Content Warning: This story contains explicit sexual content, descriptions of war injury and recovery, and themes of past sexual abuse.
Returning readers might recognize some faces here from Go Home and Trading Desire. But if you haven't read them, don't worry—this story stands completely on its own. No other reading needed.
Huge thanks to Hayden and Jim for seeing me through this one.
Chapter 1: The Ghost on the Line
The shrill blast of the whistle cut through the heavy thuds and squeaks of wrestling shoes on the practice mats.
"Hustle, Timmons! You’re flat footed out there!" Coach Burgess barked. His voice echoed off the cinderblock walls of the high school gym.
He wiped a hand across his jaw, feeling the rough scruff there. "Keep your hips down!"
He spun his chair around in a swift pivot to track the heavyweight driving his opponent toward the edge of the circle.
The titanium frame of the wheelchair responded instantly to the thrust of his calloused hands. Where his legs used to be, the fabric of his sweatpants was pinned and folded neatly over the blunt ends of his thighs.
His work phone buzzed in the cup holder attached to the frame of his chair, and he glanced down. The screen showed a call routing from his office extension, displaying an out-of-state number.
He let the boys run their drills and rolled backward toward the bleachers, swiping the screen to answer.
"Coach Burgess," he answered, keeping his voice flat, ready for an annoyed parent or a telemarketer.
"Jake Burgess?" The voice on the other end asked, hesitant.
Jake could hear another man’s voice murmuring faintly in the background.
"Yes. Who is this?"
A beat of heavy static. Then, a sharp intake of breath. "It’s Junior. Junior Griffin."
Jake’s hand clamped down on the rubber rim, stopping his chair dead.
He hadn't heard that name in almost two decades.
He shoved off. The bearings let out a whir as he wheeled himself away from the bleachers, driving his chair toward the dim, quiet corridor outside the locker rooms.
He stopped there, putting a concrete wall between himself and the noise of the court.
"Junior," Jake said. A statement of fact.
"I’ve looked for you for so long," Junior said, the words rushing out. "You just... vanished."
Jake stared down the empty cinderblock hallway. "I didn't vanish. I just moved on."
"I... I know," Junior said quickly. "I can’t believe I found you."
Jake’s forearm flexed, triggering a slight, restless creak from the metal frame.
"I just... I’d really like to see you," Junior continued.
"I want to see how you are, Jake. I—I’m married now, believe it or not. I have a family.”
His words came tumbling out in a flurry—breathy, eager. “I really want to see you. I thought… I thought I could come to you. If that’s okay."
"Alaska’s a ways away," Jake said, stating the geography as a warning.
"I know" Junior rushed to assure him. "My husband, Boon, and our son, they'd come too. Just for a day. A cup of coffee."
There was a quiet, desperate sincerity in Junior's voice—a vulnerability that reminded Jake of the skinny, artistic kid who used to look at him like he hung the moon.
The kid Jake had ruthlessly used as a shield.
"Fine," Jake said, in a decisive surrender. They exchanged a few logistics and Jake took down Junior’s email address.
"I can’t talk now. I'll send you the rest.” He paused, his grip tightening on the wheel.
“But, Junior—I'm not the same person you remember."
“Well, who is?” Junior’s chuckle was a little nervous, but it sounded more like the old Junior, from back then.
The line clicked dead. Jake sat in the silence of the corridor, staring at the black screen of his phone.
He dropped the device back into the cup holder and gripped the metal wheels, meaning to turn back toward the gymnasium doors.
But the sounds of the boys grappling on the mats seemed muffled and distant, replaced by an unstoppable surge of sense memory: the simple, unquestioning safety of Junior's bed.
And right behind it, the cold awareness that the safety was contingent entirely on Sam, the man who was the true anchor of that house.
Chapter 2: Trading Desire
The memory of his own home was always accompanied by a physical ache—a tightness in Jake's rib cage. His mother's boyfriends were a revolving cast, and Jake learned early that he couldn’t always make himself small enough to not be noticed.
He also learned, later on, that the natural athleticism that served him so well in the school gym had a different kind of value at home, when he caught a man's eyes lingering on his developing chest or the low, loose ride of his jeans.
Still later, he learned that if he didn't flinch when one of the men cornered him in the narrow galley kitchen—if he leaned into it, dropping to his knees on the peeling linoleum—if he detached his mind and let his mouth work the man’s cock, wet and mechanical—the volatile energy in the cramped house would miraculously diffuse.
It wasn't about pleasure, but it wasn’t always unpleasant either—though his pleasure was not the point. And it gave him a twisted sense of control over the monsters in his own home. Some of them, anyway.
Then came Junior Griffin.
They weren't friends. They were barely even in the same orbit. Jake was the compact anchor of the wrestling team, and Junior was the quiet kid sketching in the margins of his notebooks.
Their orbits finally intersected on a Tuesday afternoon, long after wrestling practice had ended.
Jake was lingering in the locker room, putting off the inevitable. He hadn't slept the night before; the walls of his house were too thin, the voices too loud, the moods too erratic. Now, facing the reality of going back to it, he was sitting alone on the wooden bench, staring blankly at the scuffed floor, emotionally stripped to the bone.
He didn't realize the room hadn't entirely emptied out until he heard a nervous shuffle of sneakers.
Skinny Junior Griffin was standing at the end of the row of lockers, his backpack straps clutched to his narrow chest. He looked terrified to be caught staring, as usual, but for once, he didn't look away.
"You okay?” Junior asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Normally, Jake would have told the kid to fuck off. But that day he had nothing left to fight with.
"I can't go back there tonight," Jake muttered. The humiliating truth slipped out before he could catch it.
Junior swallowed hard, his grip tightening around his backpack straps. "You... you can crash at my place. If you want."
Jake wasn't naive. He knew Junior wasn't just being a Good Samaritan. He had seen the way Junior’s eyes darted to his shoulders when he changed his shirt, the way the skinny boy held his breath when Jake stepped out of his gym shorts. When Junior looked at him, it wasn't with the predatory eye of his mother's boyfriends. It was softer, sweeter, but it was rooted in the physical just the same.
So that night, when Junior offered up his own bed to share, Jake knew exactly how the transaction was supposed to work.
He remembered lying on Junior’s mattress, staring at the dark ceiling, waiting to pay the toll. He waited for the nervous shift of the blankets, the hand reaching across the sheets to claim what was owed. Jake had already decided to just close his eyes and let the kid get it over with, as long as it meant he didn't have to go back home.
But the hand never came. Junior just said good night and rolled over. He went to sleep, content to simply breathe the same air.
The shock of it had left Jake paralyzed for an hour. And then, for the first time in a long time, he actually slept. Deep, heavy, dreamless sleep.
There was another sleepover, and then another. And more. They were an odd match, but with enough boyish interests—comic books, sci-fi movies—to call it friendship. More importantly, Junior’s home became Jake’s sanctuary—a quiet, orderly fortress where he could hide, at least until high school ended.
Until Sam Griffin decided he’d had enough.
Jake felt it coming the way animals sense earthquakes. Sam was an apex predator, territorial and aggressively solitary. When Sam laid down the law and threatened to cut the sleepovers, the walls of Jake's fragile sanctuary began to collapse. The thought of going back home without even the occasional respite took Jake’s breath away.
He needed to secure his spot in the Griffin house, and Junior’s timid affection wasn't strong enough to anchor him there. He had to go to the source.
Approaching Sam on the sofa in his pajamas, legs spread hadn't been an act of reckless seduction; it had been a calculated negotiation. Jake had studied the older man. He recognized the vanity, the simmering sexual frustration.
In another lifetime, Sam Griffin could have been one of Jake’s mother’s men, and Jake knew exactly how to handle men like that. He was more than willing to trade a few minutes on his knees to keep a solid roof over his head, and the truth was Sam Griffin looked better than most.
What Jake hadn't anticipated was his own body’s betrayal.
When he took Sam’s cock into his mouth that first night, he expected it to be a service. A simple transaction—Sam’s release for Jake's oasis.
But the sheer, unapologetic dominance of the older man, his muscular build—the heavy hand gripping Jake’s hair—had cross-wired Jake’s survival instincts. When Jake finally swallowed Sam’s hot, spurting load, his own cock spewed his mess on the floor between them. The pleasure had been intensely and entirely real.
And that was just the beginning.
Chapter 3: The Math
Jake had spent his life studying frustrated, volatile men. Sam wasn't volatile. He was cunning. But he was highly-sexed, and a man who had already run through most of the available options in their small town. He liked head and he liked to fuck.
But the complication was that for Jake, after years of fending off the deadbeats in his mother’s cramped flat, being used by a man like Sam was an intoxicating high. Sam was built like a pro wrestler—exactly the kind of man Jake was drawn to long before he even understood why.
He loved the density of Sam’s body pressing him down into the mattress, the rough scrape of the older man’s jaw, and the swell of his cock at the moment he fed Jake his load. Jake felt a dark, thrilling pride in knowing that he was the one pulling the toe-curling pleasure out of a man who otherwise needed no one.
The summer bled on and then Junior left for college, leaving them entirely alone. But the quiet brought a new kind of danger. Without Junior’s oblivious presence to hide from, the illicit thrill waned for Sam. Jake could sense the older man growing restless. If Sam got bored, the transaction would end. Jake would be evicted—a kid with a high school degree in a small town, with no better options.
At the grocery store, when Sam lingered at the register to flirt with the blonde checkout girl, Jake felt a cold spike of territorial panic. He stood at the end of the conveyor belt and let Sam see the possessive glare in his eyes. He knew exactly what that kind of jealous, hungry devotion would do to an ego like Sam's—even if it happened to be true.
Minutes later, Sam was dragging him into the unlit alley behind the dumpsters, shoving Jake’s khakis down and slamming him against the rough brick.
As Sam drove his spit-smeared cock into him in short, brutal thrusts, his knees knocking against the wall, the strategy completely evaporated from Jake's mind.
Big ego or not, Sam was too good at this. He fucked with a punishing, relentless rhythm that stripped Jake’s defendes. Sam’s thick prick pushing deep inside Jake again and again forced the climax right out of Jake, his own release spilling hot and fast against the brick wall. Through the haze, a triumphant thought crystallized in Jake's mind: I own him. He can't let this go.
Jake made the fatal mistake of letting the intensity of the sex and the illusion of safety convince him that he was finally home.
The delusion peaked on a humid morning in late summer. Jake stepped out of the hot shower, his skin flushed, while Sam stood at the sink, wiping the fog from the glass to reveal his freshly shaven jaw, studying it.
As Jake toweled off, the older man grabbed Jake by the bare arm and hauled him into the tight space between his hips and the porcelain sink.
Sam’s hand locked onto Jake’s jaw, forcing him to look at their overlapping reflections in the mirror.
Jake didn't understand the dark math turning in Sam's head. But looking at their matching blond hair and similar jawlines, it made sense that a man like Sam would get off on the narcissistic thrill of fucking a younger version of himself.
Jake felt the brush of Sam's arm as he reached out to grab the cheap lotion, and then the sudden invasion as Sam drove into him.
Sam watched them in the mirror as his hips worked, filling the boy, their faces flushing identically.
"You're mine," Sam grunted, his voice wavering but rough.
Jake felt the heat of Sam stiffen. His insides clenched as the older man's climax pressed even deeper and harder in him. A second later, his own release tore through him, his cumshot hitting the porcelain of the sink and swirling down the drain.
Yes, Jake thought, in complete surrender. I'm yours.
Chapter 4: Severance
The illusion shattered the week of Thanksgiving.
When Junior texted that he was coming home for the holiday, the heavy oak doors of the Griffin house slammed shut. Jake was exiled back to his mother’s flat on the edge of town.
After months of Sam’s quiet, disciplined house and the comforting weight of the older man’s body, home felt like being dropped back into a nightmare Jake had forgotten how to navigate. It stank of cigarettes and the air rang with the erratic chaos of raised voices of his mother and her current unpredictable boyfriend.
The old survival mechanisms no longer worked. Jake had tasted actual safety. He had tasted genuine, mind-erasing pleasure. He spent the entire long weekend trying to block it all out, counting the hours.
The morning Junior finally left, Jake got on his bike and pedaled to the Griffin house. He rode past it once, then again, slowing down just enough to let Sam—who was out in the yard raking leaves—drink him in. On the third pass, he dropped his bike on the lawn and walked straight through the front door, trailing his clothes behind him.
When Sam followed him inside, the reunion was intoxicating. They met in the center of the mattress. It wasn't just the frantic, rough need of the summer; Jake could tell it was deeper. When Sam slid into him, stretching him open, it felt slow and sure. When the older man shuddered, pumping his seed into Jake, the kisses actually softened. Lying there in the hazy aftermath, wrapped in the scent of their sweat and semen, Jake felt a profound, overwhelming sense of victory.
He had done it. He had traded his flesh for permanence.
Permanence lasted until December.
The chill had already seeped into the woodshop when Jake arrived. He didn't waste any words; he reached for Sam’s wide leather belt, yanked his jeans down, and leaned over the worn workbench. He wanted Sam to pound everything thought out of him, to feel that prick completing him.
Sam did—plunging into Jake hard and without warning.
The sudden roughness made a confused whimper catch in Jake’s throat But as usual, the physical force of Sam in him wiped Jake’s mind blank. The crown, his cockhead, pushed against every nerve inside Jake, lighting him up from the inside out.
He let out a sharp groan as Sam hit the deepest part of him. Sam fucked the climax right out of Jake—his dick twitching, cum spilling onto the dusty wood shavings on the floor. A second later, Sam emptied himself inside Jake.
Jake stayed pressed against the hard wood of the workbench, legs trembling in the freezing air. He waited for the hand in his hair. He waited for the kiss that always followed when Sam’s resistance softened.
It didn't come.
"This isn't working anymore," Sam said.
The voice was completely flat. Stripped bare of any warmth.
Jake turned his head. His breath plumed in the cold air. He watched Sam zip his fly and look down at him for one agonizing, silent second. Sam turned and walked out of the shop without a single backward glance.
Jake pushed himself up, standing bare-assed in the freezing room. His hole pulsed and Sam's cum leaked slowly onto the dusty floorboards.
Slowly, the devastating truth sank into Jake: He hadn't won anything. His body—the only currency that had any value in this world—was nothing but a hole that Sam had gotten tired of using.
Chapter 5: The Ghost of October
Jake’s cabin in the Alaskan interior was designed to meet his specific needs. Outside, an aluminum ramp led up to the front door. Inside, the counters were dropped low, the doorways widened. The floors were stripped of any rugs that might catch a caster. Steel grab bars were bolted directly into the bathroom wall studs, and his bed in the back room was a low, firm mattress for lateral transfers.
Jake parked at the lowered desk in the small living area and opened his laptop. Outside, the wind howled off the tree line, rattling the glass panes. But Jake’s focus was entirely on the glowing screen.
He typed the name into the search bar, his calloused thumb hovering over the trackpad.
Junior Griffin
The initial results were a wash of dead ends. Jake refined the search, adding artist and illustrator. A few clicks later, he landed on the author page of an independent publishing site.
Jake had to squint to find the nervous, skinny kid in the face of the professionally photographed author staring back at him. But when he did, he felt a tight, strange pull in his chest.
