"As Flies to Wanton Boys," the story that follows in multiple episodes, appeared ten years ago as my first submission to the Nifty Archive. Its 46 pages are still there: /nifty/gay/adult-youth/divine-neglect under the title "Divine Neglect" for readers who want to consume the whole thing in one sitting. That 1999 version, slightly edited and revised, will now appear in shorter takes and, because several readers were unhappy about the way things ended, new chapters follow.
[DISCLAIMER: The following completely fictional story, the sole copyright for which belongs to the author and translator, contains explicit depictions of sex between men and should not, therefore, be read by anyone under the legal age of consent in whatever jurisdiction or by anyone offended by homoerotic and/or pornographic material. It is forbidden to post the text electronically or disseminate it in any manner without permission of the copyright holders. The author welcomes comments which the translator, -- park517@aol.com -- will forward at his discretion.]
We lay peaceably, full of contentment, in each other's arms for minutes on end. My erection subsided, and I simply basked in the joy of being with a handsome, ardent, responsive male. That we had found each other was a small wonder. That we had found each other's love in the midst of war and death was a miracle. I stroked his haunch, delighting in its firm curve, and put a tentative hand on the spent sex organ that, even soft, had impressed Sgt. Voinovic.
"Are you just going to play with the prisoner's helpless body, your worship, sir," I could hear the grin that I could not see, "or are you going to fuck him?" One beat, two beats. "Please, Mitya, please take me. I want to be yours."
"I want you, too, Rifat. You can't know how much I want you, but I don't want to hurt you. Let me see if I can find something to make it easier." I patted the sheet until I found my flashlight and switched it on.
"What do you need that for?" the teenager asked as I started to swing off the bed.
"To see if our absent hostess used skin lotion. Or anything else that would grease you and me up a little."
"Mitya, Pee-wee," his hand caught my arm, "we don't need anything but spit and each other. Your fingers already opened me and you're right about how to relax a prisoner. Don't leave me." His hand slid into my crotch. "Let me show you how Muslim boys do it."
"Let me guess. First, you bow to Mecca. Then you put my cock in your mouth."
"And soak it for a long time in my juices before putting it in a pre-heated oven. That's my bottom. And it's hot now."
"So I gather." I extinguished the light and swung back into his arms. "Rifat, will you promise to tell me to stop if you feel pain? We have lots of time for loving ahead of us. We don't have to rush things."
"I promise, your eminence." His lips locked onto mine and his wet tongue invaded my mouth. At the same time, he gently pressed my body down into the bed and put a delicate hand on my balls. "Mmm," his mouth released mine. "Everything about you is big. Well, I like challenges." He lowered his head over my groin, and as my penis stiffened, he seized its base with his fingers and its head with his lips. My foreskin retracted under the pressure, and his tongue began a wet dance over and under my exposed tip.
I nearly surrendered to that moist massage. My semen began to mount in a hot tide out of my testicles toward release. My balls tightened against my rod, and as I was on the edge of explosion, Rifat bit me. The bastard actually bit my cock, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to make me yelp and to send "reverse course" signals flashing through my entire, pre-liftoff circuitry.
I grabbed a clump of his hair and pulled his head abruptly up, away from my rigid, injured dick. "You juvenile pervert," I hissed at him. "What did you do that for?"
"To keep you from going off. It's what Muslim boys do. I didn't really hurt you, did I?"
"You surprised the hell out of me. But I guess you were right. I was ready."
"I am ready, too." He knelt on the bed and pulled at his buttocks to open them. "All Shqiptars are dogs. So says Sgt. Voinovic, and most Serbs agree. Will you please fuck me now like a dog?"
I got to my knees behind him and bent him forward so that he rested on his elbows. After spitting on my fingers and rubbing their moisture on the outside of his anus, I pushed one finger in to the knuckle and began swirling it in the passage he presented to me. "All right?" I asked.
"Nice," he moaned. "But the real thing would be nicer. Plug me, Mitya, please, please. Plant that great knobby spear of yours in my gut."
I didn't need to be persuaded. Using my free hand, I guided my cock head to the hole my finger had breached and pressed against it. "Push out, Rifat," I said. "Advice from medical school." He obeyed. I put more weight against him, and suddenly I was in, sliding slowly but steadily past the clutching ring of muscle into a slippery corridor of tropical heat. It was bliss. I folded myself over his bent body and clasped him around the waist with one arm. My other hand felt beneath him for his dangling penis, caught its solid softness and began to stroke him.
"You don't have to do that, Mitya, sir, lover," Rifat gasped. "Just fuck me. Just the way you're doing it. You're so strong and so gentle and," he said a few words in Albanian, "so big."
