A Boy Who Came In from the Cold Ch. 17

"Are you still with me?" Paddy asked and he felt the words like a warm breeze across his shoulders.

"Yeah." Rayne stared out of the window at the trees and the sunlight and he knew that he would not move away. He could not move at all; could not look around. If he met Paddy's eye he would not be able to lie to the man. For a moment his conscience debated the wisdom versus folly of telling the truth.

'Would that be so bad?'

Rayne closed his eyes tightly, refusing to consider it further. How stupid was he going to look when Paddy realised the truth of how he felt? Of course the Irishman would be really kind; he was not the sort to let others down badly after all but it was that very patience – that unbearable tolerance – the smile and the dismissive pat on the head that he was trying to avoid.

'He can't know!' Rayne warned that treacherous little voice inside himself darkly now. 'He mustn't ever know!'

At the same time he felt those warm, careful arms move around him a little more securely. Paddy eased closer against his back, breathing quietly into his hair and running his hands very gently up and down Rayne's bare arms.

"What happened?" he asked again now. "I just don't get what happened with you guys. I thought you and Aldo were really clicking and then you wind up in hospital and he won't even come visit you. Then he flies off to Naples without a word and doesn't even come to say goodbye."

Rayne swallowed hard. That was not entirely true. Aldo 'had' come to see him, to make sure he hadn't talked. It had been a long goodbye, in almost every sense of the word. He was in a private ward and Aldo di Bocatto took full advantage of that. Rayne felt more alive that night than at any other time since he had been admitted to the hospital.

"I hate goodbyes," he said neutrally.

"I thought you might go with him," Paddy whispered into his ear, sounding intrigued. "I was kinda surprised that you stayed here."

"It's a secure unit. You reckon he'd have come to break me out, yeah?" Rayne curled up tighter and kept his eyes closed.

"I'd break you out," Paddy told him, laughing quietly at his own daring. "If you really don't want him..."

Rayne ground his teeth, silently wishing that the older man would leave this alone.

"It's none of your business!" he declared a little too harshly. "There! You got it wrong... I'm not hung up on him! I don't care about anybody!"

Paddy sat back and for a little while his back was cold without that large, reassuring presence there. Thankfully he did not pursue the matter of Aldo, but he was not done. Rayne could tell from the thoughtful silence. He was not prepared to forget the rest, worse luck!

"You care about Ant," he said reasonably. "You care about him enough to be his alibi."

"I'm not his alibi. He didn't do it," Rayne said flatly.

Ant came to see him every day. He brought little presents; chocolate and small amusements from vending machines, little cartoon strips and things that he figured would make Rayne smile. A few days ago he had come with a box of novelty condoms in four fruit flavours and they had used all of them, urgently, before the ward sister came back on her rounds. That had been quite an afternoon! He still felt the buzz of it, distantly, beneath the soft, muffled blanket of sedation.

"If you get out of here, where will you go?" Paddy wanted to know.

It was a good question. Rayne did not like the 'if' part of it. He shrugged evasively and shook his head.

"Dan Leland offered me a lot of money to just bugger off and leave Ant alone. I dunno if that offer still stands."

"You don't have to take his money," P J murmured, settling back against the bed head, which creaked a quiet protest.

"I didn't say I would," Rayne countered, burying his fingers in his shaggy hair and resting his head in his hands wearily. "Maybe I'll just tell him 'no thanks' and stick around to piss him off!"

'Maybe Dan Leland will get someone to wrap you in concrete and drop you in the Med like he promised!' the little voice of his conscience remarked snidely.

"I can offer you more," P J told him levelly and his heart jumped for a second or two, although he did not turn just yet. It would never do to seem too keen.

"I don't want to be a film star, thanks!" Rayne flashed back quickly. "I've been there, it's a pain!"

"You make half a movie and it's too much like hard work?" Paddy laughed incredulously. "Jesus, 'you're' a pain!"

He sat forward again, resting his hands on Rayne's slender shoulders, massaging them stealthily. The boy leaned back into his touch, eyes still closed, enjoying the firm, warm, comforting contact.

"Am I dreaming this?" he wanted to know.

"It's not a dream," Paddy assured him. His hands moved up Rayne's neck to cup his face, tilting his head back. As the Irishman bent over him their lips touched and those pale eyes opened suddenly.

"You're not supposed to swap spit with the mental patients," he remarked acerbically. "We could be contagious you know!"

