Hard Hats

by Neil Plakcy

  He stopped rolling the condom. “You okay?”

  I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t be okay until I got him in my mouth or my ass or maybe just cock against cock. So I grabbed him by the base and sucked in inch after inch. He eased my head back down to the hard porcelain, fucking my mouth raw then numb, the tub creaking against the subfloor with each thrust.

  Then he pulled out. His arm went back over the side, and he turned around to face my dick. Soon my smaller cock was swimming in latex. He made it work though, and he did the unthinkable—he sucked me. I lifted my hips to give him everything I had. That earned me a squeeze on the balls.

  “Don’t be greedy.” His chuckle echoed in our hiding place.

  How could I not be? He’d never done that for me before. A quick tug as he fucked me from behind? Sure. But nothing like this. His tongue swirled around my head, and I nearly shot my wad like I was eighteen again.

  His lips began pumping up and down and when I let out a moan, he backed off and licked my sac until I stopped panting. Then he pulled my legs apart and fingered my hole. I returned the favor while his sweat rained down on me, slicking my body, cooling me off. His mouth swallowed more of my shaft, and I burrowed my finger deeper into his ass. When the tip of him touched the back of my throat the next time, I stopped moving, no more craning my neck back and forth as I lost myself while he worked my prick with a tight fist and tighter lips. A few strokes more and I was there, a place I’d never imagined being—in Mack’s hot mouth, my head swimming, my bones like water.

  He gripped me hard and came off of me in one agonizing long suck. I flooded the loose condom and felt each spurt run back down to soak my balls. He cradled my fading stiffness until I recovered, then I went after him, pushing his cock in and out of my mouth with brutal speed. His ass contracted around my finger. My free hand caught his balls and he began to pound into me, fucking my face again. I didn’t have to move my finger—he did all the work, forcing me in and out of that snug part of him my cock would probably never know. Then again, with all of his other changes, maybe one day I would.

  A spasm shot through him. He pumped harder, his balls coming down on my nose so fast that I was panting as hard as he was just to keep breathing. He yelled when he came. I remembered the sound well, knew how loudly it echoed off bathhouse walls and other places we used to meet. He seemed more powerful then, nothing like the man who now dropped his full weight on me to rest his head on my hip.

  “You miss the old days?” I asked. “I mean, this wasn’t at all what I’d expected.”

  He got back on all fours and hung his head down to meet my eyes. He looked offended.

  “Not that I was disappointed or anything,” I added quickly, with a smile.

  He smiled back at me, looking a little sadder. A little wiser. “You mean our glory days?”

  “Yeah. If you want to call them that.” What I wanted to know was did he miss the rough stuff and me being younger, more boy than man. Did he miss the parties and the wild, care-free sex? Those times were long gone. At least for me.

  “Sometimes.”

  He turned around to face me, our limp cocks bumping under layers of latex. The tub was big enough for him to lie down in all the way and he pulled me to him, chest to chest.

  “Things change. People change.” As he said the words, he seemed to be searching my face for any sign of disappointment.

  He wouldn’t find a single trace, not today. Not with him beside me.

  SOOTY

  T. Hitman

  The truck pulled up the last leg of the long, winding drive. It was big and white, masculine. A man’s sort of truck. The silhouette of a soot-blackened chimney sweep was tattooed across the driver’s side door. Tire treads chewed gravel, pine needles, and clumps of dirt on that final turn toward the house. Then the roar of its engine cut out; in the void, the ever-present sigh of the wind and the occasional croaking groan of an elder’s trunk in the nearby woods resumed.

  The man behind the wheel was a shadow, like the chimney sweep logo on the truck. He wore a baseball cap, bill aimed forward. Sunglasses created twin ovals of liquid silver in the shadow of the cab. He scrambled for a clipboard on the passenger side seat. Then the door opened, dispelling most of my questions. He was a short man dressed in a white T-shirt with a logo identical to the one on the truck’s door, faded blue jeans, and soot-covered work boots. He closed the door. Temporary thunder shattered the calm. A man gets used to the quiet of remote places when he’s been part of the landscape long enough. I had. My heart pulsed as he stared at the lodge, unaware that he, too, was being studied.

