Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/rural/lake-desolation/) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
SPECIAL NOTE: This series is written from the POV of an older American man. He is the product of his times, complete with serious baggage about race, age, sexuality and socioeconomic status. He is not a raving bigot, but he's certainly not enlightened. Please don't think that I agree with him.
Logan's molten-chocolate eyes look into mine. He picks up the teaspoon I've given him with a quaking hand and begins to messily get about half the mixture into himself. I settle him into the dryer-warmed blankets, this time making less of a nest and more of a bed. "We'll work this out, son. But right now you need to sleep." I watch him snuggle a little into the covers before he's out like a light. I take my own bowl over to my laptop and start to write, not really thinking, letting the characters do the storytelling. It will be hours later when I realise, these are the first words I've written since Maria passed.
***** Lake Desolation 3: The Subject at Hand
By Bear Pup
M/M; masturbation
I've always been a light sleeper. I hear Logan make a couple of urgent bathroom runs in the night. That is a fantastic sign. It means his body is coming to grips with the lack of opiates in his system. I also know that either very early in the morning or tomorrow at bedtime, the nightmares will start, and the longer he holds them at bay the worse they will be.
I mix up something that Joseph always hated almost as I hate oatmeal, but I know is exactly what the lad needs. Cream of Wheat is a porridge that has virtually vanished in today's world and I never understood why. It's quick, filling and packed with all the things a recovering body needs. I add wheat germ, knowing that a lot of what Logan has lost can be found in the combination. As Logan stirs then launches himself at speed into the bathroom, I melt together some brown sugar and butter, spoon the porridge into a bowl and drizzle a small amount of the sugary butter around the edge, just enough to give some flavour but not enough to let the fats and sugar take over his stomach.
Logan shudders with revulsion as I sit him in front of the cereal. He downs a huge glass of water which I replace with milk, getting a despondent glare for my trouble. I let him mope until the porridge cooled, something it needs anyway. "Are you eating this, son, or am I feeding it to you? Make me no difference, I raised a toddler. But you're going to have all of that inside you in the next 30 minutes, that I guarantee."
With a look of loathing split equally between me and the Cream of Wheat, Logan begins to spoon it in, taking gulps of milk when he absolutely has to. "Logan, you'll be finishing the milk as well. You hear me?" He refuses to look up, but I notice that his hand is shaking a lot less this morning. I give his shoulder a pat and make my own bowl, thankful for an excuse to leave the dreaded oatmeal in the cupboard.
He slows midway through the bowl and make a desultory attempt at more, but I can tell that he's reached a physical limit. I quietly murmur, "You did well, son. Sit back for a minute, okay?" He does and I proceed to clean up the minimal mess that Cream of Wheat leaves behind. I can see he's nodding a bit.
"Another thing that you're not going to like even a little bit is you're getting two baths a day." Logan's face screws up in dismay. "This is only partly for you, son. Your body is flushing out toxins as you sweat. I'm sorry, kid, but you reek. Let's get the morning one out of the way."
I pull him into the bathroom and unceremoniously strip him again while the tub fills. I add a cup of Epsom salts. No, I don't know why. My grandmother did it when I was a kid and my mother did as well whenever I had a scrape or a bruise. It's just something you do.
Logan is in full sulk mode, which actually works for me. I am still unnerved by how his young body affects me. I help (force) him into the tub and begin to wash him again. The water stays clear today, thankfully, but I wasn't kidding when I said he reeked. I talk to him throughout, just as I did with Joseph, telling what I was going to do next.
I dunk him and wash his tangled hair again. Yesterday had just been to get it at least slightly clean. Today, I'm trying to actually get it really and truly washed. Parts of it feel like the hair of those black potheads, I think called dreadnaughts, all bristly and knotted. I try three times and never can get the tangles out. I decided to leave news of what that means for later.
I work down his back and again clean his extremely sore ass. Logan doesn't complain, not once, but he is unhappy in the extreme. In fact, thinking back, he's never resisted what I've done. He might balk, but he doesn't fight me. I'm thus a bit taken aback when I try to lean him back so I can wash his front-side.
"Logan, son, I can't finish if you won't sit back." He is blushing so hard his neck and back are red. He sighs deeply and resignedly and sits back. The reason for his hesitancy is very, very clear. He has, to use to terminology of my own youth, thrown and massive woodie. He glances at me for less than an instant to judge my reaction and then stares at the wall. He had been embarrassed yesterday, but was still more or less in the clutches of withdrawal. He is now painfully aware of my presence.
