Title: Beautiful Dancer Movie: Rob Roy Author: Bitterfig Feedback: Feedback is welcome. Pairing: Archibald Cunningham/Alan McDonald Summary: On the night of the Beltane fires before the events of the film have been set into motion Rob Roy McGregor's right hand man Alan McDonald first encounters the Englishman Archibald Cunningham. Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. They are not my property and I do not profit from them in anyway. Spoilers: Alludes to character deaths and plot elements within the film. Rating: NC-17 Warnings: Oral/anal sex Distribution: If this story is posted to another mailing list please include my e-mail address bitter_fig@yahoo.com and website address http://bitterfig.livejournal.com/ so I can get feedback and interested readers can find more of my stories. Archive: Yes =========================================================================== Beautiful Dancer My sister Moire McDonald and I were cut from the same piece of cloth. Fair and freckled the both of us, red-haired with blue eyes always on the look out for excitement and adventure. As a man, I could roam far a field but while I went distances Moire went to depths. She could find in neighboring villages and nearby places things more thrilling then I could imagine on distant continents. So it was that on the evening of May the first, Moire and I traveled through the chill mists and the forest bound for a gathering she knew well where the coming of spring was celebrated by those folks that had never quite given up the old ways or put aside the Goddess of the moon and deer for the Christ on his cross. Moire had been coming to these rites or celebrations for five years but I had always been elsewhere, doing McGregor's business. It would be the first time I had seen the Beltane fires. "I warn you brother," she told me as we made our way through the woods. "These nights are wondrous but wondrous strange. Tonight and again in the fall the veil that separates our world from all others will be at it's thinnest. Anything can happen but whatever does will fade away with mornings light and you will remember it as a dream." "What's the good of our coming then, if all is forgotten?" I asked her. "Not forgotten Alan McDonald," she told me, "never forgotten. Rather seen through a glass darkly as the good book says. I've found that the things that happen on Beltane nights hold up a mirror to what you are and what's to come. I will tell you a story. Two years ago on this very night I meant a little girl at these fires. We laughed and played together all night. In the morning I scarcely remembered but earlier this year when the baby I saw carrying came early and died I remembered perfectly that night and that girl. I knew she was the child I lost." "This is no light undertaking then." I said gravely, knowing the blow the loss of that babe had struck her. "No, it is not. Death and life, love and hate, hope and despair. They all gather round the fires. And yet it is a dance, a celebration, a joy." The woods broke before us into a wife clearing where a host of people were gathered round bright and crackling fires. "Let me tell you no more," my sister said. "You will see for yourself now. We have arrived." Entering the circle felt like both drunkenness and clarity. There was a ceremony performed that I did not understand and though it went on long till I knew it was late in the night it seemed no time at all till the rites were ended and the celebration began. There was music and dance, drinking and food. In these ways it seemed no different then any number of festivals I had attended but in so many other ways it was like nothing I had ever seen. Among the crowd there were figures I could not explain. A naked woman with the head of a deer, a child with skin as green as grass and eyes like yellow sun, I even thought I saw my cousin Gilly McDonald who'd died of the pox ten years before. And there was a May pole and the dancers round it seemed to go in both directions at once and the May pole was a tree or was a man and the ribbons had hands. I held my sister's hand tightly, as if we were children again. I never felt or saw her move away but suddenly she was gone and I was all alone to look into whatever dark mirror waited me. That was when I saw him, a creature even more exotic and beautiful then the horned women and stag headed men or the girls with rose vines instead of hair who danced in a ring. He was perhaps my age, smaller then me and lighter, lean and sharp-edged. His cropped head was bare his light blue eyes fixed and intense in his pale, pointed face. He was wearing an incredible costume that shimmered the colors of lilac blossoms and rich cream embossed with lace and pearl buttons. I had seem such things often enough in the city and about the courts but here in the woods it seemed fantastical as everything else. Near him I spied a woman in a simple peasant's gown wearing a wig of elaborate curls and holding a sword in his hands. She must have been the one to bring him to the fires (surely he had not brought himself) and the sword and the wig his belongings though he seemed to have forgotten them. He was dancing, dancing beautifully among the throng of bodies. It was a wild highland dance and though someone like him could not have done it before he seemed to learn it before my eyes, taking the steps of others and turning them into his own. I joined the dance. My own pride was eager to show a man of the land could hold his own against at his own dances but mainly I wanted to get closer to the strange and graceful courtier. I've been called an excellent dancer and he took heed, drawing near he matched my moves and as the music seemed to grow ever louder, ever faster we reeled and stepped and twirled about each other. My boots and his slippers flying in a blur but his eyes locked to mine never wavering in a glare of pure defiance I found well neigh irresistible. I wanted to touch him in a way I had never wanted to touch another man before. Knowing this did not alarm me. I remembered what Moire had said how on these nights anything could happen and I reached for him. He was too fleet and dodged me easily, laughing cruelly in my face. I knew he could evade me all night if I played his game so instead of giving chase I abruptly stopped and he still in motion reeled into my arms. I caught him by the wrist and waist and started dancing a dance such as a man and woman would do together. "Follow my lead," I said. He sneered at me, like he might take a bite out of my face but he did as I said. And so we whirled about and amidst the strange crowd till I saw dizzy and nearly sick and his body was hot and wet in my arms and his face seemed tinged with green. I knew I couldn't dance much longer but I didn't know what else to do. Then bless is dark little heart he mashed his mouth against mine, his sharp hard tongue thrusting into my mouth. I lifted him right off the ground, spinning and twirling