What My Neighbors Asked Me for in Exchange

The fourth-floor hallway had a single flickering lightbulb. Two in the morning, the cold linoleum floor through my socks, and me with my fist raised in front of the door to 4B, still unable to make up my mind.

I had made it that far before. Twice the week before. Both times, I turned around before knocking.

Not that night.

The first knock was soft. The second, firmer. The echo surprised me: I hadn’t calculated how loudly it would resound through the empty hallway. My heart sped up before I even heard footsteps on the other side.

I had been listening to them for weeks. At first I thought it was the television. Then I thought I’d get used to it. Neither happened. The sounds from 4B had colonized my nights with an almost personal precision: the cadence rising and breaking and rising again, the mingled voices, the rhythmic pounding of the headboard against the wall we shared, the moans turning into muffled screams, the wet sloshing that sometimes seeped into my room with indecent clarity. I had woken like that for twenty nights straight, my cock hard against my underwear, my hand moving down on its own, jerking off in silence against the wall while I listened to them come on the other side. I had even memorized the patterns, the rhythms, the exact moments when one of them reached the highest point and let it escape in a howl that left me staring at the ceiling for hours, semen drying on my stomach.

So there I was.

The door opened.

Nadia filled the doorway. Her brown hair hung loose over her shoulders, and a satin robe, hanging open, reached halfway down her legs. She was taller than I had imagined from passing her at the mailboxes, with broad shoulders and a calmness in her eyes that completely threw me off. She looked me up and down in silence, without hurrying. It wasn’t surprise or irritation. It was pure assessment.

Behind her, Raquel appeared in the opening: dark-haired, her hair half tied back, her arms crossed in that posture that can mean many things, and that night meant only one.

“What do you want?” she said.

I hadn’t prepared any speech. I only had what had brought me there.

“I’ve heard you,” I said. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted. “Every night. I haven’t slept properly in weeks. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m…” I stopped. Swallowed. “I’m alone, and I don’t know what to do with that anymore.”

Silence. Nadia turned her head toward Raquel. Raquel raised an eyebrow. One second, two. Then they both looked at me with something I couldn’t decipher right away: it wasn’t pity or rejection. It was recognition.

“Come in,” Nadia said.

***

Their apartment was the opposite of mine. Mine had white walls and boxes that had been unpacked for four months. Theirs had plants on every windowsill, half-burned candles, fabrics hanging from the ceiling to soften the corners, and a scent I took a while to identify: burnt wood and some kind of flower I didn’t recognize.

They sat me on the sofa. Nadia brought me a glass of water without asking whether I wanted one.

I talked more than I had all month. The city that had swallowed me before I could settle in, the job that left no room for anything else, the persistent feeling of standing right beside something without being able to cross over. Raquel listened, leaning against the bookcase with her arms crossed. Nadia, with her legs drawn up in the armchair, didn’t interrupt me once.

When I finished, Raquel asked:

“What exactly are you looking for here?”

It was the right question. Not what I wanted from them. What I was looking for.

“Something real,” I said. “Something with weight.”

Nadia smiled. A slow smile that began at her lips and reached her eyes a second later.

“We can give you that,” she said. “But there are rules here.”

Raquel pushed away from the bookcase and sat beside me on the sofa. Her thigh brushed mine.

“We’re in charge here,” she said quietly. “You do what we ask, when we ask it. You’re going to suck, lick, open your mouth and your ass when we tell you to, and you won’t come until we give you permission. If you want to stop, you say the word and we stop. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I need to hear you say it clearly,” Nadia added.

“I understand,” I said.

“Good,” Raquel replied, and for the first time all night, something in her posture relaxed by a millimeter.

***

Nadia put me on my knees on the rug in front of the sofa with the same natural ease with which someone sets down a glass. No negotiation or theatrics. She simply did it, I allowed it, and in that permission I found something I hadn’t anticipated: an inner silence I hadn’t visited in weeks.

On my knees, looking up at them, I felt my mind finally stop racing.

“That’s it,” Nadia said, sliding a finger along my jaw and slipping it between my lips until I sucked it without thinking. “Stay still. That’s right. Good boy.”

Raquel positioned herself behind me. Her hands gripped my shoulders precisely—not forcefully, but with intent. She pulled my shirt off my shoulders and let it fall to my elbows, leaving my chest bare and my arms half trapped in the fabric.

“Breathe,” she told me in my ear, her lips brushing my earlobe. “And don’t do anything we haven’t asked you to do.”

I breathed.

Nadia opened her robe slowly. She was trans, something I already knew, and that night it carried the same weight as any other detail of the room: part of who she was, part of what they had offered me. The robe opened all the way, and her cock came level with my eyes, hard and thick, veins standing out along the shaft, the shiny, uncut head a handspan from my mouth. A thin string of pre-cum hung from the tip. My mouth watered without permission.

“Stick out your tongue,” she said.

I did. She ran the head of her cock slowly over my tongue, rubbing it across my lips, smearing my face with her own juices. The taste was salty and thick, and it struck somewhere I hadn’t known I had.