I wash his chest and he sucks in a shuddering breath then whimpers when I get to his nipples. I keep my face (relatively) impassive, but I find that I enjoy making this young man squirm a little with pleasure. I skip the midlands and work on his legs, finding that he is more ticklish than I ever expected on his toes and the soles of his feet. Apparently, his physical state yesterday made that fact less noticeable. Today though, I actually have to clamp one hand over his ankle as he giggles, twists and lurches, slopping water all over me in the process. There is a bit a grime left there, but I desist much to the lad's relief.
Back up the inside and backs of the legs. I bend his knees to make the process possible and spread them has well. Logan has gone from giggling to mortified silence, barely breathing. He lets out a nearly-inaudible sound like a mouse being stepped upon when I finally draw the sponge across his taint and then his ample balls.
I thoroughly wash his pubes and alongside his sac, a place I know to be exquisitely sensitive for me. Apparently, Logan shares that. His hands are white where they clench the sides of the clawfoot tub and he is making small, desperate noises that he tries (and fails) to stifle. I bring the sponge slowly up the top of his big prong, then down the veiny underside; up the left and down the right. Logan is breathing in short, hard little gasps. I skin back the foreskin and use my fingers to clean beneath and he finally says, or whispers, his first words of the day.
A tiny, breathless, mortified voice is whispering, "No, no, no, no, no," like a mantra. As I finally finish with the hidden area behind the flange and skin his sheath back up and over, Logan gives out a cry that even I, writer of dark and sensual bodice-rippers, cannot really describe. Imagine a full-throated and high-pitched scream. Now close your throat so no air can escape. I guess strangled squeak-scream comes closest.
His thick cock explodes into the water, like a fountain of hand-cream underwater. Ropes blast so hard that they ripple the surface of the water. Unthinkingly, I leave my hand in place, lightly encircling his cockhead and I feel him thrust through my grip. I'm a bit stunned as I never expected that! I think for a moment as Logan's entire body spasms, every muscle, especially his wonderful and subtle abs, joins the orgasm. Suddenly it clicks. He says that he's 20, which seems likely. He's been in withdrawal for around four days so he certainly has not, um, 'relieved himself' in that time. Opiates can inhibit sexual needs and withdrawal certainly does, but the build-up of pressure from highly-active balls does not simply disappear. His reaction and quick trigger were as inevitable as the sunrise.
I shake myself and pretend nothing at all happened and continue to wash his belly, arms and hands even as Logan is trying to catch his breath. He doesn't look at me. I can tell he wants to hang his head in shame, but that would force him to stare as the slowly-dissolving ropes of cum. He stares at the wall and my heart rips; he's crying.
I pull the bung and drain the water, starting to dry his hair and upper body even as the water and cum swirl away. He's shaking again, but this time it has nothing to do with drugs or cold or fear; it is pure humiliation quaking through him. I stand him up, still acting as if this was no different that yesterday's bath and dry him in a thorough and detached way. He leaps like a frog when I get to his insanely-sensitive cock, but has gone back to mortified silence. I hand him a different set of sweats and gather the towels. I also get the bedding, his and mine, dumping it all in to the wash.
Logan comes out, naturally-tanned skin almost glowing with shame. He sits at the table and blushes, finally working up the courage to look at me. In a voice a decade younger than his actual years, he quietly says, "I'm so sorry."
"For what, Logan?" I put on my best puzzled face, laying the stage to treat this as if it didn't happen or, if it did, that it was the most natural thing in the world.
"F-f-for what I j-just did..."
"Oh! You mean for cumming like that? Don't be silly, son, what could be more normal. I had a son of my own, and believe it or not, I was 20 at some point, too. Between the drugs and the withdrawal," I see that I've made a serious mistake, he curls into himself like a snail and I put my hand on his quaking shoulder. "... I'm sorry, Logan, I really am. I'm not judging you. I am just trying to say that it has to have been a long time since you, well, had a chance to release the tension. It's fine, son. You're fine and I'm not upset or even embarrassed," I lie like a rug. I'm as mortified by what I caused as he is; I just have over six decades of practise hiding what I think.
I suggest that he move to the chair that normally sits in front of the hearth, an old armchair that Maria used to favour. I get him settled and he just watches me as I move around the room, doing all the simple things needful for a single man, now one with a very unexpected guest. I am rinsing out the kettle to make us both some tea when I stop literally mid-motion as if smacked between the eyes.
