Grown Men (2011)

by Damon Suede

  Runt shook his head. “Nah. It’s nice out here.”

  Just a little longer now.

  Eventually they did extinguish the little fire and trek back home, where they fell into overfed sleep in under twenty seconds.

  In the small hours, after the smallest of three moons rose high and violet outside, Runt jerked awake. Stealthy movement had woken him: a tremor or a noise. At the door? No. A childhood spent on the street had taught him to track disturbances.

  Then something shook the bed again.

  At first he thought Ox was rubbing his head on the pillow in his sleep as he sometimes did, but then he recognized the furtive motion and smiled . . . Cracking one eye open and shifting his head slightly, Runt got confirmation in the indigo glow from the ceiling clock.

  Someone’s having a tug . . .

  Sure enough, Ox gripped his fat club in one meaty fist, quietly but steadily polishing his knob with the other palm. The foreskin had pulled back from the engorged head and the veins stood out along its length. He didn’t stroke the shaft or jerk his loose skin quickly, just continued a slow silent rub of the glans. His plump, tan scrotum was so tight that his nuts barely moved. He was obviously trying not to move too much or breathe too loudly. The musky seawater scent and whisper of friction filled the air. His heavy testes hugged the base as he strained patiently toward climax.

  Pretending to shift in his sleep, Runt rolled his head a little further so he could watch more easily. Natural curiosity and all.

  In the faint lights of the habitat instruments, Ox froze with a look at his bedmate. He opened his mouth to keep even his breath silent. The big man almost stopped moving, just tickling the small sensitive fold of foreskin under the moist crown, reflexively petting the nerves there with one calloused finger.

  He’s too close to stop.

  Runt stayed very still, waiting, waiting . . . Staring through his squint and keeping his breathing deep and slow as if dreaming still. He tried to feel offended or nervous that Ox was having a wank in their bed, but couldn’t manage it. He was happy mainly that Ox felt safe enough to find his pleasure this close.

  We’re guys. It’s natural.

  Ox’s towering stalk flexed in his fist and he held his breath, still watching Runt for any sign of waking.

  That thing . . . is a fucking fencepost.

  Runt tried to imagine the holo-porn career a guy could build lugging around that kind of meat. He wasn’t into men, but some part of him wanted to touch it, just once. To know how it felt to milk pleasure out of something that gigantic. Runt’s mouth filled with saliva and he swallowed. Very quietly.

  No. It’s a battering ram.

  Ox looked back at his heroic shaft. Barely moving now and patient as a mountain, he kept shucking his foreskin slowly and fully. Millimeter by millimeter, he exposed the engorged, ruddy head to that deliberate, punishing polish. The yeasty pheromones filled the sleep-space.

  They rewired his cock to smell so good.

  Runt swallowed again, watching through squinted eyes. He wished he was brave enough to roll onto his back, grease his hand and tug in tandem. He was so horny all the time and finding a place to have a toss was near impossible. They were friends, so surely it wasn’t a worry. Maybe this was Ox’s way of raising the subject.

  That thing’s gotta be hazardous to a woman’s health.

  He glanced at Ox’s face in the dark, the clamped eyes and the sweaty brow. Could he really get off from that little stimulation? Runt would have lost his marbles at that pace; he tended to yank his own meat hard and shout when he got there.

  But Ox seemed to know exactly how to get where he needed to go, teasing his pleasure to the surface like it was made of spun glass. Breath whistled between his clenched teeth as those bull balls tightened-tightened and his broad feet pushed into the bed to tip his pelvis.

  Sure enough, half a minute later Ox gave a soft huff of relief and his orgasm arced in the darkness.

  Runt couldn’t see the spray of semen, but he could smell the hot brine of it and the soft plip-thwip-plips as it spattered onto Ox’s hairy brawn. One stray drop hit Runt’s chest, but he didn’t move for fear of giving himself away. Odd’s Gods! He stayed frozen, letting the thick scalding droplet run down his ribs like melting wax. His own erection strained under the crumpled sheets.

  Slowly . . . slowly . . . Ox relaxed each of his muscles with grinding patience, settling his weight back into the foam so gradually that for all his heft he barely seemed to move.

  Runt realized there was no way Ox could clean up his load quietly.

