The Rut

Prologue

The Venable Home was established in 1942 at the outset of US involvement in World War II, to accommodate unplanned pregnancies of young women—not ladies, obviously—who gave into base desires as their beaus or even handsome strangers went off to war. Whereas common wayward girls might be sent to an asylum for gestation, girls of families of means whose values had temporarily lapsed were afforded more exclusive destinations suited to their station in life. At the Venable Home up to five girls at a time could be supervised through their pregnancy in relative isolation from prying eyes, provided a respectable liberal arts education and medical supervision during their delicate time. This was provided for a fee commensurate to the sensitive nature of the arrangement, and the quality of care. The eventual offspring could be placed with infertile couples carefully screened and selected by the Venable family for both their wealth and circumspection. Client families of the Venable Home valued the latter almost as much as the former.
 
In the years that followed there was a steady stream of families in need of The Venable Home, both those who wished to place infants and those who wished to procure them from a reputable source, with all the assurances money could buy of a tidy and professional transaction. With only five openings at any time, there was never a shortage of clients, even in times of more lax standards. *Discretion is ever in season among the better families*, was a Venable Home maxim. *Good breeding is essential*, was another.

In the 1960s, Rachel Carson’s book *Silent Spring* promised global catastrophe resulting from humanity’s abuse of the planet. Nature itself appeared to issue a forceful statement, confirming or rebutting these claims, depending on one’s interpretation of events. Soon after publication of these predictions, the first Rut unfolded in 1963. Young men, most between the ages of 18 to 26, normally inclined to ordinary and even zealous heterosexuality, turned to each other, abandoning any interest in the opposite sex. They took to their newfound lusts with abandon, driven by powerful pheromone lures they emitted. The more shocking development surfaced a few months later as these young men developed pregnancies, amid a host of biological changes.

As in every Rut since, relatively few were affected, even among the demographic in which it manifested. At its outset, the moneyed and powerful considered the first of the pregnancies appalling transgressions of the lower classes, owing to their wanton recklessness. But as middle- and upper-class families discovered their athletic all-American boys to be in a family way, the Venable Home provided a sought-after service, as ever among families with means, not for their wayward daughters, but for their impulsive sons.
 
The first Rut peaked in 1964 and had run its course by 1968, concluding as inexplicably as it began. By its end, the Venable Home had cemented its reputation as the West Coast destination for boys in trouble. The sprawling estate in Cody, California came to be known as a place where well reared boys could still be boys, their feared-for masculinity encouraged and cultivated, even as their lusts were moderated by a strong but caring hand. The Home maintained exclusivity by keeping to only five rooms, but increased fees steeply.

In 1975 the Rut surged again, resulting in thousands of Bicentennial babies born in the following year. As in every instance of the Rut, college sports teams were disrupted by surprise male pregnancies, the young and athletic being the most afflicted. This time the Rut lasted little more than a year. But the 1986 Rut spanned nearly a decade, and barely ended before it surged again in 1997. Some believed that the species was headed toward a permanent Rut, but like almost everything about The Rut, this was only speculation.

By the seventh Rut, the shame of male pregnancy did not hold the same sting it once had, but there remained a market for the Venable Home. Keeping pheromone-addled young men in line took a strong hand, particularly in an era of indulged youth with little respect for tradition or propriety, and the headmistress of the Venable home provided that expertly. In addition, the appropriate and discreet placement of Rut offspring required a certain savvy the Venable Home specialized in.

Still, by 2018, it was not quite the same world as that in which the Venable Home was established.

1. The Stag

Summer brought out an even more randy side to the boys in the Venable Home. The air was thick—pregnant, some might say—with the musky pheromones they emitted. 

“What I wouldn’t give for a beer,” said Joey, absentmindedly running a hand over his left pec, already swelling as his milk glands developed under the thick layer of muscle.

“Bad for the baby,” said Lane, the most obviously pregnant among the boys.
 
He was not the furthest along, but with the smallest frame among the group of college jocks, his distended belly seemed the most pronounced. He was so small that it was a surprise he ever got knocked up. The pheromones tended to drive Stags to the most physically superior Bucks, the driving force of the Rut linked in some way to muscular athleticism.

