Ingenious #1

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Q uiggs sat on the edge of his bunk in his small room crammed with bookshelves and models of his inventions. He wore a white bath wrap around his waist and a pair of shower sandals, his braid coiled around his head. He dug his fingers into the thin mattress to still their nervous flutters while he waited for Cressley’s knock. A delicious excitement bubbled through him, like tinkering with an invention and discovering the stubborn thing worked after all. It just needed some tweaking first.

Beau hadn’t suspected any trick. He loved riding the barges. The dean reassured Quiggs his friend was last seen hanging off the rail, his white-blond hair blowing in the breeze as he waved bye to the dock workers. With his long double-jointed fingers and toes, he’d skitter around the barge like a sucker-toe.

After an afternoon of unannounced, relentless athletic drills, the other inactives showered and slept soundly. The only sound breaking the quiet was the patter of Beau’s pet sucker-toed lizards chasing roaches on the ceiling.

His breath hitched at the soft knock on the door. He peeped outside and saw Cressley holding open the stairwell door opposite his room.

Cressley waved at the night monitor, who would write the time and reason for Quiggs leaving his floor and a note who was chaperoning.

His heart pounding so hard at breaking the rules, Quiggs leaned against the wall gasping when he reached the upper landing outside the actives’ door.

“Wait here a minute and catch your breath,” Cressley said. “You’ll be fine. You got some old friends eager to help you.”

Quiggs hugged his ribs to stifle his noisy gasps. He worried about the risk Cressley was taking. “What about… the other c-cadets? If… anyone… reports this… you’ll be p-punished.”

“Sure, the others suspect something’s up, but it’s a point of honor for actives not to inform on one another. Besides, they’re drunk from the ale smuggled in. They ought to be snoring away. Calm down while I check inside with the night monitor. Frank’s getting himself a tidy bonus for helping. Course, like me, he believes you deserve to marry and continue your bloodline. Otherwise, the dean couldn’t pay us enough.”

Left alone on the landing, Quiggs pushed his palms together, holding for ten seconds with his eyes closed. He focused on the bubbles of excitement flowing through his veins, willing them to leave his brain and head south. Pleasssse, pleasssse, pleasssse…

A hand tugged on his elbow. Shit! Caught alone by the night patrol! His eyes popped open, widening further when he looked down and saw Beau.

Sweaty, mud-streaked, with his white-blonde hair as stiff as a dirty mop, Beau bounced foot to foot. “No go in there. Law says bad. They whip you.”

When Quiggs shook his elbow free, Beau slithered around and plastered his back against the door. “Bad, bad, bad!”

“How’d you… why aren’t you… goddammit, Beau, you’re supposed to be in Port Paducah. ”

“When captain tells me barge broke, I tell him I always sleep with my friend Quiggs.” Beau grinned revealing small sharp teeth. “I jump off broke barge into canal. I swim to bank, climb out. Then run back to you.”

Quiggs gripped Beau’s face. “You little idiot! You could have been eaten by eels!”

Beau rubbed his face against Quiggs’s hands. “Nah. Swim fast. Run faster. Good thing I come back. Why you up here?” It hadn’t occurred to Beau his friend wanted him gone.

Cressley opened the door, bumping Beau headfirst into Quiggs’s chest. Cressley bit back a curse when he saw Beau. He put an authoritative growl in his voice. “Go to your room, Beau. Quiggs is with me.”

Beau read body language like a master linguist. He’d wonder why Quiggs’s heart thudded, why the fresh burst of sweat from Cressley. Beau went perfectly still as he stared up at Cressley. “Why you take my friend Quiggs up here? Law says no bad showers.”

Familiar with Beau, Cressley stuck to short simple truths. “Your showers are broken. Quiggs can shower up here while I guard the door. It’s okay. The law says a cadet must shower every night.”

“I be a good cadet. I mind law and take bad shower with my friend Quiggs.”

“It’s not a bad shower,” Quiggs said.

Cressley’s eyebrows pulled tight. “Beau, go to your room. You weren’t in line when the permission slips for the showers were handed out.”

Beau dropped to his knees. He wrapped those crazy long arms around Quiggs’s legs and whined, “Nooooooo! Wanna bad shower with my Quiggs.”

Quiggs patted his dirty head. “What if Cressley promises to give you a special time all by yourself after me?”

Beau flicked a look at Quiggs from beneath his sparse pale lashes. “I always take shower with you. ”

Quiggs rolled his eyes. “Beau, I have to drag you to water. How about you skipping a shower tonight? Go back to our room.”

“I dirty. Law says must take shower.”

“You can have my leftover nut bread from supper.”

