What Darío Kept After Training

Darío is dark-skinned. The kind of deep brown that seems soaked in after years under the sun, in heritage, in something that needs no explanation. Dark, curly hair, pronounced lips, always with a shine that distracted me at the most inopportune moments of training. The body of someone who works hard: broad back, defined abs without any showiness, long, fast legs. Left wing on our university handball team. Just turned eighteen, and already the player everyone looked to when an impossible play had to be solved. The one who never hesitated, the one who never backed down, the one who kept moving forward even with three guys hanging off him.

I looked at him for different reasons.

I didn’t admit it for a long time. I told myself it was sports admiration, that it was what anyone would feel seeing someone move like that across the court. But admiration doesn’t leave your heart racing when someone merely turns their head. Admiration doesn’t make you look away fast when another person’s eyes meet yours head-on and linger there a second longer than expected.

We’d been training together for a year and a half. I got to university, joined the team because I needed to do something with my body besides study, and Darío had already been there from day one. The first thing I noticed was the way he warmed up: without pause, without looking around, completely absorbed in what he was doing. The rest of the team took time to get going. He didn’t.

There were ten of us on the team plus the goalkeeper. We trained three times a week in one of those old sports halls: wooden floor with worn-down lines, lockers with peeling paint, showers that sometimes had hot water and sometimes didn’t. The coach, Marcos, was a serious man in his mid-forties who spoke little but watched a lot. When he corrected you, he did it with a single sentence and never repeated himself. If you didn’t understand him the first time, that was your problem.

Darío and I ended up together in defensive drills. We had to work side by side, body against body, learning to read each other’s movements before they happened. Those moments were the worst and the best at the same time. Worst because I had to keep my head cold while feeling his weight against mine, his breath close, the heat coming off his skin after twenty minutes of running. Best for exactly the same reason.

For months I’d been living with that nameless contradiction.

***

That Wednesday I arrived late to the locker room.

Marcos had held me back ten extra minutes to go over a defensive play that wasn’t working properly, a positioning read I kept getting wrong even though he had explained it to me three times. By the time I dropped my bag on the bench, the sound of the showers was down to just one. Steam floated in the hot, dense air, mixed with the smell of cheap soap and something else harder to identify.

I punched in the code on my locker and then I heard him come out.

Darío crossed out of the showers with a towel hanging around his neck and his dark hair plastered to his forehead. His skin was still wet, gleaming under the white light from the ceiling. Drops ran down his chest, over his sides, tracing the line of his muscles with a slowness that seemed deliberate.

He bent toward his locker to look for something. I looked.

It wasn’t a decision. It was a reflex, the kind where the body reacts before the brain can step in with anything sensible. The towel slipped a little with the movement. I saw enough to make my heart punch hard in my chest, a blow that echoed lower than it should have. I saw his ass whole for a second, the round, dark curve still dripping, and lower down the dark weight of his balls hanging between his thighs. His cock, half-soft, hung thick against the inside of his right thigh, still shiny with water. My gaze stuck to that image as if my eyes had been pinned there with a needle.

By the time he straightened up, he’d already put on his briefs. Gray. Tight. And what was under the fabric was not something you could ignore without making a conscious effort. I felt heat in my face, in my neck. Lower down too.

Then Darío turned his head.

And found me looking.

I looked away immediately. Too late, I knew it the same instant. Too fast, too obvious. I bent over my bag and pretended to search for something, anything, though I knew perfectly well where everything was. The sound of his locker closing was the only thing I heard for the next few seconds.

When I looked up, he was dressed and heading for the door.

He didn’t say a word.

***

I left the hall a few minutes later, with my training clothes still clinging to my skin and a hot kind of shame lodged somewhere between my stomach and my throat.

The parking lot was almost empty. The streetlights cast long shadows over the wet asphalt. It was cold, that autumn cold that isn’t winter yet but already warns you. I put my headphones on without playing anything, I just needed the gesture, the shield.

—Hey.

I stopped.

Darío was leaning against the fence that separated the parking lot from the path that led into the small woods behind the hall. His hands were in the pockets of his tracksuit bottoms. He was looking straight at me, unhurried, with that calm of his that had always seemed to me like the calm of someone who knows things other people haven’t learned yet.

—Come here a second? —He tipped his chin toward the path. —Just a second.

I couldn’t say no. I had never been able to say no to him, even though until that day I hadn’t put it into words that clearly.

We walked without speaking. The path was covered in damp leaves that crunched under our sneakers. The trees were young, not very tall, and cold exterior light filtered through their branches. The smell was of wet earth, resin, and that kind of silence with its own texture. The image of the locker room kept circling in my head: wet skin, dark eyes meeting mine, the certainty that I’d made myself obvious in a way I couldn’t walk back from.

