The Desire of His Gay Best Friend Changed Him Forever

The terrace of the mansion in Punta del Este was everything money could buy and none of what the soul needs. It was half past midnight, and the Río de la Plata stretched out dark and still beyond the stone railing, with Montevideo’s lights drawing a blurred line on the horizon. Music rose muffled from the floor below: slow electronic, meant to loosen the edges of people.

Daniela Fuentes was sitting on the pool steps with her legs in the water, her black dress rolled up to her thighs, staring without seeing. She was twenty-three, with dark brown hair to her shoulders and that stillness people have when they’ve spent too long keeping something silent.

The villa belonged to Sofía Aldana’s family, whose father had made a fortune in Buenos Aires finance. That weekend she had gathered the four friends who had survived Villa Crespo boarding school, the private school where the rich families of the Southern Cone sent their children to learn the rules of the world. Daniela had entered at fourteen. She had left at eighteen with the rules learned and a secret she had never told anyone.

—Daniela, want some more? —Rodrigo asked from the portable bar they had set up beside the steps.

—No, I’m fine.

Rodrigo nodded and went back to his conversation with Karim Nassir, who was seated on the edge of the water with his feet dangling and that calculating expression he wore when he watched people without seeming to watch them.

Daniela tightened her grip on the glass.

Mateo Riesco had just come back from the interior and sat down again on the white chaise longue, a blue linen shirt open over his chest, his hair slightly damp from the heat, a glass of whisky in his hand. Twenty-five years old, tanned skin, sharply defined features, and that way of occupying space some people have: effortlessly, with no need to explain themselves.

He was gay. He had been since he was seventeen. He had said it once and hadn’t needed to say it again.

Daniela had loved him since she was sixteen and he had walked into geography class with a battered backpack and the expression of someone with the least interest in being there. From that exact moment. Not in the quiet way one loves a friend: in the other way. The way that has no exit.

—Mateo, tell us about Berlin —Karim said from the water’s edge—. The museum guide.

—Which one? —Mateo replied with a slow smile.

—The one who followed you into the fourth room.

Mateo let the glass rest on his thigh and glanced toward the river for a second before speaking.

—His name was Tobias. Thirty, a photographer. He hit on me in the second room and by the time we got to the fourth it was obvious what was going to happen. We ended up in the bathroom in the basement for almost an hour. We came out as if nothing had happened and never even exchanged surnames.

Rodrigo burst out laughing. Sofía, who had come back from the kitchen with another bottle, rolled her eyes with a smile.

Daniela smiled too.

That was what she always did: listen, smile, keep it. Five years like that, since boarding school. Five years listening to every one of Mateo’s stories with the same careful attention and the same quiet pain no one saw because she had become very good at not letting it show. Keeping everything somewhere inside her chest and then, alone, letting it out in the only possible way.

At two in the morning, when Rodrigo was already on the sofa with his eyes closed and Karim had disappeared upstairs with Sofía, Daniela took her drink and went down alone to the private beach.

She sat on the sand. The water was still. The sky, clear and full.

This can’t be fixed anymore.

It wasn’t a new conclusion. It was the same thought as always, but that night it weighed differently. Maybe because she hadn’t seen him in person for two years. Maybe because seeing him that afternoon, when he got out of the car and looked at her with that same open, confident smile, had reminded her with perfect precision of what she couldn’t have.

She heard footsteps in the sand behind her. She turned.

It wasn’t Mateo.

It was a man she hadn’t seen all night: tall, dark suit without a tie, black hair combed back, short beard perfectly trimmed. He walked across the beach as if he hadn’t arrived at any point, as if he had always been there. When he reached her, he stopped and looked at her with a calm that didn’t belong at any party.

—Daniela —he said. It wasn’t a question.

She frowned.

—Who are you?

—Someone who can offer you what you’ve wanted for years. —He sat down beside her without asking permission, with the ease of someone who needs no approval for anything—. My name is Víctor.

—How do you know my name?

—For the same reason I know you’ve been in love with a man for eight years who’s never going to desire you the way you want. Not because he doesn’t see you. But because what he desires is something this body can’t give him.

Daniela clenched her jaw but said nothing.

Víctor put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small dark glass vial, unlabeled. Inside were only a few drops of a thick, nearly black liquid.

