What I Heard on the Other Side of My Wall

I had lived in that apartment for three years without getting to know anyone. Third floor right, Valencia, a seventies building with noisy pipes and peeling lime on the ceilings. My job was remote, my friends lived in other cities or had faded away with time as these things tend to happen, and I had developed a kind of invisible routine: groceries on Tuesdays, gym on Wednesdays, the rest of the time in front of a screen. It was the kind of loneliness that doesn’t hurt because you no longer recognize that it exists. You settle into it and convince yourself it’s fine.

I saw them for the first time on a Thursday in October. I was taking out the trash and they were coming in with boxes. Two women. One with dark hair tied up in a high bun, brown skin, and a way of moving that reminded me of someone who is never in a hurry because she knows exactly where she’s going. The other —Irene, as I would later call her when I read her name on the mailbox— had reddish hair and a way of moving that made it hard not to look. Irene was tall, with narrow shoulders and pronounced hips, with an elegance that didn’t quite fit with the cardboard boxes. She carried the heaviest one as if it weighed nothing, with long arms and a straight back. It was when she bent down to pick something up off the floor that I noticed it: a contour that took me half a second to process, a marked bulge against the fabric of her pants, the unmistakable shape of a cock pressed beneath her clothes. And once I processed it, I couldn’t stop looking at it.

I greeted them with an awkward nod, they answered with a brief smile, and each of us went on with our business. Nothing worth remembering. And yet, when I got back to my apartment, I found myself thinking about them. About the angle of Irene’s wrist as she held the box. About the way the other one —whose name I later learned was Nadia— had looked me up and down without any apparent intention of hiding it.

That night I took a long time to fall asleep. I jerked off twice thinking about that bulge, imagining myself on my knees in front of Irene, pulling her zipper down with my teeth, taking her cock out and stuffing it all the way down my throat.

***

In the days that followed, I started noticing things. The sound of their footsteps above my head —they lived on the floor above— had its own rhythm, like a conversation between two people who knew each other well. Music that drifted down muffled through the ceiling, sometimes jazz, sometimes something more modern. Laughter in the landing when they came home together.

I saw them three or four more times before we exchanged more than two words. One afternoon we happened to be in the elevator and Nadia asked me if I knew where there was a laundromat nearby. I explained. Irene said nothing, just watched me with a calm expression that was impossible to read.

There was something about her that threw me completely off balance. Not just her looks, but something in the way she occupied space, as if she knew exactly what place belonged to her in it and didn’t need anyone to confirm it. When the elevator reached their floor and they got out, I stayed inside for a moment before pressing the button for my own floor, with a half-hard cock inside my pants and a dry mouth.

The next time was stranger. It was late, almost midnight, and I was coming back from wandering aimlessly around —something I did when I couldn’t sleep—. Irene was leaning against the building door, smoking alone. She saw me arrive, held my gaze for a moment, and then looked away toward the street as if I didn’t exist. It wasn’t hostile. It was simply that, for her, I wasn’t relevant yet. That feeling —of being invisible to someone whose presence filled your head— was the first time I realized I had gotten myself into something.

Stop acting like an idiot.

But it was already too late for that advice.

***

The problem with loneliness, when you’ve been inside it long enough, is that any point of light looks like a bonfire. I began adjusting my schedule without being fully aware of it: taking the trash out when I figured they might be getting home, lingering a little longer in the landing under the pretense of checking the mail that I’d already picked up.

At night, I listened. Not on purpose, at first. Old apartments transmit sound as if the walls were made of paper, and theirs was right above mine. Voices overlapping, the sound of chairs, footsteps from one end to the other. Nothing private, nothing that couldn’t be heard from any building with thin walls.

But one November night, lying in the dark with the white ceiling above me, I started hearing something different.

A whimper. Low, almost inaudible. Then another. And then Nadia’s voice, clear and firm, saying something I couldn’t make out but whose tone was unmistakable: it wasn’t a question, it was an order.

I stayed still, body tense, not quite breathing.

Irene’s voice came after, softer but with the same edge. And between the two of them, that sound of a man trying to hold out and failing, yielding little by little to something stronger than him. A wet, stifled gasp, like someone with a mouth full. Then a noise of skin against skin, rhythmic, insistent, leaving no room for doubt: someone was fucking someone above me, and they weren’t stopping.

I got up to pee and when I came back I sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor. I had gotten hard without realizing it. My cock pressed against the pajama pants, so tense it hurt. I was hot. The whimpering from upstairs continued, irregular, with long pauses between each sound, as if someone were choosing when and how much to allow themselves.

I slipped my hand under my clothes and took my cock in my hand slowly, head bowed, listening. I felt it hot, throbbing against my palm. I started stroking without hurrying, squeezing the head with my thumb every time I went up, feeling the pre-cum wet my fingers. Up above, someone had just moaned in a new way —sharper, more broken— and that sound went through me like a jolt. I jerked myself faster, breathing raggedly, biting my lip so I wouldn’t make a noise. When the rhythm of skin against skin quickened above me, my hand quickened too, unintentionally synchronized with what was happening in the ceiling. I came in two dull pulses, holding the tip with my other hand so I wouldn’t stain the sheet, feeling the orgasm rise from my balls and leave my legs trembling. Then I sat there for a moment looking at my semen-covered hand before going to wash it.

