The Secret Born Among the Pines

I slept little and badly that night. It wasn’t true insomnia, the kind where you stare at the ceiling without managing to close your eyes. It was worse: I’d fall asleep and wake up, fall asleep and wake up, and every time I drifted off again I found the same broken dream waiting for me. A strange mix of fear and of something else I still didn’t quite know how to name.

I got up with a heavy body. I showered, ate breakfast without any appetite, and arrived at the sports hall twenty minutes early for the first time in a long while, though I’m not entirely sure why. To get away from the walls of home, maybe.

At training I was useless. The coach called me out twice, and the third time he didn’t even bother. Every time Damián passed near me, something inside me tensed like a cable carrying too much load. He didn’t do anything special. He didn’t seek out my gaze, didn’t speak to me more than necessary. He trained the way he always trained: well, with apparent ease, with that calm of his that was almost irritating.

When the final whistle blew, I showered quickly and left through the side door without waiting for anyone. I knew the path to the woods by heart now: turn right behind the parking lot, cross the strip of grass nobody ever cut, go in among the pines where the fence was broken. The afternoon had that low, golden light that cuts diagonally between the trunks, and the ground smelled of wet earth and resin.

Damián was already there.

Standing with his hands in the pockets of his tracksuit bottoms, looking toward the trees without doing anything in particular. He didn’t say hello. Neither did I.

He took out his cigarettes and lighter. He lit one with a single motion, inhaled slowly, and let the smoke drift upward. Then he held it out to me.

I took it. This time I didn’t cough. The smoke scraped my throat all the same, but I was starting to know that rough taste that sticks to your lips.

—You don’t cough anymore —he said.

—I’m getting used to it.

—Bad sign.

I handed it back and he took it without rushing, watching me with that calm that always made me a little nervous. He had a habit of lowering his gaze when he thought. I saw him do it then: looking down, at my sneakers.

—Hey —he said.

—What?

—Put your foot beside mine.

—What for?

—To check something.

I didn’t protest any further. I moved my sneaker close to his. They were almost the same size, that was obvious, but Damián bent slightly and slid the tip of his foot against mine with a completely unnecessary slowness, millimeter by millimeter.

—Forty-three —he said.

—Me too.

He straightened up. Looked at me.

—Now your arm.

Here we go, I thought, but I said nothing.

—You’re going to compare that too?

—It has to be done properly.

He turned his elbow and aligned his forearm with mine from shoulder to fingertips. From that distance I could smell the shower soap mixed with something warmer, more his. I struggled to keep up with whatever we were supposedly doing.

—Hold still —he murmured.

He kept his arm pressed against mine longer than any real comparison needed. When he turned his face toward me, he was so close I could see a dried droplet at the base of his neck, from the shower still. I don’t know why I noticed that.

—Mine’s a bit longer —he said.

—A little.

—We’ll have to look at the hands.

He said it with that exasperating calm, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. He held up his hand between us and waited. I hesitated for a second. Then I lifted mine.

Our palms met open, first with something like shyness and then fully. Damián didn’t pull away. He left it there, and with his fingers he arranged mine with methodical slowness, as if he really needed to measure something. He touched my index fingertip. Then my ring finger. Then he slid down to the base of my palm and pressed just enough for me to feel the pulse in my own fingers.

—Not as small as I thought —he said, and gave a half-smile.

I wanted to answer. Say something light, return the joke, protect myself behind a line that committed me to nothing. Nothing came out. I just swallowed.

Damián noticed. I’m sure he noticed, because in that moment the way he looked at me changed. It became stiller, more direct. The half-smile disappeared from his eyes.

He took the cigarette with the same hand he’d used to settle my fingers and drew on it without fully letting go of me. Then he brought it to my mouth. I inhaled with my hand still trapped under his. The smoke came out slowly and mingled between us in the cold forest air.

That was when he lifted his free hand and brushed my mouth with his thumb.

It wasn’t a rough or impatient gesture. Just the slow pass of the fingertip along the edge of my lower lip, measured and precise, as if he had just found the last measurement he still needed to check.