  Eyes peering through the part in the blueberry curtains, I sized him up. Yeah, short. Not more than five-five, five-six. But cute. Really, truly damn cute! Short dark hair in an athletic cut beneath his ball cap. A bit of scruff from not shaving that day. The last trace of a tan from all his trips up to people’s roofs. Little guy, with big muscles puffing on arms covered in patterns of dark hair. As he stretched and shifted the clipboard from one hand to the other, I caught a hint of dampness under an armpit. All the moisture drained from my mouth.

  He approached the house. I straightened the curtains, hand-stenciled with a pattern of blueberries and leaves, and crossed to the door.

  “Mister Ellis?” he said, a smile twisting his mouth. Flash of clean white teeth inside that playful smile.

  “Mister Ellis is my dad. Call me Aaron.” I opened the door, extending a hand to bid him welcome. As soon as he was inside the sunporch stretching half the length of the lodge, he made a similar gesture. We shook hands. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the town of Lonesome Oaks, so remote it doesn’t appear on most maps. There was deceptive strength in that small, sexy hand. Electric pinpricks tingled up my arm and threatened to unleash a shiver down my spine.

  “Wyatt,” he said, his voice one of those masculine, playful growls that a guy who loves other guys could easily get used to hearing on a regular basis.

  First thought: how that voice must sound in the bedroom, when breaking commandments and grunting alternate takes on Heaven.

  Suck my hairy fuckin’ cock! Yeah, like that. Now lick the sweat off my nuts! Can’t wait to bend you over. Fuck you in the cunt, fucker!

  Second observation: those hands. Releasing the one he offered, I noticed soot on fingertips, beneath nails, and permanently etched into the flesh of his palm. Smaller than mine, but twice as powerful. Awesome hands, matching the rest of him.

  “Nice to meet you, Wyatt.”

  His closeness washed the scent of soap, deodorant, and clean sweat around me. Beneath it was a smell that conjured happy memories of childhood winters. The first snow, woodstoves and fireplaces filling the cold air with a smoky bite.

  Wyatt scanned his surroundings: the great room, extending past the open-concept kitchen; one accent wall painted a rich pomegranate red, another, eggplant-purple, with soft, soothing gray connecting everything together. Beautiful antique furniture. Shelves loaded with books. Writing desk, laptop computer open and humming atop it beside legal pad, uncapped pens. The screen on the computer, blank. A few lines scratched longhand across the legal pad—flat, lifeless prose destined for the paper-recycling bin on the sunporch. Some of my book covers blown up to poster size and framed on one wall, relics of a lost era. Even so, home.

  “Great little house,” Wyatt sighed.

  “You should have seen it when I moved in.”

  “A mess?”

  “That’s being kind. I rescued the lodge from the wrecking ball. My realtor told me somebody wanted to knock it down and put up a McMansion. Can you imagine doing that to a house like this?”

  I pointed out the wide pine floorboards, built-ins, exposed beams, and tile work. The fieldstone fireplace with airtight woodstove awaiting his care brought the tour to its conclusion.

  “You’ve done a great job with the place.”

  “I’m not done yet. Still need to replace a floor, gut a bathroom, and get the chimney swept and repaired so I don’
t freeze my ass off come winter.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m here.”

  More bullshitting about: wood heat, other houses in the area, New England winters, and the baseball playoffs. My eyes wandered over Wyatt’s musculature. The T-shirt tucked into his belted blue jeans showcased taut stomach (probably hairy, too, if his arms were any indication). Decent legs. Feet, looking bigger than their actual size because of sooty work boots. The magnet of his package kept drawing my glances: nice, full relief of dick and balls packed in denim.

  “Let me get cracking. It’s supposed to cool down significantly over the weekend, as I heard it.”

  “Yeah,” I babbled.

  “Start out on the roof—”

  “Sure. Just come back in when you’re ready. No need to knock.”

  He nodded, tipped me a wandering glance from face to feet, then exited the house.

