Nights and Sharks Chapter 7

Benjamin Ashton & Daniel Sharpe

benashtonvilla@yahoo.com

smutwithsemicolons@gmail.com

Nights & Sharks

Part 7

// Nathan

"You're finally starting to relax, aren't you?" Jonah said, as if to himself.

I slowly turned towards him, leaving the sight of the rapidly passing strip malls, car dealerships, small towns and barren fields. I had expected the drive to take us through large sways of desert and plains, with yellow signs warning us of the possible presence of kangaroos (one of the first guys I fucked had such a sign in his dorm room, I remembered). The M1 was called the Pacific Motorway, after all, but there was nothing around to explain the name. Maybe further south.

Jonah was right, I was starting to relax. We had left the house with neither of us saying goodbye to Chloe, who had stayed secluded in their bedroom. I indicated to Jonah that I needed to thank her for having me stay a whole month at her place. "Don't bother", Jonah mumbled, lifting my heavy suitcase and carefully climbing down the stairs out of my little studio. I took one last look at the room before shutting its door closed. It felt a little momentous, as if leaving a place where I belonged, where I had made my imprint, my domestic claim to be part of a territory. It also felt a little silly. I wasn't from here. I stayed in Brisbane for a month, but I was still a stranger. A visitor. A guest.

We crossed the river over Captain Cook Bridge, which sounded childish somehow, and I felt like the city was slightly mocking me, impressing on me the ephemeral nature of whatever may have happened to me in Brisbane. But a ferry was on the river, appearing from below the bridge, and I thought about Dan.

I was starting to relax, Jonah was right – and it felt touching that he was still able to read me, to read my silences. We were half way through the trip, a trip Jonah had promised wouldn't take much more than an hour, and I had worked on changing my perspective, on settling on an outlook which might make bearable the two days and three nights to come.

Dan had laughed at Jonah's apparent multiple personality disorder. I probably wouldn't be able to, because each personality which Jonah assumed when he was not with me was a lie, a belittling of the frail bond that had held us together. But I concluded the lies weren't deliberate and manipulative acts of deception. I had a friend back in Boston who would move to a new apartment or house every three years or so. "By the time I'm eighty, I want to have lived in twenty different places. That's like having twenty different lives. I feel like I'm cheating death." Maybe Jonah needed the three or four or five different lives, the three or four or five different Jonahs to feel alive, to make sure that he gets it all before he dies.

To his wife, he was a grounded bisexual who preferred women. With me, he was a somewhat grounded straight man who was confused about liking dick so much but fucked his wife loudly through thin walls. To Dan, he was a horny closeted guy, who didn't get much action at home, but banged a dude's ass with abandon. Who was he to his elegant and hot colleague who might very well be his long-term lover? Who had he been to Chris and Geoff, whoever Chris and Geoff were?

The question was not really who the real Jonah was, because there was likely no such thing. It wasn't either why Jonah morphed and altered, because Jonah was a narcissist and I had long decided not to waste time deciphering and analyzing the rationales of narcissists. The only curiosity I had left about Jonah was rather more self-centered: what made him think that I'd be more turned on (because, ultimately, this had always been Jonah's drive in life, to turn people on) by his disclosing of rare and recent forays into gay sex, rather than his sharing of the extra-marital affair he was having with a gorgeous black woman or than his confessing of a steady flow of male sex partners? He knew I had very little patience with mystified and dithering closeted guys, so adopting a version of this posture would not be attractive to me.

You're the only person with who I can talk about shit like this, the only person with who I can do shit like this, he had once said. And I still remembered him telling me this, and how it had made me feel both heartened and defensive - defensive because if he was lying, or exaggerating, it would have been back then the worst lie, the most painful exaggeration one could throw at me. Fuck, I thought, he had wanted me to feel special. Probably still did. And he had been right, he had read me correctly, I had needed to feel special, I had needed to get the fuck out of my childhood and family and assumptions and fears. But since then, since the early restricted and gratifying access to Jonah's inner thoughts and naked body, since the affirming comradery of his exclamations of appreciation (Cool foreskin and So much cum! And You're quite the international playboy, dude and You're the only person with who I can talk about shit like this), since the elating intimacy of his hand reaching for my dick in a large expensive bed in a large expensive house in a large expensive world, I had outgrown my need to feel special. I had read and had educated myself and had fucked and had cum my way up the ladder, I had escaped, I had learned to breathe. Being special was not at stake any longer. Whatever my issues were today, Jonah's pretense of my uniqueness were pointless, and just a little ridiculous.

"I am starting to relax," I finally answered soothingly. I rolled the window all the way down, pushed my seat as far back as it could go and extended my left leg outside, the wind cooling my foot and sending the hair on my calf into a dancing frenzy.

The house was splendid, yet not too ostentatious. It had a circuitous private drive off a main road, and you felt in the middle of nowhere. The ground floor was largely made of windows, opening up to a terrace and infinity pool, looking over a gorgeous view of green hills and pastures yellowed by the summer. It was extremely quiet and eerily secluded.

I followed Jonah upstairs. He dropped his small bag in the master bedroom, then held the door wide open, indicating that we were to sleep in the same bed. There were three other open doors on the landing, two leading to small but comfortable bedrooms, one to a large and sunny bathroom.

"I need a shower," I said, dropping my suitcase in a corner. "I feel sticky."

"Go ahead. I'll unpack the food I brought and start the barbecue. And open the beers."

I quickly fished in his bag when he left the room. I had seen him stuff a sheet paper with the directions to the house. I found the address of the house and typed it in a text to Dan, but I stopped just before sending it. I needed to think this through. I was being reckless.

I came back downstairs thirty minutes later. I didn't shave the beard that had been growing for five days, but I took my time nonetheless, walking around the room naked, pondering how and when to see Dan again, watching through the window Jonah lighting up the grill, drinking a beer, gazing at the view. I saw him undress completely and diving in the pool. I put on some tight jeans and a deep v-neck t-shirt (cringing briefly when I remembered wearing it the day Dan and I visited Sean), and decided against underwear, socks or shoes.

Jonah was doing laps as I picked up the bottle of beer that he had uncapped for me. I sat cross-legged on the edge on the pool and watched him swim. He came up for air and slowly made his way near me.

"This is so fucking great," he beamed, before forcing his body horizontal, floating on the surface, thrusting his crotch up to raise his limp, fat cock out of the water. "You want to get in?"

"I'm good. I'm just out of the shower."

"Right," he said, before ducking under water and swimming all the way to the end of the pool and back, grazing the bottom. The slow motion of his long legs, of the muscles of his back, of his tightened white buttocks was likely part of a show he was consciously giving me but which I decided to enjoy nonetheless. I had a clear sense that he was making himself available and that I'd soon get horny enough to be able to know what I wanted to do with these muscles, these legs, that cock and that grin on his face.

He got out of the pool in one swift, vigorous move, grabbed a towel and dried himself. I saw him looking for his clothes.

"You don't have to get dressed," I said, watching the wet imprints of his feet slowly disappearing from the stoned ground. He froze for a moment, unsure of the implications. "I know you like to walk around naked outside," I added.

"Cool," he said. He started uncertainly to wrap his towel over his waist, then decided against it, and came to sit next to me, two beers in hand. "There you go," he said, handing me one. "Drink up, buddy. You got some catching up to do."

"So, what do you want to do this weekend?" I asked.

"What do you want to do?"

"It's your birthday."

"My birthday was a month ago."

"Yes, but we're officially celebrating it this weekend."

"Fine. We could do what we used to do."

"Hike, drink, eat?"

"Sounds good to me," he said, after leaving a silence to let me add the other thing we used to do.

"And talk," I said instead.

"And talk, yes."

"Do you want to talk about Chloe?" I asked, taking a gulp.

"No, I definitely do not want to talk about Chloe," he said in a tone that nonetheless seemed to invite prodding.

"Things are not better?"

"No. She seems to know something."

"So you've said."

"Yeah, but she seems to know something more... specific. I don't what know what, though.

"Something about Dan?" I asked, then regretting giving him the opportunity to lie again.

"Maybe. How would she know, though? Who would tell her?" he said, turning to stare at me.

"You're kidding, right? Why would I tell her anything?"

"I know, I know. The whole thing's just fucked up."

I emptied my first beer and started on the second. The sun was slowly setting and the light was gorgeous.

"Are you going to fuck other guys? I mean, do you plan on going on with the whole gay sex thing?" I asked and we both chuckled.

"Yeah," he sighed heavily. "Yes, definitely. Do you?"

"Ah. Yup."

"The whole gay sex thing," he repeated pensively.

