Your Day in the Barrel

And so the schedule was finally complete. Monday was Raoul's night to pleasure the sailors. Tuesday was Mikey's, and he offered an extra time slot at seven A.M. for morning-wood relief. Wednesday was Terry, Thursday Alan, Friday Sam, Saturday Mikey again, both slots again. And Sunday was Stanley, the old mariner, who despite his nature gave truly formidable head, mopping his bushy moustache up and down your shaft between bouts of rapid, forceful suction.

There were, however, many exceptions to the schedule. Most notably, whenever it was someone's birthday, the birthday boy got to call all the shots he wanted.

They were anchored at Vigo, in another one of those foggy Celtic corners, when the next birthday came. The Triton rocked up and down on the choppy grey waves as Steven and Stephan labored in the galley, getting the vat of chicken-noodle soup prepared for tonight.

A wave pitched, and a jar of cream sauce tipped over on the counter, dribbling down across Stephan's apron. He scowled. These first hours of being twenty-eight were not treating him particularly well.

Stephan was the kitchen aide of the Triton, its meal planner and cooking inspector who assisted Steven or Mikey with the supper tasks more often than not. He was a smallish, charming Berliner, with glasses and short mouse-colored hair, but he had a bit of a reputation for clumsiness. He still owed David money for a wine glass he'd broken way back on New Year's Eve. He grimaced as he finished wiping off the sauce.

"You excited to celebrate your big night?" asked Steven, lifting a large blender off a shelf.

"Aye... I guess," said Stephan, in a strong exhale.

"What's the matter?"

"I dunno," Stephan mumbled. "Years of my life used to mean so much more. I got my first job. I got the right to vote. I graduated from university. But now I feel unfulfilled. Every year feels the same as the year before. Nothing is progressing -"

"Well, what are ye looking to accomplish?" asked Steven. "It's a new year for you. What would make this truly a year to remember?"

The small lad was stumbling. "I was thinking I might want to - well - I'm not sure, actually," he responded, shrinking back. "Do you have any suggestions?"

A pause. "Well," said Steven, "there's a harpsichord down in the lounge. You could learn to play."

"I see. So this'll be my special 'harpsichord year'," said Stephan, rolling his eyes.

"It could be," shrugged Steven. "Have you heard how good Alberto's got? He plays all the classical composers flawlessly. He's even thinking of going to a music school after we're -"

"I want to have sex with a man," blurted Stephan.

The sous-chef was caught off guard for a second, but he came around fast.

"Yeah. That's what I want to do. I want to pound a man's ass. I want to ride him. I want to shoot my seed deep within him," the aide went on, letting the words rumble out. While he did, an electric roar echoed through the room. Steven had switched on the blender. Three, four times he dumped in handfuls of cut vegetables.

"I apologize," said Stephan, as finally it quieted. "If that was inappropriate, I'm so sorry -"

"It's your birthday. I will help you out, no questions asked," whispered Steven. "But I do have ground rules. First, you'll need to give me a little foreplay to turn me on."

"I can do that," said Stephan, wide-eyed.

"Protection is mandatory, and make sure to lube me thickly. You might need a full bottle."

"I'm cut," replied the younger man. "I'm used to it."

And they laughed together and locked their arms into a passionate hug, not of romance, but of friendship. The sauce stain was stamped onto Steven. Stephan leaned his head over and checked the temperature of the oven. He shrugged.

"Now, should I bake a cake for myself?"

----------------------

Stephan was bisexual, and preferred going to the bars ashore to find his mainly female companionship. Although he rarely visited the barrel room, he did make one important contribution there.

A few years ago, he had picked up a painting at an art gallery in Berlin from someone he knew well. He'd brought the painting aboard as a keepsake, and it now held pride of place on the wall of this room, hanging beside the shelf where Mikey's erotic drawings were stored.