“Don’t want nut bread. Wanna bad shower with you. Keep you safe.” Beau clung like a sixty-pound, five-foot burr when Quiggs lost patience and tried to kick free.

“The timers are set,” Cressley reminded Quiggs. “If he doesn’t let go, you’ll miss the wet down.”

Quiggs stopped kicking before they toppled down the stairs. “Okay, runt. I give up. Go to our room, strip down, and get your shower gear.” Of course, Cressley would lock the stairs door and pretend he’d misplaced the key when Beau returned.

For a creature looking as if he were built from spare parts, Beau jumped up on his paddle feet with a boneless grace and tossed aside his loincloth. His long slender penis with the funny fleshy ring around the middle swung as he bounced foot to foot. “Okay. I naked. Don’t need gear. We go wet down now.”

Cressley used his harsh voice. “Pick up your loincloth. Go to your room and wait.”

Beau’s lips quivered. His throat worked, gathering for a yowl.

Quiggs clamped a palm over Beau’s mouth. “Shut up before the patrol hears us.”

Beau pulled Quiggs’s hand away with surprising strength. “Bad things happen in shower up here. My Quiggs neeeeeeds me.” He placed Quiggs’s hand back over his mouth. His throat worked closer to a yowl.

Cressley caved. “He can wait naked outside in the hall with me. It’s not like the actives care about his scrawny ass.”

Quiggs glared down at Beau. “You must promise to stay in the hall the whole time. You can’t watch.”

Beau pulled Quiggs’s hand away. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you watching me. ”

Beau cocked his lopsided head. “Why not? I see you naked all the time. You see all of me.”

“Because… because other cadets will be in there… um… soaping up. And when they do, things… um… happen.”

Beau’s voice dropped to a knowing whisper. “Bad, bad things.” He tugged on his limp penis.

Cressley sucked in a breath. “Beau, is anyone at the barns bothering you?”

“Bad, bad, bad to bother me. Herders say men sick if touch Beau.”

Quiggs said, “He’d tell me if anyone touched him, Cressley.”

“Tell my friend Quiggs everything. Never, ever lie to my friend.”

Satisfied Beau wasn’t abused, Cressley opened the door and waved Beau through.

Beau trilled his triumph, then hissed when Quiggs thunked the back of his lopsided head. “My friend Quiggs mean tonight. No bad things happen to him. He hits.” Beau padded ahead in his splay-footed gait, the argument already forgotten.

“How do you live with it? ” Cressley muttered.

Good question. “Beau happened at a time I needed someone to love me.”

Cressley stood guard in the hall as Quiggs drew a deep breath and stepped through the pair of swinging doors into the communal shower. After being shown there was a curtain for Quiggs’s privacy, Beau squatted outside by the entrance and rocked his displeasure with his arms around his knees and his chin tucked into his chest. Quiggs would have fallen on his ass after thirty seconds. Beau could rock for hours.

After Quiggs threatened to stuff a dirty towel in his mouth if one sound escaped, Beau clamped his jaws tight.

The bad shower looked like the downstairs shower. The blue-veined stone walls emitted a soft bluish light that turned blushes into an ugly mottled purple. The room accommodated up to eight cadets who’d march in keeping two steps apart. On the left wall were eight pairs of hooks: one to hang your wrap on, the other holding a scratchy white towel. Once the eight cadets had lined up at their respective hooks, they shed their wraps and slipped off their sandals. The academy demanded silence up to this point, but eyes roamed, and mouths curved in derision or envy.

Touching each other was forbidden until the junior year, but cadets were free to talk as they showered. They mostly farted and traded crude insults. As Academic Champion, Quiggs had showered alone since he was eleven and hadn’t missed the company.

A beige curtain stretched around the end shower as planned. Cressley had stolen a curtain panel and ropes from the janitor’s room and cut out strategic peepholes. Shielded behind the curtain, Quiggs could stare down the line of showers and watch everyone, while the only parts of him exposed were his long flat feet and skinny shanks.

He shed his sandals and hung his wrap on a hook. What a pathetic sight his naked form was. While medical assured Quiggs his flaccid penis was a normal size, the rest of him needed toning. Until he popped a boner, why waste time on exercise?

Cressley darted his head inside the room, gaze lowered. “You in place yet?”

“Almost.” Quiggs hastened behind the curtain.

The stone walls retained the heat of the earlier showers, and the steamy air condensed on his skin like dripping sweat. Soap pumps were mounted on the wall below each showerhead, a brown pump for heavy grime and a pink pump for soft crevices, tender parts, and hair. Cadets soaped up accordingly; then a short wet down activated the cleansing suds. When the wet down stopped, the cadets joked around while the suds did their work. A long hot rinse followed.

