Authors Note: This is a story written as a tie-in to three of my other stories, 'After We Danced', 'Song For Guy', 
and 'Thompsonville', with the characters that were introduced in all of those stories making appearances in the others.

This is a fictional story which contains scenes depicting sexual acts between males of different ages. All the 
normal legal warnings apply. This story should not be used, duplicated or re-written without the consent of the author 
as the author holds the copy right to the story. Please feel free to send all comments and suggestions to my email:
mp_ponyboy@hotmail.com

To all those who are reading this story on Nifty I encourage you to visit their home page ( www.nifty.org ) and 
make a donation towards the Nifty website. It is only through the support of everyone that they are able to continue
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Enjoy!

For Michael.
I can only hope that wherever you are,
and whatever you are doing, you are happy.

~ PART ONE ~

Chapter One

Have you ever noticed how some things that happen just stick in our minds forever?

Then without us even knowing it, those same events begin to shape our lives, and our destiny. They pull us this way or that, tearing at our very being, or pummeling us into submission, like the endless waves that crash upon our shores only to then be sucked back out to sea, creating those dangerous and unseen rips that sweep the unwary and the underprepared to a certain death.

I know that everyone may not look at it that way, but that is what it feels like to me at least.

And have you ever noticed that it is mostly the sad things that we remember first? And even when we may not want them to be there, lodged inside our minds, they stay there all the same. Never leaving us. Never letting us forget.

But then there are those few moments that we get to cherish forever. We remember joy and laughter, or something that we were applauded for, and the echoes of the happiness we felt right at that moment rings forever in our ears.

I have one such moment that stands out above all the others. It was the day that I saved somebody from the clutches of the sea, and while the memories of that day may not all be rosy, the fact that I did what I did still fills me with pride, and no matter what else I have, or haven't, done with my own life since, I know that just once I made a difference. I managed to give somebody the chance to live a life of their own. I think of him occasionally, as I sit on that same beach, and wonder what became of him. I guess he must be eighteen or nineteen now.

Chapter Two

I remember the day well. It was a Thursday, December nineteenth, nineteen ninety three. Almost nine years ago now.

Billy was the last of us, being our small gang of friends, to turn eighteen. So apart from the fact that what happened that day was memorable anyway, the fact that it happened on the day it did just makes it that much easier to recall.

We weren't living in what you would call a tourist area, such lofty titles were usually reserved for the bigger towns to the south of us, like Macquarie Harbour and Port Jackson, but we were living in our own little slice of heaven and we were happy here. School was out, and as we often did at that time of the year, when the sun is shining and there is little else to do in Thompsonville, our sleepy little seaside town, some friends and I were down on the beach, which was a quiet one where not too many people tended to come.

I guess that was because the town was pretty much like that too.

We were enjoying life, and apart from the worry of having to find something to do with our spare time (which was really only a worry to our parents anyway), we had no cares in the world.

Thompsonville was just a quiet seaside town with a population of 5730, according to the sign at the town limits, and was tucked safely between the banks of a small lake and a rugged, rainforest covered mountain range that rose like a sentinel behind us.

The place was always lush and green and tropical looking, which was only to be expected I suppose, given that we were living around a lake and right next to the ocean, and on that day nine years ago, there was the fresh and invigorating aroma of the sea drifting in on the warm summer air.

In a word, Thompsonville was beautiful, and that was what seemed to bring the same tourists back year after year. Maybe not in great numbers, but they were always the same ones, as regular as clockwork.

The town was named for the Thompson River, which flowed into the lake from the northern end and then flowed out again to the south, after which it made a very short journey to the sea, and it was around this lake that the town was nestled. There was a small marina, where sail boats and house boats rocked safely at their moorings, a caravan park, which was where I lived, given the fact that my parents owned it, and a sheltered beach where mostly families with young children played.

Between the caravan park and where the surf crashed relentlessly onto the shore, there were some low sandy hills, covered with typical coastal vegetation, and miles of sandy white beaches which stretched north and south for as far as you could see.

On that particular November morning Billy, Robert, Chris and I had been to the movies, then afterwards we bought some fish and chips from one of the stalls on the marina and then went and sat at one of our favourite spots to eat it.

On the hill between the lake and the beach there was a huge old Moreton Bay Fig Tree, underneath which was a picnic table in which we had once all carved our initials. Sitting in the shade of this tree, looking out over the beach and ocean in one direction and the lake in the other, with an easterly zephyr blowing in from the sea was one of our favourite ways to spend a beautiful day.

