Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2019 20:29:25 +0000 From: Zack McNaught Subject: Scarecrow chapter 2 Many thanks to my online buddy Johnyboy for the inspiration for so many of the scenes in this chapter. He's been sending me endless ideas, all of them wonderful. Let's see if I can do them justice, eh? Cheers mate. Oh, while you're here, Nifty could do with a few quid (dollars/pesos/yen/Bitcoin?) to keep paying for bandwidth. If you could help out, that would be wonderful: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html --- Scarecrow - Chapter 2 Something was digging into my shoulder. Several somethings. Several sharp, pointy somethings in a little cluster. They came with a purring sound, far too close to my ear for comfort. I peeled open my eyes. They were too blurry to focus on anything, but I could tell by the colour of the light outside that it was still early morning. I was lying on my side on Sue's sofa, with a thin blanket over me. And, on top of that blanket - purring sweet nothings into my ear - was Jenkins. Jenkins wasn't even a tom, though with a name like that you could have been mistaken. She was a delicate little calico snippet of fur, with wild green eyes and an incredibly playful character. She was Hugo's cat, and Hugo loved Jenkins. Jenkins loved her owner, too, which made it all that much stranger that she wasn't curled up on his bed, as I was told she definitely would remain. Did that mean... "Oh, hi," Hugo mumbled through a mouthful of Cheerios. He plopped himself down on the other sofa, and nearly coated himself in a tidal wave of milky cereal. Jenkins hopped down with balletic grace and sidled over to his sofa, mounting it with an effortless leap and wrapping her tail around his arm. "Is it OK if I watch Match of the Day?" "Er, sure," I replied, "but wasn't that on last night?" "They show it today, too, on repeat, 'cause there's nothing else on the telly at this time of day, I suppose." "What time is it?" "About seven twenty five. It'll be on in five minutes." "Oh, right." I said nothing more, just wrapped myself up in the blanket, grateful for the fact that it was hiding my morning erection. Hugo sat eating his cereal, thankfully not attempting to engage me in any form of conversation. The programme started soon after, and he was riveted. When the bowl was empty, he lay it down carefully on the coffee table, then ignored it, sitting with one leg dangling off the sofa cushion, and the other bent to his side. He leaned forward and cupped his chin in his hand, and didn't move even when Jenkins knocked the spoon out of his bowl onto the table with a clatter, as she went after the dregs of his milk. I wasn't bothered by the football, but I was quite happy to watch Hugo. His hair was even more of a mess than normal, having been slept on but not brushed. "Y'know, you really look like a scarecrow with your hair all over the place like that," I said. Hugo didn't respond. "Hey, Scarecrow!" I said, trying to get his attention. Hugo's head span round. "What?" he asked, confused. "Nothing," I replied, and he rolled his eyes, then returned to watching the programme. I counted the little bumps of his spine - nine wrapped in cotton, two exposed where the t-shirt was insufficient to cover his lower back. I could see his shoulder blades, and the muscles of his back either side. There was not an ounce of extra fat on him. The pants fit his little posterior like a second skin. They had the soft fluffiness of well-worn cotton, and I felt my fingers twitching at the thought of running my hand over them, conforming to their infinitely smooth contours. Further up, a little curl of blonde hair sat at the nape of his neck. I longed to reach over and twist it in my fingers. I imagined him sitting next to me, and shuddering with a smile as my fingers caressed his neck, sending up goosebumps on his arms. He would giggle and look up at me with love in his eyes, and I would lean down to caress his lips with mine, gently at first and then hungrily. I snapped out of it when a set of little claws dug into my knee. It made me squeak, and Hugo spun around at the sound. "Just the cat, clawing my knee," I said, by way of explanation. "He does that if he likes you," Hugo responded, with a little smile. He turned and stood up, and took a step closer to me, reaching out to gently stroke Jenkins' head as she sat on my leg, flexing her claws. I felt the colour rising in my face as my heart beat faster. Hugo stood within a foot of me, and not only was I getting a close-up view of him, but the scent of him washed over me, too. Sweaty little boy, with a hint of a musty something underneath it. It was a heady fragrance, and I let me eyes drift shut as I breathed in deeply. Hugo's attention returned to the TV screen, but he kept one hand on the cat's head as he turned back. His tight little bum was right there next to me, well within reach. What would he do if I reached up and touched it? How would he respond? Maybe he would like it. Maybe he would want me to do more, to press my fingertips into the crease of his backside, to push the soft cotton of his pants up against the wrinkled skin of his hole. I resisted. A creak on the stairs broke the spell. Hugo turned, and went to his mum for a morning hug, and we were no longer alone. Not that anything was going to happen, of course. --- I luxuriated in the shower. My shower, in my little house, alone. I replayed everything which had happened in Sue's house, with Hugo. This time the orgasm was followed by a sense that something wasn't quite right, as if I had done something wrong but couldn't quite work out what it was. I wondered if I would ever get invited back to their house. --- "He was meant to be with his dad this weekend, but I'm sure you know how that's worked out... No, no, of course... Thanks, Amelie, you're a lifesaver... Yes, yes