Per Anum Ch. 07: Fireworks

I sighed in relief as I pulled the heavy coat off. Though night had fallen some time ago, it remained brutally hot even inside the usually cool garage, and wearing 45 pounds of turnout gear did not improve the situation. I took pains to arrange my gear precisely as I removed each element, knowing that a few extra seconds spent equipping myself might literally cost someone's life. Every piece of equipment had a specific location and position, and I was still new enough at this to need the focus.

Around me, the other guys on my crew were doing the same, just in a more relaxed manner; experienced hands all, they hardly needed to look to put their gear precisely where it needed to go. They'd all done this same routine hundreds of times more than I had, of course, but I was still jealous of their easy confidence.

"Five calls since noon," Mick grumbled. He was a big, swarthy man around thirty, over six feet tall and built like a bull, with massive shoulders and little neck. "It's like people don't realize fireworks involve combustion."

"God bless America, but fuck the Fourth of July," laughed Charlie.

"Is it always like this?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah, this is your first Fourth with us, isn't it?" asked Charlie, turning to me. "I'd forgotten." Charlie was a lean twentysomething, all whipcord and wire beneath mixed-race cafe au lait skin. "And no, this is worse than average. Not as bad as some years, but it's usually better. Rough way to pop your cherry, Nicky," he added with a smirk. I'd learned early on that Charlie was a smirky sort of guy.

I scowled. "Don't call me that." I hate it when people call me Nicky.

Charlie put on a look of mock hurt, clutching his chest as though wounded. "It's a term of endearment!"

Jake, on the far end of the line from me, snorted derisively. "No, it's a term of annoy-ment. You don't use it because you like him, you use it because it irks him." Jake was big and broad-shouldered, like Mick, but better proportioned, all long limbs and lean muscle. Combine that body with striking gray eyes and killer cheekbones...well. Let's just say that if somebody wanted to include guys from our station in one of those sexy fireman calendars, he'd be my first suggestion.

Okay, fine, maybe my second suggestion. I worked here too.

Charlie was still playing offended. "It's called being friendly. I know that's an unfamiliar concept for you, but sometimes guys give each other silly nicknames. Also," he added righteously, "'annoyment' isn't a word."

"Enough," said Sam, his voice quiet but firm. Charlie, wonder of wonders, actually shut up. None of us have figured out how Sam does that. "Finish putting your gear away. We might get called again at any moment." We...obeyed. Sam has this compelling presence about him that's hard to define. It's not that he goes around barking orders at us or anything--he doesn't even technically outrank us, or at least not the others--but on the rare occasions when he speaks, everybody listens, even Chief Carson, and that old bastard doesn't take shit from anyone.

As if the thought had summoned him, the chief himself came around the side of our engine. "Hit the showers, boys, you're done," he barked, giving me weird flashback vibes of my high school swim coach. "Crew 3 will cover the rest of the night as primary. You're on standby if something really goes bad, but you're off for now." Chief Carson was a gnarled stump of a man, short and wide, the type of tough old guy who could still totally kick your ass despite being three times your age. "I'll be in my office filling out the paperwork for that last shitshow if anybody needs me." He glared around at all of us for a moment to make it clear how acceptable it would be for anyone to need him. His eyes fell on me, at the end of the line, and softened a bit. A very tiny bit. "Happy Fourth, probie," he said as he clomped away. "I guess you'll live after all."

Charlie waited for the chief to get out of earshot, then turned to me with wide eyes. "Wow," he said, "that might be the nicest thing I've ever heard him say."

"That's because he's never said anything that nice to you," said Jake.

"Harsh, but true."

I tuned out the friendly (ish) bickering and focused on getting my gear squared away. By the time I had it all cleaned and ready for the next call, the rest of Crew 2 was already in the showers. When I arrived, Mick and Charlie were actually drying off and getting dressed again. I quickly undressed, gladly tossing the sweat-soaked set of station wear I'd had under my turnout gear into the laundry pile before heading to the shower block. Ours was an old-fashioned station, with fully open communal showers instead of stalls or anything. Two pillars ringed with showerheads stood in a large tiled space with drains set in the floor, and a sort of half-wall divided the space from the locker room proper.

