Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 19:48:33 +0100 (BST)
From: Robert Furlong <robert.furlong@rocketmail.com>
Subject: Father and Son Moments

FATHER AND SON MOMENTS
Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong
robert.furlong@rocketmail.com
Find my older stories at screeve.org

===

"I ran into Guy Leeson at the petrol station the other day, Jake."

"Did you, now?" he said with a suggestive smirk.  He grabbed the remote
control and turned the volume down on the football match we were watching
on TV.  My son didn't usually turn the TV down when I had something to say:
if given the choice, he would probably turn it up.

"So were the two of you okay around each other?" he asked.  "After... you
know... what happened?"

"We managed not to start groping each other in front of the confectionary
stands, if that's what you mean."

He smiled.  "I actually meant if it was uncomfortable for you both... you
know, kind of awkward?"

"Not at all," I replied, glancing over at the TV.  It was times like these
you miss the best goals.  Seeing very little happening on the pitch, I
turned back to him and explained, "We're both grown men.  I guess we've
both come to terms with it by now."

Jake kept smiling but raised his eyebrows in a look that made him look
rather older than his eighteen years.  A look that said he felt, from my
recent behaviour, that I was still quite a long way from coming to terms
with it.

He looked back over at the screen himself and then asked, "Did he say
anything about what you'd done to him?"

"You mean, did he announce to the shop that I'd licked his bum?" I laughed.
"No, Jake, he didn't.  He managed to restrain himself."

Jake chuckled and took a swig from his coke.

"And anyway," I went on.  "You say it like it was a one-way thing.  As a
matter of fact, he was a very willing accomplice.
Very... er... enthusiastic, actually."

Jake nodded and smirked.  "I'm sure he was.  I mean, it's not every day
that someone offers to put their mouth on your pooper."

I took a drink from my own glass of wine.  It was a Muscadet: a good deal
sharper than I usually like.

Then I said, "It wasn't something that I offered to do.  It just happened,
believe it or not."

Jake looked sceptical.  In his shoes, I had to admit that I too would find
it very difficult to believe.

"Anyway," I went on.  "He suggested we go and see another match together.
The four of us.  Sometime in the New Year."

"Sounds cool," he nodded.

Then, after a few seconds had ticked by to give him time to digest the
idea, he asked, "So... I'm guessing I'll be sharing with Simon again?"

I smiled.  "That'd suit you, wouldn't it?"

He chuckled.  "Yeah, of course.  As long as it'd suit you guys...?"

I chuckled back.  "I'd prefer it that way.  Obviously.  But if you'd rather
bunk up with me and leave Simon with his dad, that'd be okay too."

Jake shrugged.  "It'd more fun for me to share with Simon like last time.
And, well... let's face it... it'd be more fun for you pair too.  So I
guess it makes sense."

I smiled across at him.  "More fun for different reasons, of course."

Jake grinned at me.  "Ooh I dunno, dad.  Simon's got a really nice
bum... really tasty!"

I threw him a look of disapproval.  "Don't say that."

He chuckled.  "Come on, dad.  I'm only messing.  There's no way I could
ever do that.  Not to Simon or anyone else."

"That's not the issue," I said.  "I don't mind how you want to express
yourself.  I just don't like you making jokes about something that I
enjoy... making it sound cheap and crude."

He nodded, still smiling.  "Okay.  Point taken."

He reached for the remote control and pointed it at the TV.  But then, with
his thumb poised over the volume button, he asked, "Do you think, when we
stay over somewhere, you guys will... well...?"

I just stared at him, curious to hear what he was thinking of.

"I mean if you both get drunk enough," he went on.  "Will you
actually... you know... do the deed?"

"Do the deed?"

He giggled.  "You know what I mean!  Don't make me say it!"

I smiled.  "Do what deed, Jake?  I don't know what you mean!"

"Come on, dad!" he laughed.  "You must have thought about it.  You know,
whether you'll... well..."

I threw him a look of innocent puzzlement.  "Play cards together?  Watch
TV?"

He chuckled.  "You know exactly what I mean!  And you must have thought
about whether you would.  And, you know, which way round you'd want to do
it..."

I held my smile but he could see from my hardness of my eyes that I wasn't
going to rise to this line of questioning.

He shrugged and said, "Maybe we should watch the rest of the match?"

"Good idea, Jake."