As Quiggs soaped up, he decided whatever was happening, whoever was watching—if a boner popped, he was sprinting bare-assed to the sex clinic and registering.

Who were the cadets who’d volunteered? What were they thinking of this? Quiggs bounced foot to foot on the pebbled floor, as fidgety as Beau about the bad things ahead .

The heavy slap of sandals marching in echoed off the stone walls. Quiggs peeped through a cutout, and his pulse picked up.

Those hard-muscled bodies filing in could only belong to cadets enrolled in the military program. Quiggs pressed against the curtain, watching the actives silently stretch and pose at their stations before stripping off their short white wraps. The performance was obviously scripted by Professor Hines.

The hell if Quiggs cared.

The cadets postured, offering a mouthwatering view of sculpted buttocks and strong thighs. Instead of sliding off their sandals, they bent at the waist to remove them, providing Quiggs a row of hairy cracks… not as mouthwatering.

The cadets turned around, and Quiggs’s jaw dropped as six cockstands saluted him. Some straight, some curved. All thick, all long, all veined, with heavy, hairy balls tight to the body.

The cadets paired off at the showerheads and leisurely soaped their partners with particular attention to genitals and cracks. Despite the heat, Quiggs shivered.

The warm gentle spray of the wet down started, and the soap foamed upon contact. Quiggs spat suds out of his gaping mouth. He realized he hadn’t looked above the necks to see if he could identify the cadets. He stuck two fingers in the peephole and ripped it wider.

Annnnnnd… thank you, Professor Hines.

Quiggs worked his limp cock while he loaded up on visual stimuli.

A cadet on his knees sucking cock, a cadet working fingers in another’s soapy hole, a cadet bending over while—Quiggs never saw this one coming—another licked out his hole. Quiggs tugged his cock faster. He heard an anxious whine and was surprised it came from himself.

The cadet closest to him turned his head at the whine, and his amused blue eyes stared straight at the peephole. “Like what you see, Quiggs?”

Oh, shit, oh, shit… he recognized Miller, the current Athletic Ch ampion. Quiggs had suffered a shy devotion for him before Miller registered and moved in with the actives. His black hair was clipped close to his shapely skull. A scar bisected his left eyebrow, and he sported a slight bend in his once-perfect nose from fighting matches since he’d moved out. The defects enhanced his appeal. Quiggs watched as Cadet Colby sucked Miller to the root with noisy slurps.

Colby was a year older than Quiggs and had bunked beside him before joining the actives. Quiggs stared at the changes in Colby’s body over the years. Wider shoulders, hair sprinkled across padded pectorals… a mushroom crown, rosy and leaking as he fisted himself while sucking Miller. Quiggs stared at the veiny shaft. How odd. Where the foreskin had been attached was a scarred red ring. In fact, he saw no foreskins on any of the cocks.

Quiggs pulled back the foreskin of his flaccid cock. Did arousal cause it to peel off when stretched? Made sense if the strain split it… but ouch.

“Feels so good,” Miller groaned, and Quiggs forgot about foreskins and stuffed his mind with visual stimuli. “Oh… oh… oh… you got the magic mouth, Colby… oh, yeah. I’m close. Pull off or swallow.”

Colby hollowed his cheeks, bobbing faster. Miller arched his neck, his meaty hands holding the blond head in place.

Quiggs stopped tugging. Cadets swallowed semen?

“Need help getting off, Colby?” Cadet Blane, who’d bunked near Quiggs, strutted over, wiping a hand across his swollen mouth. He knelt and fingered Colby’s pucker. Colby lifted his ass without missing a fisting stroke.

Now that Quiggs would like to try. The thought of fingers worshiping his ass while he wanked sent a spark to places never before sparked in Quiggs. He’d suspected these acts existed. He’d just not visualized the how of them. The veil lifted from a world of delights much more fascinating than hot air balloons.

A raucous laugh belted out. “Hey, guys, look who’s joining us!”

More laughter echoed off the walls.

Miller whooped the loudest. “Beau, you ugly runt, are you lost? ”

“Not lost. Know where I am. In bad shower.”

No, no, no, no. Quiggs sloshed his foot through a puddle of water around the drain. He was forbidden to speak, or he’d yell at Beau to get out.

Beau stopped by Miller and watched the threesome at work. “Colby sucks Miller like a hungry baby goat. Why, Colby?”

Colby released Miller’s cock with a pop, cum dripping down his chin. The other cadets gathered around.

“Because Colby likes my custard,” Miller panted. He swiped a thumb over the cum dribbling down Colby’s chin and offered Beau a taste.

Beau frowned and made a pfffftttt sound. “Not custard. Semen. Miller thinks Beau is stupid.”

