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, we had both just turned 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-lowered because the sun was brutal at that hour.

My mother worked until nine, my father was almost always away on a trip, and my room was at the back of the hall. It was our little territory, a place where we could yell 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 highlighted her waist, her full breasts, a smile that didn’t fit the violence of the rest of the game. I felt my pants start to tighten. I shifted on the floor, crossed my legs, tried to hide it.

Tobías laughed.

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

I looked at him. The front of his jeans was bulging, just like mine, and he was laughing with that nervous laugh of people who have 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, planted his palms on the rug, and unbuttoned his pants with a calm that was anything but innocent. The fabric gave way with a soft pop of the button. He pulled the zipper down. The tip was outlined beneath the white boxer briefs, hard, lifting the fabric as if it had a life of its own. There was a small wet patch right where the head pressed, and that sight made me swallow.

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, shining at the tip, slightly curved toward his navel. It was the first time I had seen another man’s cock outside the school locker room, and I had never seen one like that, awake, looking at me. The shaft was darker and the glans a swollen pink, with a thick bead of pre-cum hanging from the slit. His balls had slipped out of his boxer briefs too, tight, tense, pulled up against the base of his cock as if they were in a hurry.

—Now you —he said.

I pulled my pants down to my thighs. I was embarrassed at first, in that second when the garment gives way and everything is exposed, but I also felt a strange pleasure knowing he was looking at me with the same attention I had given him. My cock sprang out of the elastic and slapped against my stomach, so hard the stretched skin of the head hurt. Tobías bit his lip.

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

When his fingers wrapped around my base, I jumped. His hand was hotter than I expected, his fingers long, his nails short. He squeezed gently, measuring me, and started moving. Slowly, up and down. My skin slid back, exposing the glans, and he stopped right at the tip, looked at it, and went back down. I almost came in the first ten seconds.

—Wait —I told him—. Wait, I’m gonna cum.

—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 peeking out at the tip and sticking to my thumb when I pulled down. I spread that warm liquid all over the glans, using it as lubricant, and Tobías’s cock started shining all over. Having his erection between my fingers gave me the absurd sensation of having all of him, of controlling the center of his will with the muscles of my wrist. Every time I squeezed a little harder, he closed his eyes and a low moan slipped out of him. Every time I eased up, he opened them sharply to look at me, mouth parted, breathing shallow.

—Harder —he whispered—. Grab it harder.

I clenched my fist around it and started jerking him off for real, in rhythm, pulling up to cover the glans and down until my knuckles bumped against his balls. He did the same to me, and the two of us watched our hands go back and forth over each other’s cocks, hypnotized. Mine crackled every time it went down, wet with the fluid that kept leaking out of me.

We jerked off like that for a long while, face to face, our pants half-lowered, the television screen still showing the game paused. It smelled of sweat, of soda spilled on the rug, and of that new, thick smell of two cocks worked up to the edge. At some point I stopped hearing the fan.

—My mom —murmured Tobías suddenly, and hurried to pull up his pants, trapping his hard cock against the elastic with a grimace of pain.

His mother was calling him from the gate. She had brought him over and was coming to pick him up. We got dressed in a hurry, both of us red to the ears, without finishing what we’d started.

—Tomorrow —he said from the bedroom door. 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, how his balls tightened when I squeezed hard. The first time I came two minutes after getting into bed, imagining it was his hand and not mine; I swallowed the cum from my thumb and lay there staring at the ceiling, ashamed and already hard again. The second time I pulled my briefs down to my knees and jerked myself off slowly, imagining what would have happened if his mother hadn’t arrived, if I had knelt in front of him right there, if I had opened my mouth to his cock like I hadn’t dared to. I came on my stomach and stayed still, feeling the hot puddle run down my ribs. The third time, near dawn, I put two fingers in my mouth while I held myself, to get my tongue used to feeling something thick, something pushing in. 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 sharp. 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 start again. This time there was no game on the console to pretend nothing was happening.

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

—How?

—I don’t know. Something more than with our hands.

He came close until he was a hand’s width from me. He smelled of that cheap deodorant he always used and of something else, something new, something I hadn’t noticed the day before. He pressed his forehead to mine and we stayed like that, breathing each other’s air, until his hand gripped 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, tight. He did the same to me. Our cocks searched for each other through the jeans, met, pressed against one another separated only by two layers of fabric that were starting to get wet at the tip. I pushed my hips against his and he let out a short moan against my neck. I dug my fingers into his ass and pulled him closer, and he bit my shoulder over my T-shirt. We stayed like that for several minutes, panting against each other’s necks, until he pulled away, his breathing ragged.

—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. My cock was at face level, pointed at his lips, dripping pre-cum that ran in a long thread all the way down to his jeans. Tobías looked up at me with an expression I had never seen on him: part fear, part hunger, part pleading. He took my cock by the base, hesitated for a second, stuck out his tongue, and licked the drop hanging there. He swallowed it slowly, eyes closed, as if tasting it. Then he opened his mouth and took it all the way in.

The world went out under me.

I felt the heat first, then the wetness, then the pressure of his tongue moving up and down along the frenulum. He squeezed his lips around the shaft and went down until he could reach, and when the tip touched the back of his palate he made a little gagging noise, pulled back, breathed, and went down again. He didn’t know what he was doing, I understood that right away; his teeth scraped me now and then and he pulled my cock out of his mouth every so often to take a breath with a thread of saliva hanging from his chin. But technique wasn’t necessary. It was him. It was my cousin, that boy I had built sandcastles with at seven, that I had stolen candy with from the kiosk at ten, that I had 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, saliva running down his chin, his wet eyes looking up at me, asking me to teach him.