Throwing me a half-apologetic smirk, he turned up volume on the TV and we
found that we had, indeed, missed a very good goal.

===

If Jake had called my bluff and had said that he would indeed prefer to
share a room with me, I'd have gone along with it and booked the two of us
into a twin room.  I wouldn't have wanted him to think I was desperate to
hook up with Guy (although I was almost skittishly excited about the
prospect) and I'd have hoped that, once we checked into the hotel, Guy
might have been more persuasive about his preferred sleeping arrangements
than I was prepared to be.

Jake and I had shared a room together countless times; not only when we'd
gone off at weekends to watch various sports fixtures, but also on the rare
occasions when we'd managed to escape somewhere sunny together to take a
holiday.

My main problem with sharing with Jake – just as it is with anyone I
share a room with – is trying to conceal the incessant demands which my
errant biology places upon me.  These range from the tricky issue of how to
conceal the obscenely obvious tenting of my pyjama bottoms most mornings,
to the far more embarrassing problem of my almost unremitting need for
regular sexual release.

When Jake had been young, I'd managed to kill both birds with one stone by
waking early when he was still sleeping and then quietly attending to my
arousal in my bed alongside his.  I spent many a first light in this most
inelegant of states: trying to silently manipulate myself under the canopy
of my duvet, grasping my balls to stop them slapping against my thighs and
peering over at my son to make sure he was still sleeping.  By the time
he'd awoken, I'd usually managed to flush the evidence of my misconduct
down the toilet and the front of my pyjamas were presentable save, perhaps,
for the odd dribble of stray stickiness around the fly.

But as Jake had grown older, he'd become less of a sound sleeper.  One
morning, as my bed gently shook and I discharged squirt after squirt of my
seed into a waiting tissue, I'd realised that he was awake and staring at
me.  Even as my erection was still disgorging itself beneath my bedding,
Jake had asked sleepily what I was doing.

"Just scratching," I'd gasped, staring wide-eyed at him as my hand pumped
up and down my manhood, coaxing the last few gobs of semen from its gaping
slit.  "Nearly got it... yeah... that's it..."

He'd stared at me more quizzically as I'd lain there panting, my bed now
steady and my balls mercifully emptied.

"What's that smell?" he'd asked.

"What smell?" I'd quickly replied, recovering my breath.

"I dunno," he'd muttered.  "A weird smell.  Not very nice.  I've never
smelt it before."

It's the smell of the stuff that produced you, I'd thought as I'd slyly
dabbed at a stray dribble oozing from my softening cock.

"It's just a smell men sometimes produce, Jake," I'd offered, tentatively.

"Oh right," he'd said.  "Was that what the scratching was about?"

I'd considered my answer and then settled for a cop out.  "Kind of."

At some point I'd tell him what he needed to know, but not just yet.  For
now, I would just have to make do with conducting my morning ablutions
behind the closed door of the bathroom.

However, even concealing my erection from my son in the confines of a
shared room could sometimes prove problematic.  If he was awake when I
arose and staggered towards the bathroom, he'd roar with laughter at the
front of my pyjamas, sticking outwards so comically from the prominence of
my over-generous hard-on.

The first time this happened, I'd tried to be mature about it and had
walked over to Jake's bed to show him, behind the material of my pyjamas of
course, that erections are a normal part of being a man.  I'd explained
that when men sleep their penises often become aroused and this made them
grow hard and stand upwards.  Jake hadn't really listened to me but instead
had stared intently at the curious third leg his father had developed,
marvelling at how flagrantly the thin cotton of my pyjama bottoms was being
held upwards by a part of the body which must have always seemed so
inconsequential on himself.

He asked me to turn to the side, which I did, and I smiled at him staring
at the size of the tent I was making, entranced by how far outwards the
mysterious organ I was concealing was making my stripy pyjama trousers
protrude.  I'd felt acutely embarrassed to be parading for my son how
well-endowed my morning hard-on is, but I thought it best that he could
appreciate that this was a natural state for a man to be in and for him to
see, on his dad, one of the surprises that his own male body would one day
present.

"Whoa!" he'd gasped, stifling his laughter.  "That is, like, mega!"  And
I'd been pleased that he was far more relaxed about sexual matters than I
had been at his age.

