It was still early when Erik and Linus arrived in the little village of Torsåker, the sun low and white through a veil of mist. The festival grounds spread behind a cluster of red barns, where loudspeakers already crackled with announcements in Swedish and English. The brothers parked by a field, stepping out into the frosted grass that bent under their boots.
Erik stretched his back and looked over the crowd. “So this is it. The famous Bär Din Bror race.”
Linus, grinned through his scarf. “You always wanted to carry me around. Now’s your chance.”
They had grown up in different towns but ended up under the same roof seven years ago when their parents remarried. Both had long wanted a brother; the novelty hadn’t worn off. Every shared plan still carried that gleam of childhood wish fulfilled, especially now, when the older brother was getting engaged, and the younger brother had just come back to their parents’ house after graduating from university and looking for a job.
They joined the slow drift of people heading toward the village square. It was lined with stalls selling all kinds of ware—wool socks, painted rocks, clay mugs, elk jerky, and mugs of steaming glögg. The air smelled of smoke and cinnamon. A local band was tuning fiddles near the wooden church, and a brass bell rang from a bakery door each time someone entered. They ducked inside for coffee and cardamom buns, shaking the cold from their jackets.
The baker, a round woman with red cheeks, asked where they came from.
“Stockholm,” Erik said.
She nodded as though that explained the mud-craving insanity. “Then you’ll like this. We are muddy all right but the mud is clean.”
By late morning, they’d toured the small outdoor museum—a pair of log cottages and an old forge still smelling faintly of iron dust—and then headed toward the race field. The event was already in motion: teams of brothers, cousins, and sometimes girlfriends balanced awkwardly as they stumbled through the deep mud trench. Crowds laughed and cheered. Some teams had costumes—Vikings, lumberjacks, even one pair of men dressed as moose.
Erik and Linus changed in a tent where the floor was already half mud. Their race bibs, pinned crookedly, read 37A and 37B. The rules were simple: one carries, the other clings like a backpack. Halfway through, they switch. Whoever finishes fastest wins a barrel of beer and a basket of local cheese.
Linus started as the carried. He hooked his arms around Erik’s neck, legs locked over his shoulders. “Don’t drop me, brother,” he said, muffled against Erik’s jacket.
“No promises,” Erik puffed, already knee-deep in cold sludge.
They ran—or tried to. The mud clung to their shins, each step like lifting a sack of cement. The cheering crowd blurred into steam and laughter. At the first turn, Erik slipped and they both tumbled in, rolling over like otters in brown water. Linus surfaced first, cackling. “You look like a roast potato!”
They switched roles at the halfway mark. Linus was lighter but no steadier, sprinting with Erik on his back, mouth open in effort and disbelief. The final stretch crossed a shallow pond fringed with reeds; they splashed through, water up to their waists, until they stumbled past the finish line—filthy, shivering, grinning uncontrollably.
They didn’t win. But the announcer called their names anyway, congratulating “Team Garbo Brothers from Stockholm” for “best synchronized fall.” The crowd clapped. A volunteer handed them paper cups of hot blueberry soup, which they drank like nectar.
After the race, they found the open-air shower cabins—wooden stalls under the gray sky with a single pipe overhead. Cold water only. They stood side by side, the mud streaming off them in brown rivers, gasping as the icy water hit their shoulders.
Linus yelped. “This is punishment.”
Erik’s teeth chattered. “No. This is Sweden, brother, you were born here.”
Clean and half-frozen, they took off their swimming shorts and dressed in dry clothes in the car and walked back into the village for the evening feast. Long tables were set up inside the community hall, lit with string lights and the smell of roasted meat. Everyone ate together: competitors, farmers, visiting tourists. The two brothers sat beside a father-and-son pair from Östersund, trading stories of failed sprints and spectacular dives.
Dinner stretched on: venison stew, beet salad, warm bread, lingonberry jam. Then someone brought out guitars, and a group began singing old drinking songs. Linus joined in, guessing the words, and Erik clapped along, their laughter mixing with the others’.
Later, they stepped outside into the cold night. The fields were dark, except for a few lanterns flickering near the empty raceway. Their boots squelched on the path back to the car. Breath steamed between them.
Linus kicked a clump of frozen mud. “You know,” he said, “I think I finally get what it’s like having a brother. You can shout at him, or trust him to carry you through a swamp.”
Erik smiled, starting the engine. “Yeah. And he’ll still be there when you fall in.”
They drove off through the quiet countryside, windows fogging from the heat, the road winding between black pines and frozen meadows. Behind them, the festival lights faded, and the laughter of the village melted into the hum of the tires on the wet road.
***
The first thing they wanted after coming home was a long warm shower. Their parents fast asleep, the brothers walked in, still laughing about something that had happened to them that day, shed their clothes on the way, the hot water sprung out, and they both exhaled blissfully.
This was nothing special for them, years and years they’ve done that in every shower they took when the parents were asleep. The steam beaded on Erik’s collarbones, rolling down the faint dusting of blond hair that darkened when wet. Linus’s hands slid lower, palms cupping the curve of Erik’s shoulder blades, thumbs pressing small half-moons into slick skin. Their chests met—Erik’s leaner, ribs rising with quick breaths; Linus’s broader, water streaming off the swell of pecs onto the younger’s sternum. Below, Erik’s cut dickhead brushed Linus’s hooded tip once, twice, the two dicks dangling against each other in a teasing preview. Panting, they parted for breath with their foreheads still touching, eyes locked on each other as the water drummed around them.
“Älskar dig.”
The words came out as they always had, together, milliseconds away from each other: “Love you,” a simple declaration almost eight years old.