“Open,” she added. “All the way.”

I opened my mouth as wide as I could, and she eased inside, holding the back of my head with one firm hand. Her cock filled my tongue, pressed against my palate, and kept advancing until it touched the back of my throat. I gagged. She didn’t pull it out. She waited one second, two, and when the reflex gave way, she pushed another inch.

“Slower,” she said, though she was the one setting the pace. “Breathe through your nose. Swallow me.”

I swallowed. My throat opened around her cock, and she let out a hoarse moan that went through me completely. She began fucking my mouth with short thrusts, then longer ones, until her hair brushed the tip of my nose every time she buried herself in me. Saliva ran down my chin and dripped onto my bare chest. My eyes filled with tears. I didn’t close my mouth for even a moment.

Raquel undid my pants from behind, pulled them down to my knees along with my underwear, and ran her hands over my torso without hurrying, then lower. She gripped my thighs firmly and ran her fingers along the cleft of my ass. One of her fingers, wet with something I hadn’t seen her take out, slipped between my cheeks and pressed against my asshole with calculated slowness.

“Look at me,” she said.

I looked at her, Nadia’s cock still buried in my mouth. Raquel pushed her finger inside me to the knuckle. I arched involuntarily.

“Good.”

She began moving it slowly, in and out, curling it inside me until she found a spot that made me moan around Nadia’s cock. She noticed, chuckled under her breath, and thrust harder.

“He likes it,” Raquel murmured. “Look at his cock. It’s getting hard just from having one finger up his ass.”

“It is what it is,” Nadia replied, and held my head with both hands, fucking my mouth at her own pace, not letting me do a thing.

Raquel pushed a second finger into me. It burned at first, then opened up. She scissored them, slowly stretching me, while her other hand reached around and gripped my cock, stroking it firmly. Not enough to make me come. Just enough to keep me on the edge without letting me fall.

“Not yet,” she warned in my ear. “Don’t even think about it.”

I clenched my teeth against the urge without closing my mouth around Nadia. She pulled her cock out abruptly with a wet sound and sat on the sofa, legs spread, her cock erect and gleaming with my saliva.

“Come here,” she told me. “Lick my balls. Slowly. One, then the other.”

I crawled toward her with my pants tangled around my ankles and buried my face between her legs. I ran my tongue beneath her cock, over the taut skin of her testicles, took them into my mouth one by one, sucking them carefully while she stroked my hair and sighed. I licked upward along her entire shaft, wrapped my lips around it, and went back down. I repeated the path several times, until she tugged my hair to lift my face.

“Very good,” she said. “You learn quickly.”

Raquel sat up on the sofa and pulled me toward her. At some point I hadn’t noticed, she had taken off her pants and panties. She spread her legs and placed her hand on the back of my neck without a word. I took the inside of her thigh in my hand and waited. She nodded, and I continued with my fingers, following the specific instructions she gave me in a low voice: here, like that, not so hard, more. I parted the lips of her pussy with two fingers and saw how wet she was, the pink, glistening flesh, her swollen clit peeking out between the folds. I pushed a finger inside, and she closed around it with a heat that made me grit my teeth.

“With your tongue,” she said.

I obeyed. I buried my mouth in her pussy, ran my tongue along the slit, up and down, sucking her inner lips, searching for her clit with the tip and circling around it without quite touching it. When I finally covered it with my whole mouth and began sucking it slowly, she arched her hips against my face.

“There,” she panted. “There, don’t stop.”

Her head was thrown back and her fingers were buried in my hair, and every so often she quietly told Nadia what she wanted her to do next. I fucked her pussy with two fingers while sucking her clit, curling them upward until I found a rough spot that made her squeeze against my mouth. Her wetness streamed down my chin, mixed with the saliva from the earlier blowjob, and ran down my neck.

Nadia had stood up and was moving behind me. I felt her hands spread my cheeks. I felt something cold and thick spilling between them, a stream of lube running down my crack. Then the head of her cock, broad and hot, pressed against my asshole, freshly opened by Raquel’s fingers.

“Don’t stop eating her pussy,” she ordered. “Even while I fuck you. Not for one second.”

She pushed. The head forced my ring open and entered in one thrust, and I let out a muffled grunt against Raquel’s pussy. She pressed my head harder against herself.

“Keep going,” she said. “I said keep going.”

I kept going. Sucking her clit, taking it between my lips, while Nadia opened me at her own pace, inch by inch, until her hips were pressed against my ass and her entire cock was buried inside me. She stayed still for a moment, letting me feel every pulse, every vein. Then she began to move.

At first slowly, with long thrusts that pulled almost all the way out and then drove back in to the hilt. Then faster. Her hips slapped against mine with a wet sloshing sound I recognized instantly: it was the same sound I had heard through the wall for twenty nights. Now I was making it. Now I was the one moaning against Raquel’s flesh while Nadia’s cock pierced me; I was the headboard bouncing; I was the one making those sounds at two in the morning.

“Look at him,” Nadia said to Raquel. “I’m putting it all the way in and he isn’t pulling away. He’s opening up on his own.”