Darío stopped once the hall was no longer visible.

He put a hand in his tracksuit pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes.

I stared. It didn’t fit. On the team he was the strictest about rest, food, sleep. Marcos held him up as an example whenever someone arrived hungover or having eaten badly.

—You smoke? —he asked.

—No —I said.

He smiled. A small smile, just on one side of his mouth.

—Neither should I.

He took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips. The lighter snapped in the forest’s silence. The flame lit his face for an instant: the high cheekbone, the lips closed around the cigarette, the narrowed eyes.

He inhaled slowly. The smoke came out in a white cloud that dissolved between the two nearest trees.

—Want to try? —He looked straight at me.

—I’ve never smoked.

—There’s always a first time.

He took a step toward me. He offered me the cigarette. I took it. Our fingers barely brushed for a second, something hot and brief that shot up my arm before I could make sense of it.

I brought the cigarette to my lips. Inhaled too hard. Coughed. Darío laughed, a low laugh that didn’t sound mocking but something closer, harder to classify.

—Slowly —he said. He came closer. Put his hand over mine, guiding the motion, adjusting the angle with calm firmness. —Like that.

I inhaled again. Slower. The smoke came out slowly between us and hung there for a moment before dissolving.

And then something different started.

He took the cigarette and inhaled without taking his eyes off me. When he exhaled, he didn’t blow it upward or to the side. He blew it straight toward my face, slowly, as if measuring every inch. The smoke reached me before I could lean away. I breathed it in by accident. I felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the forest cold.

He did it again. This time he inhaled deeper and leaned in a little more before releasing the air. So close I could feel the heat of his breath before the smoke arrived. The smell of tobacco mixed with his skin, with the soap that still lingered after the shower.

—Breathe —he said.

I obeyed.

The cigarette went back and forth between us as if it had its own rhythm, marking something neither of us named. Every time he brought it near, he pulled it away a moment before it reached me. Every time he offered it again, the distance was a little smaller. As if he enjoyed that tiny space between us, stretched and compressed it at will, turned it into something that hurt a little.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

At one point he took a deep drag and instead of letting the smoke out into the air, brought his mouth to mine. He didn’t quite touch me. But the distance was so small that I could feel the heat of his lips, the movement of the air as he exhaled. The smoke entered my mouth before I could stop it. I breathed it all in.

My heart was pounding in my throat.

—See? —he murmured. His voice sounded different. Lower. As if the woods had changed its scale.

He did it again. And again. Each time there was a millimeter less distance between his mouth and mine. The cigarette burned down between his fingers while the space between us became narrower, heavier, harder to hold without saying anything.

He took my hand.

Lifted it slowly. Placed the cigarette between my fingers with his own closing over mine a second longer than the gesture required.

—Your turn now.

I inhaled. When I let the smoke out I blew it toward him, imitating what he’d done, directing it straight at him. Darío didn’t move away. He breathed in slowly, as if taking back in the air I’d just expelled. His eyes never left mine.

Our faces were so close I could make out every detail of his skin, the corner of his mouth, the dark gleam in his eyes. I could feel his measured, steady breathing, far calmer than mine. The cigarette was almost out when our hands met again, and this time he laid his on top of mine. Without moving it. Hot and firm over my knuckles.

Neither of us spoke.

The silence in the woods was different now. Thicker. Full of something.

—Tomorrow after training —Darío said quietly. —Will you come back here?

I didn’t think. The answer came out before any deliberation.

—Yes.

—Good.

He stood there a moment without moving, looking at me. Then, without warning and without haste, he leaned toward me and brushed his mouth against the corner of mine. Barely a touch, less than a second. Dry heat against my skin.

He pulled back. Glanced down for an instant, toward my pants, where there was no way to hide anything anymore. Then he lowered his gaze to his own.

He smiled.

—Looks like I’m not the only one.

He took another step. The distance between us disappeared completely. He took the cigarette from my fingers with insulting calm, dragged on it deeply, and flicked it at the fork of a dry branch without taking his eyes off me. The ember stayed lit there, pointing at us like a small eye. His free hand rose slowly up my waist, slipped under my sweatshirt, and when it found skin I shuddered as if he’d touched a bare wire. The other hand found the back of my neck.

—Come here —he said, low.

He pulled me against him and this time his mouth didn’t brush the corner of mine. He planted it fully over mine. His lips were thick, still warm from the smoke, and he opened mine without asking permission. His tongue entered my mouth with the same confidence he used to carve through matches: without hesitation, without retreat, advancing all the way even with three guys hanging off him. There was nobody here to stop him. Just me, trembling, letting myself be opened.