"I'm not hurting you, tearing you?"
"Not now. Now you are really taking me prisoner. And I will never want to run away."
Reassured, I quickened the pace of my thrusts, but I tried not to mount up him too far. I am big. Ivo called me "pony boy." My penis is both long and thick, and I am self-conscious about its size and potential to damage a partner.
Rifat, though, responded to me with passion, not pain. His sphincter clamped around my shaft with each drive and relaxed for each withdrawal. As I moved into him, his buttocks drove back into my groin and his whole lower body shimmied around my pole. In my hand, his cock grew rapidly hard and urgent, and both of us began to moan our gratification in chorus.
Such intense pleasure cannot be sustained for long. Before I wanted to, I began to spew, my organ jerking and flailing as it discharged salvo after salvo into the boy's velvety innards. His member, a club of aroused flesh sheathed in my fingers, also erupted, depositing hot gobs of his seed on his belly and my hand.
I began to withdraw, but he pressed his ass tightly to my crotch. "Don't leave me Mitya," he pleaded. "Stay in me. You are so magnificent in me. You fuck like a god." With great care, I helped him straighten his legs and turn, with me still clamped to his back, so that we ended up side by side, his body fitted snugly into mine. I took my hand out of his groin, wiped up the come that had landed on him, put those fingers into my mouth and cleaned them so I could have a second, sweet taste of his youth.
"Prisoner," I said. "Now you are mine. If you follow all the rules of your captivity, I will treat you well. Plenty of bread and water and healthy exercise."
"I like the exercise part. What are the rules, your reverence?"
"Love me. That is the first rule and the last."
"I do. I will. And will you screw me at least once a month?"
"At least. Oh, Rifat, sweetheart, I can't give you your old life back, but we can make a new one. Starting now."
He twisted his head far enough around so that he could kiss my ear. Then he snuggled against me, wiggled his behind just enough to resurrect my flaccid cock and instantly went to sleep. Holding him to me, I followed him into a deep slumber.
Thunder woke me. Or artillery fire. Or a tank rumbling past. Actually, it was none of those, just insistent knocking. I stumbled out of bed and made my cautious way in darkness to the door.
"Who's there?" I asked. "What do you want?"
"It's just me, Lieutenant. Mirko. It's six thirty. I have hot water so you can shave. Can I come in?"
"The door's locked. I have to get the key." I groped my way back to the bed, felt around where my pillow had been, found the key and managed to get the door open. Smiling broadly and holding a pan in both hands, the corporal walked into the room. With the light from the hallway guiding him, he found a dresser, set his gift down and turned to me. "Good news, sir. We're going home. The radio says an accord will be signed at midday. And," he strode to the wall by the door and pressed a switch, "the electricity is back."
Horrible fluorescent tubes in the ceiling sizzled into life. Bright light illuminated the room, my nudity and the bed on which Rifat lay, his charming rump naked and slightly raised. Mirko took in the scene in a flash. An expressive eyebrow arched.
"The boy had nightmares," I said in answer to the unasked question. "Didn't you hear his screams? Voinovic thought he was trying to kill me."
"I could sleep through the Second Coming." Mirko gave me an appraising look, taking in not just my unclothed state but the partial erection with which I started most days. "May I ask a personal question, sir?"
"What?"
"Are you hung like that because you're an officer, or are you an officer because you're hung like that?"
"Both." I made a pretense of laughing. "Get out now, Komaretcki. Thanks for the hot water. And the news. I'll get the boy up."
"It looks like he already is," Mirko gave a sardonic smile and pointed at the bed. Rifat had rolled over. His arms were flung out to his sides, and his penis pointed skyward.
"Ah, youth," I said, trying to make a joke.
"Wasted on the young," Mirko replied as he went toward the door. Before he reached it, he bent down and picked something off the floor. My underwear. He held the shorts out to me, and now his grin was lascivious, all-knowing. "Yours, sir?" he asked. "Would you like me to put them where you can find them? Later?"
"Thank you, corporal." I strove for a dignity that was hopelessly lost. "I'll put them on now. It got hot last night."
"Yes, sir," he smirked. "It must have been very hot." He left, closing the door gently behind him and taking my reputation downstairs to be shredded.
I put on the baggy drawers, pushed open the metal shutters on a glorious spring dawn and turned off the ghastly overhead light. Then I went to the bed and shook Rifat's shoulder.
"Wake up, boy. Peace is breaking out."
"I'm awake," he answered, his eyes still shut. "I heard. Do you think he'll tell the others?"
"No," I lied. "He's a nice guy. He probably has his eye on you himself."
