Jude and Cal

by Jessie Pinkham

If it weren’t for the gravity difference, Jude would’ve gone back out right then, but repeated switches in gravity could really screw with a person’s body. “So we’re going to be stuck in here.”

  “You mean you’re tired of my charming company? I’m wounded.”

  Jude wasn’t tired of Cal’s company. Actually, he was getting a little too fond of it, which was a completely different problem to which he definitely didn’t want to call attention, so he asked, “How am I supposed to find us a bonus lode when we’re too low for orbital scans and too trapped for hand scans?”

  “A valid point. Still, nothing we can do except make the best of it.”

  Neither of them mentioned the dagger over their heads, which was the possibility that their food would run out before rescue arrived. For his part, Jude tried his very best not to think about that worst-case scenario. Not like he could do anything about it, anyway, besides check the transmitter every few hours like he was already doing.

  Being helpless really sucked.

  Chapter 3

  Cal had never been in a snowstorm before. He’d seen snow on multiple unnamed planets, but in these cases, it had been on the ground already. Now here was all this snow and still no opportunity to go sledding, dammit.

  At least he’d gotten to build a snowman, even if it was by no stretch of the imagination a great snowman. The snow on this planet was a fine powder which, as Jude had predicted, didn’t stick together at all, meaning the snowman had to be constructed out of the snow boulders which were a result of their landing.

  He watched the live view from the outside camera with interest as flakes started to float down from the sky. “You wanna go outside for a few minutes?”

  Jude gave a pointed look. “Do I want to suit up, let out half our heat, then come back in after a few minutes and deal with the gravity difference?”

  He was right. Cal knew it didn’t make sense, he just wanted to experience a snowstorm as personally as possible, though it admittedly wouldn’t be the same in an environmental suit. “Okay, okay, we can be reasonable.”

  Jude was big on being reasonable, maybe more than was ideal. Cal liked the guy but thought he could loosen up a bit from time to time. This wasn’t only because Cal had some fun ideas on how he could help (most of which involved blowjobs), though that certainly played a part.

  So far Cal had kept these fun ideas to himself. If Jude had given even a hint that he might have similar interests—and really, hadn’t liking the same gay porn star been a perfect opening?—he might have made a casual suggestion, the kind which could be passed off as a joke with minimal fallout. This had yet to happen, and Cal was starting to think it never would.

  It was a pity. Jude was striking to look at and had a kind of quiet intensity which Cal found very attractive. He was a good guy, easily the best mining partner Cal had been paired with, and all of this had come together to form interest which extended beyond the purely sexual.

  Well, a man couldn’t get everything he wanted in life, as Cal was acutely aware. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known this truism. He’d longed for a dad, but his mom didn’t know who his was and none of her revolving fucking partners wanted to stick around long enough to take on the role. He’d wanted a mom who cared about him more than hooking up and getting high, but that hadn’t happened either.

  Cal counted exactly two things in his life which had gone the way he wished. One, he had a grandmother who’d stepped in to raise him when his own mother couldn’t be bothered, and who had lived to see him graduate from the local college and start his own life. Two, he’d taken his degree and gotten the hell out of Dodge. So, considering his luck, it would probably be too much to hope for a third wish to be granted any time soon.

  It could’ve been worse, anyway. He had a decent job with an agreeable coworker, his savings account was going to be very healthy when he eventually went back to Earth, and his mom had finally gotten the message that he wasn’t about to underwrite her drug habit by sending money on demand.

  Now he was getting some personal experience with snow, and if going outside in the storm didn’t make sense, he was at least going to watch it on the screen. Not the same, of course. It really was a shame about the frigid temperatures and low oxygen, or he’d have skipped the suit and gone out, gravity be damned.

  “Too bad we’re not allowed to bring alcohol with us,” said Jude. “I could go for a beer or two.”

