This is a martial arts/comic book style story that was suggested by a reader. We're collaborating on the story. The idea is his, the outline is ours and the narration is mine. With all the stories I'm working on by myself, I don't have the time to do many of these, but if I'm interested enough in the idea, I can be persuaded. Expect this story to appear one chapter every 2-3 weeks, usually on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. The College Magic Cycle gets its new chapter once a week, usually on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.

Up this weekend will be Wishcraft chapter 8. Next week during the week will be Bellus Cinaedus chapter 2. Both are already written.

Please remember that NIFTY is a free site that provides an invaluable resource for men like us. Please consider donating to help ensure that site remains available for everyone. https://donate.nifty.org/

You can contact me at pseudonominius@gmail.com.

Author's Notes

·        If you want to be informed of new stories, send me an email and ask to be put on the notification list. I'll send a notification. Everyone will be on the bcc line so your email address will not show to other members.

·        I am considering changing the name of the College Magic Cycle folder to Concordium since that has become a unifying theme in all the stories and it would allow me to tell stories outside the college. Tell me what you think.

·        I fixed the calendar problem in My Roommate the Alchemist. I was able to assume that the first day of classes was at the end of August.

·        My Stories on NIFY

o   College Magic Cycle

o   Jack and the Giant

o   Sacred Submissives

o   Bellus Cinaedus

 

Guardian Angel Chapter 1 (Ariel)

Timothy Lund was just your ordinary 17-year-old nerd. At 5 foot 9 inches tall, he was average in height, and he was skinny but fit, weighing 145 pounds. His mid-length brown hair hung down to touch the collar of the t-shirts he usually wore. He earned good grades (mostly A's with an occasional B); he loved to read; and he played violin. All of these were probably reasons he was a constant target for bullies. And that was why he didn't like school much. It wasn't the classes, although few of them really challenged him; it was the hallways, the common areas and the green areas outside the buildings.

It usually started when he first arrived at school in the morning. He walked unless it was raining, and from the time he came through the gate until the time he left in the afternoon he had to remain alert to the presence of his tormentors. Chief among them was Rick Brower, his nemesis. Rick was already 18. He hadn't been held back a year; his birthday just fell at the right time (mid-October) that he was almost a year older than Timothy whose August birthday made him one of the youngest kids in his grade. Rick and Timothy had gone to the same schools since third grade and for some reason Timothy had always been his favorite target.

Rick Brower had bright red hair that he wore short on the top with a fade on the sides. He already had the beginnings of red beard that he kept trimmed but not shaved. He stood 6 foot 3 inches tall and weighed 215 pounds. Maybe he wasn't as muscular as the linebackers on the school team, but he didn't have to be; he was a wide receiver. When football season was done, he was on the wrestling team. His grades were usually in the C range, but some of his teachers gave him a break because he was a jock.

Rick always called Timothy by his childhood name Timmy. He claimed it was because he'd known him so long that he was used to calling him that, but mostly he did it because Timothy hated it and thought it made him seem childish and weak. He also insisted that Timothy come up and greet him in the morning, so he couldn't just slip by and hope not to be seen. Whenever he missed the morning greeting, he knew he'd pay for it later, especially if it was one of those mornings he'd completed homework for Rick.

This morning was no exception. Rick was in the back court hanging out with his friends on the steps leading up to the main building. It was like he was holding court. It always rankled him that he was the most popular jock in the school, but the quarterback, Dean Nelson, got all the attention. Rick blamed Dean for having a better throwing arm than him. If Dean weren't here, Rick would have been the star.

Timothy waited for Rick to acknowledge him with a glance then said, "Good morning, Rick."

"Good morning, Timmy," the smug jock replied. "You have something for me?"

"Yes," Timothy replied. "Red folder."

"You can go now, Timmy," Rick said.

And that's how it went most mornings. Timothy would go to his locker and put the homework he'd finished for Rick in a red folder and put it on the lefthand side of his locker. Rick had made him give him the combination to his locker so he could get the homework when he wanted it. He seldom returned the folders until Timothy asked for them and then he'd get a week or two of them returned at once. Rick needed the 100% on his homework to bring up the D's he earned on tests and quizzes and get a C for the class.

