“Oh dear God,” Reg breathed, lost in the sensations of their warm, wet mouths on his chest and belly and their hard, velvety cocks sliding against his. He’d wanted to fuck Frolic, fuck him hard, but….
“I can’t last. I’m going to…. Oh God!”
“It’s all right,” Querry said, wrapping his hand around all three of their cocks and pressing them tight together. “You need this, and I love you. Come for me.”
Reg threw his head back and screwed his eyes shut as Frolic laid his hand over Querry’s, increasing the pressure on their dicks. Lifting his hips, Reg thrust into the tight tunnel their fingers formed and felt their flesh catch against his own. Then he reached down and draped his hand over theirs, feeling the bumps of their knuckles before moving up to feel all three of their hot, hard, wet cockheads crushed against each other. He fondled the tips, spreading his and Querry’s seed liberally over them all. As he continued to caress their slits and ridges, Querry and Frolic moved their hands to the bases and back up, jacking them with quick, urgent strokes.
Frolic dropped his mouth to Reg’s nipple and encircled the rigid flesh with his hot tongue, while Querry kissed Reg and grabbed his balls, squeezing them rhythmically within his unoccupied fist.
“Go on, love,” Querry said against his lips. “Show me how much you love me.”
Frolic lifted his head, and his golden eyes caught and held Reg’s gaze. “Yes, Reggie. I want to know I make you happy.”
“Happy? God… I’m the luckiest man in the world…. Oh, yes. Grab me just like that. Your hands on me are all I need. Please… kiss me. Please, my loves.”
Both of them descended on his mouth, and their three tongues twined together. All of them thrust hard, seeking their releases, finding it difficult to stay in each other’s rhythm. None of them could really move freely with their pants barely to their knees. For Reg, it hardly mattered. The feeling of the men he loved on top of him, close against him, and kissing him while they held his cock next to theirs drove him over the edge he’d been trying to skirt. He plummeted into his release, screaming their names and slamming his head against the floor. He felt like he’d be shredded into ribbons as he shot his seed over Querry and Frolic’s hands and his own stomach. Querry and Frolic held him together, gripping his cock tightly and joining their bodies. Their solid flesh against his grounded Reg until his ecstasy subsided, and he felt the floor beneath him again.
Querry and Frolic kissed an inch from his chin, and Querry’s free hand massaged Frolic’s ass and the back of his thigh. Frolic shivered with the aftershocks of however many orgasms he’d enjoyed. Sometimes it was hard to tell without any physical evidence. Reg realized Querry had come all over his belly and chest, and his semen coated the sparse hair up the center of Reg’s stomach and chest. The smell made Reg’s spent dick skip. He dipped a fingertip into the drying liquid and brought it to his mouth.
“I miss sucking your cock,” he said to Querry.
“I can remedy that for you very easily, love,” Querry said with a chuckle. “Anytime, truly.”
“Look at the mess we’ve made,” Reg said, raking his fingers through Frolic’s hair. “We didn’t even manage to undress properly. I… I’m afraid I’ve embarrassed myself. I didn’t even last five minutes.”
Querry turned on his side and nestled down against Reg’s chest. Reg snaked an arm around his back and pulled him closer. “You were so excited, Reggie. Seeing you like that, seeing you like that because of us…. Well, you saw what it did to me. I’m glad you still have so much passion for me. That we all have so much passion for each other. Besides, it might have been quick, but it was good. It’s always good.”
Frolic wriggled closer, reached across Reg’s chest despite the mess, knit his fingers with Querry’s, pecked along Reg’s jawline, and then said, “We’ll always be like this, won’t we?”
Reg couldn’t answer. Frolic would never change, but he and Querry would. He couldn’t help but wonder how Frolic would feel when their beauty faded. He didn’t worry Frolic would abandon them; Frolic wasn’t so shallow or disloyal, but his physical attraction might wane. What would happen to him when they were gone? He squeezed his lovers harder, as if he could prevent them being taken from him, as if he could stand against mortality and the passage of time. Of course he knew he couldn’t; Querry was the one to fight such impossible odds. Some part of Reg still believed Querry, if anyone, could defeat anything.
