Boot Camp Buddies - part 1

When the time came for me to do my military service, as all French boys are required to, I requested to be placed in the navy. I didn't care much about cocks then: my few sexual experiences with other guys were limited to drawing female anatomies in a back row of a history class and watching our bulges grow under the old wooden desks. Whoever had drawn the picture which resulted in the biggest bulges would win; at most one of us would quickly tap some of those bulges to make sure there was no cheating by fluffing the fabric around the crotch. Nothing harmful; boys will always be boys.

Here I was at eighteen in a navy boot camp near Brest and a bit disappointed that they would not assign us to any ship until a month from then. The camp was miles away from any town or village and we were told there would be no leave until the end of our training. Imagine two hundred young guys, a lot of us still teenagers, locked in "Yes-Sir" land and with only our right hand for comfort! Lucky for us we didn't have to bunk in dorms: we were paired and assigned to double-bed rooms. There would always be the possibility of a silent jerk-off session while the other was sleeping.

I liked Jerome right away. He seemed to be the quiet type and self-controlled. Not a troublemaker; at least I wouldn't have to do pushups or some crappy detail chore because an asshole happened to be bunking with me. Jerome was about my height - six feet of so, with black hair as I could judge by what remained of it after a trip under the clippers, olive skin, eyes as dark as mine were ice blue, broad shoulders, nice arms, big hands and a strong neck which could only belong to some kid who had already worked more than he had been to school. Maybe twenty, I thought, from the Mediterranean. He simply walked into the room with a "Hey", unpacked his bag and laid on his bed face up, hands behind his head, waiting for the PA above the door to announce 'dinner for the first third', which meant our barrack. I glanced at him a few times while unpacking my bag and trying to figure out why our uniform pants had that buttoned square flap in front of the zipper. When the flap was undone and lowered, which took a while, you still had to unzip in order to take your dick out and piss - or whatever else you had to do. Jerome looked back once or twice and smiled: "Weird, huh?" he simply said. Years later I would still recall his voice. It came out of him low and husky like some deep and powerful secret he feared to release. The sound seemed to build within his belly, flew up his throat and past the pearly teeth, the generous lips, and hit you in the face like a slap from someone who meant to caress you but didn't know how. That was Jerome.

The first time I felt the terrible power he would have over me came a few days later. A 'Force Run' is a very simple task: you wake up at three in the morning after a grueling day of learning how to march together while singing navy songs, scraping shit off the bathroom stalls before repainting them, more marching, polishing the barracks until a white glove comes out cleaner at the end of an inspection than it was at the beginning, peeling potatoes by the hundreds and more marching; you strap on a backpack full of God-knows-what-heavy-ass-shit-they-stuff-in-there, and you run together for two hours under a romantic moonlight. I liked sports and was not afraid of roughing but my idea of fun was a bit different than having some navy jarhead ream our 'candy asses' all the way to Timbuktu while we tried not to suck in every single pine needle along the run. I was in pain and panting like a bitch after the first hour. Jerome ran alongside, obviously fighting exhaustion but as self-controlled as ever. "Come on man, they're going to fry us if we don't make it together".

I didn't want to fail him and be the asshole that would get him in trouble. I liked Jerome and felt a bond I could not yet explain. I kept running for him. I kept running for my roomie, my buddy with the husky voice and the dark eyes. I needed his strength, his steady force; my feet started to beat the ground with his feet, my thighs to strain with his thighs; the muscles in my back and my ass hardened and let go in rhythm with his back and his ass. My stomach shot volleys of pain that rolled into my chest and grabbed my heart in a tight grip. I felt the burn in his belly and the stubbornness of his heart. I heard the pounding waves of his breathing and rode them. I felt his balls bouncing in their sack and the cock responding to the bouncing. The sound we made became that of lovemaking. A thought came out of nowhere: "We're fucking our way to the end." The heavy sensation between my legs told me that I was as hard as a gun's barrel and probably 'tenting' my shorts in a major way. I looked down - runners do that to every now and then to keep focused, and saw the betraying arch of my cock pressing against the fabric and begging to be set free. Shame invaded me, and with it the liberating confession that I could get a hell of a boner for another man. I looked away from this devastation only to lock eyes with Jerome. The bastard simply smiled.

