Chapter 6
Paul “Rock Giant” Reed
“I don’t remember if it’s the ones with yellow legs or the trumpet-y ones I’m supposed to be picking,” Ronnie said. After he’d expressed remorse over his earlier foraging efforts, Paul had agreed to give him an impromptu lesson.
“Both,” Paul said from where he was leaning against a tree. He and the beech had been having a heartfelt one-to-one. He just couldn’t remember entirely what about. “Just not the ones that look like parasols. They’ll make you sick.”
“What about these?” Ronnie leaned against the bark alongside him and shone his phone torch over the collection of fungi in his hands.
Paul picked out and chucked the objectively dangerous, and not so dangerous but definitely not worthwhile mushrooms, which left them with a grand total of… one. One weedy looking Horn of Plenty.
“I don’t get how Spook found all those…what did you call them…chanterelles, earlier.”
“Bought them.”
“When did he go to the shop?” Ronnie pointed out quite reasonably. He could be as irritatingly logical as he could be inane.
“Ages ago.” Paul didn’t know that for sure, he just had a suspicion.
Nah, Spook wouldn’t cheat like that. Ash, maybe.
More likely, Spook had grown them from spores specifically for the occasion.
That’d be a very Spook thing to do. He waved his hand vaguely, which unfortunately knocked the last mushroom from Ronnie’s palm.
Neither of them bothered to bow down to hunt for it.
Weren’t worth it. “Probably growed…grow-ed…grew them espesh-ully.”
“I didn’t know that was allowed.”
He patted Ronnie’s clean-shaven cheek. “It’s a harvest. Course stuff you’ve growed’s allowed.”
“Right.” Ronnie touched his cheek where Paul had just patted him. “Only problem with that is that I’m shit at growing stuff. I even managed to kill the cactus I had. It went all brown and shrivel-ly.”
“Know what else is brown and shrivelled?” After drinking the bottle or two he’d brought along with him on this stroll, his head was full of fog. He’d had a nip or two of boom-boom from the flask tucked into his boot too.
“No, what?”
He paused, trying to remember and had to shake his head. “Don’t remember.”
“That’s a shit joke,” Ronnie said, laughing anyway.
“That’s it,” he recalled. “A turd.”
“Dude, there’s something up with your innards if they’re coming out like that.”
“A flinty graveller – a turd after a festival,” he elaborated. “You’ve never experienced that after a bit too much to drink and active avoidance of the festival bogs?”
Ronnie shook his head, seemingly bewildered by the notion. “I’d never been to a festival before I started playing at them.”
“Never?” That was mind-blowing. He’d attended his first festival aged three weeks.
Not that he could remember it, but he imagined it had been like every other festival.
They were much of a muchness, and at least to him, a familiar sanctuary.
It made his current twitchiness all the more remarkable.
Drinking hadn’t shaken him of it, and honestly, trudging around with Ronnie was probably making it worse, all that nonsense about blowjobs having created an uncomfortable tether between them that would need to be disposed of sooner or later.
Sooner, based on the way Ronnie was looking at him, concentrating on his lips when he spoke and checking him out in a way that was probably meant to be subtle but definitely wasn’t. The boy had sex on the brain.
Paul definitely didn’t have a sudden boner for Ronnie Bush. On the other hand, there was a charge flowing between them, and he wasn’t averse to having a bit of fun.
He would quite like to get laid.
He had that itch.
Though, what he really desired was a pretty plump maiden with breasts so big he couldn’t encompass them with his hands, and a nice soft tummy that made folds when she sat, and thick thighs to wrap around him as he explored the cavern at their apex.
But, failing that, and because he was an opportunist, and open-minded, and always up for an adventure, he’d take what was on offer. If it was still on offer.
“Bushie.”
“Yeah.”
“About that offer you made… Are you still good for it?”
Ronnie coughed and spluttered and made a show of patting himself on the chest. He brushed his long hair behind one ear and peeped up at him from beneath dark eyelashes. “Um, yes,” he said drawing out the syllables. “I mean, sure, that is, if you are too.”
It was cute the way he was trying to play it cool.
Trying, because he was failing utterly. His smirk made his lips pucker, and his eyes lit like fucking lamps.
“I was thinking maybe now.”
“Now!” Ronnie choked a little. Then he started patting down his pockets for his jelly sweets. The moment they were in his hands, Paul took them off him and pushed a jelly ring onto the end of his rolled tongue.
Result—rabbit in the headlights. Ronnie stared at him. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“Nope.”
He watched the man’s Adam’s apple bob as he gulped. “You’re seriously gonna let me? You’re not just fucking with me like earlier?”
