one Alex got when he'd made up his mind to finish a story at three in the morning after being up trying for days. Which only made the doubt in his next words more painful for Ricky to hear, "Unless you don't want to. Do you want me?"

Ricky knew that doubt, fear, and he soothed as best as he could by blowing on the inside of Alex's thigh, down towards those shadowy blond curls around Alex's privates. "I want to, but you're going to talk me through it, right? I wouldn't do a thing until you tell me."

"Touch my hair, there, you know my pubic hair," Alex said, sounding younger and less sure of himself than Ricky had ever heard him. "With your fingers."

Kneeling between Alex's bent knees, Ricky let his fingers brush the top of Alex's pubic hair, as soft as he'd brushed his wet eyelashes. "Like this?"

"Yes, but deeper, really touch, but don't touch my penis." Alex grabbed a pillow and propped himself up more, fingers nervously combing into his damp blond hair.

Ricky buried his fingers then, separated damp wet pubic hair, and combed it up. "It's very soft. It's so pretty, blond pubic hair. I wish mine was pink."

"Yeah? No dying that. Think about getting bleach on your balls," Alex laughed, imagining a screaming, howling Ricky, yelling, "My balls, my balls!"

"What are you imagining?" Ricky asked, curling blond pubic hair around his finger.

"You don't want to know, just don't bleach your pubs" Alex said, smiling adoringly at Ricky.

"Wouldn't have to bleach yours to make them pink. Can I kiss them?"

"Yes, kiss, but don't touch me," Alex let his words fade off, expecting Ricky to understand. "You can dye me pink there, next time you're going to some convention and you'll be gone a week."

Pubs held between his lips, Ricky looked up, eyes wide with surprise, imagining his worst fear, Alex with a female fan, the woman's eyes bugging out as she screams, 'You're pink down there!' Laughter caught him making him spit out hair, except for one that got on his tongue.

"What?" Alex snarled.

"I'll tell you if you tell me," Ricky offered, words mumbled as he chased one blond hair around in his mouth.

"Maybe later," Alex dodged, "When you're done chasing my hair, stick your tongue up me."

The sheer naughty vulgarity of it made Ricky's cock twitch, his belly tighten and he forgot about the hair, was back on his knees, fingers parting Alex's cheeks as the blond shifted, offering himself.

The skin wasn't like Ricky had expected. It was soft, smooth, folded over and gathered, tasting like Alex, like Alex's cheek or the back of Alex's neck, only his tongue slipped easily inside his lover. It was warmer inside and tasted like soap, slightly bitter, like Alex's weird French soap. Ricky didn't pull away though, because he was afraid Alex would think it was because of Alex, not the soap, so Ricky just closed his eyes, his forehead resting against Alex's soft scrotum, and thrust his tongue deep into the man he loved more than he could ever put into any story.

Alex's fingers caressed his hair, oblivious to any dark roots that might be there, caressing right into Ricky's heart and soul. "Oh, that does feel good," Alex said, comfortable. "Stop now."

Ricky pulled back, licking, once at Alex's ass, before Alex tensed and Ricky realized he hadn't been told it was okay to do that. "Sorry."

"Is okay," Alex said, but Ricky could hear the tension. He waited, doing nothing, just waiting.

"Sit up and put oil on yourself," Alex instructed, holding the warmed ceramic bowl of oil on his bare belly. "I want to watch you stroke yourself."

"Okay," Ricky said, dipping his fingers right into the oil, which dripped over Alex's belly, weighed down a few blond hairs. It made Ricky moan as he trailed oily fingers down his own cock. He wasn't as big as Alex and that had given him issues for a while, but in the end, like he didn't care if Alex wrote for books that appealed to people who wanted to compare it to the Iliad or for him and his comics. Anything Alex wrote was good. What mattered was the total amount of cock between them not who had the most, and that logic he'd never shared with his brilliant writer lover.

The oil and his slow movements up and down his own cock drove out all thought as he rubbed, thumb rubbing at the sensitive spot where his head made a little V.

