The return of Jungle Crack
Title: Jungle Crack
Rating: NC-17 overall
Genre: AU. Put Roy, Ed, Al, Hei, Winry, Russell, Fletcher, Shezka together. Mix and stir. Graphic scenes are all yaoi.
Pairing: Multiple
Length: 3, 833 this bit (20, 697 words today so far)
Author: kalikamaxwell
Artist: cofie
Warning: Pictures are included in the fic. Not quite worksafe.
Summary: Alfons the unlucky explorer gets lost in the jungle and is captured by the veeeeery friendly and very skimpily clad natives of the Elric tribe. See cultures clash messily! See sexy boys wear loincloths, and sometimes take them off!
Previous parts (on Cofie's lj):
Parts 1-3.
Parts 4-5.
Parts 6-8.
Parts 9-11.
Parts 12-14.
-15-
They’d been extremely busy lately; Winry worked them all like slaves and it only took a few hours before Alfons found himself too sweaty and exhausted to go on without a break. He watched the other men enviously: they could go on and on like they didn’t feel the heat, building like bees.
It came as a surprise when he noticed, somewhere between admiring and being jealous of the brothers’ strong builds, that his skin was no longer blindingly pale compared to theirs; a few weeks wearing almost nothing had given him a tan, which made him stand out a touch less. The only reason his skin hadn’t just burned right off, he assumed, was that he didn’t usually spend the entire day in the middle of the budding village, more often sitting in the shades.
When the evening, and therefore the time for the second big meal of the day, came, Edward and Alphonse ate quickly and took off-again. Alfons knew they were using a handmade net to catch bats, which they proceeded to eat before bedtime, making suffering faces. He gathered it was something they had to do, not something they liked to do, but he didn’t know the reason for it.
No more than he knew why, when Russell brought down a monkey and offered them its testicles with a grin, they ate them as well.
“Who the fuck decided monkeys and bats were the fertility spirit’ animals?” Edward said, glaring in answer to Russell’s grin. “Tastes fucking gross. Winry!” he wailed. “This crap isn’t working! Can we quit already?”
Winry and Rose were wandering by, holding baskets on their hips. Winry didn’t pause to answer Edward, only inclined her head. “Sure, let’s try something else. Russell tells me it might work to stock up semen for a few days. So you’re forbidden to release semen for six sunrises and sundowns. We’ll see what that gives.” And she continued onward, leaving Edward and Alphonse to gape at her back.
“She’s kidding,” Alphonse said. “She has to be.”
Edward looked at Russell, who seemed very pleased with himself, and growled, “I’m going to KILL YOU.”
Alfons, intrigued, would very much have liked to understand more than he did. There was something about days and nights, and he could recognize Edward’s death threat face... Anybody could recognize that face really: Fletcher quickly found some reason to tug his brother away from a death match waiting to happen.
He did understand afterward, somewhat. Neither Edward nor Alphonse tried to jump him or anybody else for three days and that stood out from their usual behavior. Was it a punishment? Was Winry angry? He couldn’t tell.
Edward looked like a dying man, lying listlessly on the ground whenever he was left to himself; he didn’t even say a word when Kitten decided he made a decent pillow and spread over him. Alphonse didn’t seem overly affected, but his mood did take a sullen edge and his smiles, usually plentiful, became rare.
Three days passed in that odd atmosphere. Rose didn’t notice it was an odd atmosphere for the good reason she didn’t know what the normal atmosphere should be and Alfons wasn’t about to bring it to her attention.
Edward eventually rose from the ground to poke his brother, who was moodily cuddling with Kitten. “Hey, Al. Let’s go down to the river.”
“Haven’t we had enough fish lately?”
“Come on, grab your spear.”
“Fine, fine.”
Alfons watched Edward and Alphonse head toward the river with their spears, eventually deciding he should help: he could write in his notebook and fish at the same time. He followed them after fetching his homemade fishing line along with a clay pot in which he gathered worms and other fish-bait.
He found them sitting on the bank, whispering; they spared him a guilty look and went back to talking. He settled not far, wondering what they were doing, and flipped his notebook open to detail the last few days’ events, few as they were.
“That’s a bad, bad idea. Winry--”
“I’m full okay? I’m going to explode with semen. Russell was lying anyway and you know it. It’ll be fine if we wait just the next three sundowns. Right now, I need to come or explode. If you’re so wimpy, I’ll go see Alfons over there. He won’t complain.”
“Oh no. If you’re going to get sex, I’m getting sex too.”
It turned out fishing wasn’t what the boys had in mind, not at all. No fishing method in the world involved groping somebody else’s cock.
“Shhh, Brother. Be quiet.”
“Trying…”
“Here…”
Alphonse kissed his brother. Alfons kept quiet but didn’t bother looking away. It was the first time he saw them kissing and he had to say they made a pretty picture sitting as they were in the golden sunlight. That was something he wasn’t going to write down: nobody else had to know he was turning into such a terribly perverted person. He didn’t even want to be polite and leave. In fact, he wanted to join them… He was only held back by the fear Rose might find out. He would die of shame if she did.