  The company prohibited booze out of an understandable fear that people would get smashed and consequently negligent. This ban had never bothered Cal in the least. He’d seen his mom high plenty enough to know that mind-altering substances weren’t for him. And maybe he was slightly worried that addiction could be inherited, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world not to go out and get drunk.

  “Makes no difference to me,” he said. “I don’t drink.”

  He rarely mentioned this because the ensuring teasing got old. By now he figured he knew Jude well enough to expect the teasing would be lighthearted, if it came, and he could handle that much.

  “At all? What did you do to prove you were an adult once you got to college?” Jude injected a fair bit of levity and a touch of sarcasm into his voice, proving he knew that getting wasted didn’t really indicate any kind of maturity. Quite the opposite.

  In college Cal had studied so he could have a better life. He didn’t really start to loosen up until later, though his senior year he’d made a happy discovery by chance. “I learned that if you drink water, you have more cash to tip the strippers, and then they’ll face you when they dance.”

  Jude gave him surprised little smirk. “Damn. Wish I’d have thought of that when I was nineteen.”

  “It’s especially nice when it involves boobs jiggling in your face.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Jude. “I couldn’t care less about breasts.”

  “I’m equal opportunity that way,” replied Cal, who’d never seen a point in restricting himself to a particular gender preference. “It’s all hot.”

  “I once got dragged to a club with female strippers in the name of trying to cheer up a friend who’d been dumped. In the end, I got the bouncer’s number, and he was fun, so the trip wasn’t a complete waste, but I doubt the place had ever seen a less interested guest, or for that matter has since.”

  “Too bad. Strip joints should be appreciated.”

  “I appreciate them plenty when the strippers are male,” Jude said.

  “Those are good, too. Not like it matters out here.” Though, again, they could be having a hell of a lot of fun without any need for strippers, other than doing the job themselves.

  It was obviously past time for Cal to get laid. Good thing they were doing a supply run soon. A random hookup wasn’t his first choice—that would be Jude—but it would be an improvement on solo sex.

  “No beer, no strippers. And then Alston wonders why their new recruits don’t stick around.” Jude shook his head. “They’ve got to stop targeting young people.”

  “You say that like you’re not young.”

  “Just wait until thirty is lurking around the corner,” said Jude. “Those twenty-one-year-olds are like babies.”

  Cal had always thought they were, probably because he’d been forced to grow up when his mom wasn’t around and his grandmother’s health went downhill. At twenty-five, he was finally starting to feel that he was more or less on the same wavelength as his age cohort.

  Not one to get into such a topic, he replied, “Or they’re just dumbasses.”

  Jude was quick to agree. “Some of them undoubtedly are.”

  Outside, the snowflakes picked up speed. Cal wondered what it would feel like for them to land on his skin, other than cold, which he imagined was part of the experience.

  “Enjoying the scenery?” asked Jude. “Sometimes I forget how pretty snowfall is.”

  “You take it for granted?” Cal had a hard time envisioning that, though he supposed it could happen as easil
y as anything else a person took for granted, like getting coconuts from palm trees.

  “When I was a kid, snow was exciting and we’d play in it. Then you get to be older and it’s a hassle, you’re thinking how much the snow removal is going to be over the city’s budget again this year, and the driving is a mess. The magic fades.”

  “I can’t say the tax burden had occurred to me.”

  “There isn’t one here,” said Jude. “No roads to be hazardous, either.”

  They watched in companionable silence for a couple minutes. It was like being inside a snow globe, the way Cal had always imagined, and he really wished he could go outside without a suit. As views went, it was very serene. No wonder poets went to town with this stuff.

  He was the first to speak again. “This looks like more fine snow, the kind that’s already out there.”

  “If you’re hoping for better snowman material, you’re out of luck. The temperature is too low.”

  “Not looking good for the snowball fight, then.”

  “I’d pummel you,” said Jude with complete and very sexy confidence. “I have years of experience.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still kicking your ass in chess, so I can handle losing a snowball fight.”

