Blitzed

Chapter One: In the Sauna

1:00 a.m., New Year's Day, 1941

The Stable Baths, London

Sir Neville had just lowered himself into the main bath of The Stable, a private gentlemen's bathhouse near Covent Garden, on Endall Street, after having taken Irma home at the end of a round of New Year's Eve parties. He was scanning the baths for likely young men when an attendant came in, crouched down beside the senior civil servant, and whispered, "It is starting again, sir. Jack here will show you to the basement shelter. The sauna there has been reinforced to serve as an air raid shelter. There aren't many at the baths this evening, so you shouldn't be inconvenienced."

No sooner had the man said that than the first of the evening's bombs burst not far away in the city, close enough that the building trembled.

"No respite even on New Year's Day," Sir Neville muttered. He was a large, but well-built, florid, reddish-gray-haired man in his fifties, of strong constitution and appetites, and with endowments to be proud of. He was a man not to stint on the exercise of either his appetites or his endowments. With Jack's help, he pulled himself up from the water and, wrapping a large towel around his midsection, followed the solicitous Jack to the stairs leading down to the lower level of the gay baths.

Jack flinched as a German bomb exploded nearer to Covent Gardens than the previous shell, but Neville did not. The London blitz, a near-nightly occurrence since it had started on September 7th of the now-previous year, was nothing new for Neville. As with all who remained in London, the constant fear of destruction and instant death in bombing attacks that came on every clear, or mostly clear, night, no longer wore heavy in the mind of anyone who had remained in the city. Now it was more the prayer that, if a bomb had one's name written on it, please have it make a direct hit. Medical and rescue support was stretched to such a limit that the suffering of being wounded but living through being bombed was more a fear than dying from being bombed.

Sir Neville had been recognized as an important patron of the baths. He was already at the head of the stairs, being guided by Jack, as the attendant who had told him he needed to go to the air raid shelter was telling that to the other men in the pool area. Neville, in deference to his position, was being given a head start to find a comfortable resting place. His eyes descended to the orbs of the young, handsome Jack as he padded down the stairs in his slippers, holding his towel together, and he fantasized being alone with the young man and fingering between those orbs in preparation for a mounting. Alone with him again, that is to say, as Sir Neville had enjoyed the charms of the young man on earlier occasions, and Jack had been quite compliant.

Neville liked his men young, blond, small of stature, but perfectly formed, which Jack approximated well enough. And he liked them submissive. He did like them educated, clean, and of good class, though, which made scratching his itches somewhat delicate and failed to make Jack fully satisfactory.

With the advance notice, Sir Neville was nearly the only one in the sauna when he arrived and thus was able to pick his spot, on the highest, third tier on the wall to the right of the door, from whence he could continue his voyeur activities. It had been a tiring, glutinous, and wine-filled round of New Year's Eve ceremonies and parties through the government realms earlier, starting in the afternoon and mostly winding down before midnight, and he was in the mood to window shop rather than to buy. But he was wound up enough not to have wanted to go straight home with his wife, Irma, married because, despite being from a manufacturing family, and thus of a lower class, she'd come with money. She'd also been imposed on him by those he served when he reached the step in the ladder to power where having a wife was at least protective coloring. There were many like him in government service, but it was still very much a private vice for the titled.

The New Year's Eve festivities had gone on despite the threat of the blitz, because, after four months or unrelentless fire from heaven, London was becoming accustomed to the inconvenience and gambler's luck of it all and the British had mused, falsely it turned out, that even the Germans would stay home and celebrate the advent of a new year. It was a new year that portended to be to the Third Reich's satisfaction. But this Hitler fellow was totally without humor and a sense of having a good time and every good time having its due.

Neville was no sooner settled on his perch than other men started coming into the sauna. There weren't too many, because the partying had mostly been done earlier and Londoners tended to stay close to their own neighborhoods and shelters on clear nights, regardless of a celebration.