When I finished, the sound upstairs was still going. It hadn’t been interrupted. As if my little silent climax had been nothing more than background noise to something much bigger happening over my head. The man upstairs was still responding to something I couldn’t see, moaning, begging in broken phrases I couldn’t quite understand but whose meaning was obvious: he wanted more, he begged them not to stop, he begged them to fuck him to the end. And their voices kept guiding him, controlling him, deciding everything.

I didn’t sleep all night.

***

Weeks passed. The situation settled into a pattern I started to recognize with a mixture of shame and anticipation: quiet nights, sometimes without a sound, and then suddenly a session that could last an hour or two, with that same dynamic —their voices, setting the rhythm; a man’s voice, surrendering to it, whining like a bitch under the weight of two women doing whatever they wanted with him.

It wasn’t always the same man. One night the buzzer rang late and I heard unfamiliar footsteps, a different voice speaking in the landing. Sometimes they came home with someone, sometimes they were alone. When they were alone, the nights were quieter but not completely: some object moving, slow footsteps, low music, and every so often a muffled moan from Irene, long and deep, which I imagined was her coming in Nadia’s mouth. An intimacy that wasn’t directed at me and that I received anyway, unable to do anything with it.

I jerked off thinking about them more times than I can count. About Irene, about the way her long hands held things, about the line of her neck and what must have been beneath her clothes —that extra thing that made her what she was, a woman with a cock I was dying to suck—. I thought about her dick. I think it now with the same clarity with which I thought it then: I imagined it long and smooth like the rest of her, with her balls snug underneath, and I imagined it sinking into my mouth all the way to my throat, or opening my ass slowly against the mattress. I jerked off thinking about swallowing her load, about feeling it spill hot over my tongue, about how she would hold my head so I wouldn’t miss a single drop. I thought of Nadia in a different way, darker: her direct gaze, the commanding voice I had heard through the ceiling, the weight of her authority. I imagined myself in that apartment upstairs, in the man’s place, kneeling between the two of them, with Irene fucking my mouth while Nadia spread my legs and put her fingers in me to the hilt, telling me in my ear what she was going to do to me and what I was going to take. The image was so intense I had to push it away before finishing because otherwise I’d cum in three pulls and be left feeling like I’d missed the best part.

It was a full-blown obsession. I knew it and did nothing about it.

***

The night that changed everything was a Friday in December. I had finished work late, had two beers alone in front of the window watching the rain, and gotten into bed with that heavy feeling of someone who has been doing the same thing for too long.

The noises started after midnight.

But this time they were different. More intense. The man upstairs wasn’t holding out: he was crying. Not a cry of pain but of surrender, that kind of crying that comes when something breaks inside you and, paradoxically, it’s relief. And over that crying, Nadia’s voice —clear, merciless and without cruelty, simply there—, marking something that sounded like an instruction. And Irene’s voice, answering with a softness that was more devastating than any harshness.

I got up without fully deciding to.

I stood for a while in the middle of the bedroom, with darkness around me and that sound seeping down from above. My heart pounding against my ribs and my cock hard against the waistband of my briefs. I thought about all the times I had told myself it was a fantasy, that it wasn’t real, that what I imagined had nothing to do with what was happening in that apartment. Three years of never crossing any door that wasn’t necessary, of asking nothing of anyone, of surviving on the bare minimum of human contact. And now this. One floor above. Two people who hadn’t even invited me but who had somehow gotten inside my head and had no intention of leaving.

But I was no longer sure I wanted to keep believing it was just fantasy.

I put on a T-shirt and stepped out barefoot into the landing. The cold hallway floor froze my feet. The stairs creaked under my weight. I stopped in front of their door, hand raised, and listened from close by: the sounds were sharper here, without the ceiling muffling them. You could hear the wet slurping of a mouth sucking, the creak of a mattress, a sharp gasp, and Nadia’s voice saying swallow it all, don’t make me say it twice. For a moment I stood completely still, cock dripping inside my briefs, unable to decide anything.

Three years of solitude in front of a closed door.

I knocked.

The sounds stopped instantly. There was several seconds of silence, footsteps, and then the door opened. Nadia was looking at me from the threshold, her hair loose and a dark silk robe tied at the waist, open just enough to show the top of a brown breast and a dark, erect nipple. Behind her, the apartment was lit with a warm, low light. I didn’t see the man. I didn’t see Irene.

Nadia said nothing. She just looked at me with that expression of hers, as if she already knew what was going to happen before it did, dropped her eyes to the bulge straining my pajama pants, and waited.

—I hear everything —I said, and I didn’t know how to continue.

—I know —she answered—. I’ve been listening to you too for weeks. Every time you come with your face pressed to the ceiling, you can hear yourself breathing.

