The Dinner Where Four Men Confessed Our Desires

The return flight from the United States felt short. I’d spent months training in a development league on the other side of the Atlantic, with the pressure of the cameras on me and the nickname “the Overall Kid” stuck to my back like a second skin. Leo slept through almost the entire journey with his head on my shoulder, and I spent my time looking at the crown of his hair and breathing slowly, as if I could store that moment somewhere.

Darío and Mateo were checking emails in silence in the row ahead. When the plane touched down and the doors opened, the damp northern air filled my lungs with something like peace. It smelled of recent rain and the sea.

—Almost home —Mateo said from the front passenger seat of the rented minivan. He drove slowly, unhurriedly, along a road that wound between green hills and stone farmhouses.

Leo found my hand in the back seat and interlaced his fingers with mine.

—Finally, nobody watching us —he murmured.

I kissed his forehead. I was just about to believe it when I saw it.

Less than a kilometer from the village, hanging from a post beside the ditch, a sheet with crooked red letters: “GET OUT OF HERE. WE DON’T WANT YOUR KIND.”

Silence fell inside the car like a slab of stone. I squeezed Leo’s hand without realizing it.

—Don’t pay them any mind —Darío said at the wheel, jaw tight—. They’re just a handful of loudmouths.

—It hurts just the same —Leo replied softly, his eyes shining.

They’re not going to take this from us. That’s what I thought, though the words wouldn’t come out.

The banner was left behind, but its echo traveled with us for the last few meters.

***

The welcome, by contrast, was the complete opposite. When we turned into the main street, half the square was waiting for us: neighbors with hand-painted signs, children running around in green bibs like the one I had made famous, teenagers in printed T-shirts. Music was playing, cider was flowing, and someone hugged me before I’d even shut the car door.

A group of grandmothers pinched my cheeks as if I were twelve.

—What a source of pride, son!

A kid wearing the bib yelled that I was his idol, and my voice broke when I thanked him. Leo was watching me out of the corner of his eye, smiling, and he squeezed my hand.

—Look what you’ve done —he said.

Darío and Mateo stood a step behind us, giving us the moment. For once, the banner at the entrance seemed very small.

***

They put us in the guest room at Darío and Mateo’s house, a large room overlooking the back garden, with sheets that smelled of lavender. I set the suitcase on the floor and hugged Leo from behind, burying my nose in his neck.

—Everything feels more real here —I told him against his skin—. Less noise. You calm me down.

He turned in my arms and slipped his hand down the front of my pants without ceremony, gripping my cock through the fabric until I could feel it hardening against his palm.

—That banner hurt me —he whispered, biting my jaw—. Are you okay?

—It hurts —I admitted, pushing my hips against his hand—. But the welcome healed me. And you, touching me like that, get me so hard I forget everything else.

I kissed him slowly, with tongue, sucking his lower lip until a low moan escaped him. I slipped my hand under his T-shirt, pinched his nipples one by one until they hardened, and he answered by squeezing my bulge harder, tracing the shape of my cock through my jeans with his fingers. We would have kept going; I would have pulled it out right there and shoved it into his mouth against the wall, but jet lag weighed on our bones and dinner was still ahead. We unpacked half-heartedly, brushing against each other on purpose, him pushing his ass out every time he bent over, me biting the back of his neck from behind, putting off what we both knew was going to happen sooner or later.

***

Hugo and Saúl arrived as evening fell, after closing the shop they ran in the village. A clothing store that, in my absence, had become a small empire: they hired boys from the local club, sold colorful bibs with the brand I had helped make fashionable, negotiated sponsorships with brands that had once barely looked at us.

—Sales are through the roof —Hugo said, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Saúl, quieter, hugged Darío with a force that gave something away. I noticed it from the doorway: they came carrying a weight.

—We need to talk about a couple of things —Saúl said—. Personal things. Dinner together?

Mateo caught the tension immediately.

—At home. With Leo and Bruno too. Everything gets talked about here.

***

The table was set when we sat down: candles, steaming marmitako, fresh bread, red wine, and the fire in the hearth crackling in the background. We ate for a while amid anecdotes and laughter until Saúl put down his fork and drew breath.

—Hugo and I are in crisis —he blurted out. His voice trembled a little—. I dream of stability. A home, roots, maybe one day a child. And he needs to explore. An open relationship, other bodies, trying things that with me just feel too short.

Hugo reached for his hand under the tablecloth.

—That’s not it —he said, his voice rough—. I love Saúl with everything I am. But I’m afraid routine will extinguish us, that desire will turn into habit. I don’t want to stop looking at him the way I look at him now. And sometimes I feel that in order not to lose him, I need exactly the opposite: open up, not close ourselves off.