Jonah put on shorts and a shirt, which he kept open, to grill the meat and fix a salad. We ate outside and drank more beers from an improvised cooler he had made from a bucket and plenty of ice cubes. We talked the whole time, with an animation and breeziness which I had started to miss these last two weeks. He even discussed his family at length, something he was never really prone to do, not in the frank introspection he was displaying, and he prodded me about mine, without much success. "Still a sore subject?" he asked, with what seemed genuine care. "I guess," was all I replied.

"Do you want to explore the grounds? The area?" he asked as we were clearing the plates.

It was early but already night by then, the sky was cloudless and the moon gave out a blue shine to the hills around us. Most of them were relatively barren around the property, given them an eerie vastness.

"Sure."

We put our sneakers on and set off to walk, climbing over the fence of the property. There were some sheep in the distance, grey and immobile dots on the dark sloped grass fields.

"Why do you think we became friends?" Jonah asked, breaking a ten-minute silence, even though the lights of the house shone so bright in the distance, as if calling us back, that it seemed we had barely walked a few hundred yards.

"Because we were good on the soccer field."

"No, I'm serious, Nathan."

"Why do you ask?"

He shrugged, then went on. "I remember your anger. You always seemed so angry. It sort of fascinated me, I guess."

"Anger?"

"Yes, some kind of quiet, seething rage. It was always latent, giving you a hard, mean look, underneath your pretty boy surface."

"I see."

"And you could be a beast on the field. As if that's where you unleashed it. Your anger. Where did it come from anyway?"

The conversation was making me uncomfortable. Jonah stopped by a large tree, a lone towering figure on the empty space. He leaned against the trunk and lit a joint he must have rolled up earlier. "I asked you a question," he said, exhaling with a smile.

"I don't know that I was angry, or that angry anyway. Not angrier at least than your typical teenager."

"You were. But I'm not sure everyone saw it. I'm pretty sure they didn't, actually. But I did."

He looked at me knowingly, staring with both warmth and defiance. I looked away.

"I liked it," he said softly. "I was ... attracted by it. I know I was. I became a little obsessed with you, to be completely honest."

I was staring at the sky, but I could sense him looking at me, gaging my reaction with hungry determination.

"I was a bit obsessed with you too, I guess," I conceded, glancing at him.

"You gave off...", he handed me the joint as he searched for his words. "You gave off danger, I guess. There was something volatile about you. But there was also a sense of bravery, of daring, of unpredictability. We were, what, sixteen? I felt I could get into serious trouble with you. It was a bit tantalizing."

"I was not brave or daring, Jonah. The only times I was brave or daring were with you," I said, unable to look him in the eyes. I felt his hand on my elbow and he pulled me gently down, nudging me to sit down next to him, against the tree trunk.

"That's it, maybe then. We became friends because we were brave together."

"Is cumming together inside some jock's gym bag bravery?"

"I think it is," Jonah pondered seriously. "Somehow. But it's interesting because we both chose Todd Reilly's bag instantly, without consulting or throwing other ideas around. I knew you were, well, angry at him and I knew you'd like the idea of defiling his stuff."

"Again with the anger?"

"Why did you hate Todd?"

"You're a bit full of shit, Jonah," I said, trying to keep a light tone.

"Why?"

"You chose Todd Reilly's bag because you had a bit of a boy crush on the dude."

"I did?" Jonah laughed.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Besides me, he was the one you felt most competitive with in sports. And you always dated the girls he was interested in or the girls who had dumped him. I think you wanted to fuck his gym bag for the same reason you wanted to fuck his girlfriends, because that was the closest thing you'd get to fucking him."

The silence didn't last more than a few seconds before we both burst out laughing. Jonah placed a hand on my thigh as he was trying to catch his breath.

"I see," he said. "So why did you chose Todd Reilly's bag? Same reason?"

"No, quite the opposite actually. I'd had had two fingers up Todd Reilly's ass and his eager mouth on my cock, but he acted like a dick thereafter."

"You what? Are you shitting me?" Jonah gaped.

"I'm not. I never told you because I knew it'd be weird. Since, you know, you had a crush on that dumb jock." We both laughed again, the weed providing the lightness this conversation needed.

"What do you mean he acted like a dick, by the way? Fuck, I can't believe this."

"He wasn't all no-homo, not exactly. He suggested, a couple of days later, that we grab some food together. I was expecting McDonalds or something, but he took me to this fancy place and ordered for us stuff with names I hadn't even heard back then. Then he said we'd split the bill. Of course, I did not have near that kind of money, on me or at all. So he said he'd loan me the money and I could just pay him back. I never did and we never really spoke again."

I had barely spoken a few minutes, but felt exhausted and upset.

"And you're still denying anger?" Jonah asked softly, with a hint of a smile. When I didn't answer, he lay on the grass, his head on my lap. "Isn't it fucked up though? I mean, we think we do things innocently and spontaneously. But if you think about it, and assuming what you're saying is right about me having a crush on Todd Reilly, so I was hooking up with these girls because I wanted to hook up with him, you hooked up with him because you wanted to hook up with me and you knew I wanted to hook up with him, he hooked up with you maybe because he knew you and I wanted to hook up with each other, and we both jizzed inside his gym bag because... well, it's getting confusing."

"I never said I wanted to hook up with you."

"You kind of implied it."

"And Todd hooked up with me because he wanted fingers up his ass and a cock in his mouth. I don't think his motives were much more intricate than that."

"Still."

"Are you seriously puzzling out loud about hidden motivations behind sex, Jonah? You're not that thick."

"Be nice, buddy. I am stoned, a bit, and yes, I'm kind of seeing the absurdity of it all. Do we ever stuff our dicks inside someone just and only because we like that person?"

"You're the married guy. You should know the answer to this."

"I like stuffing my dick inside someone because I like the guy I am when I do," Jonah said as if some truth had just revealed itself to him. I didn't tell him I was angry at how stupid and crass his statement was. "Fuck man," he said, changing subject and tone, "we should have taken some beer with us. Not just this joint. I'm parched."

"So you've dealt with your anger?" Jonah asked airily as we walked back to the house.

"Please cut it out, Jonah. It's tiresome. And I don't want to talk about myself anymore."

"It's not about you, not just," he said, pacing ahead slightly. "It's about us. Were you ever angry at me back then? Are you now, years later?"

I was facing his back, his striding legs, his tight ass. I didn't answer. Jonah stopped abruptly and turned around.

"Are you okay with me having sex with guys? With Dan?"

These were two different questions, with potentially different answers, but I wasn't going to delve into subtleties.

"Of course, I am, Jonah. As long as you're being honest with me, we're good."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

I passed by him to resume our walking. "It means what it means, Jonah."

We were silent the rest of the walk. When we reached the pool, I started to take off my clothes to take a quick, chilling swim. I saw the look on Jonah's face, he was upset, a little dejected and lost.

"You want to dip in too?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Fuck you and your honesty, Nathan."

"Excuse me?"

He stepped forward, making a slow, resolute way towards me. I was naked and he was dressed, but he looked hurt and powerless.

"Why do you expect from me things you're not man enough to be yourself? Honesty? Seriously? You've spent years hiding your sexuality. You're still keeping from me all these things from the past. You have secret boyfriends and secret lovers. You never share what the fuck is going on in your head. You lie to everybody, you always have. Fuck, Nathan, you've spent the last twenty years never really saying how you actually feel about me. And you're asking for honesty? Fucking hypocrite."

What followed was blurry. I hit Jonah. I was conscious enough to know exactly how to hit him, where it hurt but doesn't show real bruise, a quick light hit on the waist before a real strong knock on his temple. He quivered and faltered, fell on the floor, almost fell in the pool. The skin on his legs may have been scratched by the stone tiles. I briefly thought that some traces of this moment might after all be visible when morning would come. I darted inside the house, ran up the stairs. I was thinking of grabbing my things and getting the fuck away, but I realized I had nowhere to go and that, if I had, no way to take me there. A cab, maybe? I picked up my phone and the unsent text to Dan appeared when I turned it on. I pressed send. Then cursed myself, then screamed, a brief, deep howl. And I smashed the lampshade.

I sat on the floor and took a deep breath. I realized I was naked, alone in a dark room. I realized what I had done. I stood up and went to the windows. Jonah was sitting by the pool, his feet dipped in the water, a beer in his hand. I grabbed my cigarettes from my bag and went downstairs.

Once outside, I lit a cigarette and picked up my jeans.

"Stay naked," the voice of Jonah commanded. I looked at him, but he was facing away, towards the hills.

I slowly dropped the jeans, grabbed an ashtray and a beer, and went to sit by him, but not next to him.

"Maybe we should just hike, drink, eat and jerk off," he said, looking at his wriggling toes in the water. "That seems to work better for us."

I extended my cigarette for him to take a drag, the only peace offering I had at hand.

