This story about Peter from Tales of the Navel: The Shadow Forest (Unwilling to Be Yours, Be My Valentine...Snack, Stealing Myself From Shadows) was the result...
Peter groaned, rubbed his head, and wondered where his trousers had gone. Oh, that’s right. He’d been wearing hose and a doublet, not trousers, before both had been stripped from him. After the singing and the dancing and well, everything became a pleasant blur after that.
“You are amazing,” a husky voice breathed in his ear. Warm limbs covered with sweat entangled from his own. Peter gazed into chocolate brown eyes in a sweet face, with rounded cheeks and a hint of down of his chin. Mmm, yummy.
What was his name again?
“Paul,” the naked young man sliding from beneath him said, pushing a russet curl away from his face. Those glossy locks were darker and looser than Peter’s own. “I’m guessing you forgot my name.” An impish smile of pure sweetness and shared mischief took any sting out of his words. “I certainly forgot yours.”
“Peter.” Peter tossed his hair, quite away of his own impressive head of curls while inspecting Paul’s button nose, pouting lips exposing a hint of white smile. He had even more of a baby face than Peter did and Peter had been compared to cherubs before. “Here I thought I was amazing, too amazing to be forgotten.”
“Too amazing for names, at least last night.” Paul wrinkled his nose. “Did we dance on tabletop, singing folk songs to techno music?”
“Encouraging many others to join us.” Peter glanced at the prone forms of last night’s dance partners, many of which lay unconscious on the floor. “Whatever was in that glog was incredible. I’m not even sure if it was glog.”
“Thank you.” Paul fluttered his eyelashes. They were glossy and dark, darker than his eyes. “I find that particular beverage lowers all sorts of inhibitions.”
“My, oh, my.” Peter gave Paul’s flank an appreciative glance. It was slim, yet with a rounded suppleness many would dismiss as a love hand. To Peter, it gave this young man a voluptuousness not often associated with young men. He ran his fingers over it, feeling Paul shiver beneath his touch. “You have many talents.”
“And you are far too interesting for just one night.” Paul placed his own hand upon Peter’s fingers, stroking them. “Would I be ruining a perfectly good memory if I asked to see you again?”
“Not at all.” Peter allowed himself a quiver of appreciation at the tingling sensation running down his arms, his chest, heading straight for his groin. “I’m hoping we can surpass ourselves and last night, if it’s just us.” He breathed in the scent of Paul’s hair, his skin, before claiming those pouting lips with his own.
It had started out as such a good time until it got serious. After which Paul got serious, serious about things Peter didn’t understand. Things Paul never shared with him.
Leaving Paul had been the right thing to do. At least he kept telling himself that. Peter often wondered if he shouldn’t check on his former lover, see how he was doing. The rest of him told himself to give up and move on.
Perhaps this was why he’d allowed himself to become so smitten with Christopher, a boy whose heart was already taken. His passion for Christopher would never go anywhere. There was a limit to how unfaithful Peter could be to Paul’s memory with such an unattainable object of desire.
Not that Paul couldn’t do unattainable, too, once he got serious and secretive. This was the one quality he and Christopher had in common. Physically they couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Christopher was a slight, slender creature to the point of androgyny. Paul had a more fleshy version of a classical torso, hard muscles surrounded by softness. Their dreamy, distant look upon their faces, like they were gazing at a far away landscape only they could see, that was only too similar. It was a quality Peter found both exasperating and alluring.
What did they see, drifting away in their inner vision, where did they go? How could he catch up with him, or at least catch their eyes? Get them to see him?
It was a riddle he’d never been able to resist. He still couldn’t resist. Perhaps at heart he was a hopeless romantic, pining for what was out of reach. Only Paul had once been very much within his reach. Peter had held him in his arms, whispered secrets in the other boy’s ears. He’d gone deep inside of Paul, only to find himself penetrated in turn, not just in a physical sense. They’d invaded each other with tenderest, most intimate disregard.
To think they’d met at a party. To think they’d once sung and danced on top of tables, getting others to do the same.
Origins could be a funny thing.
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