The byline simply read: Griff. He was still slim, his dark hair grown longer. The anxious posture had eased into a sort of quiet confidence. The sleeves of a dark henley were pushed up, revealing the intricate, creeping lines of tattoos wrapping around his lean forearms.
Jake navigated to Griff’s portfolio, perusing the digital covers.
He remembered Junior’s high school sketchbooks—the brightly colored panels of caped, muscled men in capes and tights, but there were no superheroes here.
Instead, the artwork was stark and atmospheric, with deep shadows and sharp, deliberate ink lines. There was a story about two high school boys—The Summer House. A trilogy that looked rooted in Greek myth, titled Labyrinth, Stag and Sol.
He clicked on the most recent release, a graphic novel titled The Ghost of October.
Jake pulled his wallet from his pocket, extracted a bank card, and methodically typed the numbers into the checkout screen. He bought the digital download, watching the file load onto his screen.
The art was uniformly dark and moody—an intimate story about a gay man drowning in grief, navigating a world that felt completely isolated. And just when the darkness seemed too much to bear, the protagonist emerged—not through force of will, but by grasping at the slightest, most fragile connections.
It hit uncomfortably close to the bone.
Jake sat in silence for a long time. Then, he opened his email client.
He typed: Dear Junior,
Jake frowned. He hit the backspace key, deleting the letters one by one, and typed again: Dear Griff,
He kept the email brief and tactical. He named a decent diner in town with wide aisles that could accommodate his chair, and listed the times he could make himself free, limiting the options. He hit send before he could second-guess himself.
He reached down to the bottom drawer of the desk, fingers feeling for the small, tin lockbox hidden beneath a stack of coaching playbooks. He pulled it out, popped the latch, and removed the only two photographs he had allowed himself to keep from that previous life.
The first was a Polaroid from a high school wrestling tournament. Jake, packed into a tight singlet. Beside him stood Junior, thin and dark, looking at Jake with heartbreaking, unguarded adoration.
He set the Polaroid down and looked at the second photo.
It was a stolen shot, taken during a summer barbecue. Sam Griffin stood by the grill, a beer in hand. The heavy, blond cockscomb of hair. The thick, vascular biceps stretching the sleeves of a tight t-shirt. The arrogant, self-satisfied set of his jaw.
Even now, nearly two decades later, with his legs and his youth burned away in the desert of Helmand, Jake felt the old heat flare in his gut. Lust was a stubborn thing.
Looking at the photo, he could almost feel the weight of the man pressing him down, filling him, and his own bare legs—athletic, young, intact—hooking tight around Sam’s waist, his body rocking uncontrollably under the driving rhythm of Sam Griffin’s thrusts.
He remembered the desperate way he had pursued that contact—the most intense pleasure he’d known at the time.
But as Jake stared at the photo, a glimmer of recognition suddenly unsettled him.
He looked at the lines around Sam’s eyes. The weathered coloring and the heavy set of his jaw. And right behind the photograph, Jake saw his own reflection staring back from the dark, glossy laptop screen. He saw his own blond scruff, the thickness of his neck, the eyes of a thirty-eight-year-old man.
Buried in the resemblance, the dark math of time suddenly caught up to him.
Sam had been forty years old, maybe forty-one that summer.
Only a few years older than Jake was today.
The towering man who had fucked him and then casually discarded him hadn't been an apex predator at all. He had just been a middle-aged man, fucking a desperate, traumatized eighteen-year-old kid.
A wave of profound, exhausted disgust washed over him—for Sam, and for himself for wanting it so badly.
Jake dropped the photo back into the tin, snapped the lid shut, and wheeled backward into the quiet of the cabin.
Chapter 6: The Long Freeze
Jake kicked open Junior’s bedroom window with a sneakered foot, standing on a plastic milk crate, to slip inside one last time. He couldn’t bring himself to walk through Sam’s front door. He’d rather have walked away with nothing but the clothes on his back than face Sam again.
Over the brief weeks after Thanksgiving, Jake had quietly migrated his daily existence into this room. He ignored the hollowed-out feeling in his chest as he grabbed his backpack from the closet. He stuffed it with his other pair of jeans, some underwear and socks, t-shirts and a thick sweater of Junior's.
Right before he zipped the bag, his eyes fell on the corkboard above Junior’s desk. He unpinned the Polaroid of the two of them—Jake in his wrestling singlet, Junior looking on in barely hidden adoration. Then, he opened the top drawer and took a stolen photo of Sam by the grill. He shoved them deep into a backpack pocket.
He climbed back out into the late afternoon, turning to face the Griffin house one last time, putting up two middle fingers in a silent, hateful curse.
He grabbed his battered bike from the side of the garage. His sneakers hit the pedals hard.
He biked across town, dropping the kickstand on the sidewalk. The house smelled like stale smoke when he pushed the front door open. His mother’s current boyfriend, a useless deadbeat named Gary, was watching TV.
Jake ignored him, walking straight to his old room. Like a stray dog burying a bone, Jake had buried his vital documents and his emergency roll of cash hidden under the floorboards—the one place he knew nobody would ever look. He pried open the floorboard with his housekey and set it aside. He wouldn’t be needing it again. He lifted the tin box out from its hiding spot and extracted the cash and birth certificate, shoving them into a zippered section in the lining of his bag.
Gary was still on the sofa when Jake emerged.
"Tell my mom not to bother looking or me," Jake said flatly, hoisting the backpack over his shoulder. "I'm going to Alaska."
Gary snorted. "Don't freeze your ass off, kid."
Jake walked out the door, threw his leg over his bike, and pedaled hard. He rode until his thighs burned, pushing until the pathetic, blinking Christmas lights of the town limits disappeared behind him. When he finally reached the edge of the dark, open highway, he dismounted, wheeled the bike into a frozen ditch, and walked away from it without looking back.
The precariousness of his situation hit hard as the temperature dropped—barely nineteen years old with a few hundred dollars cash, no car and no destination.
He dropped his bag and unbuttoned his jacket. He took it off, and the thermal shirt under it. Standing on the shoulder in just a thin, ribbed tank top, the thirty-degree wind immediately raised goosebumps on his bare arms. He was shivering, but he knew exactly what he was selling. He squared his shoulders, thrusting his chest out to let the high beams highlight the cut of his pecs and the lean lines of his torso. He stuck out his thumb.
The air brakes hissed a hundred yards down the road. A faded plastic Christmas wreath was zip-tied to the massive chrome grille of a Peterbilt.
Jake jogged up to the cab as the passenger door swung open. The driver, a heavy-set man with a thick beard, looked down at Jake’s bare arms and the wholesome, boyish head of blond hair.
"It's thirty degrees out there, kid," the driver grunted, his eyes drifting slowly down Jake's chest. "But gas ain't free. You got fare?"
The man was no Sam Griffin, but Jake kept his jaw up. "I don't have cash to spare," he said, smiling. "But I'll suck your dick you if you can get me to the border."
The driver looked at Jake’s bare shoulders, then back at his steady eyes. He jerked his chin toward the empty seat. "Hop in. Shut the door."
They hit the Canadian border two hours later. The guard at the booth looked at the trucker, then their ideas. He looked at Jake, traveling with a man more than twice his age.
"Relationship to the driver?" the guard asked, his eyes narrowing.
Jake didn't skip a beat. He leaned across the center console and gave the guard a practiced grin. "He’s my uncle. Taking me up to work the logging season."
The guard took in Jake’s wholesome, certain grin and finally shrugged, waving them through. He couldn’t see the trucker’s hand shoved down the back of Jake's jeans, two knuckles deep in the crack.
Ten miles past the border, Jake unbuckled, unzipped the man’s jeans, and dropped his head into the older guy’s lap. The cock was soft, unwashed, and smelled like a full day on the road, but Jake took it anyway. He worked it with wet, sloppy suction until it swelled thick and hard, stretching his lips. The driver’s hand clamped on the back of his neck, guiding him deeper. Jake let the wet choking sounds and the man’s low curses drown out the memory of Sam walking out of the woodshop.
This is what you gave up, Sam.
In a rest stop outside Hope, a man in a late-model sedan didn’t want to use Jake in that way at all—he wanted to worship him. He dropped between Jake’s pale, athletic thighs in the plush leather seat. His eyes were glassy with reverence as he licked and sucked every inch of Jake’s cock and balls like they were holy. Jake leaned back, one hand lazily stroking the man’s hair, and let him work.
When Jake finally blew his load—hot ropes pulsing across the guy’s tongue—he gripped the man’s head and growled, “Fucking take it. Swallow every drop, you cocksucker.”
The head wasn’t the best—the guy was too in the thrall of his own fetish—to actually focus on Jake’s pleasure. But it didn’t matter. For the first time Jake realized his body wasn’t just something to be used—it had value as an idol.
He stalled out for eight weeks in a drafty boarding house in Prince George, waiting for the worst of the winter blizzards to break. He spent those sixty days in a gray limbo, hauling cordwood and scrubbing grease traps for a landlord who didn't care that he was a nineteen-year-old kid on his own, as long as the work got done.
As the spring thaw finally hit the Alcan Highway, Jake moved again. He bartered his way up the map, riding shotgun with drivers who spent hundreds of miles with a hand on his thigh, while he watched the white-capped mountains in the side mirror.
In a cheap motel outside Calgary, a traveling salesman flipped him onto his stomach, spat on his hole, and buried his fat cock in him. “Fuck, that’s a sweet little cunt,” the guy grunted, pounding him so hard the headboard slammed the wall.
Jake didn't give a shit about the word. He just rode the sensation of the man filling him. He gripped his own hard cock, pumping his fist until he shot a load into the mattress, his head pushed down into the pillow, ass clenching around a stranger’s cock.
It wasn't making love, and it didn't have the arousal of being used by a man like Sam. But like the gas station nuts and fast food he subsisted on, it was real enough.
The months burned the last of the baby fat from his frame. By the time the road signs shifted back to miles and he flashed his ID to re-enter Alaska at the Tok crossing, Border security had to look twice. The nineteen-year-old who had fled Washington had been replaced by a man who was leaner and harder.
Nearly a year had passed. His jaw was sharper, his cheeks hollowed. His muscles were more sharply defined, the skin over them vacuum-packed. His jeans hung low on his hips and his skin was pale when he finally rolled into Fairbanks. His eyes had the cool look of someone who knew exactly what his mouth and ass were worth.
Chapter 7: Recruitment
The trucker dropped him at a gas station just as the sun dipped below the horizon, plunging the landscape into a deep, unfamiliar indigo, leaving him standing in the snow with his backpack.
Jake watched the rig's taillights disappear into the dark, cock softening and damp from the driver’s goodbye handjob. He didn't feel lonely; he didn't have time for it. The sub-zero temperature demanded immediate action.
He hustled up a room above a dive bar that rented by the week, paying in cash from his diminishing roll. But his cheap winter jacket wasn't going to keep him alive here, let alone allow him to work. The next morning, he walked to a warehouse-style store on the edge of town. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as he navigated the wide aisles, piling thermal underwear, canvas work pants, and insulated gloves into a basket.
As he turned down the main aisle toward the registers, a display rack of tourist merchandise caught his eye. Amidst the cheap shot glasses and keychains hung a row of dark gray t-shirts. Jake stopped, his eyes locking onto the bold, block lettering across the chest:
Alaska: It doesn't grow on you as much as it makes you unfit to live anywhere else.
A strange, dark sense of comfort settled in his gut. He’d never felt at home before—not with "family" and their complicated, shifting loyalties that never included him. Not in the Griffin house, where he never really belonged. He wanted a place cold and hard enough to keep the world out. He paid for his gear and walked out into the freezing morning.
By 9:00 AM, he was standing in the heated trailer office of a commercial lumber yard in clean clothes. The yard foreman, a thick-necked man missing half his left index finger, barely looked up from his clipboard. "Not hiring drifters. Try the cannery down the highway."
Jake pulled off his heavy coat, revealing the muscle of his chest under a waffle-knit shirt. He rolled his shoulders back and flashed a slow, practiced smile.
"I'm not a drifter," Jake said, a cocky lilt in his voice. "I'm your new worker. I’m strong and I don't complain. I can out-lift any two of the lazy fucks you've got in that yard."
The foreman stopped writing. He looked up, his eyes catching on Jake's shoulders, tracking the arrogant confidence in the kid's posture. Jake held the eye contact, letting his natural charm do the heavy lifting, bartering his physicality just like he always had.
The foreman let out a short, dry laugh. It sounded like gravel in a tin can. He reached under the counter and tossed a pair of heavy, stiff leather work gloves at Jake’s chest.
"Twelve bucks an hour," the foreman grunted. "You drop a load, you're fired."
Jake traded the heated cabs of eighteen-wheelers for the freezing reality of the yard. The work was brutal but simple: unloading freight, stacking timber, and chaining down flatbeds. He pushed his body until his muscles screamed, dropping into his twin bed each night where he slept harder than he ever had before.
By the time six months had passed, Jake wasn’t just cut—his muscles had grown dense. He couldn't quite grow a full beard yet, his face still holding onto a stubborn, youthful smoothness, but his jaw was flecked with an ashy-blond scruff.
But as the deep winter began to thaw into a muddy spring, a new kind of restlessness set in. Jake quickly realized that Fairbanks had its own unwritten rules. The plum jobs—the heated cabs, the foreman salaries—went to the guys who had grown up there. Jake was a nameless outsider with a blank past. No matter how much heavy lifting he did, or how brilliantly he charmed the office staff, he was always going to be locked out.
He realized he needed to find a place that wasn't dictated by who he knew or who he let use him.
The answer came on a Tuesday afternoon. He took a shortcut through a strip mall, pausing to light a cigarette and cupping his raw hands around the flame. When he looked up, he saw the window. The glass door bore the bold, gold-and-scarlet emblem of the United States Marine Corps.
The recruitment poster didn't promise comfort. It promised to not give a fuck where Jake came from, who he’d fucked, or who his father was or wasn’t. He dropped his cigarette into the slush, crushed it under his boot, and pushed open the heavy door.
The recruiter sitting behind a metal desk looked up. He stood, resting his hands on his belt, and his eyes began a slow sweep of Jake’s body.
Jake’s stomach tightened by instinct—he’d been priced and weighed by older men for what felt like his entire life. He exhaled, readying himself for the linger on his waist, the hunger in the eyes.
But the recruiter's gaze, as it traveled from Jake’s squared shoulders down to his calloused hands and back up to his jaw, was absent the lust Jake knew. The recruiter wasn't looking for a blow job or an anonymous body to fuck. He was looking to fill a quota, and a uniform.
"Can I help you, son?" the recruiter asked.
Jake met the man's eyes without a trace of his usual manufactured charm.
"Yeah," Jake said, his voice flat and sure. "I want to enlist."
Chapter 8: Equals
Stationed in the sun-baked sprawl of the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, while other recruits puked in the heat and broke under the pressure, Jake thrived.
The brass didn't care that he was a bastard from a fucked up family in a trashy flat on the wrong side of town. Fuck, it almost seemed like the minimum requirement. They only cared that he could run three miles in eighteen minutes, strip an M4 carbine in the dark, and hold the line.