it will be, but please don't say anything about that to Hugo, he doesn't know... Thanks, I thought I'd done the right thing... OK, great, thank you. See you Friday." I wasn't really eavesdropping. Sue was having the phone conversation next to me, and not too quietly, so it wasn't entirely my fault that I had overheard. It didn't take the investigative skills of Hercule Poirot to work out what was being arranged, especially as I happened to know that Amelie was Sue's oldest and closest friend: Hugo would be going to his surrogate aunt's house for the weekend to stay with his best mate, Theo, while Sue and I visited the biggest literary festival in Dorset, with a couple of our biggest names. I knew where I would much rather be. --- Boys like Hugo have plentiful friends, there's no doubt about that. Boys who are sporty, and outgoing, and generally see life as one big opportunity to have a laugh, are very easy to get on with. But they are just as capable as any other boy of forming very strong bonds with a single, best friend. Hugo's was called Theo, and on many levels they were in an exclusive relationship. Much has been made of the vaguely homoerotic overtones of extremely close boyhood friendships, most of it quite wide of the mark, but had I not known better, I would have sworn that Theo was Hugo's boyfriend, not just best friend. Theo was cute, too. Long before I met Theo, I knew what he looked like, as I had seen plenty of pictures of him around their house. Curiously, he was a couple of years older than Hugo; well, more like 18 months, I suppose, but that's a decent enough difference for best friends at that age. But Theo's mum was Sue's best friend, too, and that meant the boys had spent a lot of time together, and had grown close. Where Hugo had earned the nickname Scarecrow for his unruly mop of straw-coloured hair, Theo was quite different. His hair fell in cascading waves to shoulder length, and was raven black. It was thick enough that it bounced when he ran, and it gave him the appearance of an Elizabethan-era rogue. His face was narrow and elfin, and his skin, in contrast to Hugo's, was pale and untanned. He was six inches taller, and a waist size or two thinner. And he had - no word of a lie - the most wondrous eyes I have ever seen on a boy. Glittering sapphire green, they drew you into their depths and trapped you there, to stand wordlessly in admiration for the gift bestowed upon him by his maker. Had I not seen them for myself, in real life, I might have believed that each and every picture of him in Sue's house had been doctored. Hugo was going to spend the weekend with him, and it brought to mind the story Sue had told me in strictest confidence one day over lunch. --- "Oh God, the weekend I've had," she started, as we sat munching on our less-than-appetising `healthy' salads. Nothing that soul-destroying should ever be called `healthy', but Sue was on a bit of a kick, and she was dragging me along for the ride. "We were over at Amelie's, and Hugo and Theo had gone out to their hot tub." "Hot tub? In Chiselhurst?" "Yeah! It's great. If you think about it, it makes a lot more sense in this country than in a hot one." "Yeah, I suppose... Anyway, what happened?" "So, Amelie and I were inside having a drink and tidying up after dinner. Dave, Amelie's bloke, had gone out to the pub with his mates to watch the Champion's League final, and the boys had gone outside with Zara, Amelie's youngest. The boys were meant to be looking after her, but suddenly she appears at the door, crying because they're not paying her any attention. And, she says, they've taken their suits off in the hot tub." "I'm guessing that's not allowed?" I asked, trying to appear casual while my heart rate soared and my mind went off on a thousand little tangents about what the boys might have ben up to. "Not when Zara's there, no way. What those boys choose to do when no-one else is around is their business, but not when there are others present." By now, my heart was pounding so hard against my rib cage that I wondered if it might just burst out. "So, Amelie and I went outside, and we could hear the boys giggling about something before we went round the corner. You wouldn't believe what we saw when we got there." I arched an eyebrow. I was perfectly happy to have the limits of my susceptibility tested. "Hugo was holding down Theo's erection, and using it to launch some toy motorbike rider's helmet thing out of the hot tub! And they weren't even bothered. Hugo was all `come and look at this, mum!', and Amelie and I were just stood there in total shock. He jumped out of the tub to get the helmet back, and Theo just stood there and let him do it again. He just put the helmet on the end of Theo's thing, pulled down and let go, and off the little plastic helmet went." The astonished widening of my eyes was entirely genuine. So was the wordlessness. "I was quite impressed, actually," she went on to say. "Theo's erection was quite a bit bigger than Hugo's, and he could get a lot more distance than Hugo could with his little thing. It didn't help that the helmet didn't sit so snugly on the end of Hugo's; I think he lost quite a bit of power that way." I sat, staring, not knowing what the beginning, middle or end of an appropriate response might be. Eventually, I managed, "What did you do?" "Oh, all we could do, really. We told the boys not to do it in front of Zara, or anyone else for that matter. Then we took Zara inside and put her to bed, got ourselves a very large glass of wine each, and left the boys to their willy games." I nodded. "Boys, eh?" You could've knocked me down with a feather. --- It was with that story in mind that I imagined what might transpire between the boys when Hugo went to Theo's for the weekend. I thought of little else, when I had the time to think. My mind wandered back to the