  Is he gonna sleep in it? Shit. What if he rolls over on me covered in his splooge?

  But clever Ox had a solution. Not knowing that Runt was spying through slitted eyes, the spunk-slicked giant carefully and quietly and shamelessly scraped his juicy nut off his face and torso and bush and cleaned his fingers like a hulking, satisfied cat.

  By the time Ox had finished and began snoring lightly, Runt’s erection was a quivering spike that he was too nervous to touch.

  Conscious of the big warm beast a few centimeters away, Runt just rolled to press his face into his pillow and humped the sheets carefully until he began to doze off, praying he wouldn’t blow his load in his sleep.

  In the morning, Ox had beaten him out of bed again.

  By the time Runt rolled awake and stumbled naked toward the cook-space, Ox had begun preparing a quick breakfast of scrambled soy and seaweed. He wasn’t as skilled as Runt with the digi-wok, but nothing was more delicious than a breakfast you didn’t have to make.

  Watching in contented silence, Runt didn’t bother to cover his pisshard at the table and Ox didn’t joke about it. Likewise, Runt didn’t say anything about the small patch of dried semen on the side of Ox’s throat. Or his swollen cock.

  Checking on the food for an ETA, Runt took a whiff of his own pit and grimaced. The dark scrubby thatch on his head felt too long, three centimeters at least, enough to be hot.

  Ox bobbed his head, stir-frying sliced peppers and tofu in soy oil. He paused and held up ten fingers for ten minutes. Breakfast ready shortly.

  Runt nodded and jerked his chin toward the wash-space, “I have time to grab a rinse?” And a hard wank.

  Ox winked and raised one massive arm, smelled his own pit, and scowled.

  The tickle of hormone triggers ghosted over them both. He’d forgotten his anti-allergen dose.

  “And how!” Runt chuckled. “Tell you what, I scrub up after, so you can go do your own bits . . . yeah?”

  Of course, Runt’s knob pressed a wet coin of seminal fluid on his stretchy sleep shorts as he stood. Neither man looked down at it. Runt’s precum was old news by now.

  Ox seemed to prefer washing in the water under the little red sun. Something about the wide space and big sky, maybe? He bathed a couple of times a day, which seemed to help with the pheromones. So polite.

  Runt ducked into the wash-space and skinned out of his shorts as soon as the door shut. His cock bobbed in front of him, blind and adamant, reminding him about the pills. He spit-swallowed two to blunt the pheromonal itch. At least he hadn’t squirted in his sleep after spying on his partner’s stolen pleasure.

  Without a word spoken, they had crossed some kind of threshold in the night. Had Ox known he was awake? Again Runt wondered if Ox was trying to raise the subject of masturbation with his typical caution. Then again, maybe it had been on purpose.

  Grabbing the clippers, Runt ran them over his head haphazardly. He felt with his hands for any patches he might have missed and quickly buzzed his thick hair down to dark stubble.

  The glossy clippings covered the floor: dark seal brown even without being wet. Even two suns never managed to lighten his hair.

  Better.

  He looked at the ceiling and jets overhead snicked on; the hot cascade pelted his scalp and shoulders.

  He pumped a dollop of antibacterial lotion and lathered himself, trying to keep from getting distracted.

 
Get it over with and get on with the damn day.

  He pumped his shaft quickly, rushing himself to orgasm with mechanical urgency. After about forty-five seconds of tugging, his muscles bunched, his balls tightened, and semen drooled out of him in thick blobs.

  The climax felt more like blowing his nose than satisfaction. Nothing at all like the patient, perfect polish Ox had given himself last night.

  His cock stayed stiff. Runt licked his lips.

  Trying to stifle his unrelenting hormones, he made himself catalog the kill-kit in his mind, the blades and poisons HardCell had sent to retire some other employee. Nothing sexy there.

  Ox hadn’t used it, but someone else could, some idiot with the wrong idea. Dispatch might send an assassin in the next crate or any after to finish the job. Or Ox might change his mind at any minute.

  Doubt sprouts.

  Runt spat at the drain. As his ma used to say, “A man is just a life support system for assumptions.” And Runt knew he made the same mistakes as any man . . . Had done, except when his parents had died and he’d taken to the spaceport streets. In a crowd of villains, preconceptions were blood in the water. Assumptions cost too much. Better to keep your eyes open and your heart shut.