“I’m about five minutes from being free to have a beer,” volunteered Chad, proudly thrusting forward his high, taut belly. It was round as a beach ball, covered with the same tightly curled black hair that covered his beefy chest.

“Fuck you,” laughed Joey. “You aren’t that far along. That’s mostly a food baby. Dude, I saw you eat half a pizza!”

Chad let out a long, loud, rumbling burp, chuckled and said, “I’d eat the other half for dessert, but you got to it first, bro.”
 
He held up a fist and Joey stretched his arm from his seated position to bump their knuckles.

“How about dick for dessert? I’m overdue on my nut,” joked Stu, making a jerking motion with his hand and giggling.

“Anytime, anyplace,” sighed Chad, shamelessly.
 
It was no secret that Stu was considered the hottest of the bunch. An amateur bodybuilder with beautifully swollen muscles and a snub-nosed boyish face, he had near-constant puppy-level energy that could only get him in trouble. The man-child of the Home, he was famously also a Stag Buck, a bro who had put a baby in a Buck and had taken one in his own belly too.

“Shut up!” hissed Jamie, turning to look over to the Home’s formal entrance, where an apparent confrontation was brewing. “Listen!”

“THAT’S MY BABY IN THERE!” they heard from the entrance, in a rich deep voice, the sound of which made their holes twitch. Their shared physical reaction told them it was a Stag.

“This is ABSOLUTELY prohibited!” declared Ms. Venable. “If you do not leave the premises at once, I will alert the police!”

“Like I give a fuck,” said the determined Stag, brushing Ms.Venable aside to make his way into the recreation room where the Home residents were gathered.

The Stag was a young man, maybe 25, on the short side but powerfully built. He stomped in wearing heavy scarred work boots, tracking the carpet with dirt and dust. He had a thick manly belly, strong shoulders and powerful thighs, built for breeding, evident even in his thick canvas pants. His snug white t-shirt revealed a chest heaving with deep breaths, and a large fleur-de-lis tattooed inside one bicep. His nostrils flared in an otherwise affable face, crowned with a nest of brown curls.

“Brodie?” asked Lane, looking up in shock.

The Stag’s face softened immediately on hearing Lane’s voice. “Oh baby,” he said. “Oh baby, there you are.”

The Stag dropped to his knees, and ran his hands over Lane’s belly, so swollen it looked painful. “You’re so big now – I didn’t know.”

He inhaled the scent of Lane’s pregnancy, detecting traces of his own essence, gently kissing the belly again and again as Lane ran his fingers through the Stag’s brown curls.

“You must leave at once,” demanded Ms. Venable, marshaling herself.

The Stag, Brodie, was oblivious to her, and everyone else. He yanked down Lane’s drawstring shorts, and there in the recreation room unbuttoned his own work pants, drawing out a prodigious cock, rock-hard and oozing precum. It was a common side effect for Stags that the male member enlarged beyond its original proportions, and became the master of the man who bore it, enthralled to pheromone stimulation.

The other boys’ cocks sprung to attention as they watched the scene unfold. Brodie lifted and parted Lane’s legs in a single swift movement and positioned his cock at the swelling hole. Both Stag and Buck were oozing the natural lubricants they produced in Rut, from their respective reproductive organs. Brodie sank his full length into Lane, who quivered and gasped out loud as he was opened wide and filled.
 
The other boys yanked down their shorts to stroke their cocks, intoxicated by the sight and scent of the urgent rut. Even Ms. Venable was impressed by the intensity of passion as Brodie slammed repeatedly into his much smaller Buck. She did not try to intervene, though she fretted over the safety of the fetus, knowing when The Rut was on two boys, nothing short of a crowbar could peel them apart.

“I love you baby,” groaned Brodie as his thick slab of cock stroked out and pounded back into Lane’s hole. “I lo — oh — OHHHHHHH…”

Within moments of burying his cock in Lane, Brodie trembled and spasmed, flooding his Buck with a thick load of his potent semen. As was usual in Rut, his load was many times the amount of an ordinary ejaculate. Accordingly, Brodie’s orgasm went on over the course of almost five minutes, his balls churning out prodigious floods of hot cum that seeped into Lane, and then out his twitching hole, where Brodie was lodged in to the base.

