Following Tides -Book II - Sascha & Yuri: "Soul Bound"

“Following Tides II - Sascha and Yuri's Tale”

T H E   F O L L O W I N G   T I D E S   S E R I E S
PART II  - SASCHA & YURI
Author: D. Sanders a.k.a "The Fablespinner"
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CHAPTER ONE  -- "SOUL BOUND"
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Sascha was just coming back from adding some protective charms to his ship “The Golden Sun” that was in the finishing stages of being built. For the past eighteen months they’d been building her on Safe Harbor Isle and during these past eighteen months a gnawing dread had been growing in the pit of his stomach. Because during these same months he’d faced an inner truth he’d been trying to deny. He loved his best friend and not just affection or mild infatuation, it was full-blown desire so intense he could barely look at him anymore without wanting to throw caution to the wind and make love to him within an inch of his young life. He turned to see his desire standing on the beach, letting the sea wash up over his feet, his face turned to the water.
 
Oh, but he was beautiful. Even more so than his elder brother Ilya. Ilya was handsome, tall, slender and lithe and in his female aspect positively breathtaking in a slim boyish-figured frame. Yuri however in Sascha’s opinion made even Ilya’s female aspect seem like a wren among swans.
 
Yuri had always been slight of build and even after puberty came and went he still looked as if a strong wind might blow him away like a wisp of cloud. He looked almost delicate and he was physically due to an extreme expenditure of his talents at a tender age of five, when he had given everything he had to save his brother’s life and had almost lost his own.
 
Sascha shivered at the memory, he’d woken up in terror out of a sound sleep with an urgent need to be at Yuri’s side immediately. Olya had tried to reassure him that it was just a dream, but the cold panic had been very real and thankfully Yuri’s mother had brought Sascha to Yuri’s side just in time. Sascha spent the entire day feeding Yuri his strength to recover. His body however showed lingering effects from that frightful nightmare of an event. He was the picture of health and internally his healing gifts had even strengthened beyond all recognition after that day, he’d blown his talents wide-open but at a cost. His carriage would forever be fragile and delicate.
 
But in Sascha’s opinion it made him even more unearthly beautiful. He moved with an unconscious grace, the turn of a foot or wrist almost mesmerizing. His long, sun streaked blond hair was braided and hung down his back to his waist. It was womanishly long, but then again, Yuri was ‘balanced’ as his mother often said. Female and male in equal measures in spirit. He wore femininity on a male frame that made that internal balance extremely evident in the androgynous figure that glided across the beach.
 
He even dressed almost feminine in the loose airy sleeveless tunic he wore. The color of blushing roses with a seashell pattern embroidered neckline. His dark tanned skin highly complimented by the soft almost coral pink colored garment. Soft shades always brought out Yuri’s best features and natural tawny richness of color. His slim legs were poking out from the long tunic which appeared to be all he was wearing. Sascha’s groin gave an involuntary twitch as he shamelessly watched Yuri meander along the seashore. Gods how he loved him, every part of him. From his big green eyes, to his breathy laugh, to his shy smile, to the tips of his toes. He was the Golden Sun that gave light to Sascha’s world.
 
Sascha worried his lip. What was Yuri going to do when he left? Yuri was painfully shy and mild mannered. Unless he was working in a healing trance, Yuri would never approach anyone first for companionship or conversation. The only person Yuri went to of his own freewill was Sascha; the only person he confided in or shared anything personal with was Sascha. The thought of Yuri being alone without anyone to turn to stabbed Sascha in the heart painfully, churning his gut in anxiety. If only they were the same age, Yuri would be able to go with Sascha. But you had to be of age, fifteen to be precise. Yuri was still six moons away from turning fifteen, but that half-year was everything. Sascha had just turned sixteen the day before, over the age, but because of the timing of the reunion, he’d turned thirteen while still out to sea which was the normal time one would return to the Isle to begin the two year building ritual. He didn’t reach the Isle until he was fourteen and had spent the better part of the past two years building his ship. If only Yuri was six-moons older, he could then go with “the Golden Sun” as the official healer of the crew.
 