We would never go on a Force Run again; one was enough to 'separate the men from the pussies'. A part of me celebrated the news as much as another craved for a second taste of our secret lovemaking. The days went by with their customary dose of sweat-and-blood and verbal abuse from our trainers; the nights were mostly populated with loud snores from nearby rooms and the occasional solo masturbation when I did not feel like puking my guts out. I would wait unmoving until Jerome's breath seemed to settle and grab my tool for some silent pleasure, polishing the knob and stroking the length of my shaft until the load splattered with a faint sound. All the while I dreamt of Jerome smiling when our eyes had met during the run. Had he seen what had been happening in my shorts? Why had he smiled? Would we ever talk about it? How stupid I had been not to look at his shorts and find my answers there! I would explore the possibilities and let intangible fingers float along his sleeping form, climbing every mound, slipping inside every crevice. His body became a landscape of my mind and my unspoken lust for him crowned me caretaker of this yet untouched territory. I would tend to this Eden with all the devotion and torment a condemned soul has for his obsession, licking my secret wound and reopening it at the first signs of healing. I believe I loved the guy and wrote him passionate letters with cum on government issued underwear.

Three days before we ship out! Officers from several ships would arrive and pick their choice of fresh sailors, each according to their natural talent. My good ear got me Anti-Submarine Crew and I would spend the rest of my turn learning the subtleties between a soviet sub and a water density shift. Jerome got Mechanics.
"That's what I do best: fixing things. You know?"
I saw him desecrated with grease and swathed in fluids, imprisoned in the bowels of a great vessel while up above I would ensure his safe return to shore where the iron beast would regurgitate his body and give him back to me.
"Where do you think they're going to send us?" Jerome asked.
"I'm not sure. I've heard a few ships would sail off to Djibouti towards the end of the year, but they will stay there for several months, so that leaves us out."
Everyone wanted to go to Djibouti: it meant a much higher pay, five whores to every sailor, cheap alcohol and deals on electronics like nowhere else.
"Wouldn't it be great if we ended up on the same ship?" I ventured.
"Yeah, I'd like that very much."
My heart sang.

We undressed and went to bed at the PA's orders. I had seen Jerome naked in the open showers and had had plenty of time and occasions to perfect his image in my mind. But having to share his splendor with a dozen of fellow sailors almost angered me and never gave me the sense of belonging and closeness I felt when guessing his presence in the near darkness of our room. Beauty draws you best when it is partially hidden and makes promises you pray it can keep. In near darkness the curve of an ass wraps itself in moving shadows and creates pools of unknown depths where the mind likes to linger and wishes it could probe.

Jerome now laid on his stomach, his face towards me, lips slightly apart and his breathe flowing in and out gently. The sheets that he had at first carefully drawn over him had slipped off here and there with a move of the leg or a shift of the hip. A thigh was emerging from under the crisp linen and the muscles of his back had also escaped, pulling with them a portion of the round ass. My hand found my cock, which was already stirring and gaining considerable weight. I started to jack off. The sound and rhythm of my hand stroking my tool must have disturbed Jerome; he let out a small moan and turned on his back, pulling the sheets over his belly and covering a hand he rested over his crotch. I paused and waited until silence reentered the room before resuming my strokes. It happened then. I almost convinced myself I was seeing things but Jerome's hand, under the white sheets, was slowly moving up and down.

A lightning bolt cracked in my chest and froze my entire body. Jerome's hand also stopped, for a while, and then moved up and down again in long slow strokes. I heard his face turn and saw his eyes gleaming right at me. "Please", he only said. My buddy was asking me to masturbate with him. We looked at each other while polishing our manhood, two sailors ready to be shipped out, two friends who had pulled through a month of boot camp and celebrated their accomplishment by wanking together. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it pulse in the veins of my tool. I wanted this moment to last forever; I wanted the tension in my stomach to never leave me. I felt suspended in time by my cock.
Jerome moved so quickly I did not react until he was already on my bed, his knees on each side of my hips, holding his dick inches away from mine.
"Oh fuck!" was all I could say, afraid someone in another room might hear us, and utterly conquered by Jerome's body towering over me.
"Ssssssh! Don't ruin it." Jerome handled his cock with tenderness and the precision of a man who knows what he is doing. He squeezed the base softly and pulled to the end of the shaft, drawing generous amounts of precum that fell onto my cockhead, joining us by a fragile strand that shivered for a second and vanished as if it had only been a ghost. I received his offering and mixed it with my own in a swift movement of fingers. More precum was given as we stroked, moving our eyes between our cocks and our smiling faces. I marveled at the size of his tool, which seemed to swell and harden more with every pass. The thickness of it was unbelievable and even his large hand could not encircle the shaft entirely. Mine was longer, a dick made to penetrate as deep as an ass or a mouth would allow it; his was a massive instrument engineered to break down by force any resistance it would meet.
"You think I didn't see your hard on when we were running? You think I don't know what you're doing while I pretend to be asleep?"
His condemnation filled me with embarrassment and joy. He knew. He knew how much I wanted him and loved him. He knew how many times I had wanted to tell him, how many times I had to fight not to scream his name while releasing my love for him all over my stomach. The bastard knew!
"Well, guess what little buddy? I would just wait until you were done with your wanking and jerk my own cock while you slept like an innocent boy. But now your ass is mine!"

End of part 1 -------