"I'll take that risk," P J McNamara whispered into his mouth. "I'm not asking you to be in any of my films, Rayne. You're too expensive for a start! This last fiasco cost me over fifty thousand dollars alone! If you don't wanna make films you should just say, but that doesn't mean you can't be with me, does it?"

Rayne looked up at him suddenly lost for words. His mouth had gone dry at this sudden, unexpected turn of events and he could not even think of a smart answer; at least nothing that would not sound childish, churlish or both!

"With you?" he repeated numbly, shaking his head.

Paddy's arms moved back around him, holding him closer once more. It felt so good that Rayne briefly hoped he was dying and this would be the last thing he ever felt. Maybe that was why everyone was being so nice to him.

"That's why I came back. It's up to you," P J said pleasantly.

"With you in what respect?" Rayne turned to face him, wriggling around in his loose embrace and studying that solemn, handsome face. There was no indication in that expression that Paddy was winding him up, but he had been wrong about people before.

"Well... I was kinda hoping... in the respect that you'd come back to the States with me. We're flying out in a week and... I mean... I know that I'm old enough to be your dad and you don't take me remotely seriously, so why the hell you'd want to come, I don't know but..."

Rayne touched his mouth to Paddy's quickly.

"Don't talk," he said with his lips still brushing the other man's mouth.

To his infinite relief, Patrick McNamara did not even try. He kept his arms around Rayne though and for a long, searching, hungry time he kissed the boy, ignoring the stream of silent tears that ran down his pale face the whole time. Gentle hands drew him closer and closer until Rayne knew it could only be a dream. Nothing real felt like this.

It was Ant though who picked him up from the clinic when the consultant finally agreed to Rayne Wilde's discharge. Terry had come with him in the Mercedes and they sat in the back in silence all the way back to the Cap from Narbonne. The big Londoner looked him up and down as he got into the car but beyond a cursory; "All right then?" he said nothing.

Ant held his hand possessively. Rayne looked out of the window, his senses buzzing mutely at the shock of being outside, albeit briefly. His head was full of madness.

Paddy had stayed with him for ages that afternoon, just holding him and talking quietly about his house in San Francisco and his friends and his two dogs. Rayne said nothing in response. He had not even said 'yes'. Paddy talked like any other answer was out of the question. When he left, Rayne felt as though he had gone deaf. The silence was absolute. He wrapped himself in blankets and cried for an hour. It had been years since he last felt so scared and confused.

The doctor said it was a good sign. He was emoting. It was a positive response. He ticked boxes on Rayne's chart and smiled like a con-man. The boy stared at him and said nothing.

And now here he was, watching the verges flash by as they drove back along the AutoRoute to Agde. He picked at the rip in the knee of his pale blue jeans and tried to sort out his thoughts but nothing was making sense. There was still a small bandage around his left hand below the knuckles and he examined it curiously. Ant squeezed his good hand to distract him and tried to put an arm around him but Rayne shook his head irritably. It was too warm and confining here in the car and he was still too bewildered to accept intimacy.

"What do you want to do?" Ant asked him when they got out of the Merc on the little car park beyond the marina.

Rayne was looking out at the boats, feeling nervous again now that they were back on familiar territory. Ant talked as if he thought Rayne did not remember what he had done, or even understand it, but he remembered all right. He remembered a moment of clarity before they drugged him and his head stopped working for him.

"I can't stay here," he said defensively.

"I understand if you want to go somewhere else," Ant told him at once. "It must be strange to come back here after everything that happened."

Rayne shook his head slowly.

"I need some space," he murmured. "I just... I want to go for a walk. I need to think."

He could see from Ant's expression that the older man was unhappy with this request and added; "I won't go far. No one's going to touch me in any case. I look like a total fruit loop, don't I? Besides, just about everyone probably knows what happened to me by now."

As he walked up around the edge of the marina at Ambonne, eyes half closed against the brilliance of the sunlight on the water, someone ran up from one of the pontoons and came to a halt at the gate, just a few feet ahead. Mikkal Saarinen smiled like it hurt him and ran a hand through his long, pale hair, pushing it back from his face.

"How are you feeling?" he asked tentatively.

"Weird," Rayne said with a little shrug. "Agoraphobic."

"It must be strange," Mikka agreed.

"No," Rayne shook his head. "It's just...It's horrible, Mikkal!"

He saw the shadow of concern behind Mikka's eyes but the blond man just said; "Are you coming down to the boat?"

