Following One’s Guts

Claude

I couldn’t figure out how to get Sonny to test the compass with me without telling him about said compass. In the end, I decided I didn’t care if he tried to nick it, and handed it over during dinner that evening.

“A Gut Compass.” Sonny’s eyes lit up with obvious awe. “I’ve pickpocketed a few of these before.” The tips of his ears went pink. “I mean, I always give them back to their owners. Contrary to what most folk believe, I try to return all the stolen items.”

“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise,” I said, despite the almost tangible knowledge he still had not returned any of my belongings.

“I know...” Sonny cleared his throat and looked down at the device. He flipped it over. “They’re usually much more elaborate than this one, though. This one seems kind of... prototypey, like maybe it’s the first one ever to have been made—holy fuck.” He stared at it some more, his already overlarge eyes so wide they threatened to fall out of their sockets. “No, it can’t be. That would be...” He shook his head. His mouth moved over the initials G.M.V.

“So, you want to try it out tonight? I was thinking of setting it to adventurous, or inquisitive, or curious if it gives me any of those options,” I said.

“Yes!” His fork tumbled to the ground in his excitement. “I would love that. We should take torches in case the compass leads us outside of the house and we’re out so late it gets dark. And we should take hoodies as well, in case it gets cold.”

Since I didn’t own a hoodie, I’d slung my jacket over my arm and flicked through the emotions while I waited for Sonny to run back to his room to collect his, but... I didn’t know, something seemed wrong with the compass. Every emotion I clicked through was kinda the same as the last. I must have been on my twentieth click, but they were all coming up worryingly similar...

Romantic. Amorous. Sensual. Intimate. First-date vibes. Lovey-dovey.

I would simply die of embarrassment if Sonny saw any of those. I clicked it again.

Getting sucked off under a glittering waterfall—

I almost dropped the thing. What the hell?

Sonny approached, pulling his mustard bee-print hoodie over his head, and I shoved the compass in my pocket before he could look at the face and accuse me of... what? Deliberately selecting that option? I couldn’t deny that part of me—a gradually increasing part—wanted to follow the dial and see where it took us.

“Hey,” he said. “You ready for adventure?”

“Sure am.”

“So, what emotion-slash-instinct are we following?”

I grimaced. “I haven’t selected one yet. The compass... it keeps giving me stupid suggestions.”

“Let’s have a look?” Sonny held out a hand, palm up.

“No?” I said, like a question.

He laughed. “Aw, why not? Come on, let’s see.”

I sucked in a breath, placed the small brass instrument in his grip, and then screwed up my face. The shame coursing through my veins wouldn’t bear witness to his reaction.

“Oh!” Sonny said, laughing again.

“Let me change it.” I blindly reached out for the compass.

“Um... I mean, I’m happy to leave it on that one. If you are.”

I pried my eyes open to find him staring at me, bottom lip caught between his teeth, his free hand scratching the back of his neck. I checked the panel on the compass again, just to make sure the dial had not accidentally clicked to something else as it passed between our hands. It had not.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

“Yeah,” I squeaked. Cleared my throat. “Yeah, that’s... also very fine with me.”

Sonny snorted. “Perfect.” I did not miss the subtle adjustment he made to the front of his shorts. “Righty-ho, this way.”

We marched out of The Night Cap’s exit and down the tree-lined drive. Blossoms had begun to drop, and the ground was littered with pretty white and pink petals. Then, the compass took us out beyond the house, in the opposite direction from the paddock. Forests and steep hilltops disappeared into the horizon.

Sonny and I spent the first five minutes of the walk giggling. We didn’t know what to say given the instructions we were following. Occasionally one of us would chime in with “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” or “I wonder where it’ll lead us,” or “At least it’s not raining.” Which would bring about a fresh wave of the giggles.

Until Sonny got distracted by all the different fungi. The path wound through the woods, along a brook, over fallen trees, and through clearings. He would run ahead excitedly, then beckon me over.

“Look, green elf cup! Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, crouching down next to some blueberry-sized blue-green mushrooms sprouting on a felled tree. “They grow on the dead wood and help to break it down. Look, here...” He leaned over the trunk and picked up a branch from a different, much older and more rotted tree. “The fungi dyes the wood a turquoise colour. They use it in fancy furniture inlays and things. Cool, huh?”