"Jesus, Nathan, you fucking hit me," he grunted, ignoring my gesture.

"What do you want from me, Jonah?"

"What do I want?"

"Yes. You have me tonight. My body, my cock, my mouth, my ass, whatever. They're here. What do you want to do?" My stare was icy and he looked down, a little defeated, a little puzzled. "Or would you rather talk? You just said you didn't, but maybe you do. I don't think I can talk about my anger, as you call it, and I'm not sure I can talk about us, about how I feel towards you, how I've felt about you all these years. Because I don't care. Not anymore, not enough. But you are my friend and I'm here for you if you're going through some shit. And you are fucking hot, and you are always horny, so I'm here for you too, because even if I'm not horny as often as you are, I can always have sex. I can get hard and I can make you hard. I can make you cum big time and I can squirt a big load almost every time because, I don't know, I've got overactive balls, churning sperm like crazy. I can milk it for you, I can drench you. Whatever you think might be hot or fun or vile or filthy. I could fuck you too and I think you'll like it, I'm sure you'll like it, if you're ever able to get to like the person you are when you have my eight inches stuffed up your hole, your legs spread in the air, or your ass up as you're squirming like a bitch in heat begging to be seeded. Or I-"

"Shut up," he grunted and I noticed the bulge of an erection in his shorts.

I stood up and paced around, smoking and drinking.

"Does your leg hurt?" I asked, when I saw a little blood below his knee.

"My head fucking hurts, you fucking animal."

I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray and finished the beer.

"Were you lusting after Dan because he was mine?" Jonah suddenly asked.

"What?"

"I saw how you looked at him the night we went out together. At that lame club. Your claws were out."

I didn't want to remind him that Dan wasn't his, because it'd have sounded petty. I didn't want to deny my attraction for Dan, because I did owe him some truth if I was to resent his own lies.

I sat back down, close to him. "What I felt for Dan had nothing to do with you," I said, truthfully, actually becoming sure about that question which had occasionally nagged me.

"Did you guys ever get together? Did you guys fuck?", the possibility suddenly dawning on him.

"No," I said, choosing to answer his second question, deciding that his first was none of his business. I did not owe him that much truth.

"Do you want to?" he asked, calmer but resolute.

"What?"

"Fuck him."

"I don't know. Yes, because he's hot. But what drew me to him most had nothing to do with sex."

"His inner beauty?" he sniggered.

"Sure."

"Which you saw by talking to him for, like, five minutes, and watching him dance shirtless in that stupid gay club."

"I don't think he was actually shirtless on that dance floor. But it's interesting that this is how you remember it."

"Or that you were so engrossed with his intellect that you fail to see his naked chest," he joked, finally lightening the mood a bit. "Go grab the lube," he then said, looking up at the starry night. "It's in my kit, in the bathroom."

"You brought lube, huh?"

"Just go and bring it back," he said suddenly cold again. "You said we could do whatever I wanted. Well, I don't want your cock up my ass, but I want to jack off."

When I came back, he was standing by the pool, waiting, naked, with his cock already half hard. He had turned off all the lights. Only the moonshine and the pool lights were helping me to see. I handed him the KY bottle.

"Lie down," he commanded, nodding at the space by his feet.

I did, a bit uncertain at first, then willing to go along with whatever he had in mind. As I lowered myself to the floor, I realized I had gotten very drunk.

Jonah squatted next to me and squeezed some lube on my limp cock. He spread it gently all over its shaft, which hardened almost instantly with the cool liquid and the touch of his wiggling fingers. He pulled down my foreskin and poured a little more lube directly on the head, which he grazed with the tip of his index, before grabbing the shaft and giving it more vigorous tugs.

When I was fully hard, he stood back and retreated a couple of steps.

"Jack off for me," he huskily whispered, and he squeezed some lube on his own, already hard cock.

He was a dark mass of flesh and muscles, towering over me, backlit by the moon.

I slowly jerked my dick, pulling and tugging, changing hands, my back bucking, my legs squirming. It was hard to lose myself in the act, I was consciously giving him a performance, but I was hard as rock nonetheless and he was breathing very loudly, his hand moving fast.

"Fuck," he groaned. "You're so..." I couldn't quite hear his last word. He stepped back even further and I tried to picture what he was looking at. A man squirming naked on the tiled floor, in the dark of the night, by a lit pool, grabbing and tugging furiously at his sloppy hard cock. Or was he watching Nathan having a wank? Which Nathan?

Jonah kept grunting inaudible words which sounded dirty, his knees dropping every once in a while, his back arching and bending, his other hand cupping and lifting his balls. I wished I could see him more clearly, I was starting to, as my eyes were now adjusting to the obscurity, I wished I could see clearly Jonah having a wank. Which Jonah?

The he abruptly stepped towards me, grunting louder, dropping on his knees right next to me. His words were now audible. "You want that load, don't you? You want that fucking load? You want to gag on it, you want to be fucking drenched with my cum, don't you?"

I closed my eyes just in time, before he sprayed all over my face. The jets of cum hit me hard on the forehead, nose, cheeks, lips, chin. Everywhere. They started to drip down to my ears and neck while some cum was still being squirted out, more feebly, landing in my hair. I felt Jonah rubbing his cock across my face, smearing and spreading the pools and drops of his warm semen.

I increased my jerking pace to bring me to climax but he grabbed the hand on my cock and stilled it.

"We're not done," he whispered. "I got another load coming. And I want to take my time for this one."

I opened my eyes carefully, they seemed to have been miraculously unsoiled. I saw Jonah leaning down, apparently to kiss me. I wiped some cum of my cheek with a hand then stuck my fingers inside his mouth. He startled a bit. "Lick me clean," I said.

He was still panting as he lapped my face like a dog, taking surprising care to lick every drop of his cum from my face.

He looked a little disoriented when I stood up and dragged him towards one of the loungers. I sat him down and briskly thrust my cock in his mouth. He grabbed it with both hands and started to feast on it. He was excellent at sucking cock, I thought once again. And once again, I thought about all the cocks Jonah may have gorged on for all I knew, in his car, in bathrooms, at home, in the woods, in the backrooms of seedy clubs.

True to his words, he was hard again within a minute and slowly jerking his dick, which looked already chafed and reddened underneath the moisture of the lube.

I tried to face fuck him, but I sensed he wasn't willing to let me take control. He grabbed and stilled my waist, but my hand gripped the back of his head and pushed it to swallow me whole. He lay on the lounger, I straddled him and pushed my cock back down his throat. I tried to grip his wrists, but he resisted. But I clearly felt he enjoyed his resistance, he enjoyed our wrestling for control. And so we wrestled for control. I forced my dick inside his mouth from every angle possible, he gagged and coughed and groaned before pushing me out and taking me back in with his hand firmly gripping my shaft.

Then I turned around and stuffed my ass right on his mouth and nose. He became very still, I stopped moving too. Then I felt his tongue lightly licking my hole, then prodding gently, then lapping furiously. I lowered myself and put his cock in my mouth. His whole body squirmed and his tongue darted deeper and faster in my ass. I grabbed the lube from the floor and applied a copious amount on my fingers. I smeared his hole wet, then spread his cheeks briskly, blew on his anus and watched it writhe.

I raised my ass so that I could insert my dick back in his mouth and I slowly pushed my index in his hole. It went it easily, so easily that I added a second and a third finger.

Jonah felt like he was suffocating on my dick, but when I tried to pull out his mouth clawed me back in. I increased the speed of my fingers, spread them inside, felt the space that could be so welcoming for a cock.

His muffled moans were becoming louder and suddenly, a "fuck me!" shout, plaintive and pleading, was distinctly heard. And these two words gorged my dick thicker and harder, and despite all my efforts not to, I started to cum gushingly in his mouth.

Jonah choked on my cum and pushed me roughly away, to spit in his hands, to cough and catch his breath. I sat on the floor, next to the lounger, panting heavily. I turned and watched him stare haggardly, his eyes wide open, his mouth gaping. Then he lifted slowly, mechanically, his hand towards his mouth and hungrily licked my cum off it. He was going to take a second lick when he realized I was watching him, when he snapped back to reality. He looked away briskly and wiped the rest of his hand on his thigh.

He stared at me then tenderly whispered "Kiss me", making clearer his intent than at his earlier attempt.

"My fingers stink of your ass, my face is covered in dried cum and your mouth is rank with jizz and lube. I don't think kissing is really a good idea."

I saw in his eyes, dismayed and wounded, that my rejection and my disgust may have hurt him more than my earlier hitting.

I stood up and jogged to the pool. I jumped and dove, and in this one second when my body touched neither ground nor water, I wished for Dan to fall with me.

