Holy Week: What I Did to That Sleeping Man

“Hail Mary, most pure,” says a voice on the other side of the lattice. He’s younger than I expected.

“Without sin conceived,” I reply, and I take a moment before going on. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been more than a month since my last confession.”

The silence that follows is mine alone. I know what I have to say. I don’t know whether I can say it out loud.

“My son, what would you like to confess?”

“Father… can all sins be forgiven? I need to know before I begin.”

A brief pause. Then:

“The short answer is yes. But forgiveness requires sincere repentance. Are you sorry?”

“That’s what I don’t know, Father.”

I hear him shift his posture on the other side.

“Tell me what happened,” he says. “We’ll look at it together.”

I take a deep breath and begin at the beginning.

***

At Easter, Elena’s parents invited me to spend a few days at their summer house, in a village on the coast in Cantabria. Elena and me, who had been together for three years and were getting married in August. And also Sofía, Elena’s sister, with her boyfriend Erik.

We arrived on Wednesday night, after three and a half hours in the car under a relentless rain. Elena’s mother was waiting for us with dinner. When we got there, the potatoes had been on the stove for a long time and were no longer what they had been, but I said nothing. We ate quickly. Then she said what she always said: that the engaged couple could not share a room under her roof until they were married.

The girls would sleep together in Sofía’s room. I would share a room with Erik, whom I had never seen in my life.

Because it was late and he was already asleep, I went in quietly. The room was small, with a narrow bed pushed against the back wall and barely enough space to move. There was a little moonlight through the window, just enough not to trip. I got undressed in the dark, put on my pajamas, and slipped into bed carefully so as not to wake him.

A stranger twenty centimeters away. Normal. Completely normal.

It took me a while to fall asleep, but I didn’t make much of it. The bed was uncomfortable, the village was strangely quiet for someone from the city, and every so often the wind slapped the shutter. Nothing odd.

***

In the middle of the night, Erik woke up. He had to go to the bathroom, and between him and the door there was me. He climbed over me trying not to bother me, and at that moment I noticed something I shouldn’t have noticed. His crotch brushed my hip. And what brushed me was hard. It wasn’t one second, it was the time it took him to pass, which isn’t much, but it isn’t nothing either. I felt the weight of his cock against my bone, the whole shape of it, the head and the thickness pressed by the fabric of his underwear, dragging slowly over my skin. My breath caught.

I heard him in the bathroom. The stream hitting the porcelain longer than it should, and then a strange silence, as if he had stood there without doing anything. He came back, climbed over me again—and I swear this time it was slower, and this time his cock brushed me from the hip to the navel—settled himself on his side of the bed and fell asleep at once.

I didn’t sleep again that whole night. I got hard under my pajamas and didn’t dare touch myself with him twenty centimeters away. I held it like that, swollen and throbbing, until the sun came up.

“Does that count as a sin, Father?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“No. Go on, my son.”

***

The next morning I showered early and went downstairs for breakfast. It was in the kitchen that they introduced us, amid everyone’s laughter: Elena’s boyfriend and Sofía’s boyfriend, who had slept together before they met. I laughed just enough so nothing would show.

Because Erik was one of those men you couldn’t ignore. Blond hair almost white, eyes a very pale blue, skin tanned despite it still being April. His father was from Northern Europe; you could tell without asking. Tall, broad-shouldered, with that calm way of moving that men have when they don’t need to prove anything. He had been swimming since he was twelve, had a doctorate in engineering, and when he told a story people stopped looking at their plates and looked at him instead.

I’m dark-haired, average build. I struggle to describe what I look like because every time I try I realize how little I pay attention to myself. Dark eyes, dark hair, a textbook Spaniard. Nothing special to look at.

And yet Erik kept looking at me while I looked at the table.

We spent Thursday visiting the village, going to mass, eating more than we should. Erik made jokes that even Elena’s mother laughed at. I hardly spoke all day. When they asked if anything was wrong, I said it was the tiredness from the trip.

***

In the afternoon we went to the municipal pool. The water was still cold, but nobody wanted to stay home. I sat on the edge with a book open to the same page for half an hour.

Then Erik got out of the water and walked over to where I was. He shook the wet hair from his head, held out his hand for me to get up, and when I did he wrapped his arms around me from behind. The kind of gesture lifelong friends make when they try to toss you into the pool, except we barely knew each other.

I felt his body against mine. I felt his wet chest against my back, his arms around my torso. And I felt, under his swim trunks, exactly what I had felt the night before. With less fabric between us and for longer. His hard cock wedged between my ass cheeks over the trunks, outlined in full, riding up against my lower back. He moved his hips once, disguising it like part of the hug, and rubbed it up and down on me. I felt the head of his glans catch against my tailbone and my knees went weak.

