Dying for Winter

Wanted to give you guys a sneak peek of something I'm working on. It probably won't appeal to many of you because it's less of an erotic story, and more of a romantic one, but I wanted to run it by you first.

I won't be posting this for a while, and will continue to work on current series, but once I'm finished it, it will be available to download from Amazon (free for Patreon subscribers of course).

Let me know what you think!

Jack dug his sneaker into the gravel and balled his fists in the pockets of his jeans. He knew what to expect, and he knew better than to try to block it. It didn't really hurt at first, which was a good thing, because he couldn't risk looking like a total loser right in front of the entire school again. He'd feel the sting of it later on, when he was at home.

Tristan Bell pulled his arm back like a slingshot and drove his fist forward, and then a ringing sounded in Jack's ear and he was looking up at the sky with water dripping from the edges of his eyes. He wasn't crying, he'd learned how to prevent that a long time ago. It was the effect of being socked in the nose that caused the tears.

People didn't really laugh much anymore. Which was a good thing, he supposed. Maybe everyone else was as tired of Tristan's shit as Jack was, but then again, they never did anything to stop it either.

"That's enough!" The booming sound of the headteacher's voice rang out across the yard, and everybody scarpered except Jack, who was stemming the blood from his nose with his hand.

"What on earth are you doing down there?" Mr. Cashen barked, and Jack looked up whilst trails of crimson liquid poured out from between his fingers.

"I like the view from here" he said, in that voice that you can only do when you can't breathe out your nose.

"Well get up!" Cashen growled, "and go and get yourself cleaned up".

Jack rose to his feet, but stumbled back a bit. He was dizzy, but he felt the bridge of his nose, and once again, it hadn't been broken. He wondered if all the punches had somehow strengthened it. It was an interesting theory.

"You're such a fucking pussy, bro!" A boy, three or four years Jack's junior told him as he stood against the sink spitting red and mopping his face with wet tissue.

"I mean, who the fuck just stands there and lets someone beat their ass?" the boy cackled, and left the bathroom.

In the mirror, an eighteen-year-old stared back at Jack. It was him of course, but it didn't really look like him anymore. He still had the same dull brown hair, which no matter how short he had it cut, still stuck up at the back like he'd just rolled out of bed. He still had the same shitty brown eyes that were about as lively as a pensioners disco, and his face was still thin and pale, and reminded him of a recently deceased corpse. But he didn't look like he used to. Maybe he'd just gotten older, and that was the cause, or maybe it was something else.

Jack rolled up the sleeves on his long sleeve shirt and rubbed his finger across the fading scars. How long had it been now? He couldn't really remember. A year perhaps, less. He could do it again if he wanted to. Nobody would really care, except his aunt who'd find the blood speckles on his shirt for sure. But he didn't give much of a fuck about her, and she felt the same about him. She just didn't want any of her friends to find out that her nephew was a freak. Which Jack could understand, he supposed.

He still had maths and a double English class to deal with, but that was fine by him. He was much smarter than anybody who picked on him, so he didn't need to worry about sharing a room with any of them.

The blood had stopped, but that persistent ruby stain refused to disappear above his lip, so he went to maths with a blood moustache, and sat near the back so Mrs. Reid didn't make a fuss. He liked maths, but then again, he liked any class that didn't contain Tristan fucking Bell.

Double English went fine too, and then came home time. He wasn't sure which part of the day he dreaded more, coming to school or leaving school. But now that he thought of it, he didn't really dread anything anymore. His face had become swollen and his top lip puffed out some, which felt funny, and uncomfortable. He sucked it into his mouth and let it slip out, wet.

The journey home was quite long, and on days when the sun baked down, it was a pain in the ass because his clothes stuck to his skin and got itchy, but he couldn't wear t-shirts, of course. Today however, there was a light breeze which made it more bearable.

"Loser!" A red car soared by him, and the voice did too. He didn't know who it belonged to, and he didn't really care either.

"Jack, what happened to your face?!" His aunt shrieked, but it sounded more like an accusation than a question, and so Jack shrugged and said, "what, wasn't it always like this?" and went to his bedroom.

It was, perhaps, the only place on the planet where he didn't have that thick, heavy knot in his stomach, which was nice. He face planted the bed and winced when his mouth hit the pillow, but kicked off his sneakers and curled up.

"Did you get beat up again?" Olly asked, and Jack groaned.

