Episode 29 | The Men In My Barracks 🪖 (Patreon)

All characters depicted in this story are fictional and 18 years of age or older. Everything portrayed is safe, sane, and consensual.

Episode 29: The Image That Wouldn’t Leave

I stayed locked in the bathroom stall longer than I should have.

The picture wouldn’t leave. Julian on his knees in front of Ryder. The low light in the supply room. The way Ryder had turned his head and that small, sharp smirk had settled on his mouth like he already knew exactly what I was seeing. Every time I closed my eyes it came back harder. I pressed the heels of my hands against them until colors burst behind the lids, but the image waited for me when I opened them again.

It wasn’t just the position. It was everything that had led up to it. The measured kisses that used to turn hungry and messy and now stayed careful, like Ryder was holding something back even while his mouth was on mine. The nights he had stopped me with a calm voice and a reasonable excuse right when I was hard and open for him. The way his hand used to find the back of my neck or my shoulder without thinking and no longer did. Even the last time he fucked me — slow and deep, his cock stretching me open the way I had been desperate for — I had still felt the distance. He had been inside me, filling me, whispering that I was his wifey, and somehow he had still felt further away than when we used to just make out against the shelves. His lips had been soft against my neck, but they never quite claimed me the way they used to. All of it sat under the single frozen second of Julian on his knees and made the whole thing heavier.

The jealousy was ugly. It sat in my chest like something hot and raw. And right next to it was the knowledge that I had no clean right to feel it. I had been the one sneaking out. I had been the one letting Ashford fuck me in his private quarters while Ryder slept one bunk above an empty mattress. I had been the one carrying another man’s marks and another man’s cum and still coming back to call Ryder husband like the word still meant the same thing. I had no moral ground. That didn’t make the image hurt less.

I stayed there until my breathing evened out enough that I could stand without my legs feeling unreliable. Then I unlocked the stall, rinsed my face with cold water at the sink, and walked out like nothing had happened.

The corridor felt too bright. I kept my head down and moved toward the chow hall because that was the next required place to be. I didn’t want food. I just needed to keep occupying space until the day ended.

I almost walked straight past Ashford.

He was standing near the turn that led toward the senior side of the building. His eyes found me the way they always did, steady and unreadable at first. Then the look shifted into something more deliberate.

“I’ll be expecting you tonight, recruit” he said, voice low enough that it stayed between us.

The words landed in a part of my brain that was still full of the supply closet. I heard them. I understood them. I just couldn’t make the usual answer come out clean.

“I'm not sure, Sergeant,” I said.

Something tightened in his face. The hesitation registered. For a second it looked like he might pull me up on it right there in the open, the old dominance rising under the surface. I didn’t give him the chance. I kept moving toward the chow hall before the moment could turn into anything more. Behind me I felt the weight of his attention, but I didn’t look back. My head was still too full of Julian’s flustered face and Ryder’s smirk.

I took a tray because it was expected. The food looked like nothing. I found an empty stretch of table at the far end and sat. The noise of the room moved around me without touching me. Men talking. Trays scraping. The usual low chaos of evening chow. I stared at the plate and didn’t touch my food.

A few minutes later two more trays appeared across from me and beside me.

Ryder sat down across from me like the last hour hadn’t happened at all. Julian sat a little to his right, close enough that I could see the side of his face without turning my head. The same quiet, careful face I had last seen looking up at my husband from the floor of the supply room, doing god knows what.

The air at the table changed immediately.

Ryder looked at me for a long second. Whatever he saw in my expression made his own shift.

“Hey, baby,” he said, voice low. “What’s wrong?”

I kept my eyes on the tray. “Nothing.”

“You walked away earlier.”

“Needed air.”

The lie was thin and we both knew it. Ryder didn’t call it out. He just watched me the way he had started watching me over the last week, like he was collecting small details and lining them up.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Ryder.”

Julian stayed quiet. He ate in small, careful bites and didn’t look at me directly. That somehow made it worse. I could feel him there in my peripheral vision. Every time my eyes drifted even slightly the image flashed again — the angle of his body, the way he had leaned to the side when Ryder turned, the secret sitting behind the usual soft expression. I forced my attention back to the tray and pushed food around without lifting it to my mouth.

Ryder tried again, quieter.

“You’ve been off since you came back from the supply room.”

“I’m fine.”

“Doesn’t look fine.”

I finally looked up. The eye contact lasted only a second. It was enough to make the jealousy spike again, hot and pointless.

“I said I’m fine, Ryder.”

He held my gaze for another beat, then let it go. The rest of the meal passed in short, clipped exchanges that went nowhere. When Julian spoke it was only to answer something Ryder asked him about the next day’s training schedule. His voice sounded normal. That made the whole thing feel even more unreal. I sat there with the two of them and the image of what I had walked in on and the knowledge that I had no right to the anger sitting under my ribs, and the combination made the food taste like nothing at all.