Chapter Three

I remember that the four of us had enjoyed our lunch then we had lazed away part of the afternoon, before heading to the ocean for a surf.

Chris and Robert were the experts amongst us (Chris would actually later try his hand with the pro's), but Billy and I kept getting wiped out, so after a while we dragged our sorry asses from the ocean and headed back towards the hill and the shade of the Moreton Bay Fig Tree, carrying our boards under our arms and quietly cursing ourselves.

"Man, I ain't ever gonna get any good at that," Billy said to me.

"Don't worry about it mate. You ain't the only one," I replied, grinning at him. For some reason that day I had found myself looking at Billy in a different light. I think that it was the first time I had studied him closely when we had been together. He was wearing his favourite multi-coloured board shorts, the ones with the orange and mauve and yellow bands, and looking at these set against his olive skin and his sun-bleached hair all matted and wet, I felt a tingling sensation within my stomach that started to unnerve me.

It wasn't the first time that I had felt it. But it was the first time that I realised what it meant, and it both scared and excited me.

"Hey Scottie, I think I might head into the showers before I do too much else," he said to me as we trudged up the hill toward `our' tree.

"I want to wash the sand and the salt off me."

"Good thinking," I replied, suddenly feeling that tingling sensation move lower. I found myself wanting desperately to see more of my friend.

We dumped our boards in the bushes near the picnic table and strolled down towards the toilets and showers, which were all within the same building, set back well away from the waters edge.

I kept looking sideways at Billy, unable to take my eyes off the body that he had developed over the past twelve months but had nearly always managed to keep hidden from me.

"What's your problem?" he asked me, with a grin, as we walked down the last flight of steps before we reached the brick building.

"N...nothing," I managed to stutter, then quickly looked away toward the boats tied at the marina. When I glanced back at him moments later, I saw him smiling to himself.

I followed him inside and we found the showers, which were basically just three nozzles along one wall of a fairly large room, with taps on the wall below them. Along the opposite wall there was a low bench, with hooks on the wall above them for hanging your clothes. It was dark inside, but within a few minutes our eyes had become accustomed to the light.

Without taking his shorts off, Billy walked over to one of the showers and turned it on, which made my heart sink. Trying not to let any of my feelings show however, I joined him, turning on the shower beside his and standing under the stream of cold water, letting it run down through my hair, washing the salt water from me.

I remember that we glanced at each other a few times, before turning away, and I wondered if he may have been having the same thoughts I was.

After a couple of minutes I then heard him say, "Oh man, my shorts are all full of sand."

I turned around just in time to see his shorts hit the floor and Billy stepping out of them, then bending over in front of me and picking them up.

"You should be careful who you do that in front of," I said to him, half joking. He turned around and grinned at me.

"Oh, I think I know what I'm doing," was all he said, then held his shorts up under the stream of water to wash the sand from them.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye, glancing furtively in his direction every so often and seeing him standing side on to me. His tanned body was smooth and far more muscular than I could recall him being last summer, and the semi hard cock that was sticking out from the thick bush of brown pubes was something I had desired to see for quite a long time but had never had the opportunity, until now.

He turned and caught me staring at him with my mouth open.

"Haven't you ever seen one of these before?" he laughed.

"Errr, not in that state, I haven't."

In one motion he threw his shorts across the room onto the bench and turned to faced me fully, with his cock now pointing straight at me, and growing harder with every minute.

"Don't you have sand in your shorts as well? I can see you have something in there."

I glanced down and saw my own hardening member, now struggling to break free of my own shorts. I couldn't believe that after having known each other for so long we were now talking like this.

"I...errr...," I began to say, but he walked over to me and placed a finger on my lips.

"Ssssh," he said. "Let me help you."

I was frozen to the spot. Part of me wanted to run. Part of me wanted to drop to my knees. Part of me wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

We could hear the sounds of the seaside coming to us from outside the building. Seagulls, children playing and the usual sound of the surf crashing on the nearby beach, but from inside the showers the only sounds being made were the sound of the water falling on concrete, and the sound of our own heavy breathing.

I was still frozen to the same spot when Billy's hand touched the zipper on my shorts, brushing gently over my own erection. He unzipped me, then fumbled with the button, and before long my shorts were down around my ankles and Billy's hand was wrapped around my shaft.

Besides my own hand, his was the first hand to ever touch me while my cock in this state of excitement, and it felt wonderful.

