“So you're a cum sommelier,” I said, and immediately felt the grin on my face. “Would you like a sample?”

  The words left my mouth and I sat there for a second genuinely surprised at myself. That was not something the Jack Hartley of two weeks ago would have said to a beautiful boy he'd known for twenty minutes. That Jack had been nervous around people and hadn't had a sexual experience worth mentioning. He had certainly never looked at a guy with curly blonde hair and thought beautiful. The ring pulsed warm at my base and I thought yeah alright, fair enough, this is probably your fault.

  Though in fairness Caleo was objectively beautiful. The blue eyes set against the tan skin, the blonde curls falling across his forehead, the way his fitted trousers showed the definition of his thighs when he shifted in his chair. I felt pin by comparison. I was five foot ten and had some muscle definition from years of cross country and farm work before that, nothing remarkable. Caleo was shaped like someone had designed him with specific aesthetic intentions. Compact and defined in the way of a gymnast, the muscles of his arms and legs obvious through the fabric even sitting down.

  My cock had started hardening while I was thinking all of this and was now making its presence known against my trousers with its usual complete ck of subtlety.

  Caleo stared at me for a moment with an expression I hadn't seen on him yet, genuine surprise, the relentless forward momentum briefly paused. His eyes dropped to my p and whatever he saw there appeared to confirm something for him because the surprise shifted immediately into something considerably warmer.

  “I thought you'd never ask,” he said.

  He stood up and started taking his clothes off.

  "Stop," I said. "Hold on."

  He stopped with his shirt half unced and looked at me with patient energy, the expression of someone who had paused a process they were confident they'd be resuming shortly.

  "Tell me about yourself first," I said. "You show up at my door knowing things about me that nobody is supposed to know. I'd like to know who I'm dealing with before anyone takes their clothes off."

  He considered this for approximately one second. "Fair," he said, and sat back down and reced his shirt with the same energy he did everything, fingers moving fast. "What would you like to know?"

  "Everything," I said. "Start with why a nineteen year old has been studying Vitalist output since he was fourteen."

  Caleo settled back in his chair with his cup and his expression did something I hadn't seen yet, the enthusiasm was still there but it got quieter, more considered, like a mp turned down rather than extinguished. He was quiet for a moment, which was the first time he'd been quiet since he arrived and felt significant because of it.

  "My family," he said, "has a condition. It runs through the males on my father's side. A wasting illness they say. It progresses slowly but it progresses, and there's nothing conventional medicine does for it beyond managing the symptoms. My father has it. His father had it. His father before that." He turned the teacup in his hands. "I found a text when I was fourteen. Fragmentary, old, half the pages missing. It described Vitalist output as having regenerative properties beyond anything standard alchemy could produce. Tissue restoration. Systemic healing. Reversal of degenerative conditions." He looked up at me with those blue eyes. "The text said a Vitalist's ‘seed’ could heal things that nothing else could heal. So I decided to find one."

  The room was quiet for a moment.

  "The training," I said carefully. "The five years of study."

  "I needed to be useful," he said simply. "If I found a Vitalist I needed to offer something in return. Knowledge. Understanding of what they produce and what it can do. The ability to help refine and develop the applications." The corner of his mouth turned up. "I also needed to be physically prepared for the practical component of working closely with a Vitalist, which the literature was quite specific about in terms of requirements."

  "Your father," I said. "How advanced is it?"

  "Moderate," he said. "He functions. He's in pain most of the time and the progression is slow but consistent. I have maybe three years before it becomes serious." He said it with the same matter of fact delivery he used for everything, which somehow made it nd harder than distress would have. "So. Here I am."

  I looked at him across the table. The golden curls and the blue eyes. The gymnast's body, five years of studying something everyone said was extinct because his father was sick and he'd decided to do something about it at age fourteen.

  The ring pulsed once at my base. Warm. Certain.

  I thought about the locked recipe sitting behind Cum Crafter Level 8. The thing I was fairly confident was behind that lock. Limb regrowth. Degenerative condition reversal. The trajectory the system had been pointing me toward since the first recipe appeared.

  "Alright Caleo," I said. "Now you can take your clothes off."

