TWENTY-NINE
The sun was starting its slow descent when they made their way back to camp.
The light had shifted, still bright, but softer now, golden instead of white-hot. It painted everything in warmer tones, made the rocks glow amber, and turned the Joshua trees into silhouettes against a sky beginning to blush pink.
Rory knelt by the fire pit, arranging kindling with focused precision. He struck a match and it caught, flames licking up through the structure.
Kieran watched him work, then turned his attention to the cooler. He pulled out the fish, the buns, and the vegetables he’d optimistically purchased.
This is normal.
Two people. A campsite. Food that would probably be mediocre at best. Two dogs sprawled in the shade. The crackle of a fire coming to life.
Rory stood, brushing dirt from his knees, and walked over to where Kieran stood.
“You going to cook or just stand there looking domestic?” Rory asked.
“I’m manifesting competence,” Kieran replied.
“How’s that working out?”
“Poorly.”
Rory laughed. He moved closer. “We don’t have to eat yet.”
Kieran looked up at him. “No?”
“No.” Rory’s hand came up, fingers brushing along Kieran’s jaw. “We’ve got time.”
The fire popped behind them. Kieran’s pulse kicked hard in his throat.
Rory kissed him, slow at first, then deeper, his hand sliding to the back of Kieran’s neck.
Kieran leaned into it, his own hands finding the warmth of Rory’s bare chest.
When they broke apart, both breathing harder, Kieran glanced toward the tent.
“Inside?” he asked.
Rory shook his head. “Too small. There’s more room in the back of my truck.”
He ducked into the tent and came back with the sleeping bags bundled in his arms. Kieran watched as he tossed them into the bed of the Tacoma, spreading them out to cover the metal.
“Get in,” Rory said.
Kieran climbed up into the truck bed, and Rory followed, pulling the tailgate closed behind them.
The sleeping bags were soft against Kieran’s back, smelling of sun-baked canvas and cedar dust, the rigid lines of the metal beneath.
He inhaled the scent of the hot truck bed, dust, and Rory’s clean sweat.
The sky stretched endless above them, pale blue fading toward gold at the edges, without a single cloud.
The Joshua trees stood silent around them like strange witnesses.
They were completely exposed. Anyone could see them, if anyone were here.
No one was.
Kieran had never done anything like this before. Never been this bare, this open, this visible under an endless sky. His whole life he’d kept everything hidden—his desires, his body, his wants. Sex had always been behind closed doors, in dark rooms, under covers. Safe. Contained. Secret.
And now here he was, in the back of a truck in the middle of the desert, about to let Rory take him apart with nothing between them and the heavens.
He should have been scared. Vulnerable in the bad way.
But he wasn’t. He was free.
Rory knelt over him, and Kieran reached up, pulling him down into a kiss that was more need than finesse. Rory’s hands were everywhere—his chest, his ribs, his stomach—and Kieran arched into every touch.
“Off,” Rory muttered against his mouth, tugging at Kieran’s shirt.
They shed their clothes quickly, kicking fabric aside until there was nothing between them.
Kieran pressed a hand against Rory’s chest and pushed him back, reversing their positions. Rory went willingly, settling against the wheel well, and Kieran sank down between his legs.
Rory took a sharp breath as Kieran wrapped his hand around him, stroking once before taking him into his mouth, his tongue swirling over the head before sinking down as far as he could.
“Fuck,” Rory breathed.
Kieran looked up at him, the taste of salt and sharp pre-cum heavy on his tongue. The sight must have done something to Rory because his hand came down to cup Kieran’s jaw, his thumb stroking along his cheek.
“Good man,” Rory said.
Kieran hummed around him, taking him deeper, and Rory’s hips jerked involuntarily.
Rory reached down and pulled Kieran up, hands gripping his arms, bringing their mouths together in a kiss that was equal parts want and inevitability, and eased him down onto the sleeping bag.
Kieran lay on his back, watching as Rory knelt between his legs. Rory leaned over him, his nose dragging along Kieran’s ribs, up to his armpit, inhaling deeply.
Then Rory grabbed Kieran’s thighs and pushed them up and back, folding him nearly in half.
The last time he’d been in this position with Rory, the sun had been doing all the work. This was a significant upgrade.
He almost laughed. Almost.
