IN WHICH FANTASIES ARE REVEALED

I awaken suddenly with a start.

Something is wrong. Terribly and urgently wrong.

I have overslept! This is the first time this has happened to me! How, how could I have let this happen? I had a perfect track record for over a decade, and one disastrous lapse in discipline has cost me-

My hands roam the sheets and suddenly I feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders. No. I remember where I am. I relax. My sacrifice wasn't for naught.

It must have happened because, for the first time in my life, I have known comfort.

I am beginning a fresh chapter, as it were; waking up sandwiched between some twenty-odd pillows and this embroidered silk duvet that seems to continue in all directions for miles – how the previous owners of this estate got anything done, I'll never know!

With some difficulty I climb out of the enormous four-poster and tug open the window, unable to subdue a small gasp when I see the expanse of the flower-lined drive two stories below winding into a beautiful countryside. It's still partially masked by fog and yet remains the most vibrant green under the morning sunlight, speckled sparsely with lush trees. There are some foremen working on the fountain below and I wave to them.

I feel tingly all over as I dress and walk down the stairs - I fear I may trip because I'm excited; so excited...Moulinsart feels like all of the places I want to be at once comprised. The meadow I saw out the window, the hills – they look as if they could be anywhere. I don't want to speak too soon but I feel I could die here.

My head is getting warm when I reach the atrium and when I come into the dining room the Captain isn't even wearing clothing- oh…I can see the pajamas beneath his bathrobe, I suppose…but my…he's…wet, right out of the bath. Damp and dripping and fresher than I've probably ever smelled him when I sit down.

I love breakfast here. I want to eat it forever. I want to stay close to him like this, adjacent to his seat, leaning into his space to read his paper with him, our legs almost touching and his eyes so piercing as they go down every line of the article…I can see he takes his coffee sweet and light. When he's through fixing it it's the same shade as my hair, almost. Perhaps he might like me too because I am so milky and slight. I hope I do not look tired. I hope I look bright and warm and a little bit mischievous, and I hope he is noticing.

Oh goodness, the waffles are coming out. It's like he knows this is my favorite food and he asked specifically after it. Does that mean he'd want to…have me? Could I be that boy? He's sitting like he's had men before as he pours his syrup, like he's kept boys; or could it be the complete opposite - could he have had a lot of women? What if he's a pervert? What if he talks to me about nothing but women, tries to get me to meet women, consumes women wherever he goes?

If he does love women so, could I be pretty enough to make him want me?

He looks at me like he wants me, but then again he's part of everything – everything which might not understand what I want for us. What if the world falls out from around me when I ask him, what if it cannot process my existence when I touch his thigh?

How could he resist me, though?

I've never told anyone this, but I've secretly wanted from the age of fifteen to find a wealthy benefactor to take care of me as his pet. And it's almost disgusting, after I had begun to tentatively feel for this man, how soon he suddenly became my deepest, darkest fetish. That's got to be cheating of some sort. Not fair.

This is getting me hot even now, I fear. I hope he doesn't see me turning pink. Nestor is putting strawberries on the waffles now. He's placing a bowl of cream on the table and I just want to drop to my knees and start rubbing myself against the Captain's hand like he's my master. I want to climb up from between his thighs and grasp his waist; in my mind I am positively slithering around him like a snake but in reality we're still barely touching, our knees mere centimeters away.

Oh gosh, I'm breathing harder now and he sees me. Oh crumbs, what if he knows of my unchaste, hysterical thoughts and sends me to an asylum? I've only been once by accident; do not wish to return for anything so stupid and shallow.

But if he responds favorably? Ah, but then I'll know that men can be attracted to me. I'll know that men have probably desired me, wanted to do things to me – this coffee is too bitter, I need something sweeter. I need the whipped cream, and now I'm spooning it into my coffee heavily; it's making a mess on the table. I need more, more whipped cream on my waffles, more on everything. If I could I would empty it all onto my plate and lap it up in front of him, or lick it from his beard. Or put it on myself so he could lick it from me.

