Salt and Rust

It was over eighty degrees in the tired, cramped bunk-room of our barracks — twenty-seven Celsius, the kind of heat that sits on your chest like a wet towel and doesn't move. We were stuck on some random base in the middle of the Mediterranean, pouring years of our lives into manning a compound in case we were ever needed. I had nothing going on back in Wyoming, so committing to three years over here seemed like a decent way to kill time and earn benefits I could use for an education later. Serving had really made a man out of me, lemme tell ya.

Somehow our room was hotter than the air outside. And air conditioning? Thirty-five months since the day I left Wyoming and hadn't had that basic comfort once. One month to go, and I'd be home.

Today was my one day a month when I got to skip squad chores. Our group of eight was responsible for the armory and the concrete apron around it, and we each got eight days off a month on rotation. Today was my "self-meditation" day.

I slid my pants and underwear down in my bottom bunk and wiggled my little dick around a bit. It looked sad, like me, from only getting love from my hand for three years. I'd finally started fucking guys right before I enlisted, unleashing years of pent-up closeted horniness, got a few in before I shipped off halfway around the world — and my only date since had been my own fist.

Thunder rumbled somewhere out past the wire. Rain started to patter on the tin roof, then to hammer it. I settled back into the bunk, the frame creaking, the three-inch mattress letting the springs dig into my spine.

I'd kept my pubes trimmed the whole time, a small act of defiance and personal preference in a place where most guys just let it go wild. I rubbed a bead of pre-cum around my glans and felt the raw, stupid sensitivity of a cock that got some love once a week at best. It took a minute to get hard. Six inches of smooth military meat at mass, cut, the head already shiny, the veins coming up fat along the shaft. I stroked it, the head sliding smooth against my palm, and let out a low groan that rumbled right along with the thunder.

I inverted my hand and squeezed the head, working my frenulum in tight, constricting circles with the heel of my palm. My abs seized in response, that deep cramp of over-sensitivity, and my toes curled against the mattress.

I was just getting to the good part when the door creaked open.

My hand froze. My eyes snapped open. Hallway light spilled in and for a split second I was a deer in the headlights, cock out, balls drawn up, caught completely flat-footed.

Rourke came through the doorway — our squad leader, twenty-four, ripped like something carved and left out in the sun, a stallion and a shit stirrer in equal measure. Our newest recruit came in behind him, tailed and hesitant, a nineteen-year-old named Elias with skin the color of wet coffee and eyes that hadn't stopped moving since the day he got off the bus.

They were covered in dirt, camo pants black with mud to the knee, sweat standing in sheets on their foreheads. The rain must have come down hard enough to force them in early. A wave of embarrassment rushed over me, hot and prickling.

Rourke's eyes went straight to my hand, and a slow, knowing grin crawled across his face. Elias looked like he'd just watched a man get shot.

"Jesus, Trace, my bad, dude." Rourke kicked the door shut behind him with his heel. "Guess I should've known to knock."

"Sorry, sorry, my bad!" I stammered, cheeks burning, fumbling my boxers up over myself.

Rourke took a step in and leaned against the bunk across from mine, arms crossed over his chest, his biceps straining the grimy fabric of his shirt. Lyrics and a sword ran down his forearm in dark ink; there were more that snaked along his side and across his abs, and I knew exactly where they went because I'd had my mouth on the skin over them twice before.

Everybody jerks it on their off day. That wasn't the thing. The thing was that we usually had two hours before a single chore got finished, and getting caught felt like a violation of the one scrap of privacy a man had.

"So," Rourke said, grin still up. "Looking for some help there, buddy?"

My heart was going like a fist on a door. He tested boundaries for sport. He had a girlfriend back home, but the time over here, the stress, the infinite dudes in every direction — it made gay shit happen to almost everyone eventually. I'd had three straight guys in my mouth in three years and he was one of them, both other times at his instigation, both times ending with him staring at the ceiling like he'd been robbed.

Now he looked hungry. He was always hungry. He just didn't always follow through.

Elias looked baffled. He was still in what we called the back-home mindset, still measuring everything against a girl he probably hadn't even kissed yet, and Rourke's offer had visibly spooked him.

