Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/adult-friends/shark-reef/) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
Ian called the halt to that as I was well over thigh-depth on the last pass and he physically restrained me from another trip. We got everything into the container, but realized it was, well, nasty, stuffy and stifling with a strong redolence of burned webs. I set up one of the Mylar space-blankets a few yards away at the nearest convenient set of trees. This time, to Ian's wide smile, I angled it. We would, with luck, never need to collect rainwater again. We'd test the pump later. It was nearly noon when we finished. We each ate a protein bar, some dried fruit and a liter of water before settling on a fresh Lunk-Lunk shirt-blanket. I pulled Ian's now-naked body to me. Sleepily I whispered, "I love you Ian." I heard a gasp just before I drifted into contented sleep.
Shark Reef 9: Ringpiece
By Bear Pup
I woke slowly in the golden light of late afternoon and realized that I was alone in the Lunk-Lunk bed for the first time in, well, since getting sucked out of the plane. I got up, pissed, thought for a minute then went and dug a new latrine with McGeek's buckets, a deep one this time. Another handy asswipe-vine was nearby which made it the perfect spot. Clean (relatively speaking), I went in search of Ian.
I found him looking out into the lagoon with the monocular. I sat next to him and waited for him to talk. He'd left without waking me, which is actually quite difficult. That meant he intended me to keep sleeping. After a while he lowered the scope and sighed, then turned to me.
"You're a right ringpiece, you are."
I looked up and to the left, then back. "Nope. Got nuthin. I think you probably just insulted me but I'll be damned if I know how."
"Ringpiece! Hole! Shitehole! Arsehole! You're a fookin shitehawk!"
"Um, ooooookay, I think I get the general drift. I am probably sorry for whatever you suddenly have up your -- never mind, strike that. Bad image at the moment. Can you tell me what I did so I can know what I'm apologizing for?"
"I am not a fool, JB. Don't fookin treat me like one!"
"Okay." My voice had gotten taut and I was nearing the edge of my patience. "I will try one more time. What. The fuck. Are. You. Talking. About?"
"You, ya fookin knobhead!" I resolved to buy and Irish-to-American expletive dictionary whenever I got off this island; I was gaining a really stellar cursing vocab if I only knew what it meant! "You finally get me back doors kicked in and then say you LOVE me? Y'ar a ringpiece!"
He started to get up and I swept his feet from under him. He threw a flurry of kittenish punches and I threw my greater bulk over him and pinned his arms. "Get the fook offa me ya shitehawk Yankee bastard!" When he tired of hurling insults he went as limp as Olive Garden spaghetti and just started to sob quietly. I didn't move at all until he ran out of tears and his eyes focused on me.
"Ian, I really don't get it, kid. You saved us, Ian. We have fresh water, at least for a while. You found the container, Ian, and then you realized it was a pump which I sure the fuck didn't. I love you for all that, kid.
"And I know I'm not good at this. I mean, I've been about as straight as guy gets for, like, my whole fucking life. But, even with that. You know, after the last 24 hours, I think... I really, actually, honestly, think..." I froze and realized what it would mean to say the next few words. An aeon passed in that second as I realized everything I thought about myself wasn't exactly a lie, it was just... based on too little information. That Ian had made me realize that I wasn't the JB I thought It was. That I was... better than that. More real. More whole. More true. "...that I love you."
And the clouds parted and the heavenly host sang as the seraphim played lyres and the world quaked with joy and... yeah, 'fook' that. Ian had spent the time I was distracted with the aeon of self-realization repositioning his leg so that when he jerked it up with all his might, he racked my nuts so hard I literally could not inhale. I rolled off him into the typical 'my nads are now jellified pinpoints of anguish' pose, the only thing keeping it from being a fetal position was my stiffly held arms supporting the two hands that cradled my screaming balls.
For the next half hour, I relived the first five years of my life. I first taught myself to breathe. I never respected an OB/GYN more than when I was desperately wishing there was one there to slap my ass and make me start breathing. Once I was finally able suck in air, I found that the pain I'd felt earlier was just an entr'acte to Act II of the magnificent symphony of agony that Ian had blessed me with. As with any newborn, the first ragged breath came back out as a ululating wail at the insult of the universe at large.
