Men of Steel

by Ryan Loveless

  Boots leapt to safety. Bulldog prepared to do the same. Unfortunately, before he could, a huge beam from overhead came crashing down.

  THE doctors at the secret lair that housed the League of Protection were cautiously optimistic. The little man’s injuries were extensive. He’d been burned over much of his face and torso, and was in a medically-induced coma because of the pain. The Wallace family would work hard to get over the emotional scars left by losing its home and treasures. Bulldog’s scars, on the outside, if he survived, would most likely be permanent. And while Kylie and Tommy’s family thanked their guardian angels for saving their lives, the one who truly deserved the credit went un-lauded. Such was often a secret superhero’s fate.

  He was a cut-up; Bulldog was—super-friendly, always with a joke and clever with his words.

  “What I wouldn’t give,” Nurse Nancy lamented, as she changed the dressing on his wounds, “to have him make some inappropriate comment about my boobs.”

  Nurse Nancy’s boobs were huge!

  “I bet he’d call ya Nurse Knockers,” said Jack Monterey.

  Nurse Nancy grinned.

  “He’ll join the League,” Monterey declared. “I haven’t known him long,” he confessed. “Only spoke to him once or twice. He made a good impression, though. I think I can cultivate him into something special.”

  “He already is something special,” Nancy Knockers amended, studying his beauty, reflecting on what he had done. “I really think he already is.”

  SMASH tried to take his mind off his erection, and off Bulldog’s, which had found its way into the crease of his thigh. He went to the place in his mind that extinguished sexual thoughts—things like road kill, singing the alphabet, and Nurse Nancy’s boobs. Then, when that didn’t work, with a touch of melancholy, he thought back to the day that he first saw Bulldog, or actually, not so much saw him, but the day they were first introduced.

  And I first touched his erection.

  That memory was not particularly helpful.

  THEY met in the infirmary. Smash did exactly as his name implied: he smashed into things, crashed into things—broke through walls with super-human strength. He could also fly. He was the epitome of a superhero. Dude even wore a cape. Mild-mannered, nerdy hunk by day, caped crusader for goodness and justice at night, he stood six-foot-two, had dark, wavy hair, electric blue eyes, and a body that looked like it was put together by a horny homosexual artist who sculpted everything to the exact size and specifications any horny homosexual would while making a marble representation of his dream lay and plaything. He had the fullest, manly, pink, kissable lips. It was one of the first things Bulldog noticed, when he saw Smash up-close and personal—the second being the extra-large pink-tipped thing a few feet lower.

  The horny gay sculptor didn’t skimp when it came to the marble for Smash’s big dick. It was perfectly carved—every detail molded by the real creator of life. A true artist he must be, to have conjured and executed such a magnificent cock!

  And when Smash turned around, Holy shit! Bulldog thought. That ass! He believed in God almighty at that moment—in divine creation, Bulldog did—because no act of biology could have made such a fabulous ass!

  IT HAPPENED near the White House, Smash’s injury. The villain that day was not an international terrorist, but rather someone not even on Homeland Security’s radar. She was a super-villain called Blast, a she-devil who blew icy winds. When not presenting herself to the public as a well-known member of the Tea Party, protesting basic human rights for the poor and for gays, she dressed all in silver, conjuring ice storms and slippery pavement to thwart progress in America and, also, ya know, make unsuspecting guards fall down so she could rob the occasional jewelry store.

  The drab conservative suits she wore to Republican rallies needed lots of sparkly accessories.

  Blast, and her alter ego Isabella Burr, had gone into hiding after a major scandal thwarted any hopes she had of being her party’s presidential nomination. The ultra-conservative, who filmed a BDSM sex tape with another much-married, majorly religious female presidential ticket hopeful, was run out of town on a rail still wearing her strap-on when the thing went public, thanks to NBS Network Anchorman Jacob Cannon. Unable to spread hate by misconstruing the Constitution, Blast got even meaner, threatening to unleash her villainous acts on the entire unsuspecting nation.