He made Corporal in record time. He had built his body into a tool for competition, then for survival, and now for war. And as the last traces of boyish vulnerability burned off him in the desert heat, the currency he traded in changed completely.
For the first time in his life, Jake’s opportunities weren't middle-aged men with doughy guts, or even a thin, tentative, love-struck boy. They weren't even men with the aging bulk of Sam Griffin. They were nineteen, twenty, twenty-one-year-old guys in their prime, with pure, conditioned muscle with nowhere soft to put it.
And you couldn't pack hundreds of hyper-competitive young cum machines into a blistering 120-degree oven with no women and expect the air not to spark. Not without escape valves.
Jake could almost smell the backed-up nut wafting off them.
It started with a thick-necked grunt named Hayes and a wiry Marine named Cortez.
They were two weeks into a training exercise in the Mojave. Jake was sitting on a crate in the shadows of a stifling canvas supply tent, wiping down his rifle. His fair skin had tanned, and his forehead was damp at the shaved hairline. Hayes and Cortez were lounging on a stack of MRE boxes a few feet away, shooting the shit.
The banter started out standard, but as the heat settled in, it turned dirty. Jake said nothing. He just waited. Cortez tossed a rag at Jake, his eyes lingering on Jake’s face.
"Look at Burgess," Cortez muttered, a filthy smirk pulling at his mouth. "All that heavy lifting and he still looks like a fucking choir boy. You got a pretty mouth on you, Burgess. Bet you could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch."
Not even original.
Hayes let out a rough laugh. "Hell, look at them. Bet it feels like absolute heaven sliding into that pretty mouth. Right, Burgess?"
Jake’s body braced for a fight. But looking at these two guys—cocky, sweating, their young, athletic bodies a match for his—Jake realized that what they were joking about was exactly what he wanted.
Jake set his rifle down, wiped his grease-stained hands on his cammies, and looked them dead in the eye.
"You two going to sit there talking about it," Jake said, his voice a deadpan drawl, "or are you going to unzip?"
Hayes and Cortez traded a shocked look, the bluff suddenly called. Then, Hayes grinned—an eager flash of teeth—and stood up, his hand going straight to his belt. Cortez followed a second later.
Jake dropped to his knees on the dusty tarp, pulling Hayes’s pale, uncut cock out of his boxers while Cortez stepped up right beside him, his own dick jutting out of his fatigues.
Jake knew exactly how to angle his head, how to open his throat—but a sudden alarm bell rang in his head. If he serviced them with the polished skill of a kid who had bartered his mouth across three thousand miles of highway, that would set off a field of red flags.
You could be a cocksucker, but not a faggot.
So, Jake deliberately dialed it back. He made his movements a little clumsier, a little more awkward. He let his teeth scrape just a fraction, hiding his hard-won expertise behind the mask of a horny, inexperienced grunt.
He let Hayes pump deep, the hard head scraping his throat, choking as if he hadn’t taken bigger. His hand wrapped tight around the next cock—Cortez’s—jerking him until they switched up and he went down on the rifleman. "Fuck yeah, Burgess. Milk it," Cortez hissed, his breath caching in his throat as Jake dragged his teeth lightly over the ridge.
Jake’s head swam at the sight of two guys his own age and size trembling and groaning above him. His own cock throbbed against his zipper. He would have done anything for a third hand to stroke it with.
Cortez cursed, his hips snapping forward as he shot a load into Jake's mouth. He coughed and spat it out, secretly savoring the sour taste. A minute later, Hayes grabbed a handful of Jake's hair, grunting out a string of breathless curses, and shot a massive load. Jake swallowed that one, desperately shoving a hand into his waistband for a few frantic strokes before he nutted, too.
It didn't stop with Hayes and Cortez, and it didn't stay quiet.
Late nights in the showers became a filthy underground trade. Sometimes Jake was on his knees, throat open for whichever squadmate needed to unload. Other times he stood in the steam, hands on buzzed hair, fucking a willing mouth until he painted the back of a throat with his own load.
The sex was raunchy, opportunistic and completely stripped of emotion, but it felt like the healthiest thing Jake had ever experienced. He wasn't yielding to men with power over him. He was colliding with equals.
In the aftermath of those encounters, guys just zipped up their pants, wiped off their jaws, and went back to cleaning their rifles. No cuddling. No kissing.
Until Winston.
It happened late one night in the stifling heat of the barracks. Jake was lying on his narrow canvas cot, staring up at the ceiling in the low, blue light, when Winston slipped through the shadows. The corporal stopped at the edge of Jake’s bunk, wearing nothing but his standard-issue olive skivvies.
Jake’s cock stirred, expecting a demand for head. But instead, Winston lowered himself and his lips brushed Jake’s, then his tongue flicked. When Winston pulled back and looked down at him, his expression looked painfully familiar. It was the soft desire Jake had seen in Junior’s eyes in high school.
Jake’s jaw tightened. He grabbed Winston by the shoulder, flipped him face-down on the cot, and yanked the skivvies down to expose that smooth, pale ass.
“You want this dick, Corporal?” Jake growled low, spitting into his palm and slicking his erection.
“Yeah,” Winston breathed, pushing his ass up. “Fuck me.”
Jake lined up and pushed in—slow at first, then one thrust that sank him balls-deep into the tight heat.
Jake’s vision swam. For years, he had been the receptacle, swallowing the dominance of older men. Actually shoving his own prick into another man—feeling the panicked clench of muscle and then the yielding around him—was a reeling, dizzying shift in power.
The breathless sound of this softer man taking his thrusts was completely new and intoxicating.
Jake buried his face in the space between Winston's bare shoulder blades as the friction built to a pitch. Terrified that the sound of his own desire would bleed out of him, Jake weaponized his voice to cover it up—using the script he knew.
"Yeah, take it, you dirty fuck," Jake growled, his hips snapping. "Take every fucking inch."
The climax hit him like a flashbang. His degrading words choked off into a breathless gasp as he shot inside Winston, cursing as the heat of the corporal’s insides milked him empty.
Afterwards, Jake lay there in the dark, smelling the musk of cum and sweat, and a slow, genuine smile spread across his face. He hadn't been bartered. He hadn't been used. He had just taken exactly what he wanted.
The realization washed over him: his body wasn’t a commodity to be bartered for shelter or safety. For the first time in his life, it belonged entirely to him.
By the time their unit got the deployment orders for Helmand Province six months later, Jake felt like a completely different man. He was lethal, confident—at the peak of his physical prime.
He didn't know the desert was waiting to take it all away.
Chapter 9: Walter Reed
There was no firefight, no enemy in the crosshairs, no heroic final stand. It was just the fluke of buried explosives on a dusty road in Helmand Province.
One second, Jake was riding in the back of a Humvee. The midday sun baked the side of his face, and ahead the desert was cast in the amber tint of his sunglasses. He could feel the vibration of the armored chassis beneath his boots. He was at the absolute height of his physical power, his body a hardened, lethal weapon.
The next second, the world tore open in a blinding flash of white heat and deafening sound.
Jake woke up three weeks later in a sterile room at Walter Reed, drowning in a cocktail of morphine. A doctor was standing over his bed. His voice was a steady drone, rattling off words that refused to process: damage control… Bastion… induced coma… Landstuhl… medevac. Jake couldn't move his arms. Thick IV lines snaked into a port in his collarbone, pumping sedatives and milky liquid nutrition directly into his blood. He couldn't lift his head. But he could feel the terrifying, weightless absence beneath the hospital sheets. When the doctor finally pulled the blanket back to show him, Jake didn't scream. He just stared at the flat, folded fabric where his thighs ended in blunt, bandaged stumps.
A wave of morphine-laced nausea hit him so hard his vision whited out. Unable to even lift his chin, Jake rolled his cheek into the thin hospital pillow and dry-heaved. His chest shuddered with the involuntary spasms, but there was nothing left inside him to throw up.
The devastation was absolute. His body—the trick that bought him temporary safety, the instrument of power in the Mojave—the only currency he had ever possessed to navigate a fucked up world—was gone. He had been, for all it mattered, cut in half.
Because his enlistment paperwork listed "No Next of Kin," there was no one sitting by his bed when the morphine wore off. When a social worker gently asked if there was someone they could call, Jake just stared blankly ahead and shook his head. He would rather rot in this sterile room than be dragged back to the cigarette smoke and useless men of his mother’s cramped flat.
But as the first month descended into a dark void, he almost weakened. He almost begged them to call his mother, just so someone on earth would know he still existed.
He lay trapped in the bed, stripped of his dignity. A catheter drained his bladder into a plastic bag hung on the bedrail. A rotation of nurses rolled him onto his side on a schedule, using suppositories to manually clear his bowels. The physical pain was excruciating, but the absolute, humiliating loss of agency was worse.
If he was going to survive this, he had to do it on his own.
The turning point came not from a miraculous epiphany, but in tiny, incremental steps, built by the stubborn, unyielding grind of the hospital staff. The physical therapists pushed him until he vomited, demanding he grip the parallel bars and haul his own dead weight up. The social workers sat by his bed, refusing to let him wallow in the silence. They didn't look at him with hunger, and they couldn't look at him with Junior's blind worship. They looked at him with the pragmatic expectation of survival.
Slowly, agonizingly, Jake hauled himself out of the ruin. He transferred his upper-body strength into mastering the wheelchair. He learned how to pivot, how to balance, how to thrust the wheels.
The doctors were blunt and unsentimental about his long-term prognosis. It was during this grueling phase that a urology specialist finally pulled the privacy curtain around his chair. The doctor spoke about pelvic trauma and blast waves, offering the rehearsed comfort that many young men in his condition went on to marry, have wives, and eventually achieve "some semblance of normal relations."
But the doctor's sterile script didn't answer the questions that haunted Jake’s mind. The VA didn't understand the physics of the sex Jake actually craved. Would his insides even work? Could he still take a cock? Without legs to brace against the mattress, a core to push back? If he ever managed to have sex again, he would be reduced to a completely stationary object, shoved passively across the sheets, relying entirely on someone else's strength.
One thing was sure: he would never again be able to flip a man onto a canvas cot and take what he wanted. And worse was the terrifying mechanical reality of the nerve damage: his dick might never get hard again.
Late at night, with the privacy curtain pulled tight, he would reach down and try to find a spark of the life he used to have. It was a bleak, frustrating effort. His hand worked over his soft, unresponsive cock with desperate tugs. He squeezed his eyes shut, picturing himself mounting Winston on that canvas cot, the way Winston’s hole had clenched and milked him dry. Nothing. Just limp meat in his fist.
He dug deeper, bypassing his pride and tapping into a darker, complicated history. He imagined the bulk of Sam Griffin pressing him into the mattress, the stretch of being spread open and filled by that thick cock, the way it had filled him until he came untouched.
He waited for his brain to send the signals, demanding the familiar rush of blood. Instead, there was nothing. Just the dry friction of his own grip and a terrifying deadness where the wiring, he feared, had been severed.
They’d saved his body from the waist to the thighs, but they might as well not have bothered.
In the darkest hours of the night, listening to the steady beep of the monitors, the desperate isolation almost broke him. What man would look at the wreckage beneath the sheets and feel anything but pity or disgust?
Then, his mind drifted to Junior. His simple, stupid love. The boy who had been perfectly content to just breathe the same air in the dark.
More than once, the temptation flared—a desperate ache for the unearned comfort of Junior's adoration. He imagined Junior dropping everything, flying to his bedside, and looking at Jake’s ruined body with that same blind devotion. Seeing him as he once was, instead of this.
But how would he even find him? It had been years since high school. He’d have to call Sam to get a number.
Sam.
Jake had slept in Junior’s bed, fully aware of the timid, sweet feelings the boy had for him. He had worn Junior's clothes, hidden in his sanctuary, and then secretly fucked his father. He didn't deserve Junior's comfort. He deserved to be exactly where he was—lying alone in a sterile room with half a body.
So he swallowed the isolation. He somehow forced himself to accept the deadness, hoping with time it would improve. He built up resilience, patience, and an emotional discipline that didn't rely on the shape of his legs or the thrust of his hips.
Eighteen months after the explosion, Jake was officially discharged.
The military offered him placement programs, vocational training in the lower forty-eight, and soft landings in warm climates. Sitting in his chair in the discharge office, staring down at a glossy pamphlet for accessible civilian living in Florida, Jake's mind drifted back to a freezing morning in Fairbanks years ago.
He remembered the cheap tourist t-shirt hanging on a rack in a warehouse store.
Alaska. It doesn't grow on you as much as it makes you unfit to live anywhere else.
It had been true then, when he wanted the cold to freeze out the softness and the history. It was even truer now. He was entirely unfit for the soft, pitying stares of the lower forty-eight. He didn't want a warm climate or an easy landing.
Jake dropped the pamphlet back onto the officer's desk, gripped the rubber rims of his titanium chair, and bought a one-way ticket back to the deep freeze.
Chapter 10: Reintroduction
The first few emails were purely tactical.
Jake kept his sentences short, defensive, and stripped of any personal information, addressing them stiffly to "Griff," focusing on coordinating possible dates and times for the Fairbanks meeting. If the guy was coming to Alaska to throw around accusations, Jake didn’t need to give him ammunition or point out the weak spots in his defense.
Before hitting send on the third email, Jake’s thumb hovered over the trackpad, his jaw tight. He hated the idea of Junior walking into that diner and freezing in shock at the sight of Jake in his chair. Even worse, standing there with his husband, looking down in pity.
He typed out a blunt addendum: Just so you're not caught off guard, I lost my legs in Helmand. I'm in a chair now. It doesn't affect my life or my coaching, but I figured I'd tell you before you get here.
The reply came an hour later.
Thank you for telling me, he wrote back. I know. I found a video of the Warrior Games a while ago. You were doing shotput. You looked incredible. PS: Everyone calls me Griff now, but you call me Junior if it’s more comfortable. Special exemption.
Jake stared at the monitor, his heart giving a strange, heavy thump. He typed out: Shotput is just wrestling with a heavy rock. He paused, his vision blurring slightly in the glow of the screen. I read The Ghost of October, by the way. It’s a hell of a book. The art is amazing.
As he hit send, a hot tear tracked through the stubble on his cheek. Damn Junior Griffin.
Over the next two weeks, the emails lost their rigid formatting. They started coming late at night, slipping effortlessly into the familiar cadence of two guys who shared a history. Junior didn't ask prying questions about the amputation, and Jake didn't ask about Sam.
Instead, they talked about the present. Jake talked about his wrestling team, the Games, and the quiet satisfaction of his routine.
I know I told you I had a family now, Junior replied. His name is Boon. And we have a son. They're coming with me to Alaska. I really want you to meet them. If you had told me in high school that my life would look like this, I would have thought you were insane. The skinny, terrified kid had grown up. He had found a husband. And a baby—God knows how they pulled that off, though Jake had a vague awareness of surrogates and adoption.
Jake found himself actually looking forward to the glow of his laptop screen in the dark cabin. He let himself be lulled into it. It felt like the unquestioning safety of Junior’s childhood bedroom all over again. He started to believe this was just two old friends finding their way back to each other.
Then came the very last line of the email that froze Jake.
So we're on the same page, I know about you and my father. See you soon.
