Grown Men

jungle cat.
    Rummaging through the cook-space cabinets, Runt’s fist closed on a mealpak, and he threw it hard enough to startle his silent partner. “Oi! Big boy!”
    Ox turned in time to catch the food.
    “You should eat anyways.” Runt pointed at the entree and then Ox’s chiseled mouth. “Slowly or you’ll choke, yeah?”
    He nodded once in thanks and smiled again into Runt’s eyes.
    Runt’s groin itched like anything, but damned if he’d scratch. Why should he seem uncomfortable?
    Maybe I’m allergic to mutants.
    He pressed his itchy nuts again from inside his pocket. “Are you all right?”
    Again, Ox nodded just once, content. He squinted at Runt, his Cro-Magnon brow wrinkled as if solving a puzzle.
    Runt looked away before he smiled back. “And there’s plenty of water. But whatever you drink you have to replace.” He gestured in the direction of the hydrotreatment shed twenty meters away and tossed a bottle that Ox caught with a massive paw. Transport hibernation left everyone starved and dehydrated.
    The water looked like a toy in that fist, but Ox’s face bloomed with gratitude. He turned his head and nodded once, sipping the water gingerly. For someone that size, it would be barely a mouthful.
    In the close space, Runt began to realize they both needed a wash. He had been rank already from the day’s chores, but Ox was unclothed and the giant’s locker-room reek swirled around Runt, making him sweat and swallow involuntarily.
    Gah!
    Suddenly his entire crotch tickled, from his belly to his upper legs. That’s what itched: his endocrine system short-circuiting. Ox’s scent was probably altered to cause arousal for sex work.
    Runt’s mouth filled again with saliva, and his moist foreskin retracted slightly inside his undergear; his scrotum shifted. He kept his fists bunched so he wouldn’t give in to the maddening itch.
    Thanks, HardCell. Just perfect.
    Ox stood by the cook-space wall as if waiting for orders, his head only a half-meter under the waxy incandescence where the wall curved into the ceiling.
    Runt stood in his sweat-stiff clothing, and licked his salty mustache. “I need a hard scrub, yeah? And then you need at least two. You’re fuckin’ ripe!”
    Ox grimaced an apology, rocking on the balls of his bare feet. Maybe the big fucker knew what his pheromones did, what Runt’s skin felt like. Even shifting his weight, his thighs bunched with power. He still hadn’t touched the mealpak.
    “Eat. It’s yours. You, uh . . .” Runt pretended nonchalance, leaning against the cook-space counter. “You bought all that gear and food and what, yeah?”
    Ox pressed both hands against his chest and then pressed both palms toward Runt. The supplies were theirs to share. He nodded, once.
    “Housewarming.” Runt bobbed his head, but wouldn’t raise his eyes. “Good.”
    How the hell had he afforded those supplies?
    “Ox. Use a chair, huh? Make yourself . . . Well, this is home, so get comfortable as you can. Five ticks.” Runt jabbed a finger toward the BBQ mealpak in Ox’s big mitt. “And fucking eat something, would ya?”
    Ox nodded in apology. Without looking at it, he raised the packet to his lips, sucking a mouthful of the paste, his muscular throat swallowing.
    Those insidious pheromones filled Runt’s nostrils and his neurons. He could feel his anatomy responding as he crossed the room: cock ticklish and swollen, mouth wet and loose, nipples tightening, hair on end. Until he acclimated to them, he’d have to take anti-allergens or he’d go bonkers.
    Runt stepped inside the bathroom cubicle and the door slid shut behind him. The entire space was a shower stall: toilet and sink were mounted on opposite walls and a spray of water fell from directly overhead from the smartbarrels on the roof.
    A fucking raw deal is what it is. Slave out here for a year and more and this mutant fucker had jumped in to swipe a piece. Ox was twice as big and eighteen months late so he’d have to do twice the work, no, five times the work.
    Runt peeled off his grimy gear straight into the laundry hatch. He looked at the ceiling and wondered if Ox could even fit in here to wash. Then water fell from above, warm from the day’s sunlight. It sluiced the grime from his compact muscles as he scoured his aching body and scalp with the dregs of the disinfectant lotion. He hoped Ox had brought a barrel for himself.
    Thieving bastard.
    Runt scrubbed and scowled at the unfairness of it. Without