"Or on you. He certainly was interested in your big officer's insignia."
"Ridiculous," I bent to kiss his belly button and trail my tongue down into his pubic hair and around the base of his rigid cock. "Enlisted men are not allowed to have sex with officers. Against the rules."
"And leaving a weapon in reach of a terrorist Shqiptar? What rules does that break?"
I looked up. Rifat held my gun casually in his right hand. He was smiling but not laughing.
"Give me that, please." I straightened up, nervous but not truly fearful. I held out my hand. "It's dangerous. I don't want you to be hurt."
"You can have it in a minute. But first take off those ugly pants."
"Don't play around. We've got to get dressed."
"Strip, your honor. I am armed and dangerous and I want to see you naked." He put the gun hand behind his back. "I mean it."
I looked at him, shrugged and pulled off my shorts.
"Come closer," he gestured to the side of the bed, and I stepped up next to it. With his free hand he began to fondle my penis. It immediately stood straight out from my groin. The boy gave a low whistle. Then he moved his fingers to my testicles, tugging them down, cupping each one and then returning to my cock, stroking it and squeezing a bit of fluid from the tip.
"And to think I had that in me," he beamed at me. "I bet nobody ever called you Pee-wee. You made that up to tease me."
"I did. I'm sorry. Please, Rifat, stop toying with me. We don't have time for games."
"I'll be quick. Turn around." I did. "Oh, what a pretty, woolly ass your reverence has, like two lovely, ripe melons covered in fuzz. Bend over." As I did, he got out of bed and moved behind me. His hand went into the cleft between my buttocks. The tip of one finger rubbed gently against my anus.
"Did you let your Ivo make love to you, Mitya, the way you made love to me? Please tell me the truth."
"Yes, Rifat. I did. He did."
"Will you let me?"
"Of course, but not now. We'll have plenty of time later. Are you finished humiliating me?"
"I guess so. You don't seem to like being a prisoner as much as I do." His arm came under my chest and raised it till I stood upright. He moved in front of me and we stood so close together that my chin rested on his head.
"Here is your gun." He handed me the pistol. I checked the safety and tossed it onto the bed. "And here is mine." He took my penis in both his hands, knelt swiftly and guided my cock into the hot cavern of his mouth. But having swallowed only a little more than half the length, he choked for an instant, shook his head and released me.
"I do not have much practice. Actually, nobody ever called me Big Mouth, either. I am sorry for teasing you," he said, looking up at me. "Mitya, you are the most magnificent man I have ever seen, even if your dick belongs on a donkey. I love you and I want to see what a Montenegrin man tastes like. Can I just suck the tip of you and pump the rest?"
"Will that make you happy? Will you get dressed right away afterwards?"
"Yes and yes. But if you really loved me, we would never need clothes. We would go to the South Seas and be naked and turn brown. And I would teach you how to play chess." He grinned.
"I do really love you. We will go to Tahiti or Bali or somewhere. And I will teach you respect. Also, always to finish what you start." I put my hands on either side of his head and pressed his lips to my erection. "Suck me, Rifat," I urged him. "Pump me. Unlike you, I really will be quick."
I was. The boy's tongue made barely four delicious circuits, wet and tingling at the same time, over and under my glans, and his tight fingers accomplished no more than the same number of trips up and down my straining shaft when I groaned and ejaculated. My whole body shook. My knees quaked. Rifat's lips refused to let me go until I was completely drained. Swallowing, he stood up and wrapped his arms around me.
"You taste just like a nice Muslim boy," he said. "Except for the plum brandy. The Koran forbids believers to drink."
"And are you a believer?"
"Of course."
"Then how do you know what brandy tastes like?"
The boy squeezed me. "I'm a believer, but I'm a sinner, too. Oh, Mitya, your worship, I love you so much. And you do love me, don't you?"
"More than I thought I could ever love anyone."
He tilted his head up. I bent mine down. As we kissed, his hands took hold of my buttocks, and mine cupped his. Our bellies pressed together. Feeling the stiffness of his organ, I also felt my own coming back to life.
"Rifat," I pulled away from him. "We have to stop this. Right now. Among other things, my shaving water is getting cool."
"But you're getting hot." He grabbed playfully for my groin but I eluded him.
"You seem to have that effect on me. You promised to dress. Please put your clothes on now. We'll get naked again in the South Pacific."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
And I meant it. More than anything at the start of that day, the last of war, the first of peace, I wanted to walk away with him, away from Kosovo, away from Yugoslavia and all its venomous history of hate and madness, away to some new land where Rifat and I, even if we had to wear clothes, could love each other and even, as the Bible enjoined, love our neighbors. As I shaved, I daydreamed about that future, and the vision made me so happy that I started to hum and then to sing.