*         *       *

The bed Jonah and I shared was large enough for two tall guys not to have to touch much. I pretended to fall fast asleep, but my head was thumping with a drunken headache. Jonah was immobile next to me, but I knew his sleep breathing enough to know that he was still half-awake too. I heard him whisper "I fucking hate you".

I tossed and turned the whole night. I thought about Dan most of my waking moments. I thought there were no lies with Dan. I could like the person I am when I am with him. I could like the person I am if I'd be inside him.

*         *       *

I was awaken by the pinging of my phone. The alarm clock indicated 11:04am and Jonah's side of the bed was empty. I reached for my phone. Message from Dan.

Getting on the bike now. On my way.

My head felt dizzy. What the fuck did I do? I vaguely saw a flash of me sending him the address, but couldn't quite remember when I had done such idiotic, selfishly crass deed. This changed everything. This was messed up. This was real. Dan was on his way. I figured a bike wouldn't take much longer to get here than a car, probably even a little faster. I remembered a cluster of Harleys passing us on the motorway with noisy and rough elegance. He might be here a little after 12.

I slowly and painfully extricated myself out of bed, I put on some jeans and my t-shirt from the previous night. My skin smelled of chlorine and of the musk of a sleeping man. It smelled of Jonah too, I thought, but discarded the notion.

I noiselessly climbed down the stairs and found Jonah making breakfast.

"Hey," he said levelly, not helping me gaging his mood.

"Hey."

"You look like shit."

"You're as hot as ever, man," I cracked a smile, testing the waters.

"Coffee?" was he all said.

"Loads."

He poured me a mug and handed it to me. I felt like hugging him, like saying I was sorry but knew my drive for contrition had as much to do with lightening up the mood as it had with genuine remorse. I just placed my hand on his shoulder instead, when I said "Thanks." He didn't recoil.

I saw today's paper on the kitchen table.

"How early did you get up?" I asked.

"A while ago. Maybe 8:30. I drove to the village, got us some fruit. And the paper. I know you like your news with your coffee in the morning."

I turned towards him, hoping to be in time to catch his expression, but he was busy slicing a mango.

"Thanks," I repeated and stepped outside.

I stopped before laying on the lounger closest to me. It was the one where Jonah lay the previous night, where I force fed him my cock and my ass. Where I failed to fuck him and declined to kiss him. The lube bottle was still next to it, as a discreet but snarky reminder of the ugliness of last night.

I sat down and drank some coffee. It jolted my brains nicely.

There was no point in telling Jonah about Dan's impending arrival. He'd find out soon enough. He'll probably be glad, a little thrilled. We'll just have to explain, we'll figure something out. When Dan and I were on, we were good. I will have to let Dan speak, however. What could I possibly say? I brought you a surprise? I didn't want to give Dan as a sexual offering, to hand him over as a cheap trick toy boy.

I heard Jonah walking over. He pulled the other lounger to move it closer to mine, then dragged a small table where he dropped the plate with the mango. He went back inside and brought his coffee mug and his iPad. He dropped heavily in front of me and stared at me. I stared back.

"How do we get over shit like this?" he asked.

I pondered his question and said "I don't know."

"It could have been nice. Simple. Hot."

"Really?"

"Yes. Why not?" he said casually, blowing on his coffee.

"I'm not sure sex was ever simple between us, Jonah. It could once have been nice and hot. Maybe that ship has sailed."

"Bullshit."

"We barely know how to be friends anymore, Jonah."

"Bullshit," he said again, though less convincingly. He lay back and ostensibly started to read his iPad. I did the same, but handed him over the business section of the paper.

"You're keeping sports to read first? Some things never change," he smirked.

We were idle for an hour, slowly emptying the pot of coffee Jonah had brewed, eating all the mango and some of the grapes he had bought too. It was getting really hot by midday and I was feeling edgy, expecting Dan to appear any minute.

"Okay, it's much too hot to be wearing these clothes," Jonah said. He undressed and jumped in the pool. There would be no swim trunks this weekend, it appeared. "Come on in, Nathan, it feels really good," he said when he emerged. I followed suit and dove naked in the chill water.

We both swam some laps in opposite directions, passing each other by every time we reached the middle of the pool. After a few minutes, he jumped on me, tried to playfully drown me, grabbed my shrunk dick and patted my ass. "Why do you turn me on like this?" he mumbled through his teeth.

I got out of the pool and sat on my lounger, watching him pulling himself out of the water. He had an erection and looked a little prouder for it.

"We should go for a run," he said. "Get rid of the toxins."

Was it better for Dan to arrive and find us, or for us to come back later and find him here? I couldn't tell.

"Let's."

I texted Dan when I changed. You're stepping into hell. Are we going to kiss or not?

We ran for an hour under the midday sun, which was moronic and painful. We had to stick to the road, not being familiar enough with the area to find jogging tracks or to venture out.

I felt exhausted and broken when we reached back the gate. We walked, panting heavily, to the house, and I didn't see or hear any signs of Dan. It must have been 1:30pm by then. He should have been there an hour ago. I checked my phone. No replies, no updates, no ETA. He wasn't coming, he had read my text, he had changed his mind. Relief crept in, just before panic, then grief. I will not see him again. I had to run to bathroom and vomited in the toilet.

*         *       *

When Dylan got out of jail, having served his full two-year sentence, he wrote me a long letter. An actual letter, paper and ink. I'm guessing and hoping you're still at the same address. Stay put and they'll find you, they say.

His seething resentment towards society hadn't abated. Two years. Two full years. I'm not much into "good behavior". At least that's one thing The System and I agree on. He ranted and vented, for the most part. They get away with anything, we don't. Some parts were largely unintelligible. I don't have a Body, They took it away, but I'm here and out there and They can't take it away, my Body, your Body Nate, fuck them, Nate, because Yes Yes Yes you and I. A whole page was about the secrets I had shared with him, but my own story, my past and my present, seemed to have mutated with the time he spent losing his mind in jail, as if the rot and mold I imagined in his cell had cultivated strange bacteria coloring, blossoming and putrefying his reality and mine. What He did to you, to your beautiful youth because you are so beautiful and young and you were so so so young and beautiful, and Fuck them and fuck Him. Listen to me, please listen to me, you're better than that, than Them and They. You found the way, Nate, you did. You're there and here. You know. You know how. You made it. They can get anyway with anything, but so can you. We're not like the rest of them, you're not like the rest of them. Always told you so. Because I know. I can see. Fight and fuck, I did. Stride, stride, fly, you did. You are you, my friend. You fly and you fly.

I flew and I flew, he'd said, yet I had stayed put indeed, and his letter had found me. For fifteen years, I have stayed put.

*         *       *

Jonah showered first, while I lay in bed, struggling to stay awake. I was physically and emotionally battered, I knew. I tried to let the soft noise of the running water, hitting and cascading along Jonah's naked body to soothe me. I used to have a thing about Jonah showering, when we were younger. He did too; actually, he did first. We were seventeen, we had come back to his place after soccer practice and his house was empty. I was taking a shower in his older brother's bathroom and when I turned around, I saw Jonah leaning against the sink, watching me. Feeling caught, he pretended to clip his fingernails. Then he dropped the pretense and just watched me, peppering the moment with bits of banter. I wasn't exactly sure what he saw, what he liked seeing, but I noticed his growing erection.

It gave me license to watch him myself, a couple of weeks later, in similar circumstances. The sight was beguiling. Jonah's body was perfect, of course, but there was something more. Something so intimate, so private. You could jerk off with a buddy, ejaculate together, share fabricated secrets and extravagant, revealing fantasies, but you still cannot fully access the person that your buddy is, the person he is when you're not there, the person who actually, physically, will never belong to you. The Jonah I jacked off with treated his cock with proud, almost theatrical veneration, the Jonah in the shower lifted briskly his ball sack to rub soap on his scrotum.

Domesticity did give you more access, I would later find out. But with access come all sorts of quandaries.

When I came downstairs, Jonah had split in two large bowls a quinoa salad he had bought at the deli that morning. He was walking around in white briefs, tight and crisp. He nudged me outside and we ate in silence, under the shading patio.

"We need a nap," he said as he finished his meal.

"What time is it?"

"It's 2:30."

Dan is not coming. I kept reminding myself that it was a good thing, that his sudden, unexpected presence would have been awkward, potentially disastrous. That Dan and I only existed in a bubble, ephemeral and fragile, a bubble which had likely and wisely be pierced by the sound of Dan's motorbike just before he was about to exit the city, just when he realized the pointlessness of it all.

I cleared the table and put everything in the dishwasher. When I came back out, Jonah was watching the surface of the pool, naked and still.

I took off my clothes and went to lie on one of the loungers.

The sun was blinding me a little, but I could see the shape of his body turning around and stepping slowly towards me.

"So, last night, what was that all about?" he asked casually.

