Ian & Joshua | The Marshlands

Note to the reader: This standalone story ventures into a rougher and more physically intense territory than my usual sweet yearning. It features a highly intense encounter between Ian and Joshua involving themes of dominance, physical restraint and rough play. Content is consensual but dark. Read with care.

I’d been standing by the corner of the bait shack for forty minutes, exactly at the spot Ian had texted. The pin he sent put us right where the marsh water started turning into thick, black sludge.

The text read: We are ending this.

Four words, no punctuation.

I kept staring at the screen until my thumbs went numb from the cold. To keep the blood moving in my toes, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. The mud made a slow, slurping sound around my boots. The fog was rolling in from the pitch-black pools, swallowing the reeds in thick ribbons. The landscape was fading into a grey twilight, looking completely dead. The smell of rotten vegetation mingled with the salty air of the open sea further down by the shipyard.

I scanned the empty shore. Still no Ian.

The whole drive to the Marshlands, I had replayed the past three weeks at the docks. Ian working with me on the ships, totally silent, his face closed off. Until this afternoon, when our shoulders brushed in the narrow galley and he had gone rigid, dropping his wrench and walking out without a word. Two hours later, I got his text.

I wrapped my flannel shirt tighter around my body. The wooden shed offered barely any protection against the biting wind. Five more minutes, I told myself. Then I was out of this shitty place.

A branch snapped behind me. My throat tightened as the footsteps came closer. I turned around, my heel slipping in the slime. A silhouette emerged from the mist.

It was Ian. His eyes were glassy, staring right through me and his denim jacket gaped wide open. His bare chest was smeared with a streak of grease from the docks.

He stopped about five feet back, refusing to lock eyes. Instead, he leaned heavily against the shack, staring across the dark water with his teeth clamped together.

Ian’s shoulders were pulled up high, his posture a deliberate wall between us. I wanted to turn around and walk away, but my feet felt heavy, glued to the marsh.

A flock of swallows flew over, hurrying toward the black trees upstream. I followed them with my eyes because looking at Ian was starting to make my chest ache.

A nasty gust of wind battered the shack, yanking the denim right off Ian’s shoulder. He didn’t even try to pull it back up, leaving his skin bare to the chill.

“You texted,” I said, shoving my hands deep into my pockets to hide how hard my fingers were shaking.

He didn’t look up. “Yeah.”

I kept staring at his nipples, hard and tight under the lashing wind. His pale skin looked almost blue in the twilight. He kept his face turned away as if I wasn’t there.

“You said we are ending this.”

He gave a single nod.

My stomach dropped. That was that, then.

“So what, you dragged me all the way out to this swamp just so you could say it to my face?”

Ian clenched his fists. “I brought you here cause I can’t…”

He looked right at me, his eyes wild.

Before I could brace myself, he threw his weight into me. His hands came down on both sides of my face. His thumbs dug into my jaw to force my head up.

“I can’t think straight, damn it, Josh!”

He forced the words out, his eyes locked onto my mouth.

His fingers clawed desperately at my chest before he grabbed a fistful of my shirt. He pulled me forward so hard my boots lost their grip in the mud; then threw his shoulder into my sternum, shoving me backward until my spine slammed into the rough timber of the shack.

The impact rattled my teeth. A heron erupted from the brush nearby with a loud shriek.

Ian didn’t back off. He pinned me flat to the creaking wood, his entire weight crushing my ribs. He drove his hips forward, crowding me into the wall, forcing out everything we had left unspoken for weeks. His knuckles pressed so hard into my chest that it hurt. But I wanted it.

His hand gripped my hair and pulled my head aside, while he jerked my shirt out of my jeans and slid his cold fingers over my stomach.

I felt his whole frame tremble when his mouth whispered against my ear, “I can’t take it anymore.”

He ran his hand further up my shirt, shoving it over my chest, exposing my nipples to the wind. He rocked his hips back and forth, back and forth, pinning me harder to the shack. His desperate wanting made me gasp for air.

I put my hands on the small of his back stroking under his jacket. His lips were still on my ear.

“I tried, but I can’t.”

The tip of his tongue traced the shell of my ear, then lingered on my earlobe, tugging it, tasting it.

My knees were going soft. He must have felt me cave because he grabbed my throat, keeping me upright.

He caught my hands, pinning my wrists high over my head, shoving his forearm flat against them to trap them to the wood.

His free hand stroked down my stomach, his nails raking my abs slowly. I flinched. He brushed my nipples, a slow torment, then pressed his index finger against my lips, forcing it into my mouth. I bit down slightly, tasting the shipyard grease on his skin as he pulled his finger out wet and dragged it down my chest, slicking my spit over my nipples until they hardened even more.

Before I could catch my breath, he wrenched me around, slamming my ribs into the wood. My palms hit the rough planks. His belt buckle was a line of ice against my spine as he ground his hips into my ass. His hand found my stomach, fumbled with the button, the zipper. Then, very, very slowly, his fingers slipped between the waistband and my skin.

My whole body tensed. His hand stopped as if he was unsure if I’d let him. I shuffled my boots in the sludge. He shifted behind me, driving his knee hard between mine until I had to widen my stance to keep my balance. His body pressed into my back, his warm breath on my neck, pinning me face-first to the shack.

When I pushed back into him, I felt the full length of him grinding against me, his hand digging deeper, palm flat and warm against me. My fingernails gripped the grain of the wood in an effort to anchor myself. The raw planks dragged against my chest with every small movement, rubbing my sensitive nipples.

His hand was shaking as he stroked me.

The friction was clumsy and heavy. The biting wind kept lashing at the shack, but with his body pressed onto mine, I couldn’t really feel the cold anymore.

I let my head fall back against his shoulder, every tight muscle in my back finally going soft. He stopped moving, just leaving his hand heavy in my jeans.

We stayed like that, completely still in the mud, as the grey twilight finally collapsed into total darkness, swallowing the marsh, the shipyard and the two of us whole.

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