I wonder as I eat how he might react to that, finding me without clothes on when he came home, his dearest, most platonicfriend Tintin, suddenly sitting on his bed covered in cream and waiting to be ravaged.

I wonder if I could have it in me to be that boy.

If we were together, I dream, I'd think I might like the world to know.I would! I'd want them to know that Tintin, world famous reporter, is preoccupied in all his free hours with his man; being protected and doted on and conquered, and conquered, and conquered….

And they must know, they absolutely mustknow that I love it, that I am a willing participant; that he is not tricking me or baiting me with expensive gifts as older men won't to do – but that I undoubtedly love him with every inch of my young heart and that I will let him do it again and again and again and again; and I will laugh as he does it, laugh and writhe and cry in passion; and sometimes shout, shout words they will never ever hear me say in polite conversation.

Sometimes I would shout terrible and lewd things because I am a whore; I am just a little whore inside who has wants and needs like everybody – only I can solve cases faster than the police can, can catch you in the act of scheming your disgusting, criminal schemes; and on top of that I would fuck better than you.

I would have something special. Something special all good people deserve to have, and should (and perhaps a few nasty people ought to give it a try that they might become better), and I would be given it in the form of this foul-mouthed, loyal, ill-tempered, beautiful son-of-a-gun. We would worship each other forever. We would always remain the same, even when the seasons change and the styles change; we'd always fancy each other…

He sees me staring at him as this is all playing out in my head – the years and years I imagine being with him, all the years I've lived in those few minutes he's been looking at me; and I say, and my voice cracks,

"Captain?"

I can tell what it is he wants to say.

He wants to ask 'What is it, boy?' but I think he knows too, what I'm feeling right now. We've both been so silent there is no way to read this situation in any other fashion. I almost don't want it to happen, nearly don't want it to. I wish I could be here forever, on this thin line where I cannot tell what he is thinking. I almost want him to reject me so I can want him more, when suddenly he grabs my head, pressing his lips to mine across the table -

No, no…here is not where it would happen. I get up and go to the garden. Perhaps there it will happen?

He finishes his coffee quickly and follows me, but only to the door, and he asks me has the mail come yet?

And I smile back at him and say no, because maybe we should stay this way, him never having me, this intelligent boy with orange hair – the hair, I know he wants it. I know he wants to grab it. I know he's probably imagined (against his better nature) smugglers or gangsters grabbing it and forcing me to perform fellacio, but thankfully this has never happened. He knows it, that I'm untainted; and he wants to be the one who does that, I suspect.

If he thought I had been with many men, might he be comforted somehow? Would he be self-conscious? He's a very self-conscious man, but I think he is the most attractive thing I've ever seen. He's a bear, he's a god, he's still standing by the door with his dressing robe on, for heaven's sake.

I come back and I want to kiss him here, over the threshold, but that too feels wrong, like I'm visiting him; him inside with his bathrobe and me on the porch in my clothes like I've just wandered in, appeared from some mystery location – not like I am now, a true resident as he is.

I come inside and as he turns around I index the manor immediately. Is there any way to get onto the roof of the house tonight? Is there a flat area at all? How do the stars look in the countryside at night? But won't it be too impersonal in the dark, my move?

May I ask him to get into my bed tonight instead? What about lunchtime? Is it too late for that? I want to kiss him and then perhaps leave him for the rest of the day, hard and yearning and angry. I'd like him to take out on me all the times he was frustrated with me; all the times I denied him a drink or a smoke, all the times I became upset with him in my prudish hubris. I want him to take it all out on me by fucking me hard; I need for him to spank me until I cry.

Though I've solved his mystery with him, and mostly forhim, I wish we could become comfortable enough with one another for him to pretend sometimes that I am rather simple – simple and supple and like the common houseboy I am sometimes at heart; someone he only keeps around for pleasure.