Olly was fifteen, and was his father's son for sure. He had a tuft of fiery red hair and freckles all across his face. If there was a person in the world who he liked less than Tristan, it was perhaps his cousin Olly, or maybe not. There were a few of them, now that he considered it.

"No" Jack told him.

"Bullshit" he replied, "you're always getting beat up".

"Get out of my room" Jack sighed.

"This is my house" came the usual response, "you get out of my house".

Arguing was pointless, and if he was honest, he didn't feel that spark to argue anyway. He wondered if he'd prefer to be deaf. Then he wouldn't have to listen to anybody anymore. He got up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and said, "alright then", and left.

His uncle Robert, who wasn't actually his uncle, but his aunt's boyfriend, was pulling off his paint stained work boots in the hall, and looked up at Jack. It was clear from his expression that he had hoped to find Olly instead, and now he looked like he'd just sniffed milk and found it spoiled.

"What happened to you?" He growled, and Jack shrugged.

"I woke up like this" he said, and swung around the bannisters and toward the back of the house.

"That kid is retarded" he heard Robert say to his aunty who probably agreed, he supposed.

The back yard was pretty big, and the end of it was far enough away from the house that nobody could see him, but nobody really looked for him anyway, and he'd once been able to spend nearly two whole nights down there before his aunt stumbled upon him by accident.

It was getting to that time of year when the summer was dying off and things started to turn orange and die in preparation for winter. That was a funny thing to do, Jack thought. To die for a particular occasion. They'd come back to life though, which sounded utterly dreadful to Jack. Imagine going to the trouble of dying, and then waking back up a few months later.

He sat down on a seat that Robert had made from an old log ten years prior, and dug his toes into the soft dirt underfoot. Olly's name was carved into the side, but Olly hadn't done it, Robert did. Maybe it was to keep Jack off it, or just to remind him that he wasn't really part of the family, because below that name, the word Robert and then a shitty love heart with an arrow through it, (which made no sense to Jack), was etched next to the word Helen, which was his aunt's name.

Jack's name had been there once, but he'd had to do it himself with a butter knife and it took him hours to get it right. Then Robert whacked him in the bottom of his back for taking the knife and made him carve it out, so now it was only a rotten crevice, which somehow mirrored what Jack felt when he looked at it.

Mrs. Beaufort wobbled down the steps in the yard next door. From where Jack was sitting, he could see her clearly, but she couldn't see him, which was just as well because she always made a fuss of him, and he wasn't in the mood to talk. He hadn't really been in the mood to talk since he was a kid, if he was being honest.

"Oh bother" the old woman said, and Jack supposed he should go and help her because she was lugging a big old black sack over her back, that was nearly bigger than she was.

He sighed and stood up, and felt that light headed wave of dizziness tingle around his brain. He was hungry, but only in the physical sense. He wasn't actually going to eat anything. Not today, anyway.

He wondered how much energy he'd expend on helping Mrs. Beaufort with the trash. Would he pass out? If he could grab the bag, throw it in the trash can and get back into his own yard before he did, that would be fine.

Jack took a step forward, and then stopped when he heard a second voice. He crouched down behind the bush that blocked Mrs. Beaufort's view of him, and peered through it. A boy appeared. Well, not a boy, a man, but not yet an entire man.

He had soft golden skin which looked quite stark in contrast to the white, wrinkled skin of the old woman beside him. His hair was black, but not just black, it was like the same black that you see when you close your eyes real tight. He was tall too, but maybe he just looked tall because Mrs. Beaufort was all hunched up and tiny.

"I told you" he said, and his accent reminded Jack of a cowboy film he'd watched one time, "you call me when you've got a job that needs doing".

It was a funny way to speak, but Jack kinda' liked it, he supposed.

"There's life left in this old gal' yet!" Mrs. Beaufort said, but she handed the bag to the man so Jack wasn't so sure.

He followed him with his eyes, and the closer he got, the more of the thick muscle he could see under the hems of the white t-shirt that looked like it had been painted onto him. Jack shook his head. He knew some people like that, and none of them had ever been very nice.

"Are you taking a shit?" The voice hit Jack's ears at the exact moment that the muscular cowboy stood directly on the opposite side of the bush, and everybody turned to see Olly smirking.

Jack stood up and cleared his throat.

"I was tying my lace" he told his cousin, who looked down at his socked feet and said, "but you're not wearing any shoes", and then Jack heard the cowboy stifle a laugh as he dumped the bag into the trash can.

His cheeks filled with blood, and so did his nose, and then it began to drip over his puffy lip again, and he hurried from the garden before the day could get any worse.