Fan Fiction ❯ Standing Outside the Fire ❯ To The Sea ( Chapter 7 )

Standing Outside

The Fire

By: Irish

Chapter Seven:

To the Sea

It had been raining since the wee hours of the morning. Lyn lie awake listening to the constant drum of the rain on the nylon tent, the morning light was a dingy gray and that suited him just fine. It had been hard waking up each morning prior to sunshine and calling birds, the smell of salt water on the air; all he felt was dark and dismal as the rain cloud that hung over their camp site. Andrew's arms were warm and safe around him. Lyn lay curled against Andrew's more muscular chest, their sleeping bags between them. It felt so good to be held like that; no strings, no sex, just comfort and security. But there were some things Andrew couldn't protect him from, like the constant barrage of self-abuse.

The rain continued to patter and Lyn shivered delicately, instinctively Andrew's arms tightened around him. Lyn nuzzled his face against Andrew's chest with a soft sigh. Some tension inside of him eased. The tight binding on his heart had loosened. All he wanted to do was cry. He inhaled the scent of the man next to him who had become such a comfort; he had started to accept Andrew as part of his day-to-day life and was coming to rely on his quiet strength and total willingness to say exactly what he thought.

"You're not asleep." Andrew's voice was slightly horse with sleep and he swallowed convulsively.

Lyn covered his surprise, changing his wide-eyed looked to a sarcastic brow quirk. "Nor are you."

"So were both faking it. You don't usually stay around in the morning to cuddle. Something eating you?"

"It's not usually raining." Lyn shot back, but then sighed heavily, it took so much effort to be sarcastic. He laid his head on Andrew's chest again, just soaking up the gentle affection the other radiated.

"No, I suppose its not. What is on your mind?" Andrew didn't dare move to offer more comfort; this was the first that Lyn had been more then a passive recipient to his attempts to comfort.

Lyn didn't say a word, just lay silently, and Andrew did not press, if what Lyn needed right now more then anything was comfort, Andrew could provide that, he had a feeling Lyn hadn't had much comfort in his life, a set of warm strong arms just to hold him when he needed it. Andrew could sympathize to a certain degree his home environment had been less then stellar, but his friends had more then made up for that. Lyn didn't seem to feel he could go home for whatever reason, and his only friend in the world was Andrew, a sad state of affairs as far as the blonde was concerned, f the best Lyn could do was a casual acquaintance with a huge case of puppy love, then he really was hard up.

"How can you be so goddamn calm and at peace all the fucking time.' Lyn muttered, annoyance dripping from his voice like grease from McDonalds.

"Lots and lots of meditation and prayer. Lots."

"If you ask me if I've found Jesus I'm kicking you in nuts." Lyn's eyes had narrowed suspiciously at the Norseman.

"I personally put as much faith in Jesus as I do in Mohammad, Buddha, Krishna, and the Yeti." His voice was calm and even not in the lease phased at Lyn's suspicion.

"So its either all or nothing. What you don't believe in UFOs?"

"If I throw my shoe across the campsite and you don't know what it is, its an Unidentified Flying Object, that doesn't mean little green men are going to come running out when it lands."

"Not if you use Oder-eaters anyway." Lyn had propped his elbows up on Andrew chest and had rested his chin on them, staring down at Andrew. It was just a maneuver to try and get a rise out of him, gouging his pointy little elbows into An's chest, but Andrew ignored it, Lyn wasn't even heavy enough to leave bruises.

"My feet smell like roses. My point is, Myth is based on believe, and faith is based on myth, so the lessons that Krishna, Muhammad, Buddha, Jesus and the Yeti teach in their respective myths is what is important, not how holy or unholy they were. Divinity is hard to achieve, and if you are saying things like love your fellow man, regardless of race, sex, preference, religion, culture, or level of salvation and believing it… that kind of true self sacrifice when it rings true as more then just an abstract concept, has got to be an aspect of divinity."

Lyn obviously seemed to think it was a fair argument because he took his elbows off Andrew chest, reclining on his back along side him instead.

"So, what…. Your divine?"

"Well, we all are, but no, not in the way you mean. I may say I believe in and act on the idea of selfless love… but… I do not do so purely. If a KKK member walked up to me, it would be a real challenge for me not to just give him a TKO before he could put on his little white hood and say boo. That is not selfless love. If a KKK member came to me bleeding on the street, of course I would help him, but I doubt I would be tender in my ministration. I strive towards perfection, but fall drastically short yet. I need a few more turns of the cosmic wheel before my karma is even." Andrew tucked his hands under his head, glancing at Lyn out of the corner of his eyes.

"I don't know if you noticed buddy, but the cosmic wheel broke an axel or something. I am of the strong belief we are currently residing in purgatory… or maybe Limbo." The lanky man glared at the ceiling of the tent as if he might be able to scold God through the nylon.

"So you think we are currently absent from the presence of God?"

"Well, this doesn't exactly look like the work of an involved creator now does it? No I think this planet is more like God's latch key kid, severely neglected."

"That's a helluva metaphor, and you wonder why you are depressed? I'm a Buddhist who doesn't even believe in a creator and that idea depresses me." Andrew rolled his head to the side, brows furrowed as he watched Lyn. Andrew didn't mind talking religion at all, he hadn't been a Philosophy major for nothing, and if it helped Lyn sort through what ever was tangling up inside… it wasn't like it was going to shake his faith, he could listen until the stars fell from the sky.