Tentatively I reached across and touched him also, feeling his firmness, feeling his length, running my hand backwards and forwards, with each motion revealing the throbbing head of his penis from the folds of loose foreskin.

"That feels so good," he whispered to me, while stroking my cut cock in much the same way.

"I've never felt another guy before," I whispered back.

"Well, you're a pretty quick learner then," he said, grinning. I wasn't sure I should say anything, so I stayed silent. We stayed as we were for a few minutes, each just enjoying the touch of the other, sharing something that we had both obviously dreamed about and desired, but each of us apparently unsure of what the next step was, or even if we wanted to take that next step.

I reached up and placed my hand on Billy's chest, feeling the beat of his heart beneath my fingers and gazing into the deep dark pools that were his eyes.

"What are you thinking?" he whispered softly to me.

"How I never knew you were into this. And how I wish I'd known a long time ago. And how I reckon this would have to be the strangest birthday present I've ever given to you."

"I've sometimes seen you watching me and I've often wondered about you," he said. "There's no one else around here that I've ever thought might be keen, so I reckoned this would have been the best opportunity I was ever going to have to find out."

"I'm glad you did," I replied, then leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips, before saying, "Happy Birthday, Billy."

"Holy cow!" someone suddenly said, and we both spun around and looked toward the doorway, where a young boy, no more than nine or ten years old, was standing, staring at us.

Before we could say or do anything however, he turned and ran from the building, leaving us standing there in the shower, still holding onto each other, with water still cascading down over us.

Chapter Four

"Fuck. What do we do now?" I asked Billy in a shaky voice. I looked at him and noticed that his face had become totally drained of all colour.

He didn't answer me. He just started shaking.

I turned off the water and pulled my shorts back on, then touched him on the shoulder. He flinched and stepped backwards, looking at me with nothing but fear in his eyes.

"Come on mate, we've got to get out of here," I said to him. Still he said nothing.

I walked across the room and picked up his shorts and threw them at him, hitting him squarely in the chest. He caught them before they dropped to the floor, then looked at me with an expression that could only be described as anger, before quickly returning to the expression of fear and confusion he had worn moments beforehand.

"Put them on," I said to him. "We've got to get out of here before someone comes in."

Reluctantly he did as he was told, then folded his arms across his body, clasping his sides, shivering.

"Lets get going," I urged and slowly he followed.

We got to the main doorway to the men's side of the building and I cautiously peered around the edge, with Billy standing behind me. There was no one to be seen anywhere.

"I think the coast is clear," I whispered to him. I felt his cold hand touch my back and I looked at him, relieved to see the colour returning to his features and a wan smile on his lips.

"Man, I've never been so scared in all my life," he whispered.

"Yeah mate, I know," I replied. 

"Look, there's no one outside that I can see. Let's just get back up to the tree on the hill."

"OK," he replied.

I looked outside again and could see no one close by, so I stuck my head out a little further. There were people down by the lake's edge, paddling about in the shallow water, and there were a few other people scattered here and there, but I couldn't see the boy who had spotted us anywhere.

"Come on," I said. "Lets go."

Together we stepped out into the sunlight and headed along the path towards the steps that we had earlier come down.

No one called out. No one yelled at us.

We climbed the steps and headed up the hill, feeling extremely lucky, but then we heard some distant laughter and looked toward the marina where we saw a group of people sitting around a picnic table and looking our way.

Amongst them was a young boy of about nine or ten, with dirty blonde hair, wearing only his red Speedo's. We climbed the hill as quickly as we could, getting out of sight of the group of people as quickly as we could, and shortly afterward found our selves sitting once more on our favourite picnic table, breathing deeply and feeling quite lucky.

Chapter Five

After we had caught our breath and we felt like things had returned to normal I said to Billy, "That was a close call mate."

"You're not wrong there," he answered.

"I'm glad that we did what we did though," I said.

He grinned at me and said, "Yeah. So am I."

I looked toward the main beach and could see Robert and Chris still riding the waves.

"They seem to be enjoying themselves," Billy said to me, when he noticed where I was staring.

"Yeah, they do. We were too, until we got interrupted, as I recall."

Billy grinned. "Yeah, I think we were."

"Do you want to come home to my place and finish what we started?" I asked.

"Umm... not just now. Let me get over today first will you?" 

I just laughed at him. 

As it was now well into the afternoon and the sun was moving westwards across the sky, our shaded picnic table, which had been a blessing in the middle of the day, was now emerging into the afternoon sunlight, which warmed us through and through.
We sat with our backs to the table, leaning against it's edge, and looking down towards the lake and where the river flowed out of it.