The secret he had dragged across three thousand miles of highway—the betrayal of the one friend he had in those years—wasn't a secret at all. Junior knew. And the omission of any forgiveness in the text was deafening. There was no "it’s okay." There was only the scheduled visit.
Jake had spent twenty years putting three thousand miles of tar and ice between himself and his past, where no one could touch him. And now Junior was coming. Not for a nostalgic catch-up but to hold Jake to account, to demand answers Jake had no way of giving him.
He was coming to tear Jake’s life apart.
He needed to move.
Jake pivoted his chair, rolling away from the desk and into the center of the living room. He locked the wheels and reached up, unhooking the thick bungee cord from the wall to let his worn leather heavy bag swing free on its chain.
He didn't have the lean, hungry survivor's physique of his twenties anymore. Below the hips that once powered those brutal fucks of beautiful Marines, the stumps of his thighs ended cleanly. But from the waist up he was a goddamn machine—broad lats, thick traps, and arms packed with the dense, layered muscle required to launch a sixteen-pound shotput or to carry the weight of his life.
Jake braced his dense core and launched a brutal right cross.
The leather cracked under his bare knuckles. He didn't bother with defense or evasion. As the heavy weight swung back toward him, Jake just met it head-on, absorbing the jarring impact into his thick shoulders and driving forward with another strike.
He worked the bag with a relentless, ugly rhythm, not counting the strikes. His fists battered the hide until his knuckles bruised and sweat soaked his shirt. He thought about Junior—a husband, a father, an artist—living a full, beautiful life. And he thought about Sam, the ghost that still lived in the dark corners of Jake's mind.
He pushed his body to the point of absolute exhaustion, letting the stinging impact and the burning in his lungs drown out the terrifying realization that he was finally going to have to answer for his life.
Chapter 11: The Forge
Returning to Fairbanks without legs was a different kind of survival than arriving at eighteen with a backpack.
Financially, Jake was more secure than he’d ever been before. The VA had rated him at a hundred percent disabled, layering on special monthly compensation for the loss of his limbs. Every first of the month, a tax-free deposit hit his bank account.
They provided a grant for a heavy-duty pickup truck outfitted with hand controls, and paid for the modifications to a ground-floor apartment near the edge of town—a sterile, accessible box that would serve as a temporary stepping stone until he eventually bought his secluded cabin.
He didn't have to hustle. He didn't have to barter his body or charm lumber yard foremen to keep a roof over his head. The government had permanently bought out his contract.
But the absolute lack of necessity was its own kind of prison.
He was twenty-five years old with a pension, an adequate apartment, and absolutely nothing to do. For the first few months, Jake lived in a state of simmering, aimless hibernation. He killed time drinking cheap beer, staring at the television, and sleeping twelve hours a day.
By the end of his first dark winter back, the stagnation began to show.
He wasn't entirely out of shape—his arms and shoulders were solid with the muscle required to haul his weight in and out of the titanium chair. But one morning, Jake caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror and frowned. The skin that had been creamy enough to draw Sam Griffin’s eye was merely pale.
He reached down and pinched the skin just above his waist, catching an inch or two of unfamiliar, doughy belly fat. The flat, vacuum-packed abs that had once made Marines stare were padded. His cock was still limp flesh below the waist—and the rest of him was going that route.
He felt a sudden, sharp sting of vanity.
The one grace in his fucked-up life had always been that effortless, athletic fuckable beauty. He could see it slipping.
But all that was left were the polite smiles of civilians stepping quickly out of his wheelchair’s path. It was a steep fall from the fumbling hunger of the horny men in the barracks, or even lonely truckers—the blunt, honest transaction of lust.
His legs were gone, and his junk was dead wiring, but his mouth still worked. He wondered if he rolled into the right dive bar on the edge of town, if some rough, older guy wouldn't care about the chair. He could still drop his head into a lap, slobber over an unwashed cock until it pulsed down his throat. Pull a desperate grunt out of someone. He wanted to hear a man beg him to swallow it.
But if he was going to command that kind of attention again, the remaining merchandise had to be flawless. He needed to be a wounded warrior, not a fat guy in a chair.
He went to a local powerlifting cellar, a windowless basement with absolutely zero adaptive equipment. He hauled his torso out of his chair, dragging himself up and strapping his waist to a vertical utility bench. He pressed heavy dumbbells, feeling forgotten muscles protest as he worked to carve the deep cuts back into his chest and shoulders.
He was midway through a grueling set of seated overhead presses when he sensed someone standing nearby—a man in his late fifties, built like a fireplug, wearing a faded Semper Fi ballcap. His eyes raked over Jake's chest, taking in his shoulders, tracking the movement of his arms.
Jake felt a familiar spark in his gut. Okay, he thought. Here we go. He knew the slow appraisal of an older man weighing a younger body, deciding how hard he’d fuck it or how deep he’d push it down a throat. Maybe this one wouldn’t care about the stumps. Maybe he’d just unzip and let Jake take what he wanted.
His mouth watered.
He finished the rep, locked out the heavy iron, and carefully guided the dumbbells to his knees. He shifted his posture to let the harsh overhead light catch the fresh swell of his pecs and the sweat on his neck, showing the merchandise as-is, but at its best.
He readied himself for the proposition, preparing to navigate the terms.
"You've got a hell of a foundation there," the man said. Jake's pulse ticked up. The hook was set. "But your left elbow’s flaring."
Jake blinked, the sexual calculation stalling.
"I’m out of practice," Jake grunted.
"You're lazy," the man countered, chuckling. He stuck out a hand. Jake stared at it for a second before gripping it. "I’m Vance. I run an adaptive throwing clinic up at the university track. Shotput, discus, javelin."
Jake looked back at Vance, his eyes dropping briefly to the older man's belt, still half-expecting the guy to palm his crotch and suggest they finish this in the parking lot. "I don't play games." It was exactly the kind of thing a guy who was all game would say.
"It’s not a game, Marine," Vance snapped, throwing the rank at Jake. "It’s physics. Finding a way to move a heavy object from point A to point B using nothing but your torque. You’ve got the frame for it. The question is if you’ve got the discipline to do something with it."
Jake shouldn’t have liked his tone, but it stirred something in him—even if that thing wasn’t his dick.
For the next three years, Vance became the architect of Jake’s third act.
There was no blowjob. But there was no coddling either.
Vance pushed Jake, teaching him how to strap his chair into the throwing circle, how to coil his upper body and explode upward with violent, controlled grace.
Jake found that the shotput was the purest expression of his new reality. When he sat with the sixteen-pound iron tucked against his neck, there was no highway, no IED, no pitying stares. There was only the weight, the rotation of his shoulder, and the release.
But Vance didn't let him stop there.
“The VA will pay for Vocational Rehab,” Vance told him one afternoon, tossing a towel at Jake's chest. “But you're not going to throw a rock for the rest of your life. Enroll at UAF. Do something with your mind.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Or… I could just blow you right now and we call it even.” An ask disguised as a joke, offered flat, but hopeful.
Vance let out a short, gruff bark of a laugh, completely unfazed. “Stow it, Marine. I'm not here to get my knob polished. I’m here to get you to stop wasting that engine you’ve still got under the hood.” He clapped Jake on the shoulder, firm and fatherly. “You’re good at this. Get the degree in Kinesiology. Learn the mechanics. Figure out how to train athletes and pass it on.”
So, Jake did. He fought his way through the classrooms at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He learned the anatomy of the body that had been taken from him, and he learned how to teach others to maximize the bodies they had.
He also started winning.
At the DoD Warrior Games, he sat in the throwing chair under the blazing sun, his thick arms gleaming, his jaw unconsciously set in that same arrogant invincibility he’d had at eighteen. He launched the iron ball forty feet through the air, completely unaware of the cameras tracking his movement.
He didn't know that a man named Griff thousands of miles away would one day lean into a glowing computer screen, watching the broadcast with his heart in his throat. He didn't know that the boy he’d shared a bed with would see the desperate kid he tried to save finally forged in fire.
A few months later, back in Fairbanks, Jake wheeled his chair through the double doors of the local high school, a thin resume printed on cheap paper resting on his lap. He stared down a skeptical school principal, insisting he knew more about leverage and weight distribution than any able-bodied man in the state.
He was a force on the mat, his titanium chair positioned right at the edge of the circle, barking technical corrections with a sharp, gravelly authority. He had built his fortress piece by piece—completely unaware that one day, Junior Griffin would come to Alaska to tear it all down.
Chapter 12: The Tourist
The afterparty for the DoD Warrior Games was held in the cavernous ballroom of a Colorado Springs hotel. Jake parked his titanium chair at a small table near the periphery of the room, a glass of bourbon in his hand. Around him, the room was loud with the boisterous camaraderie of combat veterans blowing off steam—drinking, laughing, and trading records like currency.
Jake didn't join in. The sound of the crowd was grating. He’d have stayed in his room on the third floor, but there was only one thing he wanted, and it wasn’t something room service provided.
He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair and rolled his shoulders. The cheap maroon dress shirt he bought for the occasion itched at the collar, but it hugged his pecs and delts, unbuttoned to reveal the V of his tank top.
He’d had his eye on one of the other athletes, but it was a civilian who approached—one of the corporate sponsors wearing a VIP lanyard. Mark. He was middle-aged with thinning hair, but passably fit beneath a crisp, expensive button-down.
He stepped uncomfortably close and crouched down to be eye level with the chair.
"It's an absolute honor to meet you," Mark said. The words were a flawless PR script, but Jake ignored them, instead tracking the slight tremble in his voice. Mark's eyes flicked from Jake's mouth, down to the pulse in his thick neck, and settled hungrily on the tight stretch of the maroon shirt across Jake's heavy pecs.
"Our firm is incredibly proud to sponsor the Games," Mark continued, forcing his gaze back up to Jake’s face, though he had to swallow hard before finishing the thought. "I saw you out there today in the throwing circle. Your resilience... the sheer power you have. It’s truly awe-inspiring. I just wanted to come over and personally thank you for your sacrifice."
Jake took a slow sip of his bourbon. His blood was still running hot from the win, and he could see right through the corporate veneer. The guy was looking at him like a starving man looking at a steak. Jake wanted that specific attention, but he was done pretending. He wanted to cut through the bullshit.
"You want to see what's left?" he asked, flat and unapologetic.
Ten minutes later, the heavy door of Jake’s accessible hotel room clicked shut.
Mark watched as Jake locked the wheels of his titanium chair flush against the bed. Jake gripped the mattress with one hand, braced his other on the chair's frame, and hoisted his torso up and over in a practiced, powerful pivot transfer. He settled his weight onto the mattress and pushed himself back against the headboard.
Jake unbuttoned the dress shirt and shrugged out of it, letting the smooth fabric slide off his shoulders. Then he hooked his thumbs under the ribbed tank underneath and pulled it up and over his head in one smooth motion, revealing the slabs of his chest and the dirty blond hair trailing down his flat stomach.
Mark stripped off his button-down shirt to reveal a lean frame and a thatch of hair at the center of his chest. He wore boxers and had hairy legs. He crawled onto the bed, leaned in, and kissed Jake’s mouth hard and hot—their tongues wrestling. His hands roamed greedily over Jake’s chest and then down, slipping into the waistband of Jake’s loose black athletic shorts and the underwear beneath. He dragged both down in one tug. The fabric slipped right off the blunt, scarred ends.
Jake’s cock didn’t rise, didn’t move. But Mark’s boxers tented as he looked down at the useless dick and balls, nestled in coarse blond hair, and then at the blunt, healed ends of Jake’s thighs. He let out a stuttering breath.
"You're so fucking strong," Mark whispered. Without hesitating, he ducked his head down and took Jake into his mouth.
Jake leaned his head back against the headboard and closed his eyes. He waited for the rush of blood. He tried to will into being the swell that would have been instant five years ago—when a wet mouth like this would have made him throb and leak down a stranger’s chin. He wanted to feel it, to grab the guy by his thinning hair and fuck his face.
Nothing happened.
The guy’s tongue swirled around the head and shaft, sucking at the unresponsive flesh, taking it whole in his mouth, cupping the balls beneath. But Jake remained stubbornly, agonizingly soft. He could feel it, could feel Mark's hands gripping his upper thighs, but right at the center, the wiring was dead. It was like watching something happen to someone else’s body.
Jake reached down, calloused hands gripping the guy firmly by the shoulders, and physically hauled the man up.
"Stop," Jake grunted, trying to hide his frustration beneath a steady voice. "It's dead down there. It doesn't work."
Jake expected the guy to awkwardly clear his throat. He expected confusion. He prepared to say, It’s not you, and lean forward to haul the guy closer by his hips and put his own mouth to work. I can still blow you—
Instead, the civilian looked down at Jake's soft, wet dick, and then up at Jake's face. A glaze fell over his eyes.
"That's okay," Mark whispered, his voice near trembling. "You don't have to do anything."
He shifted into the space where Jake’s legs used to be, pulling out his own erection from his loose boxers. He just stared down at the heft of Jake’s pecs, his flaccid dick, and the ends of his thighs. He began to stroke himself—fist flying fast over his leaking shaft.
Jake watched him, surprised by the fixation. He’d expected to suck the guy off, maybe for his own muscle to take some of the show. But not this.
A quiet, resigned acceptance settled in his chest. This was what was left.
“You get off on that, huh?” Jake muttered, intentionally dropping his voice to a low, gravelly pitch. “Go on then. Look at it. That’s all there is now.”
Jake shifted his hips and spread his truncated thighs wide to give the man a better view of the ruin.
Jake held out a cupped palm, right above where his erection should be. “Give it to me.”
Mark’s hand sped up, breaths turning frantic. His hips jerked forward, and he sent a hot splatter of cum across Jake's outstretched palm, his cock, and his thighs—streaking the pale skin.
The man practically sobbed, slumping forward, dropping his head on Jake’s shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Jake didn't flinch. He just looked down at the mess in his hand. He brought it to his lips, lapped the already cooling cum with the flat of his tongue, and swallowed it.
This was the new reality. Mark was a tourist, and Jake was a monument. He didn't come to get blown, to barter desires, or even to conquer. He came to stand at the edge of the blast zone and feel his own safe distance.
Jake wasn't a participant in the blunt, honest transactions of lust anymore, and he didn’t know if he ever would be again.
Mark got out of bed to get dressed, and Jake reached over to the nightstand, grabbed a wad of tissues, and began to wipe himself clean.
Chapter 13: The Architecture of the North
Jake traded his sterile apartment for a secluded cabin on the edge of the tree line, a place where the only neighbors were the birch and the permafrost. A veteran’s non-profit, Homes for Our Troops, had stepped in to help him with the renovations required to turn the rustic shell into a functioning home.
At his insistence, they gutted the living room, reinforcing the floor joists to handle the weight of a thousand pounds of plates. They bolted an iron pull-up bar into the exposed ceiling beams, and hung a hundred-pound leather heavy bag. When it was done, the head of the crew said it looked like a training facility with a bed and a kitchen attached.
As Head Coach, Jake didn't offer pep talks or platitudes. He’d spend hours at the edge of the wrestling mat, barking technical corrections in a way that made the kids hate him until they realized he was making them untouchable.
The memory of who he’d been at that age began to seem distant.