I can imagine it now, he as the reporter and not I; all the weight lifted off my shoulders as I chase the heels of this nautical journalist wherever he may go as he sails everywhere, solves everything, does everything – and I am at his side, his youthful ginger companion; and everyone knowswhat we do and why he keeps me…others might catch onto how wild I am behind closed doors and they would try to get at me shamelessly and he would fight them all off.

He's heading back into the dining room and I wonder if I should take him for a ride on my motorcycle just to feel him hug me close from behind.

He turns back around a second time. "Are you okay?" he asks me, and now I have to answer.

I don't know what to say.

I don't know how to condense the entirety of my life's fantasy over breakfast into one answer.

My heart is singing, and all I can say is,

"I want to be your boy."

He's confused. He must think I want him to adopt me. To be his son.

No, no, no.

"I want to be your boy," I say, licking my lips and placing both of my hands on one of his arms as if he is chaperoning me to some event. "…your onlyboy."

He's not looking at me, but simply standing frozen. And so thusly I am as well, though I feel far from cold – I'm actually getting quite hot again (because I have obviously been bad just now) and though I try to subside it through the very real panic that's enveloping me I feel the fantasy blossoming in the corner of my mind without my consent, only causing me to become more aroused.

He turns and probably can see now that my face is red, probably imagining what he may do with me; and there's no way he can't see my arousal now, because I've let go of him and my hands are at my sides. I'm looking down like a schoolboy ashamed of himself, how could he not want me? If he didn't, he does now; I am sure of it.

He still looks confused and me, I always get what I want; so I lean in and I kiss him on the corner of his mouth, gently brushing our lips together before moving mine along his moustache and across his chin and I bite him, I bitehis beard.

Before he knows it I'm putting his hands on me; making him lift me up, one arm under each thigh, forcing me to straddle him as he stands in the middle of the main hall, him still dripping with bathwater onto the tiles. I fear hemay slip up the stairs as he carries me, still kissing him, and as the clock chimes go off below us I realize it is noon and I have made a good decision – noon is the midnight of days. When all is revealed at noon there is no night to punctuate the confession and the vision; there is no time to dream, only to do.

For a moment I wish I was back at my apartment, able to invite him in for the first time in more ways than one at my old place of residence…able to proudly show him how quaintly I live, to make him feel that much worse for plunging himself into me again and again in my small, clean bedroom; and I want my old neighbors and acquaintances to see him leave, see me come down to get my mail in my robe with my tuft disheveled, my eyes bleary; obviously I will have spent the whole night fucking, amongst the sculptures and pictures and all the books I own, all the work I've done. I'll smile my innocent smile at Mrs. Finch as I get my letters, but she'll see love marks on my neck and my lips all swollen and pink, and she'll know where I've been and what I've done and just who I've taken into my mouth several times over, and she'll see him return again and again and again…

But, no. I am glad I'm at Moulinsart – as I said, I have never felt more at home. He's taking me into his bedroom now. I'm glad he's not taking me to mine because I've never seen his – it's magnificent, his bed is magnificent and it's still only noon!

He locks the door and climbs onto me; for a second I'm afraid, afraid this is going to be too much for me, that I won't want to – but when I see my hands opening his bathrobe and pajama shirt of their own accord and his chest his revealed, broad and covered in thick hair, I reconsider; and when it is rubbing across my shirt, all of his weight on me as the wetness of him soaks into my clothing, I knowI want this.

I hear myself whimper and now he's doing the same thing to me, his hands pulling my sweater off and opening my shirt - and I jump - I probably look so small next to him, small but able; and he still hasn't spoken in all this time since I kissed him.

"I want to talk," I hear myself say.

He says, "What would you like to talk about?" and it is a voice I've never heard him use before. It's gruff and calculating and to know a man like Haddock is not always bumbling and confused, not always sad or angry or ornery; but that he knows what he's doing, makes me feel unbelievably quickly. Even now it's as if he knows what he's doing with my body; he's touching it as if he's had practice in doing so even though we've never touched before this moment.