“Reggie?”
“I can promise I’ll always love you,” Reg said. “Both of you.”
Why was he thinking such morbid thoughts? They were only in their twenties, for God’s sake. They had decades before them. Still, holding them now, feeling them stir against him and hearing the sound of their satisfied breathing, he wanted more. He wanted centuries, millennia, an eternity with these men. After everything he’d experienced, he still expected life to take them away. He felt like it was only a matter of time, and it terrified him.
Querry chuckled against his chest, pulling Reg out of the dark place he’d gone. “It’s funny. You know, beauty, when Reg and I were just boys, we’d lay awake after our day of work in the factory and talk about running away and going off to exotic places on a ship. Remember, Reggie?”
Reg couldn’t help but smile as he recalled feeling safe within Querry’s lank limbs despite the danger and misery surrounding them. Their dream had felt close enough to touch, until growing up stole it away. Until now, Reg thought. “I suppose we did it. Here we are. I guess there’s absolutely no stopping you when you want something, no matter how impossible it seems. You simply won’t relent until you make it happen.”
“If I’ve learned anything about this life, it’s that you have to fight for everything. Take it. No one is ever going to give it to you.”
“That’s not true,” Frolic said softly. “I didn’t have to fight for either of you. All I had to do was ask, and you loved me and took care of me.”
Reg couldn’t bear to remind him of everything they’d battled against to remain free and together. Thankfully Querry didn’t say it either. It was too lovely a sentiment to crush. They lay in silence for probably half an hour, gratified just to be together, even half-dressed and filthy as they were, even on a greasy metal floor.
“Do you think I can read over Tom’s contract?” Frolic asked, shaking Reg out of his contented languor.
He’d completely overlooked the ill-gotten fruits of his adventure. His lovers sat up so he could move freely. He reached down and fished the crinkled copies from his trouser pocket. Reg supposed he’d rested long enough and should probably start studying Querry and Frolic’s agreement. With a disgusted but amused grunt, he tried to brush the dry, flaky semen from his chest and torso before pulling up his trousers. In the heat of the cabin, he didn’t bother buttoning his shirt. He and Frolic leaned back against the bunks and spread the papers across their laps. The verbose and meandering language instantly made his head ache. Something pressed against his palm, and he saw Querry smiling down at him as he pressed Reg’s spectacles into his hand. Querry’s blackened eye had swollen almost completely shut, his iris a cobalt slash in the bruised flesh. He watched both of them with clear adulation tinged with a trace of apology.
“I’ll go see if I can find some coffee,” Querry said. “Maybe some soap and water.” He kissed each of them on the forehead before departing.
The door closed softly, and Frolic gasped. “I knew it! I can help Tom! I think this contract is talking about me.”
Though he’d anticipated Frolic’s reaction, it still struck Reg like a kick to the stomach.
Chapter 12
FROLIC, EXCITED to continue his work with Cornelia, hurried into the workshop. When he didn’t see the tinkerer leaning over her bench, he picked his way around the partially completed projects they’d been experimenting with to the large door at the back of the room. The way their voyage had been going, Frolic needed some distraction. Storms assailed them almost daily. Essential parts of the sh
ip broke or stopped functioning inexplicably. The sailors’ instruments went missing. The ship’s captain claimed ocean currents he’d sailed for decades had somehow changed course, or disappeared altogether. When they needed wind, the air stood as still and stale as the atmosphere within a tomb. Other times, it battered the vessel and threatened to capsize it. The crew suffered violent shifts in mood, sometimes so jolly and indolent they couldn’t attend to their tasks, and at each other’s throats moments later. All the while, Frolic heard the voices of the sky and sea begging them to turn back, swearing to stop them if they persisted. Both Reg and Querry had been on edge, and it made the last several weeks feel like half a year to Frolic.
Frolic entered the huge, empty part of the hold he and Corny had been given to work on their latest creation. Both gaslights and oil-burning lanterns hung from the walls. The light they cast fluctuated with the rocking of the ship, making Frolic doubt the solidity of the floor as he approached the large, rectangular construct that dwarfed even Cornelia.