broke us free from the other dancers, away from the fires till we were crashing through the brambles and branches of the forest, still kissing deeply. Finally I stumbled and we fell on the ground on the moss and leaves and on each other. He was on top of me the satiny expanse of his buttocks under my hands the smoothness of the heavy fabric and the rises and clefts beneath. I couldn't seem to feel him enough and he was the same with my long red hair that he buried his face in and kissed me through mouthfuls of. "What's your name," I managed between kisses. "Archie," he gasped. "Do you want to know mine?" "No, I don't care. I'll call you redhead." "You're English?" I asked, noting his accent. "I was." He said making it clear I should ask no more on that matter. I started pulling my clothes off, it wasn't difficult. I had only to unhook my belt, undo a few knots and twists of my kilted plaid, pull off my blouse and boots and I was naked in the moonlight. He had only just managed to unbutton his vest. A longer, smaller row of buttons waited beneath them on his shirt. I went to my kit and retrieved my bone handled knife. "I can make things go a lot quicker," I told him. "Don't you dare," he snapped but I had already caught a handful of the soft billowing fabric and let the knife tear it from belly to throat. My pleasure at seeing his tight, smooth chest was short lived. He backhanded me with considerable force. It stung but hardly phrased me. I pushed him to the ground, straddling his narrow hips and pinned his arms. "You're rather a nasty piece of work, aren't you Archie," I said. "If I wasn't I wouldn't be here with you, would I." I kissed him as hard as I could, still holding him down. No easy task, though I can't say he was struggling to free himself he was thrashing against me like a landed fish his pelvis bucking between my legs. I left his mouth and eased my kisses downward to his throat, the hardened nubs of his nipples, licking his stomach. When I reached the waist of his breeches I snapped off the first flat, shimmering button between my teeth and moved upward again to kiss him. We passed the mother-of-pearl round between our mouths but I'd had enough of such tricks. I let go of his wrists and he dug his freed hands in my hair as I fell to unfastening his breeches. I pulled away the lavender trousers, his member now lay hard and purple with need against his belly. I took him in my mouth sucking and coaxing. He moaned wordlessly, his hips beating in rhythm with my mouth. He let go of my hair, covering his face with his hands. As he climaxed he cried out as if in pain then lay still. I had let him spill his seed on his stomach, onto that recess between his hip bones. Now I scooped it up and rolling him over moved my slick hand into the crevice between his buttocks. When I slide a finger inside him he cried out once again and a tremor ran through his body but he did not protest. I pressed my cock against him now. I was engorged with passion, hardly able to control myself. His body yielded to me slowly, painstakingly slow he was so tight as I squeezed into him, finally sunk to the hilt inside him. I saw his face, his teeth were clenched. I thought I might be hurting him but once I began the motions of thrusting inside him I could not be gentle and I could not have stopped. I burst inside him, falling onto him. I would have lain there till morning, my cheek against his back my arms wrapped around his waist but while I was still inside him he began struggling to push me away. "We're done now get off me," he snarled in vehement exasperation. "Let me go." He sort of kicked me aside and began to pull his clothes back on, cover himself with his trousers. I swung my bare legs across him. "You'll have to pardon me," I said. "For assuming that since you didn't object to being plowed in the arse you'd consent to being held afterwards." "Don't try to be clever redhead," Archie snapped, "you're not. And I'm not some pretty little thing." He moved to push my legs aside but only stroked them. "Rest assured Archie I've found you beautiful, but never pretty. In the city I once saw a captive panther, the pet of a woman of the court. It was sleek and on a gold chain but I knew just what it was, a wild creature. Later I heard it mauled the woman. I though of that panther when I saw you dancing, I thought for all your damned buttons you were just as much of an untamed beast. That's why I can't take my eyes off you." "Then you're a man of dangerous tastes." "As you said before, if I wasn't I wouldn't be here with you. Or here at all dancing around pagan fires in the night, in wood and the dark. I've always wanted to see and know beyond what's comfortable and familiar. I'd be more then willing to cross the ocean to see lands so went my sister told me if I came tonight I could wander in another world, how could I not join her?" "What other world?" He asked "The world of the spirits, the world of dreaming," I told him. "My sister says the events which happen under Beltane's moon hold a mirror to what we are and what will be. A reflection distorted beyond recognition until the time comes to see it clearly. " "Some things are perfectly clear without the mockery of a warped witch's mirror," he said with bitterness but amusement as well. "Then tell me if you see so clearly. What are we and what will be?" He leaned close, his breath teasing my ear a hand upon my chest. "A bastard in every sense of the word. A rapier, a rapist, a cutlass, a cutthroat, a foil, an unholy fool. That is what I am and will be." "My lover, my panther, my beautiful dancer," I purred back to him grazing his lips with mine. He pulled away, got to his feet. "And you witch boy," he said, "with your enchanting rhythms and entangling red hair. I did not need your name because I already knew it. You are Alan McDonald, McGregor's man and that can only mean that by and by, directly or indirectly I'll likely be the death of you." "And the dance, do you know the meaning of that as well wise sir?" "There is only one dance I know." He said and mimicked perfectly the thrusts and pivots of swordplay. "One dance I've excelled in which one day I'll stumble at. Sooner or later we all fall down." He laughed cruelly. "It's a vicious joke, this night." "You'll pardon me Archie if I can not quite see things as you do." "God, you're a child. You can't be younger then me, you're a grown man but you're like a child with your looking for adventure, your treating things as a game and your wide eyes. Believe whatever suits you but you might do best to remember this night as a warning to change your loyalties or your land and get out while you still can." "It could just as easily be a warning to you," I said. "To leave off your dancing and lie in my arms while you still can." I reached out to him, he took a step in my direction but then he turned his back. "I can't," was all he said then he walked away disappearing into the darkness and the forest.