“He loves it,” Raquel replied, panting. “Look how he eats me. You’ve opened his ass and his tongue is moving faster.”

It was true. Every thrust from Nadia pushed my face against Raquel’s pussy, and I used the momentum to suck her harder, deeper. The three of us moved to a single rhythm, locked together, Raquel deciding how much and when with her hand in my hair, Nadia driving into me with controlled precision, me between them, drilled and used and, for the first time in months, completely present.

Raquel came first. She clenched around my fingers, shook against my mouth, and let out a long moan that reverberated through Nadia. She pressed my face against herself until the last tremor passed. She didn’t let me breathe. When she released me, I sucked in air, my chin soaked.

Nadia pulled her cock out of my ass, turned me over with both firm hands, and threw me onto my back on the rug. She straddled me backward, sitting astride my face, and lowered herself until the head of her cock struck my lips.

“Open your mouth,” she said. “And stay still. I’m going to come down your throat.”

I opened. She pushed herself all the way in, holding my head against the floor, and fucked my mouth with short, brutal thrusts. At the same time, with her other hand, she gripped my cock and stroked it hard. Raquel crouched beside me and put three fingers up my ass, searching for that spot inside me, pressing it with the same persistence Nadia used to fuck my mouth.

“Now,” Raquel said. “Come.”

I let go as if someone had cut a rope. My orgasm rose in waves, thick jets splattering my stomach and chest, while Nadia growled above me and emptied herself down my throat with increasingly slow thrusts. Her hot semen ran down the back of my palate, and I swallowed as much as I could. What I couldn’t went leaking from the corners of my mouth.

I came when they told me I could. Not before.

Afterward, the three of us lay still. It took a while for our breathing to settle. The air smelled of burning wax, hot skin, semen and sweat, and the same burnt wood as always.

***

Raquel was the one who broke the silence.

“There’s something you need to know,” she said without moving, looking at the ceiling. “I don’t like men. Generally speaking.”

I turned to look at her.

“Tonight was different,” she continued. “But it isn’t what I usually look for.”

“Why did you do it, then?”

“Because Nadia wanted it. And because you seemed to truly need it.”

I didn’t know exactly how to process that. In the end, I decided to take it as honesty and move on.

Nadia stretched and looked at me from the side.

“Raquel and I have talked about this before,” she said. “About whether there could be someone else in this space.”

“And?”

“The condition is that it not be a man,” Raquel said.

I fell silent.

“We aren’t asking you to give anything up,” Nadia added. “We’re asking you to set it aside here, within these walls.”

Raquel stood up and opened the wardrobe. It was large and orderly: bright colors, long skirts, blouses in different textures, fabrics that seemed to have a weight of their own beneath the candlelight.

“You can say no,” she said. “You go back to your apartment, and this was one night. Nothing more.”

I looked at her. Then at Nadia. I thought of the empty apartment on the other side of the shared wall, the unpacked boxes, the fluorescent tube flickering in the dark hallway.

“What do you need from me?” I asked.

“For you to be whatever the three of us are capable of building,” Nadia said.

***

Nadia chose a dark silk blouse and slipped it over my shoulders without ceremony. The fabric was cool to the touch and slowly warmed against my skin. Raquel took out a long skirt and placed it around my hips with precise hands, adjusting it without comment, as if fixing something that had already been there all along.

Then they both looked at me.

“What’s your name here?” Raquel asked.

“Daniel,” I said automatically.

“No.” She was direct. “Tonight, here, in this apartment, what’s your name?”

I hadn’t thought about it. The name came on its own, as if it had been waiting for someone to ask for it.

“Sombra,” I said.

Nadia nodded slowly, weighing it.

“Sombra,” she repeated. “Yes. It fits.”

Raquel crossed her arms, but with a different posture. Less guarded, more like acceptance.

“Sombra can stay,” she said. “Daniel has to leave before dawn.”

I looked at myself in the wall mirror. The dark blouse, the flowered skirt, my disheveled hair, the eyes reflecting an expression I didn’t quite know how to name. I didn’t recognize what I saw, but it didn’t feel alien either. It was something under construction, something whose edges had not yet been defined.

That seemed sufficient to me at that moment.

“Sombra stays,” I said.

***

Nadia taught me how to move in the skirt, which was less complicated than I had imagined. Raquel combed my hair back with a practical efficiency that made me laugh, and she laughed too, the first time all night.

We sat on the bedroom floor with the lights low, and Raquel put on music I didn’t recognize but that suited the room and the hour.

We talked until the sky began to brighten. About ordinary things: the neighborhood supermarket that closed too early, the neighbors on the first floor who argued every Sunday, a movie none of us had finished. The everyday conversation I had been missing for months, which in that apartment, in those clothes, with those two people, came without any effort at all.

Before I left, Nadia said:

“Next time, you get here before two.”

It was an order. It was also an invitation.

“All right,” I replied.

Raquel opened the door. She said nothing. But when I reached the end of the hallway and turned around, she raised her hand: a small gesture, almost nothing.

Enough.