  Sometimes, on rare occasions, a chemical spark goes off between two people upon their first meeting that is undeniable. It erupts thanks to scent receptors, and leaves you with that feeling of having your nuts squeezed by rough, fumbling fingers in lieu of words. It had for me. And, if that glance over the shoulder Wyatt shot me on his way out the door was to be trusted, the same was true for him.

  Back at the blueberry curtains over the kitchen sink, I peered out the window. Wyatt removed the long aluminum ladder hanging on hooks above the bed of his truck. He unfolded it. Secured it in place. Scaled up to the lodge’s roof, a long-handled chimney brush going up with him. As he ascended and I watched, the stain on his armpits looked damper, bigger. His crotch, so clearly displayed in the sunlight, passed between the ladder’s rungs. Big feet next. A flash of sanitary white sock at the tops of both sooty work boots triggered a sensory rush of images in my head: clean cotton, toes damp with buttery sweat, a hint of pine sap caught like amber in the treads beneath the sole. My carnal foot-thoughts pushed my dick out of its coma into an erection so steely, it ached. I adjusted myself and saw stars.

  Wyatt was shorter than me (not my usual type); blue collar (definitely my usual type); and mostly, probably straight, with just a hint of curiosity. The kind of guy who drank beer, peed in the woods (and over the edges of roofs on occasion, no doubt), hollered at the widescreen during baseball and football games, and secretly wandered through a wide range of fetishes and private perversions while masturbating. One of those jack-off concessions was probably allowing a dick-hungry writer at a remote lodge in the woods (me) the honor of humming on his erection. The chemical spark steadily consumed the rest of my body in the seconds that followed. On the sofa, out of focus, phantom versions of us moaned and fucked.

  The clunk of booted feet on the roof played counterpoint to the drumming solo of my galloping heart. I fondled my hard-on, teased a finger against the sensitive flesh of my asshole. How long had it been since I’d joined the world of the living, except to shop for groceries or home-improvement supplies?

  You’re losing it, Aaron. You been living out here alone way too long.

  The scrape of Wyatt’s brush in the chimney slithered through the air, and even that to me sounded sexual, gloriously deviant. I was actually thinking about jerking myself to what promised to be a hell of a climax, if my length was any indication, when the clatter of falling metal jarred me out of my fantasy. A not-so-subtle reminder that both the house—and I—were far from complete in our restoration.

  Cock half-hard, standing at the window, I saw: Piney, sniffable /lickable booted feet hasten down the ladder. Blue jeans and crotch followed next. White T-shirt lifted out of pants to show a magnificent stretch of tanned six-pack, treasure trail of coarse black hair bisecting it straight down the middle. Wyatt’s sunglasses now rode the bill of his baseball cap as he hurried back into the house.

  “I’ve got some bad news.”

  My inner-Aaron was used to such cries of doom. When you buy an old house and try to fix her up as a method of healing your own shit, bad news comes in bulk supply.

  “There should have been a crown over your flue, shaped like this.” Wyatt steepled his sooty hands together, forming a round dome. “The genius that put that T-joint up there left off the cement, which shields the flue from rain and snow. Which has been pouring down your chimney long enough to rot all that metal into rust. I shoved my—”

  (…dick up your sweet, tight ass, fucker!)

  “—brush down there and everything fuckin’ came apart.”

  “Yeah, so I heard. Let me just say—”

  (…you won’t be saying nothing, not with my cock stuffing your mouth shut and my sweaty nuts bouncing off your chin!)

  “—that nothing surprises me. I’ve already painted the place front to back, fixed and replaced doors, floors, plumbing, electrical. When I first moved in, I discovered that genius who owned the house before me had taken all the switch plates with him when he left. All the outlets were bare, too.”

  “No shit.” Wyatt folded his arms. “Did you get a home inspection before you bought the place?”

  “Naw, like I said, sold as is. The previous owner figured it would be a knock-down. Just because it was older, neglected, needed to be fixed…that’s no reason to demolish the place, just to put up something newer, bigger, and better looking. Those houses are cookie-cutter cheap, and made of unnatural building materials.”

  “I thought you were talking about people there for a moment, not houses,” Wyatt said.

  “That, too.”

  Wyatt nodded, that snarl of a smile returning to his face. “Good news is it can be fixed.”