"Not yet," Rayne answered him. "I need to stretch my legs. I've got some stuff to think over first. How long have I got?"

"We're sailing tonight at six. The boat goes back to Marseilles then we'll get a taxi to the airport and fly to Paris," the Finn told him methodically. He reached out towards Rayne as if to take his arm when the boy moved on but did not touch him. "You 'are' coming with us, yes?"

"Apparently," Rayne said, without meeting his eyes. He tugged restlessly at the bandage on his hand again.

"Is this what you want?" Mikkal asked seriously.

"I don't know," Rayne exhaled, shaking his head again. "I don't know what I want, Mikka. I've never known. I just need a bit of space, that's all."

As he walked the tall, blond man shadowed him for a little way. He was dressed this afternoon, in an open white shirt, leather thong sandals and loose, cream coloured linen trousers. Mikkal invariably looked good but the outfit suited him.

"He cares about you," Mikka said at last, almost reluctantly.

"You would know." Rayne looked sidelong at him with a small, careful smile.

"Yes," the Finn shrugged slightly. "He is hard to know but I understand him."

"Do you love him?" Rayne asked quietly.

"Do you?" Mikkal retaliated but it was more of a challenge.

For a moment the boy said nothing at all but he stopped and looked directly into Mikkal's silver eyes as he contemplated the answer.

"Yeah..." he admitted finally. "But I wonder if it's enough."

Mikkal frowned, the concern all too plain in his eyes now.

"I will leave you to consider," he sighed in the end. "But I ask of you, if you must let him down, then do so to his face. He will be unhappy but he will think more of you if you do not simply run away again."

As he turned away, Rayne called him back and when he came the boy impulsively threw both arms around his shoulders and hugged him. It felt strange to hold him as an equal, knowing the familiar warm, clean scent of his body and hair.

"You've been really good to me, Mikka," he murmured into the Finn's ear. "Thank you."

"You are welcome, Rayne," Mikkal told him, kissing him gently on the forehead before releasing him. As they went their separate ways he called; "Six o' clock! No later!"

Rayne flashed a smile by way of acknowledgement and went on his way.

He walked down to the mole and the lighthouse and sat watching the small yachts battle the waves for a while as a couple of elderly fellows in waterproofs fished for sprats off the rocks below. The beach was busy and he only went a little way down the shoreline before turning back inland and walking back through the precinct past the shops and bars, quietly oblivious to the sun worshippers on their loungers, swilling beer and sipping cocktails. It truly was another world but not one that he felt a part of. It was time to move on, for certain, but the direction to move in... that was the big question.

He experienced two incidents that unsettled him on the way back to Ambonne. The first occurred as he passed the row of bars up on the boardwalk near to the beach. Giovanni was standing in the shade of a tall, black parasol outside the Laguna watching him with his dark, Latin eyes narrowed disapprovingly. The fellow folded his arms as Rayne drew level and shook his head but he said nothing, just turned and went back into the shade of the bar. Rayne quickened his stride at once and did not look back. He was not sure why he had presumed that Giovanni would have been one of the men in the villa when Aldo went back to burn it. The shock of knowing that he was unscathed made his heart beat a little too fast.

Giovanni had not been one of the men from the dunes but even so Rayne seethed a little at the sight of him. In turn, that encounter drove him in a direction he had not intended to take. When he set out he had not really decided on a route but now he found himself walking back down between the low-rise villas of Port Nature. It was not possible to walk past the place where Christophe's abode had been since the police had cordoned off the whole area with fluttering blue and white tape but he could see the charred remains of the single storey house from the path. The roof had fallen in and the broken joists rose up like ugly black claws into the summer sky.

Rayne shivered and turned away, feeling ill and not one bit satisfied. He went back to the marina and retreated to the bedroom to pack his few belongings, not wanting to see anyone or talk about anything. He was almost done when Ant came down from the sun deck to join him and sat on the bed looking pensive and unusually solemn.

"Well?" the older man breathed at last. "Have you decided what you want to do?"

Rayne put his arms around the battered guitar case between his knees and hugged it as if the contact with that familiar possession reassured him. He rested his cheek against the neck of the case and closed his eyes.

"Paddy's asked me to go to America with him," he said atonally.

"Right." Ant heaved a long sigh and nodded his head slowly as if this was no real surprise. "When do you leave?"

Rayne opened his eyes and looked at him a little strangely, he thought.