—We’re missing this —he said.

I didn’t ask what he meant. I knew.

My body went rigid. Damián touched my lip again, this time with such careful attention that my knees shook. He watched me while he did it: not my mouth but my eyes, as if he wanted to confirm I was still there, that I wasn’t going to back out.

—Let’s see if they’re the same thickness —he murmured.

I lifted my hand almost without realizing it. He took my wrist and guided it to his mouth. I felt the heat of his lips before I even brushed them. They were softer than I’d imagined, fuller, more alive. I barely ran my fingertip over them and he didn’t move. He only parted his mouth slightly as he breathed, just enough for the heat to reach my whole hand.

Damián dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his sole without taking his eyes off me. Then he stepped closer. There was no space left between us. I felt the warmth of his chest, the warm dampness of his breath on my face, the smell of tobacco mixed with his freshly washed skin. I had time, with almost cruel clarity, to think that this was the last moment when I could still back away.

I didn’t back away.

He was the one who closed the distance.

At first he only brushed his mouth against mine, just enough contact that it could have been an accident if he hadn’t done it again a second later. The next time it was no longer a brush: it was a whole kiss, decisive, with a resolve that erased all the doubts I’d been manufacturing since the night before. I felt his lips on mine and for an instant I didn’t react, not because I didn’t want to, but because my body still didn’t know how to hold something I had imagined so many times without ever believing it could really happen.

Damián did know. He held the back of my neck and deepened the kiss with that burning calm he had for everything, as if he’d been thinking about it for a while, as if he’d been building this moment from the smoke of the day before. His tongue parted my lips without asking and entered my mouth as if he already knew the way, and I let mine tangle with his, awkward and hungry at the same time.

Then I reacted. I grabbed his waist, awkward at first, and he answered by pulling me closer, until the kiss stopped being a surprise and became something else. A clean, brutal shiver ran through me from head to toe. There was nothing soft in what was happening inside me, even if his gesture was measured. It was pure intensity: a slow fire lighting me from the inside out. Every time I ran out of breath, Damián pulled back just enough to breathe over my mouth and kiss me again, biting my lower lip, sucking on it, tugging it with his teeth before letting go and going back in with his tongue.

I don’t know how long it lasted. Time among the pines had become something else.

Damián smiled with his lips still wet and looked at me as if he had just confirmed something he already knew.

—They’re not the same —he said quietly.

A short, broken laugh escaped me, mixed with excitement and fear and something much more physical that cut through everything. That was when I noticed he was pressing his hips against mine. We started moving slowly, the tracksuit fabric rubbing together. I felt his hard cock against mine through the cloth and that finished emptying my head of any thought that wasn’t him. A low moan slipped out of me, something I hadn’t planned to let escape, and Damián caught it with his mouth and returned it to me by slowly biting my neck, with his teeth right below my ear, while he kept grinding his pelvis against mine in a slow rocking that had me on the verge of coming in my pants like a kid.

He slipped a hand under my sweatshirt and pushed my T-shirt up to my ribs. He ran his fingers over my stomach, over my chest, and when he pinched one nipple, another, louder moan broke out of me. He laughed softly against my neck.

—You’re so sensitive —he murmured—. We’re going to have to make use of that.

His hand slid down my belly, into the elastic of my tracksuit bottoms and my briefs, and he took my cock without any preamble. He closed his whole hand around it and squeezed. I shut my eyes and let out the air in one burst. He started stroking me slowly, with a dry palm at first, finding his rhythm, and when he realized I could barely think anymore, he brought his fingers to his mouth, wet them, and went back down. The second pass, with his hand damp, tore a long moan out of me that escaped against his shoulder.

—That’s it —he said—. That’s it.

He worked me over completely, up to the tip, squeezing the head with his thumb, going back down to the base. I didn’t know where to put my hands. I slipped them under his tracksuit bottoms too and grabbed his ass with both of them, squeezing it, pulling him against me. Damián let out a rough gasp and bit my jaw.