"What'd you have in mind?" I said, trying to keep my voice level.

The grin widened. Rourke uncrossed his arms and unbuttoned his pants, and the zipper came down with a sound like a tearing envelope. He shoved his mud-caked shorts and his boxer briefs down just far enough to free a solid, semi-hard six inches, and the smell came off him in a wave — wet earth, sweat, the deep animal reek of a man who'd been working since dawn in the heat.

His pubes were a dark, tangled mess, untouched since the day he enlisted. It matched his whole energy. He was our leader, we'd have followed him anywhere, and all that pressure had to come out of him somehow.

He stepped up to my bunk and wiggled his hips so his cock swung in the air, right in front of my face. "Got a little appreciation for my service, soldier?"

The musky, grimy scent of him hit me in the back of the throat. Raw and earthy, the kind of thing that should be a turn-off and instead just makes you hungrier. My hand moved on its own and wrapped around his thick shaft — warm, heavy, the skin like warm wax over iron, a fat vein riding the underside. I leaned forward, knees digging into the rough blanket, and opened my mouth.

He let out a low, satisfied grunt as I took him in. I got as much down as I could, lips sealed and sliding, tongue flattening along the shaft, and felt his wiry, dirty pubes scratching my cheeks and the wet heat of his balls against my chin. He tasted like salt and old sweat and something faintly bitter underneath, and my mouth flooded with spit around him.

Out of the corner of my eye, Elias flinched. He took a step back. His dark eyes were huge.

Rourke, hands on his hips, laughed short and easy. "Don't worry, man. You'll get used to it. A mouth's a mouth. You'll be glad for one in a few years — might as well take advantage of the one guy here who'll actually do a good job while we still got him around."

I pulled off and looked up, lips slick and shining, a string of spit breaking off my chin. Rourke's eyes were half-closed, glazed, focused on something about six thousand miles away and wearing a dress. "Good, Trace. That's good."

"I'll do you too, if you want," I said to Elias, not pushing.

"Trust me," Rourke said. "He's good, dude."

Elias's eyes drifted down. My face, red and swollen. Rourke's cock standing up out of that black tangle, wet from my mouth and shining in the flat gray light. Then lower, to a view I couldn't see — probably Rourke's hairy, heavy ass cheeks flexed where he stood.

I was genuinely shocked when he stepped forward. His hands shook on his buttons. He got his pants open and shoved his boxers down and his cock hung out soft, and it was big even soft — uncut, heavy, hanging in a dark hood of skin with a set of low, loose balls behind it. He was lean and tight the way only nineteen is, not built like Rourke, but cut from the same athletic stone.

His groin doubled the reek in the room. Sweeter than Rourke's, muskier, greener.

"He wants you too," Rourke said, tipping his chin at me. "Go on. Take him."

I crawled off the bunk and my knees hit the concrete with a soft thud. I knelt between them and reached out, Rourke's cock in my left hand and Elias's in my right, and the difference made me dizzy. Rourke was hard and rough, twitching, that vein jumping under my thumb. Elias was smooth and soft-skinned, his foreskin a delicate sheath that slid and bunched under my grip, and he got longer as I worked him, filling out to a good seven inches with the head pushing out of the hood all pink and wet.

I brought it to my mouth and gave him a slow, exploratory lick up the underside, then slid my tongue under the foreskin, into the fold, and got a hot, sharp, pungent mouthful of him — salt and iron and the deep sour tang of a man who'd been sweating through chores. He made a strangled noise above me and his hand found the top of my head and just rested there, shaking.

Rourke nodded at me. A silent command from my squad leader. I switched and took him back down, all the way to the hair, and swallowed around him until my eyes watered, then pulled off and went back to Elias, and back and forth, hand pumping whatever my mouth wasn't on, tongue working both heads, spit running off my chin in ropes. I could feel the heat coming up in both of them, the tension drawing their balls up tight.

