2. What the Whiskey Started #2
"Alright, fuck this silence," Theo announced, his gym-built frame sprawled against a log, the firelight carving shadows across a face designed for confident pronouncements.
"We're out here playing caveman. No women, no phones, no civilization.
Might as well go full primal." He took another pull from the flask.
"So. Serious question. Who's got the biggest dick in the group? "
"Come on," Theo pressed, grinning. "We're in the woods. No one to impress. Just science. Bet on Reed, old guys always surprise you. All that accumulated gravity pulling blood south."
Reed stroked his beard with performative thoughtfulness. "Son, I've seen enough locker rooms to know that the loudest man in the conversation is usually compensating for something. But I'll play. Four grand to get dirty, might as well get honest."
"Guys," Milo managed, his face the color of the campfire coals. "We're adults."
"Exactly," Theo said, already working his zipper with the casual confidence of a man who treated his body as a public amenity.
"Adults who are about to settle this the old-fashioned way.
Call it a bonding exercise." He freed himself from his shorts with a flourish that suggested he'd done this before, at parties, in locker rooms, anywhere an audience might be assembled.
His cock hung heavy even soft, thick and veined along the shaft, the skin smooth and tanned to the same even bronze as the rest of him.
But what drew the eye was the foreskin, long and loose, draping over the head in a hooded fold of skin that bunched at the tip, the inner surface glimpsed as a darker pink when it shifted with his movements.
He stroked himself to semi-hardness with lazy arrogance, the foreskin retracting slightly to reveal the glistening head beneath, slick with natural moisture that caught the firelight.
"Seven inches hard," Theo announced, his grin predatory. "Uncut and proud. This foreskin? Ladies love the extra play. Built-in sleeve action. Feel like velvet."
It's the whiskey, he told himself. It's the isolation. It's the altitude.
Reed followed suit with the matter-of-fact confidence of a man who'd long since stopped needing anyone's approval.
He tugged his pants down to reveal a cock that was shorter than Theo's but significantly thicker, girthy, circumcised, with a slight upward curve that spoke to physics as much as genetics.
The shaft was heavy with prominent veins, nested in a thatch of silver-grey hair, and even soft it had a density, a presence, that made Theo's length seem almost performative by comparison.
"Six and a half," Reed said, cupping himself with unselfconscious ease. "But thick as a beer can. Experience over size, kid. Any man who's been with enough partners knows it's the girth that makes them gasp."
"Bullshit," Theo fired back, still stroking. "Length hits the spots girth can't reach. You want depth, you need inches. Girth is just—"
"Girth is just the reason your partner can't walk straight the next morning," Reed finished, with the serene confidence of an expert. "Length is performance. Girth is results."
Milo, whose face had progressed from red to nearly purple, fumbled with his zipper after the flask made its third pass.
He exposed himself with the reluctance of a man submitting to a medical exam, shorter, plumper, circumcised, about five inches soft with a smooth, rounded head that flushed pink in the firelight.
"Not winning any contests," he mumbled. "But it... works."
"Fun-size," Theo corrected, grinning. Then all eyes turned to Jace.
His heart was hammering. The whiskey had stripped away enough inhibition to make the next step feel possible, almost inevitable, like gravity had tilted and the only direction was forward.
Fuck it. He unzipped and freed himself, circumcised, straight-shafted, average length but with a flared head that was already flushed darker than the rest of him, responsive to the cool air and the charged atmosphere in a way that was impossible to disguise.
"Six inches," Jace said, his voice rougher than he intended. "Clean cut. No frills."
Theo's eyes swept the group with the assessing gaze of a judge at a competition he'd already won.
"Reed, yours looks like it could split a log, respect.
Milo, adorable. Jace, solid blue-collar hardware.
But mine?" He tugged the foreskin back slowly, deliberately, revealing the full head beneath, plump, purple-pink, glistening with natural lubrication, the ridged corona pronounced and wet.
"Extra sensitive. Extra fun. This right here? This is the luxury package."