Loincloths had some good points, such as the ability to go about sexual activities without needing to take them off, but in this case, they were impairing his view of the proceedings. He could see the boys’ hands moving beneath the fur, but not what they were grasping. His imagination rose to the challenge. He knew Edward’s cock was like an overeager puppy that became excited as soon as it got attention. It would be nice and hard already-yes, it certainly was, he thought, watching Edward try to push into Alphonse’s hand. Alphonse shifted in answer, propping his legs over his brother’s to bring their groins and erections in contact.
“Hurry up already,” Edward whined.
Alfons’ imagination tried to guess the meaning of the whined words. Something like ‘harder’? ‘I want to come’? Perhaps people only said things like that in his fantasies, but it was nice to imagine all the same. Shifting in an effort to conceal a budding erection of his own, he went about pretending to write in his notebook without looking at it.
Oh, there, he thought happily. Alphonse had just tugged the loincloths aside to allow flesh contact, the two erect cocks finally coming into view. Alfons was seriously considering doing something about his own arousal when things were suddenly and tragically interrupted. It was the best bit too; they were grinding and kissing at once and…and… Not fair.
Appearing on the scene as though she possessed a sixth sense, Winry proceeded to beat both boys upside the head with the handle of a spear, punctuating each hit with an angry word. “Stupid… boys! Can’t… you… even… hold… yourselves… for… a… little… while?”
All three erections involved faded away. Alfons winced and decided he was glad he wasn’t a target too. A confused Rose stumbled on the scene shortly later; Alfons hoped she has no idea what was going on. For himself, he was suddenly very, very interested in his notebook.
Edward’s punishment was mildly entertaining: Winry had him tied up in the hut, his hands securely bound in his back around a pole specially installed for this purpose.
“Since you seem unable to control your own hands, we’ll help you.”
“You’re going a bit far,” Edward complained, but not too loudly.
Winry bent down to growl in her helpless mate’s face. “If you won’t give me a child, I’ll…I’ll…I’ll ask Roy. He’s proven himself competent at it!”
That was followed by much yelling back and forth. Alfons didn’t have much to write down. He understood the name ‘Roy’, but how could Winry’s apparent dislike for the man have anything to do with forbidding the brothers to have sex with each other? It must be a punishment of some sort, he thought. He found himself wishing, once again, that he’d bothered to study the local language.
Rose appeared at his side. “Do you know why she’s angry at them?” she inquired in perfect innocence.
“I…” He wasn’t about to tell her about these people’s approach to sexuality. It just wasn’t the kind of thing a gentleman could tell a lady. “I’m not sure. I don’t understand women.” That much, at least, was pure truth.
“I see. We probably shouldn’t intrude.”
They moved away and sat down in the shades, carefully scanning the ground for spiders beforehand: sitting on potentially deadly spiders was not a good idea. The conversation soon turned to the evil known as insects, which came out thick in the evening and seemed to think Rose was utterly, utterly delicious. She kept slapping them down and spoke wistfully of the bug-repellent ointment she’d lost in her flight from the cannibals. Alfons had to confess he didn’t have such a bad time: bugs didn’t find him very tasty.
“If only I had pants instead of a dress,” Rose sighed. “It wouldn’t be so bad then.”
Rose’s misery and repeated self-slapping was noticed: Fletcher approached them shyly, offering her thick plant leaves and motioning to her reddened arms.
“Thank you,” Rose spoke in their tongue. “I hope this is what I think it is…”
The leaves, it turned out, contained a foul-smelling substance that, once spread on bug bites, both calmed the itching and kept other bugs away. Liberal use of the stuff yielded amazing results: bugs couldn’t flee Rose fast enough.
“Oh, it already itches so much less now,” Rose said blissfully, rising to give Fletcher a thankful hug. “Thank you!”
Blushing with all the blood in his body, Fletcher ran away. They blinked: that boy was used to seeing half-naked women all the time and a simple hug was too much to handle?
“Well then,” Rose said. She smoothed her dress and looked away as she asked, “I meant to ask you... I need to wash my dress but there’s no privacy here. If you could stand watch for me, that would be very kind.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll help.”
“Thank you.”
This simple request seemed to strain Rose’s modesty: she was blushing. Alfons began hoping, fervently, that the current ban on sex might last until rescue came: what he would tell Rose if she caught the boys in the act, he had no idea…
-16-
Alfons knew strange things were afoot. The recent flurry of construction could easily be explained by the need to shelter everybody properly, but the rest didn’t seem to make sense. Winry’s ongoing behavior toward her mates was especially baffling: she shunned them, yelled at them, tied them up and made them eat strange things. Others also acted a little weird: Shezka had taken to blushing every time she saw Russell while Russell spent half his time hunting and the other half talking to Winry with a big happy smile.
