The following story describes people and places wholly fictional, although based on some element of reality. How much is really up to you to decide. There is a place called Ruthenia, but it is not the Rothenia depicted here. It won't take long for the alert reader to realise that my Rothenia is unapologetically borrowed from Anthony Hope's magnificent creation of Ruritania, although updated for the twenty-first century.
This is my third attempt at gay erotic fiction. The earlier ones are 'The Decent Inn' and 'Terry and the Peachers' which can be found in the Nifty archive under the College section. Excuse the self-indulgence of the crossover references, but they did amuse me.
The story contains graphic depictions of sex between adult males. If the reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your place of residence please leave this site immediately and do not proceed further. If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.
And for those with an inclination to vomit, I have to warn you that this is fundamentally a romantic story written by a hopeless romantic.
III
Will's alarm clock woke him at seven thirty the next morning. He was alone in bed. Harry Baxter had gone home at one to his own small house in Lower Whatton, where his parents lived in Whatton Manor. But Will knew that what they had started last night was not over. He felt smug. He had sexually satisfied another gay man, and he had lost his inconvenient virginity at long, long last. The embarrassment was over. He had loved the sensation of being filled by another man too. Some part of him had been realised, and he was no longer the man he had been.
Will moved and stretched, and his face spasmed in alarm. He suddenly was aware that what he and Harry had done was not going to be without serious consequences. He gingerly felt between his buttocks, and was appalled at the swollen state of his anal lips. He looked at his fingers and was almost surprised to find them free of blood. He got out of bed, wincing as he sat before standing. The worst thing was that he was desperate for a crap. He would have to go. The muffled yells and cursing from his bathroom were plaintive, and were faintly heard in the newsagents downstairs.
He sat in a cold bath to ease the soreness, and it helped a bit. But he still walked stiffly out of his flat and he took the bus to school rather than walk, as he usually did.
His mobile bleeped as he was standing in the queue.
'Morning, Will babe,' said an amused and warm voice.
'Oh, hi!'
'Can't talk? Where are you?'
'Bus queue outside the Co-op.'
'OK. Well I just wanted to ring to tell you that you are the hottest babe in Whithampsted.'
'Not a huge compliment, that,' smiled Will.
'I also wanted to apologise for the state of your arse this morning. Is it bad? Red hot poker sensation?'
'I can't tell you.'
'It'll get better, kid. Practice and some proper lubricants, and maybe some chemical assistance, and it'll never be as bad again. It'll have eased by tonight.'
'Tonight?'
'Well you don't think that last night was the end of the affair, do you? I'll be round at eight, OK?'
'More than OK.'
'I'm so glad. Happy educating. Bye my babe.' It was a good day. His happiness and cheeriness was contagious, the kids responded well to all his ideas and he was inspired and inspiring. He got back home exhausted but fully content with himself and the universe in general. His arse had also stopped holding what he had done to it against him, though it was still sore. He did not think that he could take anal sex again tonight, but maybe Harry would let him take a turn.
Harry arrived on time, a grin all over his face with a bottle of expensive red wine in one hand and a carrier bag in the other. Will's heart pulsed at the sight of him and they kissed lingeringly in the downstairs hall behind the closed outside door. Harry went to go up, but Will coyly stopped him by blocking the stairs with an arm.
'What's up.'
'You can't go up there without paying toll.'
'Toll?'
'I need to see you naked. Leave your clothes here.' Harry laughed and was out of his clothes in a moment, as was Will. Naked and hand in hand they went upstairs. A prolonged necking session on the sofa turned into a marathon of fellatio. Harry got a little carried away and attempted at one point to enter Will with a finger. He yelped and sat up. Harry looked concerned, 'Still hurting?'
'Yeah. I think we'll have to leave it a bit before I have you in me again ... but believe me I can't wait.'
Harry smiled with a certain amount of satisfaction. 'You'll be my best bottom boy ever.'
'Bottom boy?'