As I was telling him that he too would start to develop erections in time,
and that his would probably grow to be just as large as mine, he'd
surprised me by reaching forwards and grabbing at my organ through my
pyjamas.  He pulled it downwards and let it spring back up, calling out
"Ba-doing!" and giggling wildly at how funny it looked.  He did it again –
more roughly and yanking it further down – before I could pull back, and
then had collapsed on his bed, overcome with hilarity.

Stunned, I put my hands over the front of my pyjamas and waited for him to
regain his composure.  I didn't want to tell him off for what he'd done –
to make him think in any way that he'd touched a 'bad place' – but he
had to understand that it was not appropriate.

When he'd calmed down, I said, "Jake, you mustn't touch me down there.
That's a very private place."

Apart from anything else, with the excited state I was in, just a couple
more 'ba-doings' could very easily have caused something very embarrassing
to happen.  I didn't want to have to explain to my son why the front of my
pyjamas had suddenly started seeping with glutinous white liquid.

Although he was still smirking, I could tell that my more serious tone had
sobered him up enough for my message to get through.

"I was only joking... it was funny," he protested.

"I know.  And I'm not having a go.  You just shouldn't touch it like you
did."

"Why?"

I didn't want to resort to, 'You'll understand when you're older,' but at
the same time I didn't want to get into some long discussion.  I was
worried that I could end up burying the idea in his subconscious that it
was wrong to touch all guys' penises – after all he might turn out gay
and having that in his head would really mess things up for him.  But I
wanted him to know that what he'd just done was not acceptable.

At length, I settled for, "I'm your dad, Jake.  You shouldn't touch me
there.  In a few years' time, when your pyjama bottoms start doing the same
thing, it'd be just as wrong for me to grab at your erection."

He shrugged.  "I won't mind... you can 'ba-doing' me if you want to!"

I smiled, retreating to the bathroom.  "Thanks for the offer, Jake.  But I
think it'll best if we both keep our hands to ourselves."

From then on, I tried my hardest to sneak around unobserved when I awoke to
find myself aroused – which was most mornings – but occasionally a
gale of guffaws from Jake's side of the room would let me know that I had
not been successful.

After Jake had reached an age where his own pyjama bottoms were starting to
tent outwards in the mornings – a state which became overtly conspicuous
with dramatic rapidity – he began finding my own indiscretions far less
amusing.  I'd spent many years telling him not to be ashamed of his body
and that puberty was something to be welcomed rather than condemned, and so
he wasn't particularly embarrassed to get out of bed with his organ at full
mast.

Nevertheless I felt perhaps Jake was reaching an age where he needed more
privacy and so I suggested to him that we might in future stay in separate
rooms when we went away together.  Jake surprised me, however, by speaking
out – quite strongly – against this as he enjoyed the fun of staying
over together and said it would be boring to stay in a room on his own.  I
decided, then, that it would be a shame to spoil his weekends away for the
sake of my own probably overly-prudent sensitivities.

So we continued sharing rooms when we went away, the two of us clambering
out of bed each morning and smirking over at each other at the state sleep
had put us both in, as the front of Jake's pyjama bottoms became as
stretched as mine were by the nightly punishments his newly awakened
anatomy was inflicting upon them.

What happened next was, in retrospect, inevitable.  So inevitable that I
should really have foreseen its arrival and yet, basked in blissful
oblivion, I sailed right into it unawares.

We'd had a talk at home some time back about what Jake could do to try and
becalm a spate of nocturnal accidents which had stretched to breaking point
my ability to keep up with the laundering of his pyjama bottoms.  I'd
offered him some advice about what he could do in bed last thing at night
to help his nightwear last more than a single sleep, and almost immediately
afterwards the issue had quickly dissipated.

Jake presumably discovered, when his wet dreams had started, the paternal
source of the "smell men sometimes produce", as I had referred to it that
early morning.  Once he had taken up the hobby I had suggested for him, he
must have also quickly realised what I had just done to myself in the hotel
room to elicit such a recognisable odour.

Another boy might have been shocked to learn, after the event, that his
father had masturbated in the bed next to him while he'd been sleeping and
that I'd just brought myself to climax at the moment he had awoken.  Jake,
though, with his typical matter-of-fact outlook on life, saw it simply as
an opportunity to follow my lead.