  A human ice maker may not seem like a threat to the government. But if the president went boom down the slick White House steps, and Joe Biden had to step in, the ramifications could be disastrous!

  Smash was sent to DC to keep an eye on things. League Intel said Blast was about to make a move.

  He sensed her movement before he saw her. She had an uncanny ability to blend into her background, like a chameleon of sorts, a trait Smash rather envied. The always horny hero imagined himself with invisibility powers—hiding in locker rooms, or in a certain movie star’s dressing room—maybe shrinking down to hide in a pair of the Twilight vampire’s underwear!

  Maybe he didn’t have his mind exactly where it should have been that morning. He didn’t know Blast was really Isabella Burr. He didn’t realize that when Isabella lost her place amongst Washington’s elite, she’d also lost her fucking mind. Most importantly, he didn’t realize the whackadoo witch had figured out that her superhero enemy and her media enemy were one and the same.

  Jacob Cannon is Smash!

  She had put two and two together and now, she was out four revenge.

  He watched her inhale deeply, preparing to blow across the concrete porch just before dawn, a few days into 2012. It was quite impressive. And pervy Smash couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have her go down on his massive cock.

  “Eww,” he decided. “An Isabella Burr blow job? No thanks! Even horn-dogs like me have limits!”

  He tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, soul sister.” His coppery cape fluttered in the frigid winter breeze and his hard, pointy nipples threatened to poke right through the shiny fabric pulled tight across his chest. “Whacha doin’?”

  “Smash.” She glanced at his package swathed in stretchy reddish-purple. “We meet again.”

  She may have licked her lips.

  Smash and Blast had first come face-to-face as Jacob Cannon and Isabella Burr. Cannon got into news by way of being an underwear model. His body still graced a huge billboard right across from the studio he sat in each night at six thirty. As he told America what was up in the world, he often found himself up where it counted, behind the desk, sometimes with an intern’s head in his lap, sometimes just from looking at himself out the window in his painted-on, striped boxer briefs and thick-framed black glasses.

  Dude was somewhat vain.

  Would Walter Cronkite pose in his skivvies? Are there any old, soft-porn images of the “That’s the way it is” guy from yesteryear on the web? For those guys who dream of fogies they’d love to fuck, for boys with daddy or grandpappy issues who wank in front of those gray-haired-dude-on young-buck websites, sadly, the answer is probably no. But when Brian Williams started popping up on 30 Rock every other week, and Katie Couric did Glee while sitting in Cronkite’s chair, the suits behind the scenes at NBS decided some washboard abs and a big bulge in designer shorts might bring in a more desirable demographic.

  Anyway, Jacob and Isabella had had a rather famous sparring session on air when Jacob had the nerve to ask questions about foreign policy and what newspapers she read. Worst of all, he ripped her a new one regarding her prejudices against homosexuals. He informed her that neither America nor he would ever get behind someone with such hatred for a group of people who were born the way they were, people who should be respected and afforded the same rights as everyone else. She shut the closeted stud up with a short question of her own.

  “Why? Are you one?”

  There was no way he could come out at that moment—or any other. The gays loved him, sure. How could they not after seeing him nearly nude and forty-foot tall—espec
ially when at least four foot of that was visible penis line? He felt guilty sometimes, for not publicly waving the rainbow flag. It was complicated, though. A newsman and a superhero, he really had to keep his private life private.

  Burr’s words backfired. Her critics saw her accusation as schoolyard bullying. Her supporters—who secretly loved it—even they had to say she was hitting below the belt.

  Still, the confrontation opened a maelstrom of media scrutiny that pissed Jacob Cannon off. He couldn’t go anywhere without someone asking, “Are you gay?”

  He blamed Burr.

  He dug and dug for crap on Old Frosty Snatch, finally discovering and exposing the sex tape.

  Now, sadly, even as he stared Blast in her painted-silver, sequin-dotted face, he had no idea she and Burr were one and the same. Nor did he know, as previously mentioned but worth repeating, how bat-shit mad she had become.

  “Give it up, hag.” Smash’s words formed clouds when they hit the frigid air. He took a superhero fist-on-hips stance. “You’ll never get one over on me. America is safe under my watch.”

