Between the Stacks

Crataegus

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Hey, all. I'm really sorry about this long delay, but I've been having a hell of a couple days. First my wallet gets stolen, then the car I'm using while I'm down here on vacation breaks (and can't be fixed, but is sort of driveable). So, long story short, I'm working on the third rewrite of Chapter Eight, and hope to have it up soon.

Sorry to keep you all waiting like this, but some things come before stories. :tongue:
 

Crataegus

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Okay, I know you all are probably tired of excuses, but I've been having a hell of a week. I just flew home from Tennessee (more than 23h in transit), and in the process my laptop got damaged. It's still useable, but the screen's bollocksed up, and I don't have the money to either fix it or replace it.

I'm also having trouble writing the next chapter. I've tried rewriting it five times, and I'm not able to get it right. I think this time it may work, but it's slow going.

I'd like to be able to promise it to you by the the beginning of next week, but I'm not going to, because I'm not sure I'll be able to.

Sorry, once again!
 

Crataegus

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This is the last time I'm a tease about the next chapter. Either tomorrow or Sunday, my laptop is going to the repair shop, and I refuse to leave Chapter Eight unfinished until I get my laptop back. So you can expect the next chapter either tonight or tomorrow.

Promise!

And feel free to berate me mercilessly for my incessant tardiness in continuing; I deserve it. :p
 

Crataegus

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This chapter is finally done! I'm posting now, before I forget, and before I send my computer off to be fixed.

I probably won't actually write any more until I get my computer back, even if I do have access to the file (transferred to a spare laptop). So it may be another few weeks before I post anything else, but I promise it'll be good.

Chapter Eight:

With the large fluffy towel wrapped around my waist, I wiped the steam off the mirror, looking at my reflexion thoughtfully. I smiled. It was a real smile and it made me glad to see it. I thought of Niels then and my smile grew into a wide grin. Had I found a man I could trust? It was too early to tell that. Had I found a man I could happily go out with? It seemed so. Had I found a man I could fall in love with—for better or worse? Most definitely.

'Speaking of that man, where did he get to?' I said to myself with a small chuckle. 'I guess I'll have to go play hide-and-seek.' I have a bad habit of talking to myself. I've tried to keep my internal monologues internal, but it doesn't always work. Especially when I'm alone. My father used to berate me endlessly for it, saying that those who couldn't keep their thoughts in their heads must not have much in there to begin with.

I unwrapped myself and dried off. I did so slowly and with relish, closing my eyes and trying to remember the sensation of Niels' hands on my body—his broad palms kneading my back; his lightest touch brushing against my side; his gentle and insistent touch on my arms, legs, chest, and of course my dick and balls. As I thought, my dick—which was still not fully flaccid—began to rise again. I ran my hands over my own chest, the place where he'd placed his hands seemingly still hot to my fantasy-filled mind.

I shook my head suddenly. 'No. Why am I doing this when he's off somewhere waiting for m—' I didn't finish the word before a new sound landed in my ears. A great roar of music grew around me. This, however, wasn't the ever so slightly tinny sound of a speaker playing a recording. I'd been around enough pianos in my time to know the sound of a real one, and this was exactly such—being played better than I'd heard a piano played in person before. Playing was a stormy, roiling, irritated sea of music. All of a sudden, just as I finished towelling myself—a task I did mostly on autopilot—the music halted.

With a curious furrow between my brows, I rewrapped myself in my towel, this time making sure that it was properly secure. Just because I'd been with him naked in the shower didn't mean that I wanted surprise nakedness to occur because my towel fell off at an inopportune moment. I gave it one last quick tug to make sure it was well-seated on my hips and went to the bathroom door. It was slightly ajar from when Niels had left only minutes ago. I peeked out the door—quick look to the left; quick look to the right—and opened it. I didn't see anything, but within moments of the door's quiet creak, the stormy piano began calling out again. It was the same place as it had started before, but it went on for a while longer before stopping this time. While it played I stuck my head out the door and took a slow step. On the lush carpet my bare feet made no noise, so the only sound that came as I left and walked down the hall was the occasional and faint rustle of the towel. Again, the piano started—I was close. The door at the end of the hall—where you'd expect a bedroom to be—was pulled to and it was definitely from here that the piano music came. It stopped just as I put my hand on the door—had the pianist heard the near-inaudible thump of hand-on-wood?—I didn't hear noise from inside. I waited till the piano started up again—the pianist had moved on a bit from the first time I'd heard the piece—before I pushed the door open. It gave way with hardly a creak, opening in on a large room. Directly in front of me was a surprising sight: It wasn't a bed that greeted me, as one would expect from a bedroom; it was a large piano. The pianist was facing away from me, but it was impossible to mistake whom the music's culprit was. Niels sat on the sturdy piano bench, stark naked, and hunched over the piano which looked slightly comically small next to him. He was writing. I stood in the doorway for a good few moments, watching him scribble furiously at the page.

