Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 2

promote a swift, un-dramatic death by swinging a little.
    His pappa would have said he should give a better fight before giving up. The only thing he was fighting right now— besides hunger— was freaking gravity, and one needed machines to win the constant battle against that bitch.
    Every time he opened his eyes in the dwindling twilight, vertigo seized him. He was pressing his eyelids closed so hard they trembled in a rebellious effort to betray him, to make him meet his last moment with frightening awareness and flailing arms.
    Something smacked him between his closed eyes. Luckily, he was wearing his goggles. That would have been annoyingly painful otherwise.
    A rope.
    Could it be?
    The miraculous rope was long enough to circle his waist. If the straps yielded now, he wouldn't fall. Phew, he wasn't afraid of heights, but it's not the same when you don't have anything under your feet. All he needed now was to find strength to pull himself up and fast. Maybe this time he would have the chance to talk to his savior.
    Helping Alaric every time he met with trouble, the strange man in a gas mask had kept his distance, never exchanging words, just letting his presence be known.
    Curiosity moved Alaric to act swiftly more than an actual sense of danger. He longed for an opportunity to face his protector. The masked man had been haunting his dreams and— lately— even his waking moments. It had become a compulsion stronger than hunger and survival. It had inflamed his desire for company.
    Alaric knew it had a lot to do with worldlier things than gratitude, in a very testosterone-seeks-testosterone kind of way. In his dreams, he unclothed the stranger without removing the gas mask. He frankly did not care what his savior looked like. The only important thing was how good that man had been to him, without asking for anything in return.
    In a place with so few people left, kindness was a rare oddity. All went about their lives paying as little attention as possible to other survivors. The natural, human instinct to seek the comfort of a group had been forsaken for that of isolation. Fears fathered on the illogical claim that gatherings might bring back the dust plague.
    Alaric was finally on his feet, running toward the place where he saw the glint of the dying light on the visor of the gas mask. It was too late though, all he found was the rabbit he had been chasing impaled on a stick, like a macabre offering. His protector didn't even give him the chance to blow a kiss in his direction now that he had summoned the courage to do so.
    I have the shittiest timing in the galaxy.
    He quickly changed his goggles to thermal recognition in a last effort to see if the man was still around. Useless, everything around him was colder than a dog's nose.
    Strained and frustrated, Alaric decided to set camp in the first decaying building he found outside the improvised junkyard. He hadn't encountered survivors this far into the outskirts of the city before. He did a cursory examination of the place— to confirm he was alone— and started to skin the rabbit.
    He broke some chairs to start a fire and used the stick the rabbit had been delivered on to roast it. His place was almost at the other end of the city and the night was too cold to be wandering, when he could rest here by this nice fire with a sated stomach.
    If the man hadn't scurried like a scared pigeon, Alaric would have loved to share his food.
    Be honest with yourself Alaric, you'd have shared food, mouth, hands, cock, hole, and everything in between with him.
    As he chewed a roasted strip of meat, he pondered all the things he couldn't do with the masked man, while adjusting his intruding cock. He was messy enough after the junkyard snafu to consider a hasty masturbatory release. No, he was going to wait until he could do it at his own leisure in the security of his own quarters. GM deserved better than a mechanical, uninspired tug, and Alaric deserved to clean himself properly afterward. He had an adequate amount of water contained for a decent bath.
    Alaric chuckled inwardly; this was the second time he had thought about the masked man as GM. Calling his savior Gas Mask was too impersonal, GM sounded like a friend's nickname, and he wanted to feel close to this silent protector. Not to mention that little interaction with other human beings really helped with the unrestricted explosion of wishful thinking and gas-mask-gazing fantasies.
    He readied himself to sleep on