“It is pretty cool,” I admitted, though I would never have thought as much a couple of months ago.

“Ooh, ooh, this one is chicken of the woods.” Sonny stopped by some yellowish, grooved mushrooms growing out the side of a tree like frills on a dress.

“The mushroom is called chicken of the woods?” I asked the question slowly in case I’d heard him wrong.

“Yeah,” he said, making me feel guilty that comparatively, I knew nothing about my own kind.

“Can you eat them?” Chicken of the woods sounded very... edible.

He nodded. “You’d love them. They’re very meaty.”

And then a few moments later when he spotted what I initially assumed to be a wingball.. .

“Giant puffball! Ah, these are my favourite.”

Those I had heard of—and seen—before. An enormous white globe, about a foot tall and a foot wide, nestled into a clump of wild grasses.

“What is it you like so much about them?”

“Just look at them, they’re massive!” Sonny was practically giddy with excitement.

“So, you’re a fan of very large things?” I aimed for a wink, missed by a country mile, and half blinked, half grimaced at him.

Sonny assessed me with his head tilted to the side. “Claude Stinkhorn, was that... banter?”

My face flamed, but I was smiling. “How many times in your life have you seen a giant puffball?”

“Hundreds, maybe thousands. They’re still my favourite.”

As we walked farther into the woods, I let Sonny’s words bounce around in my mind. He got as excited as a child on Winter Fest at something he’d seen so often before. He wasn’t bored, or disinterested, or tired of seeing them. Why did that stir an achiness inside my chest?

At the twenty-five-minute mark, I felt Jenny’s boundaries drop away, meaning we’d left the property. It was like the air pressure changed. Like my ears popped, and it was suddenly easier to breathe.

“Did you feel that?” I asked Sonny.

“Feel what?” he responded. That was a no then.

“I think we’re no longer in the Stinkhorn Manor grounds. Jenny, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

I took a step backwards, felt the weird popping sensation again. “Jenny, are we venturing out of your boundaries?”

The house sighed. “Yes. Beyond that stupid line lives a different network of mycelium. I can’t see you. Go do naked things in peace. Spoilsports.”

“What did it say?” Sonny asked.

I faltered for half a beat. “It can’t see or hear us once we pass this invisible barrier... right here.” I demonstrated with my hands where the edge of the boundary was. “It said it belongs to a different network of mycelium.”

“Huh, of course,” Sonny said, apparently to himself.

We kept walking for another five to ten minutes. All the while I thought about how close to the three kilometre distance limit we must be. Several times I turned the compass over just to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently set the limit to thirty instead of three, despite knowing a tiny key was needed to change the dial.

The needle flipped to the left, then right, then to the top again, and then began going haywire. “Damn, I think it’s broken.”

I made to show Sonny, but he stood open-mouthed, staring ahead. I followed his gaze and almost tripped forward.

Our view was blanketed by enormous redwoods, but between the trunks a clearing revealed itself. Soft, white, sandy banks dropped away into a brilliant turquoise pool of water. Late afternoon sunlight twinkled off the surface like the tiles of a disco ball. At the far edge of the water, rocks jutted out at odd angles, some low and flat, some rounded off, and some rose up and up into a sheer cliff face. Tumbling down the centre, the most breathtaking, picture-perfect waterfall I’d ever seen. The entire scene could have been on a poster in a dentist’s waiting room, or the wallpaper of a travel agent’s PC.

Sonny and I inched forward until we were wedged between the trunks of two trees.

“It’s absolutely stunning,” he said quietly. In awe. “If I’m being honest, I didn’t really know what we were walking into... and now the gravity of what the compass said is sinking in. I shouldn’t have been so naive.”

“We don’t have to do anything like that,” I added quickly. “We can just sit... there and chat for a bit.” I pointed to a smooth rock next to the water. It was big enough to fit the both of us, and if I rolled my trouser legs up and took off my shoes and socks, we might dangle our feet in the pool. Gods knew I needed to freshen up a little after that sweaty hike. “You never finished telling me about the sexual selection of mushrooms.”