When he wasn't at the school, the rhythmic thud of his bare knuckles hitting the leather bag was the soundtrack to his nights. His body adapted to the demands of the adaptive sports circuit. The neck, chest, and shoulders on his compact frame grew so dense and thick he reminded himself of a condensed version of Sam Griffin with that ridiculous, pro-wrestler build. No wonder Junior drew superheroes.
The shotput wasn’t the only purpose he put that body to.
Sometimes the isolation drove him to test his own wiring. He’d lie flat on his back in the dark, a bottle of silicone lube sitting on his nightstand. He’d reach down between his thighs, sliding his slicked fingers into himself, searching for a pulse in the dark.
He worked himself with the same methodical effort he used to train, driving in to hit the deep tissue, chasing the ghost of ecstasy. One night he thought he could feel it—not in the way he remembered—just a dull, muted thrum. It felt like a muffled heartbeat buried under a foot of concrete.
He pumped his fingers in faster, stumps spread wide, jaw clenched tight in the dark as he tried to force the engine to turn over. Sweat beaded on his forehead; his breathing turned into ragged pants. He swallowed hard, chasing the friction, wanting the release. But the spark never caught. The dull ache swelled—so close—and then stubbornly flatlined.
Jake drew his slick fingers out. "FUhhk!" he roared into the empty cabin. He snatched the plastic bottle of lube and hurled it across the room. It slammed against the log wall with a crack and clattered into the shadows.
He lay there in the dark, chest heaving, his hand slick and empty, grasping at a ghost.
He decided that the muted pressure was all he had left. He filed it away in his mind as a biological curiosity—a sensation he could use to keep his body idling while he serviced a whole man, but entirely useless for his own climax. If he couldn't get himself off, he reasoned, he would just have to use his mouth and fingers and muscle to get off on the power he held over others.
So, he stuck to the one-offs. Men like Reyes, a quiet ex-Marine he'd met in a hotel bar in Colorado. Reyes was married to a woman back home—two kids, the whole picture—but for one night, the itch had gotten too loud.
He’d stood over Jake on the bed while Jake sat up, his back against the headboard. Jake took the man’s thick cock down his throat, sucking him with wet, hungry pulls. As he did, Jake reached for the lube and worked his fingers into his own hole, rhythmically opening himself in time with his jaw. It was a way to tap the thrum in his gut.
“You fucking love that shit,” Reyes muttered, getting off on the sight of Jake fingering himself as he sucked.
Mmmhmmm, Jake murmured around the meat in his mouth. And he did. He loved the weight of it on his tongue, the rhythmic strikes of his head against the board. Reyes pulled out at the last second, cursing and gripping Jake's hair as he sprayed ropes of hot cum across Jake's chest. Reyes wiped the mess off with his thumb, fed it to Jake, and left without a word. Jake never saw him again, and he preferred it that way.
Then came Eli.
Eli was a mechanic from Anchorage, a stocky forty-five-year-old with hairy forearms, a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, and a middle-aged gut. He’d been sent up to service the school’s aging hydraulic bleachers.
Jake had been mid-practice, his voice echoing off the rafters, when he noticed the civilian leaning against a heavy tool chest. Eli worked quietly, Jake watching the slope of his back into his jeans.
When the whistle blew for a water break, Eli finally spoke up.
"You're a broad one," he’d remarked, a slow, appreciative grin spreading across his face as he glanced around the gym, checking for any prying ears. "But you’re not that tall, are you?"
Jake locked his wheels. He looked Eli dead in the eye with a flat calm. "I could bring you down to size."
Eli laughed. It was a deep, honest sound without a trace of pity in it. "I'd like to see you try."
When they made it back to the cabin, Jake made good on the threat. He didn't let Eli take the lead. Jake hauled himself out of his chair and onto the mattress. He gripped the mechanic by his thick waist, making quick work of his leather belt and jeans.
He took the older man’s prick down his throat in one hungry swallow, working him over with wet determination. He was a machine built to serve. His fingers reached down between his own stumps to find the heat inside his gut, while his other hand gripped Eli’s hip to keep the rhythm steady. He expected Eli to just throw his head back, grip his hair, and take the service.
But the mechanic’s hairy hands tangled in Jake’s thick blond hair—not to hold him down, but to pull him up. Eli dragged Jake’s mouth off him with a wet release.
Jake’s eyes snapped open. “What’s wrong?” he gasped, his voice rough. He ran the back of his hand over his chin, catching the spit there.
"Hey," Eli breathed, his voice heavy as he looked down at Jake. "I want to see your face."
Before Jake could reassert control, Eli leaned in and captured Jake's mouth. It was a deep kiss, tasting of Eli's precum. Eli used his stocky weight to push forward, awkwardly crowding Jake backward until he was pinned flat against the mattress.
Eli climbed over him, dropping his hips and pressing his hot, leaking cock against Jake's soft junk. He began to grind them together, daring more wet kisses.
“I can’t—down there,” Jake gasped between smacks.
They tangled together, a mess of calloused hands and wet kisses, Eli’s cock dragging against Jake’s skin, teasing the sensitive underside. Eli humped faster, breath hot on Jake’s neck, friction building until he finally shattered. The mechanic let out a guttural groan, his body shuddering as he came in hot, messy spurts trapped between their grinding bodies and across Jake's stomach.
Once the heat died down, Eli rolled off of Jake, chest heaving, a breathless, genuine laugh in the dark. “I haven’t done that since high school.”
He looked down at Jake, searching for that connection again. But Jake didn't give it to him. He reached up, clapping a heavy hand on Eli's shoulder, shifting the dynamic.
"That was solid, Eli," Jake rumbled, his voice flat, completely anchored in his Fortress. "Give me a call the next time you're heading north."
It sounded like an invitation, but they both knew it was a dismissal. The service was over; time to pack up the tools.
"Yeah," Eli answered quietly. His easy, affectionate grin slipped just a fraction as he pushed himself off Jake’s chest.
Jake saw a distant echo in Eli’s face of what his own must have looked like the day Sam Griffin decided the experiment with Jake was over. A much smaller echo, for many reasons, but it was there.
Jake realized, with a quiet discomfort, that there was some of Sam in him after all.
Chapter 14: The Ghost Circuit
Jake threw a personal best at the Invictus Games. He missed the podium by inches.
He’d cursed the loss quietly in the locker room. But looking around the athlete village later that afternoon, he knew the truth: the roster was changing. There was a new crop of twenty-two-year-old grunts coming up behind him, fresh from their own dirt roads and firefights. They brought a raw, hungry, explosive power to the circle that Jake’s thirty-something shoulders couldn’t quite match anymore. He was shifting from a competitor to a coach, and he had to accept it.
Still, the real victory of the week didn’t happen in the throwing circle.
Jake nursed a bourbon at the hotel bar. He had recently spotted the first errant pale strand in his thick, blond hair. He wore a snug blue dress shirt over his thicker build, unbuttoned just enough at the collar.
Over the last decade, this had become his routine: the drink, the shirt, the quiet, brooding posture. It was a lure, designed to pull the right kind of rough, physical attention without him ever having to ask for it.
The man who dropped into the second chair at his table was a rugby player—Murderball. Jake had seen his team on the courts earlier that week; the man had been a total menace, smashing his armored chair into the opposition with a reckless, gap-toothed grin. He was in his late twenties, with a thick dark beard and an above-the-knee amputation on his left side.
"Bloody good release today," the man said, grinning. His accent was thick, a low, gravelly Australian drawl. "You throw like a grunt. Yank Marine?"
Jake’s eyebrow raised. "Yeah. 2/4. Helmand."
The man tapped a finger against his own titanium thigh. "Uruzgan. 2 RAR. Took an RPG to the side of a Bushmaster."
"IED," Jake replied. "Pressure plate on a dirt road. Just bad luck."
The man let out a short, rough laugh. "Sure it is, mate. I'm Cole."
Fifteen minutes later, they were in Jake’s accessible hotel room. Jake’s back was against the headboard, and Cole was balancing on his one good leg, slow-pumping his meat into Jake’s mouth.
Jake took it like a pro—wet, rhythmic, and gulping. He used his throat muscles to tease the head, eyes closed, lost in the familiar safety of his service. Without pausing, he reached for the bottle of silicone lube on the nightstand. He snapped the top open, doused his fingers and reached down between his own spread stumps, hiking his hips up.
He worked two slick fingers into his own hole, opening himself in time with the deep plunges of Cole's cock in his throat. He could feel the hollow thrum of the displacement—a muted pulse that matched the rhythm of his jaw.
Cole’s gaze fixed downward on Jake’s hand, watching as his strong fingers disappeared. He let out a low chuckle and reached down to tangle his hand in Jake’s hair, firmly pulling it back, and his cock out of Jake’s mouth.
"Stand down, mate," Cole ordered.
Jake froze, his mouth still parted, staring up at the bearded mass of the man looming over him. Cole’s cock bobbed there—thick, heavy, and dripping with Jake's spit.
"Doing a bloody good job there," Cole rumbled, grinning through his beard as he looked at the hand disappearing beneath Jake’s balls. "But drop the hand. I didn't come here to watch you do all the heavy lifting."
Jake’s face flushed—a hot, rare burn of shame. He hadn't taken a man inside him since before the dirt road. To bottom was to completely relinquish control, to be pinned and passively shoved across the mattress while another man took what he wanted. He didn't want to surrender his body to a sensation he couldn't answer. It was easier to just use his mouth—to dictate the pace, stay in command, and avoid the humiliating ghost of what he used to feel.
But looking up at the sheer size of the man, Jake’s resolve flattened. If the Aussie wanted to use his ruined body to get off, Jake would take the hit. He would swallow the loss of control, if only to share in the raw, unapologetic release of a man like that.
Cole dropped down, his one good knee sinking into the mattress. Jake was no lightweight, but Cole gripped him by the waist and hauled him forward, flipping him onto his chest. Cole’s large hand squeezed the thick muscle of Jake's glute.
"Fucking solid," Cole murmured, appreciating the dense weight of him.
"Still built for impact," Jake lied, turning his face into the sheets, bracing himself for a transaction—the use of his fucked up hole for another man’s pleasure.
Cole dropped his head, his dark beard grazing the inner skin of Jake’s thighs before he buried his face. The surface wiring there was dull, but it wasn't completely dead. More than that, it was the sheer, shocking intimacy of the act—a man so eager to bury his face in Jake’s ruin—that sent a psychological jolt through Jake.
"Lube tastes like absolute piss," Cole laughed, and then dived in again.
Cole was relentless, eating him with a hunger that made Jake feel stripped bare. His whiskers rubbed the sensitive skin. Jake was left quivering, his hips involuntarily chasing the mouth.
Then came the cool slide of more lube as the first two fingers drove into Jake. The silicone squelched as Cole pried him open, his fingers bypassing the numb wiring of Jake's groin and hitting a deep, buried cluster of nerves miraculously preserved.
“Fuck,” Jake grunted, grasping at the bed sheets, hiking his ass up to meet the pressure. “Right there!”
“Fucking beautiful. Open that cunt up for me, mate,” Cole growled, his breath hot against Jake's rear as he drove a third finger in, stretching the ring.
Jake clutched the pillow bunched under his chin, the muscles of his stumps searching the mattress for leverage. “Let’s see if you catch as good as you throw.”
Jake’s core involuntarily shuddered.
“Fuck me,” he choked out, saying the words for the first time since the Mojave.
Cole pulled his fingers out and wrapped a hand around Jake's hip, anchoring him. He steadied himself on his good leg and his stump, positioning himself with one hand braced against the headboard. He pressed into the tight knot and sank in to the hilt. "Fuuuuck."
The heavy slap of their sweat-slicked bodies echoed in the room. Cole was a Murderball player, built for collisions, and every thrust ended with a meaty clap of skin against skin. Jake threw his hands forward against the headboard for something to push against, bracing his shoulders to meet Cole’s slams. His biceps trembled as Cole swayed over him, his hips a relentless engine of friction.
“Taking the hit, mate?” Cole grunted, his weight bearing down on Jake, slamming home with a force that made Jake’s head bob. “Reckon you can keep copping it?”
“I can take… anything you fucking throw at me,” Jake barked back, almost choking on the words.
Cole let out a rough laugh, his hips snapping forward. "Tough cunt, aren't ya?"
Jake didn't expect a climax. He’d spent a decade convinced the physical mechanics of an orgasm were gone. But Cole’s invading cockhead found a deep, forgotten bypass in his core and rode it straight through Jake’s body. It started as a pressure deep in his gut, the squelch of lube repeating as Cole’s cock suctioned in and out of him, faster, harder.
“Fucking cop it,” Cole rasped, his thrusts turning jagged and frantic.
And then the world cracked open in a white-hot flash.
Jake’s entire torso seized, every muscle locking as a phantom nerve lit up like a live wire. He felt himself being split, torn open from the inside out, but not dying. He gasped loudly, spasming, his hips bucking uncontrollably. And then Cole groaned, driving deep one final time, shooting into Jake’s quivering insides—Jake's breath vanished at the scalding heat of the man's meat filling him and spreading through his body.
The rugby player’s sweaty, hairy chest dropped onto Jake's back. For a long time, the only sound was their gasps. Jake lay pinned, his arms limp. His insides were still violently twitching.
Cole shifted, pulling out with a long, wet sound. He dropped to his side, gently guiding Jake by the shoulder to let him turn over onto his back.
"Jesus Christ," Jake breathed, his voice a wrecked rasp. He dragged a shaking hand over his face and then down to his crotch, uncertain. He looked down. The skin was wet with sweat, but there was no release. "Nothing came out. I didn't even know... I didn't think I could do that. Not anymore."
Cole looked down at Jake, his eyes softening just a fraction. "That was your first?"
Jake didn't answer, but the stunned look in his eyes was enough.
"Listen to me," Cole rumbled. He ran a calloused finger up from Jake’s pelvis. "IED cooked the local wiring—the nerves to the plumbing. But there’s a back road. Vagus nerve. Runs straight from the prostate to the brain. Most blokes never find it ’cause they’re too busy mourning the hardware up front. Hit that gland enough, with the right torque…” he gestured at his used semi-erection, “the engine still fires. It just doesn’t squeeze any juice."
Jake had spent four years studying the map of the human body, learning the clinical definitions of the nervous system, but the textbooks had never mentioned that the back road could feel like this—like turning on every Christmas light in the house at the exact same time.
"Autonomic reflex," Jake rasped.
"It’s a ghost circuit," Cole continued, tapping a finger against Jake’s solar plexus. "Cumshot’s just the evidence, mate. The go? That’s all up here." He tapped Jake’s temple.
Jake glanced down at the rugby player's heavy equipment. It was a hell of a weapon, sure. But as the technical reality sank in, a profound shift settled in. It wasn't Cole's cock that had performed a miracle. The fire, the wiring, the capacity to tear the world open and survive—it hadn't been given to him. It had been sitting dormant inside Jake all along.
A sound started deep in Jake's chest—a rumbling laugh that shook his massive frame. Cole grinned, reaching down to press his fingers to Jake’s slick, worn hole, where a stream of cum was beginning to seep out. “Good thing I've got enough for both of us.”
Before Jake could fully catch his breath, Cole slid those two cum-coated fingers right back inside Jake’s thoroughly wrecked hole.