Only Fletcher seemed to be acting normal, busy expanding the garden by transplanting plants from the jungle into it. There was one plant as big as a person that seemed…alive. It was obviously a carnivorous plant meant to eat the bugs that would otherwise attack the food growing in the garden, but it wasn’t like any carnivorous plant of which Alfons had ever heard: it didn’t just lure insects, it actively hunted them by throwing sticky tentacles at them and bringing them back struggling into its mouth. It could even, Alfons discovered with horror, catch small furry animals with its thicker tentacles. And Fletcher spoke to it like to a pet and didn’t seem to mind the tentacles that curled around his ankles as if the thing was trying to figure out if it could eat him. Okay, so maybe Fletcher wasn’t being so normal either.
Alfons sat meditating on all this at the foot of a tall tree. Rose was sitting with him quietly, her thoughts her own. Midday was always hottest time of the day but today it was reaching a truly uncomfortable temperature: those who had tasks to handle did so slowly and nobody stood in the sun. Kitten hadn’t moved from her shady spot for hours and a concerned Alphonse soon brought her water.
“I wonder what’s going on with everybody these days,” he said idly, eyes half-closed. He wasn’t expecting an actual answer.
Nonetheless, he got one. “They’re preparing a wedding, I think.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, they’ve started building a shrine, which are needed for celebrations. Russell acts like a man preparing to be wed too. He spends a lot of time with the leader to ask for her blessing and he’s always hunting birds. He has to collect as many feathers as he can for Shezka’s wedding clothes. There won’t be a wedding unless he can gather enough to dress her, I think.”
Alfons sat up in surprise. “How do you know all that?”
“Someone was getting ready to get married in Russell’s village. Even though so many people were falling sick, they still wanted to marry the couple. But the attack came before the wedding.”
The heat lulled them back into quietness. Alfons thought he might even have fallen asleep for a little while. When he opened his eyes again, Edward was waving at them from the other side of the village.
"Come over and grab something to eat!”
Rose blinked sleepy eyes: she might have fallen asleep too. “What is he saying?”
“Food is ready.” He took Rose’s hand to pull her to her feet and together they ambled toward the others, squinting against the harsh sun.
Alphonse was laughing at something when they arrived and it felt like they were the butt of the joke. “They kind of make a cute couple, no? We could marry them at the same time as Russell and Shezka.”
“Are you kidding?” Edward replied. “Alfons can’t use a bow to save his life. He’d just hurt himself trying to get her a ceremonial dress.”
“Don’t be so harsh. Anyone can learn, given time.”
Edward suddenly looked stricken. “Wait…Al, you don’t think… If he gets married, does that mean we have to stop? I mean, do we count as his inseminators?”
Edward and Alphonse were both looking at him weirdly now. When Winry joined them to eat, they turned to her, babbling. He watched, confused, as Winry listened, then laughed and smacked them both over the head.
“You two are impossible! You’re worried you’ll have to give up sex with him? By the way he holds a bow, I say it’s a stretch to think he’ll ever get married!”
Edward and Alphonse looked at each other again. It was a look full of meaning, but the meaning of it was lost on Alfons.
“Let’s never teach him.” Edward skipped over to his side to latch onto his arm and nuzzle his neck. “Stay the worse bow hunter ever, okay?”
“What is he doing?” Rose asked.
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
Russell appeared shortly later, smiling as he offered a large green leaf to Winry. There seemed to be something in the leaf; Winry peered at it and smiled. “Thanks, Russell. Hey, Ed, here’s something for you.”
Edward stood and went to look. “Are those-? No way. I am not eating this."
“Don’t be such a child. I bet even Alfons would eat it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Watch.”
Alfons watched Winry approached a touch wearily. He glanced at the bloody….whatever it was, and up at Winry’s expectant smile.
“Go on, have one. It’s very good for you.”
Alfons hesitated. He was sure he could trust Winry not to offer him something dangerous, but he couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. It might have had something to do with the way Alphonse and Edward were looking at him. And these things looked like… But no, he must be paranoid. After all, half the time he didn’t know what he was eating anyway so he couldn’t presume to identify anything.
He picked up a bit of the raw meat.
“Um, Alfons? I think-” Rose began uncertainly. “-Oh, well, never mind.”
He’d already thrown it into his mouth and bitten down. He froze in mid-chew and gave her a look that said ‘oh god, what is it I should have known before putting this in my mouth?’.
“It’s alright,” Rose added hastily. “It’s safe. It’s just…”
Alfons looked at Rose’s face, then at Winry’s. He swallowed, sighed and said, “Just don’t tell me.” He was sure he’d be happier that way.
Edward glared at him as he, too, ate some of whatever it was, complaining all the while.