My own cock was throbbing, hanging heavy between my thighs. I got my free hand on it and stroked in time with my mouth, and the sounds above me got more frequent, more desperate, less controlled. I looked up and both of them had the same far-away face, the same jaw, both of them somewhere back home with somebody who wasn't me. So I went harder, sucking Elias's foreskin back with a wet pop, then burying my nose in Rourke's pubes until I gagged, and my hand flew on myself.

The room was all breathing and wet suction and the rain drumming overhead. Their legs pressed against my shoulders. Their hands were in my hair now, both of them, guiding, pushing, holding me in place, and I stopped being a guy and became a hole with a job.

I was climbing toward my own edge when Rourke spoke.

"Trace." I pulled off Elias and looked up, chin dripping. "Open your mouth. Elias — let's feed him at the same time."

I didn't have to think about it. I opened up, tongue out flat, and Rourke looked at Elias and nodded once.

Then they both roared.

They came at me in unison — Rourke lunging in from the left and Elias from the right, both cocks jamming into my mouth at once, fighting for the same space, mashing together against my tongue and each other, and the sound they made when their dicks touched was the best thing I've ever heard out of two men. Two loads hit me at the same time, hot and thick and endless, rope after rope of it across my teeth and the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat, and my mouth filled up faster than I could swallow.

It overflowed. It ran out the corners of my lips and down my chin in long dirty strings and pooled in the hollow of my throat. Their cocks kept sliding against each other in the flood of it, slicking each other up with each other's cum, and I thought about the view from up there — two straight guys watching their dicks rub together and get coated in another man's spunk — and it nearly broke me.

The taste was awful. Pungent, salty, raw, cooked all morning in the heat and the dust of the armory apron. I swallowed twice and still had a mouthful.

My own climax tore out of me with a gag, a choked moan around both of them. Elias pulled out, staggering, flustered, wiping his wet cock on his wrist — which just gave Rourke the whole mouth. He pushed back in and sank down my throat with his spent, softening cock and held it there, hand rubbing slow circles in my hair, because this part was for me now. He's not selfish; he wanted to thank me for the mouth. I came all over the concrete between his boots with his cock buried in my throat, and the taste of his raunchy, unwashed length was like rocket fuel, extending it, dragging it out of me in pulses until my balls ached.

I stayed on my knees with my head tipped back, mouth full, my own cock still jerking in my fist, until the last drop went down. Then he pulled free and I fell backwards, skull landing on the rough blanket, chest heaving, legs shaking.

They stood over me with their chests going like bellows, dicks out, still dripping.

"Good job, soldier," Rourke said, smiling down at me.

And then nobody moved to put anything away.

That's how I knew it wasn't over. Rourke stood there in the hot gray light with his cock hanging out and his pants around his knees, breathing through his mouth, and he was looking at me the way a man looks at a meal he hasn't finished. Behind him Elias had his back against the far bunk, one hand still holding his own softening dick like he didn't know what else to do with it, foreskin rolled forward again over the wet head.

Rourke reached down and hauled me up by the arm, spun me around, and put me face-down over the edge of my own bunk. My feet found the floor, my chest hit the mattress, the springs groaned and bit into my sternum. My ass was up, my spent cock hanging, my thighs still wet.

"Stay," he said, and stepped away.

I heard him at his footlocker. The lid clanged. Then he was back, and his thumb — wet, cold with spit — was dragging down my crack and pressing at my hole, and I pushed back into it before I could think about it.

"Look at that," Rourke said, almost to himself. "Greedy."

He worked the spit around and in, two fingers, twisting, and I heard my own voice come out high and stupid. Behind me Elias had crept closer. I could hear him breathing.

"Come here," Rourke said to him. "Get under him. He's got a mouth, remember."

Elias dropped to the floor on his back, slid under the bunk ledge, and looked up at my face from six inches away, and then his mouth was on mine — clumsy, wet, all tongue and no rhythm, and tasting of his own load and mine. His hand came up and shoved two fingers in alongside his tongue and I sucked them.

Rourke lined up and pushed.

The head went in and my whole body locked. He was thick and I hadn't been fucked in three years and it burned like a hot spoon, and I made a sound straight into Elias's mouth that he swallowed. Rourke didn't pause. He sank in slow and steady and relentless until his hips were flat against my ass and that tangle of pubes was tickling my crack, and he just breathed there a second, letting me feel all of it.

