Wor Camping Trip

"Are you following, kid?" Marshall asked.

Ellis jolted out of his stupor with great effort. "Yeah," he coughed out. "Yeah, that makes sense."

The older man was pointing at something on the monitor, his finger against the screen and his glasses hanging by the tip of his large nose. "Alright, now. We'll have to look carefully," he said, leaning in.

Ellis' eyes fluttered closed again. The man had been going strong for nearly two straight hours now, navigating in fits and bursts though a program he seemed uncomfortable with, at best.

Ellis liked Marshall, he really did. But watching old people try and use technology was just short of a war crime. Human rights groups needed to hear about this.

"You can use the computer to search for it," Ellis cut in, grinding his palm into his eyes. "I think you use control F," he said dully.

"Hm? Enh... I don't know about that," Marshall mumbled, hardly seeming to hear. The man's finger continued to slide down the lines of text.

Ellis drifted back to sleep. He didn't try to fight it this time. Three months on the job, and his trainer still insisted on keeping the training wheels locked firmly on. If someone didn't let him get out there and start breaking things on his own, he was going to lose his mind or start investing heavily in alcoholism.

Another hour passed before they broke for lunch. For the first few days, Ellis had been suckered into joining 'the guys' up in the cafeteria. But, despite what his trainer seemed to think, Ellis considered himself a fast learner. Now he was more careful.

"Going to study again?"

"I think so," Ellis replied, giving what he hoped was a regretful look.

"Well, you don't have to learn it all in one day," Marshall said, heaving himself to his feet.

He was a large man. Not tall, but thickly built. He was like a viking king gone to seed. "And I think you've gotten the hang of it. Don't beat yourself up about it so much. The job's not going anywhere."

Ellis grinned, throwing his backpack over his shoulder. "Oh, I don't mind at all."

They waved farewell and Ellis dashed back to his cubicle. There he kicked his feet up onto the small desk, leaned back, and slipped his headphones in. Thirty minutes of paradise, all to himself. It was the one bit of salvation that got him through the day. That, of course, and the money. The money was a pretty big draw, too.

He bit back a laugh as he re-adjusted his phone, entirely lost in the video on his screen. Only by chance did he glance up and see the strands of beard hair hanging over the wall beside him. He followed it further up, and there was Marshall and his big nose, standing just behind the half-wall, watching along with him.

Ellis yelped, swiping the buds out of his ears. It took a few jabs of the finger to finally pause the video. "Hey," he said, trying his best to soothe his crackling voice.

"We're running out to grab something from Tom's. Wanted to see if you wanted anything."

Ellis shook his head a little too enthusiastically before the man could finish talking.

"Wait, what's that?" the boy asked.

"You haven't been? It's that donut place. Not the best in town, but it is the closest," he grinned.

Ellis continued shaking his head. "Nah, that's okay." His fingers scrambled over toward the training manuals he had stashed in the corner, and then hesitated. It seemed a bit late to pretend to be reading them.

The older man eyed him over slowly with an amused look on his face, but he pivoted the conversation away. "You know, you're gonna have to go out and explore our town at one point or another."

"Yeah, you'd think so," Ellis chuckled.

Marshall gave a grin back. "Aren't you interested in anything? Don't you want to get out there and see it, kid?"

"I've seen the Burger Kings and Subways. I'm pretty sure I, ya know, get this town," he said, waving dismissively at the air.

Marshall frowned down at him again. "Boy, there's more to the city than that. You just gotta step those little legs outside. Maybe you have to keep an eye out," he went on, "but something is out there that'll make it all worthwhile."

Ellis was amused, despite himself. He had moved here three weeks ago, straight out of school. The pay and the cost of living had caught his attention. Beyond that, though, he had arrived with no expectations. And he was still unimpressed.

"Give me an example," Taylor prompted.

"Other than donuts?" Marshall asked, scratching at his great, big beard. "There's a lot of great clubs and leagues, with kids your own age. There's enough pie to drown a man, if you're into that. Or have you seen the nature preserve up north? The park?" Ellis shook his head. "Beautiful place. I go camping there every summer. You can go deer hunting, too, if you're desperate for a spot."

"We used to go camping," Ellis cut in, "back when I was in college. There were some grounds about an hour or so away from us."