They tucked away eventually, the banter fading into the comfortable aftermath of shared transgression, the air heavy with woodsmoke and whiskey and the unmistakable musk of male arousal, warm, salt-edged, primal.
Jace could still feel his cock half-hard in his pants, a persistent weight that pulsed with each heartbeat.
His eyes kept drifting to Theo's crotch, then away, then back, the gravity of the image pulling at something he'd spent thirty-four years not looking at directly.
Canyon returned from the trees twenty minutes later, stepping into the firelight with a silence that should have been impossible for a man his size.
His pale eyes swept the group, and his nostrils flared, once, deliberately, as if sampling the air the way a sommelier samples wine.
Whatever he detected in the cocktail of whiskey and testosterone and confused arousal, he didn't comment on it.
But his gaze lingered on Jace for half a second longer than the others, and in that half-second Jace saw something flicker behind the silver, amusement, maybe, or recognition, or hunger.
"You don't sleep?" Milo asked, his voice cracking.
"Not the way you mean." Canyon sat on a log at the fire's edge, his back to the dark forest, though everything about his posture suggested he was more aware of what lay behind him than what lay in front. "Go. Rest. The hike tomorrow is harder."
***
The tent was small. Too small for two grown men, their sleeping bags overlapping at the edges, shoulders nearly touching in the canvas-filtered moonlight.
Theo's breathing was uneven, not sleep-slow, but the irregular pattern of a man lying awake with a decision forming in his mind.
Jace stared at the ceiling and tried to identify the sounds filtering through the fabric: wind, water, the creak of pines, and beneath it all, the silence that wasn't silence but rather the mountain holding its breath.
His mind replayed the campfire in looping fragments.
The heft of Theo's cock in the firelight.
The way the foreskin moved, the glistening head.
Reed's thickness. His own body's betrayal, the heat, the hardening, the interest he'd never examined because examining it meant dismantling a version of himself he'd spent decades constructing.
"Hey." Theo's whisper cut through the dark. "You were staring pretty hard at the campfire earlier. At me."
"I wasn't—"
"Bullshit. I saw your eyes, man. It's fine. Most guys are curious about uncut. Not a lot of us in the States." A rustle of sleeping bag. "Want a better look? Just us here. No judgment."
Jace's cock was already hardening, a traitor responding to the proximity, the whispered invitation, the whiskey still warm in his blood.
Six months without being touched. Six months of nothing but his own hand and a grief so thick it muffled even that.
The hunger was physical, urgent, a hollow ache that had nothing to do with orientation and everything to do with being starved.
"That's, no. We should sleep."
"Come on. Not gay if it's just looking. Scientific curiosity." Another rustle, and Jace heard the unmistakable sound of fabric sliding down skin. "Already out. Just take a look."
The tent was dim but not dark, moonlight filtered through the fabric in a blue-white wash that turned Theo's body into a study in light and shadow.
He'd shoved his sleeping bag down and lay on his back, his cock resting heavily against his toned stomach, the foreskin draped like a velvet hood over the head that peeked out just enough to catch the light.
It was thicker than Jace had registered at the campfire.
The shaft was veined and heavy, the skin smooth, and the natural musky scent filled the small space with an intimacy that made Jace's head swim.
Don't, said the rational part of his brain.
"Just looking," Jace heard himself say. His voice didn't sound like his own.
Theo grinned in the blue light and tugged the foreskin back slowly, revealing the full, glistening head, slick with natural moisture, the slit beading with clear precum that caught the moonlight like a tiny jewel.
He stroked lazily, the skin gliding in that way circumcised men never got to experience, the wet sound of it filling the tent.
"See? Built-in action. Feels like silk."
Jace swallowed hard. His cock was fully rigid now, straining against his shorts, the head slick and sensitive and demanding attention.
The distance between them was maybe eight inches.
He could feel the heat radiating off Theo's body, could smell the musk of his arousal, warm, salty, overwhelmingly male.