I replay my internal monologue, "... an old armchair that Maria used to favour." Not a chair that my wife favours dot dot dot used to favour. A chair that my wife, now gone, favoured when she was still here. I feel a stray tear leak, but even that stuns me. The tear is not from the aching hole that Maria left in me, but at the melancholy idea that I may be moving past the crippling grief itself.
"Sir, are you okay?"
I turn to Logan. "Yes, son, I'm fine. I lost m-my... wife earlier this year and it's... it's hard." I am shocked when he comes up and puts his hands on my shoulders and looks into my teary eyes.
"I am so, so sorry, sir. I l-lost my mom, and it takes a long, long time, I guess." I don't know what has suddenly turned me into some kind of sentimental child, but I yank the boy into a hug and feel him cry, which knocks loose a dam holding my own sobs. A long, cathartic jag later, we pull apart and Logan smiles at me. "Thank you, sir. I needed that so much."
"No, thank you, son. I didn't even realise just how much I needed a hug and a cry just like that. By the way, you don't have to keep calling me sir. It makes me feel old... well, I am old, but it makes me realise I'm old."
Instead of the smile I expect, Logan drops his head and mumbles something.
"What, Logan?"
His voice is shaking with unshed tears of frustration and self-loathing. "I know you told me but I, I, I..."
"You were a bit preoccupied with not dying, son. Give yourself a break. I'm Jacob. If you think you want me as a friend, I'm Jake."
"Thank you, Jake, I am so, so, so sorry," he's crying again, not the sobs of grief and healing we shared, but one of doubt and fear and self-hatred. "I wish you'd have shot me. GOD! I wish I was dead."
I pop him lightly on the side of the head and his tear-streaked face pops up. "We covered that, Logan, and I won't hear you say that again." My voice is harsh and I do nothing to soften it. My long-dormant 'dadness' knows that this is what he needs. "You are of no use to anyone dead, Logan. If you've made mistakes -- and you've told me you have -- you can't fix them if you're dead, sport. You don't want to hear this, no one does, but after you heal up a bit you will just have to pull up your big-boy pants and damned well do something about it."
Logan's mouth is hanging open so far he might have been saying 'Ah' for a doctor. I clap his shoulder, hard, and his mouth snaps shut with an audible clack and he swallows, then nods. I turn quickly before my own waterworks start. The complete and utter despair in his eyes nearly undid me. In a voice made gruff from the need to weep, I ask, "Do you like to read, son?"
He sniffles before he answers. "Yes, si-- Jake."
"I have a pretty nice library here." I open the massive breakfront that had started out as a massive Arts & Crafts wardrobe by Stickley. I'd fallen in love with it in a antique store Maria dragged me to in Kansas City. It was six feet tall and just as wide, small and solid doors below and large, open ones above. When I'd bought it, all of the glass was missing from the uppers (doors and shelves), so I had a friend-of-a-friend make wavy-glass panels in their place. They warp and twist the light so that the contents are obscured.
I hear Logan gasp when I pull the doors wide. I don't keep first editions and such here and never have. Instead, I have six paperback-height shelves, supported in the middle with wood stained to match the rest of the piece. I had long since made a deal with Maria -- actually, Maria beat sense into me -- that every new book I bring to the cabin bumps one into the Goodwill box. So Logan is looking at the books that I could read for years on end.
The top shelf is "lit-tra-ture" (highbrow stuff like classics and a few modern masterpieces), second has bios and history, third holds my own genre and books that support my writing, fourth sports science fiction, fifth is fantasy and the bottom is mystery. Maria tended to the first and fifth shelves and I to the second and last. We both liked the Sci Fi and neither of us had much use for the Rom-- (ahem) Historical Fiction.
In an instant, Logan goes from tentative and subservient to enthralled. It is clear that books are as much a passion for my young foundling as they have always been for me. His chocolate eyes glow as he scans the shelves and I stand aside and watch intently. I see it take him only moments to recognise what is where, and only a minute or two to tell that I organise everything by title, not author.
I'm waiting to see what he grabs. What a person chooses to read from a wide selection can tell you a lot about him. Logan is obviously a rough young part-Latino, so I expect... well, I'm not sure what to expect. Probably sword-and-sorcery, or maybe modern pulp Sci Fi. I am shocked to speechlessness when he lunges forward and extracts a slim, reasonably-battered, pink-and-grey volume from the lowest shelf: 'A Surfeit of Lampreys' by Ngaio Marsh.