—One drop. The transformation is complete and real. You’ll have exactly what you want. But it comes at a price.

—What price?

—The first time, pure pleasure. After that, each use costs you something: a small memory, a piece of emotion, a fragment of what you were before. If you use it too much, at some point you won’t know who you were anymore. You decide how much you lose. I just put the vial on the table.

Daniela looked at him for a moment. She thought about all the nights she had spent awake. About the times she had seen Mateo come out of some room with his hair tousled and that satisfied expression, and she had smiled as if nothing were wrong while inside something in her had tightened beyond relief. She thought about the last goodbye hug: her face against his neck, breathing in that scent she still remembered two years later.

She took the vial.

—Just once —she said.

—The decision is always yours —Víctor replied.

When Daniela looked over again, he was already gone.

***

She locked herself in the bathroom of her room with the vial in her hand and her heart pounding hard. She opened it. The smell was almost nonexistent, only a metallic trace, like the air before a storm.

She let a single drop fall onto her tongue.

The effect was immediate: a heat that surged from the center of her chest and spread to her extremities within seconds. Then came the pain, dull at first, deep, like something reorganizing itself from the bones outward. She fell to her knees in front of the mirror and watched what was happening to her body and couldn’t look away.

The features of her face sharpened, redefined themselves. Her jaw squared. Her shoulders broadened beneath the dress with a dull crack. Her chest flattened, became flat and marked. Her voice, when she let out an involuntary sound, came out low and strange in her own throat.

And between her legs, the most drastic change: complete, hot, unexpectedly heavy.

When the pain eased, Darío stood up and stared at himself in the mirror for a long while.

—Fuck —he said. The word came out in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own, but it was completely his.

He touched his face with both hands. Ran his fingers over the flat chest, the sides, the hips. He slowly brought one hand down, with a mix of vertigo and hunger, until he found that new anatomy and confirmed, with a brutal jolt of reality, that there was something hard, hot, and alive there where before there had been nothing like it. His breath caught. His fingers trembled a little as he wrapped around it, measuring the weight and length, feeling the sensitive skin underneath and the immediate tension climbing through his belly. He had never felt a body like this. He had never been so awake inside one.

He pressed his forehead to the mirror and let out his breath in a rush.

Then he closed his eyes for a moment and thought about Mateo.

He went up the stairs.

***

He found him exactly where he expected: alone on the upper terrace, leaning against the stone railing, looking out at the black river. He had a half-finished glass of whisky and that posture of someone who thinks too much when he is still. The music from below came like a distant murmur.

Mateo turned at the sound of footsteps.

His expression changed: surprise first, then a quick appraisal that ended in curiosity. He looked Darío up and down with that natural ease people have when they are used to knowing what they want.

—I hadn’t seen you before tonight.

—I was around —Darío replied.

They looked at each other for a second. Mateo had that ability to read people fast, and what he read in that moment made him smile slowly, with that half-smile Daniela knew by heart but which, seen from this angle and from this body, worked in a completely different way.

—Want a drink?

—No.

Darío took two steps toward him, put a hand on the back of his neck, and kissed him.

It wasn’t tentative. It was the kiss of eight years of waiting, direct, unapologetic. Mateo took exactly two seconds to respond, and when he did, the hand he placed on Darío’s waist squeezed with enough force to make it clear he had no intention of pulling away. His mouth tasted of whisky and salt, and Mateo’s tongue came in hungry, with a confidence that made his whole body burn. Darío let out a low moan against his lips, feeling his pulse racing between his legs, as if that transformation had only made every contact unbearable.

Mateo shoved him against the terrace wall without breaking the kiss. His hands slid down Darío’s back, squeezing his ass through the fabric, assessing his body’s new shape with obscene frankness. Darío pressed closer, rubbing against him shamelessly, feeling Mateo’s hard erection against his own crotch and the way that left him trembling from head to toe. They broke apart only enough to breathe.

—I don’t know your name —Mateo said.

—Darío.

Mateo repeated it softly, as if weighing it. Then he slowly unbuttoned the shirt, looking him in the face while he did it. He ran his hands over his chest, his sides, his hips, and then brought one down to wrap around his cock through the pants, measuring the size with a slow, sure gesture that drew an involuntary growl from Darío. The fabric was already wet where Mateo was squeezing. He smiled, barely.