"Like I said," I gasp, "I want to be your boy."

And he growls, "My one and only?"

And I say, "Yes…yes!" as he tugs my trousers down and takes me in his mouth – and I say, I whinethat I want to sleep in his bed and wear his hat with nothing else on and I want to share a hotel room in a distant land and conduct official business with a sultanate mere minutes after servicing my Captain in the palace washroom and as he climbs back up on his elbows to face me my chest is going up and down rapidly.

He asks me, but have I ever done it?

No, no I haven't, I say, and then I ask him might I say something vulgar? And I lean in and whisper, "Please break me in."

I can tell he doesn't think it vulgar, but I do – perhaps he is not thinking of it in the same way I am. He is thinking of breaking me in gently, of claiming me politely; and though I do not want him to really do it I am imagining him making me take all of him at once. I imagine him holding my neck down with a single slippery hand, telling me that I'm a good boy. Of course, I am smart enough to realize this is a mere echo of a faceless old fantasy from long ago; but now that he's actually doing it, slipping his finger inside me gently, I can allow myself to revel in its wake.

Though the sensation burns, it becomes easier as he moves it in and out…and all I can think is that I want him to wear the hat, sometimes. I call him "Captain" out of respect but if we were to embark on a relationship he would probably want me to call him "Archibald." "Archibald," or, "Archie," I think, and I feel suddenly fuller now; feel myself stretching wider because I think there is another finger there, now.

He might want me to call him "Archie," but I want him to wear the hat and make me call him his Captain. I want to go on boat trips with him and be his cabin boy - dust and organize his belongings and when he comes in ask him if he'd like a drink, and he'd say no, he'd like something else, and then he'd take me by the waist and have me on that tiny bed by the porthole, and something's…hurting, now. I groan.

He's easing a third finger into me and I feel like I could just pop.

I hadn't even noticed him slowly stroking me up and down. If I was pink before I am a cherry now. I put my hand on my face and I could just weep from how full I feel, how good it is.

"I don't know if I can-" I say.

And he tells me, "I would be glad to stay like this the rest of my life if I had to, lad; you look incredible."

And I laugh out of embarrassment. I'm also nervous, so nervous I will pop early and go everywhere and be left without it, without what I need in me right this very second, what my entire body is trembling for. I can see it from between the fingers over my eye, through my legs and his – it's sticking proudly out from the slit in his pajama trousers and bathrobe unrestrained…it's very large but looks very straight and accommodating and like I may not die after all and I tell him go on, then.

I think hard. I think hard about the freshness of him, the water that's still dripping from him onto my forehead like some sort of Chinese water torture and my legs, I can see them in front of me now; they're on his shoulders, when did they get there?

He leans in and I gasp as I feel it – its blunt end is slipping inside my hole, and he pushes my legs apart further and I'm whimpering again, I have been this whole time, still red in the face and grabbing the sheets as he guides himself in; and I surprise even myself when I take my legs from him and pull them even further back toward my head.

He looks at me in shock. Yoga, I tell him breathlessly, coy.

He kisses me again, laughing as if he has won the lottery, and when he begins to fuck me it feels strange.

It feels strange, it feels odd, it feels as if I've got a cramp – but suddenly I feel it slipping somewhere else, rubbing up against the most splendid little bit I never knew I had. I did not expect my happiest place to be situated there, in the most unspeakable location, but I suppose there's a reason rich men take houseboys, and why houseboys stay.

I spring to life. The cramp is gone and I feel him – every inch of him filling me up, and I must have loosened a good deal because he's thrusting harder and harder, and I'm shouting into my hand now. He keeps asking me, "Is it good, is it good?" and I'm actually crying, genuine tears streaming down my face, but also nodding furiously.

I'm sure that is frightening for him, to see me like that, but he's continuing because he knows that if he stopped now I could just kill him, downright kill him – stop speaking to him forever and move out of Moulinsart and back to my apartment, scorning him until the end of days for stopping; for ruining my first and most perfect liaison, but he is not! Alors, we were made for each other.