"They're going this evening," he said at last, rocking himself back and forth, clinging to the case in his arms.

"Is that what you want?" Ant enquired, trying not to sound too embittered.

Rayne just shrugged awkwardly.

"Do you want me to stay?" the boy asked.

"Of course," his companion retorted at once. "I... I can't really compete though, can I? I mean, what have I got to offer you that he can't better? He's got more money, a flashy lifestyle, a big cock!"

Rayne let go of the case and eased it to the floor, then turned and put his arms around the older man, kissing him firmly on the mouth and drawing him down onto the bed. He slid one hand down to his groin and unbuttoned his jeans so that Ant could help him to get out of them, then kissed his slow way down the other man's tanned, naked belly to his rising cock, taking the thick, pulsing head in his mouth and rolling his tongue slowly around it. Ant sank back on the duvet and pushed his fingers through the thick mop of black hair that trickled down like silk into his crotch. Rayne's hot, wet mouth swallowed more and more of his straining sex as the boy nodded lower. They had made urgent love one afternoon whilst Rayne was still in the Hospital but this impulsive act of oral pleasuring was as delicious as it was unexpected.

"Mmmnnnhhhhh.... You are wonderful!" Ant groaned huskily as the boy touched base and licked his balls seductively.

Ant bucked upward into his tight throat a couple of times then let go of his hair so that Rayne could kneel back, pacing himself. His mouth drew back up to the fat mushroom head of Ant's erection and his tongue flickered teasingly back and forth in the sensitive slit. At the same time, Rayne reached sideways into the drawer above the bed where he knew Ant kept condoms and lube. His deft fingers shucked the rubber out of it's wrapper unseen and he lifted his head briefly to work the sheath down over his partner's thick, leaking cock.

"I thought you were better," Ant whispered to him, surprised by this new caution.

"Better safe than sorry, hey?" Rayne told him quietly. "I only came off the antibiotics the other day."

He uncapped the lube and drizzled it liberally over Ant's twitching sex, then straddled him with a sharp, expectant little smile and wriggled out of his shirt. Eagerly he guided the other man's hard cock to his arsehole and lowered himself steadily onto it until Ant felt the head pop into his yielding bum. The wet heat of his chute swallowed him up at once and he sucked in a gasp of approval.

"Uuuhhhhh... Yeah!" he cried appreciatively as Rayne began to ease steadily up and down on his long, hard shaft. He reached out and pulled on the boy's stiff young nipples, then let his hands glide to Rayne's slender hips, holding him there as he began to thrust.

"Aahhh!" Rayne cried out, throwing his head back as Ant's big cock invaded him with more purpose. His own dark, sexy young prick was rising in response to the vigorous friction in his colon as he rode eagerly on his lover's swollen sex.

"Does it still hurt?" Ant gasped solicitously, praying that it would not be too bad.

Rayne shook his head bravely. "Not much."

"I bet you've missed it though, haven't you?" He pulled Rayne down into his arms then rolled the unresisting boy easily onto his back on the bed and kissed his neck as he pumped deeper and faster in that soft, slippery passage.

Rayne coiled around him with one heel braced against the mattress and the other leg hooked over Ant's hip, riding on the bigger man, his arms wrapped tightly around Ant's neck.

"Uuuhhhh... uuuuhhhh... c'mon!" he keened hungrily. "Ohhhh, Ant... yes! Like that! That's good! That's gooooooood!"

He began to cry out, his voice rising in pitch, over and over like a kicked dog, bucking and yelping in time with Ant's vigorous cock thrusts until there was not much doubt in Ant's mind that he certainly had been needing this for quite some time. The older man wasted no time in giving him what he wanted and it was not long before he felt Rayne clench furiously around him and his hot seed spurted all over Ant's belly.

"Yuhhh...yuuhhhh... yeeaaaahhhhh!" he moaned, thrashing like a landed shark in Ant's embrace.

His mate pumped hard two... three more times in that pulsing, tightening chute then thrust deep and let his own hot payload spill into the skein of latex around his bell-end, washing over him like a lover's tongue. He slumped in Rayne's arms for a moment, twin hearts pounding in his chest and the head of his cock, then leaned over the boy to kiss the softness of his parted lips slowly. Ant's cock stiffened automatically and he began to thrust again. He felt Rayne's knees come up and the boy's feet landed in the small of his back, stroking encouragingly there as his lover carried on pulsing between his legs.