Linus popped the cap of the shower gel, and citrus-flavored suds bloomed across Erik’s chest, white trails sliding over lean muscle. Linus’s thumbs drew slow, deliberate circles, coaxing the small pink nubs of Erik’s nipples to turn stiff while hr panted heavily against Linus’s neck.
A second later, Erik’s palms glided lower, more suds cascading down Linus’s thick thighs. His fingers ghosted the tender inner skin; it was that barely brushed heat, each pass just a promise withheld—but their hips swayed closer this time, cocks brushing against each other again under the spray.
Then Erik tilted Linus’s head back under the spray, and his teeth grazed the soaked curve of his neck, murmuring something filthy in Swedish against his skin. Linus moaned—suddenly long and sad, plaintive—then his palms cupped Erik’s taut cheeks, squeezed them and Linus dragged him in—the slippery crowns of their cocks met, slid, and kissed again—and again—under the drumming water.
They now stood facing each other, water sluicing the last suds away. Their fists closed around each other’s heated shafts—Erik’s cut crown in Linus’s hand, Linus’s hooded cock in Erik’s broad palm. Strokes matched, slow pulls that rolled the skin (whatever remained of it for Erik) back and forth, glided smoothly as if dancing. Their eyes locked on each other, their breaths synced, the shared rhythm tightened like a wire ready to sing. They’ve done it for years whenever they could but each new time felt different.
“Älskar dig.”
“Älskar dig, lillebror…”
“Ach, Karlsson.”
They burst out laughing, their hard dicks bobbing up and down, ah, the view any voyeur would pay for.
But soon they stood again chest to chest, and Erik thumbed Linus’s foreskin down in one slow reveal; warm water kissed the bared crown and Linus’s breath stuttered. He returned the move, tracing Erik’s circumcision scar lightly. Smiles disappeared now; Erik trembled on his feet, Linus hissed quietly through his teeth. Their faces were now passionate, wild, and when they kissed again fiercely they banged their foreheads together and didn’t even stop to notice.
When their mouths crashed together—open and wet—they swapped breaths in turn every ten seconds, angling for deeper and deeper taste. Below, their dicks fought their own battle: Erik angled up; Linus rolled his hips forward. The cut crown smacked the flushed hood, a wet slap echoing off the tiles. Erik pulled back, surged again—slap, slide—the foreskin kissed his slit then slipped off. Linus twisted wrist-like, his shaft now curved under Erik’s, the cockheads slammed into each other, shafts slapped side-to-side. The water turned each strike into a slick clap. This was the rhythm that turned into a playful war: an upstroke followed by a downswipe, glans tapping glans until both tips glowed rose-red, and each impact now sparked a shared grunt into the next kiss.
Next they pumped fresh gel into each other’s palms, and multiple suds bloomed white and thick. Erik’s fist slicked Linus first—it was a slow twist from his root to his tip, and the foreskin glided under the foam until the shaft shone like wet marble. Linus returned the favor, and lathered Erik’s cut crown, sparkling bubbles clung to the ridge, dripping down the veined underside. The steam around them turned the bubbles pearlescent, both cocks now glistened, slipping through fingers with zero friction, ready for the next move.
They were dead silent prepping themselves like that, only deep breaths and slaps of shuffling feet in water puddles betrayed their excitement—and, well, of course the rock hard dicks, too, ha.
Erik braced his shoulders against the tiles, now warm and soapy, his thighs parted just enough to offer room. Linus curled his fingers around both shafts, lined up—his hooded crown kissing the soft collar of what was left of Erik’s foreskin. A gentle push, slick with soap, and the fold yielded; Erik’s cock head slid inside the translucent sleeve, skin stretching to sheath him snug. They froze, sharing one sharp inhale, feeling twin heartbeats throb through the thin shared membrane while water drummed a warm rhythm over the knot of their bodies.
Linus eased back until only the tip of Erik’s cut cock nested inside the sleeve, then slid forward again—slow, deliberate—his shaft gliding along the snug foreskin tunnel. Whatever remained of Erik’s skin rolled with him, and that glide that drew low groans from both. Erik’s fingers tightened on Linus’s wet shoulders. He planted his feet wide and tilted hips to meet each thrust, the soft slap of balls against the palm holding their cocks together echoed under the spray. Steam curled around them, water beading on joined flesh while their shared sheath of foreskin pulsed—hot, tight, a private pocket moving back and forth with every careful stroke.
“I … am… fucking….”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go, go!”
Linus shifted rhythm—several shallow nudges that teased the rim, then one long glide to the hilt, his foreskin stretched glossy and thin. Erik matched him, their hips rolled, their pulses drummed through the shared sleeve. Their breaths now turned ragged, their foreheads knocked together again and again, but they didn’t seem to notice, looking down at their sliding cocks.
Then the tension coiled and snapped—Erik cried out first, cock kicking as several spurts shot inside the tunnel; Linus followed—he thrust deep and held, his seed mixing with his stepbrother’s, the sheath ballooning then overflowing—milky threads spilling out, chased instantly by warm water that carried the mingled white streams down their thighs.
Linus eased out gradually, his stretched and soaked foreskin slipped free with a soft wet sigh. Erik pulled him close, his arms looped low around his stepbrother’s waist, both chests heaving under the cooling needles of water. They traded slow, salty lazy kisses, while their palms drifted over cooling backs, sudsy trails gradually thinning to nothing. Linus twisted the shower dial down and the stinging spray turned into a lazy drip of hot water.
“One day I’ll fuck you.”
“Nope. I am straight, I’ve got a girlfriend, remember?”
“Says he who got hard riding my back.”
“Karlsson!”
“Lillebror!”
Their mother’s voice said from the hallway:
“Guys, you back?”
“Yeah, mom.”
“Don’t flood the apartment.”
“Won’t.”
“Night!”
“See ya tomorrow.”
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