Two of the men who came in, though, caught Neville's attention—primarily the younger of the two and that because, shockingly, Neville knew the young man. He recognized him instantly because the young man, although only clothed in a towel as Neville was, was limping. He had suffered a wound in his leg, which was why, at his age and in his condition, he was here in London rather than on the battlefield. Neville knew the young man had fought the Germans in France and had been wounded in the evacuation at Dunkirk in May and June of the previous year. He could serve the Allied cause, but no longer on the battlefield. Sir Neville had also been pursuing the young man, albeit still in a preliminary fashion. He was everything that made Sir Neville's juices flow. He hadn't seen him in this club before.

The young man was named Neal, and Neville had lusted for him in the previous few months that he had known the young, blond, perfectly formed, sunny-dispositioned man of small stature and angelic face. He just hadn't known for sure Neal would be of the preference to be coming to The Stables baths. There had been signs, but Neville couldn't be sure of his chances. Neville also had struggled over the possible conquest. The young man was too closely associated with Neville professionally. Neville had a policy of not taking his pleasures where he worked. In his position and considering his activities, he couldn't—or, at least knew he shouldn't—take chances.

As it was, Neville knew the other young man who came into the sauna with Neal as well. Phillip was in his early thirties and thus a good five or six years older than Neal. Phillip didn't arouse Neville. They were too much of the same desire in what they were looking for in a partner. But it had been Neville's experience that men who aroused Phillip also aroused him. Neville gave Neal a more searching assessment.

The two, Phillip and Neal, obviously were together—and almost as obviously had been close to or in the early stages of intimacy somewhere else in the baths before the air raid had started—because they came in arm in arm and with dreamy eyes only for each other. Phillip was a mid-level officer at the Foreign Office, often coming to the Ministry of Information to avail his seniors of the services of Neville's office. Neville didn't know what Phillip's duties were at the Foreign Office beyond liaison work. Before tonight he had his suspicions of what they were, but obviously a man who pursued other men in public, in a bathhouse as known as The Stable, would not be handling those types of sensitive functions, whether or not he was of the titled class.

And it was quite clear, as Neville watched the two young men climb to the second tier of wooden benches in the sauna to the left of the door, directly across from Neville, that Phillip's sexual pursuit of Neal was to be successful and most likely had been successful before. They moved into position quickly and didn't to have any care about what those around them observed. The two were kissing and embracing and only had eyes for each other. Each was handing the cock of the other through the folds of their towels, and stroking it.

There weren't many men in the sauna during the bombing, but the ones who were there were determined to "carry on" despite the fire from heaven, and, most of them drunk and devil may care, they did, indeed, carry on. There were no limits to the pleasures they would take from those who were as willing and as interested in substituting the danger and cares of the present for the hedonism of pleasure fulfilled.

These were times for not stinting in taking your pleasures tonight, as a German bomb would just as likely as not land in your lap tomorrow.

Two men were openly fucking across from Neville, the emergency lighting in the sauna throwing their undulating rising and falling shadows in greater-than-life relief on the far wall. If Neville were ever to be in the position to film a tasteful gay male movie—and he had given thought to doing so—the shadow on the wall of two beautiful male bodies fucking would surely appear in the credits sequence.

A slim, young man was saddled on the shaft of a reclining older man and rising and falling, moving the shadow on the wall erotically. Neville took his own cock in hand and was pleasuring himself, his attention going from the shadow play to Phillip and Neal descending into sex. All thoughts of the bombing overhead floated out of Neville's mind to be replaced with thoughts of possession and release.

Phillip and Neal fell right into the needs and desires of the present, along with the two other coupling men, while the rest in the sauna, along with Neville, were content to play the audience and encouraging Greek chorus.