-17-
As much as Edward disliked Russell, it was hard to remain stoic in front of Russell’s excitement as his wedding neared: he looked right down foolish with his near-permanent grin and sudden ability to trip over invisible pebbles. Shezka was nowhere to be seen, bound by tradition to spend the last day and night away from her promised. It was supposed to be a time for both parties to reconsider the arrangement and ensure they could honestly tell the spirits they wanted to be bound to each other. If Shezka wished to proceed, she was to come out of the house wearing the ceremonial feather dress. If Russell also wished to proceed, he would be waiting at the altar for her. Somehow Edward didn’t think either of them would change their mind.
There was, it turned out, a slight difference in tradition between their tribe and Russell’s. It was Winry who told them of it just hours before the scheduled wedding, Russell standing behind her with an unhappy face. He seemed to have a bruise on his face for some reason.
“Okay, look, you two,” Winry spoke firmly, planting the butt of her spear in the ground. “Their tradition says a man about to marry must take semen a last time during the evening leading to the ceremony. I don’t see why, but he wants to do everything properly according to his ancestors’ tradition. So we have a problem: he doesn’t have his inseminator anymore and the only two married men here are you two.”
Edward wanted to squirm under Winry’s stare. Think carefully, her eyes said as her hand tightening on the spear. She seemed to dare him to refuse. Oh. That probably explained Russell’s bruise. She was in a violent mood.
He considered the situation. He didn’t mean to undermine the leader in front of a newcomer, not without some reason, and it was in his interest to be polite about it or face a whack. Did he mind this? He didn’t like Russell much, but he didn’t have to like him, only his mouth. And mouths, he now knew, were really great. He thought about it another second. Russell was probably good at it… Yes, it would be his honor to help.
“I can do it,” he offered selflessly.
Tension left Winry’s shoulders and she quirked an eyebrow in a way that said she’d known exactly how his thoughts would run if he bothered to think about it. “Off you go then. Don’t take forever. Shezka’s so impatient she’ll explode if you’re late.”
They went.
Edward’s goodwill wavered quickly; Russell had followed him inside the nearest hut but did not seem inclined to get down to business, sulkily looking away from him.
“Oh, come on, you’re the one who told her you needed to do this,” he eventually said. “So get to it.” He tried not to look too hopeful.
“This isn’t how it should be done. You’re not Cain and I don’t trust you.”
Cain? That must have been Russell’s inseminator. Some little sympathy bubbled up. “Yeah, I know this isn’t perfect, but unless you want to skip it, I’m all there is.”
Silence went on for a time. Irritation came and went. Anything to get out of this awkward situation, he thought. He was making a huge effort to be nice here! He flopped down, squashed a suspicious-looking spider and stretched on the earth. “Look, think about it, but think fast.”
Boredom settled in fast. He began entertaining himself with happy thoughts, the kind that involved naked behinds. They were such happy thoughts that he started without Russell, touching himself. He didn’t often masturbate, partly because there was always someone else available to touch and partly because he couldn’t last when he was alone with himself. His hand knew his cock too well, knew the speed, the pressure, the right place to clamp down when he was just about to-
Too well indeed, he thought sheepishly, eying his dirty hand. That’d been meant for Russell. Oh, wait… He stood up and walked to where Russell was sitting staring at the wall, brows knotted in thoughts.
“Here,” he said, and unceremoniously jammed his fingers in Russell’s mouth. “You’ve got semen. Can we move on now?”
Russell stared a moment but didn’t bite or spit out the invasive fingers. He instead took Edward’s hand in his own and methodically licked off every last drop of the white substance. “Good enough,” he said, rising.
They were not late; Russell had to wait at the altar for some time before Shezka appeared, clad in nothing but feathers that covered her from breasts to thighs. Additional feathers were tied in her hair, at her wrists and at her ankles. The feathers moved at her every step, showing bits of skin here and there. A permanent blush was on her face.
Edward had settled down on the ground beside the others and, like them, he kept silent while the couple took turns telling the spirits they wished to marry and begging for their blessing. It only took a few minutes, but they were important minutes.
They left a small offering of fruits at the altar and left the spirit house to escort the couple to their hut. Here, tradition differed a little more. Shezka squeaked as Winry tore her flimsy clothes and Russell looked mildly irritated as his younger brother, who had been given instructions beforehand, seized his loincloth. The newlyweds were then pushed inside together.
The rest of them settled by the fire to eat and be merry. Even the outsiders could understand what had just happened and all had a good time. But nobody seemed to be having as much fun as Shezka.
“Funny,” Winry said, “I didn’t think she’d be a screamer.”
Unfortunately for all creatures that valued their hearing, there was a lot more of that screaming over the following week. Edward wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed, awed, jealous or just in pain. The outsider girl took to looking at Shezka with wide, shocked eyes. Even Fletcher seemed uneasy.
Eventually, Fletcher approached Winry with an idea, which Edward overheard and approved heartily. The very same evening, Winry presented the newlyweds with a gag and very kindly suggested they ought to use it before the lack of sleep began affecting her temper.
Peace and quiet returned.
Last part to come next week. Why am I suddenly bothering to post this? Well my M/M novel is coming out next week and I need to keep busy or go crazy. Omg novel omg!