I first realised we had a problem when I was awoken early one morning in a
Premier Inn near Villa Park by a gentle rhythmic thudding coming from
within the room.  I'd blearily assumed the noise to be the sound of the
pipework heating up and had groped at myself through my pyjama fly, finding
my organ throbbing with its usual early morning demands and my balls heavy
and expectant for release.  I'd pulled my erection out through my pyjama
fly and had started fondling it when, glancing over from habit to check
Jake was still asleep before taking up my own rhythm, I'd suddenly realised
that the beating noise which had awoken me wasn't coming from the plumbing.

It's not every day one sees one's teenaged son masturbating, and the image
of Jake lying in the bed next to me enrapt in his own self-gratification is
not one I like to dwell on.  Nevertheless, I found myself enthralled to
watch him pleasuring himself; my rapt curiosity at observing him in such a
state tempered, but far from overcome, by my feelings of self-reproach.

He'd kept his duvet over him and had bent his knees upwards to try and
conceal what he was doing, but the nature of his activity was blatantly
obvious, especially to one as practised as I was to trying to hide the
self-same recreation from others' prying eyes.

His bed was gently rocking back and forth and his elbow was making a
rhythmic thudding noise against his mattress, but Jake seemed blissfully
unaware that his solitary pleasures were being so conspicuously announced.
He was totally absorbed by the sensations of his hand sweeping up and down
his penis; his eyes were tightly closed and his mouth slightly open, his
lips forming a half-smile.  His breathing was quickening and the rhythm of
his wrist, as betrayed by the thumping of his elbow, was also growing
steadily faster.  A film of sweat was breaking out on his brow and his
mouth opened a little, exhaling, as his hand worked his organ, a quiet
"Aah!"

His free hand, I realised, was probably on his balls: he was likely groping
them, or at least holding them steady, just like I do when I masturbate.  I
wondered what else he might like doing at such moments: would he sometimes
hold off from climaxing, repeatedly bringing himself close and then easing
off; or would he push his face beneath his bedding to appreciate the strong
sexual odour from his genitals?  I enjoy doing both of those during moments
of self-stimulation and it fascinated me that my son might, through some
intricate genetic connection, have exactly the same predilection.

I was still achingly hard, my throbbing manhood poking through my pyjama
fly, and I became aware that I was gently squeezing myself as I watched my
son's rhythm on his own equivalent gradually increase.  I momentarily
considered joining him – the two of us masturbating together as if in
some weird father-son ritual – but I quickly disregarded the notion on
the grounds it would throw up too many difficulties afterwards.

He was, by now, gently panting; the beating of his elbow now accelerating
quickly as he pushed himself towards his climax.  I could tell that his
erection would have swollen to its full aroused size and I found myself
wondering how thick and how long it would be.  Would it be as large as mine
had been at his age, or could some random combination of providential genes
from his mother and me have made him even more well-endowed?

He seemed very adept at what he was doing: perhaps all boys are once
they've taken up the habit.  How long had he been masturbating?  How long
had it been since we'd had that talk?  Months?  Years?

A distinct click-click-click sound started up and I realised it was coming
from Jake's foreskin being frantically jerked back and forth across his
distended cock-head.  Evidently, his erection remained on the dry side
during sex, just like mine, and didn't produce a copious ooze of lubricant
as I knew some men did.

Abruptly he straightened his legs in his bed and opened them wide, his feet
splayed apart at either side of the mattress.  Now unsupported by his
knees, his duvet settled down onto his groin and his hand thudded loudly
against it, each beat of it hammering on its underside like a drum and the
pace of it still increasing.  I could see from his face – from the way
he kept puckering his lips and licking them with his tongue – that he
was too far gone to care.  Evidently he was on the home straight, oblivious
that he was bringing his dad along for the ride.

If I'd been going to let him know I was awake, the time to have done so had
now passed.  I knew I was now committed to watching my son experience an
orgasm in his bed just feet away from me; committed to seeing Jake – my
little Jakey who I'd brought up almost single-handedly – masturbate his
penis to climax.  And beneath my own duvet, for some reason, I was gently
squeezing the shaft of my erection and circling its throbbing head with my
thumb.

Thumping loudly against his duvet, Jake's rhythm was becoming impossibly
rapid: like a steam train's engine hammering faster and faster as it sped
into open country.  Did I really wank myself this quickly?  On my son it
sounded hyperactive, almost painful; his fist must be literally slamming up
and down his shaft like an over-charged piston.