I looked at the red scratches below his knee. I wasn't sure which part of last night he was referring to, and wasn't inclined to discuss either. Yet I had to give in a little.

"It was just sex, Jonah. Drunken sex. Not always a good idea."

"Right." There was something menacing in his tone, but as he came closer and I could see him clearly, there was also lust in his eyes.

He sat down across me and, extending his right leg, placed his big foot on my crotch. I leaned back on my hands, my arms straightened, and I looked at him. He may have seen me as defiant or expectant, I wasn't sure. I was nervous. My cock was responding to his foot's fondling.

"So, do you like it rough, then?" he said, smirking.

"Sex?"

"Yeah."

"Last night was not rough sex, Jonah," I said, trying not to sound condescending.

"I know. But is that how you like it? Is that how you really get off? All that anger. Do you bottle it up and unleash it on an eager ass?"

His toes were playing with my cock head, pushing it back and forth and sideways.

"Dan likes it rough, if you want to know," Jonah continued.

"I don't want to know," I said, trying to flail away any image of Dan.

"Bear with me nonetheless. Dan likes it rough. He's quite the filthy little slut, you know," he said, almost salivating. His hand reached his own cock and started to distractedly fondle it. "You saw him all cocky, all mister fucking charming. You should see him in bed. Filthy little slut. He told me a couple of things he likes to get into. And you can just tell he is a wild, filthy little slut."

Patrick would invite random guys to fuck me, Dan had said.

"You should see him," Jonah continued, his eyes fixed on his foot wrestling with my now hard cock, "you should see him in bed. He can become a bundle of meat, which you have to pound hard. And pound and pound and pound. A bundle of meat you can thrash around, and he's begging and groaning for more."

Patrick would invite random guys to fuck me, to pound me.

"Or he can turn all nasty and brisk. I told you, it's like he demands to get fucked. So you need to shut him up by fucking him harder, by assaulting his hole, by battering his ass."

Patrick would invite random guys to fuck me, to pound me, to violate me.

"Why are you telling me this?" I finally asked, attempting to shut him up.

"Because it turned me on, it really turned me on. And I was wondering whether it'd get you hard too. And I have my answer," he smiled, pressing his big toe against the pulsing base of my cock.

I had once told Dan I was thinking about, one day, bringing ten guys, or twenty guys, and have them fuck you, one by one. I'd be next to you, the whole time, I'd be kissing you, holding you. And Dan had looked down and had just said "I see."

"Is that why you were so hung up on him?" I asked, a little snarky.

"I'm not hung up on him," he said defensively. I saw him eyeing the lube on the ground and guessed he decided against having to move his foot from my cock. He smeared the tip of my dick with my own precum instead, using the flat of his foot. "I just liked fucking him. I really did. You have no idea. I felt brutal and powerful and I liked it. It's nothing to do with anger. I fucked him like an animal."

"So you've said."

"It's fucking ... liberating. You know?"

I didn't. Not really. Not the way he seemed to mean it. Not the way, his limited, privileged, entitled, narcissistic mind seemed to mean it.

Dylan was one of the guys I had fucked the hardest. Breaking-furniture hard, sore-ass-for-three days hard. But the ferocity was elated, almost joyful. Dylan would burst out laughing, in surprise, in awe, in pain, in amazement. My eyes were sparkly with wonder and near transcendence when I would slam my cock so hard inside him that I thought I'd shatter all my pelvic bones. We were animals, perhaps, though I've never seen animals fuck the way we did. It was special. I felt special, arguably, more special than Jonah ever succeeded in making me feel with the past theatrics of our unique friendship. I felt special, briefly, sporadically, with Dylan. Then he went mad.

I broke furniture and damaged asses with plenty of other guys. But there had been no laughter, no joy. You could feel these guys loosen up, testing your willingness to abuse them. Some of them went straight for it. It could always suggest the promise of intense masculine bonding, of rough physical comradery. But it invariably turned into a nauseating power play, where the guy abandoned himself in the hollowness of his self-hatred. They begged or screamed or cried or grunted for me to fuck their worthlessness. They licked and slurped cum with as much thirst as they do insults and degradation. They were weak. They wanted a beast, and they easily found one in me. It didn't bother them that I'd lose all respect or regard for their humanity. They wanted to be slapped by my spite, loathing and revulsion. And we all found gratification in the end: my cock fucked them into punishment for relishing in their weakness, for not knowing what being a victim truly was, my cock squirted out gallons of tears of my frustration, of my resentment, of my impatience, of my disappointment. Maybe I was mad. Maybe I just didn't see it, I just didn't get it.

Maybe I should feel excitement at banging Dan the filthy little slut, the excitement which was clearly irradiating Jonah's eyes.

"We should have had a threesome," he said. "I told you we should have. I mean, imagine that. Pretty explosive. The three of us... Boom!"

He lifted my foot from the ground and placed it on his own cock, rubbed his dick up and down, pressed hard. His cock felt very warm against the sole, very slimy too. I suddenly felt exhausted by being turned on by Jonah.

I removed my foot and stood up. Jonah was startled that I had broken the sequence he had clearly in mind. A sequence very much predictable: we'd talk a little more about sex, probably about the extraordinary feat that is Dan's asshole, then he'd say he wanted to suck my cock, then I'd cum in his mouth, then he'd jerk himself off. Maybe he'd cum on his feet – he used to love that when we were teenagers, he would often aim at his feet, at the burgeoning hair sprouting on them.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm getting a cigarette. And a glass of water," I said without turning back, my erection deflating with every step I made.

"What the fuck, Nate. Seriously, you're a fucking pain in the ass."

I gulped down a whole glass of water in the kitchen, then went for my phone. No messages. I texted Dan I understand, then deleted it, because it sounded dramatic and lame. I typed

Let's not say goodbye indeed. x B

I went outside to smoke a cigarette, finding a spot out of sight from Jonah. I felt a sense of peace coming back, slowly thawing my wistfulness.

Because I think with my dick. Because despite my big brain, I'm led by my big cock, Dan had once eructated.

Had Dan's big cock led him to kick start his bike or to turn around somewhere on the way?

"I'm a little mad, Nathan."

Jonah seemed to have stayed frozen since I had left him ten minutes earlier, having pressed the pause button on his frustration and resentment. Jonah had always been terrible at dealing with blue balls.

"Please, Jonah. Just chill," I said, lying down, so ready for a nap.

"You gays are just so...," he seethed between his teeth, trying to make himself comfortable too.

I laughed, but it didn't seem to calm his quiet rage.

I closed my eyes and quickly felt my body drop and finally fall deep, so deep, into sleep.

*         *       *

"Hello boys."

There had been a big splash of water, I thought. But it could have been in my dream, my convoluted dream of houses in the woods, of nights, of sharks, of ferries, of Dan. But it must have been an actual splash of water, right there, in our pool. And it was Dan, it was his voice, chirpy, flirtatious, playful.

I couldn't quite open my eyes, I couldn't quite lift myself out of the oppressing fog. I did try, but failed, to make sense of the sounds and noises that followed. Jonah's voice. Awkward. Angry.

I did open my eyes. Shut them straight back closed. Too much sun. I opened them again, taking in my surroundings. Dan was here. I knew I had to wake up, to respond and mitigate the apparent tension, the faint violence in the air. I scanned around and saw a bundle of clothes. I glanced at Dan, the slight turn of my head aching badly. He was naked, in the pool. The clothes were his. A shirt, rolled socks, tight-looking shorts, a jock. Cycling. He had been fucking cycling. Getting on the bike now. On my way. Dan didn't have a motorbike, I would have known, I should have known. The guy biked here, cycled all the way here. What a crazy fucker. Crazy charming fucker. I felt submerged by affection, I almost choked on fondness for the little fucker, the crazy charming little fucker. I wanted to rise, to jump on him, to hug so fucking tight, to kiss him like he'd kissed me once, to tell him things. To laugh and to tell him things. To smile and kiss him. To fuck him like I might finally know how to. I wanted to get rid of Jonah, to eject him, discard him, erase him, so that he didn't spoil everything, soil and ruin everything that could happen if Dan and I were finally alone, completely fucking alone.

I snapped out of it. I awoke as Dan's body was suddenly thrown down on the empty lounger. Dan himself was still. I had heard him babbling but he was now silent. Jonah had his foot on the small of Dan's back, pinning him down. Dan's ass looked like it lifted itself up in the air, organically, as the flower opens up to the morning sun.

"Swimming naked, are we slut?" Jonah grunted, visibly excited.

Dan likes it rough. He's quite the filthy little slut, you know.

"You don't get to talk shit about my wife", Jonah spitted. What the fuck had Chloe to do with this? With Dan?

"Got it?" Jonah blurted.

A violent slap on Dan's ass, then another.