'You're the sort of gay who likes to be underneath, that's all.'
'How do you know?'
'You can just tell.' Will wasn't going to argue, because he recognised that he really did like being penetrated. Still, he was also sure he'd like to try it the other way round, though Harry clearly wasn't going to offer. But in the meantime there was oral sex, and Harry was coaching him into being an accomplished cocksucker. It was mutually very enjoyable. For the first time, Will tasted warm cum. He'd never tried his own, and he gagged slightly at the amount he had to suck down from his lover.
Harry grabbed the bag as they got up from the sofa. 'What you got there, Hairy?'
'Hairy?'
'Well you are a bit ... so I'll call you Hairy from now on.' Harry was amused. He emptied the bag, and Will picked through it. There was a rubber dildo, which caused Will to raise an eyebrow and Harry to smirk. There were also two large tubes of lubricant and boxes of extra strength condoms. Finally from the bottom he triumphantly pulled out three DVDs. 'For your collection, lover,' he said.
'Wow, this is a weird one,' said Will. 'Men being screwed by machines and hung up in chains.'
'It's arousing, believe me. But I think you'll prefer the others.' And there was Rothenian Boys 9 and 10. He looked for the beautiful face and body of Marc Bennett, but he only seemed to have a bit part in 10. Harry was grinning at him. 'Let's put this one on,' he said, fatefully selecting Rothenian Boys 10 from the list of names on the box. They returned to their oral sex, both keeping their eyes on the screen. It was very stimulating, as boy after shameless boy offered himself to the camera. But Will dropped Harry's cock out of his mouth when Marc Bennett started his set. Another handsome lad was inserting a large training dildo in his arse, and he was taking it, with a deeply preoccupied expression on his face. Harry noticed Will's distraction. He smiled and sat up. 'That's a very pretty boy-whore, isn't it?'
'He's amazing.'
'It's all gay for pay, Will.'
'Uh?'
'They're straight guys who lay it out for cash. Central Europe is full of them. Cash strapped economies where the average monthly wage for a professional is 400 dollars. You can pick and choose any sort of guy for peanuts in the Czech republic, Slovakia and Rothenia, and they'll thank you. One porno film means that for a year they don't have to do some boring job in the tractor factory, just by bending over. All the boys have to do military service, and straight or not, they get a lot of experience of anal sex in the barracks, so it's not too difficult to persuade them to get in front of the cameras and get screwed for cash.'
Harry had no idea of the impact his little lecture in economic reality was having on his new lover. Will was appalled. Somehow he had kidded himself that Marc Bennett was gay like him, maybe a bit of an exhibitionist, but a bright and funny lad, the sort of lad he'd desperately have liked to meet in the flesh. His fantasies flamed into ash.
Harry was not so insensitive as to fail to notice a mood change. But he put it down to Will's frustration with his inability to have anal sex at the moment. He cuddled into Will, 'S'OK babe, you'll be better tomorrow, then we can start exploring your bum again.'
'Yeah sure,' Will said gloomily. Then he rallied. He stood up, 'Let's get this bottle opened, eh? I could do with a drink.'
'Sure babe. Let's do that.' Harry left him just after midnight, dressing coyly in the downstairs hall. Will didn't bother to put his clothes back on. He morosely returned to his lounge and picked up Rothenian Boys 7, looking achingly at the magnificent body and smile of Marc Bennett, or whatever his name was. Just another deprived, abused Central European kid, a victim of a ruthless porn industry. Maybe it was the wine, but he sat in his chair and began crying, mourning his lost fantasy and genuinely grieving for the sort of boy that Marc Bennett had been forced to be.
At that precise moment, nearly a thousand miles away, in the ancient and beautiful city of Strelzen, on a boulevard opening off the Rodolferplaz the power went down again. Oskar Prinz walked hard into a tree and fell back on his butt. He swore and his three friends laughed, a little cruelly he thought.
'How many times is that this week?' he cursed, 'It was better under communism.'