As it stood, it would be two years before they saw each other again and Yuri could join Sascha’s crew. Sascha would have to content himself with a ship named after his love if he couldn’t have his love by his side. Finding contentment with that notion was practically impossible, not when every waking moment he spent fantasizing what those lips tasted like or how that body would feel under hands. Sascha let out a sigh, they still had two more moons together and Sascha knew how he’d rather spend those precious two moons.
 
“Yuri!” Sascha called out and the youth on the beach turned, flashed him a brilliant smile and met him halfway across the beach. A slim hand sliding into Sascha’s much larger one. Over the past two years Sascha had hit another growth spurt and was now sporting the frame of a man and no longer a boy. He’d probably not get much bigger, most of the men in his family finished growing between the ages of sixteen and eighteen and then just started filling out rather than up.
 
Sascha stood a good six feet and towered over Yuri’s much shorter build. Just a few years ago they almost stood eye to eye, now Yuri had to crane his neck up to meet Sascha’s eyes unless he enjoyed looking into the bulk of Sascha’s chest. Sascha could quite easily now rest his chin on the top of Yuri’s head at their current height. This was more than likely how matters would be between them from now on. Not that Sascha minded. Yuri always fit perfectly at his side, no matter the size.
 
“You look tired.” Yuri’s voice was concerned as they walked along the beach together.
 
“Aye. A little. I used a lot of magic today; you know how tiring that can be. I just need to eat.”
 
“Then you’re in luck. I was just about to eat myself and I’ve enough for us both.” Yuri smiled pulling Sascha over to a blanket on the beach complete with a basket of fruit, sandwiches and flasks of juice chilling in a stream that fed into the sea.
 
“You look prepared for company.”
 
“I knew you’d be tired.”
 
“Yuri, you’re always one step ahead of me.”
 
“I just know you. You always work too hard and you didn’t eat hardly any breakfast and I never saw you come down for lunch. I am a healer Sascha, I notice these things.” Yuri smiled as they sat cross-legged on the blanket and shared a late afternoon dinner together.
 
“So I am properly scolded. You take good care of me.”
 
“You’re not inclined to care for yourself. Someone must watch out for you.” Yuri smiled again, but there was a pain and sadness in his eyes. The same sadness in Sascha’s. Their time was running out.
 
Sascha laid there in the sun, his head in Yuri’s lap, eyes half lidded as Yuri finger-combed his short and shaggy black hair away from his face, every once in a while pausing to press a grape or a small slice of melon past his lips. He felt drowsy and pampered. “You have a headache.” Yuri said absently before a tingling sensation caressed Sascha’s brow as fingers traced and chased away pain. Sascha shivered, Yuri’s touch was damn near orgasmic and even the tiny brush of power was enough to make Sascha involuntarily groan in heady bliss.
 
“I would have been fine with your powders Yuri.” Sascha opened his eyes to smile up at Yuri who just grinned back.
 
“I know. But they are not here now and I am.” Yuri pressed a finger to Sascha’s nose and Sascha smiled.
 
“Thank you.”
 
“You are always welcome. Now eat more before you fall asleep.” Yuri fed him a segment of orange and Sascha obeyed and ate before he did indeed fall asleep, his head still cradled in Yuri’s lap.
 
----
 
“I used to be afraid they’d not be ready, and now that they are they’re mired in angst and are afraid.” Petra sighed where she and Ilya sat in the cool shade of a palm and watched Yuri and Sascha on the beach.
 
“What angst? Don’t tell me they think Yuri won’t be going!?” Ilya asked and Petra shrugged.
 
“I don’t know love, you know Yuri never confides what he’s feeling. Not to me at least.” Petra sighed.
 
“Then just tell them! Don’t wait for them both to be tied up in anxious knots. Mercy, they’re soul bound! Any distortion of their relationship real or perceived will be blown out of all proportions.”
 
“But Ilya, neither of them have said anything to each other. It’s driving ME crazy. You can see every time they even look at the other, it’s no innocent glance. It’s all out desire. Especially Sascha. But until they break that last hurdle themselves it’s none of our business.”
 
“Bullshit. They’re afraid if they cross that last line, they’re gonna spend the next two years apart. Tell them that’s not the case and that last line won’t be so hard for them to step over.” Ilya argued and Petra shrugged.
 