Rating: NC-17 overall
Genre: AU. Put Roy, Ed, Al, Hei, Winry, Russell, Fletcher, Shezka together. Mix and stir. Graphic scenes are all yaoi.
Pairing: Multiple
Length: 3, 833 this bit (20, 697 words today so far)
Author: kalikamaxwell
Artist: cofie
Warning: Pictures are included in the fic. Not quite worksafe.
Summary: Alfons the unlucky explorer gets lost in the jungle and is captured by the veeeeery friendly and very skimpily clad natives of the Elric tribe. See cultures clash messily! See sexy boys wear loincloths, and sometimes take them off!
Previous parts (on Cofie's lj):
Parts 1-3.
Parts 4-5.
Parts 6-8.
Parts 9-11.
Parts 12-14.
-15-
They’d been extremely busy lately; Winry worked them all like slaves and it only took a few hours before Alfons found himself too sweaty and exhausted to go on without a break. He watched the other men enviously: they could go on and on like they didn’t feel the heat, building like bees.
It came as a surprise when he noticed, somewhere between admiring and being jealous of the brothers’ strong builds, that his skin was no longer blindingly pale compared to theirs; a few weeks wearing almost nothing had given him a tan, which made him stand out a touch less. The only reason his skin hadn’t just burned right off, he assumed, was that he didn’t usually spend the entire day in the middle of the budding village, more often sitting in the shades.
When the evening, and therefore the time for the second big meal of the day, came, Edward and Alphonse ate quickly and took off-again. Alfons knew they were using a handmade net to catch bats, which they proceeded to eat before bedtime, making suffering faces. He gathered it was something they had to do, not something they liked to do, but he didn’t know the reason for it.
No more than he knew why, when Russell brought down a monkey and offered them its testicles with a grin, they ate them as well.
“Who the fuck decided monkeys and bats were the fertility spirit’ animals?” Edward said, glaring in answer to Russell’s grin. “Tastes fucking gross. Winry!” he wailed. “This crap isn’t working! Can we quit already?”
Winry and Rose were wandering by, holding baskets on their hips. Winry didn’t pause to answer Edward, only inclined her head. “Sure, let’s try something else. Russell tells me it might work to stock up semen for a few days. So you’re forbidden to release semen for six sunrises and sundowns. We’ll see what that gives.” And she continued onward, leaving Edward and Alphonse to gape at her back.
“She’s kidding,” Alphonse said. “She has to be.”
Edward looked at Russell, who seemed very pleased with himself, and growled, “I’m going to KILL YOU.”
Alfons, intrigued, would very much have liked to understand more than he did. There was something about days and nights, and he could recognize Edward’s death threat face... Anybody could recognize that face really: Fletcher quickly found some reason to tug his brother away from a death match waiting to happen.
He did understand afterward, somewhat. Neither Edward nor Alphonse tried to jump him or anybody else for three days and that stood out from their usual behavior. Was it a punishment? Was Winry angry? He couldn’t tell.
Edward looked like a dying man, lying listlessly on the ground whenever he was left to himself; he didn’t even say a word when Kitten decided he made a decent pillow and spread over him. Alphonse didn’t seem overly affected, but his mood did take a sullen edge and his smiles, usually plentiful, became rare.
Three days passed in that odd atmosphere. Rose didn’t notice it was an odd atmosphere for the good reason she didn’t know what the normal atmosphere should be and Alfons wasn’t about to bring it to her attention.
Edward eventually rose from the ground to poke his brother, who was moodily cuddling with Kitten. “Hey, Al. Let’s go down to the river.”
“Haven’t we had enough fish lately?”
“Come on, grab your spear.”
“Fine, fine.”
Alfons watched Edward and Alphonse head toward the river with their spears, eventually deciding he should help: he could write in his notebook and fish at the same time. He followed them after fetching his homemade fishing line along with a clay pot in which he gathered worms and other fish-bait.
He found them sitting on the bank, whispering; they spared him a guilty look and went back to talking. He settled not far, wondering what they were doing, and flipped his notebook open to detail the last few days’ events, few as they were.
“That’s a bad, bad idea. Winry--”
“I’m full okay? I’m going to explode with semen. Russell was lying anyway and you know it. It’ll be fine if we wait just the next three sundowns. Right now, I need to come or explode. If you’re so wimpy, I’ll go see Alfons over there. He won’t complain.”
“Oh no. If you’re going to get sex, I’m getting sex too.”
It turned out fishing wasn’t what the boys had in mind, not at all. No fishing method in the world involved groping somebody else’s cock.
“Shhh, Brother. Be quiet.”
“Trying…”
“Here…”
Alphonse kissed his brother. Alfons kept quiet but didn’t bother looking away. It was the first time he saw them kissing and he had to say they made a pretty picture sitting as they were in the golden sunlight. That was something he wasn’t going to write down: nobody else had to know he was turning into such a terribly perverted person. He didn’t even want to be polite and leave. In fact, he wanted to join them… He was only held back by the fear Rose might find out. He would die of shame if she did.