While an unorthodox way of enticing someone to get into bed with you, I had a feeling there was method to his seeming madness. After all, you don't just switch gears like that from groping and touching to composing in the nude without good reason. While the brain likes to think of itself as the king and emperor of the body, all men know that it gladly abdicates—or, if you'll pardon the pun, abdickates—when asked to by the right stimulus. I took a couple of small quiet steps into the room to get a better look at my surroundings.

It was almost certainly two rooms that had the wall between them knocked out. That might explain it, actually. I took another step or two out into the room. Around a corner that must have been where the two rooms had been once been strictly divided I saw a large bed. I grinned to myself. He was a sly one.

I suddenly looked back towards the piano, getting that feeling you get when someone's looking at you when your back is turned. The piano bench was empty, and the pen that had been in Niels' hand writing was seated on the small lip of wood where also sat a half-written piece of manuscript paper. The big question remained, however: Where had Niels gone? I got an answer with sudden immediacy when I felt two large arms wrapping around me from behind. Before I could finish my startled yelp, I had been picked up and was being carried over to the bed. I wriggled slightly, trying to look around a bit as we went. I could only catch quick snatches between the jerking of Niels' long strides and my own slightly smoother glances around—I don't know if you've ever been carried by someone, but it's damn jerky; I suppose your own strides must be the same, but the brain compensates for it when you're the one doing it.

The bedroom and pianoroom were actually divided by more than the imaginary line where the wall once was. Where the pianoroom was painted in cream and had a heavy wine carpet, the bedroom was clad in green and a dark chocolate. There was a large rug covering the sharp line dividing the two rooms with colours drawn from both. The bedroom furniture was heavy and a deep rich brown—much sturdier in both look and construction than my own flimsy set—and done in a simple classical style, emphasising its straight lines and conservative ornamentation. Along either side of the bed were two night stands and along each wall was a tall bookshelf. The only other furnishings in the room were a few lamps—one on each night stand and one in the bookshelf—and a large chest of drawers.

While I was still looking around, the bed approached to its perigee and we stopped. I heard only the faintest of grunts to signal any sort of exertion as I was tossed onto the bed. I landed on the plush surface with a grunt of my own. It was a good thing that it was a king-sized bed, as I rolled over in my landing, and ended up near the right-hand edge of the bed lying on my stomach. I half-rolled back over, trying to fix my towel which was rapidly loosing itself and abandoning its role as clothing. Laying on my back, it gave me a decent view of the room around me, and mostly, of Niels looming over the other side of the bed. He was standing with his great arms crossed over his broad chest, a smirk on his face.

'There's something wrong, Malcolm. You have clothes on. Or at least, you have covering. Perhaps you're shy, yes?' he asked, beginning to pace slightly back and forth parallel to the bed in a nearly predatory manner. I wasn't threatened by the behaviour—it was clear by now that he meant me no harm—only intrigued and aroused.

Have you ever seen a man hunt a partner he knows he has caught, but whose prey doesn't quite know it yet? When you're the prey of a man you can trust, seeing the lust-filled glances—side-long but lingering; mustn't give the game away—watching the pointed and calculated movements—slow, deliberate, smooth—you lose your desire for control. You know that you aren't in control, and that's how both parties want it. This may seem to mean that the prey is seeking to hasten the hunt, but it is not so—no, indeed it is quite the opposite. It's a game of cat-and-mouse where both parties both long for and loath the moment the game ends and the trap closes.

'In that case, I should ensure that you have nothing to be shy about.' He absently reached a hand down and scratched just below his navel, once again drawing my eye towards his groin, where his pendulous cock hang once again nearly flaccid. He raised that hand, a clear gesture of an idea coming to him. 'Malcolm, please get under the covers. You can leave the towel on the floor—you won't be needing it under the duvet.' He said this with authority, but not arrogance. As he spoke he walked over to the door—as there were two doors to the room, it having been two rooms originally—and closed it, flicking the light with a dismissive gesture.

I watched as he went about this, moving deliberately around the bed to the windows. I made no move to follow his orders, still curious as I was to his plans. The windows looked over the river-valley in our city, with the wide blue ribbon of water drawing all eyes towards it as it coursed down from the mountains to our east. He closed them with a quick flick of his hand on the chains that held the curtains suspended at the sides. It grew thickly dark when the last slivers of light were chased away by the thick fabric of the curtains. I blinked against the darkness, for even though this room was connected to his piano studio by a large open space, and there were indeed open curtains in that other room, this sudden darkness fell heavy like a quilt.

I tried to look through the thick blackness and found that I was able to make out his shape, facing me by the window. I followed his instructions, slowly undoing my towel. With a quick lift of my hips, I slipped it out from under me and let it fall to the floor. My eyes began to grow used to the darkness, and I was able to see some small details of his form. Without taking my eyes off the vague silhouette that constituted Niels, I pulled the bedsheets back, again lifting myself to get them out from under me. I saw the faintest movement in the shadow of his face; he was smiling.