I moaned without being able to help it. A low, ashamed sound that felt obscene in the woods’ silence. Darío laughed against my mouth.

—Don’t be quiet —he murmured. —I want to hear you.

His hand slid from my neck to my back, and then lower. He grabbed my ass over my tracksuit pants and pulled me against him. I felt his cock, hard as an iron bar under the fabric, pressing against mine. The contact dragged another moan out of me, longer, more ashamed.

—There you are —he whispered in my ear.

He started moving. Slowly, rubbing against me, with that calm rhythm of his that was no longer calm but a calculated torture. I pushed back on my own, searching for more friction, searching for anything that would ease the pressure that had been building since I’d seen him come out of the shower.

His fingers slid under the elastic of my tracksuit bottoms. He yanked my briefs down impatiently, and when his hand closed around my cock I jolted all over. It was so hot, so swollen, that his palm made me grit my teeth.

—Fuck —he panted against my neck. —You’re rock-hard for someone who only wanted to look.

—Shut up.

—No.

He started to work me over. Slowly at first, weighing it, setting the rhythm. My head fell against his shoulder. I bit his shirt so I wouldn’t cry out. I felt it sliding through his fist with the precum already running from the tip, and each pass of his thumb over the glans made my knees shake.

—Take off the tracksuit —I asked him.

—You take it off me.

I pulled at the elastic. The fabric dropped to mid-thigh and the black briefs barely contained the shape that had been obsessing me for half an hour. I slid my hand inside and his cock leapt against my palm, thick, hot, the head already wet. I grabbed it all. He let out a rough gasp that hit my back like a lash.

—That’s it —he said. —Hard.

We stayed like that, pressed face to face, with our pants down to our knees and our cocks in each other’s hands. The woods wrapped us in its thick silence while I pumped him with an open hand, feeling the vein pulse underneath, the skin slick with his own fluid. He worked me with the same precision he brought to everything: squeezing at the base, sliding slowly up to the glans, stopping there, teasing the trickle of precum that wouldn’t stop coming.

—Look at me —he said.

I lifted my face. His eyes were dark, almost black, pupils blown wide. He held my gaze while he kept moving his hand on my cock. He didn’t look away for a second. I couldn’t either.

—How long have you been thinking about this?

—I don’t know —I said, my voice broken.

—I do know what I’ve been thinking.

And he dropped to his knees.

It happened so fast I didn’t have time to react. One moment he was standing there, looking me in the eye, and the next he was kneeling on the wet leaves, face level with my cock, hands on my hips. He looked up at me for an instant. Smiled. That same half-smile, only now with his mouth a centimeter from my glans.

—Darío...

He didn’t answer. He took me all the way into his mouth in one stroke.

I shouted. I couldn’t help it. The cry bounced between the trees and died, and I only had time to grab his wet hair, still cool from the shower, so I wouldn’t fall over. His mouth was a furnace. Hot, tight, soaked in saliva. His tongue curled around my glans every time he went up and down, sucking with a hunger that didn’t pretend to be anything else, that was pure months-long need.

—Fuck, fuck —I murmured, with no control over my mouth or anything else. —Like that, Darío, like that.

He sucked me whole. Went down to the base, stayed there a second with his nose against my belly and swallowing, then came back up slowly, scraping with closed lips, leaving saliva hanging between his mouth and my cock in bright threads. When he went back down he made a wet, obscene noise that went through me completely.

One of his hands squeezed my ass. The other slipped between my thighs and fondled my balls, rolling them between his fingers, tugging them with a softness that contradicted everything else. I was going to explode. I knew it. I’d been biting my lips not to come since the second pass.

—Darío, stop, I’m gonna come —I warned him.

He pulled off for a moment. Saliva gleamed on his chin. He looked up at me from below, my cock still in his fist, moving it slowly.

—Come —he said. —In my mouth.

—Fuck.

—In my mouth. All of it.

He took me back in. This time he sucked faster, deeper, and with his other hand he started working my balls in time with his mouth. It was a matter of seconds. The orgasm rose from somewhere behind my knees, a lash-like pull that shot up my back and exploded in my head. I shoved him all the way down when I came. I grabbed his hair with both hands and unloaded load after load into his throat while he swallowed without pulling away, swallowing everything I gave him, down to the last spasm.

My legs were shaking when he finally let go.

A thread of semen hung from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with his thumb and licked it off without taking his eyes off me, with that same unbearable calm.

—Your turn now —he said.