  His shirt came off first and I was right about the gymnast build, defined and compact and smooth everywhere, the tan going all the way down, no line. His chest was clean and ft with the kind of muscle definition that came from functional use, the sort of body that didn't think about itself. He unced his trousers and stepped out of them and stood in the afternoon light coming through the front window without any apparent self consciousness about any of it.

  I looked at him.

  The patch of blonde hair above his cock was the only hair on his entire body, neat against the tan skin. And his cock — I stared for a moment with the frank appreciation of someone who had spent enough time recently examining unusual anatomy to feel qualified to assess it. Long, comparable to my own twelve inches, with a tapered tip that widened steadily down the shaft, uncut, the foreskin drawn back slightly with his arousal. And at the base, already beginning to swell as he hardened, the knot. Bigger than a closed fist. Six inches in diameter of dense firm tissue that was going to require serious thought before any practical decisions got made.

  He was watching me look at him with those blue eyes and a small smile.

  "I see you've noticed Maximus," he said.

  I looked up. "You named it?”

  "I was fourteen and it seemed appropriate," he said without any defensiveness whatsoever. "What do you call yours?"

  "I didn’t name my cock," I said.

  "That's very sad," he said sincerely.

  I stood up and undressed, trousers and shirt, and watched his eyes go to my cock the way everyone's eyes went to my cock — the wide fred head, the twelve inches of horse dick standing fully hard now, Morning Dew already beading at my tip and beginning its slow luminescent run down my shaft. His expression was different from the others though. The alchemist's professional surprise. The dandy's spatial concern. The woman's practical assessment. Caleo looked at my cock the way a schor looked at a primary source he'd spent five years hoping to find.

  He crossed the room and crouched in front of me and looked at it from roughly six inches away with his hands csped behind his back like he was examining an exhibit.

  "Extraordinary," he said quietly, and for once the word wasn't performance. Just genuine.

  Then he leaned forward and licked the Morning Dew off my tip in one slow deliberate pass and my knees nearly went out from under me.

  He stood up and looked at me with those blue eyes and the taste of my own Morning Dew on his lips and said "right then" with the energy of a man who had completed the academic portion of the evening and was ready for the practical component.

  I got my hands on him properly for the first time and the gymnast assessment had been completely accurate. Every muscle present and defined under smooth skin, his body warm and solid and completely hairless under my palms as I ran them down his back and grabbed his ass with both hands. He made a low appreciative sound and pressed forward against me, his long cock sliding against mine, the two of us lined up against each other, his tapered tip and my wide fred head making an interesting contrast in the afternoon light.

  Morning Dew was running freely down my shaft and getting onto both of us where we pressed together and I felt him shiver as the warmth and sensitizing properties spread across his skin on contact.

  "Oh," he said, with genuine scientific interest underneath the arousal. "That's the ambient healing effect. I've read about this. It's — " He stopped talking because I had wrapped my hand around both our cocks together and started stroking and the scientific observation dissolved into a sharp intake of breath.

  I walked him backward toward the bedroom.

  He went down onto the bed and pulled me down with him He was someone who knew what they wanted and had been patient about it for long enough. His hands were everywhere, thorough and direct, no hesitation. I got my mouth on his cock and tasted him, the tapered tip smooth against my tongue, his foreskin still partially there and soft against my lips, and I worked him slowly and felt him get harder in my mouth, the shaft thickening, the knot at his base beginning to firm up into something that I was going to need to think about carefully before I made any decisions.

  He had his hand on my cock while I worked him, stroking slowly, gathering Morning Dew from my tip and spreading it down my shaft with long deliberate passes, and I could feel him analyzing the texture and temperature of it with his fingers the way you'd feel fabric for quality, which should have been clinical but was somehow intensely hot.

  He pulled me up by the hair — not rough, just direct — and kissed me with the full commitment of someone who did everything at full commitment, his tongue finding mine, tasting of tea and Morning Dew. I felt his cock against my hip, long and thick, the knot now fully firm against my skin.

  "I want your cock in my ass," he said against my mouth, just stating a fact. "And I want you to fill me with cum. As much as you can produce. For research purposes."

  "Only for research purposes?” I said.

  "Primarily," he said.