"Jesus Christ," he said, wrecked. "Three years, and you're still tight as a fist. Nobody's been in here, huh."

"Nobody," I managed.

"Say it again."

"Nobody's been in me. Just you."

He pulled back to the head and slammed home, and the bunk jumped on its legs, and I screamed into the mattress. He set a pace that was pure punishment — long hard strokes, his balls slapping wet against mine, one hand fisted in the back of my shirt to hold me on his cock. The room was nothing but skin noise and the metal frame shrieking and the rain.

Elias got his hands under my chest and found my nipples and pinched, and then slid down and got his mouth around my cock, which had no business getting hard again that fast and did anyway, coming up thick and aching in his wet heat. His foreskin rolled over my head. He bobbed and swallowed and hummed, and Rourke drove into me above him, and I was caught between the two of them like meat in a press.

"Elias," Rourke grunted. "Get up here. Trade."

Elias slid out from under and stood, hard again, cock bobbing dark against his belly, and Rourke pulled out of me — the sudden empty ache of it — and pushed Elias down over the bunk next to me, shoulder to shoulder with me, and spat in his hand and put it to Elias's hole.

Elias's eyes went wide and fixed on mine, panicked, and I took his hand and held it.

"Breathe out," I told him. "All the way out. Don't fight it."

Rourke went in and Elias's grip on my fingers went white-knuckled, and the sound he made was thin and shocked and then, a second later, deep and grateful. Rourke took him the same way he'd taken me, and Elias pressed his forehead into the blanket and panted and pushed back, and pretty soon he was moaning steady and open-mouthed, learning in real time what he'd been missing.

Watching him get it was almost better than getting it. His ass was high and dark and shining, and Rourke's thick cock was stretching him wide and pulling little pink glimpses of him out with every stroke, and there was white spit froth around the base of it. Elias turned his face to me and kissed me again, messy, and whispered oh my God, oh my God into my mouth.

"Both of you," Rourke said, breathing hard. "Hands. Get each other off. I want to watch."

We did. Elias got me and I got him, our fists bumping, and it was graceless and frantic and perfect, both of us jerking and grunting into each other's necks while Rourke hammered Elias from behind.

Then Rourke pulled out, jerked himself twice, and came all over both of us — across Elias's lower back and over my ass and the small of my spine, hot and thick, and Elias felt it land and lost it, shooting over my knuckles and his own stomach with a broken cry. I was a stroke behind him, and Rourke shoved three fingers into Elias's sloppy hole just to feel him clench, and Elias sobbed into the blanket.

My second load came out thin and weak and endless, my whole body folding, knees giving.

Rourke stood back and looked at the three of us — the mess of it, the wet, the ruin — and dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth.

"Alright," he said, hoarse. "Alright."

We lay where we fell. Elias half on the floor, cheek on the concrete, one leg still hooked over the bunk rail. Rourke sitting on the opposite bunk with his elbows on his knees, cock still out, softening, shining. Me on my back on my own bunk with cum drying on my belly in the hot air and my hole still open and sore and my heart slowly coming back down.

The rain eased off to a hiss. Steam started coming off the concrete outside.

Nobody said anything for a long time. That's the thing about it over here — nobody narrates it. You don't say so are we gay now and you don't say that was the best I've had. You just get up eventually and get on with the day.

Elias broke first. He turned his head and looked at me, and he still had that stunned, wide-eyed kid look, except now there was something behind it. Something that had been opened.

"That's what it's like?" he said.

Rourke laughed, low, from across the room. "That's what it's like, kid."

Elias looked at me a second longer than he needed to. Then he got up, wobbly, and pulled his filthy pants back up over his wet ass.

Rourke stood, stretched until his spine popped, and tucked himself away. At the door he paused with his hand on the frame and looked back at me lying there in the ruin of my bunk.

"One month left," he said. "You're on chores tomorrow. But you're off again next week."

The door swung shut behind them and the hallway light went with it.

I didn't move for a while. Twenty-nine days, and I already knew exactly how I was going to spend every single one of my rotation days.