The desert air hit his hole, his taint, everything exposed and open. Dry and warm, nothing like the coastal chill he was used to. Above him, the sky burned gold. He was spread open under all of it. The sun, the rocks, the twisted trees.
He had never been more alive.
“Rory—”
Then Rory’s tongue was on his hole and Kieran stopped thinking entirely. His body jerked.
“Oh fuck—”
Rory devoured him. There was no other word for it. His tongue worked in circles, pressing and teasing, pushing inside with shallow thrusts that had Kieran gripping the edge of the truck bed, his knuckles white against the metal.
“Mm-hm.” Rory pulled back to speak, his breath hot against sensitive skin. “You taste so fucking good.”
Then he was back, his tongue fucking into Kieran with a relentlessness that made Kieran’s vision blur.
Eventually Rory lowered his legs, and Kieran gasped at the shift in position. He kissed his way along Kieran’s inner thigh, slow and open-mouthed, working closer and closer to where Kieran needed him most.
“I can’t—” Kieran choked out. “Rory, please. I need you inside me.”
“Not yet,” Rory murmured, his lips brushing Kieran’s wet thigh, his voice a heavy gravel. “Look up, Kier. Look how big that sky is.” His mouth curved against Kieran's skin. “Nothing out here is asking you to be quiet.”
Kieran laughed breathlessly. “This isn’t going to be like Brokeback Mountain, is it? Because I don’t think spit is going to cut it.”
Rory grinned and reached for the bag he’d tossed in earlier, pulling out a small bottle and a condom.
“You planned this.”
Rory let out a rough chuckle, the sound vibrating against Kieran’s skin as he rolled on the condom. “I didn’t plan it. But I did spend the entire three-hour drive staring at the road and losing my goddamn mind thinking about you spread open in the back of my truck. There’s a difference.”
He slicked his fingers and pressed one inside slowly. Kieran’s back arched; after the rim job, he was so sensitive that even one finger was overwhelming.
“More,” Kieran gasped.
Rory added a second, crooked finger, and found the spot inside that made Kieran see stars.
“There,” Kieran breathed. “God, right there.”
He worked him open until Kieran was trembling and desperate.
Then he pulled his fingers out. Slicked himself again, and repositioned one of Kieran’s legs flat on the sleeping bag, the other lifted onto Rory’s shoulder, opening him up.
Rory lined himself up and pushed forward.
The stretch was intense, more than fingers, a burn that made Kieran’s breath catch. But Rory didn’t stop, didn’t ask, steadily sinking in until he bottomed out.
“Fuck,” Kieran whispered.
Above them, the sky was turning a deeper gold, streaked with pink. A bird called somewhere in the distance.
And Rory was inside him, filling him, and Kieran had never been so present in his own body. So connected to another person. So part of the world instead of hiding from it.
Rory gave him a moment and then he started to move.
Pulling out before pushing back in. Each thrust was deliberate, controlled, the angle letting him hit deep.
Kieran felt split open, claimed, completely at Rory’s mercy.
The drag of him, the fullness, the obscene wet sound of their bodies connecting.
Kieran heard his own breathing turn ragged, heard Rory’s low grunt with every thrust, heard the sleeping bag bunching beneath them, and the faint, heavy groan of the truck’s suspension absorbing their rhythm.
Then Rory picked up the pace, his hips snapping harder, and Kieran couldn’t think anymore. Could only feel.
The force of it pushed them across the truck bed, the sleeping bags bunching beneath them, Kieran’s shoulders sliding against the metal where the padding had shifted. He didn’t care. The bite of it only made everything sharper, more real.
His hand moved toward his own cock, desperate for friction.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Rory growled.
Kieran’s hand froze.
“That’s mine,” Rory said. He wrapped his hand around Kieran’s cock, stroking in time with his thrusts.
The dual sensation was too much. Kieran found himself thrusting up into Rory’s fist, then back onto his cock, caught between two points of overwhelming pleasure.
Each snap of Rory’s hips drove them further across the truck bed, the metal biting into Kieran’s back, and he wanted to feel this tomorrow, wanted proof that it had happened.
“Look at me,” Rory demanded.
Kieran forced his eyes open, meeting Rory’s gaze, dark and intense and focused entirely on him.