"What is that language, Mitya, sir?" In his incongruous flowered blouse and skirt, the boy was beside me, holding a bit of towel to dry my face.
"German. Don't you recognize it?"
"No. I'm sorry. But you sing so nicely it doesn't matter."
"Schiller's 'Ode to Joy.' Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I can't do it justice. It needs a full choir. If you'd ever heard it, you'd remember."
"Then I guess I never heard it. Do you like Janet Jackson? Menudo? Ricky Martin?" He had retrieved my shirt, helped me into it and was now buttoning it up. His upturned face was full of serious inquiry.
"No, Rifat. I don't know them. The truth is I don't know popular music."
"That's all right. It will give me something else to teach you." He held out my pants and I sat on the bed to pull them on. He knelt to put on my socks and then my boots.
"What big feet you have, grandmother." He stood up smiling and pushed his way between my legs. "But I don't mind." He stroked my cheek and bent, I thought, to kiss me. Instead, he rubbed his nose against mine. "On our way to the South Seas, your very largeness, can we stop off with the Eskimos? That's the way they kiss. With their noses. I'd like to watch."
"It's very cold where the Eskimos live. We couldn't go naked." I stood up and hugged him and kissed him properly and then improperly. "But we can go wherever you want and do whatever you like, as long as we go together and do it together. I love you, Rifat, your medium-sizedness. I love you, but I want a large, hot cup of strong tea. Come on, let's go downstairs."
I moved toward the door and he followed, but at the threshold he grabbed my hand. "Mitya, I love you, too, but I worry about you. Haven't you forgotten something?"
"This?" I asked and pinched his bottom.
"No," he jumped away from me and pointed at the bed. "The pistol. You might still need it."
I blushed with embarrassment and retrieved the weapon, tucking it into my belt. "Thank you, dearest one, my savior," I said. "Voinovic would have savaged me if I'd showed up without it."
The sergeant, in fact, was in an exceptionally cheerful mood. From the way he and the others grouped together in the main room greeted us, casually acknowledging our arrival and immediately turning back to the television news and the pictures of bleary-eyed, rumpled, hand-shaking diplomats and generals, I deduced that Mirko had held his tongue. I touched him on the shoulder and thanked him in a whisper for "being discreet." He just smiled, happily this time, not lasciviously.
Rifat brought me a cup of tea. "I put lots of sugar in it," he chuckled. "To keep up your strength, sir."
"Thank you, waitress," I answered, resisting the urge to pull his hand into my groin so that he could feel that my strength was, in fact, on the rise. I drank the brew, went out to the yard to piss and deflate my reviving erection and then called my warriors to a council of peace. Voinovic agreed to lead a reconnaissance patrol, in fact a foraging expedition, through and beyond the neighborhood. I assigned myself a trip to headquarters in the town and, if possible, to buy clothes for Rifat. Mirko promised to keep an eye on our captive, and Rifat promised to teach him chess, cooking and botany. The wild plants in the area could put some roughage in our diet.
At company headquarters, I learned next to nothing. Rumors were as thick as porridge, but reliable information was nonexistent. We would be withdrawn early. No, our unit would be among the last to leave. There was no gas for transport. We would have to walk home. NATO was going to fly in diesel fuel. The KLA had accepted the peace terms. The KLA had rejected them. At the battalion offices, certainty was just as scarce, but when the exec officer spotted me, his news threw me into gloom.
"You speak German, don't you, Lt. Njegos?" he asked.
I was not quick enough to lie, but I insisted, more or less accurately, that my command of the language was rusty.
"It doesn't matter," the major declared. "The army is going to need liaison officers for the fucking monitoring teams. Which would you prefer if we decide to volunteer your services: Nazis or Austrians?"
I begged him not to volunteer me. I was a reservist. I had to get back to my studies. Montenegro -- no, all of Yugoslavia -- needed doctors. My pleas got me nowhere. "Come back around five today," he ordered me. "You're a good boy. I'll see if I can get you hooked up with the Huns. They're hateful, but at least they're not fat-assed neutrals."
The few plans for the immediate future I had dared to make while I shaved that morning went up in the black, oily smoke of my motorcycle's exhaust. I could not keep Rifat with me. I would lose him. I despaired and almost didn't notice the dusty clothing store just off the town square. What caught my eye was the freshly painted sign in the window: "Under New Menagement." That meant it had been owned by an Albanian, departed voluntarily or otherwise, and was now in the hands of a Serb who didn't know how to spell. Maybe he wouldn't know how to bargain.