Doing Rick's homework didn't get Timothy off the hook. If Rick or one of his minions passed by Timothy in the hallway, inevitably they would shove him against a wall, or against the lockers, or even into other people, who would then take it out on him instead of the bullies. This would have been a good opportunity for Dean Nelson and his friends to compete with their rival Rick by protecting Timothy, but they decided to compete in a different way. If anything, they tried to outdo Rick in their bullying.

Now Timothy knew he wasn't the only target of the bullies. In fact, they made life miserable for many of the students. The teachers weren't much help either. They should have put an end to it, but many of them were more interested in being seen as cool by the jocks, and the others just ignored it in hopes it would go away.

Timothy was in the cafeteria, carrying a tray with his lunch on it, a bean and cheese burrito. It was one of the few things that didn't suck in the cafeteria. While walking to a table, he avoided a couple feet thrust out in his path only to get blindsided by one of Rick's minions who bumped into him, sending him sprawling across the floor, his burrito flying off the tray. Everyone started laughing, except for the cafeteria monitor who yelled, "Lund, pick up that mess!"

After scrambling around picking up his food, he threw it away and resigned himself to another day without lunch. It didn't happen every day, but it happened often enough that Timothy had developed a reputation for clumsiness.

He spent his lunchtime sitting in the library reading. There was a new translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses on the shelf, and he'd been working his way through it when he had the time. It was better and more poetic in translation than the last version he'd read. The library and the music room were the only places where he felt peace in school. And he had his music class right after lunch, so he was usually in one place right after the other. He was in the orchestra class, and he played violin. It was his greatest passion, even greater than his love of books.

When school ended, he opened his locker to find some papers shoved inside. It was Rick's homework. He couldn't even be bothered to put it neatly in a folder. In addition to his own homework, Timothy would have to complete Rick's Algebra II and American government homework. Neither of them would take much time, but it was the oppressive tedium of it all that bothered him.

He managed to make it out of the school without too much trouble, and the walk home was without incident today. Sometimes he had trouble with a group of guys who hung out on the corner of 8^th street and Grand, but they weren't there today.

Although he wanted to do his own homework first, he could do Rick's while watching tv, so he found one of his favorite wuxia movies to put on in the background. He'd taken algebra II back as a sophomore and he was taking AP Statistics as a senior, so the work wasn't hard, and Rick was taking the regular American Government course, not the AP course Timothy was taking so he knew all the answers on that worksheet as well. He had time to finish and then to put dinner on before the movie ended. His dad would be totally pissed off if he came home and there was no dinner ready for him. Luckily he always texted and said when he was leaving. It's not that Timothy was a good cook, but his dad didn't do any of the work around the house. Dinner would be simple, spaghetti with store bought sauce, frozen meatballs, and garlic bread. Dad didn't eat a lot of vegetables.

While everything was cooking, Timothy worked on his own math homework. It was more complicated, and he had to pull out his calculator. He finished half of it before his dad got home. "Get me a beer, Tim," his dad called out.

Timothy set his homework aside and ran to get his dad a beer. He popped the can and handed it to him as he sat in his recliner and watched ESPN. "Dinner ready?" he asked.

"I just need to cook the garlic bread," Timothy said. "I'll put it on when the meatballs are out, in five minutes."

Konrad just grunted at his son. He'd never been happy with Timothy. From the moment he'd been born (five weeks early) Konrad had seen him as weak. He'd never been solidly built, and he'd always been sickly as a child, although he was healthy enough now. To make matters worse, he was never strong or interested in sports, preferring reading, and music. And his mother had encouraged him in these pursuits. Konrad thought she'd coddled him. He'd always said that she was turning him into faggot.

If it were possible to turn someone gay, then his father's fears were correct. Timothy was gay. He felt no personal shame over it, but he knew how his father would react, and how the kids at the school would treat him, not the good kids, maybe not even most kids these days, but the bullies and their minions.

Once everything was done, Timothy put the food on the table and called his dad to dinner. It must have been a bad day at work since his dad was working on beer number three before they finished eating. There wasn't much conversation during dinner.

