The Double-Decker Driver and the December Night

The cold that night at the Monterrey terminal was different from other nights. It wasn’t the dry cold that sometimes rolls down from the mountains. It was a damp, sticky cold that seeped in through the collar of your jacket and stayed there, clinging no matter how much you moved or how much coffee you drank on shift. The kind of cold that makes you wonder why you accepted the night shift in the first place.

I had been working the platforms for almost two years. I started shortly after turning twenty-three, fresh in from the interior, and I took the night watch because it paid a little more and because there was less competition for those spots. In time I got used to the rhythm of the early hours: buses coming and going in silence, sleeping passengers dragging suitcases, drivers greeting you with a nod and moving on without saying a word. A world apart, running only while the rest of the city slept.

That December night I was about to finish my shift. There were about forty minutes left when I saw the double-decker pull in through lane three. It was a white Volvo with gray stripes, the kind that runs the long route to the border. The driver parked it with surgical precision at platform seven and got out to check the cargo compartments. He was in his mid-forties, dark-skinned, broad-shouldered, wearing a dark jacket with the company logo stitched on the chest and a cap pulled down to his eyebrows.

I walked past with my log clipboard and asked him what time his next departure was.

—At five —he said without taking his eyes off the compartments—. I got stuck without a space in the rest room. They’re all full.

—Tough night —I replied.

He looked at me for a moment, sizing me up in a way I couldn’t quite read. His eyes drifted down my body with a slowness that wasn’t accidental, paused for a second at the level of my fly, then went back up to my face.

—When you finish your shift, if you want, you can stay inside —he said, nodding toward the bus—. It’s heated. Better than staying out on the platform in this cold.

I said yes almost without thinking. The platform at that hour was a freezing rat trap and I still had forty minutes to kill.

***

When I was done, I knocked on the Volvo’s door. He opened it from inside and gestured for me to climb up. The bus was completely empty and dim: only the emergency lights were on on both sides of the aisle, a faint row of orange dots disappearing toward the back. The heater was working. After the cold of the platform, stepping in there was like getting a mouthful of warm air straight to the face.

He was seated in one of the downstairs seats near the front, with the onboard entertainment screen on. I settled into the seat next to him, reclined the back as far as it would go, and closed my eyes. I was truly tired. I thought I’d be asleep in minutes.

I wasn’t.

Within a few minutes I realized the screen wasn’t playing any movie like the ones they normally put on for passengers. I opened my eyes just a crack and saw what it was showing: explicit video, two men. One on his knees with a thick cock shoved down his throat, moaning, his lips stretched around the shaft. The other standing over him, one hand on the back of his neck, pushing his face against his pelvis. I saw it out of the corner of my eye without turning my head, without moving. My pulse jumped suddenly, as if someone had cranked up the voltage all at once.

Don’t say anything. Stay still.

I stayed still. But I didn’t fall asleep. I listened. And then I heard something else besides the screen: the unmistakable sound of a hand moving in a slow rhythm, skin sliding against skin with a wet smack that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. I turned my head just an inch and confirmed what I already suspected. His fly was open and his cock was out, thick, dark, bigger than I’d thought, making me swallow hard without meaning to. The tip shone with a thread of pre-cum stretching between the head and his thumb each time his hand went up. He was jerking himself off without any hurry, eyes on the screen, as if I wasn’t there or as if my presence was exactly what he wanted.

My heart was pounding in my throat. I didn’t feel fear or discomfort. I felt something else, something I hadn’t expected to find that night, an arousal that surged from my stomach up into my chest in a matter of seconds and that I couldn’t tell where it came from or bring myself to stop. Mine had gone hard inside my pants too, tight against the fabric, and every time he squeezed his fist at the base of his cock I felt a sting below, a tug that made me press my thighs together.

***

Ten minutes passed. Neither of us said anything. I kept my eyes half-closed, pretending to sleep, and he kept going, calm as ever, with that unhurried rhythm that had something of calculated provocation in it. His hand went up to cover the head, twisted over the tip like screwing on a cap, then slid back down to the balls. Every now and then he spat into his palm and started again, even slower, stretching out the pleasure on purpose, fully aware that I was watching him from beneath my lashes.

Then, without announcing it, he reached out and took my hand. Brought it to him. Set it on his cock.

Hard. Hot. Wet at the tip.

I didn’t pull away.