I got under the sheets, the thin light cloth cool and soft to the touch. With a bit of a wriggle, I worked myself down into them, relishing the feel of the fabric on my bare skin. It was a very...well...erotic to know that I was doing what he wanted. It wasn't inherently about being dominated; I'm not really into that sort of thing to be honest—in my mind, any partnership is about equals, even if the members give up their power in some manner to the other—but it was about knowing that I had had my say, and my say was to do as he said. It's difficult to explain in any way that doesn't make it sound like domination, but when you're in a partnership of equals, you know—even if others can't tell.

He walked around the bed slowly, his feet making almost inaudible sounds on the plush carpet. He moved with a confident slowness that reminded you of a stalking cat. Perhaps a panther or a mountain lion. Perhaps it was more of a stalking bear. If you haven't seen a bear walking slowly while trying to decide what to make of something near by, you won't know what I'm talking about. Without taking their eyes off of the source of their interest, they'll walk around it slowly—taking it in from all angles. Then they'll take whatever action they deem appropriate, and never look back. It's a very deliberate sort of examination—you can practically see them mentally weighing all their options. He seemed much like that as he walked around the bed. He came slowly into the light, the features of his body—from the stray wisps of hair poking out from his head, to the shadow and light playing over his defined musculature, to the subtle movement with each step that betrayed the position of his cock and balls—intermittently being moved over by the light from the other room. His body was briefly visible before the light became too bright and direct, and he was in full silhouette in front of the doorway.

It was like this that he turned and faced me, the barest of detail visible over him. He was, at that moment, a creature not of flesh and blood and bone, but instead one of the purest shape and shadow. The only thing I could do at that moment was let out a small catched breath. He was a combination painting and statue—the perfect combination of form, function, and artistry.

When I was just a young man, I did some painting—I took art in high school, but have hardly picked up a brush since. Later, after I had gone home, I got out my old brushes, paints, and a large canvas I'd been saving for just such an occasion. The framing of the scene was perfect—the door blocking out everything except Niels' silhouette; behind him, only just visible behind his large frame, the piano, sunlight streaming onto it and making the wood positively glow—and the subject was a work of art on his own. The piece was finished, and framed, and for a short time, I thought of selling it. I even had it appraised. In the end, it stayed with me, and though I've never hung it up, I still think of it as my best work. Why didn't I hang it up? Why should I, with what happened next in my story?
 
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Crataegus

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Right, well, my laptop has been sent off, to return in a couple weeks. But, I do have my iPhone, and was thinking that I might write more frequent, shorter continuations. But, as they would significantly change the flow of the story (they would bring you pieces of chapters, not full chapters, though I'll still keep the chapter format), I wanted to get your opinion on it, assuming I still have readers. :p
 

Crataegus

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While I'm forced to have this hiätus in writing, I've been thinking about the story, and have a few ideas where to take it post actus, but I want to hear your thoughts. And so, what do you all think will happen to our two lovebirds after the next scene? Or, alternately, should there even be anything else after this scene? Any and all ideas are welcome and appreciated!
 

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I think it would be nice to see some of their regular life together. Maybe fastforward a bit? Id love for there ti be more action scenes in there as well! Keep up the great work!
 

Crataegus

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Finally! My laptop is fixed! Depending on how writing goes, there might be another chapter up tonight! Just need to finish work and pick up my laptop, and this story is back in business. :)
 

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Here we go! Post fifty in this thread and I've finally written Chapter Nine! I'm really sorry it's taken me so long to write, I've been so busy with work, writing my various music, and spending time with my boyfriend that I haven't really had any time that I could set aside to write in. But here it is.

Also, while I have your attention, I'm working on another story! It's not erotic at all, so it's being put up piece-by-piece in a blog I've started. I'd love to have you read it, comment on it, etc. The link is in my signature if you'd like to take a read.

With all that said, after far too long, and without further adieux:

Chapter Nine:

I've thought long and hard about how to describe what happened next. I know you're all expecting a long description of us having sex and how it was amazing and life altering and whatever other shit people usually put in their stories at about this time. I'm not going to do that. I don't want this to be about any hypothetical reader getting their rocks off or whatever the equivalent euphemism is for women. This story isn't about sex, it's about people. The people might have sex, and I might occasionally get quite explicit in describing certain...attributes, but I'm not going to spoil this with something that I'm not certain I can adequately describe.

And so, we had sex. We didn't make love—not yet. We had sex. We had good sex, loud sex, a sex filled with passion and energy. It wasn't the sex that you have when you love someone, it was the sex you have when you're in love with them. It might sound like a distinction without difference, but when you've had both kinds, you know the difference.

When we had both spent ourselves on each other, we embraced. We held each other in a tangled knot of limbs and bodies and laboured breathing. When you listen long enough to another person breathing, listening to nothing but the expiration and inspiration of air into their breast, you find yourself going into a near-sleep. You are aware in some way of every place your skin touches theirs and of every move they make. Your body goes still and you are left alone in a place between thought and dream, between wakefulness and sleep, and between light and dark.