It's like he demands to get fucked.

Jonah shifted position, he was an animal, he was liberated. Dan didn't look at me. He didn't fight back. He was letting Jonah use him, he was letting Jonah do to him what Jonah needed to do to feel powerful and brutal, to like the person he was.

Or he was letting Jonah do to him what Jonah possibly had wanted me to do to him last night, what lust and drunkenness had allowed him to demand from me.

There was more slapping, more grunting.

So you need to shut him up by fucking him harder, by assaulting his hole, by battering his ass.

They were gone, both of them. I was now awake, fully awake. Back to reality, back to men as I knew them, as I fucked them and lied to them and gave them what they wanted.

I had no idea what Dan wanted. But the husky, arousing suggestion I had once made to him morphed into a promise I now wanted to deliver on. I stood up and stepped towards Dan, I kneeled beside him. And as a feral Jonah pummeled his ass, I took his hand in mine and squeezed tenderly.

// Dan

As the sun beat down on my back, I knew I had to think fast – but think of what I was less sure. The vicious ransacking I'd just received had confirmed for me that I was a fantasy object for Jonah, that it wasn't and perhaps never had been about me. From what he'd just done, Jonah obviously thought that this gave him the upper hand in whatever we had between us: but he was wrong. No one expects their sex toy to fuck back.

I slowly, carefully turned over and disguised my discomfort by adopting what extensive research in online hook-up apps had shown was my bestselling pose. I lay back in the lounger, and folded my right hand behind my head, exposing my sweaty pit to the late afternoon light. My right foot was planted on the ground, letting my right thigh muscle tense up and highlight the muscular ridge along its length. My left foot balanced on the edge of the lounger, folding my left leg out into a v-shape, and making my cycle-toned calf bulge, with my left hand resting on my splayed knee. My half-hard cock nestled in my neatly trimmed pubes, laying down the middle of my balls. From the pool, I hoped I looked irresistibly delectable; Hockney eat your heart out.

"Well good afternoon to you, too!"

"And I didn't even get a scream", Jonah mock pouted.

"I'm not a porn star, baby" I purred back, adopting a high-pitched American voice on the last word.

"Could've fooled me"

"Slut shaming is so not cool"

"Shut up, or you'll get a cock down your throat"

"Ooh, I thought you'd never ask"

Jonah made to heave himself out of the pool, and Nathan pulled him back down, muttering something I didn't quite catch. Jonah whipped his head back towards his friend, and look of anger briefly crossed his features before he faced me again. "I'll bank it for later". I made a comedy phone gesture with my hand and mouthed "call me". Invisible to Jonah, Nathan rolled his eyes.

"You've made me hungry, slut" Jonah declared, before paddling over to the stairs at the end of the pool. He climbed out of the pool, and stepped over towards where the pile of my clothing lay. Jonah stopped in front of the pile, and then used his foot to flick the pile into the pool. "You won't be needing those", he declared, and then bent slightly to pick up a towel off the back of the other lounger. Wrapping it around his shoulders, he wandered off back towards the house, with a "See you inside, boys".

While my clothes slowly took on water and began to sink, Nathan hauled himself out of the pool. I broke my pose, and relaxed back onto the lounger, and he came toward me to retrieve his towel. Leaning down to get it from behind my head, he whispered into my ear, "I'm glad you came". I turned my head towards his, and smiled – "I haven't cum yet", I whispered back. Nathan exhaled, shook his head slightly, and went to move it away, but I stalled him with a soft "hey". He looked back at me.

I slid my hand up across Nathan's neck and rested in on the back of his head. Deciding that Jonah was far enough away, or perhaps not caring much either way, I pulled Nathan's head towards me. His bright red lips were transfixing, and his musky scent combined with the sharp tang of chlorine was filling my nose, overrunning my brain. I placed my mouth on his, and kissed him delicately on the lips. The dam was broken. Simultaneously, we started to consume each other; Nathan gripping my left pec to steady himself. I felt my cock jump to an extreme hardness, and my still-gaping hole tingled. A heat washed across my body, as electricity passed back and forth between us.

Too soon, Nathan broke away. He straightened up. He rested his hand on the top of my head. He said nothing. He walked away toward the house. I sat on the lounger, staring off into the distance watching the sun slip below the horizon inch by inch. I waited out my rude erection, forcing my mind to wander back into the past.

*       *       *

After Patrick, it had taken me a long time to get back into the saddle. I tried not to let my fragility reach the surface; I threw myself into my work and insulated myself emotionally and sexually. Six months later, when I met a young man whose smile made my mouth instantly dry, I knew my sex drive was back, but I knew some changes would need to be made to keep my fragility at bay. Thereafter, I hit a purple patch of topping: without slipping in to pop psychology, my new identity as a serial one-night-stander seemed more compatible with the active role. I accepted my role without questioning.

Pounding away at a series of interchangeable smooth-skinned, panting young men, indulging the kinks they each brought to the bedroom, I was yelling back at someone who wasn't even listening. "See", I would say as I roughly face-fucked a high school graduate with the bad luck to be on Schoolies in Brisbane, "I can get my freak on as well". When I walked out his apartment, leaving him with tears running down his face and coughing up a mix of phlegm and cum, I was engaged in a furious dialogue in my head, ranting that two can play at this game, that he's not the only one who can use sex to rip apart instead of to come together.

Until I met a man called Jonah in a bar who told me what he wanted and what I would have to do to have it, I didn't realise how much I was stuck in my head. When I got out of his SUV, he had picked me up, thrown me over his shoulder, barged into his house, thrown me down on the bed and begun to kiss, suck and bite all over my body. He had peeled my clothes off, devoured my cock, ran his rough hands all over my upper body, squeezing, pinching, twisting, and finally started to pound me with his own cock. When his firm, relentless thrusts began to hit my prostate, it was if he had found my hard reset button.

I twisted underneath him, my hands started clawing at his skin, I bit down on his perfectly-shaped biceps, I started to pant and moan like so many of my own recent conquests. As I watched a sheen of sweat bloom across his deeply tanned skin, I felt my hips start to buck back and forth, grinding myself on his cock. His hand found my face, and I ran my tongue furiously over the crevasses between his fingers. Two of his fingers found their way into my mouth, and I nursed on them as I would later suckle on his nipples. His fucking was an abnegation: the anxious, breakable man I had been was blasted away and in his place a new self-confident beast appeared.

I reached underneath him and began to massage his load out of Jonah's balls. It didn't take many tugs for his cock to start to expand inside me, and when the first blast of his cum entered me, I realised we hadn't stopped to put on a condom. There were three simultaneous triggers for my own shattering orgasm. Jonah's load began to fill me. He unleashed an animalistic growl that became a howl that vibrated through my head. And I realised that I was being seeded by a man I had met barely an hour earlier. I splattered all over my chest, with one arc of cum even hitting my chin. I felt filled; I felt complete; I felt sated.

The remaining conscious part of my mind told me that I needed to push myself away from Jonah, get out of his house, and get to an emergency room to get some PEP. It might have happened, if he'd moved away. But he collapsed down on top of me, pressing his chest against my own cum-slick skin. His left hand was twisting my hair, his right still gripping my shoulder. I turned my head away from his grasp, and he started flicking my earlobe with his tongue, before lightly nibbling on it. This intimacy, something I'd purposefully been denying myself for the preceding months, overrode my rationality. The delicate flower Dan, the one who'd just been mercilessly plucked from his stem, he would make this moment about panic.

The new Dan, the sexually daring, self-realised Dan, he would make this moment about pleasure. He would turn his head so that Jonah's tongue made contact with his lips instead of his earlobe, and he would kiss Jonah like he was the first man he'd kissed. Their tongues would cross, their mouths would wrestle, and Jonah would – against all the odds – start to harden again before his cock had left this new Dan's ass. This Dan would take the initiative for the first time in their encounter, and slowly turn Jonah onto his back. He would start to rock back and forth almost imperceptibly slowly. He would take Jonah's left nipple into his mouth, and chew on it in time with his rocking, before giving the right nipple the same treatment.

After ten minutes of this entanglement, with Jonah writhing in indistinguishable pain and pleasure, this Dan would know what to do. He would press his forehead against Jonah's, and stare into the older man's eyes. He would let this man see the determination in his eyes. He would let him see that he was going to force this out of him whether he either of them liked it or not. This Dan would place his hand on the back of Jonah's head, and press their face together so that they could each feel the other's laboured breathing on their faces, and that when Dan's unexpected climax arrived minutes later, and a watery, transparent trickle was accompanied by a stifled groan and his sphincter resolutely gripping Jonah's cock and refusing to let go until its painful second load had been expelled. These two would stay locked together, eyes firmly closed, for longer than either could remember.