At the sound of Frolic’s boots echoing through the empty chamber, Corny stood and waved. The blue flame of the gas-powered torch she held went out with a soft whoosh, and she removed the metal mask from her head. With a wide smile, she waved Frolic over, and he hurried to see what had her in such high spirits.
As had become her habit, she set her tools down and clutched both of Frolic’s hands before kissing him on top of his head. “Finally arrived, then,” she said. “And not a moment too soon. I think she’s almost ready, but I need your help to align some of the more delicate gears in the steering mechanism and regulate the fuel output. If we can’t adjust it somehow, we’ll find ourselves on the moon, I’m afraid.”
“The moon talks in poetry. It’s so pure and lonely,” Frolic said.
She pushed playfully at his shoulder. “Enough of that. You know it gives me the shivers when you talk about that faerie stuff.”
“I’m sorry. I really want you to like me.” Frolic cursed himself for not having learned which of his thoughts to speak aloud and which to hold inside.
Corny threw her arm across his shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “Ah, Frolic, you know I love ya. Now, come see. I’m pretty pleased with the modifications I’ve done to the wings.”
With her arm still around him, she guided him beneath one of the bat-like appendages. He looked up at the spines of the wings, which seemed much less angular and stiff than they had two days ago. Corny had added complex ball and socket joints at several places and multifaceted clockwork joints at others. They would afford the construct a much greater and more subtle range of motion. Above them, sheets of a brass alloy, so thin the light glowed through it, stretched across the framework. It rippled slightly when Corny went inside the vessel and adjusted some gauges, demonstrating how smoothly the wings lifted, stretched, angled back, and curled close to the ship.
Frolic gave a little hop and clapped his hands. “Oh, how wonderful, Corny! You reduced the choppiness of the movements and increased the, um, they can move in so many more directions now, and faster, I’ll bet.”
“You’d win that bet, mate. The new, smaller gears react much quicker to the controls. You’d think, at first, turning more gears would take longer than turning less, but it turns out the opposite is true, so long as everything is in balance. That way, the larger gears don’t work so hard, and the load is more evenly distributed. Er, you know what I mean.”
Frolic giggled and patted her arm. Both of them understood machines inside and out, knew the workings of their tiniest components, yet neither of them could properly articulate that knowledge to another. Fortunately, with each other, they felt no need. The steam conduits, engines, and gears spoke for themselves in a sort of beautiful, simplistic language. Unlike human words, nothing could be misunderstood. Nothing relied upon the listener’s perceptions or prior experiences; clockwork existed and functioned without the need for interpretation. It expressed a single meaning, unlike all the other voices Frolic heard and struggled to comprehend.
“You’ve segmented the spines,” Frolic said. “That was a brilliant idea. How did you come up with it?”
Corny removed her thick, leather gloves and shoved them into a pocket on her equally sturdy apron. “Well, I suppose I came up with them because of you. Ever since I met you, I’ve looked at machines in a different way. Nature knows best, it seems, and machines fashioned after living beings are much more efficient. I’ve been trying to make my clockworks more organic, make them move more like people and animals. It’s proved a huge asset to my work. You know, Frolic, I designed the wings of this airship almost exactly after the little toy bird you brought me. I’ve never seen anything mechanical move so smoothly. Except for you, of course. So, I took a good close look at the way you’d constructed the wings, and pretty much just duplicated them. I’ve learned so much from the way you create your joints. I mean, one set of gears just doesn’t do the job, does it?”
“Did you get my bird to fly?” Frolic asked. It sat on a stack of wooden crates a few dozen feet away, nothing more than a glimmer in the vast, brightly lit room.
Her face scrunched up in a wide grin. “Sure did, love.”
She clasped his hand and led him toward his creation. “You just needed an energy source. The airship gave me the idea. See, unlike the airship you described to me, the one your friend built, ours doesn’t rely on balloons of hot air to keep it afloat. Ours burns from the bottom, and while the heat helps to keep it in the sky, it’s mostly used to keep the gears turning. Watch.”