I was finally pulled back into consciousness by Niels' large form moving. As I opened my eyes, my vision adjusted into some semblance of focus and I saw him silhouetted again against the bright void that was the doorway. I smiled to myself and let my eyes close. It wasn't long before I heard the piano again. Where it had been quick, agitated, and driven before, it was now soft, pensive, and had a meditative stillness which threatened to lull me back into slumber. He played and played, quiet melodies twisting around one-another. A fugal delight of simplicity.

With a great effort, I pulled my mind back into gear and sat up, the thin sheets falling to the bed around my bare form. A great bruise was spreading down over my chest, reaching up to a thin read weal where my necklace had been pulled from me. In the low light of the bedroom, you couldn't see the mark; you could barely see me, in fact.

The sheets fell from my body completely as I rose, pulling myself to my feet. I made sure I didn't make a sound as I walked, risen up on the tips of my toes, to the door. Hiding from sight as best as possible, I peeked around the doorframe, watching Niels play. The look of intense concentration on his face was one of the most passionate things I've ever seen. He looked as though he were pouring his very being into those keys—how many are there? Eighty-eight? Something like that—and it was something else. His brow furrowed in a crease of concentration.

I let him play on for a while longer—the agility in those fingers was something to see. They crossed over one another in ways that I'm sure would tie my own fingers in knots. His music slowly wound itself down and I realised that something had changed since he first found me at that bar.

This man, this gentle giant—this man had found his way into my heart. It wasn't love at first sight (as well you would know, having read my tale) but it was something not far off. Perhaps we should stop talking about love at first sight. You can't truly love someone you've seen once. You can become infatuated, but you can't fall in love. We should instead perhaps talk about love at second sight.

Lost in my mire of thought, I didn't notice when the piano stopped singing and Niels stood up. He came up to stand in front of me and I looked up. A smile was firmly planted on his lips, and I returned a smile of my own.

'You're up.' he put a hand on my shoulder—his skin was hot, as if the effort of playing had heated his hands like an engine.

'So are you.' I smirked slightly.

'So I am. I hope I didn't wake you with my playing. I got an idea and just had to go work it through.'

My eyebrow rose in a smirk, 'You did wake me. But it was worth it; that playing, that was all improvised?' He nodded in reply, 'Well if you play like that when you're making it up when you go, you playing from written music must be an ascendant experience for the listeners.'

He laughed, shaking his head, 'No, no.... I'm not a concert pianist. I play my music but other people's music isn't all that great for me.' he paused, looking down at me with an expression that told me he was working through an idea. 'Come.' His hand dropped to take my hand and he turned, walking back to the piano. I followed and sat next to him when he sat down.

'These five notes,' he said, playing just on the black keys in a jazzy sort of scale—I would later learn that it was called the 'Pentatonic Scale'—'Try playing just on those keys. You can't really go wrong in what you play.' I hesitatingly put my hands on the piano, pressing the keys without the firm grace he had when playing. The sound was bright and clear. I played a few more notes, then tried a chord. Hey, this was kind of fun. 'That's great!' he said, smiling next to me. 'Keep playing like that.'

I tried playing a couple of rhythmic chords (the beat wasn't really professional, but it was sure fun as hell to play) and I paused, waiting to see what he would do. Without missing a tick, Niels did a nimble scale down from the very top note on the piano down to the point where I had played my chords. I played them again, and he started playing a jazzy tune over top. I did my best to add to his music, not take away from it, and I think I succeeded, overall.

We played for what must have been an hour, my just faffing around at the bass on the black keys, Niels playing every other key. At one point, he reached around behind me with his left hand, pulling me into a sort of hug while he played right at the very bottom of the keyboard. When we finally figured out that we were done, we realised that we were both laughing like children. It was the most fun I've had in many years.

I later did another painting, simply showing the two of us sitting at his big red piano, and that is the painting I have hung upon the wall. I realise now that we didn't say 'I love you' for a fair while longer, but it was as though we had. Maybe instead of words, we said it in harmony and melody and rhythm. As the bard wrote, 'If music be the food of love, play on.' So, dear reader: Play on.
 

Crataegus

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Surprise, surprise! I actually managed to get this finished in under a week. Our story is reaching a turning point, and I want to hear your opinions before I get much further. Either I can wrap things up, and we'll be done, or I can continue onto the second broad part of the story. It's entirely up to you all, so let your opinions on the matter be known! I know I get a lot of you just lurking on here, and while that's all well and good, in this particular case, I want to hear what you think, so speak up! :)

Also, I know I've mentioned it in my previous post, but I'm hoping I can entice you into taking a look at another story I'm writing, over at my blog. The Bell Invites

Please enjoy!

Chapter Ten:

Niels took me home later that day. I don't need to describe the rest of the day too much because really, none of it was terribly important. We grabbed a bite to eat at a coffee shop, me wearing an old tshirt of Niels', him as handsome as ever. We talked about things a bit more while we ate. We talked from main-street to the beach to the rainforests. We talked the world over in that coffee shop. It was amazing to hear about his life back in his home country. I almost didn't believe him at first. After all, there are a lot of guys that will talk a fanciful history for themselves with a life-altering move from their home-country to a new land, with the stylings of a daring escape. He proved it easily by telling me a long and involved joke. Entirely in Danish. I didn't understand a word of it, but he smiled and laughed, gesticulating in what must have been over-the-top way (how am I to know what's over-the-top in this joke? I don't speak Danish!), and I couldn't help but laugh until my sides were sore.