—First time? —he asked softly.

—Yes.

—Good. —He brushed Darío’s neck with his lips—. I like the ones who still don’t know what they like.

He opened the shirt wider and started licking his neck with patience, down to the collarbone, sucking the skin with his mouth open while his fingers returned to the waist, the ass, the groin, shamelessly testing Darío’s reaction. When he found his erection through the pants, he squeezed it with his palm, slowly at first, then more firmly. Darío arched his back against the wall and let the air out in a broken exhale.

—That’s it —Mateo murmured against his throat—. Like that. That’s how I like it.

Darío didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His whole body was on fire, a brutal need to be opened, used, filled with Mateo’s attention. He fumbled with the belt, helping with the buckle, and Mateo let him while continuing to kiss him with ferocious calm, as if he wanted to make clear there was no rush, that the important thing was to do it slowly and well. When Darío opened the pants, Mateo slid a hand into the boxers and wrapped it around the hot, hard cock with a pressure that drew another groan from him, louder this time, filtered through both of their heavy breathing.

—Look at me —Mateo said.

Darío looked at him.

Mateo leaned down and sucked one nipple, biting the edge lightly, then moved lower with his mouth over the abdomen to the waistband, where he knelt without ceremony on the terrace lit by the night. Darío felt a sharp jolt of disbelief and desire seeing him there, between his legs, his face at the exact level of what he wanted. Mateo pulled his pants and boxers down in one motion and left him completely exposed to the damp air.

—Fuck —Mateo murmured, looking at Darío’s cock with attention that was almost a caress—. You’re gorgeous.

Before Darío could answer, he took the whole head into his mouth, wetting it with a slow, broad tongue, then started sucking for real, deep, swallowing him as far as he could, with a firm rhythm that made Darío grip the stone railing so he wouldn’t fold over. His head was spinning. The wet sound, the heat of that mouth, the way Mateo squeezed his thighs with his hands while he sucked him like he wanted to tear the calm right out of him were completely undoing him.

—Yes... like that —Darío said, voice broken—. Don’t stop.

Mateo looked up for a second, his lips shining with saliva, and smiled with that kind of dark satisfaction that made it impossible to think. Then he went back down, taking him deeper, teasing the tip, the frenulum, alternating long, deep sucks with short filthy licks that sent tremors all through Darío’s body. One hand held his hip; the other stroked his ass over the remaining fabric, as if deciding where to touch him next.

Darío finally let out a near-desperate whimper when the orgasm started climbing from his belly.

Mateo noticed the change immediately. He pulled back just enough to look, to let him burn one second longer, and then said:

—Tell me if you want to keep going.

Darío nodded hard, breathless.

—Yes. I want more.

Mateo stood up, kissed him again, and pushed him toward the terrace door. They went into the guest room without turning on the light; only the blue-gray light of dawn slipped through the curtains, enough to see the movements halfway, enough not to miss a single gesture. Mateo led him to the bed with a firm hand on the back of his neck and made him sit on the edge while he knelt between his legs.

He opened his pants all the way, pulled down the boxers, and spat into his palm before wrapping his hand around the cock again. The hand sliding over wet skin was a slow torture. Darío leaned back, supporting himself on his hands, and Mateo spread his legs with his knee.

—Relax —he murmured—. I want to do it right.

He ran his fingers along the opening, wetting them again with saliva, and then slid them in one by one, slowly, with a precision that forced Darío to close his eyes and bite his tongue. The first finger went in with pressure. The second opened him wider. The third drew out a high, rough moan, because his whole body seemed to respond hungrily to every centimeter Mateo offered. He prepared him with cruel patience, stretching him until Darío started rocking on his own toward the hand, wanting more.

—That’s it —Mateo said—. Like that. Take my hand like you’ve been waiting for it all night.

Darío gasped. His ass was burning, his breathing in tatters, his cock throbbing against his abdomen while Mateo opened his body with those long, sure fingers. When he finally pulled them out, Darío was soaked with sweat, his skin shining and his chest rising and falling unevenly.

Mateo stood, stripped off his pants with impatient speed, and looked at him standing there, naked, hard, beautiful in the dim light. Darío lifted his gaze and lost his breath. Mateo’s cock was rigid, thick, the head wet and a vein running along the side. Mateo leaned down to kiss him again, and Darío grabbed his waist with both hands, desperate to feel him close.