“Any questions?” Cole grunted.
“Yeah.” Jake’s hand reached down to find Cole’s thick wrist, drawing it closer, pushing the fingers deeper. “How fast can you reload?”
Chapter 15: The Arrival
Jake parked his chair on the salted concrete walkway outside the Sourdough Diner, the biting Alaskan wind whipping around the corners of his heavy canvas jacket.
His calloused hands gripped the rubber rims of his wheels, bracing himself. He’d spent the weeks since that phone call waiting for Junior to step out of a car, look him in the eye, and demand to know how Jake could have so casually betrayed the boy who had worshipped him.
A dark rental SUV pulled into the lot, its tires crunching over the packed ice with a sound like breaking bone. Jake’s breath stopped in his chest.
The driver’s side door opened first. A tall, elegant man with glossy black hair stepped out into the freezing wind. Not Junior. This man moved with a graceful, practiced efficiency, opening the back door and bending into it.
Then, the passenger door opened.
The man who stepped out wasn’t a kid anymore, but the core of him remained exactly the same. Junior was still slim and wiry, his long dark hair brushing the collar of a dark wool coat. He had a more self-possessed posture now, more at ease, but those heavy-lidded eyes were unmistakable. He reached into the back seat and pulled out a canvas diaper bag.
Jake squared his shoulders. He deserved the recriminations; he was prepared for the fire.
Junior turned toward the diner, his eyes automatically scanning the walkway at eye level, looking for the upright boy from his youth. At that moment, a group of tourists exited the diner, and a sudden burst of laughter and the clatter of ceramic mugs and plates bled through the open door—the muffled clamor of normal life spilling out into the freeze before the seals shut tight again.
Jake sat perfectly still, a silent monument in the slush.
It took a second. Junior’s gaze swept the empty air where a man’s head should be, and then it dropped.
Junior stopped dead. Before Jake could even find his voice, Junior closed the distance between them, dropping to one knee right there on the salted cement. The diaper bag swung at his side as he wrapped his arms around Jake’s neck, burying his face in the rough canvas of Jake’s shoulder.
Jake locked up, every muscle in his upper body going rigid. Stray wisps of Junior’s dark hair blew into his face. Jake had prepared for a fight; he had no armor against a hug.
"I thought you were dead," Junior breathed, his voice shuddering against Jake's jacket. "I thought you were dead so many times."
Jake sat frozen in his chair, trying to process the absolute lack of hostility. Slowly, awkwardly, he brought a scarred hand up and pressed it flat against Junior’s shoulder.
"I'm here, Junior." Jake tried to keep his voice flat and steady, patting the shoulder with firm, even strokes. "I'm right here."
A slow, deliberate footstep crunched on the salted ice beside them. There was a pair of black loafers, not at all suited to the weather. Jake looked up. The other man was standing there, his posture upright, holding the baby carrier against his side. He sized Jake up with a calm, discerning gaze.
“Jake Burgess,” the man said. His voice carried the weight of a man who had spent years reassuring the person currently sobbing into Jake’s neck. “You’ve been a ghost in my husband’s life for a long time.”
Junior pulled back. He wiped a stray tear from beneath his eye and let out a short, overwhelmed exhale, but he stayed crouching, remaining at Jake’s eye level.
"Jake," Junior said, his voice thick as he gestured to the other man. "This is Boon. And this..." He gestured to the carrier, and Boon turned it slightly to reveal the sleeping, rosy-cheeked face of a baby boy. "This is Kit."
Jake looked at Boon, then down at the baby. A memory surfaced: the anxious, skinny teenager who could barely manage to look straight at him in the locker room, but who had still seen a bruised, desperate Jake and quietly offered, "You can crash at my place."
The guilt was still there, heavy and unresolved in Jake’s gut. But as he looked at them shivering in the sub-zero wind, his protective instincts finally overrode his defensive ones.
"Change of plans," Jake announced, his voice dropping into a coach’s authority.
"What's wrong?" Junior asked, a flicker of panic breaking through the emotional haze.
"It’s too noisy in there for a baby," Jake said, nodding toward the diner where the muffled clatter continued. "And the wind’s picking up. Get back in the SUV and follow my truck. My cabin is twenty minutes out of town. It's quiet, and the heat works."
Boon’s eyebrow arched up, but he smiled—curious, if not knowing. He shifted the carrier up to hip level. "Lead the way."
Junior stood up, looking slightly disoriented, as if the ground had just shifted beneath his feet all over again. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
Jake spun his chair toward his heavy-duty pickup, his hands moving with controlled speed on the rims.
He was clearing the debt, a little at least.
He was taking them home.
Chapter 16: The Shrine
Jake unlocked the front door of the cabin, wheeling himself backward over the threshold.
As Junior and Boon stepped inside, Jake sat quietly by the door, watching their eyes sweep the room. It was warm, smelling of cedar and woodsmoke, but it was entirely stripped of standard domesticity. For the first time in years, he was hyper-aware of how the space must look to a stranger. But Junior wasn’t a stranger—he knew entirely too much.
Taking up the massive footprint in the center of the open living room was Jake’s modified bench press, surrounded by heavy kettlebells, chains, and stacked iron plates. It wasn't tucked away in a spare room or a garage—it was the absolute focal point of the house.
Jake watched Junior’s heavy-lidded eyes track over the equipment, and a sudden, sickening knot tightened in Jake’s gut.
He realized exactly what the room looked like: the Griffin house after Sam’s wife had walked out. He remembered Sam’s bench press and stacked iron weights, parked right in the center of the living room—gutting the heart of a family home to build a temple to his testosterone and vanity.
Jake had spent twenty years outrunning the ghost of Sam Griffin, only to subconsciously build the exact same shrine in the middle of his own Alaskan living room—only bigger and heavier.
Junior’s eyes shifted from the bench press back to Jake. He didn't say a word, but Jake knew he had to see the parallel.
"Coats can go on the hooks by the door," Jake offered, his voice more formal than intended, desperate to break the silence.
Boon unzipped his coat and carefully extracted the sleeping baby from the carrier. He cradled the boy effortlessly in his long arms, moving with that same elegance Jake had noticed in the parking lot.
The tall, slim man was plainly observant and guarded, his dark eyes cataloging the weights, the lowered counters, and the veteran in the chair. He positioned himself subtly, keeping his body angled just behind Junior, quietly assessing the threat level.
Jake read the body language instantly. He respected it. He turned his chair toward the kitchen, needing to busy his hands. "I'll put some coffee on."
He pulled a bag of dark roast from the freezer, dumped it into the machine, and hit the brew switch. Then he pulled from the fridge a slab of smoked King salmon he’d bartered for a few weeks back, a loaf of sourdough, and a block of sharp white cheddar. He sliced it all down with quick chops of a chef's knife, sliding the cuts onto a wooden butcher block. It was a bachelor’s spread—heavy on pragmatism and protein—but it gave his hands a task and kept him from having to stare at the family standing in his living room.
Jake balanced the heavy wooden board squarely across his thighs. He spun his chair toward the small, secondary footprint of the room, leaving the coffee on the counter for a second trip.
As Jake returned with the mugs, Junior instinctively leaned forward, his hands twitching out to help take the load from the man in the wheelchair, but he caught himself.
Junior watched the forearms flex as Jake effortlessly maneuvered the chair, stopping on a dime and sliding the steaming mugs onto the table. Junior slowly lowered his arms, letting Jake maintain his autonomy.
"It's a beautiful place, Jake," Junior said quietly. He was complimenting the cabin, but his heavy-lidded eyes barely registered the cedar walls or the vaulted ceiling. They were locked entirely on Jake.
They settled into the open space. Jake carried the heavy wooden board and mugs over, positioning his chair at the end of the low coffee table. Junior and Boon took the sofa, the carrier on the floor beside them.
An hour drifted by, measured out in the clink of ceramic mugs and the crackle of the baseboard heaters. They ate the salmon and cheese, Junior noting it was delicious, Boon agreeing.
Boon asked about the road conditions on the Parks Highway. Junior asked about the high school wrestling team, navigating around the twenty-year gap in their lives. Jake answered in short, utilitarian sentences.
Mostly, Jake watched them, cataloging the differences between the two men sharing his sofa.
Both were tall and slim, but the similarities ended there. Boon was entirely fluid. Even sitting still, he had a seamless, relaxed grace about him. Junior was all restless, nervous angles.
Jake watched the quiet, effortless way the couple passed the baby between them—trading the weight of the infant back and forth without a single word, smoothly freeing up a hand for a plate of salmon or a hot mug of coffee, though Junior’s sat untouched.
It was a perfectly choreographed, unconscious teamwork that made Jake feel entirely alien in his own home.
Junior sat leaning forward, his forearms resting on his knees. His sleeves were pushed up to the elbows. Jake’s eyes traced the intricate ink wrapping around Junior's skin—a half-sleeve of blooming dahlias on his left arm, and interweaving chanterelle mushrooms on his right.
Jake’s eyes drifted away from Junior's ink and down to the floor beside the sofa, where Boon was tucking the boy into the insulated car seat to doze. Jake seized on the sight, glad for a safe, neutral topic.
"Kit," Jake said quietly, testing the syllable.
"Kittisak," Junior added softly. A faint, proud smile spread as he glanced over at his husband. "Boon’s grandfather’s name. We just call him Kit."
Jake gave a short, respectful nod.
He set his half-empty mug down on the table. He looked at Junior, deciding to just rip the bandage off.
"So," Jake started, resting his calloused hands on the rubber rims of his wheels. He locked eyes with Junior. "You said you found me. How?"
Junior leaned back, the cabin light catching the intricate sleeves inked across his forearms.
"I wondered about you for a long time," Junior said quietly, the weight of decades hovering around his thin shoulders. "I had heard a rumor that you hitched to Alaska."
Junior swallowed. "Every year or so, I’d look again. Usually late at night, when I just couldn't shake it. I'd dig through public records, hoping for a clue. Social media. Anything, really. Most of the time, I figured you just didn't want to be found. I mean, that’s what Alaska’s for, right? The place people go to disappear. Or..." He took in a sharp breath. "...or worse."
Jake didn't blink. He just stared back, dense and unreadable.
"I clicked it, and there you were. It took me a minute to realize it was you throwing that iron ball. You looked so… different. And I had no idea you were in the military. But I recognized the set of your jaw, and the way you… squinted, after the throw. You looked amazing out there, Jake."
Jake scoffed—a short, dismissive sound. "Shotput is just throwing a rock. It's just math."
"But it gave me a thread," Junior pressed on, his tone steady and earnest. "Once I knew to look for adaptive sports, I found more. I found the Invictus Games results. I found a newsletter from Homes for Our Troops about renovating your home. There was a picture of you on the front porch."
Junior looked around the cedar-lined room, taking in the bench press, the punching bag, and the timber beams, before his dark eyes settled back on Jake. "I spent twenty years terrified that you had died somewhere out in the cold. But instead... you'd built this entire life."
Jake felt a tight, uncomfortable pressure rise in his chest.
"The article in that newsletter mentioned you were a high school wrestling coach up here," Junior continued. "Once I had the city and the job, it took me less than five minutes to pull up the school's website. Your extension was listed right there on the athletics page. After all the years of looking... I just had to dial the number and hear your voice."
Jake nodded slowly. It made perfect sense. The school's public directory was a glaring hole in his defense, but he'd never had a reason to worry about it before.
On the sofa, Boon’s posture finally shifted.
The tall man had been watching Jake intently for the last hour. Jake could feel himself being calculated—Boon weighing the deflected praise, and the defensive guilt radiating off Jake's shoulders.
But as Junior finished speaking, Jake watched the protective tension physically slide from him—his guard dropped. The cold assessment in his dark eyes softened.
Boon had clearly figured the math out. He saw that this weaponized veteran wasn't a threat to his husband at all; Jake was just as terrified of this meeting as Junior was.
"He paused the video and sketched you for three hours straight," Boon chimed in, his voice warmer now. "He woke me up at four in the morning to tell me he found you."
Jake felt a tight, uncomfortable pressure rise in his chest. He deflected again, looking down at the sleeping child as Kit shifted slightly, letting out a soft, sleepy sigh.
Boon checked his watch, a look of mild paternal calculation crossing his face.
"Speaking of sleep," Boon said, shifting his long legs and standing up smoothly. "Kit has been a saint, but he needs a proper sleep in a real crib."
Boon bent to pick up the car seat with one hand, straightening again easily. He bent to place a gentle, reassuring kiss on the top of Junior’s head. "I'm going to take the SUV back to Fairbanks, check us into the hotel, and get the room set up."
Boon turned to Jake.
"Thank you for the coffee, Jake," Boon said, offering a warm, respectful nod that felt entirely genuine. He looked down at Junior. "Take all the time you need."
Jake sat perfectly still and watched the tall man carry his son out the front door. Junior sat there looking at Jake.
The latch clicked solidly shut, followed by the heavy crunch of the SUV’s tires pulling down the driveway. The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The easy buffer of the baby and the husband was gone.
Jake turned his chair slightly, gripping the armrests, and finally looked Junior right in the eye. He squared his shoulders. He had survived losing his legs. He’d survive this.
"Alright," Jake said. "Let's have it."
Chapter 17: Clearing the Air
The heavy click of the front door latch echoed in the quiet cabin. Boon was gone, taking Kit with him, leaving the two of them entirely alone for the first time in twenty years.
Jake braced his core, his jaw tight. He was waiting for the tribunal to begin.
Instead, Junior leaned forward on the sofa, resting his tattooed forearms on his knees, and stared down at the bare hardwood floor.
"I was so incredibly stupid," Junior whispered into the quiet room. "And selfish."
Jake blinked, the tension in his jaw faltering. "What?"
Junior looked up, his heavy-lidded eyes rimmed with red. "I knew your home life was shit. I didn’t know everything, but enough to know it probably made my dad look like father of the year by comparison. But I didn't see the reality of it. I just saw... you. You were so beautiful. I thought if I just loved you that would be enough. But you didn't need a lovesick kid. You needed Child Protective Services."
Jake stared at him. He had spent two decades casting himself as the villain of this story, carrying the weight of his betrayal. He had expected anger. But Junior wasn't carrying anger; he was carrying guilt.
Junior shook his head slowly. "We had already drifted apart by the time I left for college. I know why, now. But I didn't even try to connect with you again. I was so focused on my new life and my future. Getting out. So I abandoned you.”
“You didn’t—”
“I didn't learn about you and my dad until years later." Junior let out a bitter, self-deprecating breath, looking back down at his hands. "I was so offended. I felt... cuckolded. And the sickest part was, I wasn't even sure by which one of you. I didn't know if I was jealous of him for having you, or jealous of you for having him. The two people I thought were closest to me had an… intimacy with each other that I was excluded from."
Junior swallowed hard. "I romanticized it for a while. I… eroticized it. I turned it into this twisted, tragic love triangle where I was the victim. But as I got older... that fantasy burned off. It crept up on me that it wasn't romantic or erotic at all."
Junior looked Jake right in the eye, his gaze piercing. "You were an eighteen-year-old kid, drowning. And he was a grown man—a world-class narcissist who could justify taking absolutely anything he wanted. He saw exactly how desperate you were."