His neck arched back against his pillow, his face thrown backwards towards
the headboard with his eyes squinting tightly shut and his forehead wet
with sweat.  His mouth gaped wide and his elbow was somehow able to speed
up even faster as it pounded mechanically against the mattress.

"Aah!" he gasped again, through rapid breaths.  "Aah!"

And then his head fell forwards, his chin brought down almost onto his neck
by the power of his orgasm.

His rhythm slowed, but didn't stop: his hand continued to milk his shaft
and prologue the thrill of his climax as long as he could to maximise his
release.  Like me, perhaps like all men, he luxuriated in his self-induced
orgasm, coaxing every last twinge of pleasure from his squirting organ by
maintaining his rhythm for as long as he could sustain it.

When he did, eventually, stop, and was lying there with the sweat running
in dribbles down his forehead, gradually recovering his breath, I was faced
with the dilemma of what to do.  Should I pretend to have slept through my
son's masturbatory enjoyment, or should I come clean (as it were) and let
him know that I had witnessed it?

As I lay wondering, the smell of his discharge hit me abruptly.  His
seminal odour was strong – probably even sharper than my own – and
thickly laced with the acrid smack of his adolescent testosterone.

I decided I'd better speak up.  I didn't want to have to endure repeat
performances every time we shared a room.

"Couldn't you have done that in the bathroom, Jake?" I'd asked, my voice
sounding harsh in the post-orgasm silence of the room.

His head swung round to face me, his eyes horrified.  "I... er..."

"It's okay... it's just not really appropriate in a shared room."

For a few seconds he'd stared at me, aghast.  When he'd recovered his
bearings he snapped, defensively, "You do it sometimes!"

"What?"

"Yeah.  All that stuff about scratching yourself... and then the same smell
afterwards.  It's just the same as me doing it."

I sat up and faced him, keeping my own erection out of sight beneath my
covers.

"Fair enough – so I won't do it either.  I just did it when you were too
young to know about stuff like that and when I thought you were asleep."

"Yeah, well I thought you were still asleep," he countered.  His voice was
hoarse from his just waking up.  "How was I supposed to know you were
perving on me?"

I smiled.  "I wasn't.  I just... well... you were making a bit of noise.
It woke me up."

"You should have said something.  Made me stop."

I nodded.  "Well, maybe I should have.  But... you know..." (how could I
admit that I'd found it deeply captivating to watch my own son masturbating
without confirming to him that I'd been 'perving' on him, as he'd put it?)
"By the time I woke up, you seemed... kind of... into it.  It would have
seemed inconsiderate to have interrupted."

He threw me a look.  Part-quizzical, part-indignant.

"You still should have let me know you were awake," he insisted.  "It's not
something I really wanted you to see."

I shrugged.  "Fine.  So do it in the bathroom in the future, and I will
too.  Okay?"

He nodded and then threw me a small smile.  Looking down beneath his sheets
he said, "D'you wanna pass me some tissue?  Quite a lot, actually."

I smiled back and then got out of my bed on the far side so that my back
was turned towards him.  I didn't want to add to his discomfort by letting
him see how tented the front of my pyjamas were.  It might freak him out;
make him think that watching him pleasuring himself had aroused me.  I had,
of course, awoken with an erection.  The sight of Jake in the throes of his
own self-indulgence hadn't contributed to it at all.  Had it?

Stumbling into the bathroom, I called out, "It's good practice to have some
at the ready.  It's a habit you get into."

"You mean, I'm going to be doing this for years?  Until I'm old?  Like your
age, even?"

I smiled, obscuring the front of my pyjamas with the bathroom door.
Throwing him a thick wad of tissue I replied, "Even older than that Jake,
in all probability."

I closed the door to give him the privacy to clean himself up and switched
on the shower to conceal the noise of what I was desperate to do to my own
straining organ.  Attending to myself over the toilet bowl, I felt
compelled to try and match Jake's speed; jerking my shaft with the same
impatient rhythm that he had employed on himself.  Being unfamiliar with
the technique, my wrist made frantic clapping sounds against my thigh which
sounded loud and blatantly masturbatory even over the noise of the shower.
I thought it likely that Jake would be able to hear his father behind the
bathroom door following in his footsteps (or should that be handslaps) but
I was too titillated by adopting the same masturbatory rhythm on my cock as
Jake had on his to be able to curb my enthusiasm.  Nevertheless, after I'd
finished off and the copious outpouring of my seed was flushed away, the
soreness of my foreskin and the ache in my forearm dictated that I'd
probably leave such adolescent excesses to him in future.