"Have you ever thought about fucking me," Alex asked, fascinated by Ricky's fingers. "I like your dark hair. God, you're beautiful."

Ricky moaned, fingers all the way around himself, stroking slowly to his dark hair, then back up.

Crying again he sat up, caught Ricky by surprise, hand at the back of his head, as he drew him into a kiss, busted his lip on Ricky's teeth and got blood in their mouths, but refused to let go the kiss. Lip already swelling by the time he let Ricky go; he sniffed back tears. "Okay, put a finger inside me, a finger that you touched yourself with."

Ricky didn't argue or point out that Alex's lip was swelling, just leaned over and slipped a pointer finger into him, circling outside at the first, then pressing and sliding easily into the heat, the soft flesh that closed around him. His eyes went wide. "You're so hot inside!"

"So are you, hotter than any woman I ever did."

"Ouch," Ricky said, head lowering a little, until Alex caught his chin and lifted his eyes back up.

"I love you. I love you, Ricky and I will never make love to anyone else as long as you want me."

"I'll always want you." Ricky said, his lips lifting in a smile. "I busted your lip."

With a slight lisp, Alex whispers. "I know now put your cock in me."

"Put a pillow under your ass?"

"You too short little boy?"

"You're such an asshole, Alex!" Ricky said grabbing a pillow and smacked him with it, before shoving the pillow under Alex's now oily bottom. "Don't you want two fingers, scissors, you know, like you do to me?"

Alex said, eyes twinkling with laughter. "You're not as big as I am."

Ricky grimaced, inching forward on his knees, cock bouncing until Alex caught it and aimed it down. The first hit was right between the back of Alex's scrotum and his entrance and it was hard. They both looked at each other, Ricky feeling small and worried, and still hard enough that he could bite something. Alex was soft still, but he touched Ricky's cheek. "I'm never going to let you drive."

"I," Ricky said, then stressed the next couple words, "am not the one with a glove box full of speeding tickets!"

"Oh," Alex leaned back, relaxed, "you know about those?"

Ricky rolled his eyes. "I paid them," he said, voice very low, but the head of his cock was now pressing at that puckery oiled skin, circling as his finger had. "So many nerves at the tip! Did they just get there?"

"No, brat," Alex snarled, somewhat pissed that Ricky had paid his speeding tickets, "You've just had your brain in your ass not your cock! Ahhh!"

Ricky had slipped inside the ring of muscle. "Relax, Alex, like you told me, breath, relax."

"Did I say that?" Alex hissed, rolling his hips a little, reaching out to take a handful of Ricky's pink hair. "What else did I say?"

After that brief pause, Ricky pushed farther in, Alex's flesh closing in around him, hot and slick and, "How talk now..." buried all the way in, he closed his eyes and tried not to just cum, right there and then! "I think you said I should stop whining cuz it didn't hurt that badly."

"I said that? I'm an asshole." Alex tugged on Ricky's hair, pulling him closer.

"It does start feeling better, Alex, want me to stop?"

"You must love me a lot," Alex said, his other fingers caressing over Ricky's face the way a blind man might to memorize a face.

"No, you said that too, 'do you want me to stop'" Ricky said as he kissed Alex's fingers.

"It doesn't really hurt, not like I remember it did. Move, aim forward like I do to you."

"Aim? Fuck, Alex, I can't think that much!" Ricky said, and he felt himself rolled, so he was on his back and Alex was straddling him. "Owww, don't bend it!"

"If I break it, I'll buy it," Alex teased, slowly starting to stroke Ricky with himself, controlling it so that he was the one fucking almost and Ricky was his sweet little uke lover, writhing below him on the black satin. "You're beautiful."

"Aahhhhhhhh!" Ricky groaned, losing his pearls into Alex.

Alex held him, arms around him, holding Ricky's sweating face against his chest as the younger man seemed to pump, and twitch for way longer than he usually did. "Sweet god! Alex! Oh god, every time it backs off, you're still there, around me, oh man!"

