The Afternoon My Cousin Looked at Me Differently

Tobías and I grew up three blocks apart, on one of those dusty streets where summers seemed never to end. We were cousins on my father’s side, both of us freshly eighteen, and our afternoons were always the same: he’d show up with two bottles of soda, I’d have the console ready, and we’d sit on the floor of my room with the blinds half-drawn because the sun hit hard at that hour.

My mother worked until nine, my father was almost always away on business, and my room was at the end of the hallway. It was our little territory, a place where we could shout when we lost a match without anyone telling us off.

That Tuesday in February we were playing one of those action games with long scenes between levels. In a cutscene a naked woman appeared; the camera framed her from below, the lights traced her waist, her full breasts, a smile that didn’t fit the violence of the rest of the game. I felt my pants starting to tighten. I shifted on the floor, crossed my legs, tried to hide it.

Tobías laughed.

—No need to cover yourself, cousin —he said, pointing to his lap—. It happened to me too.

I looked at him. The fly of his jeans was bulging, just like mine, and he was laughing with that nervous laugh of people who’ve just crossed a line without planning to. We stayed there, both of us kneeling in front of the screen, looking at each other. The cutscene had already ended, but neither of us had gone back to the controller.

Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.

—Can I see it? —I asked.

He took a second to answer. Then he leaned back, put his palms on the rug, and unbuttoned his pants with a calm that had nothing innocent about it. The fabric gave with a soft pop of the button. He pulled down the zipper. The tip was visible under his white briefs, hard, lifting the fabric as if it had a life of its own.

I wasn’t breathing.

—Take it out —I told him. My voice came out rougher than I expected.

He did. He took it by the base and freed it from the elastic, and there it was, standing between us, shiny at the tip, slightly curved toward his navel. It was the first time I’d seen another man’s cock outside the school locker room, and I’d never seen one like that, awake, looking at me.

—Now you —he said.

I pulled my pants down to my thighs. I felt embarrassed at first, that second when the fabric gives way and everything is exposed, but I also felt a strange pleasure knowing he was looking at me with the same attention I’d given him. Tobías bit his lip.

—Can I? —he asked, reaching out without waiting for an answer.

When his fingers wrapped around the base, I jerked. His hand was hotter than I’d expected, his fingers long, his nails trimmed short. He squeezed gently, measuring me, and started moving. Slowly, up and down. I was about to come in the first ten seconds.

—Wait —I said.

—Your turn.

I changed position to reach him. My hand on him was a revelation: the weight, the hardness wrapped in soft skin, the little drop that appeared at the tip and stuck to my thumb when I pulled back. Having his erection between my fingers gave me the absurd feeling of having all of him, of controlling the center of his will with the muscles of my wrist. Every time I squeezed a little, he closed his eyes. Every time I loosened my grip, he opened them suddenly to look at me.

We jerked off like that for a long while, face to face, pants half down, the TV screen still showing the game paused. It smelled like sweat and the spilled soda on the rug. At some point I stopped hearing the fan.

—My mom —Tobías muttered all of a sudden, and hurried to pull his pants up.

His mother was calling him from the gate. She had walked him to my house and was coming back to get him. We got dressed in a rush, both of us red to the ears, without finishing what we’d started.

—Tomorrow —he said from the bedroom doorway. It wasn’t a question.

—Tomorrow —I answered.

***

That night I didn’t sleep. I jerked off three times thinking about the curve of his cock, the face he made when he closed his eyes, what would have happened if his mother hadn’t arrived. Every time I finished I swore I’d be able to sleep, and twenty minutes later I was hard again thinking about him.

The next day he showed up at four on the dot. My mother had already left for work. I closed the bedroom door and we stood there, looking at each other, not quite knowing where to begin again. This time there was no game on the console to hide anything.

—What if we do it another way? —he asked.

—How?

—I don’t know. Something more than with the hand.

He came close until he was a hand’s width from me. He smelled like that cheap deodorant he always used and something else, something new, something I hadn’t smelled the day before. He pressed his forehead to mine and we stayed like that, breathing each other’s air, until his hand grabbed my waist and gently pushed me against the wardrobe.

We rubbed our erections through our clothes, first shyly and then desperately. I grabbed his ass over his pants. It was hard, taut. He did the same to me. We stayed like that for several minutes, gasping into each other’s necks, until he pulled away, breathing in short gasps.