matter at the most inconvenient moments, when I could least afford to grow aroused. If you ever wonder why a man suddenly looks uncomfortable on a crowded bus, then at least consider the possibility that he's suddenly imagined his colleague's hot little son and his best friend naked in bed together, trying to work out what the older kids mean by `wanking off'. Or colluding on plans for an even better willy catapult. Sue's comments on the boys' relative endowment also had me intrigued. Theo couldn't have been attacked by the puberty monster yet, and still he was sufficiently bigger than Hugo for it to have been noticeable; I fantasised about making the comparison myself, by holding one little erection in each hand. Longer, thicker, or both? My trousers grew uncomfortably tight... --- I still held out entirely unreasonable and unfounded hope that I would get a phone call from Sue, begging me to take both boys for the weekend, because something had gone wrong and Amelie could no longer look after them, and she had no-one else to ask. There were, of course, some significant logical barriers. Looking beyond the fact that I was also meant to be away with Sue at the very same event that weekend, then the chances of the options being so limited that no-one else in Sue's circle of friends, and no-one Amelie knew could possibly look after the boys were practically non-existent. Facts were, I was about the last person Sue would call on to help look after her son, who - despite the fact that I now obsessed over him - I had met precisely once. I just had to get my silly fantasies out of my head and get on with my life. --- The literary festival passed well enough, I suppose. As editors, Sue and I were just there to represent the publishing house in any capacity we could, which was pretty limited in truth. The weekend did, however, give me an excellent opportunity to get to know a little more about Hugo. Sue - the proud single mum - was only too willing to over-share. Sue's first revelation was that she had caught Hugo playing with himself while watching TV a few times in the last few months. "It's all natural, I'm sure," she said, with a dismissive wave. "But it's just the brazen way he goes about it. He's not at all shy." I didn't admit that I'd seen Hugo doing exactly that. It didn't seem right somehow. I was also informed (when the wine had been flowing freely for a while) about an incident with a cigar-sized toy submarine in the bath, which had disappeared up a dark canal to do some exploring, and had to be rescued by a slightly frantic Sue. She even furnished me with the fact that as she carefully pulled the toy out of his bum, Hugo's willy went bolt upright, and stayed hard for some time. It was, according to the internet, a perfectly natural response to something leaving the rectum. I have to admit, I hold differing opinions on that. The final little tidbit was actually to do with Theo, not Hugo. "You can't tell anyone I told you this, OK," Sue slurred, definitely the worse for drink. My ears pricked up immediately. "Y'see, the thing is, Amelie isn't always so careful about internet stuff with Theo as I am with Hugo. Hu's only allowed on the computer if an adult is about, and he can never take it up to his room." "Seems sensible," I responded. Truth was, I had no idea what I would do in the same situation, if I had kids. I'd never had to think about it. "Well, Theo's allowed a little more free rein, and Amelie's a bit crap with technology and stuff, so she doesn't really know how to stop him looking at what he wants." "Let me guess," I interjected, because it doesn't take the biggest leap of inference to work out what happened, "he was looking at porn, right?" "Oh, bless you, Zack," Sue responded, probably more patronising than she intended. "If it was just a bit of porn, Amelie probably wouldn't have been worried. No, this was... this was different. More interactive, you might say." "More interactive. You mean, he was cybering someone?!" "Yep. And it was a young man. Covered in tattoos, he was. Amelie said he had the biggest penis she'd ever seen! Very good looking as well, apparently, so at least Theo has good taste. Amelie saw through his bedroom door, because the way Theo's bed is in the room." "But that's... that's child abuse! Surely you have to catch the man. I mean Theo, he's just a little kid!" "Oh God, yes, I know. Only Amelie's always been a bit of a hippy, you see, so she kind of thinks it's all part of who Theo is, and she'd rather it was some young guy on the internet than a dodgy old bloke in some toilets somewhere." I sat back in my seat and exhaled loudly. There were so many conflicting emotions in my mind. Theo was messing around with older men! And Amelie was OK with it! But it felt wrong, too, that he'd been taken advantage of in this way. Was he really old enough to be making those kinds of choices? "It doesn't feel right," I murmured in the end, not quite sure what to say. Worryingly, I had a feeling that my reticence was based in jealousy of the guy Theo had been online with. "I know," Sue said, looking down into her drink. "I'm sure it'll be fine, but Hugo's there this weekend with him. What if Theo goes online and finds some man and Hugo joins in?" --- I stumbled into my room, and ripped down my trousers. Sue's words echoed through my head. Visions of Theo and Hugo filled my inner sight, and crude jokes about Theo's submarine hiding in Hugo's Northwest Passage. Even my excessive alcohol consumption couldn't delay the inevitable. For the first time I could remember, I did it again straight after. Then, to my eternal shame, I went online to see if I could find Theo. It was a ridiculous needle-in-a-haystack hunt, because I didn't even know which service he used, and sure enough it was a fruitless search. Sleep, when it came, was fraught with unwanted dreams. End of Chapter 2