  It was a comfortable, sunny day, the last trace of an Indian summer edging toward a long New England winter. But in the lodge, the temperature was rising, despite the absence of a log fire.

  “You need eighteen inches of stone board on your floor to bring it up to code.”

  “How many?” My eyes were on Wyatt’s crotch when I asked this.

  “Eighteen.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  He snorted a laugh. His pen ceased scratching on his clipboard. He unashamedly adjusted his package. I tore my eyes off Wyatt’s crotch and choked down a dry swallow. Yes, the heat was definitely rising. That whole chemical reaction thing we seemed to have going was like the flame of a lit match to pure oxygen. Only it felt stronger, nuclear, the Big Bang that started all life in the universe.

  “It’s not that big,” he said, cutting through my fugue.

  “Huh?”

  “My dick,” he said, his voice drawing out, distorting into a feral growl. “You’ve been staring at it long enough, so you gotta know it’s pretty average.”

  A jolt of ice cut through the heat. Had I just heard him correctly?

  Wyatt tugged on his zipper. Crisp white cotton appeared among the denim, what I first mistook for simple tight-white briefs. The clipboard vanished from his hands in a puff of dark magic, there one instant, gone the next. Thus freed, he worked his pants down to his knees. I saw he was wearing boxer briefs: black elastic waistband, the cotton hugging concrete butt muscles in the back, expanded in front with meaty heaviness, leg bands clamped around solid, hairy flesh.

  “Fuck,” I moaned, lowering to one knee on the aforementioned wide pine floorboards, not the most comfortable position, but perfect for our present needs. “You handsome fucker…”

  I pulled Wyatt’s pants down to the tops of his sooty boots. Showing the same ease with which he’d disposed of his clipboard, he unlaced them and kicked them off. I caught sight of a big toe poking playfully through a hole in one white sock before pressing my face into the warmth of his underwear. I inhaled the musty smell of a real man’s crotch and almost ejaculated without even touching my dick.

  The intoxicating scent of balls; hard, sweaty cock; and lush patch spoke to me. High on Wyatt’s smell, I went on automatic. One hand fondled the prominent bulge tenting his shorts. The other stroked a length of hairy leg from calf to thigh. Wyatt moaned. A sooty hand on the back of my skull held me in place.

  “That’
s right, dude,” he urged in that addictive voice, now even more musical in its lust. “Suck on my dick. Yeah, I fuckin’ need this…”

  You need this? my inner-Aaron chuckled. For a blinding instant, all the travails that had led me to this place made it past the lodge’s protective outer walls and were in the room with us. The stresses that had devoured my creativity, leaving me unable to write. A lover’s betrayal. A death in the family. Breakdown. All of it swirling into one giant personal Perfect Storm. This was the most contact I’d had with another human being since coming here, walling myself up inside my little lodge deep in the woods.

  Wyatt’s underwear dropped to his sweat socks. His cock snapped up at attention. I inhaled the sweaty odor of his balls and smiled, leaned forward, sucked the straining head of his erection between my lips. The peehole was gummy with a trickle of clear, salty liquid. He was average, as he claimed, but thick, circumcised. A long blue vein snaked across the starboard side of his shaft. Like his voice, a man-loving man could easily get used to enjoying Wyatt’s cock, balls, and lush dark thatch of hair on a regular basis.

  One hand bracing on his leg for support, I closed my eyes and sucked Wyatt’s cock down to the curls, inhaling the raw, wonderful odor of his balls between gulps. His erection flexed on my tongue, and for an instant I swore I could feel the pulse of circulation inside it, the blood and excitement surging through, spurred on by rapid heartbeats and lust for me. His cock was full of life, and having it in my mouth made me feel alive as well.

  Reluctantly, I released it, but only to lick at his balls. My tongue explored the sensitive, smelly patch of skin behind his scrotum, and to my shock—and joy—Wyatt walked forward one giant step, over my face, permitting me access to the most private, secret part of him hidden back there. I swabbed my tongue over his asshole. The slightly metallic, primal taste my palate has never been able to get enough of consumed me. I stabbed higher, deeper.