We spent a good hour or two in that coffee shop, though if you had asked, I would have said it was less. I loved being around him. He had a way of drawing your eye and making you smile, and I noticed after a while that people around us were also staring at us, smiling. I've always been nervous having strangers look at me. I'm not overly shy, I just always get the nagging feeling that they must be judging me when they stare like that. It unnerves me into being overly quiet and cautious. That day did not have that feeling to it. I couldn't have cared any less about the rest of the café if they had been wearing clown suits singing the German national anthem backwards through their noses.

After our coffee had long gone cold because we had forgotten to drink it in the middle of our time together, we decided that it was perhaps time to head off. He drove me home, the whole time, his hand rested lightly on my leg. It wasn't possessive or anything like that, it was instead more...how to describe it? It seems as clear as crystal, but in spite of my having studied words and how they go together, I can't think of how to explain it. Perhaps the closest I can get is to say that he placed his hand on my leg simply to let me know that he was there and to not let me forget it. Not that I could or wanted to.

We didn't talk too much while driving, as it had started raining while we had been in the coffee shop, and both of us were happy just to listen to the rain's pitter-patter on the car. He drove around the city in a directionless manner, turning left here, right there. He didn't ask how to get to my place, I didn't offer the information. As we drove, I let my own hand come to rest on top of his own.

It was comfortable being with him. After a long while, I turned to him, smiling slightly. I saw him smiling as he drove. 'I.... I should probably go home. I have work tomorrow, and....' I said quietly. I didn't want to say it. I desperately didn't want to. I had to though, and I was tired enough that if I didn't find my way to bed soon, I was going to find myself falling asleep where I sat.

He nodded, the smile that had been resting on his face flickering slightly. He didn't speak, only letting me direct him to my place. The sky darkened as we drove, and the rain started coming down in sheets, thumping on the car's roof like a deep thrumming roll on a timpani drum (though Niels would later tell me that timpani is plural; the stuff he knows, I tell you). We finally arrived after finding our way back through the great hive of people that was the city. Though my mind had started racing—what do I say when we get there? Do I invite him in? Do I give him my number? Do I make sure that I get his number? What's the protocol in this situation?—I could feel sleep starting. The racing thoughts in my head were like the background noise of a beehive: Just a low hum in the back of your skull, seeming to shake some deep part of your brain just a little bit loose. I turned to him in my seat and found him looking at me already. My flat (the basement suite of this small building—my warren I called it) was behind me, not twenty metres away, yet it seemed like a thousand miles from where I sat, in his warm car, holding his hand.

He smiled. 'Well, Malcolm. I guess this is the place then? Let me walk you to the door, I have an umbrella in my trunk somewhere, I think.' Without waiting for an answer, he pulled his hand away—though mine came along with it for a moment—and left the car with me alone in it. I saw him run through the rain, fumbling a bit with the key to the trunk then disappearing behind the large slab of metal that was the lid of the trunk. I looked at my apartment. It was nothing special. Nothing special at all. Just a cheap bachelor's flat with only a few small windows. I had a spare bedroom, I suppose, although I had turned it into a sort of garden. I don't have a balcony, porch, patio, or anything like that, so I turned my spare bedroom into a little garden. I have a deck chair, a small table, and a large assortment of plants in pots. I have some vegetables, some herbs, but mostly I have flowers. I know, I know, gay man, flowers, how stereotypical. No. My love for gardening comes straight from my Scottish grandmother. She refused to live in a house unless there were fresh flowers at least one place. In the winter, it was in a large vase on the dining table, in the summer, it was fresh cut from her own garden and on any surface that could hold a vase. I would take a book from my many bookshelves (I work in a library, what do you expect?) and sit down in my 'garden' and read for hours. I had to get permission from the landlord, and he still comes by regularly to make sure I really am just growing dianthus, mirabilis, and violas, not certain other plants often grown in basements.

While I was thinking, remembering the smell of my Gran's flowers, Niels came back in the car. He was sopping wet from head to foot, a large dripping grin on his face. 'Well, I can't find my umbrella, so are you ready to make a run for it?' He looked for all the world like a little kid grinning after jumping through puddles. He also looked like a little kid getting ready to jump in a few more puddles.

I chuckled and nodded. He looked like I'd just given him some great present, 'Then last one to the door's a rotten egg!' He bolted his door open and was out in a flash. I tried getting my door open quickly, but the unfamiliar car slowed me down. As I stepped up from the curb, I flicked the door closed behind me. Dear lord it was raining. The skies had opened, and within only a few seconds I was soaked to the bone. Normally, I'm not a big fan of getting drenched from rain. I like walking in the rain, yes, but only in my boots, jacket, and with a sturdy umbrella above me. Today, I was born to run in the rain. Niels, with his long strides, had already ran around the car and was running up the front walk. I knew I couldn't catch him, but I still ran. For that moment, I was a little kid again chasing a new best friend through rain and puddles.