'How would you know, Oskar?' mocked Tomas, 'We were only little kids in the May Rising. And you lived out in Husbrau anyway, where no one even noticed. They still think that Stalin is in power in Husbrau. Have you heard the one about the Husbrauener water polo team? It drowned five horses.' They all laughed, apart from Oskar, who was irritated by reference to his rural origins. His friends were 'Strelzen und Zenden', as people called them, sophisticated boys from the capital and from the industrial city of Zenden. Still, they were fun, and they kept him from feeling lonely in the big city. They found him in the pale moonlight, and helped him up. Rodolf had a torch, and they checked him over for damage.
Rodolf smiled at him. 'Your main asset's safe, Oskar.'
Tomas snickered, 'What, can you see his dick?'
Oskar gave a low laugh, 'He means my face, asshole.'
'Yeah, I know what he meant.'
With the help of the torch and passing headlights, they picked their way across the cobbles and tramlines of the Lindenstrasse, triggered alarms ringing out in the shops and shut-up cafés all down the street. They got Oskar safely to his apartment block, a tall nineteenth-century Second Empire style building, with impressively tall double- valved outside doors and a moody concierge. They said goodnight and shook hands, like the polite Rothenian boys they were, for Rothenia is a very formal society. Oskar slipped indoors and climbed the winding balustraded stairs, since the ramshackle lift was out of action. The lights came on again as he was fumbling to get his key in the door lock.
The door opened and he blocked Marietta's attempt to get out. His little terrier leapt up at him enthusiastically. 'Yeah, missed you too, baby. Ooh you get so excited, don't you?' Oskar checked his answerphone in the living room. Three messages. His English lesson tomorrow was cancelled, which was annoying. But his sister was going to be in town tomorrow, she said, so that cancelled out the problem, as he would have had to miss the lesson in any case, and this way it cost him nothing. The PA from Falkefilm was after him too. Good. Model work at last, for which he was very grateful as the expenses were mounting up, and he was getting a bit short. He looked in the tall mirror he had inherited with the apartment, gave a broad grin and flicked his heavy blond fringe out of his eyes.
Saturday was a bit of a disaster for Will Vincent. Harry rang up regretfully to cancel the planned day they were going to spend together, as he had to drive his father to a hospital appointment. Because of the plans Will hadn't brought home any school work, which meant the weekend had been unnecessarily wasted. Will was a conscientious enough teacher to be seriously bothered by this. So he slept in and as a punishment, he woke late in the morning with an appalling migraine. He threw up twice in the loo and the pain was terrible, as if his head was being slowly and methodically impaled through the temples by a spike. But at least it distracted him from the pain in his arse, which had lessened considerably from what it had been on Friday. He was just recovering his humanity as the downstairs doorbell rang.
'Christ Will, what happened. You look like a corpse.'
'Migraine. I've had them since I was seventeen. They're killers.'
'You poor baby, what can I do?'
'Stroke my head and be nice to me.' Will was happy in the circumstances to adopt the role of the needy invalid.
'Baby, I'm so sorry, I was just coming round to tell you that the parents need me tonight, and I can't get out of it.'
Will sniffled. 'S'OK, Hairy. I'll see you in church tomorrow, won't I?'
'Yes, of course. Oh God, you look pathetic. I feel like a bastard.'
'No, go. It's not your fault. See you tomorrow. Kiss?'
They kissed out of sight of the street, and reluctantly separated. But Sunday was better. Will woke up refreshed and mildly euphoric, which was not infrequently a side effect of a serious migraine. He sang beautifully, and the summer day was marvellous, sun streaming in through the medieval windows of the big church. Harry was alongside him, nudging and smiling in a dangerously obvious way. Will hoped no one had noticed. When they left, the bushes and trees in the churchyard were full of rich greenery and the fresh smell of growth was in the warm air.