There were people still paddling around in the shallows, and kids building sand castles on the beach, and further out there were others swimming and even a few small sail boats skimming back and forth across the water.

I noticed that the river seemed to be running a bit faster than usual today, which was quite normal when there had been storms on the mountains to the west of the town.

It had rained the night before. Quite heavily actually. And usually when we had such a downpour there would be a fresh come down the river from the mountains, the result of which was that there was quite a current running through the lake, before emptying out into the Pacific.

If you were swimming in the lake and stayed close to shore you would usually be alright. However, if you strayed too far out into the current you were liable to be trapped in the fast flowing water and could possibly end up being swept out to sea.

As I looked at the scene below us, I noticed a small head bobbing up and down in the water and an arm waving towards someone on the shore.

Whoever it was that the person was waving to however, wasn't seeing them, and as I watched for a few seconds more I saw that the head and arm was being swept towards the river channel.

"Shit," I said, as I jumped to my feet. "There's someone stuck in the current."

"What?" Billy asked, having been looking the other way.

"Down there," I said, pointing towards the head, which was by now quite some distance from where I had first noticed it. Billy looked where I was pointing, then we looked again at the other people on the shore. Nobody had noticed.

We looked back at the head. It bobbed under the water momentarily, then thankfully resurfaced.

"Come on. We've got to do something," I almost yelled at my friend, and we both set off at a run down the hill, towards a point where we thought we may be able to intercept whoever it was.

"What are we going to do?" Billy asked me as we ran towards a small jetty.

"We need to find some rope or something. Can you do that?," I said. "I'll dive in and try and grab them. You head toward the bridge and we'll try and grab onto whatever you can throw us."

There was no more time for talking. I ran as fast as I could and dived into the water, just in front of the bobbing head that was coming towards me. Somehow, I managed position myself just in front of them, and it was then that I realised that it was a small child, gasping for breath.

I reached out and managed to grab a hold of their arm and pulled them toward me, then wrapped an arm around their almost lifeless body. I kicked and tried steering some sort of course in toward the bank, but I wasn't sure if I was succeeding or not.

"I hope you're there Billy," I remember thinking, hoping and praying that he had found a rope and would be waiting on the low footbridge just ahead of where we now were. 

The current had us in it's grasp, tearing relentlessly at us both, but I managed to look briefly along the shore and at the bridge, and saw Billy running, carrying a rope and what looked like a flotation ring, and with a pile of people now following him. I knew the bridge was getting closer, but how close I wasn't sure. Then in one moment I heard something splash in the water beside me and instinctively I reached out and grabbed hold of the bright orange flotation ring, then in the next moment I saw the bridge pass over us.

We were still travelling quite fast but then we just stopped dead in the water, with the current washing forcefully over us.
I managed to look back toward the bridge and saw the taut rope, which stretched from us to the bridge and up into the hands of about three people, one of whom was Billy.

"Pull them in," I heard someone say, and gradually we were pulled closer and closer toward them. As the rope had passed under the bridge it was difficult for our rescuers to pull us all the way in to them. I saw someone reach over the side that we were on and stretch down with a large grappling hook in their hands and hook it onto the rope, then a couple of more people starting tugging on the rope and inched us slowly in toward the bank, where welcome hands soon plucked us both from the water.

"Oh, Justin," I heard a woman crying as the child, a small boy of about nine or ten years was taken from me. It was the boy that had seen us in the showers. I looked up at Billy, whose face was once again drained of all colour.

"That was well done Scott," someone said to me as they wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. I looked around and saw that it was one of my teachers from school, Mr. Harris.

I managed a half a smile, but then started coughing.

There were people everywhere. Justin's mother was still crying. People came over and slapped me on the back and kept congratulating me, but all I wanted to do was go and hug Billy. Eventually a man pushed through the crowd and thrust his hand out toward me, which I reluctantly shook.

"I want to thank you," he said to me. "For saving my son."

I looked up into his eyes and saw tears streaming down his face. I just couldn't help it, I started crying too. Billy came over and put his arm around my shoulder and guided me toward a bench, where we both sat down.

The last thing I remember before I blacked out was Justin walking away with his parents and a few other people. He too had a blanket draped over his shoulders and I remember him turning around as he walked away and mouthing the words, "Thank You."

I think I managed to smile at him.

At about the same time a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, who was clearly with Justin's family said, "Hey, aren't they the two poofters?"

To be continued.....