The Green's Hill Novellas (6 page)

“Thank God. I was starting to wonder if it was my imagination, but it’s not. No one tastes as sweet as you. No one feels like you do under my hands….” His voice choked a little, but he silenced the sadness with the taste of Whim’s erection and his fingers began the walk that Whim had coached him through the year before, and Whim saw black stars in his vision and bucked and all but screamed into the clear night. There was a three-quarter moon on this solstice—it made their clearing look knife-edged in light.

Whim had his turn then, rediscovering Charlie again and adding some things he was pretty sure they hadn’t done the year before. Charlie whimpered in surprise when he found himself manhandled and turned on his stomach, and then he grunted when Whim wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled his bottom up in the air. Whim pulled a little bit of plump cheek into his mouth, laving with his tongue and suckling on it hard, and Charlie made a series of sounds into the sleeping bag that were a hysterical cross between laughter and arousal.

Whim let go of Charlie’s flesh with a wet smack of his lips. “You’ve bathed,” he said with satisfaction, reaching around to grasp Charlie’s cock with a sure hand.

“I… oh gosh… I
prepared
….” Charlie was gasping and not very coherent, but Whim got the gist—his body was clean inside and out—and Whim took that as a big hint. Charlie wanted everything, and Whim wanted to give it to him. Still, he teased, separating Charlie’s bottom and touching his tongue to the pucker between the cheeks. Charlie made a squeaking sound that Whim took as invitation, and he was more generous with his kiss. In fact, he spent a bit of time there, licking, stretching, using his fingers to make sure the ring of muscle was relaxed and ready, and Charlie’s shameless begging, his innocent passion, had Whim aroused and (with a little help from the bottle in Charlie’s trench coat pocket) poised at Charlie’s entrance in far shorter a time than Whim would have imagined.

He reached down first and hauled Charlie upright, so for a moment his chest brushed Charlie’s shoulders and he could whisper in Charlie’s ear. “Mine,” he promised. “Mine, for Litha, forever. Mine.”

And then he thrust inside, and Charlie moaned, “Yours. God, Whim… I’m yours… always have been…
now now now now now
….”

And Whim obliged.

It was different than other sex, where Whim felt his own flesh alone, no matter how considerate he tried to be of the nerve endings of his partners. For one thing, Whim felt no urge to sing. For another, he was focused—as he always had been—completely and utterly on Charlie. Charlie’s every grunt and groan, every frenzied cry, every gibbering word begging for completion, all of it was Whim’s agenda, his feedback, his evaluation. When Charlie groaned loudly and went down on his elbows, yanking furiously on his own cock in order to climax, Whim was there reaching around, because he didn’t want Charlie to have to do anything this time but scream with pleasure and come.

Which he did, and then—only then—was Whim prepared to finish, and the sweetness of spending inside Charlie’s body…. Whim would stop often in the following years, out of nowhere, and shudder and smile wistfully because he had possessed such joy.

Afterward, there was touching, soft conversation, and huddling under the extra blanket Whim had brought. It was one of those summer nights where the ocean roaring of the wind seemed to blow the last of the orange sunset away in tatters, and once the night was securely, dazzlingly purple, it was chilly. The two of them pulled the blanket over their heads and held a flashlight under it and whispered like children, and once again Whim caught up on Charlie’s year.

It was a good Litha. They were
all
good Lithas. Whim always considered himself the most honored and blessed of sidhe to see such a good man grow from such a troubled boy.

That year Charlie was excited because he was in plays. The next he was excited because he was
writing
them. The year after he was
producing
them and involved in community outreach programs that used drama as therapy. He was writing public service messages and watching young people put on programs that would benefit their community. He coached the youth of his community to speak out on every subject from the environment to tolerance, through simple plays about responsibility and tenderness. Whim was so proud of his playful lover for being responsible for such amazing, creative work!

When Whim asked him where he’d gotten the idea to use his gifts to help people, Charlie said, “From you, Whim. Where else?”