Harry and Will took a walk to the Feathers and had its renowned Sunday lunch. Several regulars stopped by and sat with them, so it wasn't the intimate meal that Will would have liked, but he had to get real. Neither he nor Harry seem to have any plans about coming out locally, so it was the best he could expect until the world changed. It was nice enough just to be sitting alongside his secret lover and laughing at his jokes and stories.
'So what happened in Greece,' he asked, when they were briefly alone, 'you were going to tell me.'
'Oh,' Harry grinned to himself, 'well in June I was on a gay cruise ... I mean literally, it was a boat trip through the Greek islands, with calls at Mykonos and Lesbos.'
'Really?'
'Oh yeah, I've been on one before. It's the best way if you're on your own and thirty-something, because if you're fit looking, you won't be alone for long. I fell in with a party of Germans, and got sort of intimate with all of them the night we anchored off Mykonos. A couple of them were rugged and I didn't want to cooperate with what they had in mind. But they had me anyway and there was a ripped condom in my arse after two of them took me at once.'
'Jesus ... is that possible?'
'Difficult but possible. I didn't want it, but I got it.'
'They raped you.'
'Uh well, technically not. I was after all naked with them of my own volition in one of their cabins. But they went further than I wanted. The line's hard to draw sometimes and these were big men with big dicks. So I got myself tested when I got back ... I was clear, fortunately.'
'Phew.'
'Yeah ... but you can see why I might be a sucker for a gentle and submissive bottom boy at the moment.'
Will was surprised at that description. Gentle? Submissive? Was that how he appeared to Harry? His Year 11 class on Friday afternoon would have been surprised at those particular adjectives applied to him. Harry would learn better soon enough, for Will was a stubborn man as well as a quiet one, and his temper and his tongue were not always under his control, which was how Year 11 had learned to be cautious of him.
Will grimaced to himself. This had happened before. He was not a forward type, and preferred to take a back seat socially. It was his nature. But that did not mean he did not have strong opinions and his own ideas. He would follow his leader, but there would sooner or later come a time when he disagreed, and that's when people found out that he was not at all submissive, but stubborn and strong. It sometimes came as a shock to people who had misread him. Harry had made the same mistake that better men than he had done.
They left the Feathers at three and found their way to Will's flat. They kissed longingly on his sofa.
'How's the bum?'
'Ready and eager.'
'Fantastic, let's get these unnecessary clothes off then.' They moved to Will's double bed, and he relaxed under the very thorough rimming that Harry administered to him. He was glowing with contentment.
'Sniff this,' Harry said, holding a small brown bottle open under his nose. It had a strong and chemical smell. Will breathed it in, his nose closed down and his eyes watered.
'What the hell was that?'
'Popper. Amyl nitrate.'
'What does it do? I feel odd, ooh dizzy and ... fuck .. oh so randy.'
'And relaxed.'
'Uh yeah. I ... ooh, that's weird. What did you just do?'
'Shoved my fingers up your arse. You just let me.'
'It didn't hurt.' Harry disappeared and came back with the dildo, which was glistening with lubricant. Harry pushed it steadily up Will's rear. It just slid in, and his anus let it enter without any protest.
'Good?'
'Dreamy.'
'You're big and open back there, babe, and your anal lips are pulsing with excitement.'
'Then fuck me, Hairy.' Harry lubed up and obliged with interest. The buzz from the popper had by now disappeared, but Will still felt good, if a little muzzy in the head. As they were lying together on his bed, hand in hand and in their afterglow. Harry asked, 'When's summer holidays for you guys?'
'It's in a fortnight, we got seven weeks. Why do you ask?'
'I'm owed more holiday, and I'd like to go somewhere with you where we can be a gay couple.'
'Fantastic. Where?'
'I'll think about it, but we'll head off for a week, how about that?'
'Er ... problem. I'm utterly broke.'
'Not a problem, kid. It's on me. A thank you for making me happier than I've been for years.'
Will looked across at the older man's smiling face, thought about it, and grinned, 'Then thank you.'