"How was work today, Dad?" Timothy asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Work is work," he said. It was one of his favorite non-answers. "Fred's out with the flu and the new guy keeps @#&!ing up. I'll probably have to work late tomorrow and the next day, maybe the day after that."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Dad," Timothy replied trying to be sympathetic. "I can bring you dinner at the shop, or make something that can be reheated, or make you a burger when you get home. Whatever you want."

"You're sorry. Of course, you're sorry," Konrad said. "When have you ever been anything but sorry?"

He went back to eating, and unfortunately also to drinking. Timothy didn't know what to say when his dad got in this kind of mood. He couldn't say anything that didn't make him worse. It was like he was trying to start a fight. The best thing he could do was to lay low and hope it blew over before it boiled over.

After dinner, Konrad went back to the living room to watch a game on ESPN. It was beginning to look like a 6-beer night. Timothy did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and then took up his homework again. There was more room at the kitchen table, but there was a better chance of avoiding his dad's sour mood in the bedroom. He spread his books out on one end of the bed and sat on the other with his back to the wall.

He'd finished his AP Statistics work and was just starting in on the draft copy of his AP Government essay. It wasn't due until Friday, and he'd already done the outline. That was the hardest part of writing an essay. That's when he heard a loud crash coming from the kitchen, followed by his dad's shouting voice. He tried to ignore him, but he kept yelling. Finally, he heard, "... get the @#&! out here!"

Timothy sighed and went out to see what the trouble was. His dad was standing in the kitchen surrounded by a mess. The milk carton was lying on its side, jars of pickles, mayonnaise and salsa were broken on the floor and everything else from the top shelf of the refrigerator was scattered around. Even his dad's bottle of Jägermeister had flown across the room and broken on the side of the table. and the shelf itself was on the floor.

"You left water of the floor, you worthless punk!" Konrad yelled. "Made me fall and pull the shelf out of the fridge. What the heck's wrong with you?"

Of course, Timothy knew he hadn't left water on the floor. It was obvious what had happened. His dad had tried to get the bottle of Jägermeister he kept at the back of fridge "so it would stay colder", and since he was drunk he pulled out the shelf when he fell. There was no water on the floor, just pickle juice, salsa, and milk.

"I'll clean it up, Dad," Timothy said with a sigh. He went to get the broom, but his dad slapped him in the back of the head, sending his stumbling into the door of the little broom cupboard. And Timothy had had enough. He tried to keep calm and let events slide on past him, just like following the Dao, but he'd had it up to his eyebrows with this crap, and he was tired of his dad always blaming him for stuff that wasn't his fault.

"IT WASN'T MY FAULT!" he shouted. "There was no water on the floor. You're just drunk – again!"

Konrad charged at him like a drunken bull. Timothy jumped aside and let him hit the wall of the cupboards. It could have worked. Konrad was drunk and Timothy was an agile guy, but he had to jump over a fallen chair to get away from his dad when the older man came at him again, and Konrad managed to grab hold of his arm and yank him back on his butt. The last thing Timothy wanted to do was fight with his dad. He didn't want to hit his dad. Well, maybe he fantasized about it, but Konrad was taller than his son and much heavier. And once he got his hands on the boy, there was no way Timothy could fight him off.

Tim watched a lot of martial arts, but he wasn't a student, just a fan. Konrad jerked Timothy to his feet and slammed him against the cupboards. Then he slapped him in the face. Timothy landed one good punch on his father's face, but then the older man punched him in the gut and put him in a headlock. That's when the beating finally began. It ended when Konrad got tired and dropped him on the floor.

"Clean up this @#&! mess," he yelled as he stumbled to bed.

Timothy lay on the floor until he got breath back. He was so darn tired of this. It wasn't every week, but it was more than once a month. He dragged himself to his feet and started cleaning up the mess. It took an hour. Then he turned off the TV and cleaned up his dad's beer cans. His government essay could wait. He took a shower and climbed into bed. His face was already a mess. He knew it would be worse tomorrow.

He drifted off to vague thoughts of fighting back against his bullies, most prominently his father and Rick Brower. In his dreams, he walked the hallways at school. A shadowy figure walked beside him. When the minions tried to walk into him, the shadowy figure stood in the way. When Rick tried to give him a wedgie because "it would be funny", the shadowy figure grabbed him and pulled Rick's underwear up into the crack of his own butt. When Timothy was playing violin on the grass and the jocks kept walking over his music, the shadowy figure pushed them away. And when he got home, the shadowy figure kept his father at bay in the other room, so Timothy was able to do his homework in peace.

Then the dream became different. The shadowy figure was holding him in his arms. Or maybe he was holding the shadowy figure; size was indeterminate in the dream. And then there was the kiss. It was like the two of them were merging into one another. It was the most intense feeling of his life. Then he was on his knees, kneeling before this guardian angel and things changed again.

Now the guardian stood before him, and Timothy bowed his head in submission. Whoever this guy was, he wanted to submit to him, he wanted to feel his power over him. The shadowy figure held Timothy to him. Pressed his face against his groin. And they knelt like that until dawn.

Timothy woke up with his alarm at 6:30 AM. His face ached and his abdomen felt bruised. He got up to get dressed and started taking off the clothes he'd slept in the night before. He threw the t-shirt in the hamper. Then he peeled off his sleeping shorts. They were sticky and gross. Darn! he thought, I had a wet dream last night. He had to jump in the shower again. When he got to the kitchen, he remembered that there was no milk for cereal. He grabbed the bread and made himself a PBJ sandwich for breakfast.

On the table there were two $20 bills and a note. It read; I'm ordering dinner tonight. I'll be home late. Order yourself a pizza or something. This was just like Dad. He'd lose his temper and get violent. Then he'd throw some money your way and pretend it never happened. It was why Timothy's mother had pulled a disappearing act. She's gotten fed up and left. And she'd left Timothy with his abusive father. She wasn't going to win any mother of the year awards either. He pocketed the money and left, eating his PBJ on the way to school.

Timothy hurried to school. He was running late so he missed meeting up with Rick Brower in the morning, so that was something to look forward to later. He put Rick's homework in the usual place in his locker. If he could learn to fight a big ape like Rick, he'd never put up with this crap again.

He sat in the back of his AP English class, and he tried to pay attention, but there were distractions. In this class, it was Samuel Tellez. He was kind of a jock, but not the kind who bullied the other students. He played tennis. He was strong and fit, but slender. He sat ahead and to the left, giving Timothy the perfect view of his deeply tanned leg. He always wore shorts, and crew socks. Timothy could see the thin, corded muscles moving beneath the smooth skin. His eyes moved downward from the knee to the firm calf, down the leg to that magic spot where it disappeared inside his snow-white sock. He could see the shape of the ankle, obscured by the white cotton, but still discernable, and he could imagine the rest of the foot, just as strong and shapely, hidden inside the white tennis shoe.

Every day he stared at Samuel's leg and every day he imagined massaging those feet, pulling those white tennis shoes off and rubbing his hands along those sock clad feet, feeling their smoothness and the ever so slight dampness of the sock. His daydream was interrupted by the teacher asking a question about Faulkner. He shook his head and tried to clear the imaged of Samuel's feet from his mind. He'd never actually seen them, but he had a good imagination. He had to shimmy his butt a little to rearrange himself and hide his erection.

On the way to 2^nd period, Timothy ran into Rick in the hallway. Rick came up behind him and slammed him into the lockers. "Good morning, Timmy," he snarled. "Were you too good to talk to your old friend this morning?"

"No. Get off me," Timothy replied. "I was running late this morning." He didn't want to tell his chief bully that he'd been running late because he had to clean up the mess from his wet dream last night.

Rick put him in a headlock and walked him up the hallway. Timothy struggled the entire way. The feeling of the bully's arm wrapped around his neck, controlling him, made his cock start to harden again. It was always like this whenever a guy grabbed him, wrestled him to the ground or pinned him. He knew that he liked the feeling. He just wished he liked the guy who was doing it to him. If Rick weren't such a bully, if he didn't always try to humiliate him, or hurt him, Timothy would probably enjoy the experience.

Rick dragged him into the bathroom and pushed him to the floor. "I've told you about disrespecting me, Timmy. Now stand up and ...."

The bully looked down at Timothy's bruised face and laughed. "Who beat you up this morning, Timmy? You look like you've been forgetting to show proper respect to some other man around here. Tell me who it is, and I'll send him congratulations."

"It's none of your business, Rick," Timothy said in a determined tone. He picked himself up from the floor and tried to walk past the bully.

"I was feeling sorry for you, Timmy, because someone already hit you," Rick snarled. Then he slapped Timothy across the face so hard that he saw stars for a moment. "But now you're just disrespecting me again. Good thing is that you're already showing signs of your last beating, and no one can tell that I just freshened it up again."

Timothy had had enough. He threw his backpack down on the ground and lunged at the larger teen. He hit Rick hard in the jaw, but he didn't really know how to throw a punch properly and he hurt his hand at least as much as he hurt Rick's face.

"Now you did it, Timmy," Rick sneered. "I was going to go easy on you because you're weak and pathetic. I was just going to slap you around enough for you to get hard."

SLAP! THWACK! Rick's hands were faster than Timothy's.

"You think no one notices that you get off on being beaten?" Rick snarled. "Everybody sees it. Me and the boys sometimes have a hard time trying to figure out whether we should @#&! you up, or just @#&! you. You'd probably like it either way."

Timothy tried to punch him again, but Rick grabbed his arm and twisted it. Then he shoved Timothy against the tile wall and gave a vicious backhanded slap to the teen's balls, causing him to slump to the ground.

"See what I mean, Timmy?" he laughed. As he was walking out the door, he added, "You'll be late to class if you stay here and masturbate."

Timothy groaned and stood up to look at himself in the mirror. His left eye and right cheek were bruised. Rick has reopened the split lip his dad had given him last night, and he had an aching pain in his nuts. I had an erection because of Samuel's feet! he insisted to himself. It wasn't because of Rick Brower.

He knew that he wasn't being completely honest with himself. He would love to experience the physical domination of a guy he liked, preferably a guy who didn't want to cause him any pain. Rick wasn't that guy. Nor were any of his minions. Samuel maybe, but Timothy had no idea whether he was into guys. It was a useless dream anyway. The openly gay guys at his school were flamboyant and that wasn't really his style. If he was going to risk his father's anger over finding out his only son was gay, it was going to be one of the jocks with the sexy feet ... or maybe another bookish nerd like himself.

Orchestra class was next, so it wasn't a general education music course, and all the students in class were interested in learning. Timothy was getting settled with his violin when he saw a fair skinned, new kid walk into the room. He stood barely more than five feet tall, with a slender and muscular build. His features were delicate. His eyes were clear as crystal and the same azure blue as a bright sky. His medium length hair was pale blond and fell in loose curls.

He wore a white t-shirt with a figure of a winged guy holding a bow, kind of like cupid, but a teenager or young adult instead of a baby. There were columns on either side of the figure and a banner with what looked like Greek writing on it. He had a pair of gray sweatpants with the elastic at the bottom, and Timothy could see that he was wearing white socks. His athletic shoes were Vans with black and white checks.

The boy walked past him to sit with the other flutes. And Timothy didn't know whether to be unhappy that he wouldn't be able to watch him from behind while he was playing, or happy that he wouldn't be distracted watching him from behind while trying to play. He was shorter than Timothy and looked like he weighed less. On the other hand, his arms looked more muscular than Timothy's.

The class was working on the Tchaikovsky waltz from Sleeping Beauty. The teacher had found a whole orchestra arrangement and they were going to perform it at an upcoming assembly. Today they played it through with only minor errors and then discussed the piece. They had time for a second play-through and discussion afterwards. Then the teacher told them to practice their pieces every night. Timothy thought that was going to be fun at his house. His dad hated it when he practiced at night. He'd have to get it done before he came home.

There was one more class before lunch, and the hallways were a nightmare. The minions of evil had heard that Rick had slapped Timothy around in the bathroom and they were determined to show that they were cool like him. But the class was AP Statistics and Timothy had done all his homework. Other than the new vocabulary, he thought this class was easier than AP Calculus last year.

After the heightened attention He'd gotten all day, he decided to give the cafeteria a miss. He figured he would stop and get some chili fries on the way home. He was looking for a place to hang out when he heard the unmistakable sound of flute music coming from somewhere. He walked around, trying to find the flautist. When he saw him, it was the small blond kid from Orchestra, the new kid. He was sitting on the grass, playing the flute parts of the Sleeping Beauty Waltz. Timothy noticed that people were giving him some distance while he played.

He walked to where the blond guy was seated and put his backpack down. Then he pulled out his violin case. The blond guy stopped playing. "I saw you in Orchestra today," he said. "My name's Ariel; I'm new to the school."

Timothy took out his violin, then held out his hand to greet him. "Hello, I'm Timothy," he said. "I hope you like it here."

His grip was surprisingly strong, and warm. "Everything's been fine so far; do you want to join me? We can play our individual pieces from the whole orchestra arrangement – or we can play an arrangement for flute and violin."

He pulled out a copy of sheet music that adapted the waltz as a duet.

"Let's try it," Timothy said, sitting on the grass beside Ariel.

They started playing the piece. It was different from the orchestral arrangement, mainly in that the flute and the violin had to cover the entire tune. But it was the same piece of music, only more complex. The feeling of their instruments interweaving their melodies was almost sensual. When they finished, Timothy's heart was racing, and he felt warm all over.

"Do you want to do it again," Ariel asked. He laid his flute across his backpack and pulled off his Vans. Then he stretched out his feet. Timothy could see his toes flexing under the cloth of the sock.

"Planet Earth to Timothy," Ariel said.

Timothy shook his head to clear it and then said, "Um ... yeah, right. Let's do that again."

They started playing the piece through again, and Timothy noticed that they had attracted a small audience, even one of the minions was watching. The second play through was smoother than the first. When they were done, the crowd nodded and started to move off. Timothy gave Ariel a smile and put his violin away. He hesitated for a moment then asked timidly, "Would you like to come home with me and practice some more? My dad won't be home for a few hours at least."

Ariel was rubbing his own foot. Timothy thought, I could do that for you; I'd love to do that for you. Then the smaller, blond boy pulled his shoe onto his foot and stood up.

"I think I would enjoy coming to your house after school today," he said, with a smile that set Timothy's heartrate spiking again.

"I'll meet you at the east gate after school and we can walk home from there," he said.

 

The rest of the day went by with only the usual hassles. Minions of evil slammed him into a few lockers and one of them kept hitting him in the back of the neck with slimy little bits of chewed paper he blew through a straw. At the end of the day, he was packing stuff in his backpack, and he noticed Rick's homework shoved in front of his books. He took it out and started to put it in his backpack, then stopped. He stuck it back inside his locker.

To heck with Rick Brower! he thought. He can just fail his classes for all I care. He'd probably get beaten for his resistance, but he didn't care. After Rick's behavior this morning, he was done with the bullies. Besides he had more important things to do this evening. The thought of Ariel's feet popped into his mind. It was like he'd been inspired by his interaction with the new kid.

He didn't encounter Rick Brower on the way to the gate because Rick drove to school, and his minions usually drove or rode with him. Looking through the crowd, he almost missed Ariel because of his height, but then he caught a glimpse of his bright blond hair, and he worked his way through the crowd to meet him.

It took a few minutes to get through the gate. Most of the 3000 students at this school left through the same gate. It was next to the stop for two buses and halfway between the stops for the streets running north and south of the school.

Once they were out of the press of the crowd and walking toward the crosswalk, Timothy said, "I didn't eat lunch and was thinking about stopping for chili fries if that's okay with you. I don't know when you must be home."

"I could eat some fries," Ariel responded. "And I can get back whenever we're done."

They stopped and got their chili fries and chocolate shakes. They talked about the school and the town they lived in. Ariel said that he was a transfer student. He admitted to liking music, books, and martial arts. It's like we were made for one another! Timothy thought.

"What does it say on your shirt?" Timothy asked.

"This is Eros, the Greek god of love, and the banner says Eros Aníkaton Mákhan, which means, `Love, Unconquered in Battle" in Attic Greek," Ariel replied.

"I thought that Venus was the goddess of love," Timothy said, staring into Ariel's crystal blue eyes.

"The Greeks call her Aphrodite," Ariel said, "and she's not really the goddess of love. She's the goddess of reproduction and sexual power. Books for kids say love because they don't want to admit she the goddess of making love. Eros – the Romans called him Cupid – was the god of both love and lust."