Charlie grew a little taller, but mostly his chest grew broad and filled out, and his waist and hips stayed trim and narrow. He developed a patch of chest hair that dwindled to his navel and then established what Charlie called a “happy trail” to his privates. He went from being clean shaven—in the mornings, too, because no stubble would grow—to having a goatee, to having sideburns, to being clean shaven again but with stubble in the mornings, because that is what human men did as they grew older. His hair stopped being floppy and in his eyes and started being cut short and sticking up, and with variations, that’s the way it stayed.

One year, his eyebrow ring disappeared. The next year, he didn’t even have the scar from where it had been.

He never stopped greeting Whim by running into his arms and wrapping his legs around Whim’s waist, for which Whim was profoundly grateful.

He did take other lovers, some serious and some short-term. He would tell Whim about them every year, saving up the best or brightest stories to make Whim smile or wonder or be proud.

One year he grew sober when Whim asked about a lover, saying that this wouldn’t make a good story.

“I’m here for sadness too,” Whim told him, and Charlie looked away.

“Except you won’t be, Whim,” Charlie said, his face bleak. “I’ll go home, and Steven will be gone because he didn’t understand about Litha, not at all, not even a little, and I’ll be alone again for another year.”

Whim caught his breath. His fault. His Charlie was alone, and it was his fault.

“Do you want to stop?” he whispered. “Do… do you want to leave me on Litha too?”

Charlie shook his head adamantly, but he couldn’t smile either. “I’d give up a thousand lovers, Whim, just to spend Litha with you. You know that, right?”

Whim nodded, swallowing. It had never occurred to him—although it should have—that their moments of Litha magic could hurt Charlie as well as heal him. The thought of hurting his boy… his man… his lover… it tore something terrible in Whim’s chest.

“Do you like your life, Charlie?” Whim asked, hoping he’d say,
No, Whim. Take me away. Rescue me.

“Yes!” Charlie said unexpectedly. “I love it. I have a sweet little house, and cats who love me. I have a job I’m proud of. I have a lover—even if it’s once a year—who makes my life magic. I’m grateful, Whim. Everything you gave me—I haven’t wasted any of your gifts, you need to know that.”

Whim’s face fell. “Oh,” he said in a small voice. “You are happy. Then of course you must stay.”

And now it was Whim who waited, anxiously, for the moment when Charlie might let him know that it was okay for Whim to take him home.

Charlie was not the only one who changed, though.

Whim had found his calling in the graceful little toys, and although his choice of subject matter would vary from moment to moment, it appeared he’d finally found a thing that could capture his butterfly mind and make him focus on something that would help his people. He made a special toy every year for Charlie, usually based on some story Charlie had told him from the year before. The year after Charlie produced his first play, the toy had a stage, tiny actors dressed in costume, Charlie in the audience, looking very grown up. The year Charlie bought his house, Whim had created the house itself—down to the cat sitting in the window, twitching its tail. He was patient. He could remember. He knew that Charlie would be waiting.

He took fewer lovers now, and the ones he took, he cared for, cherished, and remembered. Not once since he’d met Charlie in that clearing on Litha had he ever forgotten he was with somebody or burst into song. Whim had always considered himself insubstantial and only partially there in any moment. Thinking about what Charlie could be doing, at any moment in any given day, made each day worth remembering. He kept his feet—and his mind—securely on the ground as time went by and discovered that he, too, could offer something real to the world.

“You’re actually pretty flippin’ scary there, mate,” Adrian told him, his arm securely wrapped around the shoulders of the mortal sorceress he’d brought home one night. She appeared to be an ordinary mortal, but she had become invaluable to the hill. “You become any more of a grown-up and you’ll be just like Green.”

Cory smiled at him shyly, her plain face radiating an inner beauty that Whim was unsure mortals could see. She was, Whim thought painfully, barely older than Charlie had been when he and Whim had first met. Whim was touched with the frightening urge to take Adrian aside and yell at him
. The girl is too young. Don’t lock her into love with you now. Don’t play with her emotions the way you and Green can do. Give her room to grow, dammit!
But given the powerful, frightening magic this girl could do with little more than a thought and some strong emotion, Whim refrained. She belonged on the hill, probably since birth, while for Charlie, it was a choice. It had to be.