He stood up. He pulled his briefs all the way down. His cock sprang upward, pointing at me, long and thick, the glans swollen and a vein running clearly from top to bottom. I’d never sucked one. I didn’t know what to do with my hands or my mouth or the rest of me. But I dropped to my knees without thinking, because after what he’d just done to me there was not a single chance in the world of not giving it back.

The wet leaves dug into my knees. I grabbed him by the base. He was hot, heavy, thicker than I’d imagined by hand. I ran my tongue over the head and he let out a deep, rough gasp that filled me with a strange kind of satisfaction.

—That’s it —he said. —Tongue first.

I did as he said. I licked his glans clean, circled it, slid down the shaft to his balls and came back up. When I got to the top again, I opened my mouth and took him in. I couldn’t swallow him all. Half. I nearly choked and he noticed, and instead of pushing like I’d expected, he stayed still, hand on my neck, not forcing it, giving me time.

—Breathe through your nose —he said. —Take it easy.

I breathed. Got comfortable. Started moving my head, taking what I could, helping myself with my hand for what I couldn’t reach. Saliva began to fall in strands from my mouth to the ground. I sucked him with hunger, copying what had excited me, tightening my lips on the way up, playing with my tongue against the underside of the glans on the way down.

Darío groaned overhead. Low, restrained, as if it cost him not to shove deeper. His hand on my neck stroked my hair, guiding me just a little, setting the rhythm without imposing it. I could feel him swelling in my mouth, the vein pulsing against my tongue.

—Fuck —he muttered. —You learn fast.

I grabbed his balls with my other hand. I felt them tighten. His breathing suddenly quickened. His hips started moving on their own, nudging lightly toward my face, searching for more depth.

—I’m gonna come —he warned. —Swallow or outside?

I didn’t answer. I opened wider and squeezed his thighs, so he’d understand.

He came with a deep groan, almost a growl, gripping my hair with both hands. The first load filled my mouth at once, hot, thick, salty. I swallowed. The second came behind it and I swallowed that too. The third spilled from the corner of my mouth down to my chin. He kept pushing slowly, emptying himself completely, eyes closed and head thrown back.

When he finally stopped, he pulled away slowly. I remained kneeling, looking up at him, mouth still open and semen running down my chin.

He looked at me. Smiled that half-smile again.

—Fuck —he said. —You look like a picture.

He crouched down. Wiped me clean with his thumb and put it to my lips. I licked it off without taking my eyes from him. His face changed for a moment, like he was holding back the urge to start all over again.

He held out his hand. Helped me stand. Pulled his briefs and tracksuit back up slowly, with no hurry, like someone who’s just finished eating and is still savoring it. My hands were still shaking when I straightened my clothes. My cock was still throbbing, half-asleep, sticky inside my briefs.

—Tomorrow —he said. He pressed his forehead to mine for a second. —Tomorrow we come back and we’re not going to be in any rush.

—Okay —I said. It was the only thing I could manage.

He rescued the cigarette from the fork of the branch where he’d spit it out. There was one long drag left and he finished it slowly, still watching me. He put out what remained against the bark of a tree and tucked the butt into his pocket. Then he walked off down the path without looking back, with that same calm he brought to everything, as if what had just happened were something he’d calculated from the start.

***

I was left alone among the trees.

The cold came back all at once when he disappeared, as if his presence had been warming the air around me without my noticing. I leaned against the nearest trunk and breathed slowly, trying to get my heart back to a rhythm that didn’t scare me.

Darío. The first to arrive at training. The one who ran sprints without half a step of slack. The one who never let anyone read his play in advance. The one who seemed to live in a permanent state of certainty that I felt excluded from.

How long had he been looking too, when I couldn’t see him?

I thought of the locker room. Of how he’d caught me looking and said nothing, hadn’t looked away, hadn’t made the reflexive gesture anyone else would have made at noticing someone watching them without permission. He had only met my gaze for a moment and then shut his locker and gone out to wait for me.

Wait for me. That too was new.

I came out of the woods once I could no longer hear his footsteps on the leaves. The parking lot was empty. The streetlights were still drawing the same long shadows over the asphalt. I put my headphones on. This time I did play something, the first thing I found, though I didn’t hear a single note on the way home.

All I could think about was the heat of his hand on mine. Of the smoke that had gone back and forth between us like a language neither of us had needed to learn because we already knew it. Of that half-smile when he saw I couldn’t fake indifference either. Of his mouth closing all the way over my cock, of the salty taste of his on my tongue, of the wet leaves still clinging to the knees of my tracksuit.

Of how tomorrow there was training.

And after training, the path. And the damp leaves crunching under our sneakers. And everything we still hadn’t said out loud.