“I can think of a million arguments for and against love. We shouldn’t meddle in their bond. If they ASKED then we’d tell them. We’re only guessing at the problem. We could be very wrong and then whatever the problem really is might get worse.”
 
“Oh this is making my brain hurt. Mam, they’re young yes. But have you talked to either of them? Yuri talks like some damn Zen little prophet he gives me the shivers. I’m looking at a teenager and hearing an ancient serene monk. And Sascha could give my husband lessons in tact and decorum. These are no normal teenagers. Daa is right, Sascha is sixteen going on forty-seven and I’ve no clue how to describe Yuri other than he’s on a totally different plain.”
 
“That is true enough. He always was different and even more so after he helped save you.”
 
“Aye and a half! He can heal rings around me and I’m no slouch. He blew his talents open helping me and they healed open. He’s pulsing all the time with power; even Danica doesn’t have that much and she’s wizard gifted. He’s the strongest healer I’ve ever, EVER known.” Ilya agreed watching his brother in the distance.
 
“And damn if I don’t feel like a goose in looks next to him either. He’s gorgeous. Who was his daa?”
 
“Some very nice Captain come to trade. Handsome. Yuri looks nothing like him.”
 
“No, he looks like you, that’s not what I meant. He’s, I dunno. I know he’s small because of what he did for me, but there’s something else. His ‘balance’ is tipping heavily to the female aspect. I usually cannot wait to get OUT of my female aspect. It’s just convenient when Van and I decide to expand our brood. Yuri now? I’d bet Van I’d wear shoes, every day for the rest of my life that if Sascha ever shifts his aspect, you won’t see him in a hurry to switch back. He’s a female stuck in a male body. I think he was born the wrong gender entirely.”
 
“There I’d agree with you. And you hate shoes so if you’re betting that you must be certain.” Petra chuckled; Van had never been able, not in ten years, to get Ilya into a pair of boots.
 
“I can’t abide having my feet bound up.” Ilya wiggled his toes in the sand barefoot, pregnant and loving every minute of it apart from suffering hot flashes with this pregnancy.
 
“Neither can Yuri. And if he wouldn’t raise eyebrows, I’d bet you would see him sporting about in women’s clothes. He loves anything ‘pretty’. He’s forever making and embroidering me gorgeous blouses. He made what he’s wearing too.”
 
“I didn’t know he sewed!”
 
“Oksana taught him when he was little.”
 
“Here I am always trying to avoid it and he’d embrace it. I told you, he was just born wrong. He’s transgendered I’m sure of it.”
 
“Trans what?”
 
“Woman soul, Man body.”
 
“Ah.” Petra nodded as Ilya stood.
 
“Let’s leave them alone mam. I’m parched and I’m starting to get a headache from worrying about them and picking apart my brother’s aspects.”
 
Petra and Ilya left the beach to go find something to drink leaving Sascha and Yuri alone and undisturbed.
 
----
 
The building was complete and a party to celebrate was in full swing and Sascha just could not find it in his heart to celebrate, something else was there inside making it ache. He could feel the torment just as assuredly as if it was his own. But there were two distinct pains in his chest, his own heart sinking with dread and a far more intense fear. Sascha’s eyes scanned the crowd just in time to catch a blond head dashing away trying not to be seen. “Yuri.” Sascha breathed and before he could get up to follow, his mother arrived at his elbow crying and going on about her baby being all grown up and every and all other typical things mother’s gush about when their children leave their arms as adults. It took him several minutes before he was able to escape and he raced down the path running into his cousin Danica on the way.
 
“He’s crying. He won’t tell me what’s wrong. I feel his pain and it hurts.” She said and Sascha nodded.
 
“Aye. I’ll find him go on back it’s okay.” Sascha reassured the troubled and perceptive nine-year-old and raced to the beach on swift feet.
 
“Yuri?” Sascha called out, his mellow baritone was concerned.
 
“I’m here.” Yuri answered, wiping his eyes. His soft, understated tenor fell from the shadows as he stepped out and into Sascha’s arms.
 
“I hate when you cry Yuri. Please, tell me what’s wrong?”
 