“I want to see your eyes when you come,” Rory said. He shifted the angle, driving in deeper, ruthless and heavy, hitting that exact, swollen knot of nerves until Kieran’s vision fractured at the edges. “Let me see what I do to you, Kier.”
“I’m gonna come…don't stop,” Kieran whispered, his fingers clawing blindly into the muscle of Rory’s shoulders.
“Come then,” Rory growled, his fist tightening, matching the frantic snap of his hips. “Give it to me.”
Rory didn’t just hit the spot—he stayed on it, anchoring himself deep and grinding his pelvis forward, relentless and heavy, overloading Kieran’s nervous system until the distinction between pleasure and pain completely dissolved.
The orgasm didn’t just break over him; it trapped him.
Kieran’s back arched violently off the bunched sleeping bags, his jaw locking as a choked, broken shout tore from his throat.
He came hard, a blind, full-body seizure of pleasure that started where Rory was buried inside him and tore outward through every nerve.
Cum shot up across his chest, his neck—his cheek.
“Oh fuck.” Rory laughed, the sound breathless, and utterly delighted, his eyes scanning the mess on Kieran’s skin, his own hips shaking as the tightness inside Kieran began to pull him under too.
But instead of the usual sharp release and comedown, the rhythmic, devastating pressure of Rory’s hips kept the peak frozen in place. Every heavy, blunt thrust inward slammed directly into his prostate, triggering a fresh, violent wave of contractions before the last one could even recede.
“Rory—holy shit, Rory, please—” Kieran gasped, his body entirely yielding to the friction, his voice a desperate, breathless sound from a brain that had lost all ability to think. He arched into the movement, his thighs shaking so violently they threatened to drop from Rory’s shoulders.
Rory didn’t ease off. If anything, he doubled down, his jaw clamped, his eyes unblinking as he watched Kieran dismantle beneath him. He kept stroking Kieran’s oversensitive, ruined cock, wringing it out, while his hips snapped into him with a bruising, rhythmic finality.
It became endless. A lawless, white-hot loop of static where every pulse met the hard, unyielding weight of Rory’s body. Kieran’s chest heaved, his head thrashing back against the metal ridge of the truck bed, completely consumed by a pleasure so intense it was borderline hostile.
He was entirely at the mercy of the rhythm, pinned under the vast, blushing desert sky, coming and coming until there was nothing left but the raw, involuntary twitching of his muscles.
Kieran couldn’t even breathe, let alone be embarrassed. He was too far gone, his fingers tangled hopelessly in Rory’s hair, riding out an aftershock like a live current stitched into his spine. The sky wheeled above them, a dizzying blur of gold and pink, and Kieran came apart completely.
Rory fucked him through the very last tremor, his hand steadying him, holding him together while simultaneously wrecking him.
“Fuck,” Rory gasped, his rhythm finally faltering. “Kier, I’m gonna nut—”
He buried himself to the absolute hilt, his whole body going rigid as he came with a broken, guttural groan, Kieran’s name falling like a confession from his lips. The heavy, internal pulse of it, the heat of the friction lingering between them.
They stayed tangled together for a long moment, Rory collapsed half on top of him in the back of the truck, both of them breathing hard, hearts pounding, the desert sky slowly deepening above them.
Eventually, Rory pulled out carefully, and Kieran winced at the oversensitivity. They kissed softly. And then Rory’s tongue brushed the side of Kieran’s cheek, savoring the evidence of how thoroughly he’d undone him.
“You’re disgusting,” Kieran said, but he was smiling.
“You love it.”
Kieran didn’t argue.
He did.
Rory smiled and shifted to lie beside him, pulling Kieran into his arms. Kieran tucked his head against Rory’s chest, listening to the rapid thud of his heartbeat, their skin cooling in the evening air, the smell of sex and sweat and the dry, open scent of the desert mixing together.
Kieran looked up at the sky—darker now, the first stars beginning to appear. He was naked in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of nowhere, covered in his own cum, pressed against a man who had just blown his mind.
And he had never been less ashamed of anything in his life.
“I like this,” Kieran said finally.
“This?”
“All of it.”
Rory pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Get used to it.”
The fire had burned down to embers. The food sat forgotten by the cooler.
Neither of them moved to do anything about it.