Loincloths had some good points, such as the ability to go about sexual activities without needing to take them off, but in this case, they were impairing his view of the proceedings. He could see the boys’ hands moving beneath the fur, but not what they were grasping. His imagination rose to the challenge. He knew Edward’s cock was like an overeager puppy that became excited as soon as it got attention. It would be nice and hard already-yes, it certainly was, he thought, watching Edward try to push into Alphonse’s hand. Alphonse shifted in answer, propping his legs over his brother’s to bring their groins and erections in contact.
“Hurry up already,” Edward whined.
Alfons’ imagination tried to guess the meaning of the whined words. Something like ‘harder’? ‘I want to come’? Perhaps people only said things like that in his fantasies, but it was nice to imagine all the same. Shifting in an effort to conceal a budding erection of his own, he went about pretending to write in his notebook without looking at it.
Oh, there, he thought happily. Alphonse had just tugged the loincloths aside to allow flesh contact, the two erect cocks finally coming into view. Alfons was seriously considering doing something about his own arousal when things were suddenly and tragically interrupted. It was the best bit too; they were grinding and kissing at once and…and… Not fair.
Appearing on the scene as though she possessed a sixth sense, Winry proceeded to beat both boys upside the head with the handle of a spear, punctuating each hit with an angry word. “Stupid… boys! Can’t… you… even… hold… yourselves… for… a… little… while?”
All three erections involved faded away. Alfons winced and decided he was glad he wasn’t a target too. A confused Rose stumbled on the scene shortly later; Alfons hoped she has no idea what was going on. For himself, he was suddenly very, very interested in his notebook.
Edward’s punishment was mildly entertaining: Winry had him tied up in the hut, his hands securely bound in his back around a pole specially installed for this purpose.
“Since you seem unable to control your own hands, we’ll help you.”
“You’re going a bit far,” Edward complained, but not too loudly.
Winry bent down to growl in her helpless mate’s face. “If you won’t give me a child, I’ll…I’ll…I’ll ask Roy. He’s proven himself competent at it!”
That was followed by much yelling back and forth. Alfons didn’t have much to write down. He understood the name ‘Roy’, but how could Winry’s apparent dislike for the man have anything to do with forbidding the brothers to have sex with each other? It must be a punishment of some sort, he thought. He found himself wishing, once again, that he’d bothered to study the local language.
Rose appeared at his side. “Do you know why she’s angry at them?” she inquired in perfect innocence.
“I…” He wasn’t about to tell her about these people’s approach to sexuality. It just wasn’t the kind of thing a gentleman could tell a lady. “I’m not sure. I don’t understand women.” That much, at least, was pure truth.
“I see. We probably shouldn’t intrude.”
They moved away and sat down in the shades, carefully scanning the ground for spiders beforehand: sitting on potentially deadly spiders was not a good idea. The conversation soon turned to the evil known as insects, which came out thick in the evening and seemed to think Rose was utterly, utterly delicious. She kept slapping them down and spoke wistfully of the bug-repellent ointment she’d lost in her flight from the cannibals. Alfons had to confess he didn’t have such a bad time: bugs didn’t find him very tasty.
“If only I had pants instead of a dress,” Rose sighed. “It wouldn’t be so bad then.”
Rose’s misery and repeated self-slapping was noticed: Fletcher approached them shyly, offering her thick plant leaves and motioning to her reddened arms.
“Thank you,” Rose spoke in their tongue. “I hope this is what I think it is…”
The leaves, it turned out, contained a foul-smelling substance that, once spread on bug bites, both calmed the itching and kept other bugs away. Liberal use of the stuff yielded amazing results: bugs couldn’t flee Rose fast enough.
“Oh, it already itches so much less now,” Rose said blissfully, rising to give Fletcher a thankful hug. “Thank you!”
Blushing with all the blood in his body, Fletcher ran away. They blinked: that boy was used to seeing half-naked women all the time and a simple hug was too much to handle?
“Well then,” Rose said. She smoothed her dress and looked away as she asked, “I meant to ask you... I need to wash my dress but there’s no privacy here. If you could stand watch for me, that would be very kind.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll help.”
“Thank you.”
This simple request seemed to strain Rose’s modesty: she was blushing. Alfons began hoping, fervently, that the current ban on sex might last until rescue came: what he would tell Rose if she caught the boys in the act, he had no idea…
-16-
Alfons knew strange things were afoot. The recent flurry of construction could easily be explained by the need to shelter everybody properly, but the rest didn’t seem to make sense. Winry’s ongoing behavior toward her mates was especially baffling: she shunned them, yelled at them, tied them up and made them eat strange things. Others also acted a little weird: Shezka had taken to blushing every time she saw Russell while Russell spent half his time hunting and the other half talking to Winry with a big happy smile.