“You know what’s wrong. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
 
“We still have a week and I don’t want to think about it.” Sascha said holding Yuri tightly.
 
Sascha’s eminent departure had thrown their world into chaos and now things were needing to be said that were so hard to say. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Sascha I feel like I’m DYING inside.”
 
“Aye. Me too. The thought of leaving you behind is killing me.”
 
“Sascha, I love you, I’ve always loved you. I can’t let you go, I can’t….” Yuri broke into sobs and Sascha held him close.
 
“Oh gods Yuri. I love you too. I feel so damn angry that I have to leave you behind I want to scream. This hurts worse than the time I thought you were dying after healing your brother. This is that nightmare all over again for me.”
 
“Sascha…” Yuri turned his shimmering green eyes upward, Sascha fell into those eyes, and the golden sun he held in his arms and the person he’d named his ship after without telling him. It was now or never. He couldn’t hold back his emotions anymore. Not when the person nearest and dearest to his heart was in such evidently mutual and undeniable agony.
 
“Yuri. You are my Golden Sun.” Sascha breathed leaning down to finally taste those lips he’d been yearning to kiss for years. Yuri’s arms clung in desperation to Sascha’s neck clinging to the youth he loved more than life itself.
 
Knees gave way, mouths opened, strangled cries of love long denied burst free as hands battled with clothes. Sascha’s lips in his hair, his neck, his ears, made Yuri quiver with need. “Sascha, Sascha.” His voice echoed his need. Sascha moaned as he buried his lips in the curve of a graceful neck as his hands divested Yuri of his breeches and his hand found purchase on Yuri’s equally straining desire.
 
“Sure?” Sascha moaned and Yuri nodded almost frantically.
 
“For years.” He whispered and Sascha sat up on his knees to push his breeches down, freeing his hard and weeping erection.
 
“Turn over beloved. I’ll go slow. Tell me if it hurts.” Sascha said breaking of a piece of a nearby aloe plant and coating himself with it as Yuri got on his knees, ready and shaking with fear and need.
 
Sascha took the excess aloe and gently tried to prepare Yuri with shaking hands, at Yuri’s hiss of breath as a finger invaded virgin territory, Sascha pulled back as if burned.
 
“No Sascha, don’t stop, Please don’t stop!” Yuri begged and Sascha replaced his finger, Yuri moaned deep in the back of his throat.
 
“Good?”
 
“Aye.”
 
“Tell me when you think you’re ready.” Sascha trailed kisses down Yuri’s back as his fingers worked diligently, loosening, stretching, loving and longing.
 
“Now.”
 
Sascha scrambled to his knees and pushed. Yuri cried out, but not in pain. “SASCHA!”
 
“Yuri! Yuri! Yuri!” Was grunted with every thrust of hips. “Turn over, I want to see your face.” Sascha said slipping out as Yuri rolled to his back and Sascha hooked beautiful slender legs over his shoulders and pushed again and again, until he was covered and dripping with sweat, Yuri long since having come and was whimpering with joy as Sascha filled him completely.
 
Sascha saw spots in his eyes as he finally came in hard thrusts, deep inside Yuri who was weeping and clinging to Sascha like he was afraid to let go.
 
“Bond with me Yuri. I can’t leave you, not now, not ever; I love you with my very soul. They will have to let you come with me if we’re married.”
 
“Aye! Oh Aye! Aye! Sascha! I love you!”
 
“Well it took you two LONG ENOUGH!” A very pregnant again with son number five, Ilya chuckled as he and Van walked up the beach, catching a very naked couple in a very compromising position.
 
“Sascha, its usually good manners to propose to the one you love BEFORE you actually screw them into the sand.” Van added and both boys blushed hotly.
 
“Oh dear, well enjoy the evening loves, we won’t wait up.” Ilya waved over the top of his head as he and Van walked past chuckling.
 
Sascha and Yuri burst into a fit of embarrassed giggles and laughter.
 
“You want to again?” Sascha asked and Yuri smiled.
 
“Oh, Aye. But let’s get off the path shall we?”
 
“Yes, good idea.” Sascha grinned scooping up not only their clothes but Yuri who laughed and clung to Sascha’s neck laughing as Sascha moved them further down the beach into seclusion and welcoming dark shadows.
 