From then on, Jake and I kept our sexual habits largely private when we had
to share together, save for occasionally getting unintended eyefuls of each
other's morning glories inside our pyjamas (or in Jake's case his
underwear, once he'd grown out of wearing pyjamas for bed) when we happened
to wake up together.  Our masturbatory needs were consigned to the
bathroom; while we never spoke again of what we both needed to do, we were
both fully aware that we were doing it.  In my case, such necessary
activities were always disguised behind the sound of running water; my
sense of modesty being significantly greater than my concern for the
environment.  Jake showed no such qualms and got on with what he needed to
do without any concern that his father might overhear.  The fact there was
only a wooden door between the two of us to absorb the sounds of his early
morning duties seemed largely immaterial to my son: he'd attend to his
ministrations with the same abandon as he'd show when using the toilet, and
a for a good few minutes I'd have to pretend I couldn't hear the unseemly
and sometimes bewildering commotion of noises he would happily make in
there.

===

Just before bed, while I was brushing my teeth and Jake was taking a pee,
he asked me when we would be going away to watch another match.

"I don't know," I admitted, through a mouthful of foam.  Then, after
spitting into the sink and rinsing my mouth, I added, "I don't think Guy
had a specific match in mind.  He just said sometime in the New Year."

"You'll want to go sooner rather than later though," he suggested with a
grin.

"I don't really mind when we go, Jake.  Obviously you're quite keen,
though."

He shook himself and tucked himself away.  "Only for your sake.  It might
help you decide that maybe this isn't for you after all."

"What isn't for me?" I asked in surprise, walking over to the towel rail to
dry my mouth.

He reached for his toothbrush.  "This whole 'butt monkey' thing.  Doing
stuff with other guys."

I smiled towards him through the mirror.  He was putting toothpaste onto
his brush.

"Do you think it's a phase I'm going through?"

He glanced over at me and smiled back.  "Maybe."

He put the brush in his mouth and switched it on.

"Jake, I'm not thirteen," I said.  "I think my days of going through
pubescent phases are long over."

He switched off his brush and spat a mouthful of foam into the sink.  "I
don't mean like that," he said.  "I just mean maybe it's some kind of weird
obsession you've developed... after looking at all that stuff on the
internet.  Maybe when you're faced with the reality of... well... being
sexual with another guy... going the whole way with him... letting
him... you know... well, maybe then you'll realise that it isn't for you."

His speech complete, he reinserted his brush and got on cleaning his teeth.

I was taken aback that he would think like this.  Admittedly, and
thankfully, he didn't know the vast majority of what I'd done with other
men during the past few months, but I was still surprised that he might
regard me as immature enough to need to 'go the whole way' with another guy
to know whether interested in him sexually.

I put the towel back on the rail.

"Well, I guess I'll soon find out," I remarked.  "It's the office Christmas
party on Friday night."

He looked over at me and I saw his memory cogs turn a few times before his
eyes widened slightly when the penny eventually dropped.  After spitting
into the sink again, he said, "I'd forgotten about that.  I'm staying over
at mum's, aren't I?"

"You are indeed."

He smiled at me and said, "Maybe that'll be night that you figure out
whether all this is for you.  Maybe that'll be the night that things
will... well..."

"Slot into place?"

He guffawed.  "Well if anything does, one way or the other, that'll kind of
settle it for you!"

I chuckled back at him.

Then I asked, more seriously, "Does all this bother you, Jake?  That I'm
getting interested in other guys..."

He rinsed his mouth and spat again.  "No, not at all.  As long as it's
right for you.  That's my only worry."

I patted him on the shoulder.  "Well, don't worry.  You've enough to think
about with your exams approaching and university next year.  All this stuff
with me... well... it'll sort itself out one way or another."

He nodded and said, for some reason with a thick Yorkshire accent, "Aye,
'appen."

I smiled at him again.  He was being silly to mask his concern.

"Goodnight, Jake."

"'Night, dad."

I left him to scrutinise his skin in the mirror and dab antiseptic lotion
onto the spots he imagined he had, and crossed the landing to go to bed.

===

Next story: All Part of the Service

===