Only Fletcher seemed to be acting normal, busy expanding the garden by transplanting plants from the jungle into it. There was one plant as big as a person that seemed…alive. It was obviously a carnivorous plant meant to eat the bugs that would otherwise attack the food growing in the garden, but it wasn’t like any carnivorous plant of which Alfons had ever heard: it didn’t just lure insects, it actively hunted them by throwing sticky tentacles at them and bringing them back struggling into its mouth. It could even, Alfons discovered with horror, catch small furry animals with its thicker tentacles. And Fletcher spoke to it like to a pet and didn’t seem to mind the tentacles that curled around his ankles as if the thing was trying to figure out if it could eat him. Okay, so maybe Fletcher wasn’t being so normal either.
Alfons sat meditating on all this at the foot of a tall tree. Rose was sitting with him quietly, her thoughts her own. Midday was always hottest time of the day but today it was reaching a truly uncomfortable temperature: those who had tasks to handle did so slowly and nobody stood in the sun. Kitten hadn’t moved from her shady spot for hours and a concerned Alphonse soon brought her water.
“I wonder what’s going on with everybody these days,” he said idly, eyes half-closed. He wasn’t expecting an actual answer.
Nonetheless, he got one. “They’re preparing a wedding, I think.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, they’ve started building a shrine, which are needed for celebrations. Russell acts like a man preparing to be wed too. He spends a lot of time with the leader to ask for her blessing and he’s always hunting birds. He has to collect as many feathers as he can for Shezka’s wedding clothes. There won’t be a wedding unless he can gather enough to dress her, I think.”
Alfons sat up in surprise. “How do you know all that?”
“Someone was getting ready to get married in Russell’s village. Even though so many people were falling sick, they still wanted to marry the couple. But the attack came before the wedding.”
The heat lulled them back into quietness. Alfons thought he might even have fallen asleep for a little while. When he opened his eyes again, Edward was waving at them from the other side of the village.
"Come over and grab something to eat!”
Rose blinked sleepy eyes: she might have fallen asleep too. “What is he saying?”
“Food is ready.” He took Rose’s hand to pull her to her feet and together they ambled toward the others, squinting against the harsh sun.
Alphonse was laughing at something when they arrived and it felt like they were the butt of the joke. “They kind of make a cute couple, no? We could marry them at the same time as Russell and Shezka.”
“Are you kidding?” Edward replied. “Alfons can’t use a bow to save his life. He’d just hurt himself trying to get her a ceremonial dress.”
“Don’t be so harsh. Anyone can learn, given time.”
Edward suddenly looked stricken. “Wait…Al, you don’t think… If he gets married, does that mean we have to stop? I mean, do we count as his inseminators?”
Edward and Alphonse were both looking at him weirdly now. When Winry joined them to eat, they turned to her, babbling. He watched, confused, as Winry listened, then laughed and smacked them both over the head.
“You two are impossible! You’re worried you’ll have to give up sex with him? By the way he holds a bow, I say it’s a stretch to think he’ll ever get married!”
Edward and Alphonse looked at each other again. It was a look full of meaning, but the meaning of it was lost on Alfons.
“Let’s never teach him.” Edward skipped over to his side to latch onto his arm and nuzzle his neck. “Stay the worse bow hunter ever, okay?”
“What is he doing?” Rose asked.
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
Russell appeared shortly later, smiling as he offered a large green leaf to Winry. There seemed to be something in the leaf; Winry peered at it and smiled. “Thanks, Russell. Hey, Ed, here’s something for you.”
Edward stood and went to look. “Are those-? No way. I am not eating this."
“Don’t be such a child. I bet even Alfons would eat it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Watch.”
Alfons watched Winry approached a touch wearily. He glanced at the bloody….whatever it was, and up at Winry’s expectant smile.
“Go on, have one. It’s very good for you.”
Alfons hesitated. He was sure he could trust Winry not to offer him something dangerous, but he couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. It might have had something to do with the way Alphonse and Edward were looking at him. And these things looked like… But no, he must be paranoid. After all, half the time he didn’t know what he was eating anyway so he couldn’t presume to identify anything.
He picked up a bit of the raw meat.
“Um, Alfons? I think-” Rose began uncertainly. “-Oh, well, never mind.”
He’d already thrown it into his mouth and bitten down. He froze in mid-chew and gave her a look that said ‘oh god, what is it I should have known before putting this in my mouth?’.
“It’s alright,” Rose added hastily. “It’s safe. It’s just…”
Alfons looked at Rose’s face, then at Winry’s. He swallowed, sighed and said, “Just don’t tell me.” He was sure he’d be happier that way.
Edward glared at him as he, too, ate some of whatever it was, complaining all the while.
