Alan enjoyed a very rude awakening. Specifically, he had rolled over during the night and… no, no, he didn’t want to go into the specifics, not even in his own thoughts. What sort of almost didn’t really happen in the lean-to stayed in the lean-to and DIDN’T HAPPEN AGAIN. He hoped.
“Are you still upset about something as stupid as morning wood?” Alan glared back at Aaron, who just raised an eyebrow. Was he upset about it? Was he upset at Aaron? Why was he upset?
“I dunno. Maybe I’m just hungry. And sore. And stressed out. You didn’t do anything wrong and I’m the one who didn’t make my skirt long enough.” Aaron frowned a bit.
“I though we agreed they were kilts?”
“I don’t care what they’re called, I’m not actually embarrassed to be wearing a skirt or even to have a snuggle with my guy buddy to keep warm at night.”
“Then what is it?” Lucy and John crawled out of the lean-to, Lucy first and John clearly and unabashedly trying to look up her grass skirt a bit. The man gave up after only a short effort. Lucy had gone through extra work to cover up her parts, being the one woman in a group of three men, even if they were like family, they weren’t actually family and… well… John and she were hooking up on the side anyways, so clearly she didn’t think of them as off-limits either. Ah. There it was, that was why he was upset.
“Say, Aaron, can I ask you a personal question?” Aaron smirked at him.
“Buddy, we just woke up in a near-intimate situation, you can ask me anything.” Alan waived away the image and ignored the memory of the feeling between his butt cheeks.
“Thanks for that reminder.”
“Anytime.” Cheeky bastard winked!
“You’ve had sex before?”
“Uh… yeah, a few times. Not like John, I’ve only had a couple of serious partners before and none of them worked out well. Why? Despite the joking I don’t think it’s relevant here.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never had sex. I’ve never woken up with someone in my bed or touching my skin, not even over the clothes, ok? I’m not freaked out that you’re a guy or that you’re you, it’s more that the experience was already a big jump in intensity from anything I’ve had before.”
“Wait…” John held up his hand and twisted his head a little, raising an eyebrow in confusion. “You’ve never…”
“Not ever. Not anything. Hell, I haven’t even held hands with an unrelated girl that wasn’t a teacher or a friend’s mom when I was just a little kid.” His friends were very quiet for a bit, clearly feeling a little awkward about the sudden intimacy of the conversation. Lucy decided to break the silence with her own share.
“I’ve only ever been with one person, intimately.” She glanced at John, but clearly wasn’t willing to fully oust the ‘secret’, making an effort not to look at him too pointedly. John was staring vacantly into the distance, clearly struck by what she’d said.
“I… uh… I’ve…”
“We don’t really need to know, John.” Lucy interjected. John blinked and looked a little guilty, but did not continue what he was going to say. Instead he put a hand on Alan’s shoulder.
“Alan, if there is anything I can say, it’s that I’m jealous. Truly. Sex is extremely intimate and the cultural pressure to treat your body as just some thing and sex as just another activity you can do, like playing tennis or basketball or bowling…”
“Know any games without balls involved?”
“…Monopoly?” He shook his head. “I’m just trying to say, we know you’ve never found a special someone and that is exactly why it shouldn’t be a surprise or a bad thing that you haven’t had physical intimacy with anyone. While we are starting to get on in years and we’re probably getting too old to really think about any quantity of kids with any seriousness, you shouldn’t compromise on it being something you have with someone special. Sex with someone special is very special indeed.” Now John looked pointedly at Lucy. Then he frowned. Then he went white.
“I’m getting on in years, am I?”
“Lucy, I wasn’t…”
“Too late to think about any quantity of kids with any seriousness?”
“A bad choice of words…” Alan pinched his nose as the argument started to escalate. Aaron was just frowning in confusion, looking back and forth at the two. Eventually he shrugged and said he was going to go try his hand at fishing again. He plucked a handful of grass to use for stringing the supposed bounty he would catch, then made his way off into the chill morning air, hopping up and down to get himself warm. Before he departed though, he made sure Alan knew it was his job to figure out how to start a fire.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
So, while the ‘secret’ couple started to burn out as hunger, thirst, and the need to relieve themselves took precedence, Alan went off and addressed two of those needs himself while contemplating the act of inducing combustion. Thoughts of how to improve friction or the speed, or the combination of those two aspects, started driving him back to how he woke up this morning and… In the end he wandered off quite a bit further until he was confident in his privacy and relieved another need.