When the meal ended I stood first. I took my tray to the return and left the chow hall without waiting. Behind me I heard Ryder say my name once. I kept walking.

I went straight to the barracks and climbed into my bunk. The mattress felt the same as always. I pulled the thin blanket up and turned onto my side, facing the other way, like sleep might come if I pretended hard enough.

Ryder came in a few minutes later. I heard him move through the room, then the soft shift of weight as he sat down on the edge of my bunk instead of climbing to his own.

“You asleep, Callum?”

“Uhm… yeah.”

He let out a quiet laugh.

“Clearly not.”

His hand found the edge of the blanket and slipped underneath. Fingers brushed near my hip, warm and familiar, the same casual touch he had always used when he wanted me. He leaned in a little, voice dropping into that low, playful register.

“You wanna sneak out to the supply closet?”

I kept my eyes away from him.“No. I’m tired.”

His hand didn’t pull away right away. The fingers drifted higher, brushing the skin just above the waistband of my underwear, slow and testing.

“C’mon. Your husband’s dick is throbbing and only you can do something about it.”

I reached under the sheet, caught his wrist, and moved his hand away.

“I said I’m tired, Ryder.”

There was a short silence. Then he let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but thinner than usual.

“Okay. Okay.”

He stood up. I could feel him wanting more. I didn’t give it to him. A moment later I heard him climb up to the top mattress. The frame creaked once, then settled.

I stayed where I was until the shape of him had settled on the top bunk and the room began its usual slow slide toward lights out. Low voices faded. Someone coughed. Mattresses took weight. Above me Ryder’s breathing eventually evened out. Or at least it sounded like it did. I couldn’t tell if he was already asleep or simply lying still the same way I was.

The image came back the moment the room went quiet.

Julian on his knees. Ryder’s smirk. The private shape of a moment I was never supposed to see. It looped with everything that had come before it — the nights he had stopped me, the careful way he had started kissing me, the easy hand on Julian’s shoulder, the cigarette smoke on his mouth during the walk we had taken instead of me going to Ashford. All of it sat under that single visual and made the jealousy feel bottomless and completely undeserved at the same time.

I had been cheating on him for weeks. I had let another man open me up and fuck me and leave marks on my neck while Ryder called me wifey and tried to take care of me. I had no claim. I knew that. The knowledge didn’t stop the picture from hurting.

I lay there staring at the underside of his bunk and tried to will it away. It wouldn’t go. Every small sound from above me made it sharper. The shift of his weight. The slow rhythm of his breathing. The uncertainty of whether he was actually asleep only made it worse.

Time moved strangely in the dark. An hour passed. Maybe more. My thoughts kept turning over the same ground.

The man I cared about was one bunk above me. The man I had started to love in the middle of all this mess. And right now I couldn’t stop seeing him with someone else on their knees. Did he still care about me the same way? Or had the careful distance of the last few weeks been his way of already letting go? I wanted to climb up there and demand an explanation. I wanted to ask him what the fuck Julian had been doing in front of him. I also knew I had no right to ask. I had been the one disappearing. I had been the one coming back with another man’s scent still on my skin. The hypocrisy was so thick I could almost taste it.

Spite mixed with the need and the guilt until I couldn’t tell them apart. A small, ugly part of me wanted to hurt him back for the look he had put on my face in that doorway. A larger part just wanted the noise in my head to stop. I needed something solid. I needed someone who still looked at me like he wanted me without tests and without conditions.

I couldn’t stay in the bunk.

The decision built slowly while I lay there listening to him breathe. It became the sudden physical certainty that if I stayed any longer with the image on a loop and the proof of my own double standard sitting on my chest, I was going to come apart in a way I wouldn’t be able to hide when morning came.

I waited until the breathing around me sounded deep enough. Then I sat up, pulled on my boots, and moved through the dark barracks as quietly as I could. No one stirred. I slipped out into the corridor and then into the open compound.

The night air was cool. The NCO building sat across the open ground like a low, dark shape. My feet carried me toward it without any further debate. I was not going because I had resolved anything about Ryder or Julian or the weeks of careful distance. I was going because the alternative was the bunk and the image and the sound of the man I loved breathing above an empty space I had created.

I reached the door and stood there for a second with my hand raised. The jealousy and the guilt and the raw need sat in me all at once, tangled and heavy. Then I knocked once, soft.

The door opened.

Sergeant Ashford stood in the low light wearing only black underwear. The warm yellow glow from the lamp behind him cut across the hard lines of his chest and the thick muscle of his shoulders. A small smirk sat at the corner of his mouth as his eyes moved over me.

“Callum. Come in.”

I stepped through the doorway. The door shut behind me with a quiet, final click. For a moment neither of us spoke. The jealousy and the guilt and the raw need I had carried across the compound were still sitting in my chest, tangled and heavy. Ashford’s eyes moved over my face like he could see every piece of it.

He didn’t ask what was wrong.

He only stepped closer.────────────────Episode 30 | The Men In My Barracks 🪖