—I want you to fuck me —Darío said, bluntly, with an honesty that burned his throat.

Mateo let out a low laugh, thick with desire.

—That’s exactly what I was thinking.

He made him lie on his back on the bed, lifted his legs, and settled between them. Then he pressed the tip to his entrance, pushed slowly, and started in centimeter by centimeter, with a delicious slowness that made every advance unbearable. Darío felt the first invasion as a brutal sting and, at the same time, as a current racing through his whole body down to his toes. Mateo filled him in a way that left no room for anything else.

—Fuck —Darío said, grabbing him by the shoulders—. Fuck, like that.

—Do you like it? —Mateo asked, almost in his ear.

—Yes. More. Harder.

Mateo smiled with his mouth barely open and finished entering him in one deep thrust that drew a shuddering moan from Darío, long, almost broken. He stayed still for a second, giving him time to adjust, his forehead resting against Darío’s neck and his breath hot on his skin. Then he started moving. At first slow, measuring the rhythm, and then harder and deeper, hitting him from an angle that shook his whole body.

The bed creaked. Mateo’s hips slapped against Darío’s with a wet, heavy, obscene sound. Darío clung to the sheet and spread his legs wider, wanting him to go deeper, wanting to feel him everywhere. Mateo held his knees and took him with savage precision, moving without losing control but without softening anything. Every thrust was complete, direct, brutal in its exactness.

—You’re swallowing it all —Mateo murmured—. You’re insane.

Darío’s eyes were wet, his mouth open, his cock pounding between his belly and the sheet. He touched himself with his free hand and jerked off to the rhythm of the thrusts, feeling the orgasm rise again, faster this time, inevitable. Mateo brought a hand down and closed his fingers around his cock, guiding him with sharp, firm movements until Darío started moaning uncontrollably.

—Like that —Mateo said—. Come with me.

And Darío came first, with a hard shudder that tensed his whole body, spilling over his abdomen while Mateo kept fucking him with the same intensity, now deeper, messier, pushing until he too came apart with a low, hot groan against his throat. He felt the impact of the cum inside him, the final pulse, the stiffness giving way in spasms while both of them remained drenched in sweat and breath.

Mateo stayed still for a moment, still buried in him, his face pressed into Darío’s neck.

Silence. The dawn. The distant murmur of music below.

—Hey —Mateo said softly—. Are you okay?

—Yes. —The word came out whole, unbroken. And it was true: he was okay in a way that made the word completely insufficient.

Mateo pulled away slowly. Darío sat up and turned to look at him. Mateo’s expression was curious, as if he were trying to solve something that didn’t quite add up.

—You remind me of someone —he said quietly.

Darío looked at him for a moment without answering.

—I don’t think we’ve met before.

—No. —Mateo shook his head—. Not that. It’s something about the way you look at me.

Darío picked up the shirt from the floor and put it on without hurry. Mateo watched him. The river was still black and calm beyond the railing, Montevideo’s lights blinking in the distance exactly as they had an hour earlier, as if nothing in the world had changed.

—How long are you staying? —Mateo asked.

—I don’t know yet.

Mateo nodded. He picked up the whisky glass he had left on the floor and took a slow sip. Then he looked at Darío with that half-smile Daniela had known by heart since she was sixteen, but which now had another meaning, or perhaps the same meaning, finally directed in the right direction.

—I hope you stay a while —he said.

***

Darío went down to the bathroom on the ground floor before anyone else stirred. He looked at himself in the mirror under the white, cold light. He was still Darío: square jaw, short hair, man’s hands. Daniela was somewhere inside, whole but as if seen from very far away, like a memory that still hurts but no longer weighs the same.

He took the vial from his shirt pocket. There were still more drops.

Víctor had said the decision was his.

He put it away.

He turned off the bathroom light and went up the stairs quietly, making no noise. From the upper terrace came footsteps: Mateo, still awake, moving in the dark.

Darío reached the last step and stopped for a moment. Outside, dawn was beginning to show at the edge of the sky, that faint gray band that precedes the light and always feels like a promise. The vial was still in his pocket. The drops, untouched.

Just once, he had said.

He climbed the last step.