He almost reached the door and he slowed right down to a crawl, pretending to run in slow-motion. 'No! He's going to catch me!' I caught up and over took him, laughing at his commentary, 'Oh no! I'm beaten! There's no way I'll catch up now! Wait a minute....' he laughed as he quickly closed the distance I'd gained, picking me up, and throwing the front door open. 'I win! I win!' he laughed, I laughed, and I knew that he was right; I had won the person-lottery in finding Niels.

'So, Malcolm, where do you keep your keys?' he asked as he felt around in my back pockets for my key. 'Ah-hah! There it is!' With the key he had found in my back pocket, he unlocked the door and carried me through. My building is laid out a little strangely, and on one side, the 'ground floor' is actually my floor, the basement, and on the other side, 'ground floor' is a floor and a half from my floor. Going in the front, as we were, we had to go down the stairs, and without any signs of effort, Niels carried me down them when I told him which way to go.

It was only when we got to my front door that he decided to put me down and give me back my keys. 'There you go. I suppose this is your place here?' he motioned to the only door in the hall. I was lucky in some ways that I was the only one on my floor other than water-heaters and boilers. I nodded as I put the key in the door, turning it with a small click.

I opened the door—here was the moment of truth—and decided in that moment. I held the door open for him, 'Do you want to...watch a movie or something?' I paused trying to think of what I was inviting him in for and watching a movie popped into my mind. He grinned and stepped through the door. I followed and closed the door behind me, flicking the lightswitch as I did so. 'It's not as nice as your place, but it's mine, I suppose.' I said, a bit embarrassed about the little messes I didn't have cleaned up—there was a plate in the sink I had left to dry, there was dust on a few of the bookshelves, that sort of thing.

First thing in the door, you find a small office on the right and my pantry on the left. After that is my kitchen and my livingroom-diningroom hybrid. My bedroom and spare bedroom are at the very end of the hall, off to the right. I took off my shoes, putting them on a mat to dry. 'Make yourself at home. There are towels in the cupboard next to the kitchen if you need them. Right beside the washing-machine.'

I followed him to the kitchen as he pulled a couple large fluffy towels out of the cupboard. Without a word, he stripped off his shirt and trousers, wrapping the towel around his now-naked waist. 'Here you go!' he handed me the other towel. I followed his suit, picking up our wet clothes and putting them in the dryer for a cycle. It felt a little strange walking around my own flat with nothing but a towel on—especially with someone else in there with only a towel on.

With little fanfare, we went to the livingroom. I had a movie already in the player and we decided that it would do well enough. I snuggled into him on the couch and he pulled a blanket over both of us. Just after the hero of the movie found out that 'his girl' had been kidnapped by the bad-guy, I fell asleep in Niels' arms for the second time in as many days.

Long after the movie had finished and Niels had also fallen asleep, somewhere near midnight, my front door opened with a small click of the lock. Someone slipped inside the flat, quiet as a mouse, locking the door again behind them. Niels and I remained unaware for the time being of anything out of the ordinary going on, but it wouldn't remain so for long.
 

flaneur

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Only just started reading this and it is brilliant! The characterisation is great. I love Anna - I know a few girls who are very like her and I have a similar relationship with them like Malcolm does. 'Percussive maintenance' is easily my favourite phrase of the day! Thanks so much for this story.
 

Crataegus

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Only just started reading this and it is brilliant! The characterisation is great. I love Anna - I know a few girls who are very like her and I have a similar relationship with them like Malcolm does. 'Percussive maintenance' is easily my favourite phrase of the day! Thanks so much for this story.

I'm glad you like it! :smile:

Anna's basically a composite of a few of my friends, though she's a little more over-the-top than they are. She may be my favourite character, to be honest. Don't worry, even if this story does wrap up fairly shortly, we'll be seeing a bit more of Anna either way.
 

Crataegus

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So, if no one has an opinion either way, I think I'll probably bring this story to a close in the next couple of chapters. It's already gone on for 25 pages of text, and gotten much better feedback than I could have ever dreamed of. Thank you all!

If you want me to continue past this, let me know now, or the ideas in my head will stay there, and this will get finished off in the next...two, maybe three chapters.

Either way, I want to thank you all again! And keep commenting! It helps me with ideas, helps me get better, and lets me know where you all want this to go! :smile:
 

Charlemange

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So, if no one has an opinion either way, I think I'll probably bring this story to a close in the next couple of chapters. It's already gone on for 25 pages of text, and gotten much better feedback than I could have ever dreamed of. Thank you all!

If you want me to continue past this, let me know now, or the ideas in my head will stay there, and this will get finished off in the next...two, maybe three chapters.

Either way, I want to thank you all again! And keep commenting! It helps me with ideas, helps me get better, and lets me know where you all want this to go! :smile:
aww please continue
 

Crataegus

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Unfortunately this isn't a continuation, just and update.