I pulled away, said something I don’t remember, and went back to my towel to lie face down, because I was rock hard too and didn’t want it showing in my swimwear. Elena shouted from the water that I was boring. I raised my hand as if acknowledging the insult and didn’t move.

Erik came to sit beside me a minute later.

“You’ve got a lot of body hair,” he said, pointing at my arms. It wasn’t criticism, just an observation, but I tensed up anyway.

“Quite a bit, yeah.”

“I’ve got almost none, because of swimming.” He paused. “If you want, I can help you wax it. I’ve helped several teammates. I get them really smooth, even the ass and balls, so they cut through the water better.”

Keep it together. You’re at a public pool. Your fiancée is ten meters away swimming.

“No need, thanks,” I said without looking up from the book.

Erik shrugged and lay down next to me, staring at the sky. I don’t know how long he stayed like that. I know because when I finally dared glance at him out of the corner of my eye, his eyes were closed, one hand resting over the bulge in his trunks, and I had gone several minutes without reading a single letter.

***

That night we opened the wine we had brought as a gift. My in-laws went to bed early and the four of us stayed up playing Trivial Pursuit. After two glasses I was already talking too much. After three I got sentimental and told Elena I loved her in front of everyone.

At some point in the night the subject came up that Elena and I were virgins and planned to stay that way until marriage. Sofía said she was too. Erik said he was too, with a smile I couldn’t quite read.

When we finally went to bed, Erik went into the room before I did. When I walked in, he was getting undressed.

I should have looked away. At that moment I knew I should have.

I didn’t.

He had his torso bare and was searching for his pajamas in the bag. Or whatever he wore to sleep in, which turned out to be only underwear. A black brief he put on with the same ease as socks. Before pulling it up I saw him in full for a second, from behind: the white ass where the sun never reached him, and when he turned to settle it in place, his flaccid cock hanging heavy over his balls, thick even at rest, with a curl of blond hair at the base. He pulled the brief up and the fabric tightened, outlining everything.

“Is it true you’re a virgin?” he asked me as he turned around.

“Yes,” I replied, and I felt my neck burn.

“And you’ve never done anything with anyone, in any way? Not a blowjob, not a handjob? Nothing?”

“Nothing,” I said softly, and I felt my throat tighten as I said it.

“Fuck,” he whispered, licking his lips. “What a waste.”

I changed the subject. I put on my pajamas with my back to him, with hands that wouldn’t quite obey me, and took the side of the bed against the wall. Facing the wallpaper. Waiting for the wine to do its job as fast as possible.

It took longer than I would have liked, but in the end I fell asleep.

***

I woke in the middle of the night. The room was completely silent. The moon no longer shone through the window and I could barely make out shapes.

Erik was asleep beside me on his back, the sheet at hip level. He was breathing slow and deep. His chest rose and fell lazily. The black brief showed under the thin fabric, and there, in the center, was a bulge that did not belong to a peacefully sleeping man. It belonged to a hard-on.

I should have turned over and closed my eyes.

I reached out.

I felt it through the fabric. He was completely erect, so hard the tip reached almost to his navel, tightening the waistband of the briefs. I began to move slowly over the cloth, with almost no pressure, just feeling the path: the thick base, the vein running up the side, the swollen glans pressing against the brief. His breathing didn’t change. I moved a little more, now squeezing with my whole hand, enclosing him entirely. Still nothing.

Stop. Stop right now. You have to stop.

I didn’t stop.

I knelt beside him on the bed, slowly, without making a sound. I hooked two fingers under the waistband of his underwear and pulled him out carefully, holding my breath as if that could change anything. The cock sprang free and fell heavily against his belly, leaving a shiny trail against the skin.

It was big. Bigger than I had imagined, and I had imagined too much over the last two days. Long, thick at the base, the glans pink and uncircumcised, with a drop of precum already beading at the tip.

I started to jerk him off. Slowly at first, with my whole hand around him, unable to close my fingers all the way. I felt him pulse in my palm, hard as bone, hot, the skin sliding cleanly over the shaft as I pumped up and down. I took my other hand to his balls, heavy and full, and cupped them carefully, feeling their weight, noticing how they shifted in the sack when I squeezed him. His hips didn’t move. His breathing stayed deep and steady for the first few minutes, but his cock swelled a little more between my fingers, and the liquid at the tip began to drip in a thick thread.