“Didn’t want it to feel like peer pressure. You had a whole gaggle of them egging you on. If you’re gonna, I’d rather you did it because you wanted to.”
Ronnie’s teeth dug into his lower lip, then he blurted, “I really fucking wanna.”
“’cause of the ladder?”
“Not just that.” He gave a funny little squirm. “Though I am fascinated by it. Kind of terrified too, to be honest.”
“Why? It doesn’t bite.”
“Yeah, but…” His hair fell forward as his gaze sank to Paul’s loins. “We’re not really gonna, are we? I mean, if we do, Lyra will give me such a fucking bollocking for doing shit while drunk.”
Except, neither of them was drunk. They were still upright, still compos mentis, and he could still see in straight lines. Ergo, not drunk. “Fuck Lyra.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
“No wonder you never get laid if you’re constantly being oppressed by Lyra’s thumb.” Paul pressed his thumb against the centre of Ronnie’s brow.
Ronnie swiped at him. “Maybe I’ve not been interested until now.”
“Kiddo, you have not been holding a torch for me.”
All he wanted was some no strings action.
An orgasm or two. No remorse. No rewriting the occasion after the fact as anything more than what it was, namely, two mates having a bit of fun together because they were—he scratched the word lonely from his mind before it took root.
He was never lonely. He was always surrounded by friends.
If there was one thing besides playing bass, and foraging that he was truly epic at, it was making friends.
“Need me to swear I’m not in love with you?” Ronnie asked. “I’m not. At least, I don’t think I am. Although, I do love you, and I’ve a literal wedge in my pants over the possibility that I might get my hands…tongue on the barbell-enhanced monster dick you possess.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?”
“All the ti—”
Paul grabbed Ronnie’s T-shirt front and reeled him in, cutting him off.
“You’re not really my thing, Bushie, but if you’re really offering, and this isn’t just a lame game—”
“I’m offering. We can be like Xane and Spook.”
“No,” he said. That was not the vibe here.
Not that anyone besides Xane and Spook really seemed to understand what the fuck their relationship was.
He just needed to get the hell out of his own headspace for a bit.
He still had the fucking D’Amon brothers twittering away in his skull like a chattering of starlings, not to mention Elspeth’s presence weighing on his shoulders like a lead balloon.
Dwelling on shit wasn’t him. He never did that. If he had a mantra for life, it was easy come, easy fucking go.
Nothing that anyone had said ought to have left him feeling this fucking off kilter.
Getting laid would surely sort him out.
“I’m like ninety per cent straight, Bushie. This is strictly a one-time deal, and I’m laying out the boundaries. No butt stuff, and it’s not tit for tat, so don’t go expecting it.”
“Aw, you’re not gonna get on your knees for me after?” Despite the droopy faces Ronnie made, the lack of reciprocity didn’t seem to be a dealbreaker, given the guy was still buzzing with excitement. “So, your bunk or mine?”
“Here,” Paul said. Hadn’t he already said that? “It’s not like there’s anybody around, or is that too wild for you? Maybe you’re frightened Lyra will cancel your Haribo subscription if we’re caught.”
Personally, he thought a little danger ramped up the fun.
Also, he and this tree were like soul mates now.
He had no intention of parting company with it until it told him to piss off and stop stealing its oxygen.
Hang on, no that wasn’t right. Trees made oxygen.
Wait, so technically all the oxygen belonged to the trees.
Humans should be worshipping them like fucking gods.
Ronnie leaned in closer, a smirk playing over his mobile lips. “Is this what you’re like when you’re anxious? Dickish?”
“Not anxious.”
“I think you are.”
“No.”
A warm hand pressed against his upper thigh, shifted to caress the inner seam of his jeans.
Paul encircled his hand around Ronnie’s slender wrist and moved it so that it was sat over his rapidly thickening cock in order to make his point. “You’re not my first guy, Bush. You’re not even the third or fourth.”
“Ninety per cent straight?” Ronnie repeated, both eyebrows raised. “I think you’re fooling yourself, mate. Where I come from, they call that being bisexual.”
“Whateves…” Ronnie could label it anyway he liked… Bisexual… Bi-curious… Rock star straight… Heteroflexible… Opportunistic... It didn’t matter to him. He knew what got his heart thumping, and it wasn’t guys, even if he did sometimes say yes to them getting him off.
“Kiss me, dare ya.”
“I dare. Don’t know why you think I wouldn’t.”
“’cause you’re a good boy.”
“Not that good,” Ronnie replied, right before his brow collided with Paul’s nose, which left him blinking away stars. “You all think you know me, but you don’t.”