It was an unusually fast pairing for a couple in Rut, perhaps owing to their long separation. 

“What a waste,” muttered Ms. Venable, observing the Stag’s precious seed being squandered in an already pregnant Buck where it could do no good, and adding insult to injury, spilled onto her good carpet. She had half a mind to catch it up in a vial to be used in artificial insemination at a later date, but without a ready refrigeration unit there was no point. And Stag semen remained notoriously ineffective outside the actual breeding pair.

Brodie laughed, shuddered,  breathing hard as he let his still firm cock slide out of Lane. A substantial quantity of his semen followed, gushing onto the carpet below, appalling Ms. Venable yet further. He rested his sweaty head on the belly housing his fawn, and said, “Sorry, I couldn’t hold it any more.”

“It’s okay,” said Lane, “it’s all okay.”

The smaller Buck was stroking his own erection as the Stag load oozed out of him. A moment later he shot his own ordinary cum on Brodie’s chest and shoulders, and groaned as his oversize belly heaved.

Brodie pulled Lane up to his feet, raised up the Buck’s drawstring shorts and then his own work pants. “I’m getting you out of here, baby,” he said, taking Lane’s hand.

“You will do no such thing!” declared Ms. Venable. “Lane’s parents have contracted with this home for –”

“I’m taking my baby out of here,” interrupted Brodie, paternal authority wafting off of him like heat waves. “And I will take down ANYONE who gets in my way. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Ms. Venable tried to stare him down, but knowing the Rut was a force of nature that no one, not even she, could long resist, she stepped aside.

Lane nervously looked at his fellow residents and blinked back happy tears. Brodie led him to the Home’s entrance, where he put on a pair of sandals. Brodie picked him up in his strong arms and carried Lane out of the facility without even a word, and without the few possessions left in his room.
 
As the Stag and his Buck took their leave, the boys began to relax, some absentmindedly holding their erections, others tucking them back into their shorts. Neither they nor Ms. Venable spoke until Brodie and Lane were well and truly departed, probably driving down the long road into town.

“Damn,” said Jamie, finally voicing the stunned reaction of everyone in the room.

Because most Bucks were driven to take on as many Stags as possible in Rut, they often didn’t know who fathered the child in them. Evolutionary scientists posited that this was to ensure Stags would treat all Rut offspring with equanimity, knowing that any might be theirs. Brodie and Lane were different. They were college roommates who began to Rut in secret, before anyone knew they were in season, and kept at it until Lane was knocked up.

“That was fucking crazy,” said Chad, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d see a Stag do something like that.”

“Don’t expect to see it again,” said Ms. Venable. She looked down with disdain at the pooling lube on the carpet oozing from each of them. “Look at you – all of you – ruining my furniture and good carpet with your drippings.”

The boys looked down to see that in their excitement they had wet their seats with natural lubricant, soaking into the fabric of the sofa occupied by Joey and Chad, the chair that held Stu, and some had even dropped to the carpet where Jamie stood.

“Sorry Ms. V,” said Chad. “You know we can’t help it.”

Ms. Venable pursed her lips, as she did when displeased. The boys didn’t love her, but tried to appease her worst moods. 

They considered themselves lucky for the most part to be at the Venable Home. Cody California provided a year-long comfortable climate, and the Home had ample grounds, the most current gaming technology and state-of-the-art gym equipment. Most importantly, for all her pretense of discipline, Ms. Venable was happy to turn a blind eye to most of her residents’ antics. Some homes kept the boys isolated from each other to keep a lid on their supercharged libidos. But at the Venable Home, the boys maintained most liberties, as long as some appearance of order was maintained and the fees were paid on time.

“Well, we’ll see how they fare when the Rut is over,” she said about Lane and Brodie, while considering which cleaning solvents to use.

Everyone knew that when their Rut season ended, both Stags and Bucks would biologically and emotionally readjust, settling back into more ordinary heterosexual lives. There was no known case in which an existing homosexual experienced the Rut. It was also known that by the end of the first three months after birth – the “fourth trimester,” as it was jokingly referred to – the rare pair-bonded Stag and Buck became sexually repellent to one another. The same biological imperative that once drew them irresistibly to each other spun its polarity to drive them apart. The Rut, apparently, wanted as many genetic configurations as possible, and monogamy after the birth was not desirable.