The air rushed out of Jake’s lungs in a heavy, shuddering exhale. He looked away, staring blindly at the iron bench press in the center of the room.
"How is he?" Jake asked quietly. He didn’t have to say the name.
Junior sighed, leaning back against the sofa. "Softened," he admitted. "You'd be surprised, seeing him hold Kit. It doesn't excuse a single thing he did. I don't let him off the hook for it, and our relationship is... complicated. But he's an old man now."
Jake tried to picture it. Sam Griffin, his blond hair shot through gray, a slight sag to his bulky shoulders and solid pecs, gravity finally having its say. Still handsome, if creased at the eyes. Even after twenty years, his pulse ticked up. It made him feel sick to his stomach, but the pull was still there.
But Junior wasn't done. He leaned forward again, his voice dropping into a whisper.
"When the fantasy faded, I realized the truth about myself, too," Junior confessed. "I realized that even when I wanted to help you back then, I wasn’t a saint. I wanted you to love me back.”
He gestured helplessly toward the empty space below Jake's torso. "Later, when I saw what happened to you... it gutted me. Because I sat there thinking, if I had just done the right things. If I had actually helped you instead of just mooning over you, if I had stayed in touch, if I had been your friend, I could have done something. So you wouldn't have had to run away. You wouldn't have joined the Marines, and you wouldn't have lost your legs."
"Stop," Jake grunted, his voice dropping into a flat, unforgiving gravel as he gripped the rubber rims of his wheels. "You don’t have to make excuses for me, and you sure as hell don't take the blame for this.” He gestured at the space where his legs had once been. “I slept with your father, Junior. Under your roof. I was in survival mode, yeah, but I still made the choices."
Jake squared his shoulders, finally laying his own guilt bare. "You were the one person in that whole damn town who actually gave a shit about me. The only one. Don’t take that away from me by saying you weren’t my friend. You were. And I did everything wrong. I betrayed you."
Junior stood up and rounded the coffee table. He bent down and knelt, his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair.
"I never blamed you," Junior breathed, his dark eyes shining. "Never once."
Jake’s heart hammered against his ribs in a way that made them ache. He was acutely aware of the lifelines that had brought him to this exact moment—the Homes for Our Troops crew who gutted his cabin, the VA team, the principal who hired him on faith. Vance. A thousand small kindnesses. But this was the origin. The one who made all the rest possible. The skinny kid who had offered him a safe bed and never demanded a toll, even when he had to look away while Jake changed his shirt.
Over the last twenty years, Jake had fucked around with a lot of men. Some he had actively wanted, some he hadn’t, and plenty had just been cool transactions to get from one day to the next. But not one who loved him.
He reached out, cupping the back of Junior's neck, his rough thumb brushing the dark hair there. Junior let out a shaky exhale and leaned immediately into the grip, tilting his face up, closing his heavy-lidded eyes.
The moment was undeniable. They had been circling this since they were eighteen. But if they finally were going to do this, Jake wasn't going to hide the reality of what he was bringing to the table. He had to lay the absolute truth out before it went any further—give Junior an out.
"Junior," Jake began, his calloused hands dropping to rub the rough canvas on his stumps. "I'm busted up. The IED... it scrambled the wiring. I don't work the same way down there anymore. The signal is dead in the front."
Junior didn't offer sad, pitying words, and he didn't pull away. He just shifted his grip, resting his warm hands directly on top of Jake's.
"Then show me how it does work," Junior said, a small, incredibly fond smile on his lips. "Show me how to take care of you."
Chapter 18: Crash
Jake transferred himself out of the chair and onto the wide mattress. He pulled his dark thermal shirt over his head, exposing the dense muscle of his chest and his thick core. Junior stood beside the bed, shedding his own clothes, and the physical contrast between them couldn’t be more stark.
Jake was entirely compact—a self-contained mass of muscle, with a layer of pale, cold-weather insulation over it. Junior was lean, his limbs long and vascular. His forearms were completely covered in the ink of his dahlia and chanterelle sleeves, and a diamond of dark hair ran in a narrow seam straight down his flat belly.
Jake looked up at him, a rare, unguarded grin breaking across his face. "You look good, Junior."
Junior stopped, his heavy-lidded eyes traveling over the sweep of Jake's torso, catching on the rough blond hair spreading across Jake's pecs.
"You have chest hair now," Junior breathed, slightly smirking. He perched on the side of the bed and put his hand on Jake’s chest, directly over his thudding heart. "You look incredible."
Jake felt another uncomfortable flash of self-consciousness. He’d been admired before—but not like this, in a way that made him feel totally exposed. He broke the eye contact and reached over to the side of the bed, grabbing two firm, wedge-shaped pillows.
"I need the leverage," Jake explained. He shoved the pillows underneath his lower back and the blunt ends of his stumps to elevate his pelvis. His cock lolled over his balls. The dirty blond pubes spread up to a trail that ran up his belly. He’d been just a smooth boy the last time they were in a bed together. He looked back up at Junior, aiming for matter-of-fact. "This is how I have sex now. Not exactly the romantic, sweep-you-off-your-feet scenario."
Junior let out a soft, breathless laugh, crawling onto the mattress. "Jake, I've been dreaming about being in bed with you like this since we were teenagers. You could build a fort out of those pillows and I wouldn't care."
Junior moved forward, kneeling on the mattress right at the base of Jake's torso, his long legs flanking the scarred ends of Jake's stumps.
He settled back on his heels. Because of the foam wedges, Jake's pelvis was angled up and entirely exposed. Junior’s dark eyes dropped, taking in the vulnerable slope of Jake's hips, his gaze lingering for a quiet second on Jake's flaccid cock resting softly over his balls.
There was no pity in Junior's eyes, but Jake still felt the reality of his altered body demanding one last disclaimer as he handed Junior the bottle of lube from the nightstand.
"Junior," Jake warned. "Just so you know... I won't get hard. And I don't shoot. The plumbing doesn't work that way anymore."
Junior paused, his eyes lifting to search Jake’s face. He wasn't deterred, just trying to understand the physical reality of the man he loved. "Okay. Can you...?" he asked softly, letting the question hang.
Jake let go of the bottle, dropping his hands beneath his hips to clutch at his own glutes. He wriggled his heavy hips and pulled at his cheeks, actively opening himself. He grinned. "Just wait and see."
Junior smiled, a soft, devoted expression that made Jake wish he could fuck him—to see that face break as he moved inside him.
Junior poured the silicone lube into his palm, smearing his fingers, and slid two slick digits into Jake.
Jake sighed. "Oh, yeah." He let his head drop back and spread his truncated thighs wider. He even reached down, grabbing his own soft dick to hold for comfort and out of habit, as Junior expertly opened him up—far more skillfully than Jake might have guessed. He bypassed the exterior wiring and hit the deeply buried cluster of nerve endings almost immediately.
"You’re good at that," Jake chuckled, his voice already dripping desire.
"I’ve had some experience," Junior replied, blushing faintly, though a proud smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
He withdrew his fingers, wiping his hand on his thigh and leaned forward, over Jake, pressing open-mouthed kisses into the thick column of his neck. He used one hand to brace himself against Jake’s heavy thigh, and the other to position himself, guiding his cockhead against Jake's slicked hole before pushing slowly in.
“Ready?”
Jake’s core involuntarily shuddered as Junior entered and filled him. Junior dropped a shoulder against Jake’s to kiss him, his free hand gripping Jake's hard glute to keep him anchored in place as he began to rock into him.
Junior let out a shaky sigh, his hand crawling up to clutch at the meat of Jake’s pecs, his tattooed forearm caging Jake against the mattress.
The fucking started out like Junior himself—thoughtful and profoundly sweet. He settled into a deep, rolling rhythm, refusing to speed up even as Jake’s breath hitched and he gasped, “Fuck me.”
Minutes slipped by in a haze of skin and friction. Jake had spent years relying on rough, jarring impact just to register a spark, but this was entirely different. Junior was taking his time, learning the network of Jake’s body, letting every long, dragging stroke stretch him completely out.
"You feel so fucking good," Junior murmured against his jaw, his voice tight with his own restraint. "Just like I knew you would."
His slow, deliberate thrusts bypassed the severed nerves and rushed straight up Jake’s spine, building a slow heat.
Jake let out a low groan, his hands blindly gripping the sheets, entirely at the mercy of the sensation. "Junior—"
"I'm right here," Junior promised. He pulled back just enough to look down into Jake’s eyes, his hips never breaking their slow, deep grind. "Let me take my time with you."
The air in the bedroom grew thick. A sheen of sweat coated them both, their breathing syncing up. Sweat damped Junior’s hair and dripped down as he watched Jake’s face—the tension coiling tighter.
Jake let his head fall back against the pillows. It wasn't the sudden, violent detonation he had felt in that hotel room with the rugby player. This pleasure built steadily—a deep, rising tide that crested, completely overcoming him. The sudden intensity of it shucked Jake’s control. He reached up, hands grabbing the back of Junior's neck and physically pulling him back down to his mouth.
"Fuck me," Jake begged against Junior's lips, his voice breathless and breaking. "Faster. Fuck me—"
Junior didn't hesitate. He pulled back just enough to break the kiss, his jaw clenching tight. He shifted his long hands down from Jake's chest, his fingers digging into Jake's hips to anchor himself.
Junior swapped the thoughtful heat for brutal, breathless leverage. He drove into Jake fast and hard, his hips whipping forward in relentless thrusts. The sweat between their chests smacked as Junior pumped faster, trying to force so much raw friction into Jake's core that it would finally trip the breakers.
Jake's breath caught in his thick throat.
And then the climax broke. It caught the ghost circuit deep in his core, an internal surge that rolled through him in a blinding, shimmering wave of euphoria. His vision went white. He gasped out loud into Junior's open mouth as his chest seized and the neurological shockwave consumed him.
He held onto Junior tightly, his internal muscles clenching hard around Junior’s cock.
That spasming grip was the final push Junior needed. The careful restraint he’d maintained shattered. Junior dropped his head, his open mouth found the junction of Jake's neck and shoulder. His teeth sank into the muscle there as he completely lost control. His length stiffened, and he released, cock erupting a load into Jake. His hips pumped in fast, short jabs to empty himself, his knees buttressing against the mattress to support his weight, then slowed until there was nothing left.
Their breathing slowly synchronized. Jake lay pinned against the wedges, arms wrapped securely around Junior’s back, lazily tracing the ink on the younger man's skin.
Suddenly, Junior let out a muffled snort against Jake's neck.
"What?" Jake mumbled, his voice thick with the heavy fog of the aftershocks and absolute contentment.
Junior lifted his head, a bright, ridiculous grin spreading across his face. "I just... I can't believe I'm actually here. If you told the eighteen-year-old me that this was going to happen, I would have spontaneously combusted."
A rumbling chuckle started in Jake's chest. It bubbled up, catching Junior and drawing him in. He reached up, cupping the back of Junior's neck where his nape-length hair was damp and curling at the tips. Jake's eyes crinkled at the corners.
"You were a horny kid, Junior," Jake laughed softly.
"Rude. I was devoted," Junior corrected, resting his chin on Jake's chest, his heavy-lidded eyes now heavier with exhaustion.
Jake felt the heavy drag of sleep pulling at his own mind, but the reality of the situation forced him to speak. He ran a hand down Junior's bare back.
"It's getting late," he rumbled softly. "Boon... the baby. Don't you need to get back to the hotel?"
Junior didn't lift his head. He just shifted closer, resting a long, tattooed arm between his chin and Jake’s sternum.
"Boon knows exactly where I am," Junior mumbled, his voice thicker. "He's got Kit. I'm here as long as you want me."
Jake let out a slow, disbelieving breath. He was missing half his body, and the world outside his home was buried in ice. But for the first time in twenty years, they were having a sleepover.
Chapter 19: The Morning Light
The Fairbanks morning cast a thin, pale light through the windows of the cabin, but in the bed, the air was thick and warm. Jake woke up slowly, the dull, pressing urge to piss finally breaking through the deeply satisfied sleep.
Junior was sprawled over him, his face buried in the crook of Jake’s neck, one lean arm slung lazily across Jake’s ribs. He was completely out, his breathing a slow, shallow rhythm against Jake’s skin. Jake let his eyes adjust to the light.
Twenty years later, and Junior slept the exact same way—limbs flung everywhere, a scarecrow, open with total, unconscious trust.
Jake let his hand rest on the dip of Junior’s lower back, tracing the warm skin up to the dark hair that curled at the nape of his neck. For twenty years, waking up had been a solitary act, and now he was lying here pinned under his oldest, best friend.
He shifted slightly, turning his jaw to press a quiet kiss into Junior’s messy hair.
Junior stirred with a soft, sleepy groan. He blinked his eyes open, squinting against the pale light, and slowly tipped his head up. A lazy, brilliant smile spread across his face, his eyes drowsy.
"Morning," Junior murmured. He leaned up, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of Jake’s mouth.
"Morning," Jake grunted. He patted the artist's bony hip. "Gotta take a leak."
Junior rolled off with a sigh, pulling the quilt up to his chest. Jake sat up, triceps bunching as he transferred his weight off the mattress and into the chair parked by the nightstand.
A minute later, Jake transferred onto the toilet in the cold bathroom. He let out a loud, unapologetic fart that echoed off the tile as his bladder emptied. He had sat right here for twenty minutes the night before, purging his quivering bowel until he was empty. Junior had sat on the tiles with him, heavy-eyed and grinning, lazily talking to keep him company.
He grabbed a wad of toilet paper, reaching down to clean himself up. He took a second to look at the last clear slick shining on the tissue before dropping it into the bowl. His insides were still faintly quivering—a deep, exhausted muscle tremor echoing the blinding, dry climax that had torn through him hours ago. It was a stark, bodily reminder of exactly how much his wiring had been altered, but it didn't make him feel broken. It just made him feel thoroughly, deeply spent.
Jake flushed the toilet, washed his hands, transferred back to his chair, and wheeled himself out into the open living room. He rolled behind the lowered kitchen island to fill the filter and hit the switch on the coffee maker.
A moment later, he heard the unfamiliar pad of bare feet on the hardwood.
Junior wandered in, his thumb dancing on the screen of his phone. He wore nothing but his boxer briefs and Jake's discarded thermal shirt. It draped over his lean frame, the sleeves hanging past his tattooed wrists.
Junior set the phone face-down on the lowered counter.
"Boon says good morning," Junior offered, his voice still syrupy with sleep. "Said Kit slept like a rock."
Jake gave a short nod, a beat of respect for the unseen husband settling in his chest. Boon had flown to Alaska, navigated the icy roads and handled the baby solo in a strange city, actively carving out the space for them to do this. "He seems pretty perfect."
Junior smiled. "He's really not."
Junior turned and walked over to the refrigerator, pulling it open. He stood there for a long moment, the cool air spilling out as he stared at the shelves.
He looked over the door at Jake, his eyebrows raised. "Jake, there is literally ten pounds of frozen moose chili, three dozen eggs, and a slab of salmon in here, but not a single drop of milk for my coffee."
A chuckle vibrated in Jake's chest. "I don't drink milk. You want coffee, you drink it black."