I kept my hand there, motionless at first, feeling the weight and heat of that dick between my fingers. It was thicker than it had looked from a distance; my fingers couldn’t close all the way around it. It pulsed. I could feel it throbbing against my palm like a second heartbeat, slower and heavier than mine. He didn’t move either. The two of us waiting. Then I started moving slowly, without thinking, as if my body knew exactly what it wanted before my head did. I tightened my fist more firmly, slid the skin down, left the head exposed and shining, came back up. The pre-cum painted my thumb. I spread it over the whole tip and he let out a long breath through his nose.

He reclined the seat all the way and pulled me gently toward him. He ran his cock over my face while he stroked my hair with the other hand, fingers going behind my ear, down my neck. I felt the warm head against my cheek, against my closed lips, leaving a wet trail across my face. He smelled like bath soap and something denser underneath, a man smell, sweat, skin that had spent many hours inside pants. That contact, that mix of smell and heat and the sound of his breathing changing rhythm, completely undid me. I opened my mouth.

It went in little by little. The head first, thick, pushing my tongue down, forcing my jaw to stretch farther than it ever had. Then the shaft, centimeter by centimeter, as far as I could take it without gagging. I closed my lips around it and sucked.

I don’t know at what point I went from not really knowing what I was doing to doing it with total focus. I had him all the way, went down as far as I could reach, listened to the way he held his breath each time I got to the bottom, felt his fingers gently squeeze the back of my neck when the contact got deeper. I learned fast: go up slowly to the tip, circle the edge of the head with my tongue, suck hard there, go down in one move until my nose pressed against his groin. Every time I got all the way down a low groan escaped him, almost chewed back, and he dug his fingers a little into the nape of my neck. It was my first time doing it and yet there was no awkwardness. Only instinct. Saliva gathered at the corners of my mouth and ran down his shaft, wetting his balls, and I used it to make my hand slide better while I kept sucking him off.

He pulled his pants down to his ankles. I knelt between the narrow aisle and kept going. I kissed his balls, took them carefully into my mouth, licked them one by one while still moving my hand. I ran my tongue beneath them, along that hot fold between the balls and the thigh, and he spread his legs wider so I could reach better. I went back up the shaft with my tongue flat, one long lick from base to head, and took him into my mouth again. He threw his head back.

—God —he said in a low voice. Just that.

No eye contact at any point. The two of us knew what we were doing and neither of us needed to name it. I sucked him with my face wet with saliva and his pre-cum, and he guided my neck with one steady hand, setting the pace, letting me swallow and breathe when I needed to but never letting me go entirely.

***

He was the one who stopped everything that was happening.

He sat up in the seat, reached for my pants, and unbuttoned them. He pulled them down together with my boxer briefs in one motion. My cock sprang out, hard enough to hurt, the tip sticky and dripping onto the seat. He laid me back in the seat opposite him and started sucking me off. I hadn’t expected it and it surprised me: he was good. Very good. He knew exactly the pressure and rhythm, when to speed up and when to stop just before the limit. He took me down to the base without gagging, with his throat open, and when he got to the bottom he stayed there for a few seconds with his nose pressed to my groin, swallowing around the head, gripping me with his throat. Then he came back up slowly, sucking with hollowed cheeks, and I had to hold on to the seat back so I wouldn’t come right then.

Then he lifted my legs.

The first thing I felt was his tongue. He started on the inside of my thighs and worked his way down, down slowly, until he reached there. He spread my ass cheeks with both hands and ran his tongue flat over my hole, from top to bottom, without rushing. A sensation that had no name in my experience at the time went from my head to my feet. He ran it over again, this time insisting on the center, on the ring, pressing with the tip until he forced the muscle to open. I gripped the armrest so I wouldn’t move. I bit my lip. Outside, on the platform, I could hear footsteps, engines, someone talking on the radio. Inside, in that warm half-dark, there was only that: his tongue going in and out of my ass, his beard pricking my cheeks, his mouth sucking and saliva dripping down to the small of my back.

He stayed like that for about twenty minutes. Patient, methodical, never hurrying. He licked me, sucked me, pushed his tongue in as deep as he could and then came back up to suck me for a few seconds so he wouldn’t let me come down. At some point I felt two fingers inside me and hadn’t noticed when they’d gone in. He moved them slowly, spreading them in a scissoring motion, curling them upward, and found something in there that made me arch my back and let out a gasp I couldn’t hold back. He smiled without saying anything and touched it again. Again. Again. I bit down on the seat back to keep from shouting.