Marsh was a master. One of the Queens of Crime, the four women who basically created the modern mystery novel in the 30s. This one is from before what I consider the pinnacle of her career but not by much. That Logan picks that from all the choices is... mind-blowing. But nothing compares to what comes next.
"I've always wanted to read her stuff the way she wrote it! Everything in the libraries and bookstores are Americanised. They call this something like 'The Peer' or 'Death of the Peer'."
My voice is as small as his had been earlier, "'Death of a Peer'. You, um, like her stuff?"
"Oh, sure! Any of the tween-war people. They were the BEST."
Logan is rocking my preconceptions to the core. That this drugged-out Hispanic kid even knows the term 'tween-wars' is amazing. That he uses as a casual aside? Damn. Lastly, one of my obsessions is reading originals. British (and other) writers get their work mangled when some high-school drop-out at a US publishing house 'reinterprets' every term that doesn't appear in his comic books. Logan not only knows the difference, he knows what he's missing.
I watch, open-mouthed, as he heads back to the armchair and curls into it in a way that only the young can accomplish. I turn back and close the doors, deep in thought.
"You can read anything you want," I inform the doors in front of me. "Also, don't get upset if a book falls apart or gets ruined; it happens. Just make sure to leave me a note of the title and author and I'll have another shipped."
Logan looks up briefly and looks a bit amazed, but nods and dives back into the book.
I look at the gauge on the porch-post. Cold but not terrible. I drag on my 'second' coat. I've got three hanging there: a windbreaker that doubles as a rain slicker, a thickly-lined leather overcoat for cold, blustery days and my 'heavy' coat, a real treasure. I'd gotten it from a fellow writer; we are 'mutual-fans'. He lives in the wilds of Alaska and a lot of his writing involves the myths of arctic peoples. The coat he brought me about ten years ago is heavy, insanely warm, completely waterproof and lined with a fur so soft and delightful that I won't even tell you the name. Let's say that I don't wear it in public for fear of being stoned to death by environmentalists.
I go out to refill the log-box and am shocked to find that the early snow not only remains, but has deepened a little. I take a moment to run the rope-guide from the porch-post to the woodshed, a bit of overkill this early in the season, but I have to do it eventually. I do a quick walk-round checking the house. I get a glimpse of Logan's face at the window. He's biting his lower lip and seems worried. I smile, wondering if he's worried about me out in the snow or worried about what I might be doing, like calling the cops of similar. I slog back to the woodpile and return with a bundle under each arm.
I reload and stoke the fireplace and set about assembling a salad. Tomorrow will be the weekly visit of one or the other of the Miller kids, so I start my list. Regular staples of course. I take a long inventory of the larder and add some items from there. Back to the salad, with some leftover ham and a quick 'cowboy' dressing, a ranch-like concoction with BBQ flavours and a little spice. I use it very cautiously on the bowl I prepare for Logan.
When he returns from another sudden bathroom break, I serve. He is a little less repulsed than he'd been this morning. A very good sign. He finishes nearly all of the salad I'd portioned for him, another great sign. He very quietly asks if it's okay is he lays down and I encourage it. He curls into the blankets that he had apparently pulled from the dryer whilst I was out. I look to my own bed and find it neatly made. Curiouser and curiouer. I turn back to the pile of blankets and it dawns on me that no one other than Maria, Joseph and I have ever slept in the cabin. We'd removed Joseph's cot-like contraption after he passed.
I open my browser and raid Amazon. Air-bed, extra sheets (I have innumerable blankets), clothes for Logan. I'll get specific sizes when he's better, but for now stretchy, loose things are best anyway. The default shipping address is the Millers' house and they'll bring it up a day or so after the goods arrive.
I return to my word processor and am mildly shocked to find nearly 3k words from the night before. As is my wont, I edit before I start writing again, placing an edit-mark where I begin. I flow back into my writing mode and am jerked from it when Logan lets out a low moan and jerks slightly. I watch for a minute to assure myself that he's having a regular dream, not yet a withdrawal nightmare and I return to work. Logan wakes about an hour later. He is completely quiet, leaving me to work, and a small compartment in my mind is impressed as the rest flows into the words.
I finally hit a breakpoint and look up to find Logan sitting across from me.