Sam was just stepping out as I went in, and I couldn't help but notice the interplay of muscles in his lean frame as he gracefully slipped around me. For one heartbeat, we were nose to nose, naked and inches apart as steam swirled around and between us. Then he was past me, and I mentally shook myself. Don't go there, Nick, that way lies madness. Not like I'd ever make a move on Sam anyway; he had something like fifteen years on me, and I didn't even know if he was into men. Didn't know much of anything about his personal life, in fact.

Pushing thoughts of naked, damp Sam out of my head--at least until I could be alone, anyway--I stepped into the showers and was immediately struck by the tableau of Jake standing beneath the spray. Water coursed down the chiseled musculature of his torso, sliding between his abs to cascade off the end of his heavy cock or running down his broad shoulders to fall along the taut curve of his ass. His face was lifted into the stream, an expression of simple pleasure on his usually dour face.

Down, boy.

I stepped up to a showerhead and tried to refocus myself on the minutiae of actually washing. I was a sweaty, smoky mess, and entertaining those sorts of thoughts about my coworkers wasn't going to do anyone any good. No matter how mouthwateringly attractive some of them were. I'd chosen a shower that put my back to the rest of the locker room, just in case of any inappropriate physical responses, but I still had a good view of Jake rubbing body wash all over himself from the corner of my eye. The way his hands slipped over taut, flawless skin, slowly growing flushed from the heat...dammit Nick, you're better than this. Behave.

I set about washing myself with possibly excessive vigor, trying to think about anything but the way the water was beading in the fine hairs on Jake's body. Or how the steam seemed to curl around his limbs in an ethereal caress. Or whether his cock was looking any larger now than it had when I'd first come in (mine certainly was.) I stuck my head straight into the stream, trying to simultaneously scrub the smoke from my hair and the images from my brain. Which is probably why I didn't notice him approaching until he spoke, low and sultry and shockingly close.

"You know, we have a little tradition here for probies who pass their first Fourth of July." I jerked in surprise, clearing the water from my eyes to discover Jake suddenly standing in the shower right next to mine, rather than the one on the other pillar he'd been using before. His hands still glided sensually across his body, though there didn't seem to be any soap involved.

"I--what?" I blurted.

Jake carried on as though I hadn't spoken. "For a probationary firefighter like you, the Fourth is a major milestone. We like to mark the occasion with a bit of pomp and circumstance. For the sake of...team bonding, you might say." He poured so much innuendo into the phrase "team bonding" I half expected some sort of alarm to go off.

The fact that Jake absolutely was interested in men--I'd seen him exchange intimate farewells with both men and women dropping him off before a shift--abruptly took center stage in my thoughts. He'd never shown any overt interest in me before, aside from the sort of friendly ogling every man indulges in, but he surely was now. The venue was rather more public than I might have preferred, but at least he'd kept his voice low. Come to think of it, I couldn't hear any of the others moving or chatting in the locker room anymore. A glance over my shoulder confirmed it.

We were alone.

My cock was definitely swelling now, and unless I was mistaken, so was his. Were we really going to do this where anyone might walk in at any moment? Jake apparently decided that we were, because he put one hand on my shoulder, squeezed the muscle appreciatively, then reached over with his other hand and gave my swiftly-growing cock a slow, squeezing pull.

My breath caught in a ragged gasp. "Jake, I--" he did it again, harder, and I lost my train of thought in the rush of sensation. "Fuuuck," I groaned. He smiled a wicked little smile and started stroking, slow and merciless.

"I've wanted to take you for a spin since the day you were assigned here," Jake said casually, "but rules are rules. Hands off until the first Fourth."

With some effort, I managed to get my voice to function. "There are rules?"

"Of course," he replied, still steadily stroking me with that infuriating slowness. "We had to know if you were...a team player, shall we say...before we could risk it." He glanced down at his hand wrapped around my rigidly hard cock and gave it a squeeze that made me groan. "But I'd say that question has been decisively resolved."

I opened my mouth to ask a dozen questions, but was cut off in a gasp as another pair of hands slid around my waist. I jerked my head around to find Sam, of all people, snugged in against my side and back, his thick erection pressed against my hip.

"The men of this station enjoy an unusually intimate bond of camaraderie," he said in his quiet, compelling voice. "We had to be sure you were cut from the same cloth." He bent his head to run his tongue over my nipple, his hands sliding down to cup my ass. "But now it's time to welcome you as one of us."