***

—We’d have to see who’s bigger —he said, with the same naturalness he’d used for everything else, though his voice was a little hoarse now.

He cannot be saying this to me seriously.

—How? —I managed to get out.

—Who wins, I mean. The other day in the locker room I noticed you were staring.

—Damián, I wasn’t…

—It’s fine —he said, and smiled openly, for the first time without the filter of calm—. Really, it’s fine.

I don’t know why I obeyed. But I did.

We pulled down our pants and briefs at the same time, there among the trees, with the light still slicing in diagonally. What I saw left me speechless: he was fully hard, long and thick, with veins marked along the length of the shaft and the head swollen and shiny, a drop of almost transparent precome already beading at the tip. His balls looked heavy, hanging beneath, with that taut skin men only have when they’re right on the edge. Damián didn’t move. He only smiled faintly while his eyes dropped to my groin and stayed there, measuring me without a trace of shame.

We moved closer to compare. He clearly beat me: he had several centimeters on me and more thickness too. I had just enough not to feel ridiculous, though at that moment the truth was I cared very little. He put them together, side by side, and even bent down to line them up in parallel. His was almost two fingers higher than mine. He straightened, licking his lips.

—Can I touch you? —he asked—. I want to know what it feels like.

My voice shook when I said yes.

He wrapped his whole palm around my cock and my legs trembled. Not from shame: from the exact opposite of shame. From how good it felt, that hand closing around me, warm and firm, with no hurry at all. He pulled the skin back, exposing the head, spat into his palm, and closed his fist again. The second stroke was different: wet, snug, with a twist of the wrist when he reached the tip that made my knees buckle.

—Fuck —I blurted.

—It’s nice —he said, looking at it—. Very nice. And hard as a rock.

—And you want to touch mine?

—Yes —I said, not even trying to hide my anxiety.

It was the most intense sensation I had felt in my life up to that point. Warm, hard, throbbing in my hand. It felt heavy. His whole cock filled my fist and still stuck out above and below. I pulled the foreskin back slowly, uncovered it completely, and saw the smooth, purple head, wet at the tip. I gathered the drop with my thumb and spread it over the whole crown, making it slick, and Damián let out a deep gasp that sank straight into my stomach.

—Like that, with both hands —he said—. One up top and one below.

I did as he said. I took his cock in both hands, one over the other, and started moving them in opposite directions, twisting, sliding. He began to move slowly with his hips, with a confident rhythm, fucking my hands. I started to answer him, stroking up and down while we looked into each other’s eyes. He had stopped holding me to bring his hands to my face and my hair, caressing me with a softness that contrasted with everything else.

He kissed me again, dirtier this time, with his mouth open and his tongue going in deep. His lips on mine, his tongue finding mine, his left hand at the back of my neck, pressing slowly. Then that same hand started pushing downward.

I understood what he wanted.

I sank to my knees on the damp ground. Leaves crackled beneath my knees. I looked up and found his eyes staring down at me, dark and calm, and his cock pointed at my face, exactly level with my mouth. He took it by the base and brought it to my lips without saying anything, giving me control but also reminding me who was standing.

I ran my tongue from the base to the tip, slowly, tasting the salty heat of his skin. I worked my way around the whole length, from where the pubic hair grew to the crown of the head. I repeated it on the other side. I licked his balls, sucked them one by one, taking them fully into my mouth, and felt his legs tense over me. I went back up the shaft with long licks, closing my lips over the skin and tugging a little with my mouth, leaving trails of saliva that ran down to the base.

I kissed the tip. I gave him a long kiss, with tongue, playing with the slit, gathering the salty fluid that came out. Then I opened my mouth and took him all the way in, letting him slide inside, feeling the head press against my palate and down toward the back of my throat. I gagged a little at first and he held my hair with one hand.

—Easy —he murmured—. Slowly. Breathe through your nose.