A few centuries of agonized writhing later, I learned to move then prayed that I hadn't. I taught myself to stand and fell back to decide it really was fool's errand. At some point in there, I found words. A few minutes afterwards, I found expletives and the little island exploded with little verbal bombs of concentrated torment. If there was a God (a concept that was rapidly losing credence in my world of hellish pain), there would have been lightning bolts and heavenly wrath falling to every side. Nope. Nada. Just pain.
Sound, sight, smell, touch and all the other fucking useless distractions burst onto the scene. I found that I could actually stand, and peered around. Ian was nowhere to be seen. Good plan, since I was very carefully planning how best to feed him to the sharks. No, the lionfish. No! The morays! Maximum pain and minimum chance of escape.
I staggered to the tidepool at the closest end of the island and sank into it desperately. I relished the relief, sighing deeply over and over as the relatively-cool water massaged and soothed my aching nuts. Then I screamed like a little girl. Around me were a dozen sea urchins, any one of which I might have sat on moment earlier. Just the thought of dropping my aching nads onto a poisonous pincushion of brittle spines almost made me puke. I reached down and maneuvered my hand underneath one and flicked it ashore where the spines stuck in the sand. I grinned, a long-past Iron Chef (the late-late-late-night real one from Japan) coming to mind. I flipped urchin after urchin to the shore then followed them.
Still no signed of Ian. I found my way to the new nest and extracted the multitool, the largest Ninja Knitting Needle and the smallest McGeek souvenir bucket. I carefully made sure that each spiky monster was upside-down in the sand before proceeding. Lacking the utter confidence of the Iron Chef Sakai, I stabbed each one to death with the knitting needle first, then carefully cut a hole in the underbelly.
My wonton violence had left a noxious slime in three of them and they were consigned to the frothing surf. With nine of them though, I was able to banish the black parts, leaving the roe (actually the gonads) of the critters. Yes, we'd be eating balls tonight! Maybe the sympathetic magic would heal my own ravaged orbs.
I used the baby-bucket to consign the black innards to the hungry sea, then filled it with sea water with which I rinsed and cleaned the spiky little monster-carcasses. I gingerly removed the 'roe' and returned to the nest with the orange treasure held carefully in the bucket.
Ian looked at me like I had lost my 'fookin' mind when I sat, beaming next to him. "Close your eyes. Really, really. Close 'em. You'll love it!"
He looked at me like I would look at a carnival-barker/pickpocket. He did, reluctantly, close his eyes. I scooped up a bit of the coral-colored roe and placed it on his tongue. Ian pulled it in and frowned. I could imagine the sea-tang bursting through that creamy, custardy paste as he coated his palate. His eyes popped open. "That's really good! What is it. Is it a fish?"
"I don't honestly know. It's sea urchin."
"Those spiny bastards? Can I have some more?" Apparently, my peace offering was acceptable.
As we licked our way through a double-serving of creamy gonads in the fading light, I finally screwed up my courage and spoke to Ian.
"Um, Ian? Can we talk? I mean without obscure obscenities and most definitely without another knee to my nuts? By the way, that was a hell of a shot, kid. I can still barely walk."
"Good." He grunted. But he didn't shut me down.
"I didn't have sex with you, Ian, or didn't intend to. I meant to make love to you and really thought that's what we did. And I didn't say 'I love you' in some completely incomprehensible plot to play you for a fool. Think for a minute. I mean really think. You'd just found the thing that makes it possible for us to live until help comes. We were both exhausted and I cuddled you to me, then, almost asleep, told you I loved you. Do you really think I'm that good of an actor, Ian? That I could say that just as I crashed for the night with you cradled in my arm?"
He stared at me, eyes flicking around my face and eyes, looking for a sign that I was lying. I saw at least some of his rage and tension begin to fade.
"Ian, can I, um, hold you, please, while we talk?" He nodded brusquely. I smiled a bit, "But not until I have a promise that you will not be racking my nuts. You do that and I'm gonna puke sea urchin gonads all over you." He smiled then his eye went wide.
"Sea urchin what? You said ROE!"
"Well, yeah, that what it's called. But technically it's their, well, their reproductive organs. Sea urchin balls and ovaries." He looked ready to retch. Stupidly, I let my juvenile sense of humor loose. "Come on, Ian, it's not the first time we've had balls this week." Oops. His lips were now a thin line slashed across his milky, freckled face, eyes glinting.