It occurred to him that John possibly had it worse. Afterall the man had snuggled with Lucy basically all night and certainly hadn’t gotten up to anything. Hell, they were still under the impression that at least Aaron didn’t know about them being together. Why the idea of Aaron knowing bothered them so much, Alan did not understand, but hey, it still wasn’t his secret to share. In either case, they likely couldn’t get up to anything. Plus he had no idea what kind of prophylactics they were using. You couldn’t exactly pick up a box of condoms from the store out here, wherever they were.
After he had addressed this additional need, Alan felt a bit more clear headed and relaxed. He was struck with a revolutionary thought, one held secret by a small segment of the male population no doubt.
Skirts were ridiculously convenient.
“Plus nobody wants to peak up mine. Heh.” As if in response to his words, there was a rustling sound from the grasses near the edge of the trees. While the grasses were tall enough to provide ‘down there’ privacy, he’d kept to the forested edge along the river. Partially because he could still be seen from a distance out in the grasses and there would be no doubt from his expression as to what he was doing, standing there, red faced, grasses rustling. Yeah, a bit obvious. That and Alan instinctively liked that he could see a lot further and more clearly what kind of creatures there were in the forested area, where shade and thick leaf litter kept the grasses mostly at bay. What did grow in the forested section was mostly scraggly and isolated patches of grass and not terribly far from the proper prairie edge.
Really, the weirdest thing was that there simply weren’t any trees out in the prairie, it was just rolling hills of monotonous grass, rustling in waves from the wind. They hadn’t seen any large animals, birds, or even rustling from something moving through it. Nothing had accosted them so it didn’t seem to be some inherent danger. Now that he could hear rustling from the grasses, he was frozen with fear. Maybe something dangerous was out there, in the grasses. Something that even monster beavers feared.
Someone said something that sounded like someone took a bunch of languages and ran them through a blender, then cobbled a new language from it, broke the silence. There was a pause, then the crunch of a stick under a foot as the speaker moved into the forested section. They spoke again with a clear questioning tone. The voice was soft, reassuring. Alan wouldn’t be able to identify if it was male or female just from the sound of it.
Cautiously he peaked around the trees that hid him from view and caught sight of the speaker as they thankfully were looking in another direction.
“It’s a fucking elf.” The ‘elf’ whipped it’s head to look at Alan, eyes wide in surprise that quickly turned into a frown. The ma… wo… the unclearly gendered elf had a thin and long face, pale green, almond shaped eyes that were reminiscent of Asian features, darkly tanned skin and long green hair the color of the grass. They were tall. Alan and John were both just over six feet, Aaron was just under, but this person was at least half a foot or a full foot taller. Fine wrinkles were just barely visible in the corners of the eyes, along the forehead, and around the mouth.
Did that make them an old elf? How old did an elf need to get to look old? Somewhere between one and infinite years was probably a safe bet. Much like their hair, their outfit closely matched the color of the grasses and adorned them from the tops of their soft leather boots nearly to the bottom of their jaw. The outfit looked like a tightly woven and well processed linen and should have revealed if there were any feminine curves, excepting for the short cropped jacket and shorts that covered the relevant identifying regions in a loose fitting manner that neatly obscured any such attempt at discernment.
They were holding a long piece of wood with a sharp metal blade on the end. A spear! A real looking one too. If this was some elaborate LARPer they had really put some effort and cash into the costume. The ears were perhaps the most obviously not fake thing. Not because they were tall and pointed, but rather because they were set too high on the head, basically on the top of the skull like a cat or fox, they were green furred from about halfway up to a long fluffy patch at the tips… and they moved about, following sounds and even acting independently of each other.
At least, for the most part. Right now they were focused on Alan and only one would swivel for a brief moment towards some sound that was otherwise beyond Alan’s hearing to catch, before whipping back forward to face this person of interest.
The elf tried their questioning line again, but Alan just stared back. They assumed a distant look in their eyes for a moment, then Alan’s skin started to tingle intensely, causing him to yelp in surprise and jump away from the trees, thinking he was getting attacked by some kind of ant or something he hadn’t noticed. The sensation disappeared and the elf looked briefly bemused, then concerned.
“Parly voo?” Huh… that sounded weirdly familiar.
“Ess pan yol?” Ess pan… Español? Spanish?
“Err… no habla Español. English. Do you speak English?” The elf started to look excited and then dismayed.
“No… English. Deutsch? Sprechen Sie?”
“Deutsch? Ein bischen. Tut mir lied… bin ich… rusty.” Alan responded. Shit, if the elf could speak German then they could have a… conversation… crap, his German was beyond rusty. It was terrible even when it was fresh and the last time he’d used it was almost ten years ago!