The Boy From the Sea

*Sorry for the delay, I was on a weekend trip and I wasn't able to write for a few days. All characters are 18+*

*

Adriel slept. The new addition to Christopher's household was exhausted, and moments after their brief friendly 'conversation' he had started crying again.

Christopher didn't know where Adriel had come from, how old he was, or even if he was human, but did know that something terrible had happened to the feverishly dozing boy on his bed.

He didn't feel safe or in the mood to go out fishing again, so he merely waited. He cooked up some fish broth for if the boy woke again, played with the spiny branch of aloe the Spaewife had given him, and waited. After a while he mended his nets and a few items of clothing that he had worn out. Eventually he got so stir crazy that he even cleaned the house.

As the sun was setting he got his first visitor, and it was Max. He stood in the doorway with his formal clothes and his frustration and his beauty. Christopher ached for him so badly that his first impulse was to just grab his shoulders and kiss him. It was an impulse that he thankfully restrained. Max was furious.

"First you reassure me that you can come, and then you reassure me again, and even though you reached home about an hour before my child was christened, you still felt too uninspired to even show your face? What kind of a brother are you?"

Near the end, Max was nearly shouting.

Christopher opened the door. "I have a guest Max." He said quietly.

Max deflated, no longer looking furious, but only confused and peeved. "Who is that? I've never seen her around the town."

Christopher closed the door. "Not a 'her', a 'him.' I was out fishing and I found my lost net. There was a... a shipwrecked boy in the nets. He's a foreigner and doesn't speak our language. The Spaewife sent him to my hut so he could have some peace and quiet. He is very badly burned."

Max looked suddenly stricken. "God in Heaven, oh shit I'm sorry. Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Max was nearly writhing with humiliation and self-loathing. Chris felt guilty anyway. Guilty for hiding the truth, guilty for playing his emotions, and guilty for being in love with his own brother. But he had to keep up the charade.

"Shh... He's sleeping. Now is a bad time, and I have to stay here to watch him, but I swear to God, if you bring your beer and your family here tomorrow, we can celebrate your little angel in style."

Max laughed a little shakily, still looking stricken and trusting. That look tore at Christopher's heart.

"I'll be there." Max promised.

---

When Max left and Christopher closed the door he felt exhausted; physically, mentally, and emotionally. He sagged against the door with a sigh, and he jumped about a foot in the air when he saw the dark eyes of the boy were open and watching him silently.

"Nice to see you awake Adriel." He sighed and walked over to his tiny woodstove. "Let's get you something to eat."

He took the pot of cold broth from the stove and scooped a bowlful of it into a hand-carved wooden trencher. He sat on the stool by the bed and held a spoonful of it to the boy's cracked lips. Chris frowned and blinked; it was probably his imagination, but it almost looked like his lips were noticeably less blistered then earlier.

Adriel sniffed the oily broth and tentatively nibbled at the spoon. Again, it was as if he had never used a utensil in his life. Chris wondered briefly if he had lived like a wild animal, but that made no sense, his skin was so pale.

After wetting his lips with the broth and dribbling more on his chin, Adriel wanted more. "Christopher!" He yelped. He looked so hungry.

"Soup. It's called soup."

"Zoop"

Chris laughed tiredly and continued to feed the strange little man in his bed, offering him words and soup.

It was only after the last drops of broth had been consumed and Christopher was smearing aloe jelly on his face and shoulders that he realized he had been right. Adriel's skin was still terribly red and blistered, but already well-healed. It looked as if days had passed, instead of hours. The skin was starting to peel and the pink patches on his chest were nearly gone.

"I'm pretty sure you're not human Adriel." Chris spoke softly, gently, and wondrously.

"Zoop, Christopher."

"Alright, you hungry little man, I'll get you some soup."

---

Adriel learned very fast. Christopher spoke with him for a few hours; about Max, Haven, fishing, and life. To his shock and delight, Adriel was parroting back his words with better pronunciation, and even grasping the meaning of a few of them. After Christopher had wrapped his mind around the knowledge that his ward was not human, his strange features were easier to accept.

When it got too dark to see, Christopher lit the fat beeswax candle stub he left on the table near his bed. After a brief smoky flare it burned with a sweet smell and bright light. In the firelight, Adriel's unburned skin was nearly translucent. He stared at the small flame, and Chris could see small yellow sparks reflected in those curious dark eyes. Then before he could stop him, Adriel reached out and touched the dancing yellow flame.

"Eeeee!"

Chris winced. The sound was high-pitched and painful, barely human. Adriel put the wounded fingertips in his mouth, scowling at the candle.

Chris had a sudden revelation. Adriel had never used a cup or a spoon. He spoke a strange language with sounds he couldn't even hear, too high or low for his hearing range. He had never been exposed to the sun, or fire. And Chris had found him in his nets.

He jumped up, nearly speechless with excitement. "Jesus, you're one of the Merlee!"

Merlee were fishermen tales. Drunken old men talked about how they had seen Merlee girls sun themselves on the rocks. Stories about women who had been raped by male Merlee and had given birth to sharks. The young men and women in the village had always scoffed and said that the men were drunk and had seen dolphins or swimmers.