  Runt had been battling this planetoid alone, and bad habits had sprung up like weeds; he’d let himself stand still and soften up before Ox came. As dumb as the greenest spaceport tourist, ripe for the pluck.

  Except . . . No matter how many weapons Ox owned or retirements he’d executed, he’d demolished every one of Runt’s assumptions before they’d turned him into a stupid fossil on this rock at the ass end of the universe.

  The water stopped falling. Steam rolled in the small space.

  When did I get so stupid?

  As soon as the door swooshed open, Runt caught a whiff of sweet pepper and protein. Ox pointed him to his seat, his deep-set eyes flickering in confusion at something.

  What—?

  Runt sat down, only then realizing he was still naked. He had forgotten his worksuit. His months of starvation had changed how he treated hot food, no two ways. “Gonna wind up a better cook than me, huh?”

  Ox’s bronze face pinked and wrinkled at the compliment; he shook his head.

  They ate in satisfied silence. Ox tugged at his sleep shorts awkwardly and dipped his head to steal a surreptitious sniff at his pits.

  “C’mon! You don’t smell. Sheesh.”

  Ox finished and sat fidgeting, his plate still half full. No surprise there, he had to eat three times what Runt could.

  “Not like I smell so pretty after I’ve showered.” Runt snorted and mock-gagged.

  Ox scooped up another bite of scramble.

  Standing up, Runt returned his dirty dishes to the cabinet. As soon as he’d sealed it, the cleaners thwicked on and he could hear the hot solvent sterilizing them for later.

  Ox wolfed his breakfast.

  Runt knew he didn’t like to miss swimming under the red dwarf. He noticed that the giant’s hair had bleached almost gold in patches from working outdoors, though his chest and pubes stayed brownish.

  Probably getting hot.

  Runt went to fetch the clippers and stood in the wash-space doorway. “Oi, big boy!”

  Ox turned, chewing, his face open. He nodded, once. His pulse throbbed in his stubbled throat.

  “Wanna hack a couple centimeters off? Cool off some?” He pointed at Ox’s sun-streaked hair. “It’s getting too long to scratch properly.”

  Ox swallowed a mouthful of spicy soy and stood.

  Runt laughed and waved a hand to keep him seated. “Finish your feed. I just thought—”

  But Ox just wiped his hands on his bare thighs and lumbered to the auto-privy. As he passed Runt in the door, he patted Runt’s fresh dark stubble in approval and winked.

  High praise!

  Runt shook his head, chuckling.

  The shower space was snug for two naked full-grown men, so Ox knelt, his face as high as Runt’s chest and not far from it.

  Runt carded the sandy strands with his stubby, calloused fingers. “I’m not going to shave it. Fucking shame, really.”

  Ox cocked his oversized head and raised quizzical eyes to Runt.

  “Looks nice. This, I mean. The only gold we got out here.” Runt’s hands petted the soft gleam without thinking about it.

  The kneeling hulk closed his eyes and shook his head, once.

  Runt took his stroking hand away from Ox’s hair and looked at it like it belonged to some other man. “Last chance, knobjob.”

  The warm skull butted Runt’s chest with impatience, as if to say, “Get on with it.”

  Runt swallowed and realized his smooth chest was slick with sweat and his traitorous cock engorging in steady pulses. His skin sang. He stepped to the side so the damned thing wouldn’t nudge his overgrown partner. He started the clippers, and their drone filled the bathroom chamber.

  Tension melted from Ox’s muscles and he gave a quiet huff of pleasure. His head rolled forward and he was breathing deeply through his mouth as if hypnotized.

  He loves the hum.

  Runt brought the clippers to Ox’s temple and pressed firmly, shearing a stripe of hair free and leaving a stubbled wake. Sandy strands floated to the floor around them. As he worked, he traced the result with his hands, just to clear the blondish clippings. The handsome head felt like warm granite under his fingers. “Now . . . you really do look . . . like a big spokestar. We’ll have talent scouts . . . making offers.”

  Ox’s breath puffed against Runt’s arm, tickling.

  Gradually, Runt’s breath slowed until it mirrored the rise and fall of Ox’s chest. With painstaking attention, he cleaned one side of the chiseled skull and then the other.