—I want to taste it —he said without looking at me.

—Mine?

He nodded.

I sat him on the edge of the bed. I pulled my pants down to my ankles and stood between his knees. Tobías looked up at me with an expression I’d never seen on him: part fear, part hunger, part pleading. He took my cock by the base, hesitated for a second, and put it in his mouth.

The world went out for me.

First came the heat, then the dampness, then the pressure of his tongue moving up and down my frenulum. He had no technique, I understood that right away; but it didn’t matter. It was him. It was my cousin, the boy I’d built sandcastles with at seven, the one I’d stolen candy with from the corner shop at ten, the one I’d cried with in the schoolyard when my grandfather died. It was him, kneeling between my legs, my hands tangled in his hair and my cock disappearing into his mouth every few seconds.

—Wait —I told him after a while, before I came—. Your turn.

We switched positions. I sat him on the bed, knelt on the rug between his legs, and yanked his jeans down to his ankles. I took off his briefs. His balls were tight, the veins marked along the shaft, the tip already glossy. I brought my mouth close, afraid. I licked him first, the way he’d done to me, one slow stroke from bottom to top that drew a sigh from him I hadn’t expected. Then I parted my lips and took him all the way in.

Never in my life had I felt anything as intense as having a piece of hot, hard flesh between my lips. I ran my tongue over the head, over the ridge separating the glans from the shaft, over the thick vein underneath. I jerked him with one hand while I had him in my mouth, and with the other I grabbed my own cock, which throbbed against his thigh as if asking for attention. Every time I felt a jolt of pleasure in my own body, I answered by tightening my lips harder around his cock.

—I’m going to… —he started to say.

I didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to pull away. Tobías came into my mouth with a shudder that rose from his feet, and I stayed there with his hands on the back of my neck and the hot, salty taste sliding down my throat. I swallowed without thinking. That was the part I liked most, that feeling of having earned something, of having ripped from my cousin’s body the most intimate proof of his pleasure.

I finished myself off on the floor of my own room, still kneeling between his legs, while he watched me with half-closed eyes and a smile that never left his face.

***

That’s how we were for nearly a month. Tobías came over after school, before my mother got back. Some afternoons we played console with our pants low, pausing every twenty minutes to suck each other off. Other times we didn’t even turn on the TV: he’d come into the room, push me against the wall, and two minutes later he’d already be on his knees. We tried things we’d seen in the magazines he stole from his father’s workshop: positions, rhythms, ways to hold out longer, ways to come harder.

We learned to read each other’s bodies. I knew that when he bit his lip it meant he was close and I had to go slower to make it last. He knew that when I closed my eyes it was time to let go of my hand and let me finish in his mouth. It was a silent language made of breathing, squeezing, and looks. We didn’t kiss. That was a line neither of us dared cross, I don’t know if out of fear, guilt, or because physical pleasure reached us without needing to give it a romantic name.

One afternoon, when we were done, Tobías stayed lying on the rug staring at the ceiling. Sweat shone on his collarbones. I brushed the back of my hand across his cheek, not really knowing why.

—They’re going to send us far away —he said, without looking at me.

—Both of us?

—Us. My family. My old man changed jobs. We’re leaving in two weeks.

I didn’t know what to say. Tobías got dressed in silence, gave me a tap on the shoulder on his way out, and disappeared down the stairs.

We saw each other three more times after that afternoon. The last one was short, almost clumsy, both of us knowing it was the last and not daring to say so. We finished quickly, almost standing up against the bathroom door. When he pulled his pants up, he looked at me a second too long before leaving.

—Take care —he said.

—You too.

***

Many years passed. I had other partners, men and the occasional woman. There were more sophisticated encounters, people with technique, people with experience, people who knew exactly what to do with their tongues. But none had the taste of that first afternoon with Tobías, pants half down and the TV showing the pause of a game we never quite finished playing.

Sometimes, on nights when I can’t sleep, I still think about him. About the curve of his cock against my navel. About the way he used to bite his lip when the end was near. About the spilled sodas, the fan turning, the final “take care” said almost in a whisper.

If he ever comes back, I’ll be waiting with the console ready and the blinds half-drawn. And this time yes; this time I’m going to dare to kiss him.