Why Bucks continued to express pheromone lures even after successful breeding was a mystery. But so much of the Rut’s rhyme or reason was unknown, subject to wild speculation. It was only known that once impregnated, Buck pheromone decreased in potency but remained constant. What was not known was why it affected almost all men, whether they were Stags, Bucks or just ordinaries. It was also not known why although most Stags and Bucks were exceptionally fit young men, from time to time a man who fit neither demographic would transition. Nor was it known why there were rarities like Stu, who were both Stag and Buck in equal measure. The Rut, it seemed, had almost more exceptions than rules.

“Maybe they’ll make it,” said Joey, thinking wistfully of Brodie’s intensity. “You never know.”

“I know,” attested Ms. Venable. “Believe me, I know. I’ve been at this longer than you’ve been alive.”

“Gee Ms. V,” said Joey, feeling defensive of Brodie’s honor. “You think you might have helped my grandpa when he was knocked up?”

“Very amusing,” said Ms. Venable, arching an eyebrow. “Let’s hope your wit serves you well when you’re in your 12th hour of labor. A sense of humor will come in very handy then.”

Joey squirmed and Stu laughed, and Chad and Jamie looked down, hoping not to be the next target of Ms. Venable’s wrath.

She left the lot of them to summon the housemaid to come tend to the mess made by Brodie’s sexual performance and stimulation. Stag seed would be an especially potent odor to deal with, and any trace of it would leave the Bucks antsy for days, even weeks.

“Bitch,” muttered Joey, stroking at his crotch, heady with the scent of Brodie’s Stag musk. “When the Rut’s over I ought to come back and show her what she’s dealing with.”

“Nasty,” added Chad. “Even the Rut couldn’t make me go for that dried-up old cooter.”

Just the thought of vaginal sex could cause Joey to go flaccid. The dozens of girls he’d once fucked seemed like they were bedded in a dream by a different man. Once the Rut took him, no amount of stimulation could arouse him to penetrate a female, of any age or appearance. As he lost all interest in women, his passion for cock and man ass intensified. Even now his cock was almost painfully stiff as he remembered Brodie, with his gorilla arms and mitt-sized hands.

“Fuck it,” said Joey. “Let’s play ball.”
 
Days passed in the everyday sameness of the Venable Home. With its eternally temperate climate and isolation from the world, the only thing that marked the passage of time was the slowly shifting topography of the boys’ growing bodies and the rare coming and going of Bucks, though never before or since in the same way as Lane leaving the group. Any day could be any other day, and though the Bucks kept a few precious weekly rituals, they barely knew what month it might be.
 
Ms. Venable, on the other hand, tracked the days with the ruthless attention of a moneylender. She wasted no time refilling the opening in the Home left by Lane. Every occupied bed represented a substantial income. No matter how ridiculously déclassé her wards often seemed, they were the sons of money. She could practically see the dollar signs hovering over each of their heads like pale green exclamations. 

While she considered those seeking accommodation, she decided to let out two extra rooms, which would make the house more cozy. Part of the market value of Venable Home was its perceived exclusivity, with only five boys. Two wouldn’t be so much more, and the extra income would be welcome. After all, the Rut wouldn’t last forever, and one must make hay while the sun shines.

As the boys ate breakfast later that week, they heard the entrance door open and slam shut. A mysterious intruder moved through the house, making his way to the dining room with the heavy tread of an athlete.

He was tall, maybe 6’4”, with boyishly cut blond hair. He wore a sleeveless t-shirt that showed off his massive tanned shoulders and biceps. The shirt barely contained the oversize muscular pecs that most expecting men sported, and a full round belly. His blue plaid board shorts were tight around his round ass and hefty bulge, and the shorts were filled out by the biggest thighs any of the boys had ever seen.

The stranger deeply inhaled the scent of bacon and biscuits, nearly growling as he asked in a raspy voice, “Who do I have to fuck to get a plate of that?”

“Who the hell are you?” asked Jamie, mouth hanging open.

“I’m the new guy,” said the stranger, dropping his overstuffed duffel bag to the floor, and cocking his head. “Abe.”

- End, Chapter One -