Silence settled over the room. Leo and I looked at each other, because we had had that conversation ourselves a hundred times, in other beds, in other languages.

—I understand both of you —I said at last—. More than you think.

And then I told them.

***

—Last summer, before I got signed by the team abroad, Leo and I fucked a third guy. —I saw Saúl lift his head—. It was in the dunes, at sunset, far from everything. We’d gone for a swim and night fell on us. There was a guy, younger than us, early twenties, all tanned, who’d been watching us for a while from the top of a sand dune with his hand inside his swimsuit.

Leo lowered his eyes to his glass, blushing, but smiling.

—He didn’t do anything at first —I went on—. He just watched and touched his cock over the fabric. And that look, instead of bothering me, made me rock hard. I started kissing Leo knowing he was watching us, I shoved my tongue in deep until I hit his uvula, and I pulled his swimsuit down slowly, on purpose, so the other guy could see his ass. Leo was already hard and dripping when I spread his legs right there on the towel. I knelt down and took his cock in my mouth all the way, swallowing until the head hit my throat, sucking it hard so the stranger could hear him moan.

The fire crackled. Nobody said anything.

—The kid came down off the dune with his dick out —I said, not lowering my voice—. He was already jerking himself, thick, red, the foreskin pulled back and the head shiny. As soon as Leo had him close, he held out his hand and grabbed him. He brought it up to face height without stopping sucking me. I looked at Leo from above, with my cock going in and out of his mouth and the other man’s just inches from his lips, and I swear I almost came without touching myself.

—Fuck —Hugo let out, glass halfway to his mouth.

—I opened his ass with my fingers, right there in the sand —I went on, looking at the fire—. We always carry lube in the backpack. I slid in one finger, then two, while the kid brushed his cockhead against Leo’s lips and Leo, still open-mouthed, stuck out his tongue to lick underneath it. When I had him ready, I flipped him onto all fours and drove my cock into him in one thrust. He clamped down on me so hard it blinded me for a second. The kid knelt in front of him, and Leo started sucking him all the way while I fucked him from behind. Every time I thrust hard, the tip of the other guy’s cock sank down his throat. The three of us at once, without saying a word, just the sound of the sea and skin slapping skin.

Saúl swallowed and kept hold of his glass.

—I turned him over again —I said—. I wanted to watch him come. I put him on his back, legs over my shoulders, and shoved it back into him to the hilt. The kid bent down to lick his balls, lick me where I was going in and out, suck both of us where we met. Leo was jerking him with a hand covered in sand and cum, moaning my name, and when he came he shot semen all over my chest and face. He squeezed my ass so hard I emptied myself inside him without being able to hold back, driving all the way in at the end so not a single drop escaped me. The kid came seconds later, over Leo’s stomach, mixing his cum with his.

—And you weren’t jealous? —Saúl asked in a thin voice.

—I was before —I admitted—. While I was imagining it. When it was happening, all I felt was that we were more united than ever. Afterward, the kid wiped himself off with his swimsuit, kissed each of us on the mouth without telling us his name, and walked off along the beach. Leo and I stayed there hugging in the sand, with his cum still leaking out of his ass, laughing like kids.

—I felt like it made us stronger —Leo said softly—. Even though I’m embarrassed to talk about it too. I enjoyed it in the moment, for Bruno’s sake, not for the guy. I enjoyed feeling two cocks at once and knowing both of them were for him. That the one inside me was his.

***

Saúl had moist eyes and a noticeable bulge in his pants. Hugo put an arm around his shoulders and failed to hide his own erection beneath the tablecloth.

—What scares me —Saúl said in a thin voice— is someone breaking what we have. Desire taking down what matters.

—That’s not exploration —Mateo cut in, after listening in silence until then—. That’s fear. And fear gets cured by talking, not by staying silent. We learned that too late.

Darío nodded, his voice deep and warm.

—Mateo and I spent years in sad silences, each one keeping what they felt to themselves so as not to scare the other. It almost cost us what we had. Love doesn’t break because you fuck other people. It breaks because you stay silent. —He looked straight at Saúl—. If you’re going to open things up, do it with trust. With people you know, with someone who isn’t trying to take what’s yours, but to add cock and hunger. And if you decide not to, that’s fine too. What won’t work is deciding separately and in silence.

Saúl let out the air he’d been holding for a long time, as if a stone had been lifted from his chest.