It wasn't long until Neal was stretched out on his back on the wooden second-tier bench, his legs bent and spread and his knees hooked on and rubbing Phillip's hips, as the older man lay between the thighs of the younger man, wrapped his arms around Neal's torso, elevated the younger man's pelvis to the level of deep access, captured Neal's lips with his, penetrated him, and rode him in long, deep strokes. Neal's back was arched, and he was rocking on his shoulder blades in a wave of movement that coordinated in a dance-like quality with the slow-thrusting of Phillip's hips. This more intimate act of copulation was being thrown on the wall behind them in shadow, adding to the performance value of the other coupling.

Two walls of languid fucking shadow play. Yes, this would be a perfect image to run behind the movie credits, Neville though, as he fisted and stroked his own shaft.

If either or both of the two had seen the older, florid senior civil servant, Neville, observing them fucking from across the sauna and had realized that they both knew him and were revealing not only that they were actively gay but were lovers, at least in the moment, they showed no evidence of recognizing him. Regardless, though, they could not have positioned themselves any better to give him a ringside-seat exhibition of their intimate sex. They were conveniently positioned so that Sir Neville had a full view of the root of the shaft lengthening and shortening inside the young man's hole and could fantasize how much more taxing his own, somewhat thicker, cock would be for the desirable young man.

The two remained in an embrace, Phillip's buttocks rocking in the rhythm of a deep fuck, and Neal moaning and moving his pelvis in perfect harmony of the stroking, with Neville observing them and fisting his own cock until Neal cried out in release, his fingers pressing in and releasing on Phillip's shoulder blades with the rolling release of his seed. Fucking Neal raw, Phillip pulled the bulb of his shaft to the surface, tensing and jerking and tensing and jerking his own ejaculation, and then pushed his cock back in, through his cum, and continued stroking inside Neal, taking Neal's lips with his in a passionate kiss.

At the moment when something would inevitably change in the position or focus of the attention of the two lovers that might have caused them to scan the other activity in the sauna and see and recognize Neville, an attendant came into the sauna to inform Neville, in a whisper, that he was clear to leave the sauna, that the German bombers had flown away for at least the next bit of time. With one more interested, calculating look at the two men lying there and kissing, Phillip still inside Neal, Neville withdrew.

Neville too had come, with the young men across the sauna, and thus had the release he'd come to The Stable to get and could now take one last dip in the pool, dry himself, dress, and return to Irma at his stately crescent row house on Russel Square. Jack had come to him at the pool again, ready, if Sir Neville wished, to service him, but, having watched the performance of Phillip and Neal in the sauna, the civil servant was satisfactorily spent for the night. He left with the confirmation that the delicious young Neal sheathed the cocks of men and did so with yielding passion.

Chapter Two: At the Ministry of Information

25 February 1941

University College, Gower Street, London

"That's a very good turn of phrase there," Neville Chambers said, admiration apparent in his voice. "I think you're getting the hang of it. The wording comes out with a positive, but as the tragedy of the situation becomes more apparent, one won't be able to come back and say the wording was false. It just encourages assumptions the reader puts in to it on his own."

The light was dim in the writing shop of the Ministry of Information at the commandeered University College building on Gower Street in Bloomsbury. The rest of the desks were empty, junior writer Neal Singer having held back to finish off two reports on war events. Putting these reports out now would balance the earlier report that must be issued. The writing of the report on the worst event was so important and delicate that Chambers, the chief of the writers' section, had to write that one himself.

Chambers was standing behind Neal, who was seated at the typewriter on his desk. The older man was pulled in close, looking over Neal's shoulder and reading the final draft of the action report from February 20th, a "buck them up" notification that the British had landed at El Agheila, Libya, and had already engaged the Germans in what was the first British engagement of, as the report phrased it, the Krauts in North Africa. This was a rare "advance" bit of information that could be given to the public in recent weeks, and Chambers had been saving it for release with something that couldn't be spun as positively or even neutrally.

Chambers was feeling positivity at the moment, though. He was being bold and was making headway, he thought. He'd wanted to bed the handsome young blond, Neal Singer, recently assigned to him upon the young man's recovery from his Dunkirk wound, since Singer had been assigned to writing action reports for the public at the ministry. And the young man wasn't discouraging Neville's signaling. Chambers was emboldened now, because, having seen Neal in the sauna at The Stable bathhouse, he knew the young man took cock—and obviously enjoyed doing so.