I moved closer, almost without realizing it, until I could feel the heat radiating from his groin. I lowered my face and breathed in his smell—soap, clean sweat, a man’s skin—and I got a little dizzy. I ran my thumb over the tip, gathered the sticky precum and spread it over the whole glans, then used it to lubricate the entire length with his own juice. At that moment I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop.

Then I felt the pressure on the back of my neck.

His hand. Firm but not rough, pushing me down with a clarity that left no room for doubt. Fingers spread, tangled in my hair, and that calm strength of a big guy telling you without saying anything what he wants you to do.

I opened my mouth before I knew I was doing it.

I took him in as far as I could, which wasn’t all of it, but almost. The hot glans slid past my lips, over my tongue and bumped against my palate, then kept pushing to the back of my throat. My mouth filled with him, with the salty taste of the precum, with the smell of his groin against my nose. I choked a little at first, coughed silently with his cock inside me, and he eased the pressure on my neck for a second, only to press again when I recovered.

I used my tongue in ways I hadn’t known I knew how to use it, circling around the glans, running up the frenulum, pausing at the corona, sliding straight down the vein pulsing along the side. Every time I came up, I sucked hard, hollowing my cheeks; every time I went down, I relaxed and let him sink into me as far as possible. Saliva dripped from the corners of my mouth, wetting his balls, running down his groin. I didn’t care. I just wanted more.

He said nothing, but his hips started moving slowly, setting the rhythm, pushing a little more with every downward stroke. I closed my eyes and let myself go, my hands spread on his thighs, feeling the muscles tighten every time his cock hit the back of my throat. I took him in again and again, with less fear each time, with more hunger each time. I ran my tongue all over his balls, took one into my mouth, then the other, and came back up sucking from base to tip, very slowly, savoring every centimeter. I licked the thick drop that had formed again at the opening, and at last he gave a low moan, almost a growl, and pressed harder on my neck.

His breathing grew shorter, less regular. His hips more insistent, fucking my mouth without pretending now, driving me against his pubic bone with every thrust. I wasn’t thinking about anything specific anymore, only about not stopping, about doing it right, about the heat in my throat and chest and arms. I was rock hard too inside my pajamas, and I could feel a sticky thread running down my leg without even having touched myself.

When I felt he was close—the balls drawing up against his body, his cock getting thicker, harder, impossible—I pulled back for a moment to breathe and immediately went back, one hand taking over, pumping him fast with my wrist turned. I ran my tongue flat over the glans, in circles, without stopping the pumping. His body tensed all at once, arched his back a few millimeters, and at that moment I brought my lips to the tip and took everything carefully.

The first spurt was hot and thick and filled half my mouth. The second came right after, almost without pause, and the third. I kept jerking him as he came, squeezing under the glans to get it all out, and he kept thrusting in short jolts against my tongue, emptying himself completely. I swallowed the first load to make room, and then the rest pooled in my mouth before I slowly took it down. I didn’t spill a drop. I swallowed it all, feeling it go down hot through my throat, with that bitter, salty, clean taste. I cleaned the tip with my tongue, caught the last drops, sucked one last time over the head to make sure, and slowly sat up.

His eyes were still closed. His hips relaxed. He breathed in deeply once, then again. The cock, still hard but heavier, fell against his belly shining with my saliva.

“You really know how to do that,” he said softly, almost to himself. “For someone who’s never sucked one before.”

He turned over and was asleep again in ten seconds.

I stayed sitting on the edge of the bed for a long time, in the dark, with his taste still in my mouth and my pajamas stuck to my thigh with my own jizz, which had leaked out without me noticing. Not knowing what to do with what had just happened. Not with what I had done. With how I felt about having done it.

“All right, Father?” I ask, because on the other side of the lattice there’s a noise I can’t make out.

“Yes, yes,” he answers, his voice a little different. “Go on, my son.”

“That’s all, Father. What I’ve told you is what I need to confess.”

The silence lasts longer than normal.

“God forgives all sincere repentance,” he says at last. “Are you repentant?”

I stay quiet. I think of Erik’s hand on my neck, of how his body tensed and how his breathing changed. I think of the weight of his cock on my tongue, of the taste of his cum sliding down my throat. I think of Elena, who is marrying me in August. I think of the face I made that morning at breakfast and the way he looked at me without saying anything, with that smile that said nothing either, and of how I looked at the table.

“That’s what I don’t know, Father,” I repeat.

“Do you want me to give you your penance?”

“Wait. I’m not done yet.”

On the other side of the lattice, the priest exhales very slowly.

“My son,” he says, “I’ve been here for more than half an hour.”

“I know, Father. It’s just that what happened that night wasn’t only once.”