Sascha dropped to his knees and Yuri slipped to his, still holding Sascha’s neck, his head resting on Sascha’s collarbone. Sascha breathed deeply, the scent of lavender permeated Yuri’s hair and Sascha shuddered as his hands stroked Yuri’s back and down over a gently curving posterior where his fingers gripped and kneaded soft flesh. Yuri moaned, dropping feather like kisses along Sascha’s jaw and throat. “Love you.” Yuri whispered and Sascha tipped his head to look into Yuri’s brilliantly shining eyes.
 
“I love you more than I can possibly hope to describe Yuri. I’ve been denying it for years and I know better. You’re my soul bound.”
 
“Aye. I know I was waiting for you to say it. I’ve always known.”
 
“Next time I’m pig-headed stubborn, you kick me.”
 
“Never. This was something you had to admit for yourself, I couldn’t do it for you. And you know that too.”
 
“I wasted so much time agonizing over it when I could have had such wonders.” Sascha said and Yuri chuckled.
 
“I’m hardly a wonder. Too little for my age by a half.”
 
“You’re perfect just the way you are.”
 
“Only you think so love. I was born wrong.”
 
“Come again?” Sascha said leaning back to settle on his heals and clasp Yuri’s hands.
 
“My balance if off. I should have been born a girl.”
 
“I certainly don’t care that you’re a boy. What do you mean about your balance being off?”
 
“Just that. I’m, oh it’s hard to describe how I feel. I feel like, I yearn to be a girl, Like Ilya when he’s pregnant. It fascinates me and I can never understand WHY he wants to get out of that body the minute he has the babies. I certainly wouldn’t want to shed it so quickly, not when it’s as pretty as he is. But my brother and I are very different, he’s perfectly balanced, I’m not, I can’t be when I want something like that all the time.”
 
“Do you?”
 
“Aye.”
 
“That’s simple enough Yuri. I can change you that way if you want it so desperately. All you had to do was ask.”
 
“I thought, well, what do you want me to be?”
 
“Yuri love. I don’t care. Boy or girl makes no difference to me. I love YOU. It’s your soul not it’s container I love.”
 
“Please?”
 
“Aye love.” Sascha smiled and laid his hands on Yuri’s hips. “Shut your eyes beloved.”
 
Yuri shivered and shut his eyes.
 
“Let the inner opposite aspect out.” Sascha said quietly and he watched in amazement as Yuri’s form glowed and shifted. Soft hips rounded under his hands and small breasts formed on a smooth chest. Like Ilya, the face remained the same but unlike Ilya the almost dainty hourglass shape would never be called boyish. Waif-like perhaps, but certainly quite shapely.
 
Yuri had been beautiful before, Sascha’s throat was parched by the time the change was complete. He was positively angelic as a woman. Oh but Sascha felt a stab of possessiveness sweep over his senses. Almost covetous of this creature. “Oh my.” Was all he managed to say past the lump in his throat and his half-awake erection roared to life.
 
“Is it over?” A soft, lyrical mezzo-soprano asked.
 
“Aye. So beautiful.” Sascha croaked, his hands twitching at Yuri’s hips as they slid upwards to explore new breasts.
 
Yuri still hadn’t opened his eyes and moaned as Sascha toyed with his new body. “That’s so nice.” Yuri breathed and Sascha leaned over and purred in Yuri’s ear.
 
“Very, very nice.” Sascha’s voice was laced heavily with lust and Yuri giggled.
 
“Wait. We don’t want accidents Sascha. Remember what happened to my brother when they began playing about with aspects?”
 
Sascha stopped kissing Yuri’s breasts and leaned back as if burned. “Aye.” His voice cracked.
 
Yuri just chuckled and scanned the beach, Maiden’s Breath liked sandy soil, and he found a clump of the white blooms just beyond their trysting place and plucked a handful of blossoms and ate the bitter tasting blooms with a grimace. “These taste awful, it’s why we powder them with sugar.” Yuri shivered.
 
“How long until they take effect?” Sascha asked, not wanting children either.
 