  I grabbed the vial of Morning Dew from the bedside table where I'd set it and coated my fingers thoroughly and reached between his cheeks and found his asshole and pressed in.

  He hadn't been exaggerating about the training.

  My fingers went in with an ease that stopped me for a moment. Not just accommodating — genuinely, remarkably soft and open, the muscle rexed and welcoming in a way that my own body had taken days of dedicated practice to approximate. I pressed two fingers in to the knuckle without any resistance at all and he exhaled slowly with the expression of someone settling into a hot bath. I worked them and added a third and he just took it, his body moving with my hand, his cock jumping hard against his stomach.

  "How long did the training take," I said.

  "Three years," he said pleasantly. "Starting at sixteen. I told you I needed to be useful."

  I looked at him lying on my bed with three of my fingers inside him discussing his training schedule with the conversational ease of someone talking about a hobby and felt the ring pulse hard at my base and decided we were done with conversation for now.

  I pulled my fingers out and lined my cock up against him and pressed the wide fred head against his opening and felt the Morning Dew do its work, warmth spreading immediately at the point of contact, his body responding, opening further. I pushed forward slowly and felt the fred head seat inside him and the ring detonated with the immediate full body response it had every time I breached someone for the first time, warmth exploding outward from the point of contact in every direction.

  He threw his head back.

  "There it is," he breathed. "God. The literature did not cover this adequately."

  I pushed deeper and he took every inch with a long sustained exhale, his hands gripping the sheets, his cock flushed and leaking against his stomach, and I felt him opening around me in stages as the Morning Dew worked through him and his training did the rest. I buried myself to my base and stayed there and felt his whole body adjust around twelve inches of horse cock with ease.

  I started moving.

  He was loud about it in the uninhibited way of someone who had decided they were going to experience something fully and weren’t interested in managing anyone else's reaction to that. The sounds he made filled the room and I felt the ring drinking charge from the encounter in long warm pulls, that distinct quality of someone else's contribution sitting alongside my own, different, rich and substantial.

  Morning Dew was coating everything internally and I could feel it working through him the way it had worked through the woman at the brothel, healing and sensitizing simultaneously. Every nerve ending opened up, his body running hotter with each pass. He was producing a near continuous stream of precum himself, pooling on his stomach, running down his shaft and onto the sheets.

  I picked up the pace and his sounds escated accordingly.

  He came first, the way most people came when the Morning Dew was involved, without much warning, his whole body seizing up, his cock shooting hard across his own chest and chin without being touched. Ropes of cum nding across his colrbone while his ass clenched around me in long sustained waves. He made a sound that was half Caleo's usual exuberance and half something entirely involuntary, his blue eyes gone wide and unfocused, his golden curls damp against his forehead.

  I fucked him through it. He didn't ask me to stop. His ass kept gripping me in waves and I kept moving and felt the ring cycling charge higher with each pass, the warmth building toward that specific pressure I recognized, and I drove deep, held there and let the ring release.

  I filled him with cum and felt his body take it, warm and immediate. The ring absorbing most of it but letting through what I directed. He made a sound underneath me that was quieter and more real than anything he'd said since he walked through my door.

  I pulled out slowly and watched Morning Dew and cum run out of him onto the sheets and the ring hummed deep and satisfied at my base.

  He y there for a moment. Breathing.

  Then he lifted his head and looked down at himself — cum on his chest and chin, thoroughly wrecked, hair everywhere — and then looked at me with those blue eyes bright and alive.

  "For research purposes," he said.

  "Primarily," I said.

  He ughed. Full body, genuine, energy returning immediately, like a light someone had turned back on. He reached up and wiped cum off his chin with one finger and looked at it with professional interest.

  "The internal application data alone," he said, "is going to revolutionize my theoretical framework entirely."

  I y back on the bed next to him and stared at the ceiling.

  "Caleo," I said.

  "Yes?"

  "We're going to talk about your father tomorrow," I said. "Tonight you can stay."

  He was quiet for a moment. The mp turned down again, briefly.

  "Thank you Jack," he said. Simply. No performance in it at all.

  The ring pulsed once at my base. Warm. The bond slot in my status screen sitting there waiting.

  I closed my eyes.