I felt my face burn. She smiled faintly, with one corner of her mouth, and stepped aside to let me in. As I passed by her, her hand brushed my crotch over the fabric, squeezing my hard cock with the edge of her fingers, without urgency, measuring. She closed the door behind me.

—Irene —she called, without raising her voice—. Come down. We have a guest.

Irene’s footsteps came down the hall. She appeared naked from the waist up, with small, firm breasts, pink hard nipples, and a towel knotted around her hips that didn’t hide anything: beneath it, the clear, erect shape of her cock pushing the fabric forward. She came toward me unhurriedly, looked me up and down the same way Nadia had on the first day, and ran her hand over the back of my neck.

—On your knees —Nadia said behind me, in the same voice I had heard giving orders for months through the ceiling.

I knelt without thinking. Irene untied the towel and let it fall to the floor. Her cock sprang upward, long and pale, the pink head shining with moisture. She put it to my lips without saying anything. I opened my mouth. I felt it slide in hot, heavy, pushing against my palate, and I closed my eyes while Irene held my head with both hands and started moving it at her pace, thrusting it farther into me each time until it drove into the back of my throat and made me tear up.

—That’s it —murmured Nadia, crouching beside me, her robe now fully open, dark breasts swaying in front of my face—. Like you were listening. Now breathe through your nose and swallow it whole.

I obeyed. Irene shoved it in until her pubis bumped against my nose and held me there, my throat occupied, unable to swallow, while Nadia pulled down my pajama pants and took out my hard, dripping cock. I felt her hand close around it firmly, stroking me with a slow, calculated rhythm, and her mouth at my ear.

—You’ve been cumming for us alone for months —she said—. Tonight you’re not going to come until I tell you to.

Irene pulled her cock out of my mouth just enough for me to breathe and shoved it back in, faster this time, fucking my face with both hands on my skull. I sucked her with all the hunger I had built up over months, swallowing saliva and pre-cum, tightening my lips around her shaft each time she pulled out, licking the swollen head every time she gave me a moment’s break. I could hear her moaning above me, a deep, long moan, the same one I had heard through the ceiling so many nights.

Nadia stood up, sat on the edge of the sofa with her legs apart, and pointed to the floor between her thighs. Irene took her cock out of my mouth and pushed me there without letting go of my neck. I crawled on my knees until I was between Nadia’s legs. Her cunt was shaved, dark, shining with wetness. She grabbed my hair and crushed my face against her.

—Eat me —she said—. And don’t stop until I come.

I buried my tongue in her without thinking, finding her clit, sucking it with my lips while I slid two fingers inside and curled them deep. She tasted salty and something deeper, a hot flavor that stuck to my palate. Nadia pressed my head between her thighs, moaning low, moving against my mouth in a rhythm that grew rougher and rougher. Behind me, Irene had gotten down on her knees on the floor. I felt her hands spread my ass cheeks, the warm stream of saliva falling between them, and then the hot tip of her cock resting there, against my hole, not entering yet.

—Keep licking —Nadia ordered, yanking my hair—. Don’t you dare stop.

I kept eating her pussy while Irene began to push, slowly, opening me centimeter by centimeter. The head pierced my ring with a burn that made me moan against Nadia’s sex, and she laughed softly and pressed me harder into her. Irene kept going in, unhurried, until I felt her all the way inside, her balls hanging against mine and her hands firm on my hips. She stayed still for a moment, letting me feel all the weight, and then she began fucking me with long, deep thrusts, each one deeper than the last.

There was nothing I could do but moan with Nadia’s cunt full in my mouth, swallowing her wetness, sucking her clit every time Irene drove into me and shoved my face against her. I was open front and back, fully occupied, fucked at the same time by the two women I had spent months imagining above the ceiling. Nadia started trembling, her thighs clamped around my ears, and she came against my mouth with a rough, long moan, squeezing my head so hard I could barely breathe. I swallowed everything she gave me, licking her through the last contraction, while Irene kept fucking me from behind without changing rhythm.

When Nadia let me go, I collapsed forward with my cheek against her thigh, mouth dripping, panting. Irene grabbed me by the hair, pulled back to lift my chest, and drove the last thrusts in with all her force, filling me completely. I felt her cum in three hot pulses, one after another, spilling semen into my ass, and she moaned with that deep voice I had learned to recognize on sleepless nights.

She pulled out slowly. A warm thread ran down my thigh. I stayed on my knees between them, trembling, my cock hard and dripping without having come yet. Nadia looked down at me with that half-smile and ran her thumb over my stained lips.

—Now —she said—. Come for us.

She took my cock in her hand and jerked me off firmly, looking into my face. Irene stood behind me and wrapped her arms around me from the back, pressing my tits against my shoulder blades, whispering in my ear how well I had done it, how tight I was, how well I had sucked her. I came in four hard spurts over Nadia’s hand, mouth open and eyes shut, moaning for the first time in three years without fear of being heard.

When I opened my eyes, Nadia licked my semen off the back of her hand without taking her gaze off me.

—Next time —she said— you knock first.