Colby snickered. He turned around and spread his cheeks, giving Quiggs a view of his pink hole, dilated from fingering. “Want to watch how to make babies, runt?”

“Aw, Colby, that not how you make babies.”

“How do you make babies, then?” Miller asked.

Beau sat cross-legged on the wet floor. “Need a doe in heat first. Bucks don’t mount bucks to make babies. Bucks who mount bucks get their tes-ti-cles chopped off.” Before Miller could swat him, Beau dived under the curtain and chortled up at Quiggs. “I stay back here where safe from bad bucks.”

Quiggs glared down at him.

Miller whispered against the cutout. “It’ll happen, Quiggs. When it does, I’m gonna be the first to sign your slate and teach you how it feels to get fucked.” Miller slapped the curtain for emphasis. “Hear that, runt? This bad buck’s gonna pound your good friend Quiggs in the ass.” Miller chuckled at Beau’s growl before adding softly, “But only after I’ve sucked him dry and got him loosened up and begging for it.”

Miller stuck two fingers through the cutout and worked them in and out .

“Don’t bite his fingers,” Quiggs hissed when Beau showed his teeth.

Beau slid out from under the curtain and bit Miller on the calf. Before Miller could grab him, he bit the other calf and slid back under the curtain, trilling his delight at Miller’s pained yelps.

Furious at the interruption just as his prick experienced an interested tingle, Quiggs hooked an arm around Beau’s scrawny neck. “You want a bad shower? Do you? Huh? Do you! Here’s your bad shower!” He held fast as he slapped the harsher soap all over Beau’s squirming body.

“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! I no bite fingers—I bite Miller’s hairy legs!”

“Shut up, Beau. You don’t braid my hair tonight.”

“Noooooooo! Always braid my friend’s hair. Love his pretty hair.”

“I hate my hair! I want to cut off my fucking hair!”

The rinse cycle started. Quiggs held Beau under the harder, hotter spray, ignoring his caterwauling. When the spray stopped, both were breathless, with Quiggs’s flushed skin a mottled purple in the bluish light and Beau’s tawny skin a burnt orange.

“How do you live with it?” Miller gave the curtain a hard slap, then left.

Because of Beau, Quiggs’s visual stimuli swirled down the drain along with the dirty suds.

Beau patted Quiggs’s thigh. “I’m telling Cressley Miller wants sex with you.”

“You will promise me you won’t tell anyone anything.” Especially about Miller promising to suck him dry first.

A whine.

“Dammit, Beau, I mean it. Promise me this stays our special secret.”

“Don’t like to promise. Get in trouble when I forget.”

Quiggs thunked him upside his dripping head.

Beau hissed. His white-blond hair hung over his sullen eyes. “Okay. I promise. ”

Cressley called from the door, his voice worried. “Come out now. Everyone’s gone.”

Quiggs knotted his wrap around his waist and slipped on his sandals. He fell into step with Cressley outside the shower.

Cressley waited until they were in the stairwell before waving his leather disciplinary strap at Beau. “You disobeyed me. Ten stripes on your ass or no breakfast in the dining hall for a week. Choose which.”

“No breakfast!” Beau cried.

Cressley snapped the strap. “Disobey tomorrow night, and it’s both!”

Beau was off and trailing water down the stairwell before Quiggs could remind Cressley the herders always welcomed Beau to the Guild’s dining hall, where the food served was superior to the academy’s bland fare.

Cressley fixed his right eye on Quiggs. “You okay? Do you need to smuggle anything to the clinic? Got any questions for Professor Hines?”

Yes, one . “What happened to their foreskins?”

The question stunned Cressley. “I’ll be damned. We never considered what you’d think of that.” He scraped a hand over his face.

Quiggs didn’t need Beau to recognize a lie coming up. “A foreskin peels off when an erection happens, right?”

Cressley dropped his hand, sheepish at being caught. He hemmed and hawed before admitting, “We don’t want to scare the baby cadets. It does hurt a bit when the skin sheds.”

“I reasoned so.” With a pleased sniff at having his conclusion verified, Quiggs followed Cressley back to his room.

After the exciting events of the barge, the swim in the canal, and the bad shower, Beau was already asleep in his top bunk. He lay facing the wall, curled up with his chin touching his knees.

Quiggs dressed for bed in a white sleep shirt, no underwear. He tied a thin string around his penis. If an erection occurred, it would break the string and prove there was no organic malfunction. He had tied strings since his fourteenth birthday. They never broke. They wore out, and he replaced them.

As he settled under the thin blanket, he thought of those minutes in the shower. Male plumbing definitely attracted him.

Quiggs drifted to sleep with visions of Miller on his knees, sucking him to the root.