Merlee were supposed to be eerily beautiful and lure fishermen to death on the rocks, they had long fish tails in some stories, and in other stories they had the long scaly tails of water snakes.

Adriel was looking up at him curiously. Chris bit his lip; intelligent or no, the boy still understood very little, so how would he be able to ask if he was a Merlee or not?"

He got up and grabbed an old patched shirt and a pair of trousers. "Come on Adriel!" He panted. "We're going outside!"

"Christopher?" The boy sounded doubtful and wary.

The boy weakly moved his arms to go into the shirt holes, but when Christopher took hold of his frail ankles to put them through the trousers he growled and kicked hard. "No! No!"

He looked so firm that Chris just shrugged and got up. He coaxed the frightened boy to his feet, trying to calm him and hurry up at the same time. Adriel's thin white legs trembled as he stood on the hard wooden floor. The white shirt billowed around his slight body.

The boy was weak, and Christopher had to act as a crutch for him. Adriel's thin arm was slung around the older boy's neck as they stumbled outside.

The moon was huge and low and silvery on the horizon. When it was that close, the superstitious called it 'the Demon Moon.' Inland, the high white cliffs gleamed in the light of the moon. The moorland in between was dull and colorless. Nothing but windblown clumps of weeds and stones, land that was good for nothing but raising sheep. Christopher's home was on the ridge where the moor cut off and turned into a beach of gleaming snow-white sand.

A ribbon of that sand shone like beaten silver, the strip where the small breakers beat upon the sand. The sea stretched out in a dark, light-stippled expanse that was only broken once by the dark hulk of a small grassy island.

Christopher felt the boy in his arms go limp for a moment. The pale burnt face was twisted with sudden ferocious grief. Then Adriel got a sudden burst of strength and Chris was not prepared for it. The slender boy twisted and fought in his arms like a hooked fish before breaking free and fleeing clumsily to the edge of the sea. His running was weak and awkward, he crawled at times, sending up splashes of sand with his clumsily pumping knees and elbows and feet.

Chris ran after him, suddenly terrified that the poor creature would drown himself.

Adriel was kneeling, and up to his waist in cold breaking water. Chris stopped a few feet away to watch. Adriel looked down at where the wet shirt was drifting and clinging to his thin legs, and then he started to weep. The crying sent shivers up and down Christopher's spine. It was a series of long high-pitched wails of pain and loss.

Adriel's matted silvery hair glowed softly in the moonlight, whipping around his face in baby-fine strands as he put his face in his hands and sobbed wretchedly. Then he cried out a name. The name was like his original name, unpronounceable, and filled with a dozen or more syllables, but still unmistakably a name.

Chris waited for a few minutes, getting his toes wet in the surf as he waited for Adriel's weak frantic sobs to subside. He felt stricken. He felt hurt. Christopher Angler felt like a monster. Why had he done that? It didn't matter if this boy wasn't human, and he had just hurt him badly.

He scooped his strong arms under Adriel's thin knees and the other around his back. The wind blew the long silky hair into his face and mouth and he sputtered. In his arms, Adriel let out a weak sob that sounded almost like a giggle.

---

He had dried off the boy, taken off the shirt, and was now tucking him in. He plumped up the single feather pillow he owned, wrapped the blanket warmly around his tiny body and gave him a cupful of water.

Adriel pushed the blanket away and Chris had to guiltily avert his eyes from the slender torso and those shapely pale genitals. He gritted his teeth at the traitorous throb in his groin.

"Christopher?" The boy's voice was hoarse with grief.

"Hmm?"

"Please...please."

Chris gasped as those small hands tugged with surprising strength at the front of his shirt. He had been relaxed and now he was off balance, teetering on one foot. Adriel tugged again and he had suddenly fallen on top of the frail boy.

Chris blushed and began to babble an apology, trying to get away so the boy wouldn't feel his growing erection. He froze when he felt something that he had never expected to feel.

He felt the hard prong of another man's arousal against his thigh. Adriel was weak and infirm, but he would not be denied.

Suddenly a small cold mouth was against his own, a small cold tongue writhing in his mouth. Chris lost all control.

It was fast sex, and it was hard sex, and it was desperate sex. It was sex through Christopher's trousers and breechclout, but it was still sex.

Christopher was on top, panting and gasping and kissing with the clumsy desperation of someone denied and loveless. Adriel was underneath, gasping and crying and moving his body in ways that were completely and frankly erotic. They rubbed their stiff and aching cocks together through two layers of cloth, and it only took a few minutes to reach climax.

Chris panted softly, laying on top of this strange beautiful boy, careful not to crush him with his body, his mind still reeling gently.

"Please." Adriel begged softly. To illustrate his point, he caressed the surface of the bed with one small pale hand.

Christopher decided not to think about it. There would be plenty of time for that in the next few days. He had suddenly become a caregiver and a lover to a boy that was not human. The only boy he had ever desired besides his brother. For now, he didn't want the guilt or confusion, he just wanted to enjoy it.

He slipped out of his soiled clothes and eased into the bed. Adriel pressed softly into his side. The small boy buried his face into Christopher's broad muscular chest. Adriel huddled into him needfully. He needed touch, the most basic of human needs.

And Christopher was there to provide.