Whim smiled sadly back and bowed. “I could never be like Green,” he said through a swollen throat. “For one thing, my hair is usually purple.”

This had made Cory laugh as though charmed, and Whim resolved to make her a toy someday, because she could truly become his queen, and he loved her just as he loved Adrian and Green as his princes. But he didn’t love any of them like he loved Charlie.

The Litha Adrian brought Cory home was Whim and Charlie’s eleventh—Charlie had told him that the year before. It was an unsettling time at the hill. Adrian had not just brought home a new lover from outside; Green had taken to her as well. There was an enemy threatening them all. The vampires and werecreatures seemed to be in constant danger. Mitch, one of the werekitties that Whim loved the most, had been killed, leaving his mate Renny despondent and empty. Every vampire, elf, and werecreature was huddling on the hill like ancestral humans around a fire.

Whim, who only went out during Litha, began to worry that he wouldn’t be able to make his moment with Charlie.

But he
had
to make his moment with Charlie, he thought plaintively. He
had
to. It was the only moment they would get. Charlie had his life, his happy life, and he only needed Whim on Litha.

When the longest day of the year dawned and Whim realized that the situation with their enemy was going to be resolved
that night
,
he did something unprecedented.

He left the hill without Adrian’s permission, and he did it during daylight.

The magic little clearing he and Charlie had made theirs looked smaller and plainer during the day. The sun was
hideous
. One of the reasons Whim only came out at night during the summer was that elves did not do well in the heat, and as he struggled across the clearing to the trees where they usually met, a sleeping bag and picnic basket in his arms, he thought crossly that no wonder the long grasses were brown. The sun had apparently killed everything in the area with incredible malice. Even the dirt was hot and painful under his bare feet, and Whim realized with a shock that if he stayed here in this unfriendly place for the entire day, he would become ill. Green
always
kept the temperature in the hill cool so that his elves might prosper, and Whim was hit with the sad realization that it hadn’t just been artifice and random rules keeping him out of Charlie’s life.

If this field alone, this place he loved, was this hostile on a summer’s day, how bad would the rest of the mortal world be? Charlie really did need to come to Whim, and Whim fought off a moment of despair that he would ever be ready to do that.

Whim was patient now. He had learned. He could wait.

But not today. Today, he set down his bundles by the tree and passed a geas—a spell—that said that only Charlie could see them. (For Charlie, they would probably glow.) He left a note, as well as Charlie’s toy for the year. This year it was a tiny drum set. Charlie had joined a band after work hours, and the drums were his favorite. When you blew on it, the cymbals crashed and the tympani rattled.

The note was brief and, Whim hoped, not too worrisome.

Charlie—Serious hill business tonight, but I will still be here. Even if you have to wait past dawn, I will not break our promise.

He hoped it was not unfair. For the first time he cursed that he and Charlie had ignored basic modern conveniences such as phone numbers or e-mail addresses (not that Whim could use a computer, but there were such things on the hill) because it would make the separation less hard for Charlie if he could talk to Whim every day.

Whim longed to talk to Charlie every day. But he could not live in this world, he thought miserably as he trekked back to his car. At least not in the summer, and probably not during any other time. This battle that the hill had planned on the other side of the foothills terrified Whim; it would be loud and violent, and if it had been for any other reason than to protect Adrian and Green, he might very well have retreated to the cowardice of his kin and abstained.

But it
was
for Adrian and it
was
for Green, and the least he could do would be to show up and think of creative, capricious ways for their enemies to die. They
were
fighting a rogue vampire kiss, he thought with some optimism. Maybe he could simply make them fly into trees.

In either case, Whim needed to live on the hill. The human world only worked for him during Litha, or perhaps other nights with magic in them. And Charlie needed to want to be something more than mortal. He didn’t even need to quit his beautiful job, but he needed to commit to the hill, and that was a decision Whim couldn’t pressure him into or beg him to make. It had to be Charlie’s own.