A flood of memories came back to him: Stumbling through the woods in the dark, accidentally slipping into the wrong tent, getting rained on while deliriously drunk... It wasn't particularly fun at the time, but it was all far enough away in the past to be a bit charming.

Marshall scoffed. "No. Not camping grounds. Camping grounds are just... motels for suburban dads who don't know any better. I've seen those sad little plots they set up around a parking lot, with power outlets and flushing toilets and all that crap. No," he said, shaking his head bitterly. "That's not camping."

"It's not that bad. You still get out there in a tent, have a fire..."

"Real wilderness," Marshall pushed on. "That's what we have that you haven't seen before. Just you, the trees, and nothing else. Not another soul around in all the world. Nothing to do but drink beer and roast meat on the fire."

Ellis nodded along, trying his best to not seem intrigued. He had spent his summer so far in a basement apartment, streaming old sitcoms and sitting on a plastic folding chair he was too lazy to replace.

"Yeah, that sounds alright," Ellis admitted. "Someday."

He slipped his phone from the desk again and stuck it back into his pocket. The thirty minute lunch was nearly over. Back to the training wheels.

"Why not this weekend?" Marshall countered.

Ellis blinked back at the man silently. He fished around desperately for an excuse, but his mind was unhelpfully blank.

"I'll tell you what," Marshall went on, stepping closer into the cubicle and wagging a heavy finger. "You do one thing to go out and see our city, and I'll..." Now it was Marshall's turn to go silent for a moment. "I'll let you go home at lunch on Friday," he finished. "How about that?"

"Deal," Ellis said quickly. "And I can do anything at all? Even if I just let you go bring me donuts?"

Marshall snorted a laugh. "I said go out and see it. Go visit our Civil War museum. Go to the farmer's market. Go to the bar and put some hair on your chest. Or come out and go camping." Marshall leaned down closer. "I'm heading out there this weekend myself. And I save my good whiskey for summers like this."

Ellis' eyebrow rose upward all on its own.

"Really?"

Marshall gave a solemn nod. "Steak. Bacon. As many bags of chips as they're willing to sell me. I got homemade venison sausage. I do it right."

Marshall took another step closer as he went on. His voice dropped to nearly a whisper, "I drive in, sit down, and then I do nothing but eat and drink beer until the sun goes down. Then it's the good stuff. Not a better day out there to be had. Especially when it all starts on company time."

Ellis leaned backward, out of the shadow of the looming man, a frown already growing across his face. "I don't know. That sounds an awful lot like what I already do on the weekend."

"Then it won't be any trouble at all, will it?"

"Long drive, though," Ellis replied. "And I didn't bring my tent with me when I moved," he said, throwing up his hands.

"I'll drive you out myself," Marshall said. "And I've got spare tents aplenty. Sleeping bags, too. All nice and ready for ya."

Ellis chewed it over carefully. "And we're out of here by eleven-thirty?"

Marshall nodded. "Come with your bags packed."

The rest of the week slowed back down to its usual crawl. Marshall eased up on him, though, letting him spend more and more hours each day on his own, and even giving him a small project to work on. Ellis didn't make it far before needing the old man's help, but it was progress.

Then it was Friday. By the time they had their coffee and settled in, there wasn't much time left to do any actual work. Anything they could have started would have taken hours, so instead they idled away the time in silence.

It was barely ten when Marshall shuffled over, gave a great stretch of his shoulders, and shrugged. "Want to head out?"

"Yes I do," Ellis replied, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

Ten minutes later, they were on the highway in Marshall's old truck, flying down the road at ten feet in the air with CCR blasting through the cabin around them.

The nature preserve was another hour away, and the time passed in a breeze. Trees sprang up across the horizon like the wall of a great city, until it was all they could see ahead of them. At the forest edge was an unoccupied tollbooth and, beyond it, a thin passage had been carved into the dense screen of trunks.

The world turned dark as they rolled inside, dropping over them like a thick blanket and drowning them in bird song and the echoing huff of the truck's engine. The canopy was so deeply covered in summer foliage that they had to wait a moment for their eyes to adjust before rolling on.

The path on the other side of the toll faded to dirt, and it quickly became rocky as they headed onward, spilling them from side to side as they went.

They passed a sign-less fork in the road, and then another, and then another. Marshall didn't seem to give it any thought, and lead them on with easy confidence.

"You... sure about where you're going?" Ellis asked.

