Chapter 5
Paul “Rock Giant” Reed
Foraging had turned up one old boot, three tubs of ripe blackberries, fourteen random plastic items, now deposited in the site’s recycling bins, seventeen sloes, some chanterelles, and a bag of rosehips courtesy of Ash and Ginny.
Ronnie having been responsible for the old boot, Spook the sloes and chanterelles, and Xane and Luthor the blackberries and plastic.
“Not bad, not bad.” Paul offered the congratulations as he dished out bottles of Welsh cider in reward. “Not sure the boot really counts though does it, mate? It’s not exactly edible or even useful. If it were a pair, then maybe.”
Ronnie stuck out his tongue, but his expression soon twisted into a pout when Paul continued to shake his head.
“You need to do better.”
“I couldn’t find anything, and I wasn’t sure about the berries. Didn’t want to risk killing anyone,” Ronnie whined.
“There’s a shed load of nettles over there,” Luthor helpfully waved a hand in their general direction.
“Nettles. What use are they? Plus, I’ll get stung.”
Nettles had loads of uses.
“Gloves,” Ash helpfully offered a pair, be them of the fingerless mitten variety that at a guess someone had handmade him.
They were baby-shit green with a motif of flamingo pink mice and had Danger Mouse written across the knuckles.
He was going to remark upon their ugliness, but suddenly thought, what if Ginny had crocheted them?
Then the remark would land him in deep shit, and he didn’t feel like wallowing in poo.
Bad enough that he still had Damon’s lecture noodling about in his head.
Ronnie sniffed at the offered gloves, and continued to pout, which made him look cute rather than sour faced. He turned on the puppy dog charm too, rounding his kohl-enhanced eyes. Paul remained resolutely unswayed.
“Sorry, but rules are rules. You need to do your part. This is not an acceptable contribution. No cider or s’mores for you.”
“But…but…”
“Just offer him a blowjob,” someone called.
Xane, Paul suspected, but it might have been Cave Troll who was lurking around in the background like some sort of hulking bodyguard making sure their campfire didn’t attract any unwanted visitors.
Honestly, a few extra visitors might have been a welcome distraction, providing they came bearing the appropriate offerings of course.
Things were feeling rather insular. Maybe he ought to have sent invitations over to some of the other groups.
Except, it would have been difficult to do that without putting Toys in the Attic at the top of that list. And he… Well, he didn’t wanna.
“Do blowjobs count?” one of the ladies asked. He wasn’t paying enough attention to notice who. “I wasn’t told that was an option.”
“Do you really want to be wrapping your mouth around the monster he’s harbouring?” Cave Troll replied.
“She’s not wrapping her mouth around his cock,” Ash said over the top of various mutterings. Ah, so Ginny, then.
“Already did, hun. Sorry to remind you, and all…”
Ash grouched. Ginny gave him a pat on the head, then hugged his arm.
Within a couple of seconds, they were smooching.
And that was all it took for the rest of his band mates to start getting cosy with their lovers too, leaving him and Ronnie trying to find neutral positions in which to focus their gazes.
Okay, Ronnie was outright gawping, but he didn’t need a ringside view of all the tongue sandwiches.
It was great that they were all happy, but man…
He pried the top off one of the ciders and flopped onto the blanket he’d laid out.
For several minutes, he did nothing but swig his drink and stare into the flames.
Gawd, he didn’t half miss the old days, when the guys were up for shits and giggles of an evening, and everyone would have been in if he’d suggested a daft game or…
Or maybe he was pinning that on them. What was to say they wouldn’t still be up for some silliness?
It’s not like he’d asked, and lord knows when you were on the road, you needed those moments of levity.
Which was why that dumb remark about the blowjob sprouted legs and ran wild right through multiple rounds of storytelling, when it ought to have been forgotten.
It was like an echo doing its thing in a bloody loop.
Xane’s creepy as fuck ghost story somehow referenced it.
Same with Spook’s headless man offering that had them all howling so much, there were tears glistening on people’s cheeks.
He decided they’d just unanimously decided it was pick on Paul night, which mean the best option was to roll with it, and accept it as intended, as a bit of harmless fun.
It did niggle though. Maybe because it’d been so long since anyone had blown him. Ronnie started squirming around beside him, too. Hard to tell if that was due to the convo though, or just typical Ronnie restlessness.
Paul cracked open another bottle and offered him it.