  “Is that so?” Blast asked in cliché words and tone. “It’s obvious, by your pantyhose and your nightly newscast, that though you got extra helpings between your legs, you were sadly shortchanged between your ears. My mission here today has so much less to do with the country—with my own League of Evil—than it does with my personal vendetta against you. You ruined me, you faggot do-gooder. My aspirations, my reputation.”

  Jacob, no math whiz—two and two eluded him—tilted his head from side to side like a large dog. If he had concentrated on her words, on her Midwest-by-way-of-Alaska accent, he may have been prepared for what happened next. Instead, unfortunately, he concentrated on clever barbs.

  “Your reputation as a frigid bitch?” He laughed. “How does anyone fuck you, Blast, without their winkie freezing off?”

  “Make jokes,” she cackled without humor. “Crack wise. Soon, you’ll be crying instead of laughing—every time you look in the mirror at your once pretty, pretty face.”

  Without warning, her hand shot up. “Gotcha!” There was something in it—a glass container filled with liquid.

  Smash was stealthy. He hid well, moved quickly. Most of the people he rescued rarely got a good look. Those few that did, well, as Lois Lane never realized Clark Kent was Superman, no one ever knew Jacob Cannon was Smash.

  Apparently a pair of specs and a different hairstyle is a masterful disguise.

  Point is, Smash didn’t wear a mask. To cover the beauty of his face would be a crime, he believed. It was that beauty, that vanity, that Blast was intent on destroying. She had lured Smash, aka Jacob Cannon, to the White House to take from him what mattered most, just as he had done to her.

  SMASH was scooped up and flown back to the League of Protection infirmary. The best plastic surgeons were summoned to his bedside.

  Apparently the League of Protection had a great HMO.

  “I want a private room!”

  Much of the hunk’s pain medication had worn off. As he was wheeled from ICU to a room he’d been told already had a “very sweet young man” in it, the unhappy camper bitched and moaned.

  “We’re overcrowded,” Nurse Nancy countered. “Flash is short-circuiting, Wonder Woman has an invisible yeast infection, and Iron Man is rusting—again.” She clucked and shook her head. “When will he learn to come in out of the rain?”

  Grouchy Smash just huffed.

  “Maybe some of your roommate’s niceness will rub off on you.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I won’t hold my breath. And neither should you.”

  Smash wasn’t dressed in his burgundy leotard with the big, turquoise “S.” He wasn’t dressed at all. Well, he was wearing a thin, multi-colored hospital gown—with nothing underneath. Being a man, he often forgot to close his knees. This did not go unnoticed by the men and women roaming the halls, almost all of them interested and delighted by the opportunity to look up the hospital gown of an underwear model who wasn’t wearing any. As Nurse Nancy pushed the free-baller past Bulldog’s bed, the sweet young man took a long look for himself.

  “Praise God!” he whispered.

  Nancy settled Smash in, pulling up the covers.

  “Leave them off,” Smash ordered. “It’s hot in here!”

  Yes. Bulldog nodded inwardly, checking out man-of-steel taint. Leave them off, because the way that guy has his legs splayed, it just got a hole lot hotter.

  He thought it complete with pun.

  “Hey,” he said aloud, “I’m Bulldog.”

  “Look,” Smash said. “I’m not really in the mood for conversation. I just wanna lay here and think.”

  “Well,” Bulldog objected, “that’s not really healthy. Besides, I’m tired of lying here with only my own thoughts as entertainment. At least you get to move around some. I have been stuck here, flat on my back for weeks. I know,” he added excitedly. “Since your eyes are bandaged and you can’t see, I’ll describe what everything looks like for you.”

  “No thanks.”

  “No. Really. It’ll be just like you’re experiencing it for yourself. I’m good at it, too. I wanna be a writer someday….”

  “Someday? Like when you grow up? How old are you?”

  “I’m not that young, okay? I’m almost twenty-one. Well, in nine months.”