-17-
As much as Edward disliked Russell, it was hard to remain stoic in front of Russell’s excitement as his wedding neared: he looked right down foolish with his near-permanent grin and sudden ability to trip over invisible pebbles. Shezka was nowhere to be seen, bound by tradition to spend the last day and night away from her promised. It was supposed to be a time for both parties to reconsider the arrangement and ensure they could honestly tell the spirits they wanted to be bound to each other. If Shezka wished to proceed, she was to come out of the house wearing the ceremonial feather dress. If Russell also wished to proceed, he would be waiting at the altar for her. Somehow Edward didn’t think either of them would change their mind.
There was, it turned out, a slight difference in tradition between their tribe and Russell’s. It was Winry who told them of it just hours before the scheduled wedding, Russell standing behind her with an unhappy face. He seemed to have a bruise on his face for some reason.
“Okay, look, you two,” Winry spoke firmly, planting the butt of her spear in the ground. “Their tradition says a man about to marry must take semen a last time during the evening leading to the ceremony. I don’t see why, but he wants to do everything properly according to his ancestors’ tradition. So we have a problem: he doesn’t have his inseminator anymore and the only two married men here are you two.”
Edward wanted to squirm under Winry’s stare. Think carefully, her eyes said as her hand tightening on the spear. She seemed to dare him to refuse. Oh. That probably explained Russell’s bruise. She was in a violent mood.
He considered the situation. He didn’t mean to undermine the leader in front of a newcomer, not without some reason, and it was in his interest to be polite about it or face a whack. Did he mind this? He didn’t like Russell much, but he didn’t have to like him, only his mouth. And mouths, he now knew, were really great. He thought about it another second. Russell was probably good at it… Yes, it would be his honor to help.
“I can do it,” he offered selflessly.
Tension left Winry’s shoulders and she quirked an eyebrow in a way that said she’d known exactly how his thoughts would run if he bothered to think about it. “Off you go then. Don’t take forever. Shezka’s so impatient she’ll explode if you’re late.”
They went.
Edward’s goodwill wavered quickly; Russell had followed him inside the nearest hut but did not seem inclined to get down to business, sulkily looking away from him.
“Oh, come on, you’re the one who told her you needed to do this,” he eventually said. “So get to it.” He tried not to look too hopeful.
“This isn’t how it should be done. You’re not Cain and I don’t trust you.”
Cain? That must have been Russell’s inseminator. Some little sympathy bubbled up. “Yeah, I know this isn’t perfect, but unless you want to skip it, I’m all there is.”
Silence went on for a time. Irritation came and went. Anything to get out of this awkward situation, he thought. He was making a huge effort to be nice here! He flopped down, squashed a suspicious-looking spider and stretched on the earth. “Look, think about it, but think fast.”
Boredom settled in fast. He began entertaining himself with happy thoughts, the kind that involved naked behinds. They were such happy thoughts that he started without Russell, touching himself. He didn’t often masturbate, partly because there was always someone else available to touch and partly because he couldn’t last when he was alone with himself. His hand knew his cock too well, knew the speed, the pressure, the right place to clamp down when he was just about to-
Too well indeed, he thought sheepishly, eying his dirty hand. That’d been meant for Russell. Oh, wait… He stood up and walked to where Russell was sitting staring at the wall, brows knotted in thoughts.
“Here,” he said, and unceremoniously jammed his fingers in Russell’s mouth. “You’ve got semen. Can we move on now?”
Russell stared a moment but didn’t bite or spit out the invasive fingers. He instead took Edward’s hand in his own and methodically licked off every last drop of the white substance. “Good enough,” he said, rising.
They were not late; Russell had to wait at the altar for some time before Shezka appeared, clad in nothing but feathers that covered her from breasts to thighs. Additional feathers were tied in her hair, at her wrists and at her ankles. The feathers moved at her every step, showing bits of skin here and there. A permanent blush was on her face.
Edward had settled down on the ground beside the others and, like them, he kept silent while the couple took turns telling the spirits they wished to marry and begging for their blessing. It only took a few minutes, but they were important minutes.
They left a small offering of fruits at the altar and left the spirit house to escort the couple to their hut. Here, tradition differed a little more. Shezka squeaked as Winry tore her flimsy clothes and Russell looked mildly irritated as his younger brother, who had been given instructions beforehand, seized his loincloth. The newlyweds were then pushed inside together.
The rest of them settled by the fire to eat and be merry. Even the outsiders could understand what had just happened and all had a good time. But nobody seemed to be having as much fun as Shezka.
“Funny,” Winry said, “I didn’t think she’d be a screamer.”
Unfortunately for all creatures that valued their hearing, there was a lot more of that screaming over the following week. Edward wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed, awed, jealous or just in pain. The outsider girl took to looking at Shezka with wide, shocked eyes. Even Fletcher seemed uneasy.
Eventually, Fletcher approached Winry with an idea, which Edward overheard and approved heartily. The very same evening, Winry presented the newlyweds with a gag and very kindly suggested they ought to use it before the lack of sleep began affecting her temper.
Peace and quiet returned.
Last part to come next week. Why am I suddenly bothering to post this? Well my M/M novel is coming out next week and I need to keep busy or go crazy. Omg novel omg!