"Well, JB, if ever you want yours to work again, I'd suggest you watch that kind of comment. At some point you'll have to sleep, and a stomped heel is gonna be a helluva lot more effective than my leg. Swear to God, JB, I'll leave you with something the consistency of what you just fed me. Are we clear?"
I swallowed convulsively and replied in a shaky voice, "Um, point taken. I'm sorry. Yes, we're clear.
"Um, uh, um, where was I? Okay, yeah, we'll skip the whole holding-you part for a minute until that image gets out of my mind. I, I really think I love you Ian. Like, more than I've loved anyone I can remember."
"JB! Pull yer head outta yer arse, mate. You are married. You have kids. What, we head back to America and I, like, move into the spare bedroom?"
And just like that, my world stopped and began to spin around a single word, 'Abigail'. My bride, the center of my world for, what, nearly two decades? Six days after being sucked from a jet plane. Six days of a relentless drive to scrabble survival out of the handful of suitcases. Six days of imminent peril and overwhelming odds against survival had been an impenetrable bulwark against grief or even worry. We were going to die, so something inside said, 'fuck it; let's see how far we can put that off.' But now? Now we had what seems to be water. We'd had no trouble with food. Eventually someone would come looking for bodies and luggage, and we'd be alive to returned to... Abigail.
We'd met in school, both Juniors, and married when we graduated. Stopped using protection the day I landed the job at Summit and Rachel was born nearly nine months later to the day. Miriam followed, then a gap where we both worked our asses of to afford a home.
Little Megan forced the decision. That was 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago... this week. I'd agreed to the trip on the condition that I be back for her birthday. Instead, I counted back with mounting horror, I was smoking hash and getting an epochal blow job from a kid I'd just met about the time she was blowing out candles. I started to cry, then.
Abigail quit her job when she was at seven months with Meagan, the same week we bought the house on S 1100 E. Two months later, I got a call from Inflow and jumped at the massive increase in pay. Six years there, bringing Hanna and Esther, then the move to my current company. The night I signed the contract was the night our last, Rebecca, was conceived. She'll be turning nine in a few months. Miriam would be graduating High school in May and Rachel would be starting college in the fall. Would I be there to see it?
My god, what must Abigail have been going through? The thought wracked me with physical pain. It had been six days since I'd taken off on that plane. If it crashed, was my beloved wife, the center of my life, even then sitting on a hard-plastic chair in some airport waiting for news, waiting to find out if I was dead or alive? Sweet Jesus, how would they survive? I remembered it took months for those Malaysian passengers to be declared dead. Insurance doesn't pay until then, but the electric company and the bank wouldn't care.
And if the plane managed to get to an airport? Landed with most of the people still on board? Had they already buried an empty casket in Salt Lake with Abigail and both our families crying over the loss? What would happen when I came home, risen from the dead? Wouldn't that be almost worse than having died for real?
'I love you, Ian.' FUCK! I did love him! But I loved my wife, my kids! My nice, comfortable life. My home. "I love you, [_____].' It didn't matter how I ended that sentence, part of me died in the process.
Each of my senses had turned exclusively-inward as I sobbed and wept. I 'saw' only memories and horror-images of what might come to pass on the other side of the world. I 'heard' only their laughter (past) and wails of grief (present? future?). I felt nothing, nothing but crippling pain and misery.
Worst, the worst of all, was the frank realization that Ian had been right. By saying those words -- worse, by truly meaning them -- I had condemned myself and at least one other to the agony of love lost. I had spoken truly; I loved Ian more than I could ever recall loving anyone in my life. But did I have the callous guts, the sheer cruelty, to walk away from my wife and six daughters? The question was not, 'Am I a monster?' it was, 'Which sort of monster am I?' A word floated up, a new one. I cried even harder as I realized something I never thought because I never had the vocabulary: 'JB Cantrell, you are a ringpiece.'
If you want to get mail notifying you of new postings or give me ANY feedback that could make me a better author, e-mail me at orson.cadell@gmail.com
Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Canvas Hell: 30 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 21 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 23 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Lake Desolation: 15 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/ Shark Reef: 9 chapters .../adult-youth/shark-reef/ Culberhouse Rules: 6 chapters .../incest/culberhouse-rules/ Raven's Claw: 4 chapters .../authoritarian/ravens-claw/
Special collaboration with Brad Borris: In God's Love (5 installments) .../incest/in-gods-love/