Sonny smiled and bit his lip again. Damn, why was he always doing that? Give my poor insides a break, will you? He raced forward to the flat rock and threw his hoodie down, but instead of sitting on the edge, he whipped his T-shirt off, then pulled his trainers off by the heels, dropped them too, and his socks, and before I had a chance to even think not the shorts as well , he’d unbuckled his belt and let those fall to the ground.

“You can chat if you like. I’ve chatted enough recently,” he called out. “Think I’ll take a swim instead.” And with his back to me, he wiggled out of his underpants, one hand held over his junk, and he jumped into the once peacefully flat water.

I was left staring at the spot where Sonny had been, like the imprint from a camera flash. I wanted to burn it into my retinas. Tattoo his naked ass and his smiling face onto my brain.

He breached the surface and splashed an armful of water at me. “It’s warm! And pretty deep!” he yelled. “I can’t even reach the bottom. Can you swim?”

“Yeah, I can swim. Doesn’t mean I’m going to,” I said back.

But he didn’t wait for me to finish my sentence, his head was already under the surface again, and he swam farther away. I tried to peer through the water, but he kept kicking those never-ending legs, disrupting the flow and warping the view of his nakedness.

It was incredible. And frustrating. I wanted him to stop writhing around so I could gawp at every line of his figure. And I also wanted to stay on this rock and bask in Sonny’s happiness until nightfall forced him out of the pool.

I folded his clothes—his pants and shorts still held some body heat—tucked his socks into his trainers and aligned everything into a neat little rectangle. Then I took a deep, inward breath.

I’d expected to arrive at a place like this. I hadn’t been as naive as Sonny. Didn’t imagine it would be as beautiful, but I’d known the compass would be literal. So what was I waiting for? Why was I so worried about joining him?

Sonny continued to splash and laugh. Then suddenly, he stopped, and floated up to the surface on his back. He spread his arms and legs out in a star shape, and spat water in a fountain-like arch above his head.

And there was his dick, right there, at the top of the water.

I tore my eyes away from him and did the only thing I could think to distract my desperate brain. I took my brogues off. Then my socks.

One look around our surroundings told me we were alone, though I already knew this. I felt the peace of being truly alone. No onlookers, no unsuspecting hikers, no Jenny. I turned my back on Sonny to pull down my braces, unbutton my waistcoat, my shirt. I dropped my cufflinks into my left shoe and the compass into the right. Folded my top-half clothes and arranged them next to his. I spared a glance over my shoulder. Sonny was treading water, his dick beneath the surface again, but he was watching me.

He wolf-whistled.

I paused for just a second, held my breath to give me a boost of courage, and I dropped my trousers and underpants together. There was no time to fold them before I turned and plunged into the pool.

Sonny was right, it was warm. So warm. Like sinking into a bath. One that had been left for an hour or two and the water was pleasant, but not skin-meltingly hot.

He splashed me, and we half swam, half drifted towards each other.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” he said, breathless from the exertion. His petrol-coloured hair was glued to his forehead, the back sticking up at odd angles. Water ran in rivulets down his temples and the sides of his face. His cheeks were flushed.

“It really is,” I said, not taking my eyes off him. “We didn’t bring any towels.”

“We’ll have to drip dry then.” Then he splashed me again and swam away.

I chased him as best I could. But his limbs were infinitely longer than mine, and he’d obviously had a lot more experience in the water because he was at the base of the waterfall before I’d even switched my brain into gear. The closer I got to him, the higher the bottom of the pool became until I planted my feet on the sandy, weedy floor, my head and shoulders above the surface.

Sonny swam up to the rocks at the foot of the cliff and hauled himself out. Water gushed from every plane and curve of his body. Which was naked.

Perhaps I had not fully realised, or I had almost forgotten that Sonny being naked meant he was naked. Sonny was naked.

Naked!

His feet slapped the stone as he reached an arm forward into the waterfall’s jet. Evidently he decided it was the right kind of warmth or pressure or whatever, because the next moment his entire body was underneath it.

He squeegeed the runoff from his face, and wetted it again. Then held his arms out to the sides, parting the water.

The breaks in the flow looked like wings beneath him.

Magpie wings.

So breathtakingly beautiful. All of him.