And because that's who I was now, that was what happened. When I finally rolled off him, Jonah told me I could have a shower but that then I needed to leave. I considered a smart arse response, asking him if he was always this generous, but the doors behind his eyes were closed. Whatever had just happened had definitely finished and I needed to be out of the way. Part of me was sad that I missed watching the water cascade over his beautiful body as he took a shower, or the stolen sniffs of his wife-bought married-man boxers. Another part realised this was the hardened new Dan I had become. He fucks, he washes, he leaves.

I did end up stopping at the emergency room on the way home, my anxiety having got the better of me, but I brazened out the consultation with the night nurse, who honestly couldn't care less who I'd been fucked by and why. This, I reasoned, was me taking care of myself; something I had conspicuously failed to do in the years before this moment. I accepted the starter kit, and made an appointment to come back to the sexual health clinic at a more civilised hour, and all through this and the early morning walk home, I didn't once think of Jonah. All the way home, I was riding the sexual high that he had given me, but I was able to separate out Jonah-the-fuck from Jonah-the-man.

This, of course, didn't last. Jonah started lurking around the fringes of my mind, inserting himself into my consciousness at the most inconvenient of times. As a masturbatory flashback, he certainly served his purpose, but as a constant invitation to break the rules I had so carefully constructed for myself, he was a little more distracting. While his appeals were the standard stuff of thwarted lovers – I have to see you, I need you again; all about him and none about me – they were easy to ignore. When he offered me something I wanted, a chance to feel again the power and the high I'd left that first time, I rolled over without a fight and was sucked hard back into his orbit. Fragile Dan hadn't been quite as comprehensively shattered as I'd hoped.

*       *       *

By the time I stood up from the lounger, I was almost completely dry – a lucky side-effect of having lain there so long, given there were no more towels left outside. I ran my fingers along my crack, and scooped up the last of Nathan's cum that hadn't dried onto my skin. Walking over to the pool, I bent down beside it and ran both of my hands through the water to clean them off. I was tempted to stick my head under the surface too, to shake it about and try to force at least some of the thoughts racing through to settle down in some recognisable pattern. I resisted, and instead headed back up to the house, hoping the now-cool night air on my skin would do some of the work for me.

When I swung open the screen doors, Nathan and Jonah were arranged in a too-perfect tableau – it was obviously they had been talking, most probably about me or something that stemmed from me. The mystery wife? The revelation of Jonah's whoredom? The house looked like the backstage space of a porn studio; clothes and towel were draped everywhere, Nathan was wearing a tight pair of electric blue boxer briefs that highlighted his beefy arse and impressive thighs, and Jonah had a white towel slung low across his hips. looking like it would fall down at the slightest provocation. Into this scene bounded the naked me, the debutante about to be deflowered, the pool boy who'd made a terrible mistake.

"Did someone order a pizza?" I asked, trying to cut through the atmosphere.

"Fuck, I wish", Jonah muttered darkly from the kitchen.

"I thought you said you weren't a porn star", Nathan retorted from the couch.

"You're right; I don't have a pizza. It's just me. Though I could murder a pizza right now", I declared to the room as a whole as I crossed it and flopped down on the sofa that abutted Nathan's.

"That's actually a good idea, Dan", Jonah said, and started rifling through one of the drawers in the kitchen. "Bingo" – he found a menu for a local delivery place, called Giuseppe's because of course.

"What do we want, boys?" Jonah took charge.

"Meat lovers for me", I offered.

Nathan stood up from his couch, and stared daggers at me. "Give it up, Dan. You're being pathetic", he practically spat, before turning on his heel and disappearing up the stairs. I was shocked into silence. The act was mainly for him, after all – at this point, I couldn't care less what Jonah thought of me, but I needed Nathan to know that I was staying for him, that there was still something here for us. If he didn't get that, then I needed to leave and I needed to leave fast. I heard a shower start somewhere upstairs in the house, and realised Jonah had been watching me watching Nathan.

"Don't worry about him", Jonah said. "Major case of blue balls. That's how he gets".

Staring at the ceiling, noticing a cobweb in the ceiling, I heard Jonah order the pizzas to be delivered, and place his phone back on the bench. He padded over towards me, and then tapped my feet to get me to move them. I looked up to see him sit on the couch where my feet had been, and then he grabbed my shins, and stretched my legs back across his towel-covered legs. We were sitting in this comfortable pose on the couch, and his fingers started to dance across my thighs, tugging at the short hairs that covered them.

"I'm glad you're here, Dan"

"Could've fooled me. Not quite the welcome I expected"

"Rest assured not all guests get the royal treatment"

"I should hope not".

Jonah's fingers had found my balls, and started to twirl the clipped hairs that decorated them. It was vaguely uncomfortable, and I was on the point of telling him to stop when he suddenly grabbed my scrotum at the point where it met my body, and pulled my balls hard away from my body. Pain shot through me.

"Owww, Jonah!" My voice was less controlled than I'd hoped it would be.

"So tell me what you're doing with Nathan". His voice remained exactly as playful as before.

"I don't know!"

"I don't believe you", he responded, viciously twisting my balls.

"Well it's true", I stammered, bucking back against the couch. Against my will, to my shame, my cock was starting to harden from this treatment. Jonah changed his tactics and started to crush my balls in his palm.

"Are you fucking?" he demanded.

"No" I spat out; short, sharp, honest.

"Good", he said, dropping my balls. "Don't. Don't get involved. He's more than you can handle"

"I'll be the judge of what I can handle, thanks"

"I'd say I've got a pretty good idea of what you can take, and I'm telling you – back off". Jonah slapped my balls lightly with his hand, and stood up, causing me to spin around into a seated position on the couch. "I'll go get you a shirt or something – you look fucking ridiculous like that". And with that, Jonah too disappeared up the stairs.

That was my moment, and I knew it at the time, too. If ever I was going to leave this fucked-up world behind, that was when it would've had to happen. I was sure I could've found something to wear, even retrieved my soaked jock, and headed off the pizza driver on the road, used my powers of persuasion to convince him to take me into town at least, or somewhere I could get further away. But instead, I did nothing. I sat on the couch, listening to Jonah's footsteps above. I sat on the couch, listening to the shower turn off. I sat on the couch, listening to two sets of steps descend the stairs. Because that was what this Dan would do.

Both of them reappeared wearing work-out gear, as if this was the only casual attire they'd deigned to bring away with them. Jonah was of course the showier of the two, with the deep V of his t-shirt highlighting his sculpted chest, but Nathan still smouldered brighter for me, with less given away. Jonah threw an older t-shirt toward me; several sizes too big for him, it was absurdly large for me. That was the point, I guessed, because it hung down to about half-way down my thighs, and as long as I was seated properly, went some way to hiding my nakedness. Nathan burst out laughing, but before he could comment, the doorbell rang.

"Maybe you should try it out", Jonah said.

"I'm game"

"No", sensible Nathan intervened again and turned on his heel. "I'm going".

"Make sure to invite him in", Jonah shouted after him. We shared a conspiratorial smile.

Moments later Nathan appeared, alone, with three pizza boxes and a case of beer. "Did you order us a pizza each?" he demanded of Jonah.

"Did you not ask the pizza boy in?" was Jonah's rejoinder.

"It was a pizza girl and no, I didn't think anyone else needed to be involved in this insanity. Though she probably could have helped us eat all this pizza"

Heading off what could've turned into another awkward scene, I scooted over towards the pizzas. "Well I for one am ravenous", I declared, grabbing the top box, with its prominent ML written on the side. "I'm gonna eat me some meat".

*       *       *

The rest of the evening unfolded as such evenings do between friends: it was raucous, it was loud, and it was seemingly never-ending. Once they had some food inside them, Jonah and Nathan made an obvious decision to relax back into their friendship, and ensure whatever it was that had come between them earlier in the evening was kept out of the way at least for now. We watched a dreadful action movie on the huge TV, and offered a running commentary on how the plot could be improved – mostly involving the muscle-bound actors fucking immediately, or at the very least rip their shirts off slightly more often than they already did.

Nathan devised a labyrinthine drinking game of which I couldn't remember the rules – although it hardly mattered, given I wasn't drinking alcohol. Jonah was an enthusiastic participant, though, at one point chugging an entire bottle of beer in a ten-second scene, because of the proliferation of the word "dude". It didn't take me long to realise that Nathan wasn't playing by the rules at all, and was plying Jonah with at least twice as much alcohol by arranging his still-full bottles alongside Jonah's empties. By the time the galaxy was saved from its imminent destruction by our band of intrepid straight white men, Jonah was too drunk to even slur the word "drink" in response to the final exclamation of "dude!" before the credits rolled.