“Suppose I can let you have one, in the spirit of community and whatnot.” Mabon wasn’t just about harvesting.
It was about forging community and sharing your bounty with those around you who weren’t so fortunate, because maybe they’d be around for you when you needed support too.
Values his parents had drummed into him from an early age.
His upbringing might have been atypical and excessively free range, but his parents had never left him in any doubt about the things that mattered.
It boiled down to: if you could make someone else’s life better in some way, by sharing your time, or something you had and they didn’t, then that’s what you did.
And they’d do the same for you when you needed help.
It’s why he never wasted energy worrying about them.
Karma, or whatever you wanted to call it, would make sure they were taken care of.
Ronnie closed his fist around the neck of the offered bottle and beamed at him. “Sure I don’t need to blow you first?”
Like he said, legs that wouldn’t die.
“Not necessary, Ron.”
“Sure? I don’t want you thinking I’m not contributing properly.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, the offer stands.”
“Let it go, Ronnie. I’m not so desperate for a shag that I need to accept blowjobs from a bandmate.
” Just over yonder, there were literally hundreds of pretty ladies who’d probably be only too happy to make him happy.
If he could be arsed to go schmooze them.
Which, honestly, he couldn’t. He wasn’t in the mood.
Cider normally lifted his spirits, but tonight, it felt like he was stuck in the sediment.
He pried the top off another bottle for himself and let the taste of mouldering fruits settle on his tongue.
“Is that a no, then?”
“Yeah, it’s a no.”
Ronnie’s grin remained firmly fixed in place, while he consciously or unconsciously made suggestive hand movements around the neck of his drink.
If it’d been one of the other guys, he’d have confidently said it was deliberate.
With Ronnie, hard to tell. The boy was forever fiddling with things.
Take away the bottle and he’d be squishing and eating one of the multiple bags of gummy sweets secreted about his person.
“Is that cause your knob’s still sore?”
Good grief! “Give it a break, eh?” While he’d been abstinent for a stint while his most recent set of piercings healed, they’d done so nicely weeks ago. “You don’t even want to blow me.”
Ronnie’s head came up immediately. “Says who? I never said. Did someone else? I don’t like it when people speak for me.”
“Ron, chill.”
Too late, Ronnie had already fixated on the idea.
“Yeah, but I don’t want you to think—”
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“Except you obviously are, because you wouldn’t have said no, definitively no, if you hadn’t thought about it, and you wouldn’t have said that I didn’t want to, if someone hadn’t given you that impression. That wasn’t me. I’ve not implied that.”
“Okay. Got ya. You know Xane was joking?”
“Yeah,” Ronnie said in a way that left him uncertain if he did actually know that. “But maybe I wasn’t. What if I’ve been harbouring secret fantasies and psyching myself up to this moment, and now you’re crushing my sweet little sugar heart with your offhanded dismissal?”
“Am I?”
Ronnie could talk the legs off a spider while simultaneously writing a hit single. He was a confusing sod, and frequently contradictory. The question though, made him pause long enough to give it some actual consideration.
“You might be. That is, I’m curious. I’ve not blown anyone with a pierced knob before.”
“There’s a darn sight more than one bit of metal ribbing his cock,” Alle remarked from over to their right, where she was sitting snuggled under Spook’s leather jacket, or maybe it was Xane’s jacket that Spook had commandeered.
When the heck had they all started borrowing clothes like they were teenaged girls?
“Should we ask how you know that?” Xane’s petite girlfriend asked.
Alle blushed beneath her freckles. “Um…” She turned to Spook. “You don’t mind that I’ve seen his cock, do you?”
Spook shrugged. “You’d already seen it.”
“Hands up anyone who hasn’t seen Rock Giant’s cock?” Ash said.
A quick show of hands proved that was precisely zero out of the people currently present.
“Do the bars not catch on stuff?” Dani asked. She’d come out of her shell recently and was more likely to speak up than hide behind a pair of Xane’s shades and hope nobody noticed her. “I’m curious whether Ronnie will be risking his teeth.”
Ronnie had particularly nice teeth. Lord knows how, given the amount of sugar he consumed.
“Irrelevant. He’s not blowing me.” Why wouldn’t they let this die? Did he have ‘I’m desperate’ stamped across his brow? He rubbed his forehead just in case someone had inked it there and he hadn’t noticed. And he really wasn’t desperate.
“I think I should be offended.” Ronnie fetched out his pet lip.