I don’t want this to end.

But he stopped. He stood up.

***

He went to the front of the bus, to what was the driver’s glove compartment, and came back with lubricant and a condom packet. I watched him unwrap it calmly, without any rush, like someone who knows exactly what comes next and has no doubt about it.

I sucked him again, so he’d be fully hard after the pause, and when I felt him that way in my mouth, firm and hot once more, throbbing against my palate, he put the condom on. He applied the lubricant generously, first with his fingers to make sure, three this time, going in and out with a wet sound that in the silence of the bus sounded obscene, and then on himself too, coating his entire cock until it shone as if polished.

He lifted my legs and settled them over his shoulders. He gave me a kiss before going in, the only kiss of that night, brief, almost thoughtlessly, as if it were a reflex. Then he pushed.

Little by little.

I felt every centimeter. I felt the thick head forcing the ring open, the brief burn at the start, the resistance and then the way my body gave in and let him through. I felt my body opening for him and how he stopped, waited, let me get used to him before continuing. He pushed in a third of the way, stayed there, breathed with me. Pushed in a little more, stopped. When he reached the bottom, when I felt his balls resting against my cheeks, he stayed still for a long moment. His hands on my hips. The two of us breathing. I could feel him throbbing inside me, thick, hot, squeezing me from within in a way I had never imagined could exist. Outside, the world went on, indifferent. Inside there were only the two of us and that silence that had a texture of its own.

Then he started moving.

The rhythm was slow at first, almost hypnotic, nearly full withdrawals and thrusts all the way to the base, the bus seats creaking only slightly under the weight of the two of us. Then it grew more intense, more urgent, his pelvis slapping my ass with a sharp, rhythmic sound, his balls hitting my hole with each thrust, and he pulled my cock with his hand to the same beat he was driving into me, as if he had an internal metronome I was following unwillingly. With every push he touched that spot inside me he’d found with his fingers and a shock ran from there up to my nape. I made no noise. I bit my lip, gripped the armrest, stared at the dark ceiling of the bus as if I were counting each blow of that cock against the back of me.

I came first. A shudder that began in the center of my body and spread outward in waves, more intense than anything I’d felt alone. I shot thick ropes that landed on my belly and chest, clenching my ass around him without meaning to, milking him from the inside. I went rigid for a few seconds and then let the air out in one sharp breath.

He stopped for a moment when he felt me finish, letting me ride out the last spasms with him buried deep inside. Then he turned me around. I settled crouched on the seat, with my back to him, legs spread apart and hands braced on the front seatback. He entered me again from behind, in one thrust this time, all the way to the bottom. I let out a low moan I couldn’t swallow. We stayed like that another ten or fifteen minutes, me going up and down on that cock, sitting myself down all the way to the base and lifting back up to the tip, him with his hands on my hips guiding the rhythm, making it faster and harder each time, driving upward when I came down to bury it deeper. Until I heard him let out a sharp breath, a rough grunt against my shoulder, his fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise, and I felt the condom fill inside me in three, four quick jolts while he shoved all the way in and stayed there, emptying himself.

We stayed still.

***

After that we barely said anything. He came out slowly, carefully, and I felt the strange emptiness something like that leaves when it’s over. He took off the condom, tied it off, wrapped it in some tissues he pulled from the glove compartment. We got dressed in silence, each of us to ourselves, without awkwardness or discomfort. I went back to my seat, reclined the back, and this time I really did fall asleep. When I woke up, there were twenty minutes left until five. He was already up in the driver’s cab, checking something on the dashboard.

—Thanks for the warmth —I said from below as I stood up.

—That’s what we’re here for —he replied without looking up from the dashboard.

I got off the bus. I stepped out onto the platform. The cold was still there, but it no longer seemed so brutal.

In the days that followed, we crossed paths several times at the terminal. He would arrive with his double-decker at platform seven, I’d be making my rounds with my clipboard, and the treatment was exactly the same as before that night: a nod, a greeting from afar, nothing else. I never looked for him and he never looked for me. We never spoke again about what happened on that bus.

I never learned his name. I never did.

I know he had big hands and a patience few people have. I know that December night on platform seven was the first time I understood certain things about myself, things I’d kept very well hidden until then without knowing exactly what they were. And I know that even today, when the December cold comes and the air turns like that, damp and sticky, I remember him.

Not with nostalgia exactly. With something closer to gratitude.