It was Nathan who proposed going to bed, and Jonah was in no state to disagree. He did, though, turn to me, and try to explain: "He'ss sssleepping in my b-bed. He'sssss mine". "I know, Jonah", I told him, "sleep tight big man". Nathan carried his friend up the stairs, and I started looking around to see if there was another bedroom – I didn't fancy a night on the awkward leather couches. The whole bottom level was open plan apart from the small toilet that adjoined the pantry, so I soon gathered I would have to head upstairs. Passing the open door of the master bedroom, I could see Jonah protesting as Nathan took his clothes off. Nathan saw me passing in the mirror, and said loudly, "there's a bed next door".

There were in fact two other bedrooms, and I had my eye on the one further away from Nathan and Jonah's room, the one with the single bed. Whatever they were going to get up to, I didn't want any part of it. I sat down on the bed, and almost immediately decided I needed a shower. Before I could make it into the bathroom, Nathan re-emerged. He started at me for a few moments before speaking.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, Nathan"

"It's just – you being here – and him like this – "

"Really, Nathan. I'm fine. I got what I came for".

I saw his eyes widen with what might have been hurt, but before we could continue, Jonah yelled Nathan's name from the bedroom, drawing out the long second a. He smiled apologetically, I nodded my head, and with his disappearance, the pathway to the bathroom was clear. I took a long, cleansing shower, and tried to use the water to drain my mind, else I knew I wouldn't sleep at all. I took my time drying myself, making sure that I'd paid attention to every inch of my body, the body in which I was newly-confident and of which I was proud for the first time in my adult life. I dashed from the bathroom to my bed, and slipped between the crisp sheets without evening turning off the light. I turned my head towards the wall, and closed my eyes.

It took ten minutes for Jonah's volcanic snoring to begin.

It took another twenty minutes for Nathan to slip into my room.

I know, because I was counting every one of them.

Nathan tip-toed into my room, and closed the door softly behind him. "Dan?" he asked, "are you still awake?". With my head turned towards the wall, he couldn't see enough of me to know I was faking it, and he sighed, deeply and unhappily. "How the fuck you can sleep through this, I don't know". I heard him sit down, and felt the weight of his back leaning against the side of the bed. Although it was pitch black in the room, and Jonah was audibly out for the count, Nathan was looking away from me and whispering.

"I'm sorry about this afternoon", Nathan started. "It's not what I thought would happen when I told you we were here – and I should've stopped it". This time, he did stop. He took a deep breath. "Because I care that you're here and, well, more than that, I care for you. And I want you – I want you more than I can say". His voice cracked, and he stopped for a moment. "Seeing Jonah just take you like that, doing things to you that I've dreamed about in the dark, I was disgusted, I was turned on, I was angry, I was sad, I was horned up. And I had to get you alone. But now it's too late". He sighed again, and I heard him stand up. Suddenly, I felt his heat very close to my exposed shoulder blade, and he brushed his lips lightly against me. "Good night, Dan".

With the hand I had above the sheets, I reached out towards Nathan, and pulled whatever part of him was nearest firmly towards the bed. He flopped down onto the bed, and it in turn rolled into the wall – making me suddenly glad I had chosen this room. I pulled the sheet out from underneath him as silently as possible, and then turned towards him and gripped his body, pressing him against me. My right hand snaked across his back and clutched his left shoulder blade, and my left hand circled his right buttock and pulled it into me. I wanted to completely cover myself with him, to make sure that every exposed part of me was touching a part of him.

I rested my head in the exposed hollow of Nathan's collarbone, and began to whisper in his left ear. "I want you, too, Nathan. That's why I'm here. Because I want you to destroy me, and then hold me afterwards. Because I want you to take me seriously as a man at the same time as we fuck like animals. Because you've been so far inside my head that I need you inside my body". As I spoke, I could feel his hardness growing against mine, could feel our cocks starting to slip against each other. Mine was producing an exceptional amount of pre-cum, stored up from our three-week flirtation, and I could feel it begin to throb. "But whatever we do, it has to be slow – and quiet".

With that, I turned my head slowly and began to softly kiss his exposed neck. My kisses gradually became larger, wetter, and I worked my way down to his collarbone, running my tongue across the exposed ridge of bone. He'd showered recently, but it still tasted inescapably of him, of his wooden smell, of the salty tang produced by his skin. In response, Nathan began to bite into the exposed skin of my shoulder, not enough to hurt me but enough to tell me to continue, that this was what he wanted, too. Before long, my mouth was on his nipple, having made its way along the underside of his pec. As I closed my teeth lightly around his nipple, I brought one hand onto his thigh, gripping its tautness, and the other balanced on the front of his shoulder.

Meanwhile, he had placed his hand on my ass, and was slowly cupping and uncupping it. He pulled it apart for a moment, briefly exposing my hole to the night air, and then slapped my buttocks closed again. I slid my tongue across his chest, up his neck and onto his lips, and rearranged my body so he was lying prone on the bed and I could lie directly on top of him. I kissed him feverishly, and he kissed back with equal force, trying to force his tongue into my mouth, biting at my lips, letting one of his hands leave my buttocks in order to press the back of my head onto his face. My cock slid against his hard stomach, and I felt his cock begin to rasp across my ass. We need to slow down if we wanted this to last – but neither of us could.

I'd meant what I'd said just minutes before, and I knew him well enough to know that this was what he wanted too. So when I span around and grabbed his cock with my hand, bringing my mouth down over the head, he prised open my cheeks with reckless abandon. For my part, I took just the head of his cock into my mouth, sucking on it tenderly and swishing my tongue around it, as he started kissing my hole. I let my tongue descend along his shaft, keeping it outside of my mouth for the time being, and closed my eyes with pleasure when he began to run his tongue up and down the length of my crack. When his tongue starting pushing at my hole, I rewarded him by taking his shaft back into my mouth; the first half in one gulp, the second half slowly inch by painstaking inch.

I was continuing in my quest to cover myself in Nathan by squeezing my thighs tight against the sides of his body, and running my hands up and down his thighs as I went further and further down on him. For his part, he had wrapped his hands across my lower back, pressing my down onto him. My chest was grazing the hair on his belly, and I wriggled slightly to rub our hairs together. We continued like this for a few minutes, alternating between the speed that our desire drove us to and the restraint we knew we would need to keep going, until Nathan used his hands to push me off him.

I shuffled across so that I was lying chest down, beside him on the narrow bed. I pointed my face towards him and he turned his head toward mine, bringing his forehead close so I could see the perspiration. "If you want me to fuck you, it's got to be now. We don't have to, but – ". I cut him off. "Fuck me, Nathan. Do it now". I thought I saw him grin in the darkness. He pressed his face into mine, and I tasted myself on his tongue as we kissed. My cock almost erupted then, but I managed to control myself by pushing him away, and then raising my hips off the bed to indicate I wanted to be fucked in this position. Nathan lay down on top of me, gently placing his cock along my crack, and pressing his body against mine from head to toe. He lent into my ear. "Are you sure?" he asked, as he used his hand to position his cockhead on my hole. "Obliterate me", I demanded.

With one arm around my throat so that his bulging bicep was giving me a hint of pain, he pushed his cock into my ass. My whole body shook as he entered, and he steadied me by gripping my tightly to him, and continuing to talk in my ear: "Yes, Dan, yes, this is it, yes". Soon – too soon – he was all the way in. I buried my face in the pillow. His left hand pressed my head down. He drew out slowly, and then unexpectedly plunged back in, still gripping my body to his. I bucked and trembled, but he held me to him. His spare right hand stopped guiding his cock, and instead it gripped my pec hard, kneading my skin and making it burn.

Soon he had a rhythm: a slow, painstaking exit, allowing me miss every bit of his cock as it left me, followed by a swift plow forwards. The effort of maintaining this had caused him to break out in a sweat, and this had bound us still more tightly, my skin felt alive, I felt like I was being fucked in every part of my body. My still-leaking cock was skidding against the bedsheets, and I could feel my pleasure starting to build at its base. As it began to rise, Nathan pulled out slowly and then whispered again – "it's time". He dropped the weight of his upper-body on me, and as it pressed down, his hips rose to take me over the edge.

Nathan started jackhammering me; I lost track of all the thrusts as our bodies slipped across each other, as I turned my mouth to find his mouth, as his fingers scraped across my nipple, as I felt my own orgasm explode and begin to soak the sheet beneath me, as his mouth left mind and bit down on my shoulder blade in the same spot where he'd kissed me earlier, as his cock reached a new, seemingly-impossible thickness it my ass, as his load jetted out of his cock still buried inside me, as I felt the warmth of his cum begin to fill me, as the three weeks of flirtations, of smiles, of kisses, of highs, of lows, of fights, of hurt, resolved into this single moment of two men entwined together, their bodies sated and their minds at rest.

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