“Immediately once taken, you should take some too. Double precaution.” Yuri said passing blooms to Sascha who swallowed them whole.
 
Yuri spread out their clothes and laid down holding open his arms. Sascha almost pounced on him and began devouring him in earnest. Yuri gasped as Sascha entered him. “Did I hurt you?”
 
“Nay! Oh Sascha it’s beautiful!” Yuri wept clinging to Sascha’s back as he set a languid tempo.
 
“Think of nothing but how I am going to love you like this for the rest of our days.” Sascha purred into Yuri’s neck as he pushed deeply and Yuri moaned in response. He seemed to like it when Sascha drove his thrusts. He responded by mewling and whimpering and the harder Sascha moved the more Yuri thrashed. Not so delicate after all Sascha mused as he set a driving rhythm that brought them both to a shuddering completion.
 
The moon was high in the sky as they returned to the celebration, Yuri’s arm wrapped around Sascha’s waist and Sascha’s arm about Yuri’s shoulders.
 
Ilya caught sight of them and leaned over to his mother. “I told you. No shoes for me!”
 
“You did. Oh dear they’d better have taken precautions!”
 
“I’m sure they did mam. Yuri’s no fool and he learned from my mistakes. Maiden’s Breath grows all along that beach. God but he’s gorgeous. Wow.”
 
“What on Earth?” Sergei gasped seeing his son and what looked like a very female Yuri step into the light.
 
“Daa, we want to be bonded.” Sascha said as the couple stopped and all eyes turned to look at them.
 
“Well it’s about BLOODY TIME!” Sergei grinned and everyone cheered and clapped. Yuri blushed hotly and turned an embarrassed smile into Sascha’s chest. Sascha’s arm clutching him protectively, as he’d done since they were small children.
 
Sergei leaned over to smile at Yuri. “I don’t know what you see in him, but you always have been the best thing that ever happened to my son. Think you can give me the honor of bonding you to him?”
 
“Aye.” Yuri smiled a dazzling bright smile and his whole being glowed with joy.
 
“But tomorrow because I claim the rights to finding my son something beautiful to wear on his new aspect.” Petra said as she and Ilya approached.
 
“Mam!”
 
“Don’t you mam her. Take it from me, you’re gonna have absolutely nothing that will fit you properly now. Do you feel balanced now?”
 
“Aye. You knew?”
 
“Aye, I am your brother and I am a healer. Your skin never sat right, it does now. You look radiant.”
 
“I feel wonderful. But a bit off-balance in the mundane sense.”
 
“Aye, you’ll adjust to your new center of gravity in a few days.” Ilya grinned leaning over to hug his brother. “Just be happy.”
 
“I am over the moon.” Yuri hugged back turning back to Sascha’s loose embrace.
 
“I don’t have to tell you to take care of him, I know you will and have known longer than you two have.” Ilya winked at Sascha who smiled.
 
“Aye, I can be a bit slow on the uptake.” Sascha grinned and Ilya laughed.
 
“Oh enough, we have a bonding to plan!” Anya crowed as she and Petra seized Yuri’s hands and dragged him off to goodness knew where.
 
“Just leave them son. They’re in their element right now. They’ll bring him back unscathed eventually.” Sergei said as Sascha sank into a chair.
 
Van appeared and pressed a glass of wine into Sascha’s hand. “Bachelor party!” He called and all the men congregated around Sascha and began giving him tales that made him blanch.
 
“And take it from me Sascha. Just smile and nod when he’s in a state. When you do have children, pregnancy blows all rationale out the window.” Ilya said and Van nodded emphatically.
 
“Not to mention the cravings and getting up in the middle of the night to raid the galley for your spouse with things that are positively revolting to watch them eat.” Van added and got a scowl from Ilya.
 
“You try waddling down stairs when you’re big as a house. You can knock us up the least you can do is fetch food.”
 
“See what I mean Sascha?” Van grinned and Sascha looked pale.
 
“I don’t think you’ll be seeing us with babes any time soon. Yuri’s not even fifteen yet. I wouldn’t do that to his body. Hell I’m not ready to be a Daa yet!”
 
“Sixteen going on forty-seven.” Alexandre chuckled. “I’m not worried at all.”
 
----