I bumped up to the side and pulled myself out, somewhat less gracefully than Sonny had. The roar of the waterfall masked my footsteps. He didn’t open his eyes until I was beside him, standing just behind the stream. He passed his gaze from the top of my curls to my toes and back up again, and held eye contact.

I reached a hand around his neck, tilted his face down, and kissed him.

He didn’t hesitate. He simply kissed me back. Soft lips and cool water and gentle fingertip touches along his jaw, along the juncture of his neck and shoulder, down his ribs.

My cock responded—his did too—but we ignored them in favour of the slow, sweeping grazes and lingering kisses. We had to pause the kiss every few seconds to breathe in through our mouths, and it was everything I could do to stop myself pulling him down to the rock surface and climbing over him.

We couldn’t speak, the crashing water too noisy to hear anything else.

Sonny placed his palms against my chest and gently pushed me back a few steps, so we were standing in the hollow space carved into the soft rock by the waterfall. It was about the size of a typical bedroom and tapered backwards to an area so dark it was impossible to see the far side, but it wasn’t fully enclosed on the other sides. Daylight poured in through cracks—some wide enough to walk through—in the cavern walls.

He kissed me again. Pushed his tongue into my mouth, then just as quickly stopped, and shoved me another two steps backward.

Holy crap, it was really happening. The compass had really taken us to a glittering waterfall for BJs. My cock went from half-hard to full-mast in a millisecond.

Sonny clocked it. His eyes grew wider. He took his own thickening cock in his hand and gave it a few lazy pumps. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. His groan was lost to the crash of the waterfall.

I froze on the spot. Torn between wanting to close the gap between us, drop to my knees for him, and watch him stroke himself to completion.

He didn’t let me do any of those things. Instead, he retrained his focus on me, popped his tongue out the side of his mouth to mop up a drip, and disappeared behind the waterfall... well, in front of it. He dove back into the pool, leaving me bereft but smiling.

I followed him through the stream, standing there for a few moments, framed by the cascading water. I needed him to see everything he did to me—every way my body reacted to his—before I jumped in too.

That was the first time I ever cannonballed with a full boner. I couldn’t dive. Wasn’t as graceful or lithe as Sonny. I’d end up smashing my head on the bottom of the pool, not slicing the surface open and slipping in seamlessly like he had.

Sonny laughed and wiped the splash water from his face. But as soon as I could get close to him again, I did, and kiss-pushed him to the edge. The shore began to taper up. When we were waist height, Sonny wrapped his legs around my hips and I lost the last remaining tether to my control. My lips smashed into his. His back bumped against the rocks, head falling backwards. My hands were in his hair, my tongue in his mouth.

He whined and rocked his hips upwards, seeking friction against my stomach.

We could so easily fuck like this. Gods, I wanted that, and we had talked about preferences, hadn’t we? The end of my cock nudged at his hole, but I restrained myself from thrusting against him. Took everything I had, but we were in the middle of nowhere with no condoms or lube. And did lube even work underwater? Or did we need a special kind of lube?

The same thoughts seemed to be travelling through Sonny’s head. He pushed a flattened palm between us. “I want you to fuck me so badly right now.”

“I do too,” I said, giving in to the teeniest amount of temptation and rocking my hips so my cock slid along the groove of his ass. I cried out.

Sonny caught my jaw in his hand and watched the ecstasy play over my features.

“But that’s not what the compass brought us here to do.” He spun his entire body around so his back was against my front, and he started pulling himself out. In slow motion. Pausing briefly when his ass was level with my face. I made no attempt to hide my groan.

Damn, his ass was perfect. Fucking perfect. And all it would take was for me to reach forward, pin his hips still, and I’d be eating him out. But he was on the rocks, fully out of the water, and on his back before I had a chance to act on it. I clambered out. Tried to cover how ungraceful I was by lying next to him and melding our faces together.

“I don’t think so,” he said, smiling against my mouth. He rolled onto his side and away from me and got to his feet. His cock hung in the air between us.

Sonny wrapped his fingers around it and dragged them to the head. He whined. “Oh, fuck, it feels so good to finally touch it like this. I’ve missed wanking. So much. I’ll never take fucking my own fist for granted ever again. We could come here to wank, and Jenny wouldn’t see, but we could watch each other.”