  Jude was a terrible chess player. He never thought ahead enough for anything more than a purely reactive strategy, and though he was slowly getting better, he was a long way from besting Cal. For his part, Cal had joined his school’s chess club when he was fourteen because he had a thing for the group’s leader, and while the romance had been a complete nonstarter, he’d discovered a liking for chess. He currently played the computer for a more challenging opponent.

  “I’ll win at chess one of these days.”

  Cal thought days was an awfully optimistic timeframe. Months, maybe.

  “Anyway, if the computer’s predictions are remotely accurate, this storm is going to last a while,” said Jude.

  “Last I checked, it was still at low confidence.” He was talking about the prediction accuracy scale, even though it sounded like he thought the computer had self-esteem issues.

  “It’s moved up to medium-low, and a storm duration of thirty-six to forty-six hours.”

  “No sample collecting for a while, then.” Pity about that. If nothing else, picking up rocks gave them something to do.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Jude, checking the transmitter again. He’d been doing that every hour since they landed, except when he slept. The SOS signal was their only hope for rescue, not to mention survival in this brutal climate, making the transmitter crucial.

  Cal didn’t want to think about the possibility of dying on this godforsaken planet, so he turned his attention back out to the snow. “You know, it’s pretty and all, but I have a hard time seeing how people voluntarily live in frigid climates.”

  “Nobody lives in a climate this frigid,” said Jude. “Maybe a cold snap in the Arctic gets close, but this makes Martian winters look positively balmy.”

  “Okay, but the places that get close qualify. When people were migrating around Earth, wouldn’t that seem like a bad choice?”

  Obviously, ancient humans lacked options like terraforming, which anyway still had a lot of kinks to be worked out, as all that snow on Mars attested. Cal nevertheless wondered how someone looked around Arctic latitudes and thought it would do. The people in these cases must have seriously hated their neighbors or been positively starving.

  “Gradual migration,” said Jude. “It happened over generations, so the changes weren’t stark as people slowly moved further north.”

  “You’d think at some point, they would’ve gotten fed up.”

  “I’d rather be cold than hot.”

  Cal shook his head. “You and I are very different people.”

  * * * *

  As it turned out, there was only so long Cal could watch snow fall before getting bored. He looked at the visual feed often while winning another game of chess, because the snow was pretty and novel, but he needed a bit more stimulation to stave off boredom.

  He was due for a workout, so once he’d taken Jude’s king, he went over to what passed for a gym. It consisted of the galaxy’s smallest treadmill built into the floor, four different weight machines set in the walls, and a collection of resistance bands with which Cal liked to get creative.

  None of this made for a particularly exciting workout, but Cal wanted to keep himself in shape, so he utilized the gym daily in as many configurations as he could dream up. So did Jude, who was a calisthenics aficionado capable of one-armed pushups.

  As usual, he followed his workout with a shower, and that was the part of his day where he most missed conveniences back on Earth. Sure, the food could get boring, but Cal was a lousy cook anyway. The limited entertainment options were countered by getting to see new places humans had never reached plus getting to fly a sweet ship, and while his social life didn’t really exist, he was saving up a lot of money so he could buy his own place one day. There were compensations for survey life.

  Showers, though, plain sucked. He got restricted flow water for ninety seconds, then had to cool his heels for two minutes waiting for his water to be filtered before he could rinse off for another ninety seconds. It was also weird to think that the ship ejected little pebbles of dirt and skin into space when he was done.

  He was looking forward to a real shower when they made their supply run. Most stations allowed for seven or eight uninterrupted minutes of water flow, positively luxurious compared to Cal’s norm.

  Following his usual efficient if not enjoyable shower, he shaved, pulled on underwear and pants, and then went to the bedroom area for his shirt, the same as he did every day. It was all very routine, until he turned around, shirt in hand, and saw the frankly appreciative glance Jude wasn’t quite fast enough to hide.