"Ricky, you make me feel clean," Alex said, kissing pink hair, even though he could see the very tiny dark roots from this angle, and he knew that was a stupid cliché, but he felt that way, he did. He felt like he'd cleaned himself inside and out today, run pink Ricky through himself like Ricky brand soul floss. "No, you make me all brand new and yet still myself."

Shaking, Ricky reached up to touch Alex's back with one hand then the other, "But you haven't cum yet."

"Damn teenager, is that all you think about?" Alex said, not sounding like he was teasing, though Ricky knew he was. Then they were lying there, and Ricky reached to touch Alex's cock, which had never gotten hard.

"Alex?"

"I just wanted something else right now." Alex said, getting up to grab the covers. "I'll take you later, hard, and make you cum again, but let's sleep a little first."

Satisfied, half asleep anyway, Ricky fell into sleep wrapped in Alex's arms. Alex's tears soaked into Ricky's hair, but they were happy tears, tears of freedom and renewal. "I trust you," he whispered, believing it now, as if he could believe in unicorns. "I really trust you."

Ricky didn't hear him, but Alex knew his little comic artist lover knew it anyways, and probably always had.

Black's Medicine

Black’s Medicine

by Nix Winter
all rights reserved
copyright 2009

please do not archive or transmit
please just share the link




They’d fought.

Not that such an event would be difficult. A rich Englishman and a poor Irishman, even living in China couldn’t take away the sting of heritage. Dr. Black straightened, tongue pushing against the inside of his upper lip. Chinese night wrapped around him, soaking into short dark hair. Shoulders tense, he moved down the wooden sidewalk in the British Quarter with a firm step. The muted lights and laughter, drunken conversation, filtered out into the street. Chin to chest, Dr. Black glanced back over a shoulder, tingles across shoulders worried about being followed, about all manner of things that could hunt a lone, diminutive Irish person into the night.

His thumb smoothed over Derringer in his coat pocket, the metal warm under his touch. Some secrets could not be... ignored. Panic was cold black iron in his throat, knotting up his breath.

Whitehall lacked all honor and even basic reasoning skills. Black’s jaw clenched.

“Hello, honey,” a female voice said, softly honeyed English draped in Chinese mystery and temptation. “You lonely?”

Dr. Black pulled his hand from his pocket and cleared his throat. The woman leaning closer to him wore what once had been a lady’s dress, but had, quite obviously, seen several owners. Thick black hair pulled up into a bun, pinned with jeweled, but unmated hair pins, powder lightened her face, but dark eyes still watched her prey.

“No, really, I’m looking for a British man, dark hair, violet eyes,” Black said, taking a step backwards.

The woman titled her head, red painted lips parting slightly, then slowly rising into a smile. “He not like men, like that.” The smile broadened a little. “You dress wrong.”

Black’s lips drew into a tight line, nervous energy tingling over deft surgeon hands. “Do you know this personally,” Black asked in Chinese.

Tittering, nightingale laughter, and a cunning smile, the woman pointed across the dirt road to a stone building, warm light filtering through closed shutters. “Dice there,” she said, staying with English. “Everyone know Dice. Even the men.” The last carried a suggestive smile, the flick of a pink tongue against red lip.

Backing away, Black lost his balance when the side walk ended, but kept his footing on the half mud road. Glaring up at her as she walked on, Black’s hair stood on end. Turning on his heel, he picked his way across the muddy street towards the bar, brothel, tavern, whatever it was on the other side. He stepped up to the other sidewalk, jerking his coat tight around him, face grimacing.

Dice’s voice was light, floating among the others, his Chinese lovely and nuanced as he called for another round. Black stood there, just the dark side of the threshold, listening. Violet eyes, fine black hair that could catch the sunlight or rise on the breeze, a little too long for a properly groomed gentleman, Emile ‘Dice’ Whitehall was what one got when one mixed British nobility with too much intelligence, too much money, and a spirit that couldn’t be bound by anything short of death.

Explaining anything to him required a language that had not been taught in Dublin, nor Boston, and certainly would not adapt to broken medical centric Chinese. Black’s stomach dropped, the iron panic sinking from throat down to pin feet to the wood sidewalk. He was a siren, with twilight eyes and reckless poetry spilling from soft lips. There are some thresholds in life that one crosses, knowing that they can never be uncrossed.