“I’ve never wanted anything more,” I said, realising my hand was also sliding up and down my cock.

He took a step back, and another, then he knelt down on the sandy bank next to the rock. And I had no other choice but to go to him. Like the physical pull of a magnet, I wouldn’t have been able to resist even if I’d tried.

Not that I had even tried to try.

Sonny lay back on his elbows. I caged him with my body, but he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to the sand, swapping our positions until he was the one on top of me.

“The compass led us here for BJs, so a BJ it’s gonna be.” He pushed my knees up and settled between them on his. “Is that okay?”

“Yes, thank you. That would be nice,” I said, because my brain had simply short-circuited. All it could think about now was my cock in Sonny’s mouth.

“Yes, thank you. That would be nice?” He snorted and smirked at the same time.

“Well, I mean, it would be very nice.”

He didn’t respond with words. Instead, he lowered his head and dragged his mouth along the inside of my thigh.

I whimpered. “So. Fucking. Nice.”

I rolled my hips upwards as Sonny kissed the base of my cock, licked over my balls, trailed his tongue up my length, and flicked it over my slit.

Oh, no. No, no, no. I wasn’t going to last long at all.

“Claude?” he said.

“Whatever it is you’re gonna ask me, the answer is yes.”

“I want you to come in my mouth.”

“Oh, gods.” I leant back all the way, scrubbing a hand down my face.

“Okay?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

And then Sonny buried my cock in his mouth. Warmth, wetness, and blinding intensity, as he began sucking and bobbing up and down. My fingers slid through the sand, unable to find purchase on anything. My chest heaved. Sonny pumped his fist around my base.

He was so fucking good at it. I was already beginning to fall apart at the seams, trembling and crying out, the sounds dampened by the crashing water.

I kept my eyes closed because I knew the second I opened them and saw Sonny’s perfect, pert mouth stretched over my cock, I would blow. But I couldn’t deny myself the view any longer.

“Sonny, gods, you feel . . . fuck, this is . . . I’m so close.”

I opened my eyes, but the first thing I saw wasn’t his amazing lips. It was his other hand wrapped around his own cock, pumping furiously. And that was enough to send me over the edge.

“Oh shit, Sonny, I’m coming. Fuck, I’m coming, Sonny. Fuck.” I lost the ability to speak—as eloquent as I had been—so I whined out the rest of my orgasm and emptied myself into Sonny’s mouth.

He swallowed me down, moaning against my length, the vibrations travelling throughout my entire body.

Sonny pulled off me, wiped his lips with the back of his fist, and sat on his knees between my thighs. He propped himself up with one hand on my chest, hovering over me, grabbing handfuls of my flesh, as he fucked his own hand until his eyes rolled back, his mouth fell open, and his release splashed across my stomach.

It was the second time I’d witnessed Sonny fall apart, and I was already addicted.

“Fuck, that was the hottest moment of my life,” I said. Sonny preened. It was adorable.

Without another word, probably because we were too fucked out to speak, he collapsed onto my chest, squishing his own cum between us. I wrapped my arms around him and we lay together until our breaths and heart rates returned to normal.

After a few minutes, we slipped back into the pool to rinse the mess off, and then sat on the bank again to air dry. Sonny shook the water from his hair like a puppy. He rested his head on the top of mine, his arm over my shoulder, and we watched the sun begin its descent towards the tops of the distant forests.

Neither of us spoke, but Sonny’s thumb drew tender circles on my bicep as though he was saying, I’m here, by the way. I’m right beside you. And I’m not going anywhere.

After a while, he pulled his knees up to his chest. His skin had erupted in goosepimples, and even in the waning light of the evening, I saw the blue that tinged his lips.

“Come on, let’s get dressed,” I said.

“I never want this moment to be over.”

“Me neither. But I don’t want you suffering hypothermia.”

We held hands as we walked around the pool to the bank where we’d left everything and clawed our way into our clothes. I pretended not to notice Sonny slipping the compass from my shoe and into the butt pocket of his jean shorts.

Damn, he could have it.

Keep it forever.

I was almost one hundred percent certain that no matter what emotion I programmed into the compass, the needle would forevermore point to him.