I can already feel my pleasure mounting. His hair is still so wet and his beard is so coarse when my fingers find it and my body is so folded; it's practically folded in half, for godsakes – and what a sight, with the sun filtering through the trees in the windows and his jet-black hair against the white paneling of his room, and his bathrobe still on – and he really is breaking me, I fear; breaking all my senses and holding me down and defiling me, making a filthy boy out of me, and I beg to him, I say in French -

"I am going to come, please have me from behind!"

He understands me. I am flipped onto my stomach and he takes me by the hips roughly as I grip the headboard.

"I think I'm going to scream!" I scream, and he says it doesn't matter because we're already both shouting so much. Nestor can probably hear us, he says, and that he trusts him not only with our delectable little secret, but also to have a good pair of headphones for his record player.

He had better, because I'm wailing as the Captain bounces my hips off his, and the sound of our flesh slapping together is making me quake. I'm going to be done for at any moment.

I tell him to grab my hair, and whether he doesn't hear me at first or is reluctant to I shout at him to.

He grasps my quiff firmly in his fist and I cry worriedly as I stroke myself over the edge, my semen spilling out of me onto the sheets and I immediately feel him withdraw and then his own seed is spurting onto my back and a bit on my neck.

I lay facedown in the pillows for a leisurely amount of time, making sure he saw what it was he did.

And then I turn around and look at him and he's more handsome than he was earlier, his hair tousled in every direction; he's still stroking his beard and admiring his work.

"Then I'm yours?" I say, and he lifts his eyebrows and tells me that if I don't consider myself to be his after that, then I'll never be.

I bite my lip and hug the pillow. "What er…what after that," he says bashfully as his eyes meet mine, and suddenly he looks very youthful as well; I can imagine exactly what he looked like as a young man. I smile back at that young man, knowing full well I will make life more exciting for both him and the parts of him that fear growing old.

"Care to take your new houseboy around town?" I ask him and he says, "Sure, but you're going to have to put on some clothes."

I would never have expected him to be as good as he is at flirting but he is apparently charming the pants off me so well that I am already lying beneath him naked and spent upon when he does.

I wonder if people will see the way I hang on him now, with my eyes and my words and perhaps my hands now – maybe I will loop a wrist into the crook of his elbow and appear to be leading him, though my grip will soften and soon he will be leading me. People will not be sure whether I am his protégé or his young lover; they will just have to be left to their imaginations.

We both get dressed. It's springtime, so he rolls the sleeves of his sweater up and I can do with a simple white shirt as it turns out, and as we stroll past the shops in town I give him glances, supple looks. When we walk into the café there is a warmth between us I can tell other people can sense. Maybe when I speak with them they'll see my face luminous with the glow of fulfilled lust and with only the Captain by my side what conclusion would they come to?

Perhaps they will imagine us, having each other in the kitchen or in the bath or in the Captain's bedroom; which is now our bedroom, it belongs to us– in our bedroom and I'm wearing my outfit from my brief stint as a Colonel, and it would be a very exciting scene indeed. Oh, the things we'll do!

There will be times when I'm tired, or when I'm sick; or when he's tired, or when he's sick; or when we'll fight, but I'll always be his boy. And it works the other way around too - beyond the love and care we have for each other there will always be that novelty of being naughty with an older man that will have me waiting for him in the bedroom until I am on my deathbed.

And some days! Oh – some days we will act like a married couple, my yawning and leaning on his shoulder during a long train ride home and him coming home late and my being upset; and on other days we will have trysts in the garden and pool as if we are not only shielding it from Nestor out of politeness but also from some imaginary wife that will appear from the manor and berate my Captain for running about with the houseboy.

Breakfasts and holidays and games under the covers for years to come, I have done it. I've found my home in Moulinsart, as it is all the places I want to be, and the master of it all the men I want to have.