"I don't believe in God either, but he is a convient scape goat. But hell I even make a poor Atheist; they at least live for the sake of living, making do with what time theyhave and what not, helping their fellow man because no one else is going to. I say fuck them all. Nuke'em till they glow and shoot them in the dark and that will solve all the worlds fucking problems. There cant be wars, and famine and AIDS if their aren't and dumb fuck people."

"Your optimism intrigues me, I would like to hear more of your "Shoot them all so there is no one left to fuck up' philosophy." Andrew's tone was borderline mocking, now it was he who was trying to get a rise out of Lyn, to get him ranting, just to get…something.

"Well, its not like I'm about to initiate the apocalypse, with my luck I would fuck up and initiate world peace anyway…. On that note… maybe I should try to star apocalypse… maybe that's my calling in life… bringer of death."

"If you were any more morbid you would be rotting in a coffin."

"Well then I shall depress you no longer." Lyn huffed sitting up abruptly, gathering his clothes, still the better part of clean from yesterday, and his toiletries before launching himself from the tent towards the shower house. Andrew sighed deeply, that hadn't gone the way he would have liked it to.

Lyn stormed to the rickety shower house the better part of half a mile away, his anger and frustration growing with every step, nearly in tears by the time he reached the dilapidated shack. He threw open the door and flew into one of the shower stalls, a weak shower head at one end, a mirror, bench and a few hooks at the other. He hung his towel, still a bit damp from yesterdays shower on a rusting hook, tossing his toiletries and clothes on the bench he began to strip, muttering under his breath about jungle rot and athletes foot. When his flannel pants and tee shirt had joined the pile on the bench he turned to the mirror, which was too low to reflect his face. He ran a hand over his chest, then clawed his fingers, following the same trail with his nails, leaving five long lines, pinpricks of blood showing where the scratches were deeper. Lyn turned away from the mirror sharply before he could do more damage. It took less then two strides for him to be standing under the weak shower spray… more like next to it, as the showerhead was about shoulder level. Ducking down he soaked his dark hair, wishing it were a heavier spray; maybe then it would relieve some of the tension in his shoulders. He soaped up quickly, having learned how quickly the water cooled. He longed for a nice hot bath… or better yet, a sauna or hot tub, now that might do him some good.

Before Lyn had time to feel fully clean the water was cold and he was force to stepped out and turn off the water. His damp towel did little to dry himself off and as he pulled on the pair of cargo pants, cropped at mid shin, a style Andrew called 'spants' and drew on a light weight long sleeved linen shirt, they both immediately stuck to his still damp form. Sighing heavily he strapped on his sandals and gathered his toiletries, hiking back to camp.

He paused only long enough to toss his toiletries into the tent and grab his guitar from its case, slinging it over his back as he passed through, headed for a path down the side of the near by cliffs to the sea and rocks below. In some ways it reminded him of home, the waves sounded the same as they crashed through the crevices and into the hollows of the rocks. But the tang of the air, the salt that he could taste on his tongue with every spray, was sharper, a harder taste of fish and pine. There were no pines in Ireland. The scent of farming soil and sheep was lacking. He picked his way from boulder to boulder, jutting lip to jutting lip with the grace of a mountain goat, or an Irish boy raised on the edge of the world. The sea drew him, like a sirens call just out of his range of hearing and he settled on a rock as he had so many days before just watching the waves beat against the rock, beat against the rock as he struggled against himself. Rushed and broke, rushed and broke, small pebbles moving in the wake. He sat and he waited. He didn't know what he expected to come to him some sort of holy epiphany or if maybe one day the tide would just come in to high and drown him. The latter did not seem likely with his Life Guard Andrew above him, glancing down over the rocky slope, just to be sure he hadn't jumped it. He hadn't not yet. Today thought, today he cradled his guitar as he sat just out of reach of the surf. He settled it in his lap stroking it softly, watching it as though he expected it to play on his own.

It wasn't until the sun was starting to set, sinking slowly into the sea in front of him, as it had done every day of his live since he was born until he moved to America. There was stirring, soft at first, so soft that he did not feel his fingers tuning the long neglect strings, didn't feel their tightness until his fingers, unbidden plucked at them lightly, teasingly. It took him long awkward moments to reacquaint himself with the guitar, finger her erogenous zones and remember how to stroke them, to fit her curves against her as he breathed deeply his body tense in expectation. The feeling inside him ebbing and flowing like the tide, a rhythmic gently intrusion. He bowed his head over her curves, bowed it, then raised it, bowed it then raised it as the lyrics slipped in and out of his mouth, as he drew breath uneven with expectation, a thrumming need starting with in him. And finally he and the music came.

Do you always trust your first initial feeling
Special knowledge holds truth bears believing
I turned around
And the water was closing all around
Like a glove
Like the love that had finally, finally found me
Then I knew
In the crystalline knowledge of you
Drove me thru the mountains
Thru the crystal-like clear water fountain
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea….

He only got came to that one short verse, half the song, as his body quivered with it's reawakening. But it was more then he had had in weeks- months. He tilted his head back as he tried to catch his breath, the gauzy blankets of orange and purple draping over his face, the tears that fell glistening like perfect forms of unadulterated refraction. And inside him, the soft green shoots of music peeped up from the hard packed, barren dirt of his soul, hardy plants, familiar tunes that would never leave his mind. The music had returned.