I gripped his head with both hands and started setting a rhythm, pushing his face slowly against my pelvis. He let me. He learned quickly to relax his throat, to swallow the head when I went down, to suck the tip when I gave him a break. I fucked his mouth like that, gently, while he squeezed my balls with his free hand and weighed them as if they were something precious.

—Wait —I told him after a while, pulling it from his mouth with a wet sound, 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 pulled off his briefs. His cock sprang free, hard, pulsing, with a thick vein running along the shaft. His scrotum was tight, the veins marked, the head already shining with fluid. I brought my mouth close, afraid. I licked him first, like he had done, a slow stroke from bottom to top that made him let out a sigh I wasn’t expecting. I ran my tongue over his balls, kissed them one by one, took them into my mouth carefully and felt them contract against my tongue. Then I moved slowly up the vein underneath, tongue flat, until I reached the glans. I kissed the tip. 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 hot, hard piece of flesh between my lips. I ran my tongue over the head, over the ridge that separated the glans from the shaft, over the thick vein underneath. Saliva gathered in my mouth and dripped down over his balls, wetting the base of his thighs. I jerked him off with one hand while I had him in my mouth, moving my fist up and down to the same rhythm as my lips, and with the other I grabbed my own cock, which throbbed against his thigh as if begging for attention. Every time I felt a surge of pleasure in my own body, I answered it by tightening my lips harder around his cock, sucking deeper, swallowing more of the shaft. Tobías pushed his hips upward without being able to control himself, fucking my mouth from below, and I let him, opening my throat as much as I could and taking him in.

—That’s it, cousin, that’s it… —he panted, one hand tight in my nape—. Suck it all… Don’t stop…

I let his cock out for a second to lick his balls again, running my tongue up his perineum, and he jerked so violently he almost threw me off the bed. I went back to the glans. I sucked the tip with my lips tight, stuck out my tongue, wrapped it around the crown, and went down in one go to the base.

—I’m gonna… —he started to say—. I’m cumming, I’m cumming, I…

I didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to pull away. I closed my lips harder and waited. Tobías came into my mouth with a tremor that rose up from his feet, grabbing my head with both hands, pushing it against his pelvis. I felt the first shot hit the back of my throat, hot, thick, and then three or four more came, softer, filling my mouth with a salty, dense taste. I stayed there with his hands on my nape and the hot, salty taste sliding down my throat. I swallowed without thinking. I swallowed everything, every last drop, and then I sucked his tip to get out what was left, until I left it clean and still hard. That was the part I liked most, that sensation of having won something, of having torn from my cousin’s body the most intimate proof of his pleasure, of having him inside me.

I finished myself off on the floor of my own room, still kneeling between his legs, jerking off with the hand full of the saliva I had used on his cock. I came in three hard strokes, with long ropes that landed on the rug and on Tobías’s shoe, while he watched me with narrowed eyes and a smile that wouldn’t go away.

***

We went on like that for nearly a month. Tobías came after school, before my mother got back. Some afternoons we played on the console with our pants low, stopping the game 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 with my cock in his mouth. We tried things we had seen in the magazines he stole from his father’s workshop: sixty-nine lying on our sides, sucking each other’s cocks at the same time with the other’s balls against our nose; jerking off by rubbing both cocks together inside the same fist until we came at the same time over each other’s stomachs; holding back to the edge and stopping dead five times in a row so the final climax would be huge; trying to push a wet finger up each other’s ass while the other sucked, searching for that inside spot the magazines talked about.

One afternoon he made me get on all fours on the bed and licked my ass for the first time, spreading my cheeks with his hands, and I came onto the mattress without him touching my cock, just with his tongue working me back there. Another afternoon it was me who asked him to open up for me, and I ate his ass until he was crying and begging me to finger-fuck him, and I jerked myself off over his kidneys while I fucked his hole with my index and middle fingers.

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 with his hand and let me finish in his mouth. He knew how hard to squeeze my balls just before I came to make me last longer. He knew when to put a finger in while he sucked me so I’d go weak at the knees. 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 a romantic name attached to it. We swallowed each other’s cum, ate each other’s ass, put fingers inside each other, but mouth to mouth never.

One afternoon, when it was over, Tobías stayed lying on the rug staring at the ceiling, his cock still soft and shiny against his thigh. Sweat glistened on his collarbones. I brushed the back of my hand over his cheek, without really knowing why.

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

—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 little tap on the shoulder as he left, and disappeared down the stairs.

We saw each other three more times after that afternoon. The last time was short, almost awkward, both of us knowing it was the last and not daring to say it. We took them out right there, without even fully undressing, and jerked each other off leaning against the bathroom door, foreheads pressed to each other’s shoulders, pants around our ankles. I came first, into his fist, spattering his wrist and jeans; he finished a few seconds later, pressing his face against my neck, leaving my stomach wet with warm semen. We wiped ourselves with toilet paper in silence. When he pulled his pants up, he looked at me a second too long before leaving.

—Take care of yourself —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 tongue, men who fucked me and whom I fucked, expert mouths that swallowed me whole without gagging. But none of them had the taste of that first afternoon with Tobías, with our pants half-lowered and the television showing the pause screen of a game we never actually finished playing.

Sometimes, on nights when I can’t sleep, I still think of him. Of the curve of his cock against my navel. Of the weight of his balls against my tongue. Of the way he used to bite his lip when the end was near. Of the hot taste of his cum running down my throat. Of the spilled sodas, the fan turning, the last “take care of yourself” said almost in a whisper.

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