—I’ll admit one thing —he said slowly—. The idea doesn’t scare me as much if I think about trusted people. Someone familiar. Not some stranger who turns up and disappears.

He looked at Darío and Mateo for a second too long, and the two of them held his gaze without saying a word. There was no need. There were things at that table we all understood without naming them.

—Even though the thought of Saúl with another cock inside him hurts me —Hugo added—, I’d feel good if it were someone who cares about us. Just desire, bodies enjoying themselves, with nobody trying to break anything.

—That’s what matters —Darío said—. That you can say it out loud. The rest can be worked out.

***

There was nothing else that night in the dining room. The fatigue from the journey weighed too heavily, and none of us wanted desire to run roughshod over a conversation that had cost so much to have. We said goodbye in the hallway with long hugs, hips pressed together, each couple heading to their own room, laden with things said and promises only half-formed.

Leo and I closed the guest-room door and stood there in the dark for a moment, listening to the house’s silence.

—The dunes thing —he said at last, unbuttoning my shirt one button at a time— had me horny all through dinner.

—Me too. I got hard telling it. It’s still hard.

I took his hand and put it in my pants so he could check. He closed his fingers around my cock over my briefs and let out a low moan at feeling how swollen it was. I yanked his shirt off over his head and bit one nipple, sucking it until he arched his back against the door. I moved down his torso licking, undid his belt with my teeth, and pulled his jeans down to his knees. He was already straining, stretching his briefs with a dark wet stain at the tip.

I ripped off his underwear and shoved it into his mouth without preamble. I sucked him slowly, sliding my tongue under the glans, pulling him all the way out and swallowing him again to the root. Leo grabbed the back of my neck and pushed his hips, fucking my mouth at a gentle rhythm, moaning with his head thrown back against the wood.

—Slower —he asked, voice breaking—. I want it to last.

I pushed him toward the bed and laid him on his back. I undressed while looking at him, letting him see my cock hard and already dripping. He licked his lips. I climbed on top of him and put my cock in his mouth while straddling his face, as I bent down to eat his ass. I spread his cheeks with both hands and ran my tongue over his hole, licking him completely, sliding it inside, covering him with saliva until it gleamed and stayed open. Under me, he was sucking me hungrily, gripping my balls, swallowing me until he choked a little.

I turned over, took the lube from the toiletry bag, and put a good squeeze into his ass. I slid in one finger, then two, twisting them until he moaned for more. When I had him loose and open, I lifted his legs over my shoulders and set the tip of my cock against his hole. I pushed in slowly, watching his face as I entered him centimeter by centimeter. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth without making a sound.

—Look at me —I said—. Look at me while I put it all the way in.

He opened his eyes and held my gaze while I sank in to the hilt, until my balls hit his ass. I started moving inside him, coming almost all the way out and then slamming back in with a hard thrust. He clung to my back, claws digging into me. Each thrust tore a rougher moan from him. The bed creaked against the wall and I didn’t care who heard us.

—Like that —he gasped—, harder, eat my ass, shove your whole cock in me.

I fucked him harder, bracing my arms on either side of his head, hips crashing against hips. I grabbed his cock and jerked it to the rhythm of my thrusts. It was rock hard, pressed to his belly, pouring. I ran my thumb over the tip and he shuddered.

I flipped him onto all fours without pulling out, grabbed his hips, and drove back into him from behind. In that position I could hit him all the way to the hilt. With each thrust his back arched. I put my fingers in his mouth and he sucked them, drooling. I yanked his hair back and bit his shoulder.

—Come with me inside you —I whispered in his ear without stopping—. Come on, empty yourself for me.

He grabbed his cock and started jerking it fast, with mine still inside pounding his ass. I could feel him clenching around my cock every time he moaned. When he came, semen shot out in thick ropes over the sheet, and his ass tightened around me so much it dragged me along with him. I emptied myself inside him to the last drop, thrusting hard at the end, growling against his neck.

We collapsed onto our sides, still joined, without pulling out. Him breathing hard, me kissing the sweat-soaked back of his neck, feeling my cum dripping inside him as I went soft inside him.

Afterward we lay there, our breathing slowly syncing, his head on my chest, my hand stroking his sticky ass.

—I thought the hard part would be the banner —I said.

—And what was the hard part? —he asked, half asleep.

—The truth. Saying it out loud. —I kissed the crown of his head—. And it turns out that’s the only thing holding everything else up.

He didn’t answer me. He was already asleep. I let our bodies decide what time dawn would come, without haste, without expectations, with the calm certainty that whatever the sheet by the ditch had said, this was ours and nobody was going to take it from us.