Now that the sun had disappeared behind the trees, and he had lost track of all the turns they'd made, some of the thrill of the trip was bleeding away.

"Hm? Yeah, I'm sure," was all the old man said.

Half a moment later, blinding white light burst through the window again. The trees receded and soon Ellis could see why. A thin bit of river cut through the land not far from the road. It was hardly a hundred feet across, but it was enough to give them a clear view of the afternoon sky again.

There was empty land, too: flat stretches of billowing grass that were only a short walk away from the water's edge. The perfect place to camp.

Marshall saw the expectant look on the boy's face and shook his head without comment. They left it behind and the woods swallowed them whole again.

More and more clearings popped up as they went. The path they took seemed to be following the river, or at least keeping tabs on it now and again. A full twenty minutes passed by before the truck slowed and then, to Ellis' relief, finally stopped.

"Here we are," Marshall announced. "Just about the dead center of the whole forest," he said, looking around with pride and stretching his massive arms. "No camping spots, no tourists. Nothing in every direction. I don't even think it's legal to be here," he said with a proud grin.

Ellis hopped down from the truck, wincing slightly from the long drop. "I'm pretty sure there weren't any tourists in the actual camping spots we passed, either."

Marshall waved the comment away. "Better safe than sorry, believe me. Sometimes you think you've got it all to yourself, you set up all your things, you start cooking dinner, and then, just before nightfall," he clapped his hands together harshly. "Suburban dads."

Ellis shook his head, and waited while the old man took a massive piss into the brush. Then they got to work unloading. The tent bags were tossed under the treeline, "In case there's rain," Marshall wisely said. They dragged the coolers nearer the riverbank and Marshall kicked around at the dirt until he was satisfied. "Fire's going here."

Soon, Ellis was dashing into the woods to gather up sticks for kindling. By the time he dropped off his second handful, Marshall had a blaze going. By the fourth load, it was nearly a bonfire.

"You have to let it die back a bit before we throw lunch on. You want the heat, not the flames."

Ellis nodded and grinned. "You know, we're not still training anymore, right?"

"Hey, this old man's got a lot of wisdom left to to pass along," Marshall laughed.

They set up chairs and grabbed frosty beers from the cooler. They knocked them together, then sipped in silence as they watched the firewood glow and spit out sparks. When the last of their drinks disappeared, they cracked open a second, and collapsed back into their chairs again with lazy grins.

"Alright," Ellis said. "This isn't bad."

Marshall laughed and held up his beer in salute. A third drink followed before the old man dug deer jerky out of his bag and passed it over.

"Shit, I was going to make lunch, wasn't I?" he asked as he chewed.

Ellis shrugged, a bit uncertain himself, and he drained down the last of his can.

"You, uh, don't mind if I smoke, do you?" the boy asked. He slipped a vape pen from his pocket and waggled it in the air.

Marshall's face fell. "Damn," he croaked. "You're making me feel old," he said, pulling out a row of uniform joints from his pocket. He slipped one into his mouth and chuckled.

By the time the sky turned yellow, they were both leaning hard over the sides of their chairs. Ellis strained to pull up the tab of another can, but dropped it instead. His hands clawed weakly at the air as it rolled across the grass.

"Forget it," Marshall said gravely. "It's gone."

The old man wobbled his way back to the truck and came back with a bottle of what could only be whiskey swinging between his fingers.

"Shit," he mumbled, stopping suddenly, his attention caught by something in the distance. "The tents."

It wouldn't have been a hard job, in normal circumstances. They didn't struggle, but it wasn't quick. And they needed frequent breaks to stop and sit down in the grass for a few minutes, to steady themselves out.

The sky was getting dark by the time the first tent was up. It was fully night by the time they realized they were missing half the poles on the other tent.

They stared at the limp pile of canvas in silence for a very long time.

"Fuck it," Ellis shrugged. "We'll just share one."

They dropped the pieces they were holding into the grass and walked back over to the fire to find the whiskey.

Dinner was long forgotten by the time the firewood ran out, and the blaze died to embers. The empty bottle of whiskey was checked again for any last drops. Then, with a shrug, they lurched out of their chairs and headed back toward the tree line.

Without a word, they stumbled up to the tent and slipped open the zipper. They kicked their shoes off as they crawled inside. When they zipped it back shut, the sound of the world outside became muted. It was suddenly very private and intimate within their little space.