  The look was a game changer, even if Jude promptly buried himself in his latest book. Cal wasn’t about to waste this golden opportunity.

  Leaving the shirt off, he said, “Hey, if you want to ogle me, go right ahead.”

  Jude’s ears got pink in a way Cal had never seen, and for a long minute the other man didn’t reply. At last he said, “So this isn’t going to be some workplace sexual harassment fiasco?”

  “It’s not harassment if it’s welcome.”

  Jude set down his tablet and allowed his gaze to land once more on Cal’s torso. “I do appreciate a nicely formed chest.”

  It was good to know all his working out paid off. “Well, you can appreciate it from over there if you want, but I vote you come get up close and personal. Reciprocal nudity is strongly preferred.”

  Jude grinned and pulled his own shirt over his head. “How about reciprocal blowjobs?”

  Cal’s cock stirred at the suggestion. “Oh yeah. I’m completely on board there.”

  They crashed together at a speed suggesting the whole encounter was going to be quick. There would be other opportunities for more leisurely sex, so fast and dirty worked just fine for Cal, especially with the way Jude was pawing his ass. That elicited a great deal of interest from Cal’s dick.

  They really should’ve been doing this sooner.

  Jude kept his hands on Cal’s ass while mouthing the spot where Cal’s neck and shoulder met. Not to be outdone, Cal trailed the fingers of his left hand up and down Jude’s spine while cupping his ass with the other hand, drawing their groins closer.

  Groins meeting meant grinding, and Cal groaned at the contact. No, this wasn’t going to last long, and he couldn’t have cared less.

  “Someone’s eager,” said Jude, as if he wasn’t equally hard.

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “It doesn’t, but you happen to be right.” With that, Jude pushed them down onto Cal’s bed, himself on top and Cal flat on his back. This was a truly excellent position for grinding, and he took full advantage. He also set to work appreciating Cal’s chest with his hands, though as far as Cal was concerned, that was nowhere near as much
fun as rubbing their dicks together.

  Even that, however, could be improved. “Pants have got to go,” declared Cal. They removed the offending garments with no regard for finesse, ridding themselves of underwear at the same time.

  Cal’s dick was happy to be free, and also really liked what he saw. Jude’s dick popped free of his underwear, showing off a little curve and a nice prominent vein underneath, not to mention a delightfully heavy set of balls.

  “Better,” he said.

  “Pfft, that’s not better. This is better.” With that, Jude bumped his dick up against Cal’s.

  “Oh fuck yes.” Cal rarely got off from frottage, but it was great fun nonetheless, and his dick, having not touched any other body than his own in quite some time, heartily approved.

  Jude teased his nipples and got no reaction. Cal sometimes thought his nipples missed out on nerves altogether, whereas caressing Jude’s got a nice little shiver out of him. This was good to know and could be very enjoyable in the future.

  Not as enjoyable as naked grinding, though, and Cal wasn’t the only one loving it, because Jude’s breathing had gotten heavy and a few little grunts slipped out. Cal liked a verbal sex partner, so this really worked for him.

  The sudden stop was therefore a disappointment. “Getting too close,” said Jude.

  Cal filed this information away for future use. It could be really hot to make Jude come just by grinding on him.

  “Now, about those reciprocal blowjobs.” Jude slid down, getting in position. “I say we get to work.” That said, he started mouthing Cal’s sac.

  “Oh yeah. Totally with you there.”

  “Mm-hmm. Looks that way.”

  “If you’re talking, you’re doing the blowjob wrong.”

  Jude arched one eyebrow and set to work proving just how well he could suck cock, which was very excellently indeed. He started by popping the head of Cal’s dick in his mouth and sucking while applying some nimble tongue work.

  Cal let out an approving groan. “Oh yeah.”

  From there, Jude started taking more length into his mouth and going for the classic up-and-down motion, complete with ball fondling, which was always a nice touch.