I did what he said. I breathed, swallowed around his cock, and took him in again, this time deeper. I felt his fingers moving through my hair while I found the rhythm. My lips tightened around him, my tongue circled the shaft underneath, my hands covered what didn’t fit in my mouth, and he grew with every movement, harder, hotter, filling me more and more. I started bobbing with my head, forward and back, sucking hard on the way up, letting him sink in on the way down. My mouth filled with saliva and a strand started running from the corner of my mouth down to my chin. Damián saw it and let out a groan.

—Fuck, you suck so well —he said, his voice broken—. Like you’ve been doing it your whole life.

He pushed his hips a couple of times, fucking my mouth slowly, careful not to force it. I held his gaze from below with his cock buried between my lips and he let out another longer moan. I squeezed his balls with one hand while I kept sucking, massaged them, and felt his shaft throbbing against my tongue. I sucked hard and felt him tremble from top to bottom.

—Stop —he said through clenched teeth—. I’m going to come.

—I want you to come —I said, pulling him just out of my mouth enough to speak against the head, and I took him in again until my nose touched the skin above his pubes.

His eyes flew wide open. I increased the intensity. I sped up, pulling him almost all the way out and then sinking him back in to the hilt, squeezing the base with my fist to help. I ran my tongue under the head, over that soft spot at the crown, and felt his whole body contract. I sucked him once, twice, three more times, my tongue feeling the contractions, and suddenly Damián gripped my hair with his fingers, held my head in place so I couldn’t pull away, and let out a deep, animal sound I had never heard from him before. The first spurt hit the back of my throat, hot and thick. The second came, and the third, filling my mouth with a dense, salty taste that clung to my palate. I didn’t pull away. I held on with my lips tight around him while he trembled and kept spilling, and I swallowed everything, eyes closed, feeling it go down my throat. I kept going until there was nothing left, and he kept me there a few seconds longer, his hand still in my hair, breathing hard. Then I cleaned him slowly with my tongue, sucking the tip until the very last drop, leaving the shaft shining with saliva.

When I stood up, my legs were working again, barely. I was hard, pressed against my stomach, and a wet stain had soaked through my briefs. Damián saw it.

—Now you —he said—. Come here.

He gently pushed me until my back was against a pine trunk. He knelt and, without further preamble, took my whole cock into his mouth. It wasn’t a kiss or a lick or any sort of hesitation: he went straight to the back of his throat, lips tight and tongue working underneath. I arched against the bark and a low cry escaped me, caught back between clenched teeth. Damián sucked me with hunger, pulling me out and taking me back in, setting a rhythm that climbed, running his tongue around my head, slipping his free hand between my balls and massaging them at the same time. With his other hand he held my hip still so I wouldn’t move.

—Damián —I panted—. I’m going to come, stop.

He didn’t stop. On the contrary: he pressed his lips tighter, sped up, and pinned me with his eyes from below with my cock buried in his mouth. That finished me off. I came into his mouth with a tremor that shook my whole legs, clinging to his shoulders so I wouldn’t fall, feeling each pulse fill his throat and feeling him swallow without stopping sucking me. He kept it in his mouth until I stopped trembling, and then let me out little by little, sucking me down to the tip as if not to leave a trace. He cleaned the head with one last kiss and stood up licking his lips.

—We’re even now —he said with a half-smile.

I stayed leaning against the pine, breathless, watching him. He came closer and kissed me again, and I felt myself in his mouth, mixed with him. It was a long kiss, dirty and calm at the same time.

Damián took a moment before speaking. He pulled his pants up and looked at me.

—This has to stay between us —he said—. Nobody can know. Swear it to me.

—It’ll be our secret. I swear.

—We’ll talk tomorrow —he said, and kissed me one last time, with a softness none of the previous kisses had had.

Then he went off among the pines, and I listened to his footsteps recede until the woods swallowed them.

I stayed there, standing, with the taste of tobacco and his mixed in my mouth. The air between the trees smelled of wet earth, resin, and something else that still had no name, but I already knew it was going to change everything.

Damián. Just Damián.

I was never going to be able to look at him the same way again.