"What do you do, Jake?"
I startle. It's been a long time since someone asked me that. Typically, anyone who meets me does so because they know what I do already. They also would never ask 'Jake'; they'd ask 'Stettler' which in and of itself means they know my pen name.
"I'm a writer, Logan. Not a great one but a good one. Have been since college, actually. Most of my books are published under my original pen name, Stettler McKay." I see his eye register the name.
"You write beautifully, Jake." He blushes hard, "I, um, don't read much of that genre but I've read several of yours..."
I laugh a deep belly-laugh that startles Logan. "It's okay, son, I don't read my 'genre' either. But millions of bored housewives do, and they pay my bills." He smiles at that. "But you, um, think I write well?"
"I remember thinking that I wished you wrote something else. I love the way you use words." It's my turn to blush. I don't think I've really cared about what a person had to say about my writing in, sigh, more years than I care to count.
Logan helps me as I prep for dinner, chopping and slicing to my instructions. It's another night for a simple meal. Pork chops that I'll grill in the fireplace and top with a simple sauce of shallots and mushrooms with sides of two clean, simple veggies: corn and green beans.
Logan eats almost as much as I do, an improvement but with a long way to go. I don't eat much anymore and he should be consuming double (at least) of what I put away. We'll get there.
The evening bath finds Logan actually cooperative if still sullen and embarrassed. He is railed again, but I am careful not to repeat the tender and gentle touch that brought him to explosion this morning. I am more clinical and my strokes firm and quick, not something that can get even a young man like Logan off. He seems both relieved and disappointed.
I let him dry himself as I take my own bath. I see him surreptitiously check me out, top to bottom, and I smile inwardly. The reaction of any normal, red-blooded young man. I don't tease or flaunt, but I also don't hide. I climb out and start to dry as he finishes dressing and he heads into the main room of the cabin.
Logan curls up in the armchair again as I re-edit what I'd written the night before. Write once, edit twice (or more). We both find ourselves drowsy and I decide to sleep early. Logan mimics that choice and we're both asleep quickly, the tink and clink of window-glass trapped between inner warmth and outer cold and the creak of the settling fire on the hearth weave a nice lullaby.
I wake several hours later to what sounds like a dog fighting a bobcat. The hearth gives enough light that I can see Logan has thrashed his blankets into a hopeless knot in his nightmare-induced panic. He does not wake as I try and extricate him. I know that he won't wake from this kind of nightmare until it wears itself out.
One thing is different, though. Where Joseph spiked fevers with his tremors, Logan is icy to the touch and his body spasms with cold. His body has lost the ability to regulate its own temperature and he is literally freezing to death even in the relative warmth of the cabin.
I drag him bodily into bed and wrap my arms around him and bury us both in thick blankets. I finally strip of his shirt and my own and press my warm chest against his quaking and tormented back. I yelp at the contact. It's like hugging a snowman. Slowly, the shaking and perhaps even the nightmare start to fade and Logan falls into a fitful and jerky sleep. I follow quickly.
Many slow dreams later, I rise slowly into lucid dreaming, feeling the soft pearl-pink light of dawn on my eyelids. Some part of me knows that I've been dreaming of sex and am approaching a wet dream; the vast majority of me pummels that part for even considering waking up. I'm 15 again. Martin is actually in my sleeping back, something that never happened and I never realised how much I wanted. His chest is against my back and his strong arms hold and caress me.
I sigh deeply, contentedly as one of his hands move down inside the too-tight y-fronts I'd always worn, and I gasp as his thick fingers begin to stroke up and down my painful teen erection. As in any wet dream, it takes little time to reach completion and my teen body convulses with pleasure. I drift further toward wakefulness and feel warm breath on my neck, "Thank you, Jake, for saving me." I freeze. This is no wet dream and I am no teen. Logan is spooned behind me and just gave me one of the best orgasms I've had in a decade. My mind is spinning with afterglow, confusion, guilt, pleasure and horror. What have I done?
These two men, at the opposite ends of manhood, have set about saving each other. The question is, will they have the courage to let themselves be saved? Let me know your thoughts, please.
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Karl & Greg: 20 chapters .../incest/karl-and-greg/ Canvas Hell: 16 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 9 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 10 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Mud Lark Holler: 8 chapters .../rural/mud-lark-holler/ Off the Magic Carpet: 4 chapters .../military/off-the-magic-carpet/ Lake Desolation: 3 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/