It was a scene of ancient Sparta. The central figures were two well-built military commanders, walking hand in hand and wearing only helmets. One brandished a blade and shield, while the other waved an enormous red flag in the air. Under a sky full of flame, the leaders guided dozens of other nude warriors forth against a backdrop of columned temples and Hellenic amphitheaters, all made from sharp angled brushstrokes. At the bottom right corner was the artist's signature.

Gad Abendroth.

Back at university, Dr. Abendroth was Stephan's chemistry professor. His art shows were just his side hustle. Stephan imagined he must never have slept. The prof was the first openly gay person he'd ever met, and how very open he was. On warm afternoons he rode around campus on the back of a tandem bicycle, his boyfriend steering as he waved at everyone and puffed his pipe. It had never made sense to Stephan why the world judged men so badly for loving men, when all it led to was this. More quirky pairs of people on bicycles.

When the Berliner did come to the room, this painting was his fuel, and his eyes were fixated on it while he stood there beating off, pants around his ankles. Those Spartans' bodies were just so perfect. And that professor knew exactly how to draw a man.

It was still half an hour before the session should have begun, yet the viewers had found him here, Terry and a couple of his new recruits, Herb and Pauli. They sat in the chairs, making small talk and caressing themselves through their britch fabric while they stared Stephan over.

He had small, perky nipples, and a navel set flat against his belly. A happy-trail of tan hair pointed down from it, descending into his trimmed pubic stubble, and his rolling pin-like cock was perhaps five inches, but got massively hard and thick when aroused. It stood pink and powerful in the lamplight, and it caught Steven's eye as he bounded into the room, finished with the duties of another early supper.

"You look ready," he affirmed. Stephan bit his tongue.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

The chef bent in to face Stephan, and immediately he felt his lips press into his own, and he puckered up, taking Steven into his grasp. One by one, still making out with the Dutchman, he swept the vest over his head and the britches off his square, muscular legs.

Trails of precum spread across their four legs as their heads and bodies bobbed around in their embrace. Steven pulled a crate from a corner and stood there for a second, that silky-soft backside facing Stephan and the crowd. Then he bent over.

The birthday lad reached onto the shelf where the condoms sat. He unrolled one over his pulsing boner, then picked up a bottle of lube from beside. His hands gradually stretched Steven's back cavity open, working the oil in onto his walls until he reached his tiny, circular butthole lips. Steven gave a whining grunt as around the circle Stephan spiralled one finger, then two. And the voices of the voyeurs came on strong.

"Aye..." grunted Terry, his hand now firmly in his pants.

"Fuck, yes, matey, go for it," said Pauli. But just like that, the self-consciousness was sinking in. Stephan began to line himself up behind Steven's ass, making testing thrusts in the air, and suddenly he felt himself deflating again.

Not now. Oh, God, please not now. His face was flustering into purple, embarrassment rising in him while his semi flopped loosely around. Through a dry mouth he coughed.

"Can - can ye please go in there?" he asked Steven, pointing to the barrel. "I'm sorry - there's just - so much attention - so many eyes on me -"

"Breathe, Stephan!" said Terry, lifting a hand. "Remember, you're in charge tonight."

"What you did there was just lovely," reassured Steven. "I can tell you're gonna be an exceptional top. Keep it going."

He held up a palm to the others.

"And fellas - please keep quiet for a moment. Let's let Stephan have a happy birthday."

There was instant silence. The sous-chef climbed into the barrel and crouched down, facing opposite his normal direction. The German lad plunged two fingers into the glory hole, and he felt Steven's delicate rim just inside, boiling with body heat from his innermost core. He teased at the opening, sideways, vertically.

Moans of joy came back from inside the hole, and at last Stephan's stress was melting. His manhood leapt, standing hard in front of him under its cape of latex. Carefully he lined it up with the knot hole and drilled himself inside. Then he started to pump in and out.

Immediately Steven felt the hard rod tapping on his sphincter, and he began to loosen. The hole stirred and then widened, and the twink rode him deeper and deeper, until he could feel those soft walls hugging him like a silk pocket.