Right, well, I don't feel like ending it quickly, as you may have guessed by the cliffhanger I gave you there. So, before I relieve that tension I'm going to throw in another Interlude, then continue on with the story. The reason I've been so long in posting is that work has been kicking my ass, and while that hasn't changed, I really want to get this back up and moving. With that said, I can't promise when this will continue, but I'll see what I can do about hurrying up. As always, comments and questions are encouraged.
 

Crataegus

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Well, I feel terrible that it's been this long again. I wouldn't surprise any of you reading this for hating me for my inconsistency. But if there's one thing I'm consistent about, it's inconsistently but incessantly updating this! And that has to count for something, right?

So, here we go! We have another interlude, and then I'll release at least some of the tension from that cliff-hanger I left you with. Also, just as an aside, this 'little' story has now hit twenty-five thousand words in length!

Before I forget, I've started a new story! Don't worry, I'll keep working on this one, but I had an idea and I just had to run with it. So, if you like my writing, please give it a look? I'd love to know what you think of it! It's over at The Gate's Key.

Don't forget, I love to hear what you think of this story too, so if you have an opinion, question, comment, criticism, give me a shout! I love reading them!

Now, with all that out of the way....

Interlude II:

To begin with, let me start off with my name. My name is the far-too-Scottish-for-a-Canadian Malcolm Ruaridh MacDonnell. Before you ask or hurt yourself, I usually spell my middle name Rory, even though my birth certificate disagrees with me, just because it's always a trick getting people who aren't Scottish to pronounce it right. You may well ask now why I have a Scottish name if I'm a Canadian? My mother and father, bless their crazy hearts, were both from Scotland—as am I, though I'm really more of a Canadian at this point—and named me accordingly. I should, perhaps, mention that to be precise my name given me by my parents was Màel Caluim Ruaridh Mac Dhòmhnaill, and that it was only thanks to a merciful clerk in the naming office that my parents were convinced to spell at least two of my names the ordinary way.

I know what you're probably thinking, between my consonant-riddled mess of a name and Niels' foreign-letter riddled name, pronouncing anyone's name in this story is a handful. Don't worry. Mine is really easier than it looks—that isn't to say Niels is easier though. I still have trouble with his, and he's spent ages trying to teach me.

I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, but brought up in Prince George, British Columbia, although I don't boast about that. It being the unofficial dandelion capital of B.C. isn't much to boast about, really. I was born all of 27 years ago in the family home, with my godmother acting as support, doctor, and midwife to my mother.

Up until I was fourteen years old, my mother worked as a seamstress in a small tailor's shop she started and my father worked in the papermills. I had a fairly uneventful childhood, really. I was an average student, never really trying that hard, but never flunking out. I got high enough marks to get into the more advanced classes, but never so high as to be thought brilliant. Anna can confirm, and would wholeheartedly were you to ask, that I am in no way brilliant. As she once said of me—and I'm working through a translator here, so I don't know if it's exactly what she said, but bear with me—that if I were any dumber, I would put pants on my head and milk a jackass. She may have been annoyed at me at the time.

I never was a big sports-fan, but I did a bit of track-and-field around the edges. As I'd mentioned before, I was a bit of a pudgy kid. The only thing I could really say I was good at when the teachers got out the sporting equipment was the sharp-things and the heavy-things. Javelin and archery were my favourites, and I was decent at shotput. But some miracle of physics which I will never be able to explain, I was able to put the shot farther than most of the jocky kids in my grade in middle school. I still claim that as my biggest athletic achievement to this day, as it happens.

When I was fourteen, just a few weeks after my mother's birthday my father began to have difficulties at work. My life changed on that day. He was fired from the mill a month later and was at one point confined to hospital. I didn't completely understand what had happened, but I now know that my father had been schizophrenic for many years. My mother explained to me that he had always had a quirky way about him, staring at the patterns on ceiling tiles and listening to the fuzz between radio stations intently. He always put it off as him trying to 'See into the beyond!' and laughed, but it became apparent as I found out what was happening, that they had been the signs of his problems.

There's a large stigma in our society about mental illness, and you're probably going to jump to the conclusion that he became violent, or started hearing voices telling him to do heinous things. He didn't. He has never lain a hand on myself or my mother—well, in truth, I was spanked as a child, but I'm sure I deserved it, even if I don't remember why. He is one of the gentlest men you will meet. You'll know what kind of man he was when I tell you that he would be forever ferrying out the smallest of ladybirds and spiders from our house in the safety of a glass topped with card.

His problems had a great effect on my family. He became suspicious of my mother, telling me from time to time that he was sure she was up to something. He ended up being unable to work until our doctor found him the exact medication cocktail to balance whatever switch had gone awry in his head. My mother, not always a patient woman, spent more time at work during this time, and I'm not sure she's quite forgiven him to this day for cracking our perfect family dream.

