Now Am I In Arden
A story by Ivor Sukwell and Kyle McKenzie. A story about a boy and a man with all that such entails. The setting is modern and based around the theatre. Not your thing? Sorry about that, we're sure you'll find something that is. Whatever your choice, please remember Nifty needs your donations.
Now Am I In Arden
Chapter nineteen
There wasn't enough time to do any film work, but my agent found me a few small jobs.
First I did a voice over for a video game character, which was quite cool as it was something my mates might actually realize I was in. It wasn't exactly a lot of work, I just went to the voice-over studio a few days each week for a month, but it was quite well paid. Then a few bits of modeling which was boring as fuck but got me some cool new clothes and more money in the bank.
Mostly though, I was at home being Mr Williams' boy. That was the job I enjoyed most and wanted to do forever.
Wonderfully, Brat was at home for most of those months. He did a bit of this and that, earned a few quid, which I insisted went into his bank account, with any sums over four figures going into his off-shore account, untouchable till he was twenty-one.
The real joy though, was that I had my Brat for all the rest of the time he had left as a sixteen year old. He'd be seventeen by the time the Tempest opened, and, as always now, I feared him getting older.
Eventually he would be too old to want to share a bed with me, and every day that passed brought that final day one day closer. And, because every day that passed brought that inevitable moment one day closer, we made the most we could of every day we had.
I wasn't all sex, though there was a lot of sex. We had weekends in a variety of European cities, weekends where we also shared a bed and had sex. I shared a hotel bed with my Brat in Amsterdam, in Bruges, in Paris, in Baden Baden, in Budapest, in Seville and in Rome.
Most of the time, though, we shared my bed in Berkshire, and we shared our lives as best we could.
Time was going t take my Brat away from me, and not, as my Brat thought and feared, because he was no longer fourteen, but because I knew in my heart that Brat, like me, wanted fourteen.
He told me all about the thing with Gino, not just the horrible bit about him not being able to do what he ought to have been able to do, but about the fantasy he held still in his mind, the wondering what it would have been like to be properly with a boy of fourteen. Yes, he'd have been fourteen as well then, but the same wonder, the same fantasy, still haunted him.
I would, I was absolutely certain, lose my Brat not to a younger man, but to a boy.
Then it was down to work. The Costume Designer came up with a wonderful idea. Brat was to be in a body suit, a suit made of shimmering satin; sea blue as a base colour but every time he moved it would look like the waves and ripples on the sea. His arms had wings attached, hidden for most of the time but, with a flick of his wrist he could send them sweeping out, and the idea was to fly him when he did that. An idea had also been pinched from the `Mockingjay' films as well, and Brat could, when it fitted the words, become Ariel on fire.
Brat wouldn't have the most lines, but he would have the most splendid costume by an awful long way.
In fact, Brat seemed quite enthusiastic when I showed him the sketches.
"Wow!" I was stunned by the costume designs when I saw them, if they were half as good in real life as they were on the page they would be amazing.
"So who else is going to be in it?" I leafed through a few of the other designs, curious to see how my fellow cast members would be dressed.
As always, Mr Williams and I were naked, alone in his living room as the light outside faded.
"No idea yet," I was, naturally, enjoying Brat thigh, "Casting directors deal with that. I just have to make do with what they give me, No doubt they have someone lined up for Prospero and Miranda, but casting has to line up with schedules for the other stuff in the rep. Most people will be in two or all three plays, so work load is a consideration.
My hand slid up to semi-hard Brat cock, and, as always, he purred with satisfaction when I found it.
"Any particular reason why your hand is empty?" I asked casually/ I liked having my cock played with as well; shyness in that department was long gone.
I giggled and slowly stroked his cock, feeling it harden in my hand.
"Want me to do more than stroke it?" I gave him a smirk as I stroked it, enjoying being so close to him. The last few months together had been some of the happiest times of my life, able to live my life with the man I loved.
"I seem to remember you saying something about sucking it," I grinned and enjoyed more Brat thigh, and suck it he did, holding onto just enough of my spunk to make the snog that followed that little bit more tasty.
These were halcyon days, weeks and months, Brat almost always at home with me, and me having enough time to work, and enjoy Brat while he was still just about young enough to enjoy being enjoyed by me.
We both knew those days could not last forever, but we both kept those sad thoughts to ourselves and enjoyed the days that Fate had given us, as Brat moved inexorably towards seventeen.
Then Christmas and New Year had come and gone, Spring had arrived and we were off to the Bard's birthplace to start rehearsing the Tempest.
I hired a small cottage in Shottery for the two of us; to travel up from Berkshire each day would be foolish and time consuming, far better to spend our spare time doing what we both still wanted to do, and make the most of every second of our Fate given time together.
Every silver lining must have a cloud, and for me the cloud in the Tempest was Ariel's fairies.
Ariel had to have some attendant fairies, and, because of Brat's age, those fairies had to be disgustingly and nauseatingly young.
I couldn't dispense with the fairies, they were vital to underscore the point that the Island belonged to the primal magic of light and dark, with Prospero and company merely passing visitors. I was, therefore, unable to escape from the stomach churning fact that I had to work with children.
Fortunately, my actual contact with the disgusting little toads would be very limited, but I did have to deal with the unpleasant necessity of an initial viewing of them in order to approve their suitability and ability for the basic function they had.
Madame Delgard's was the pompously named stage and dance school where the toads would be culled from, and, equipped with a sufficient quantity of stomach settling pills, I gave the place the requisite visit.