A rush of carnal heat blazed through Stephan's belly. He was going to do this. He would succeed. He re-angled his thrusts, bringing his hips closer to the barrel's wood, and started rubbing his pale, elongated ballsack up and down the sides, just below the knot hole.

"Yes... yes... ffff-ppphlllll..."

Drool was cascading down Stephan's small, pointed chin. He had many intense pleasure points along the seam of his scrotum. The man in the barrel stretched his legs, pulling up his hips a little and aiming Stephan's engorged head right in behind his balls and bladder. A lightning bolt ripped through his prostate, and his mouth let loose, moaning as he pinched Stephan between his soft walls.

Terry was in a trance. His pants were tossed on the chair beside him while he rocked back and forth, clamping the root of his shaft in one fist and furiously bating it in the other, watching the top. Even more than his body, Stephan's mannerisms were turning Terry on. He didn't scream or grunt, ever. He just... spoke fast. "I think I'm gonna cum. I think I'm gonna cum. I'm gonna cum," he was reciting under his breath, his eyes wide and fixated to the side, on the painted warriors under that fiery sky.

The Berliner stood primly on his tiptoes, sinking still another inch into the glory hole, rubbing his balls harder. As he did, Steven started squeezing his rectum in a steady rhythm, vibrating that tight rim over the flare behind Stephan's exposed head, and then -

"Fuck - yes - fuck - here I cum - here I -!"

Without another sound from Stephan, a quake shook his body, and he didn't stop shaking the whole time he came. Steven's breath was held, then suddenly he gasped as he felt the bulge of the rubber inside his walls and the heat of all that potent love juice rippling into his core. Warmth filled Steven as if he'd sunk into a hot bath, and now he, too, was quivering, climbing to his brink.

"Finger - please - push down..." he hissed at Stephan, between fast, raspy breaths. In five seconds flat, the top had pulled out and shifted around. He sank his finger into the barrel and pressed it down, shooting off fireworks across every square inch of the bottom's prostate. One bellowing grunt erupted from his lungs, and the barrel rattled violently while Steven's orgasm tossed his arms and legs into the air. He spurted his load into a handful of rags, and they were beautiful spurts, liquid pulses heard by every man in the room.

"Ah, ffffuck!" Terry cried out from behind them, fist closed on his cock. He could help himself no longer. The machinist let out a mighty roar, hissing and stamping his legs against the ground, the next link in the chain reaction. His long, straight dick pitched and swung while he let out his nut, and it trailed down on his hairy abdomen and pubes in all directions, forming a milky, white web.

Looking across the junior workers' laps, the kitchen aide saw that they, too, were in desperate need of release. They said yes straight away. Stephan pulled down Herb's pants and blew him to completion, then gave the same to Pauli. And Steven climbed out to watch the rest of the action, and every few minutes, the fresh new top looked up at him, and they'd share a dreamy-eyed grin.

Nothing else had to be said. This was his day.

----------------------

The machine crew was clearing out. Only the two kitchen workers stayed behind. Stephan's eyes lingered on Dr. Abendroth's painting, and he spoke quietly.

"Do you think things will ever... turn around for us?" he asked. "Will there ever come a time when a man is allowed to love another man openly and unashamedly? When we can hold hands in public as couples, without having to keep it hushed and out of people's faces? Will we ever earn any respect - even just a little?"

Steven cast a low glance on the younger man and grasped him around the neck. His tattoo glowed in the dim light.

"Yes," he said heavily. "We will. It's going to take years and years and years. The world is going to kick and punch and stab us at every turn. For no reason at all. And political parties will always manage to put together some excuse as to why it's fair. But we will win respect."

"Thank you," Stephan murmured back. Another pause.

"Sorry. My mind's just been wandering lately. There's not been much to do. Who even is our next - like, our next big client?"

"Vieira Athletics," Steven responded. "Lisbon."

"Vieira! They run those huge Europe-wide competitions, don't they? With the huge, hunky bodybuilders? Can you check if there's one while we're in town?"

Steven smirked at the lad, patting his shoulder.

"I will now."