Holy shit. I had never been so simultaneously aroused and confused in my life.

"Did you know," Sam murmured in my ear, "that some legends claim the Spartan warriors of Ancient Greece held a belief that receiving the seed of a veteran would impart a measure of his strength and valor? The greatest warriors would spend the night before a battle 'imparting' their subordinates with as much as they could."

Sam sighed against my neck. "Just a legend, unfortunately, as there's no historical evidence such a practice ever occurred. Still, legends can inspire at least as well as truth. Don't you find that image...inspiring?" Sam started kissing one side of my neck while Jake took care of the other, their bodies pressed to mine on either side. Jake's hand was still relentlessly working my cock, his other hand exploring and caressing my torso in between toying with a nipple. Sam's hands were laser-focused on my ass, though, kneading and playing with it as he ground his erection against my hip and thigh.

Sam had said more words in the last sixty seconds than I'd heard from him in the last month. Despite the wonder of that fact, it was extremely difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. My brain was more or less trapped in a loop of "holy shit Sam and Jake holy shit" that was not very productive. I managed to slide one of my hands down between Jake and myself and get a grip on his cock, so I started giving him some of what he was giving me. I was rewarded with a pleased little noise from Jake in my ear, but Sam started up his monologue again before I could ask any of the many, many questions I had about this situation.

"It's that idea, that of passing down some measure of our experience, that inspires this little initiation tradition of ours. We, your elders, are going to impart to you whatever benefits we can--by the most intimate of means." Suddenly the pair of them, wrapped around me as they were, seized hold of my limbs and turned me around. They bent me over to plant my hands on the waist-high wall dividing the showers from the lockers and spread my legs far apart.

"I'm flattered," I gasped out, "but I'm really more of a top--" I hadn't bottomed since that time with Chris over a year ago--nope, don't think about him right now, one emotional trauma at a time--but the way Sam's hands were working my ass, along with his weird history lesson, made their intentions clear.

"Not tonight, you aren't," chuckled Jake, confirming my suspicions. "You can go back to being a top tomorrow. Tonight, your ass is mine."

"Ours," corrected a voice. A voice that did not belong to Sam.

I jerked my head up and found myself facing Charlie and Mick, both clad only in shit-eating grins and nursing erections of their own.

"You didn't think we'd miss this, did you?" Charlie asked.

"Hell no," answered Mick. "We're here to finally get a piece of that sweet ass you've been taunting us all with for the last few months."

"We're here," corrected Sam in his quiet, intense voice, "to welcome our new brother-in-arms and cement the bonds between probie and crew."

Jake shrugged. "I mean, I'm mostly here for the ass-fucking, but sure. Let's call it cementing bonds."

Sam sighed, and actually stopped groping my ass long enough to pinch the bridge of his nose. "You know, back when I joined this station, this ceremony had a certain degree of dignity and gravitas to it. But fine. On with the ass-fucking, I guess."

The other men of Crew 2 cheered. I swallowed.

"Tradition dictates that the first to contribute is the next most recent addition to the team--" Sam was cut off when Charlie whooped with excitement, but continued, "because he has the least to offer." As Charlie pouted, Sam went on. "We then proceed in ascending order of time here. After Charlie, it's Mick, then Jake, then myself."

"Hope you like sloppy seconds," Charlie crowed, rubbing his hands together before giving his cock a stroke. "Or in this case, floppy fourths, I guess?"

Jake shook his head. "Never say the word 'floppy' in a sexual context. You might jinx yourself." He gave Charlie's erection a significant glance. Charlie scowled and waved it at us, as though to prove its rigidity.

"Speak for yourself! That's not a problem I've ever had."

Jake nodded sagely, his eyes mocking. "Of course. Best not to think about it."

Charlie opened his mouth to retort, but stopped at the crisp snap of a plastic cap. We turned to see Sam with a bottle of lube, squeezing some out onto his fingers. He gestured for me to resume my bent position, and I reluctantly complied, spreading my legs and bracing my hands on the waist-high wall. A moment later, I felt the cool slipperiness of his lubed finger against my asshole, and couldn't suppress the noise that came out of my throat as Sam started gently stroking and probing the rim, spreading lube around it.