But we managed, and by the time I graduated—with Distinction, so take that, Anna! Hah!—my father had become the calm smiling man that I had grown up with. He still collects a certain amount of money from the government for his disability, but he manages. I think that the story of growing up with some small but important hardship is always destined to be not one of triumph, but one of managing. It's not always pretty, but the pieces of the puzzle eventually fall into place, even if it's not the place you were expecting.

After school I left home and went to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. It wasn't the first time I'd been to a big city, but it was still a change that I wouldn't shut up about for weeks. Whenever my mum called to find out if I had had a sock emergency and needed her to courier me more over, I would talk a blue streak about all the things in Vancouver. I always knew that cities were big and bustling, but I never really realised how much stuff was in a city. Every weekend I went to some new place in the city and found that I really wasn't all that into going to class.

My parents had saved up a fund to pay for my education, so I had money for tuition for at least a year, but half way through my first year I was coming to the realisation that I really had no idea what I would do with a degree in English Literature, and with the amount of money I was spending on it, I really should know what I was going to make money with my degree. At the end of my first year, I dropped out and enrolled in night school at a small college. Within a few years, I'd gotten my certification in Library Sciences. During that time I'd worked full-time at a series of coffee shops, bookstores, grocers, and one particularly 'enjoyable' job working in a cider factory.

The time I spent working in the cider factory was probably the most enlightening job I've had. Working for eight hours a day working a machine whose sole purpose is to mash apples beyond recognition teaches one both patience for the unpleasant and a strong desire to work somewhere else. It was that drive that led me to become the youngest manager in at least a decade at my local library. I'm not really proud of being a university drop-out, but I've made something of myself, at the least.

You probably want to know something about my love-life during all of this, don't you? That's right you do, you horny little monkeys, you. I tease, of course. You're not monkeys—monkeys can't read. Now, there's not anything to report until I was well out of highschool. Don't get me wrong, I looked longingly at any attractive man who crossed my path, but I was, as it happened, paralysingly shy. I admit, I had terrible self-esteem when I was young. As I grew up I began to realise that frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about what other people think of me. In some ways, being short was one of the best things to happen to me. When you have to be a bit of a tall poppy figuratively because you're never going to be one literally, you learn to ignore the sidelong looks you get when you act a little silly in public.

My 'dry spell' as Anna puts it ended when I met Ryan—or to be more precise, when Ryan met me. I was working at a small coffee shop downtown and a customer came in. He was handsome and had a smile you could see from here to Québec. He came up to the counter, ordered a large coffee, wrote his number on the fiver he gave me, grinned and winked, and walked back out with his coffee in-hand. After much handwringing and fretting about it, I called him. He turned out to only be here on a study grant, and after a happy year together, we agreed to split.

During that year, I discovered not only that I could be proud of myself, even if it's just for little things, but I could also be confident that I actually wasn't repulsive towards men, and that if I looked, I could find another man to spend my time with. Ryan went back to Alabama the next year, and I went back to being single. Instead of continuing on as I had, I took the chance to do something about the flaws I saw when I looked in the mirror.

I lost weight, I got into better shape than I had ever been in school, and I even got some definition while I was at it. I went to gay bars, and even managed to try to flirt a time or two. Of course I was terrible, but I got by. I managed, I suppose. And I found another boyfriend after a while. In fact, I had a couple. They weren't important to this story, and they never drifted through my life for long, but they were still an important part of me growing fully into the man I am.

You already have heard the story of how I met Anna, and she helped me out a lot through a particularly nasty breakup with a particularly asinine man. I won't tell her story again, because it's bad to repeat yourself too much, but needless to say, once she burst into my life, she's been an integral part of it ever since.

I still go every year in the spring to visit my mother and father, just in time for the dandelions to be in blossom. My mother no longer works in her little shop, having sold it for a tidy sum. My father still plays the part of foil, calming my mother down when she works herself into her fraying frets. They still talk like they were in their...our homeland, but I stopped that long ago when we moved here. But for the week I spend with them and the two or three weeks after, I sound once again like I'm not just their child, but the child of Aberdeen's granite streets. And the yellow of the dandelions and the blue of the sky which usually paint my voice become the greys and steels of granite and sea. It's perhaps the closest I've come to changing who I am. I guess I'm lucky that I get to be those two people, even if one is sleeping deep inside somewhere for all but a few smiling weeks a year.

So I suppose that fills you in on the story of one Malcolm Ruaridh MacDonnell; or if you catch me in the right month, the story of a Màel Caluim Ruaridh Mac Dhòmhnaill instead.
 

Crataegus

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Right. So once again, I'm terrible at meeting my own deadlines. But in part, this time you can blame my job! In addition, I've got some bad writer's block at the moment, and I was hoping to get some input from you all?

The main things I need to know are:
1. What do you think should happen in this next chapter? Is there anything that should definitely happen?
2. What do you think should happen over the next few chapters (the next arc of the story, that is)? Is there anything that should definitely happen?
3. Is there anything or anyone in the story you want to see happen or see more of?

Any response would be a huge help. I'm going to try to get this done by tomorrow, but I won't make promises, because I doubt I'll be able to keep them. :tongue: