Chapter 9: the birthday

 

The eve of Willym's twentieth birthday dawned as dreary as all the days preceding. The rain outside sounded vast, as though his bedroom window had been transformed behind the curtain into the porthole of a cabin, as though there had been a third Great Flood and the house had become a ship, adrift on endless seas. Cocooned in the storm's embrace, and in Willym's, Kathyn found himself wishing for a Hundred-Day Storm, such as there had been the year their father drowned, or better, a storm that would rage till the end of days, that would keep Willym at home with him forever.

 

Birthdays weren't something that had really been celebrated in the Meadowbrooke household, either before or after they moved to Highmouth. Kathyn wasn't sure if it was an islander thing, or a Seceder thing, or just a poor thing, but birthday parties had definitely not been a thing in their childhood. With Willym he'd tried to mark at least the major milestones, make the day as special as he could, with whatever he could scrounge up.

`So, anything you want tomorrow?' he asked his brother after breakfast.

`What does any sailor want? Grog in his gullet, gold in his pocket and a weatherly wife in each port.'

Kathyn rolled his eyes. `I mean, what do you want in particular? What's your favourite thing?'

Willym said, without skipping a beat, and without looking up, `Yer twat.' He knocked a chip of ivory onto the rug, and smirked at it.

Kathyn scoffed, shaking his head. `Apart from that, Willye. Something I can give you as a present.'

`You can give me that as a present.'

`It's not a present if you get it every day, Willye.'

Willym just grinned.

Kathyn sighed. `Well. It's not as though anywhere'll be open, anyhow. God willing we can sort something once the storm blows over.'

As a matter of fact, he had already sorted something. Concealed craftily in the cold room behind tall jars of pickled baby onions and preserved plums, was a cake.

To be specific, it was a brassberry and brandy caramel cream cake, layered with apricot mousse and crowned with shards of white chocolate. It was, without exaggeration, the finest he'd ever baked. He'd made (and discreetly eaten) two test cakes before he'd got it just right, but he was satisfied with his final product. He hoped Willym would be, too. He'd had misgivings about the alcohol, but decided it was all right mixed into a cake.

According to islander custom the party was on the night before the birthday itself. There was nobody to invite and nobody they wanted to. They were all the company they needed.

He'd cooked Willym a lavish supper that had taken all day to prepare, and even let Willym have the last two bottles of liquor, since, after all, it was his birthday.

Willym was back to his tusk when Kathyn came in from the kitchen after doing the washing-up. He seemed to have got it into the shape he wanted, for he was no longer peeling away chunks of ivory from the outside, but had moved on to the finer details of the design. As Kathyn watched he spat on the tooth, shook the soot from his pipe into it, and rubbed the resulting dark slurry into the lines he'd scribed. It was a most peculiar shape—at one end it was still like a horn, but at the other it tapered dramatically to a sort of thin stem before flaring out again into a wide, flat disk. He wondered what it was for, and who. It was probably for him, so it would be rude to ask.

Willym looked up as Kathyn entered. There was a deep flush in his sun-tanned cheeks that made them look like baked apples. He had a lazy, lascivious look in his eye.

Kathyn glanced at the end-table beside the chair, and sure enough, the brown bottles were empty already. He sighed inwardly, but said nothing. It was Willym's birthday.

He dropped himself onto his brother's broad thighs, nuzzling under his chin as he reached into his bell-bottoms for his cock. `Twenty years old tomorrow. My boy. My big boy. Look how you've grown...'

He gave Willym's dick several firm pumps, feeling it stiffen up each time, but left off once it reached full hardness, left it red and twitching in the candlelight.

Willym growled in frustration, but Kathyn quelled him with a lingering syrup-sweet kiss. `Wait here while I bring your surprise', he murmured, and slid off his lap.

A few minutes later he came back into the room, carrying the cake (which was lit up with exactly twenty candles) and softly singing Happy Birthday. Only this time he wasn't wearing anything but his burnt-umber hair, which he'd let down over his shoulders, just brushing the top of his buttocks.

Willym sat up and stared. His stare never wavered as Kathyn slowly walked toward him with the cake but it was a long time before he noticed it.

Kathyn knelt at his feet, lifting the cake for him to blow out the candles as if presenting an offering to a deity.

The sheen in Willym's eyes was now almost mad, and Kathyn tremored within, feeling for the first time the delight of his own nakedness, the danger and power of his own body.

Willym took the plate and swallowed hard. `Well, now, en't you a clever duckie.'

Kathyn frowned. `I'm not a duckie at all.'

`No? This morning ye was quacking like one.'

`Hmm—how about, no cake for you, rude boy?' And Kathyn picked up the cake and marched off with it.

Willym was hard before he was out of his chair. Rock-hard. Diamonds.

He'd never seen his brother do anything like this, except in dreams—the heady dark dreams that catapulted him awake through his spasming cock, that left his chest and belly drenched in come and gut queasy with shame. That left him frightened of the things he had done, and wanted to do. This was like one of those dreams come to life. Seeing Kathyn's smooth white body clad in nought but hair, the promise of warm orifices hidden in the clefts of his soft flesh stirred up ancient urges, made his blood roar songs of hunting, rending and claiming, of rough, violent ruttings amid the stench of earth and blood.

If the house had been some dim primeval forest, Kathyn might have given him a good chase. As it wasn't, he didn't stand a chance.

Kathyn was not three steps through the door when Willym rammed into him from behind like a cannon-blast.

The cake went down, and Kathyn went down into it.

He lay winded in the cool mess of his creation and Willym stood over him, breathing hard, throbbing harder. Kathyn could actually feel the long translucent skeins of pre-fuck spooling onto his calf.

Like saliva dripping from a wolf's tooth, Kathyn thought. He had never seen his brother this aroused. It would have been frightening if he hadn't been in exactly the same state. He wanted to be mauled. He wanted to be devoured.

`Think I just got me birthday present.'

The only thought Kathyn had time to form was, thank goodness I'm naked, before Willym was on him.

It was like he was trying to fuck him and eat him at the same time. He flipped Kathyn over and got his mouth on him, licking and lapping at the smeared sugary mush, teeth grazing the skin now and again and it hurt but it felt so good and that hurt more. He could actually feel his hole puckering with want.

`Willye, please. Need—nhh!'

`Mm? You want some, love?' He dragged the rosy rod of his prick up the crease of Kathyn's thigh, then swiped it across his stomach and chest, gathering golden cake-crumbs and lighter orange mousse on the broad head.

He presented it at Kathyn's mouth, and Kathyn obediently opened up to take it in. There was the sweetness of the cake, the tang of the mousse, and better than both when they had melted away, the salty-soapy body-taste of Willym.

Willym did it again, scooping more of his birthday cake onto his cock and feeding it to Kathyn, feeding the fat jaw-cracking girth of his prick right into his head then slowly withdrawing it as Kathyn scrubbed it clean with eager swipes of his tongue. Then back in, then back out, picking up speed as Kathyn curled his toes and squeaked and stroked little circles on his brother's bullish young thighs. He felt light-headed, and not just from the lack of air.

Willym was enjoying it, too. The more he did it, the more he got into it, padding his prick with ever higher mountains of sticky cake-matter, until Kathyn, who could never handle much of anything sweet, had to turn his head away. `No more, Willye, please.'

`Mmh?' Willym presented his cock once more, but Kathyn knocked it back. `Oh stop, you'll make me fat.'

`Fuckin aye I will. Want t'git ye pubble as a partridge.' Willym thrust his prick forward, jamming it insistently against Kathyn's lips. He tried to shove it in, but Kathyn refused him. He tried to get out of Willym's hold, but Willym prevented him. It devolved into a giggly heavy-breathing contest that was half cuddling and half a (very unequal) wrestling match. It was like they were back as boys, play-fighting, which Willym had loved (probably just for the excuse to touch Kathyn, now he thought about it), until the day Kathyn realised he wasn't getting off the floor until Willym let him and he'd had to hide in the outhouse till his erection went down. But that was ten years ago. Now it wasn't even a fight.

Though at first Willym held back for fear of hurting Kathyn, the animal instincts aroused by the physical struggle quickly progressed to the point where he got so caught up he forgot his own strength. He was really throwing Kathyn around now, as if he weighed no more than a straw doll. Desperate and laughing though he was in real pain, he kicked Willym in the stomach and tried to get up, but Willym grappled him round with a grunt, half onto his front, straddling his hips so as to pin his lower body. Then Kathyn tried to squirm out from under him and almost succeeded, so slippery he was with mashed cake, but Willym shoved him down, hard, and Kathyn smacked his head on the floor (thank God they weren't in the kitchen with its glazed print tiles).

The sharp thud brought Willym back enough he paused. `Love, you all right?'

`Rape me', Kathyn said at the same time, without thinking, without meaning, it just came out of him like the spunk that shot out of his cock when Willym pinned him.

Dear God, please don't let Willye have heard.

But above him his brother had gone completely rigid.

`What did you say?'

`Nothing—I didn't—I didn't say anything, Willye.'

Oh God, he thought. Why of all things?

But he'd said it. And, awful as it was, he'd meant it. And it wasn't as though he didn't know what he meant, like some sheltered burgher's daughter reading of romantic ravishments in the lilac-scented pages of a French novel.

Sailors might not have been quite as notorious as soldiers by reputation, but by sight Kathyn knew none worse. Growing up in the docklands, rape—private or public, single or serial—was something women and the womanish took almost for granted, it happened so often. It barely drew remark. Kathyn had seen women who were just going about their work pushed over or up against the nearest hard surface and taken without a word, and then, once it was over, smooth down their skirts, wipe their cheeks, straighten their shawls, and carry on whatever they had been doing before a man decided that whether they were asking for it or not, he was giving it. What else could they do? Coppers wouldn't come for sailortown wenches, who as far as they were concerned were all whores anyway. The only difference was some of them had the sense to get paid for it. If anything, they'd give any dock-slut who came whingeing at them more of the same, and throw a beating into the bargain. When Kathyn thought about it, which he tried not to, it was a miracle he hadn't—but then no one would have dared, not once Willym claimed him. That was one thing sailors and landlubbers alike respected: a claimed bitch. Even if a woman's tears were so much saltwater, the fist (or worse) of an irate husband was a thing to fear.

The trouble was, to some women, and men such as Kathyn, who were like them, it was also a thing to desire.

`You said somethin', Willym began slowly.

`I—'

`I heard, Kathyn. I heard.'

A roll of thunder crashed through house. Willym's hands kneaded the fleshy rolls above his hips with a contemplative care. His rigid cock was making a puddle in the middle of his back.

`Now, just what were ye thinkin, saying a thing like that, hmm? Have ye any fuckin idea how much it takes to control meself when—'

`Then don't', Kathyn said, shocked and also exhilarated by his own boldness. `That's your birthday present, if you want it.'

Willym paused again. What was he thinking? Kathyn wished he could see his face, but was also glad he couldn't. Kathyn's heart was beating fast, but he still still still didn't have Willye inside him where he needed him.

The hands on his hips started to slowly move again, creeping up his flanks. `Whose present?' Willym said, as if wondering aloud, and it was a fair enough question.

Willym was far from a delicate lover, yet even so, sometimes Kathyn wanted...more. But this was supposed to be Willym's birthday.

Yet, judging by the erection scrubbing far too far up Kathyn's back, maybe Willym wanted the same thing he wanted.

He pushed back against it, his body crying out for its hardness and its heat. `Willye...'

`Then...tell me how it is, Kath,' he said, voice strangely uncertain, but with an undertow of dark promise.

Kathyn took a deep breath. Here went everything. He was dicing with Davy Jones now. Who could say how Willym would take it?

He started out quiet, hesitating, but gained confidence as he spun the foul fancy out of his head into the sugar-sweet, sweat-rank space between them. `Maybe you're not my brother at all. Maybe I live here alone, and you just happened to come in. You're so horny, stuck on that ship for years on end without a woman in sight. You were walking the streets, desperate to find something—anything—to stick your cock into, and you just happened to see me like this. What was I doing, prancing about the house in naught but my hair? I was just begging for someone to break in and take advantage. In fact, that's exactly what I was hoping for. I was dreaming about a big strong sailor boy bursting in and ravishing me. And now you're here, and you've got me. And it's up to you to teach me that tarting doesn't pay.'

A thought came to him then, as if by inspiration (though from whence was doubtful. Certainly no celestial muse).

`Or maybe...it is what you said, that I was having it off with some other bloke. Maybe those letters were from him. You've caught me. I wasn't just reading them. I was touching myself to them. I had fingers in my bottom, thinking about another man. What are you going to do? You're so angry with me. What's my punishment?'

He angled his hips, grinding his arse against Willym's member. `I can't fight back, Willye. I'm too small and you're too strong. Can't stop you doing any...thing...you...want.'

'Who was it?' Willym was breathing like an asthmatic. Kathyn could feel his cock pulsing against his spine, and the need for it made him reckless, filled his head with things he would never never never in a million years think of doing in real life. They aroused him beyond measure precisely because they were so unthinkable.

`I lied to you about my landlord. Of course he wouldn't let me stay just out of kindness. I sucked him off to keep from being evicted, but the truth is I would have done it anyway, just for the asking. I enjoyed it. He wasn't the only one. Any man who wanted it, I've let him have me. And you know they want me. You know if I tried to walk down a main street I'd be on my knees before I made it ten paces. Mouth, arse, thighs, wherever. Dozens of them—probably hundreds by now. Four, five, six at a time, sometimes. And not just men—boys, too. I let you when you were young, so why not others?'

`Why not indeed?' Willym echoed. His voice had a strange quality and Kathyn wondered if his words hadn't been a touch too inspired. He was skirting close to the edge now. No he wasn't--he was charging headlong over it. And if he was going to fall, he was taking Willym with him.

`That Timyth you chased off the other day, I was going to let him put it up me. And it wouldn't have been the first time. I couldn't help it—you know how needy I am, and you were away, so I had to get it somewhere. Timyth was seeing to me every week or more. Why do you think I opened the door for him practically naked? I wanted him to see. I wanted his little-boy-pinny because yours isn't enough for me because I'm such a—uaaarchhhh!'

Willym pincered him by the neck, choking off his air. His brother's voice held no uncertainty now, sandpapered down to a spear of raw lust and what sounded like real fury. `You fuckin asked for it, bitch.'

That I did, Kathyn thought. Then thinking stopped for a long while.

Willym slammed him back down, twice as hard as before, his nose immediately starting to throb and gush. But this was eclipsed when Willym mounted him, without preparation or preamble, punching his hole out to accommodate the hugeness of his length, splitting his flesh like logwood, rending him to his root in the blink of an eye.

Willym was in what could only be called a frenzy, whether from Kathyn's words or the drink, or both. Now he truly was devouring Kathyn. He mauled his neck and chest, the puffy peaks of his nipples. If Kathyn moaned he smacked him; if he protested he punched him. He shoved his head between the legs of a chair, knocking it in half a dozen places, the cross-bar of gnarled seawood pressing into his throat, the little sharp pieces of chocolate from the cake knifing into his soft underbelly as Willym fucked him over and over and over.

He'd wanted it, he'd asked for it, but oh God it hurt, more than Willye's loving ever had. It wasn't just that he didn't care if he was hurting Kathyn, but this time he was actively trying to.

But in Willym's mind, it wasn't Kathyn he was hurting. His brother wasn't at home. Beneath him was but fuckmeat, and he was destroying it with his dick. That was the feeling, of punching through muscle with his stronger muscle, of surrounding himself in flexing, straining warmth that refused him, but could not expel him. Of breaking and taking, pounding into the perfect cocksheath, as tight as a man's arse and as wet as a woman's womb, ramming against the corded walls, so rough it made his fucking cock hurt, the head throbbing bruised every time he butted the far end, the wombgate which even in his frenzy he knew he was forbidden to enter, never stopping, never slowing, fucking on forever.

After the first white-out flare of rage faded, the roaring in his ears dimmed, and he could hear the fuckmeat make one continuous grizzling wail that sort of jived along as he thrust into it.

Worse than fuckmeat, he thought. A whore.

It was no fancy in his mind. He could see it, clear as day, clear as the nights he'd lain tossed in his hammock, haunted by scenes of his brother on his back, on his knees, on his belly for strange men, so vivid Willym had struck out at them in his sleep, fists meeting only their mocking laughter as they continued to use Kathyn, fuck him, defile him with their slime and worse, most awful of all, breeding him, staining and claiming his womb, forcing him to bear the offspring he wouldn't give to Willym, to his own brother, his own mate. While he'd been denying himself even the pleasure of his own hand, saving all he had and was for his love, Kathyn had been playing the trull in the house Willym had paid for.

Rage wakened in him again, this time deathly black, and he found himself throwing blow after blow into the dirty trollop's side, relishing the smack of knuckles against skin, the crack when he got ribs.

The fuckwhore whimpered and wept; he took hold of its head with both hands and bent its throat over the dowelled rod between the chair legs, as if he meant to snap the bone and gristle. And maybe he did. The urge to dominate, desecrate and destroy was huge within him, as huge as his cock mashed between the tight pale cheeks that divoted in a pink O around his inramming prick.

He found himself half-growling, half-chanting as he humped. `Fucking whore fucking whore fucking whore. Evil bitch cunt fucking cocksucking cunt BITCH SLUT fucking hurt you fucking make you bleed fucking DIE, bitch, fucking break you!'

The cuntslop gurgled a desperate cry. Willym slugged it between the shoulder blades, then at the top of its arse, just above where his thick shaft was smashing into it, as if he wanted to punch out a new hole. Then he yanked back, hauling the bitch out by its hair. When it got stuck on the chair legs, he just pulled harder, till at last it came free with a shout.

Its face was the same colour as the ugly bruise forming on its throat. It gasped for air but Willym gave it nothing but pain.

He hauled its hips till it was on its knees, but kept its face mashed into the floor, hollowing its back in an excruciating arc. His shaft had slid out almost all the way, the fat head tugging at its swollen ring, but now he gave it his cock again, again, again, harder and deeper than ever, till his balls were crushed into the valley of its arse, punishing him with it.

Sweat dripped into his eyes but he shook it off. He sawed in and out so fast and hard his arms were trembling and his calves were aching, yet he regretted only that he could not go faster and harder. And for all of his brutality, the bitch, the scarlet-haired harlot, the sweet-smelling but dirty, dirty, dirty whore was still warm and open around him, and so wet, sticky cuntjuice shined his thighs with each thrust.

`Great God! You're the biggest whore in the fucking world, en't you? Once every man in town's had you, we'll have to put ye out in a stall for the fuckin horses!'

Willym drove into him at a demon's pace, so fast his head ft like it was splitting along with his arse. But Kathyn fucked back just as hard. He stuffed himself down on it, raping himself on Willym's cock, needing the stretch, the pain, the fullness. He'd never felt this filthy, not even when he was guzzling Willym's piss. It hurt so sweetly he wept.

The minutes that passed were a blur of vast pains and vaster pleasures. All sense of time was lost, obliterated, fucked out of his mind, raped into oblivion, all sense of anything lost altogether but Willye--here and in me—now and the feeling of tearing out of his skin.

He came and came again, and again, the peaks strung together like pearls on a necklace, the urgency of climax lulling but never dropping away. Still Willym hammered his tong into his hole, forcing ever-diminishing ejaculations out the comesore twig of his penis. If the rug hadn't been ruined before, it was now. It was an ugly rug anyway.

For a long time he knew no time. Then all at once Willym was wrenching out of him, taking what felt like half his insides along, standing over him and grinding his heel into the raw wound of his sphincter, then kicking him onto his front and standing on him, trampling on his groin and belly and face, jerking his cock viciously and at last blinding him with a shower of pearly rain.

Willym left him splayed on the floor like an angel broken in the fall, his hair a bloody halo about him, his limbs shattered like glass, his body smeared with golden sugarstuff and black bruises, his ivory head turned to solid gold for all he could raise it. Stars in his eyes and sea-salt on his tongue. He felt half-dead and more alive than he ever had, so alive everything that came before was like limbo in comparison. He thought this might be one fuck he would truly never recover from.

Willym got down on that floor with him, half beside and half on top of him, panting hugely. For a while they lay tangled together in silence, sated and still, while miles above the sea of the sky surged and rumbled on.

After a bit Willym took his pipe out and Kathyn tried to gather the scattered pieces of his mind into something resembling himself.

Just as he was beginning to prepare himself to contemplate the possibility of getting up Willym bent over him, his young face so calm Kathyn could scarcely have imagined the storms that lurked below its surface. If he had not just weathered one

`You all right, love?'

`I'm all right.' And he was, on the inside, where it mattered. All Willye had said had been part of the game. Bruises would fade, but not the sting of his words, if he'd meant them. Which he hadn't. So it was all right. And how strange that was. That being called a `whore' and a `slut' made him feel perversely good only because they both knew he wasn't either. It didn't make much sense, but it was so nonetheless.

There was a moment of silence, then Willym let out a contemplative belch. `Me dick hurts.'

`Your di—' Kathyn broke off into an incredulous groan.

Willym stroked his side, chuckling, then turned him over, ready to go again. `Told you all I wanted was yer cunt. `Twas a good cake, though. Think I want that one every year, and served the same way.'

Through every conscious atom in his body revolted against the idea of taking yet another cocking, Kathyn let himself be turned. Though it felt like he had little knives and fires buried everywhere under his skin, he spread his legs and opened up his hole for his brother, reminding himself once more that, after all, it was his birthday.