At first it was primarily a fantasy, but ever since Chambers saw the young man being fucked in the Covent Garden bathhouse sauna, bedding him himself had become an obsession. This moment, right now, standing behind the lad in an otherwise dimly lit writers' room, was as close as Chambers had been able to come to Singer in private. As he looked over the young man's shoulder at the report Singer had rolled out of the typewriter high enough for Chambers to read the short text, he had his right hand on Singer's shoulder and his left on the lad's left side, above the waist.

And Neal wasn't shrugging away from him or in any way rejecting the intimate touch. If anything, Chambers imagined he could feel the young man tremble a bit and his breathing becoming a bit heavier. It wasn't a question of whether Singer took cock. Chambers had seen him doing so. It was a question of whether he would take cock from Chambers. Sir Neville was considerably older than Neal, but he was still in very good condition and he was hung. His experience was that young men like Neal went for men with big cocks. Phillip Talbot had a big one, and Chambers had seen Neal melt to it. The senior civil servant hadn't gotten his release from a young man at the office before, but he had become so obsessed with Neal Singer that he was prepared to give it a go. It was Chambers's experience that men like Neal also were submissive to men of high class, and higher office standing, such as Chambers.

"Umm, you smell nice," Chambers murmured, leaning over the shoulder of the younger man. "What is that scent?"

"Sandlewood, Sir," Neal said, not taking umbrage at the forwardness of his boss. But he went on, as if it hadn't been said, "The other report. Is that one written well enough too?" he asked, gesturing to another sheet of paper lying beside the typewriter. He twisted his torso a bit. If he was going to move to dislodge Chambers's hands, this was where that would happen—in such a way that he wouldn't have to openly acknowledge that he was being intimately touched. The manager's hands moved with the twist, though, and Neal didn't react against that in any way. But the young man didn't progress the intimacy either.

Reluctantly, Chambers took his right hand off Neal's shoulder and picked up and read the copy, which was another report that could be—and was, in Singer's writing—given a positive spin, at least for those looking for something positive in what was a low point for the British in a war that looked to have no end, certainly not a positive end.

Britain stood nearly alone against the Germans now, certainly alone in Europe. And the Americans could do no more than voice encouragement. No, that wasn't completely fair or true. As a unit chief in the Ministry of Information, Chambers was given access to enough classified information to know that the Americans were giving material help below the table. But damn them for not coming in full force was the current judgment of most of those holding out in Britain, Chambers knew, which at least for now was opening a chasm between the unity of the two nations. Chambers was doing what he could to work with that.

Sir Neville, in fact, was nearly the only one in the Ministry of Information who was cleared to be given advance notice of military action to be taken by British forces abroad and on the status of antiaircraft measures in the cities of the homeland. His unit reported on the war news but someone had to know about what was planned in the field and in defense of the homeland so that his newshounds and reporters of the news were prepared to cover events and to put the wanted cast on them. That the someone in the ministry was Sir Neville, meant he held the highest trust of his government—which also meant he had to be very careful in pursuing his sexual fetishes. Many in the British aristocracy had mistresses, and that wasn't just tolerated, it was celebrated as the norm and a sign of the man's virility. It still was a black mark against a man in the British aristocracy to have male lovers—at least for the public to be aware that they did.

The second report written by Neal, fresh from the field and just cleared for public consumption to uplift their spirits, reported the sinking earlier that day of the Italian cruiser, the Armando Diaz, in the North African campaign by the British submarine, Upright.

"Yes, you struck the notes just right in that, Neal," Chambers said, putting the sheet of paper down and brushing his hand against the young man's cheek as he brought the hand back up. "Umm, sorry," he murmured, but, again, no shrinking away by the young man, and the older man's adrenaline took a hit.