"Isn't Eros a fat little baby?" Timothy asked, eager to keep the conversation going.

"Ooh! Don't say that," he warned. "Starting the Middle Ages artists painted him and the other erotai as pudgy babies. They didn't want to admit that love was an ephebos, not a child."

"Okay, now you've lost me," Timothy laughed. "Erotai and ephebos?"

Ariel slurped the last of his milkshake and gave Timothy as serious look. "The erotai are the spirits of love, like dryads are spirits of the woods. Eros is the chief of the erotai. The others focus on individual lovers. They're supposed to stay aloof, but sometimes they get more personally involved. Usually they're depicted as epheboi – that's an English word too, ephebe. Ephebes are young men, usually between 15 and 25. The ancient Greeks thought this was the most sexually attractive stage of life."

"No women?" Timothy asked.

"Not for the ancient Greeks," Ariel said. "Modern erotai would include young women, just like modern dryads would include ephebes. But a lot of guys still prefer their "loves" to be epheboi."

Ariel stared into Timothy's eyes when he said that last sentence, and Timothy's ears were burning. Did Ariel know that he was gay? Was Ariel gay? He hoped so.

 

Back in Timothy's home, the two boys had practiced both the duet and their own parts of the whole orchestra arrangement. They felt like they had it down. They were sitting on the couch, enjoying an ice-cold soda, when Ariel took his shoe off and started rubbing his foot. Timothy's breath caught in his throat and his mouth went dry again. He imagined he was holding Ariel's foot in his hand, and his fingers were moving across it.

Suddenly snapping out of it, he realized that Ariel had been saying something.

"I'm sorry," Timothy said. "Were you saying something? I think I zoned out for a minute."

Ariel grinned at him and replied, "I was just saying that it's hard to get the kink out when you're doing your own foot."

"Do you want me to do it for you?" Timothy asked before he could stop himself. He blushed and lowered his head.

"Do you want to rub my feet?" Ariel asked, his sock clad foot sliding over into Timothy's lap.

Timothy moved his hands over slowly until he was holding Ariel's slender foot. It felt warm inside the cotton sock, and firm. He ran his hands over it, feeling every contour and fold beneath his hands. It was like he was moving in slow motion, his mouth running a minute or so behind his thoughts.

"Yes," he said, already holding the shapely foot in his hands. "I want to rub your feet for you."

"Look at me," Ariel demanded, and Timothy slowly raised his eyes and turned his head until he was staring into those bright, blue eyes. "I didn't ask if you wanted to rub my feet for me. Do you want to rub my feet?"

Timothy swallowed the lump in his throat and then nodded. "I do," he said.

Ariel was sitting sideways on the coach at this point, one leg bent at an angle and the other one resting on Timothy's lap. "Go ahead and turn to face me so you can massage it better."

Timothy turned around and sat on the couch, one leg bent at an angle and the other hanging off the edge of the couch. He could feel Ariel's heel gently pressing on his erection. In this position he was able to use more strength as he rubbed and stroked the foot. He moved his hands from the area above the ankle, right where the crew sock ended, down to the toes. The whole time, he kept his eyes fixed on Ariel's bright blue orbs.

He massaged that foot for what seemed like hours, then Ariel moved his other foot onto Timothy's lap. While Timothy rubbed this foot, Ariel let his other footrest against Timothy's knee, then he began to gently rub the knee with his foot. Timothy continued to explore the second foot with his hands, determined to go as good a job with this one as he had with the other. His cock was swollen so hard that it felt like it would burst.

Then Ariel flexed his feet and said, "I must go now. You have homework to do. But I'll see you tomorrow morning and walk you to school. Okay?"

"Sure, that would be great," Timothy stammered. He walked Ariel to the door, wondering what had happened. How had he let it get so far? Did Ariel think him a freak for wanting to touch his feet?

Just before walking out the door, Ariel turned around and grabbed Timothy by the neck, pulling his head down and kissing him right on the lips. "Goodbye for now," he said, then walked out the door.

Timothy closed the door and then thought he should say something. He yanked open the door and shouted, "Ariel!"

There was no sign of him, and all Timothy heard was the distant sound of wings.