  Ox grunted occasionally. He licked his parted lips, slowly, slowly . . . His eyes moved behind the lids like he was watching something in his trance.

  I wonder what.

  When Runt reached the golden crown, he hesitated. Without thinking, he dragged his bitten fingernails across Ox’s top with the slow scrape the giant seemed to crave. His whisper was hoarse when he finally asked, “Ox? Can I leave a little shine up here?”

  Ox’s face remained impassive as granite.

  Runt waited a moment then asked again gently, using the man’s given name for the first time. “Oks’ayn . . . ?”

  Between the buzzing clippers and the scrape of nails across his scalp, Ox needed a second before he answered with a woozy shrug. He couldn’t even open his eyes to smile.

  On the thick neck, Runt saw the streak of dried semen that Ox had missed in his wee-hour cat-bath. Runt’s stiff shaft finally forced him to stand back and step behind his friend. His mouth filled with saliva.

  He was designed to be desirable. That’s all. Grown that way.

  Ox’s head rolled as Runt stroked him, the stubbled jaw almost scraping Runt’s skin. The pink tongue snuck out to wet his lip.

  We’ll have a hot shower, and then I can shave his face too.

  The bathroom seemed to shrink and warm around them. Ox’s shorn hair was all over the floor like soft wheat, and his giant penis had started to chub awake as well.

  Stop!

  Runt stepped away, breaking his own trance. “That fluff’ll irritate your skin. You ought to rinse off. Go grab a quick swim as well, yeah?”

  Because I have to jerk off again.

  Ox stood and seemed like he was about to say something, to ask something, but of course that was impossible. Runt turned his back and pretended to busy himself washing the clipped hairs off in the sink.

  What do I know?

  It wasn’t until he heard Ox go out the front door that he allowed himself to turn around and shut the door of the wash-space. Without even thinking, he knelt on the floor in Ox’s trimmings and pumped out another quick load, filling his lungs with his own itchy, delicious scent.

  All that day, Runt could feel Ox stealing sideways glances as they worked shoulder to shoulder on the new greenhouse
and then again while they released a massive litter of squirmy eel pups into the cove. In the six weeks since Ox had arrived, the pups had darkened from glassy ribbons to silvery ropes.

  So much time.

  Ox stayed right beside him during each job they tackled.

  Consequently, Runt never found a chance to sneak away to pull out the next urgent load. The need to ejaculate kept his senses on edge. He kept tugging at his sweaty crotch and couldn’t stop himself; it felt too fucking good.

  Ox didn’t joke about that either.

  Luck’s fuckery, eh?

  Ox looked better for the grooming, and the gold hair left on top gleamed in the tropical suns. All morning he rubbed his scalp in unsecret pleasure, grinning at Runt and tapping his skull when their eyes met.

  It does feel better.

  Midmorning, a flock of six plasma barnstormers cut across the western sky: wide oyster-grey triangles moving so fast they tore the air.

  Plankton bombing? Yeah.

  After wiring the new pigsty, the two cofarmers were returning a spool of data-cable to the shed fifty meters up the slope from the beach.

  The scream of the engines made them both turn, but Ox froze and blanched.

  There!

  The six aircraft carved foamy stripes in the ocean wrinkling 200 meters beneath them.

  “It’s okay. Excellent even. We love plankton.” Runt gave him a thumbs up and a nod. He raised his voice a little above the intrusive whine. “The good guys.”

  Ox didn’t even finish putting away the materials. Totally unlike him. The giant jogged to the shore, turning and raking the full horizon with guard-dog eyes.

  For one second, Runt remembered the murder box welded into the wall of the hive. And just as immediately, he stopped himself. Those weapons had nothing to do with their life here.

  Ox pivoted to watch the aircraft streak past, tracking long pale claw marks across the horizon.

  In the barnstormers’s wake, Runt could see the jelly spheres fall from the sky like enormous quivering emeralds. The nine-meter blobs plummeted to the ocean floor before bursting, scattering designer phytoplankton and zooplankton across the seabed.

  Runt nodded to reassure him. “When I was here solo, I used to look forward to the bombers because it meant other people lived here too. Stupid. But I grew up in crowds, and this place got—”