Corny wound Frolic’s bird. It flapped its wings, and a few sparks shot from its beak and tail feathers. Then, to Frolic’s astonishment and delight, it lifted off the crates and circled the large room three times before setting down again.
“How?”
“Well, the body is fairly hollow, so there was plenty of room to fit a small fuel source. I chose lamp oil, just because we have plenty onboard. It doesn’t need much, just enough for the heat to lift the bird off the ground until the gears can get going. Then I outfitted it to keep them turning. I really think engines powered by burning fuel will be the rage one day. As long as the source doesn’t run out, or is replenished, your bird could just about fly forever.” As if to prove her words, Frolic’s little avian fluttered up from its roost and came to perch on her shoulder.
“I don’t like the idea of my toys depending on fuel,” Frolic said. “Still, I’m quite impressed by what you’ve done. I spent months trying to figure out how to get it into the air.”
The clockwork bird swiped a wing over its face before nesting down amidst the fabric and leather cover of Corny’s shoulder. It blinked its eyes sleepily and lowered its head to its breast. She ran a thick finger down its back and over its small head. It nestled down as if contented. “I don’t know, Frolic. Everything needs fuel. For us its food and sleep. For you, magic and heat and air. Don’t really understand all that, truth be told. Machines need energy to operate, though, even the simplest of them. By winding a clockwork, aren’t you giving it some of your energy? Wouldn’t it be better if it had its own source?”
“Well, I suppose—”
“Lamp oil isn’t going to cut it for our ship, though. After all, it has to be large enough to carry the entire expedition and all our supplies. Gas is expensive, but if we can get a hold of a few more tanks when we make port, I think we’ll have enough to fly to our destination. It will shave weeks off this entire journey if we don’t have to trek through the jungle. I understand there aren’t even any roads. With this old girl, we won’t have to worry about it, though. Lord Starling couldn’t be happier.”
“I can’t wait to get her into the air.” Frolic stepped back to look at what they’d managed to make in only a few weeks. They’d really accomplished something amazing, he thought. The airship he’d used as inspiration, the one built by Querry’s friend, Dink, back in Halcyon, had more resembled a traditional carriage made from glass, wood, and polished brass. Theirs wasn’t quite as pre
tty, made mostly from sheets of metal riveted together with only a row of small, square windows along each side and a larger one along the front. It shared the bat-like wings Dink had designed, and which allowed it, he hoped, the same maneuverability as the original. Instead of balloons floating above the passenger compartment, he and Corny had designed long, narrow bladders beneath the hull, which would fill with a mix of hot air and a recently discovered gas which was even lighter. Highlium, he thought he’d heard Corny call it. Apparently she’d learned the formula from a tinkerer onboard a pirate ship, of all places. Their ship also had a trio of gas furnaces along the back and another set beneath them to propel it up and forward.
Corny stroked the steel frame of the open door fondly. “Not bad, considering we weren’t planning on making her and did so from mostly scrap. Still, I wish we had a few more weeks.”
“Well, we don’t. I heard some of the sailors say we’d be arriving within a day, at most. Should we get to work? Tell me what needs done first.”
He followed her inside the ship to the helm. Both of them knelt down in front of the brass column beneath the helm. Cornelia pulled a metal toolbox across the floor, chose a screwdriver, and removed the casing to expose the gears within. They spent the next several hours refitting the clockwork within, as well as inside the conduits leading to the wings and rudders, making sure they all worked together in perfect synchronicity.
A rumbling sound distracted Frolic from his work. He looked up from the tip of one of the wings to Corny holding her stomach. Since he’d finished anyway, he stood up and tucked the wire-thin wrench he’d been using behind his ear, worried she might be feeling sick.
She smiled at him as she stashed her own tools in her apron pockets. A streak of black grease stretched from Corny’s left cheek to the corner of her mouth. “Ah, Frolic. As much as I love this work, I don’t enjoy missing a meal, obviously. We’ve come further than I could have hoped, so what do you say we stop for a bite and a spot of tea? My eyes are going crossed looking at gears, anyway.”
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