Junior laughed, shaking his head as he shut the door. He leaned back against the lowered counter, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched Jake pour the dark roast into two ceramic mugs. The pale morning light was illuminating the thickness of Jake's compact shoulders and neck, catching the ashy blond of his hair.
Junior’s smile slowly faded into something much more contemplative.
"You look like him," Junior said softly into the quiet kitchen.
Jake’s hand stopped pouring the coffee. He didn't have to ask who Junior meant.
"I didn't see it back then," Junior continued. His voice was devoid of any accusation, just stating an undeniable visual fact. "When we were kids, you were just... you. But now. The build. The jawline. You look just like him."
The knot in Jake's gut tightened. He put the carafe down. "I know."
Junior pushed off the counter and closed the distance between them. He crouched down to eye level and reached out, his long fingers wrapping firmly around Jake’s thick wrists.
"It doesn't mean anything," Junior whispered fiercely. "You’re nothing like him."
The absolute certainty in Junior's voice broke the tension. Jake let out a slow exhale. The ghost of Sam Griffin wasn’t entirely expunged, but looking into Junior's clear, devoted eyes, the specter seemed incredibly faint in the morning light.
Jake looked at the man crouching in front of him—wearing his shirt, completely unguarded in his kitchen. The sudden, heavy realization that their time was thinning—that this was a stolen window that was rapidly closing—morphed into something demanding.
"My turn," Jake growled.
He grabbed the waffled material of the thermal shirt and pulled Junior in for a deep, breathy kiss.
When they reached the bedroom, Jake didn't bother with the foam wedges. He grabbed Junior by the wrists, hauling him onto the mattress and rolling him flat onto his back. Jake dragged his torso over the lean artist, pinning Junior's thin hips to the sheets with the blunt ends of his thighs.
Jake hovered over him. "Something I want to do while I’ve got you," Jake murmured, his voice dropping into a gravelly pitch. "Before I give you back to that perfect husband of yours."
Jake planted his elbow onto the mattress beside Junior’s head, a thick pillar supporting his chest. He let his rough jaw scrape lightly over Junior’s collarbone, kissing a hot, damp path down the center of Junior's chest, before rising back up to lock eyes with the artist.
With his torso balanced and his left arm holding his weight, his right hand was entirely free. He reached over, grabbing the tube of lube. He flipped the cap with his thumb, squirted a cold dollop into his palm, and reached between Junior’s legs.
He slid two slick fingers deep into Junior in one smooth motion. He curled his thick digits upward, pressing into the target buried inside.
Junior let out a strangled grunt, his hips lifting instinctively off the sheets to meet the pressure of Jake’s hand.
Jake pulled back just an inch, his rough jaw hovering over Junior's flushed face. "I want to see you break," Jake growled, his voice a dark, demanding gravel.
Junior didn't hesitate. He spread his lean legs wider, hooking his calves tightly around Jake’s thick waist, pulling the veteran down exactly where he wanted him.
Jake worked his fingers deeper, hooking and pulling in an exact, ruthless rhythm that made Junior rapidly unravel. Junior's own hand dropped between them, his long fingers swiping a trace of lube from where Jake was buried inside him. He brought it back up, wrapping around the length of his cock to stroke himself in time with Jake's punishing pace. Then Jake lowered his head, his mouth capturing the artist's lips to swallow the breathless, filthy sounds Junior was making.
Jake didn't need his lower half to be a god in this bed—his hands, his commanding mouth, and his physical presence were more than enough. Junior let out a breathless, broken laugh, his spine arching completely off the mattress as he chased the friction.
"Please," he choked out, his body trembling under Jake’s heavy chest. "Jake—please—"
“Show me,” Jake ordered, half smirk, half boyish grin.
Junior shattered in a beautiful, messy surrender. He seized under Jake's weight, his tattooed arms wrapped desperately around Jake’s neck to anchor himself as he rode out the aftershocks. Jake stayed hovering over him, watching every muscle in Junior's face go slack as he took the artist completely apart.
As the tremors faded, Jake hauled his torso down the length of the mattress. He took Junior's still-hard cock into his mouth, sucking hard to drag the very last drops of the climax out of him.
“Jake!” Junior yelped, laughing, his cock spent and too sensitive for that attention.
Jake crawled his way back up the bed. He pressed soft, grounding kisses to Junior's sweat-slicked forehead, blanketing his friend until the trembling in Junior's lean limbs finally stopped.
Junior reached up, running his long fingers through Jake’s damp blond hair.
"What about you?" Junior whispered, his voice wrecked.
Jake looked down at him—at the flushed skin, the absolute devotion in the man's eyes. He didn't need the ghost circuit right now. For the moment, he had everything he wanted.
"I’m good," Jake rumbled, a satisfied vibration in his chest. And he truly was.
Chapter 20: A Safe Place to Land
The restaurant Boon had chosen was in a high-end, rustic lodge on the edge of Fairbanks. It was the kind of place that served thick-cut elk steaks and expensive bourbon, with a massive stone fireplace dominating the dining room.
"Put up with it. Boon’s a foodie," Junior told Jake as they navigated the wide aisles between the tables. "I told you: not so perfect.”
"If I have to fly to the edge of the Arctic Circle," Boon corrected, unbuttoning his knee-length coat, "I'm going to eat the local fauna."
The host led them to a wooden four-top right in the center of the dining room. The staff had specifically chosen it for the clearance, pulling a chair away so Jake could wheel his titanium frame flush with the table.
Jake parked directly across from the wooden highchair. He glanced down at the baby, then up at the wide-open dining room swirling around them.
"Appreciate the easy parking," Jake rumbled, locking his wheels.
Junior laughed, leaning forward with his lean, tattooed forearms resting on the polished wood. He passed on the wine, claiming designated driver duties for the night. Across from him, Boon was a picture of effortless grace as he used a cloth napkin to wipe a smear of sweet potato puree off Kit's chin.
Jake sat back, just watching them. For twenty years, Jake had been convinced that his own gravity would destroy anything that got too close to him. But as Junior turned, caught his eye, and broke into a bright, unguarded smile, Jake realized he wasn't a threat to this family. He was being invited into it.
"How do you..." Jake started, gesturing vaguely with his calloused hand toward Kit, trying to find the polite phrasing. "I mean, two guys. How do the logistics on that actually work? I imagine the paperwork alone is a nightmare."
Junior let out a warm laugh. "It's definitely not easy. The surrogacy and legal process is an absolute mountain. And it is not cheap."
"Which is why my mother footed the bill," Boon added smoothly, lifting the heavy glass carafe to pour himself a splash of dark red wine. "She was relentless about wanting a grandson. We finally told her that if she wanted one so badly, she could underwrite it. She wrote the check the next morning."
Jake let out a low chuckle. He liked Boon. There was no posturing with him. The man was completely secure in his marriage, completely unfazed by Jake’s presence.
The dinner was a surreal, entirely foreign experience for Jake. He was used to eating alone in the quiet of his stripped-down cabin, or hunched over his desk in the Coach’s office, between barking orders at his wrestlers. Here, the conversation flowed easily. Junior talked about a hoped-for book tour, while Boon managed the baby, navigated the wine list, and asked Jake genuine, interested questions about the wrestling team.
By the time the plates were cleared and the check was paid, the logistics of braving the sub-zero Alaskan night began. Junior slipped away to the men's room, leaving Jake and Boon at the table. Kit, sensing the impending disruption of leaving the warm restaurant, started to fuss, letting out an unhappy wail that cut through the low hum of the dining room.
Boon sighed. Between wrestling into his own heavy wool coat, slinging the canvas diaper bag over his shoulder, and trying to unlatch the bulky car seat carrier, the tall man ran out of hands.
Without a word of warning, Boon scooped the squalling boy out of the highchair, stepped over to the end of the table, and lowered the infant straight against Jake’s chest.
Jake froze. His massive, calloused hands instinctively cupped to catch the tiny bundle, completely caught off guard. He stared down at the squirming infant, his thick fingers catching the back of the baby’s fragile head.
He looked up at Boon, his wide eyes silently asking, Am I doing this right? Is this authorized?
"If you can throw a sixteen-pound shotput, you can hold a baby," Boon said smoothly, securing the strap of the diaper bag across his chest. "He won’t break."
Jake swallowed hard. He shifted his broad shoulder, settling Kit’s head against the thick muscle of his trap. He rested his wide, warm palm flat against the baby's back, holding him securely and bouncing his chair just slightly on its shocks.
"I’ve got you, kid," Jake whispered, his deep voice vibrating right through his chest cavity. "You're not going anywhere."
Feeling the solid warmth and the rumbling vibration of Jake's voice, the baby let out a soft, hiccuping sigh. Kit dropped his head, his little tongue sticking out slightly as he settled against the rough flannel of Jake’s shirt.
Jake sat perfectly still, a strange, overwhelming tightness gripping his throat. He looked up.
Junior was walking back through the dining room, arranging his heavy scarf around his neck. He stopped dead in his tracks, letting out a soft, goofy grin. He stood there, watching the boy he had loved and the man who had survived the worst of the world, holding his son with flawless gentleness.
Jake looked back down at the sleeping baby tucked against his chest, and realized for the first time that his body could also be a safe place to land.
Chapter 21: Arrivals & Departures
The announcements of arrivals and departures echoed through the bright, sterile corridors of the Fairbanks International Airport.
Jake sat in his titanium chair near the security checkpoint, trying to relax his shoulders. The visit he’d dreaded had become something else entirely.
Boon stood a few feet away, bouncing a heavily bundled Kit on his hip. He looked up at the departure board and let out a dry sigh. "Here’s hoping he sleeps past the descent," Boon muttered, "or I’m going to be buying overpriced drinks for the entire cabin."
His dark eyes met Jake’s, offering a warm smile that creased his laugh lines. He shifted the baby securely onto his left hip, stepping forward to give Jake a brief one-armed hug.
"Summer," Boon said definitively, pulling back. "We have a guest room in Seattle that has your name on it. If you don't fly down when the wrestling season ends, Griff is going to make us come back up here, and I refuse to put a teething toddler on an airplane just to miss our only sunny season of the year."
Jake let out a chuckle, clapping Boon on the back. "Keep the kid warm."
Boon stepped back, adjusting the baby's knit hat. He looked at Junior, then back to Jake.
"Time to go home," Boon said simply.
He turned and began to lead the way toward the TSA line, giving them one last moment of private space.
Junior stepped up to the wheelchair. He didn't look like a nervous teenager anymore, but the unguarded devotion in his eyes was exactly the same as it had been at eighteen. He dropped to one knee right there on the polished linoleum, resting his forearms comfortably on the blunt ends of Jake’s thighs.
He reached into his carry-on bag, pulled out a tight roll of heavy sketch paper secured with a rubber band, and pressed it firmly into Jake's hand.
"Don't unroll this until you get back to the cabin," Junior ordered softly, a fond smile spreading across his face. He looked up, searching the veteran's face. "You good?"
"I'm good, Junior," Jake grunted, his voice turning a little gravelly as his thick fingers closed securely around the paper cylinder. He reached out, his massive hand cupping the side of Junior’s neck, his thumb brushing affectionately against the hair at his nape. "You go home. Take care of your boys."
Junior smiled, leaning into the rough warmth of Jake's palm. He stood up to his full height.
"I'll text you tonight," Junior murmured.
He turned and fell into step beside his husband. Jake sat locked in his wheels, watching the three of them disappear into the security line. Junior looked back once, raising a hand, before turning the corner.
Jake unlocked his wheels, turned his chair, and rolled out into the biting cold, feeling the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat.
An hour later, Jake parked his truck in the driveway of his cabin.
It was silent, but not empty. The scent of Junior's soap still lingered in the air.
Jake took his heavy canvas coat off, hanging it on a hook near the door.
He wheeled himself into the kitchen, flipped on the overhead light, and slipped the rubber band off the tight roll of sketch paper. He unrolled it flat against the lowered island, his heavy hands pressing down on the curling edges.
It was a single inked page.
The drawing depicted two teenage boys sprawled comfortably on a narrow twin bed. One was leaning back with his back against the wall, legs outstretched. The other sat cross-legged beside his shins, head bowed as he looked down on the open comic book in his lap. It was a perfect, quiet snapshot of Junior's old bedroom from twenty years ago, rendered with incredibly fond lines.
Scrawled directly across the bottom margin of the artwork were three words:
Still drawing superheroes.
Jake swallowed hard, his fingers gently tracing the edge of the paper. For two decades, he thought he’d used Junior’s kindness and failed him. But looking at the two boys on the bed, he saw exactly how Junior had always seen him—both then, and now.
Jake let out a slow, steady breath. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number for Eli. It rang three times before the line clicked open.
"Jake?" Eli’s voice was instantly attentive. "You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine," Jake said. He looked down at his scarred hand resting on the countertop. "I was just thinking about that last run we had. Thinking about how you looked pinned to my mattress, begging for it."
Eli let out a sharp, surprised huff of a laugh. "It's nice to know I left an impression. Hell, Jake, I don't care if the Parks Highway is pure ice right now. I can be in my truck in ten minutes and make your place by 3 A.M."
Jake closed his eyes for a second. He could easily let the guy make the reckless, frozen six-hour drive tonight—strip him down the second he walked through the door and wreck him. But things had shifted.
"No. Not tonight," Jake said, his voice losing the raunchy edge and settling into something steadier. "But come up this weekend, Eli. Let's go grab a beer. Get some dinner. Spend the night."
There was a long, stunned silence on the other end of the line.
"Dinner," Eli repeated, the caution melting into a warm, surprised relief. "Yeah. Okay, Jake. I'd like that. I can be up there by Saturday afternoon."
"Drive safe," Jake grunted. "And Eli—get some sleep before you drive. You aren't getting any once you're here."
He could hear Eli's breathless laugh as Jake ended the call and set the phone down.
He felt a sudden, sharp surge of restless energy—the exact kind of blood-pumping hype that usually only hit him right before he rolled into the throwing circle at the adaptive sports championships.
He wheeled himself back into the center of the living room, locked his casters in place, and reached up to unhook the bungee cord holding his heavy leather boxing bag to the wall, letting it swing free. He pulled the hem of his thermal shirt over his head, tossing it aside and letting the cool cabin air hit his bare skin. He didn't put on wraps or gloves. He didn't need them.
Jake started with a steady rhythm—jab, cross, jab—his knuckles cracking against the dense leather. He used his core to torque his upper body, finding the leverage without legs, driving from his hips and spine. He let the pace build, throwing crisp combinations until the burn settled deep into his shoulders. His breathing grew heavy, echoing in the quiet room, a sheen of sweat rolling down the dense muscles of his chest.
He threw a sharp, punishing left hook that sent the heavy bag groaning on its chain. As it swung back toward him hard, Jake dipped his shoulder, weaving his head to the side as the worn leather hissed past his ear.
He caught the bag on the return, slapping his palms against the hide to kill the momentum dead. He looked at the heavy, hanging weight, an unguarded smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Is that all you've got?" he muttered at the bag, a full-chested challenge to the universe.
He let the bag settle and took a deep breath, throwing back his broad shoulders. He had a weekend to prepare for, and he was ready for whatever came next.
END
If you enjoyed this, you may like Go Home, the story of Junior, Boon, and Sam, or Trading Desire, the story of Sam and Jake’s ill-fated relationship.
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