Head held high, Dr. Patrick Black walked into the noise of Dice’s foxhole. The argument wasn’t over until it was over. Explosions, memories, made white noise in Black’s thoughts, wiping out much of treasured reason. Pistol out, pressed casually behind him, he was seventeen again, with great secrets, entering a building to find his captain and the American. The scent of mustard colored the air with fear and his pistol felt wrong in his hand.

Someone screamed at him in Chinese, which was so out of place, jarring, and he suddenly found himself back in a bar in China, a man the size of a German tank and inked in black dragons glaring at him.

“No entry. Members only!”

“Oh yes,” Black growled, pistol under the man’s jaw so quickly. “I want Dice. Dice Whitehall.”

Dr. Black backed the man through a curtain of jade beads into the light and opium din of the room beyond.

A lovely woman, willowy and graceful, slipped her fingers between the guard and the four barrels of the little pistol. “Now, such difficulties do not belong in The Lotus of Joy. I don’t want you shooting my best customer, Dr. Black,” Bai Lian said.

Black blinked, a couple of times, drawing his pistol back. “I don’t want to shot him. I want to... talk to him.”

Bai Lian trailed her fingers over Dr. Black’s hand, up to one neatly starched cuffs. “You smell like you want to fuck him. I know the smell of another woman who is ready to fuck, especially one that doesn’t work for me. Trousers alone don’t change what you are, Doctor.”

“I’m,” Dr. Black started, licking thin pale lips, chin dropping slightly, “I’m Dr. Patrick Black. I fought in The Great War. I don’t know what you’re talking about, woman.”

Long nails touched Dr. Black’s cheek, lightly tracing towards a softly curved jaw, over towards the curve of a lip. “Europeans are blind. I will not forgive you if you take away so much of my profits.”

“Blackie,” Dice said. He emerged from the smoke that puffed out around him, but he cut it in half when he closed the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Dr. Black hastily slipped the gun back into a coat pocket. “I needed... to talk to you.”

“She wants to fuck you,” Bai Lian complained, “Probably for free. You know the rules about bringing other people’s women into my places.”

Dice ran a hand through wild black hair, pushing it back from his face. “Black’s my friend. He’s small, but... He’s no woman. He’s a doctor, for shit’s sake.”

“Whitehall,” Black snapped, gaze snapping back through the path he’d entered from, eyes and soul on the floor. “I’m sorry.”

Just walking away shouldn’t have hurt so badly. The pain only made Black walk faster.

“Black!” Dice yelled. His voice already faded with distance. “You sodding idiot! Come back! Patrick!

Of the two of them, Dice knew the city’s streets and back ways much better than the doctor ever would. The doctor ran from demons more frightening that a British playboy would probably understand. Closer to dawn, the vaporish yellow light fingering between buildings, the playboy caught the doctor. On his hands and knees, forehead to the filthy road, arms over his head, Dr. Black cried.

Dice plopped down on the open dirt of the alley, arms around his bent knees. “You’re really not a girl.”

“Really,” Black asked sarcastically.
“Hell yeah, even some crazy Irish woman won’t try to shot someone for asking her to marry them.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Dr. Black started, then sat up, running a hand through short hair the color of a dark mouse, mouse brown hair, “I wasn’t going to shoot you. I just, I just didn’t want to go through the streets unprotected and well, I needed to see you.”

“So you see me? Look, I just... what was I supposed to say?”

Dr. Black reached out a hand, brushing dirt from Dice’s trousers. “You say what it is you mean. Why on Earth, just because you found out.... that.. why would you ask me to marry you?”

“Well,” Dice said, drawing the word out. “It’s just, I, well, for the longest time, I’ve found myself happier when I’m with you than when I’m not and it’s not like the world is a good place for a woman alone. I wanted to, you know, protect you.”

“Be my knight in shining armor,” Black snapped, arms across a very flat chest. “I don’t need such a thing. I won’t marry you.”