My guess was right. The paunchy, whiskered proprietor, having paid nothing for his inventory, didn't mind letting it go fairly cheap. I found socks, briefs, t-shirts and a couple of dress shirts in Rifat's size, a pair of sneakers and, in place of jeans, a blue Adidas(tm) track suit with an acid green stripe down the sleeves and pants legs. Almost next door, moreover, I bought two large, round loaves of fresh bread, a half kilo of goat cheese, half a comb of honey and a jar of instant coffee. A final, special purchase in a pharmacy really lifted my spirits.
They sank again when I entered the kitchen and found Mirko, alone, slowly stirring a simmering pan of something over a propane-fueled fire. "Where's Rifat?" I shouted. "You didn't let him run away?"
"No, no lieutenant. The boy's upstairs. He has a surprise for you, and look what we found." He pointed at the pot. All I could see was a froth on the bubbling surface.
"What is it?"
"One of the greatest treats of the season." The corporal beamed. "Nettles. We're going to have nettle soup. That kid is a wonder." He paused. "You know that he's in love with you? And not just puppy love. You're very lucky."
"I know," I grinned at him. "About being lucky I mean. Twice lucky. Thank you for not telling the others."
"They don't need to know. Lieutenant, even so, it won't be easy. I have a brother who... well, he's gay. Smart. Good-looking. Nice. But he used to get beaten up a lot, so he left. To Australia. It broke my mother's heart. I miss him, too. I don't care what people do in bed, but, Mitya, sir, there are lots of people who do care. You have to be very careful."
"Or go to Australia," I said. I gave him a quick hug and the provisions I'd bought. Then I took the stairs two at a time to find Rifat and give him his new wardrobe. He wasn't in our bedroom, where I put my packages, or in the one Mirko had used, but a door I had not noticed at the end of the corridor stood open and beyond it gleamed a bathroom where Rifat stood, naked except for the panties, in the middle of an array of pots, kettles, pans and cauldrons full of water he had heated downstairs.
As I entered, he rushed at me, jumped, wrapped his legs around my waist and ran his hands through my hair. "You're back," he exulted between kisses. "I missed you so. I worried. But you're in time. Get undressed. Quickly."
He clambered off me and started to unbuckle my belt then knelt to unlace my boots. "Hurry, please, your splendidness," he urged me with an upward glance. "A lot of the water is still hot, and I'm going to give you a wonderful bath."
"You don't have to do that," I protested.
"But I want to, and it won't hurt you to get clean. In fact, it will improve you."
"Am I so dirty?"
He grinned as he tugged my second boot off and pulled a sock after it. "Do you want to smell this, excellency, or will you take my word for it?"
Soon I was squatting naked in the shower stall with my hands loosely tied behind my back -- "That's the way men wash men in Kosovo," Rifat insisted -- and he was ladling cupsful of deliciously warm water over me. Then I was lathered all over, scrubbed, shampooed and rinsed.
"Stand up, please," the boy said. "Best for last." Respectfully, he soaped my genitals and pubic hair and, vigorously, my ass crack. Finally, he rinsed my crotch and cleft by filling his mouth with water and repeatedly spurting it out to wash away the suds. For the last such shower he had me bend over as he fired directly at my anus and followed up the water by plugging his lips hard to the opening.
"Don't, Rifat," I protested sternly. "Please. Advice from medical school."
"But I love you, all of you," he pouted. "And before I make love to you that way and make you my sex toy, I wanted to show the proper respect."
He started to towel me. "Forgive me?" he whispered.
I looked at him. There was a tear in each of those spellbinding gray eyes. "Untie me, and I'll forgive you. I want to hug you. I want to kiss you. All over. Even the way you just kissed me."
"Only when you're dry, your worship." He was grinning. "And since you're so furry," he ran his fingers through my pubic hair and pretended to be looking there for insects, "that may be a while. Are all Montenegrins as horribly hairy as you?"
"Just the ones like me who are descended from wolves and bears," I growled at him. Having managed, as we joked, to free my hands, I grabbed him and shook him. "Give me that towel, you hairless ninny, and get ready to be kissed."
"I can't," he shrilled. "Let me go. I don't believe the wolves and bears business. A gorilla, maybe. But it doesn't matter." He handed me the towel and slipped away. "I'm too busy for love-making with a two-legged fleece, anyway. I have to wash your dirty clothes." He gathered them up from the bathroom floor and fled.
I stood there, lost at first in adoration and then perplexed. He had left me nothing to put on except the fairly small towel. Trying to make it cover strategic terrain, I went to our bedroom and lay down. And even though it was just a little past noon, I went to sleep.