"Oh, hell to the yes," Charlie said, eyes fixed on my ass and hand on his cock again. "Now that's what I'm talking about." He abruptly looked around himself, as though searching for something. "Hey, Mick, help me with this." He and Mick grabbed one of the old benches scattered around the locker room and pulled it up against the dividing wall where I was bent over. I understood his plan when he stepped up onto it; standing on the bench put his erection right at the level of my face.

He grinned down at me, waggling his cock in what I'm sure he imagined was a seductive fashion. "While you're getting all slicked up for me, it seems like I should be getting nice and wet for you too." I considered pointing out that lube works just as well on dicks as it does on assholes, but decided to just surrender to the inevitable and took his cock into my mouth instead.

Sam's fingertip slipped inside me, rubbing sensuous circles just inside the rim to spread lube. I am a top, will always be a top, but...damn, that felt good. I tried to focus on Charlie so I could pretend Sam's ministrations weren't as pleasant as they were. Charlie's cock was as slender as its owner, with a distinct curve to it that made sucking more than just the head somewhat complicated. I tried anyway, working the head with my tongue before swallowing down most of the shaft. It required a bit of neck contortion but I made it work. I also learned that Charlie, to literally no one's surprise, was a talker.

"Oh yeah, baby, suck that big ol' cock. Yeah, that's it, suck it good, suck it all down, oh, fuck yeah, suck it!" It never stopped, just a constant stream of B-tier porn babble that had the other guys rolling their eyes. I mostly wanted to laugh--people really talk like that?--but that was sort of off the table at that moment. I just kept sucking, bobbing my head and not-so-accidentally trying to hasten his orgasm in order to spare my ass.

Not that my ass was exactly suffering just then. Sam had most of his first finger inside me now, stroking and exploring and adding more lube, and when he found my prostate I had a little fireworks display of my own go off in my brain. My toes curled against the tiles, my body shuddering as he gave that one incredible spot a thorough working over. My own cock, still hard though sadly neglected, dripped a pearly bead of precum with every press onto my gland.

"Oh fuck yeah, you suck so good, fucking hell suck that cock, yeah, mmmm..." Charlie had still not shut up. If anything he was yammering even more now that I'd really gotten him worked up. Behind me, Sam was giving me the most thorough ass-stretching I'd ever heard of, only now adding a second finger and twisting them apart to open me more and more. Off to the side stood Mick and Jake, watching avidly and occasionally stroking their cocks.

When Sam started sliding a third finger into me, Charlie apparently could take no more. "Move it, Sam, I've got to get some of that ass." He pulled out of my mouth and hopped down from the bench then came around the dividing wall. Sam split his three fingers open, stretching me wide enough to make me grunt, then withdrew them and stepped aside. Just in time, too, because Charlie never even slowed down, just strode right up behind me and pressed his cock against my hole.

"Oh God, your ass is so good. Fuck, Nick, you're so tight!"

It was a good thing my hands were braced on the divider wall since Charlie didn't stop pushing forward until he was buried to the hilt. He grabbed my hips and started thrusting. It hurt, a little, but that faded quickly as he picked up speed. I found myself suddenly grateful for Sam's thorough preparation. The curve in Charlie's cock made for a different sensation than I'd experienced before with Chris.

"Fuck yeah, take that cock! No way you're a top with an ass this sweet! Fuck!"

I rolled my eyes and did my best to tune out the babble still pouring out of Charlie. He was really pounding into me, now, his hips slapping against my ass with a loud smacking sound. It even felt fairly good, if only he would shut up. The curve of his cock meant every thrust slid over my prostate, sending little jolts from my balls up my spine.

I was distracted from Charlie when a hulking form loomed up in front of me. Mick stepped up onto the bench they'd put along the divider, though he only barely needed the extra height, and grinned down at me. His cock, short and thick and flushed an angry red, waved in my face.

"Charlie won't last long, he never does," confided Mick, ignoring the squawk of protest from behind me. "So I guess it's my turn to get ready. Go on, then. Make Daddy's cock happy."

And now he was referring to himself in the third person. Seriously, "daddy?" No way was I calling him that. With a mental sigh, I leaned forward and took him into my mouth...or tried to. I actually had to work to get my jaw open wide enough to accommodate his girth. Mick made a little pleased sound in his chest as I started sucking on the head. He ran his hands through my hair in a surprisingly gentle manner.