Ellis crawled ahead on his elbows, feeling his way in the dark across the plush sleeping bags. He found the edge of a wall and pressed his belly against it tight, flattening himself, taking up as little room as possible. He held his breath and waited for the man to settle in beside him. With luck, he thought, Marshall would be asleep in moments.

Instead, the air was suddenly noisy again as the large man struggled out of his shirt with great heaving grunts. Then he struggled again. Ellis went utterly still, his stomach tightening painfully as the man tugged his pants down to his feet and tossed them against the far wall. Marshall gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.

Ellis listened in absolute silence, waiting for some change to show the man had drifted off to sleep. Sweat beaded down chest, turning the boy's shirt damp, despite the cool night outside. Heat was radiating off the other man like a furnace, turning the whole tent into a sauna.

"Fuck, I'm hard," Marshall groaned. Ellis' eyes pulled wider. His heart stopped, possibly quite literally. "What about you?" the man asked.

The boy laid still, not daring to blink, hoping the man would think he was asleep.

"You don't mind if I tug one out, do you?" Marshall pushed on. "I can't sleep like this."

"No," Ellis squeaked.

"Good man," Marshall replied. There was another great heaving strain as the man stripped off his last ounce of clothing.

And then the sound of it began. The soft thud of meat as the fat pad of Marshall's fist struck down between his legs. The rhythm of it was building slowly, a steady beat that drowned out the faint sounds of the forest.

Then the smell of it came to him, thick enough to taste. Some forbidden, animal stink of musk. It was unpleasant, and wrong. And yet... Ellis found it hard to dislike.

The regular sound of slapping meat drove on, building faster, louder. The man's hearty grunts matched pace. It became strangely erotic. There was such raw, bestial need in those sounds. Unashamed and powerful and commanding.

The boy's face blushed painfully as he jutted his twitching erection against the canvas, hiding it as far away as he could.

The man shifted his body, spreading his hairy legs open wide as his fist beat out a furious pace. The angry slaps of skin and heavy moans grew louder, drowning out everything else. The man's thick legs, beaded fully in sweat, brushed against his Ellis' own and held there. The thick knots of muscle bulged against the boy's own as the man strained to finish.

Ellis shut his eyes, drinking all of it in, his mind working frantically. Despite everything, Marshall didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. It was because they were all alone, in the dark, and drunk. They were just men. There was no judgement. They were men doing what they wanted to, where no one would ever see or know what they had done.

So just do it, you coward.

With a quick roll, the boy was between the man's legs. With a stroke of his tongue, the man's knuckles released. And then the older man pulled the boy's mouth in closer.

It sank down easily, the thick shape of it dragging against the sides of his throat as it went. Ellis' mouth slipped back up it slowly, suckling every inch of it, cherishing the rubbery feeling of its head. He stroked the slit of it with his tongue, then tasted the hard ridge that ran around the rim. His eyes slipped shut, and Marshall's fingers teased the boy's hair as he worked it.

After a moment, Ellis pulled himself free and searched out the man's sack with his lips. They were thick with dense fur, and wet with sweat, but he scooped them in all the same, and lapped against them with tender strokes.

"Mmm. Fuck. You've gone too far," Marshall growled. "Now I need it."

Ellis blinked against the dark, still lost in his own private pleasure, and suddenly the man's heavy balls pulled from his lips, leaving him to mouth at the empty air instead.

Heavy hands gripped him by the ribs and tossed him around across the fabric. Ellis kicked out weakly, trying to right himself, but the man wouldn't let him. A hand gripped him by the belt of his jeans and tugged Ellis onto all fours. With a deft hand, he popped the boy's buckle free and yanked his pants down to his knees, boxers and all.

Ellis screeched in surprise as Marshall's wet, slobbering lips found his hole. His fingers scratched wildly at the ground as the man's bristly beard dug hard between the crack of his cheeks. The thick tongue dug around like a finger, stroking and probing everywhere it could reach. It found the rim of him quickly, and Ellis squealed as it forced its way through.

Marshall chuckled between the boy's cheeks and settled back to lap against the hole in slow, steady strokes. He wrapped one meaty hand tightly around the boy's cock, right at the base -never stroking, but always squeezing firm. Before long, the wail died out from the boy's throat, and he limply laid his head against the ground, letting the sweat stream down from his hair in rivets. He went quiet, save for the occasional twitch and squeak.