“I should still like to kiss you,” Dice said, tentative, voice soft. “I’ve thought of little else, since, I realized really.”

“And when was that,” Black snapped, chin tucked away to a shoulder, face hidden.

“That time, when we were out with London, Christmas shopping. Black, Christ’s Hell, I just want to do things honorably with you.”

“That would be marrying me? Can’t you want me as I am? London and Jonathan don’t have any trouble being together.”

“I pity the poor bastard that gets in London’s way,” Dice muttered. He reached out, dirty fingers ruffling over Black’s short hair. “Has your hair always been short?”

“No. Before my parents died, it was down to my waist. I was a poor example of a girl, bookish and awkward. I couldn’t stand the idea of being’s someone wife or someone’s whore. When my mother died, and I loved my mother. If I could have been a woman like her, that would have been a different thing. She was so brave and strong, but I’m not. I just wanted to work, to make my way, and when Dr. Lamb took me under his wing... Medicine just was easy and made so much sense. I started being able to help people, and I wasn’t going back. I wasn’t going to be nothing, just something to be owned by some man.”

Dice scratched his chin with the back of his thumb, a foot sneaking closer over to Black’s foot. “You never knew my mother. I guess I don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t... love you, cuz I do.” Dice leaned back a little, watching the sunrise turn the edge of the building golden. “So, when you said I was attractive? What did you really mean?”

“I meant that I wanted to have sex with you,” Black said, words coming out in a rush. “I’ve never and well, I thought, because, well, you’re very beautiful and I didn’t think....” Black turned to look at him, their eyes meeting, souls clinging to each other. “The last thing I thought was that you’d ask me to marry you.”

Dice raked his hair back from his face. “I could only think of one reason you’d just come out and ask me to have sex with you.”

Reborn anger sparkled in hazel eyes. Black rose up a little, a dark eye brow arching, challenging. “And what would that reason have been?”

Sheepish, Dice tugged at his ear and shifted his gaze away from Black’s. “I thought.. maybe you might be pregnant already.”

“And you thought I’d trap you? So why not just jump full hog into something with a woman who would try to trap you in marriage? Is that so?” Black’s voice had become a touch shrill.

“Well,” he tucked his chin, scratching his head, “It’s not like that!” He got to his knees, putting himself slightly above Black, violet eyes smiling down. “It’s just that if you were in trouble, I’d want to be there with you. I just wanted to protect you.”

Black pushed up to his feet. “I can’t believe you’d think so little of me. Did I not take a bullet out of your buttocks without so much as flinching? I saved lives in The Great War! I studied medicine in Boston. Marriage would be more of a trap for me than for you, in any case.”

Also on his feet, Dice pulled a silver cigarette case from his vest pocket. “It’s not like I’m the one made to wear skirts.”

“The more I talk to you, the more I do believe we could have descended from apes. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Whitehall!”

Black stalked off, shoes a sharp rhythm against the sidewalk. “OH yeah? Some of us descended from shrews, but I’m a child of god!”

“Oh?” Black paused and shouted from the other side of the street. “I didn’t know God had by blows! I’ll be sure to let your father know!”

“Bastard,” Dice growled, taking out a smoke. He was smiling though, and after a moment pushed off the corner he was leaning on to follow the indignant doctor home.

He didn’t know why, but by the time he’d reached the academy grounds, he was smirking as if he’d made the best conquest of his life.

“Mr. Whitehall,” Jonathan greeted him, as they both half jogged up the stairs to the administration section. “Far be it for me to mention, but perhaps you might wish to change prior to reporting for work and what have you been up to? Did you win substantial amounts last night?”

Winking, Dice found his grin only grew. “I’ve a change of clothes in my office. I lost badly last night, but I do believe I’ve finally found the right game.”

“All the better then!” Jonathan said, nodding politely before pivoting and striding off with a sheath of papers under one arm.

Dice waved to one of the staff maids, asked for washing water in Chinese and slipped into his office. Still smiling, he wondered if the good Dr. Black would like poetry. It was going to be a lovely day!