Madame Delgard herself was an obviously lesbian harridan who fawned on the girls and ignored, as far as possible, the boys. Eight girls and four boys revolted my eyes. The Tempest would play four times a week and the toads would be split into two teams, taking alternative performances, thus comfortably satisfying the legal requirement on working hours for toads.
The girls simperingly presented themselves in black leotards. The boys in white singlets and brief, white athletic shorts. They would, of course, have their disgusting flesh covered by appropriate costumes, but now they were presented to me in almost their complete lack of glory.
All except one. A boy of clearly mixed racial origin, he was a light caramel in skin colour; taller by almost a head than any of the others, he had legs that were starting to look like legs and not like the thin sticks that propelled the others around.
"He doesn't really match the others," I observe to Madame Delgard, and she sniffed derisively.
"Indeed he doesn't," she remarked, distaste evident in her voice, "Not in any way."
I was then treated to the full flow of her dislike of the slightly over-grown toad. He was, I was informed, named Paul Chevrolet, that he was a toad from a most unsuitable background, and had been foisted on her by the local Council because they couldn't find anywhere else to deposit him.
"Unfortunately," she hissed, "The creature can move. He moves and dances better than the normal children, and I have no option but to use him."
Here establishment depended, apparently, on a grant from the local Council who had dumped the boy on her, and she would jeopardize that grant if she left him out.
I watched some exercises, paying, I have to admit, more attention to the caramel toad than to any of the others, and he repaid my attention by moving his body with far more grace than I would have anticipated from a toad who was only just thirteen. Had he been only just fourteen instead, I knew I would have been wondering what lay beneath those incredibly brief shorts – Brat had done that for me, got me to understand exactly what it was that attracted me.
He seemed to know that I was paying him particular attention, kept flashing me looks and smiles, fluttering his eyelashes in a most unboylike manner, and, purely on an unthinking impulse, I said to the harridan, "You'll have to devise two different choreographies, one with that one," I pointed to the caramel toad, "As a definite attendant on Ariel, to hide his height difference, and the other with all the fairies together."
Sniffingly, the harridan consented and I escaped as rapidly as I could.
It never occurred to me that Brat, now well on the way to being seventeen, would feel anything but the same distaste as I did about having to work with toads.
"So do you despise them or merely loathe them?" We were relaxing in the cottage, naked of course, as I teased Rich about his day.
I was in his lap, a bit big for that position in truth, but it gave his hand easy access to my thighs which were always what he wanted. A log fire burned in the wood burner and with the curtains safely closed the place was beginning to feel like home.
"Not despise," I ruminated, "And, truth to tell, nor do I loathe them. But most of them are female, and, as such, are to be avoided at all costs." I stroked my Brat's wonderful thighs, occasionally straying a little higher than thigh, "Though of the boys, there is one who perhaps, may grow to be more than horrible toad."
I wondered if I should say more, give voice to the faint thought in my mind, but avoided direct expression of that thought by saying instead that my Brat would be obliged to have closer contact with him than any of the others as his larger build meant he would be in closer attendance on Ariel than any of the other toads.
"Can't be helped," I apologized, "He has to be part of the group for financial reasons, and we have to hide his height somehow or other."
"Got your eye on a younger model?" It was a joke, but I did feel a pang of jealousy when he mentioned a younger lad who had clearly caught his eye.
I knew it was unfair, that he couldn't help being attracted to what I almost no longer was and that he would still love me in a deeper way, but it reminded me how time would inevitably change our relationship.
Would I also change? I had always fancied older guys but would I now seek out boys my own age, or even younger, now I was older? It was a question I couldn't answer which made me feel nervous for the future.
"You know well enough I could never have that sort of eye for any boy but you," I stroked his still so wonderful thigh. Yes, my Brat would be seventeen four months before the run of the Tempest ended, but he was still my Brat, my boy.
"And anyway," I defended myself, "He is not a boy yet. He's still a toad."
There were though, and this I did have to admit, some signs that the metamorphosis from toad to boy may not be long delayed, "And," I defended myself again, I don't think he will turn into a boy. Not a real one, not a proper one." I thought for a bit before saying what I believed I had seen in the caramel toad, "I suspect he'll develop not into a boy, but into a girl with no tits and a cock."
I smiled in an affectionate way, thinking how old fashioned he could be sometimes. In his mind a boy should act `boyish', it was part of the reason I guessed he liked me as I didn't act in a `gay' way. Sure, I sucked him and let him fuck me, even fucked him sometimes, but I also enjoyed `boy' stuff like sport, and didn't act effeminately.
"Boys can like stuff like make-up, you know," I told him gently. "It doesn't make them not proper boys, it just means they like to be boys in a different way. You telling me you wouldn't fancy me if I was a bit like that?"
"I'd fancy you any way you came," I grinned at my Brat, "And talking of cum ÉÉÉ."
Rehearsal time arrived and work had to begin.
"You will be well aware," I told the assembled but toadless cast, "That no-one likes working with me, and for the very good reason that I seek only as near to perfection as human kind can get. I will mercilessly slay and slaughter anyone who makes no effort to achieve perfection."
To my surprise, not one single actor made complaint. Indeed, I had, it seemed, been blessed with a cast from heaven. Not one single prima donna amongst them. A handful of old pro's who knew what they should do and even had some vague idea and understanding of how Sweet Will's words should be spoken, and a bunch of young, na•ve creatures who still harboured the long outdated belief that doing Shakespeare at Stratford was something worth doing from a career point of view.
No doubt they would all change their minds once the reality of their first cheque for a soap flake advert nestled into their bank accounts.
Toad free I was, but poor Brat was not. He had to attend from time to time the establishment of Madame Delgard where toad choreography was underway, though he seemed to be less affected by that revolting necessity than I would have anticipated.