  Smash’s first thought was, Hot! His second was one of self-pity. He was about to turn thirty and would give anything to turn the clock back a decade.

  “Okay. So, there’s this huge tree right outside our window. This red cardinal comes and sits on it. He’s not there now, though. I think that would be a good superhero name. Don’t you? The Red Cardinal? Anyway, it’s really sunny today and—”

  “Dude! Shut up! I don’t give two shits about the fucking weather.”

  “Oh.”

  Bulldog’s eyes drooped like an actual dog’s, scolded by the master he adored. He had always looked up to Smash—the legend. No one had proof he existed, but it didn’t stop people from telling stories. Now, there he was, in the flesh, almost literally! When Nurse Nancy told Bulldog Smash was not only real, but that he was going to be his roommate, Bulldog couldn’t stop smiling. It didn’t take him long to discover the hot piece of man ass could be a total ass, for real.

  The next twenty-four hours passed slowly, the only sounds in the room coming from the TV, Bulldog’s tummy, hospital machines, and Smash’s snoring and occasional farts. On day two, Smash had his reconstructive surgery. He was out of it almost all day. On the morning of day three, the cantankerous cutie awoke, bellowing for a bedpan.

  Bulldog listened to him piss. He couldn’t help it, really. Small room. Sensitive ears. The young pup popped a woody.

  “How are you feeling?” the friendly, outgoing, positive young’un asked a little later.

  Grunt.

  “Do ya wanna chat?”

  Grunt.

  “I could read you one of my stories.”

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  Smash’s bad mood threatened to deflect positivity like bullets off Wonder Woman’s bracelets. Still, Bulldog forged on.

  “I promise they’re good. As long as you don’t mind that they’re kind of X-rated.”

  “X-rated?”

  Smash was a bit horny. He hadn’t been able to watch porn in, like, days. Plus, the morphine they had him on, though his demeanor remained quite foul, was amping up his libido and lowering his inhibitions.

  “Okay.” He got up, stumbled a bit from dizziness, and reached for the curtain he’d heard the staff draw back and forth a dozen times. He pulled it shut—his inhibitions weren’t that low—and said, “Tell me a dirty story.”

  Bulldog frowned. He shuffled some papers as he watched the tall, dark, it-remained-to-be-seen-if-still-handsome shadow crawl back into bed and pull up the covers, presumably to whack off beneath them.

  The problem was all of his narratives were guy-on-guy tales. He had no idea what Smash
’s sexual propensities might be, and didn’t want to assume. How was he to know Spidey often shot white, sticky stuff over Smash that wasn’t web, or that Super pumped his ass faster than a speeding bullet, or that Smash and Aqua played water sports together all the time? Worried his gay erotica would not cash the pornographic check his mouth had just written, Bulldog was hesitant.

  “Hello?” Smash said impatiently, already rubbing his soft tool.

  His form was perfectly silhouetted against the curtain thanks to the bright sun coming through the huge window beside him. Bulldog didn’t wanna take his eyes off it, but he did, glancing down at his words on paper he always had nearby.

  “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “Here goes. ‘His name was Pennsylvania’,” he read.

  “Pennsylvania? What the fuck kind of name is that?”

  “‘He had two sisters, Georgia and Virginia’.”

  “Ugh!” Smash fell flat against his pillow. “Is this that kind of dirty story that has too much story and too little dirty? ’Cause really, I ain’t into all that plot and shit. Just get to the part where they fuck.”

  Bulldog groaned a little. “Okay. Umm….” He rearranged some pages. “‘The architect mounted the stairs’.”

  “What architect? What stairs?”

  “Well, that’s what happens when you make me skip the story, dude!”

  “Just fill in the essentials.”

  “Okay. Pennsylvania is really reclusive. He lives in a huge mansion. As a kid, he was in this fire, and his face was all disfigured. The other kids made fun of him and stuff. As a teenager, he fell in love with this… person. They made fun of him too, and it broke his heart—forever. He locked himself away and never went outside again. He’s older now, and still has scars on his face. He hasn’t been around people in, like, ten years. He’s really sad and lonely.”