What My Friend Taught Me When We Were Left Alone

Bruno’s house was always empty on Thursday afternoons. His parents worked until late at night and his older sister had moved to another city to study, so the apartment was left to the two of us. I was twenty and he was twenty-two, and ever since we’d met at university we’d been inseparable. That afternoon, like so many others, I arrived with my backpack over my shoulder and the usual excuse: to finish a game we’d been putting off all week.

We went up to his room. He turned on the computer, I dropped into the chair beside him, and for a couple of hours nothing existed beyond the screen. We teased each other over every round, laughed at stupid things, insulted each other affectionately every time one of us beat the other. It was our routine, that safe space where everything was clear and nothing weighed on us.

But that afternoon something was different, and I think we both noticed it without daring to say so. Maybe it was the silence of the house, that stillness that reminds you at every moment that there is no one else behind those walls. Every time his arm brushed mine while he moved the mouse, I felt a jolt I couldn’t name. I told myself it was my imagination. I repeated that to myself several times.

When the last game ended, the room fell into an odd calm. Bruno leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms over his head, and let out a long sigh. I expected him to suggest we go downstairs for something to eat, or put on a series, anything we usually did. Instead, as if it were no big deal, like changing a song, he opened another tab and put on a porn video.

He searched for it without a word, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. No explanation, no knowing smile. He just hit play and settled in as though nothing had happened.

The sound changed the energy in the room at once. Moans filled the air, a woman on screen sucking a huge cock, taking it all the way in with a mouth full of saliva, and in that silence of an empty house everything turned electric. I sat rigid in the chair, my eyes fixed on the screen but not really seeing anything, too aware of him, of his breathing, of the heat that suddenly seemed to have gone up three degrees.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

I didn’t even dare turn my head. I could feel the arousal running through my body, that mix of embarrassment and curiosity that leaves your mouth dry. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him move. Bruno had leaned back and, without any rush at all, started touching himself over his pants. Slowly, with the palm of his hand, squeezing the bulge that was already pressing thickly beneath the fabric, almost absent-mindedly.

I swallowed. My heart was pounding. I wanted to say something, break the tension with some stupid comment, but my throat had closed up. The only thing I could do was glance sideways as his hand moved up and down in a slow, deliberate rhythm, squeezing his cock through the jeans while the bluish light of the monitor painted his face in shadow.

He stayed like that for a long while, taking his time, not hiding anything and not looking at me. As if he were giving me room to decide something. And I, paralyzed, couldn’t decide anything.

Then, with the same ease with which he’d put on the video, he unbuttoned his pants and pulled down his underwear. His cock sprang out, hard, bigger than I would have imagined, thick at the base, the head shining and a swollen vein running underneath it, throbbing under that cold monitor light. A clear drop was already beading at the tip. I couldn’t look away. My mouth was dry and my pulse was hammering in my temples.

—Want to try? —he said suddenly, turning to look me in the eyes.

I went blank. Completely blank. I knew exactly what he was asking, and inside I was dying to say yes, but my body wouldn’t answer. Shame had me nailed to the chair. I opened my mouth and not a word came out.

Bruno didn’t wait for me to react. He saw my face, saw that I wasn’t going to move on my own, and took the initiative. He reached out, took my hand gently, and guided it toward him. When my fingers closed around his skin, I felt the heat and the firmness, the hard flesh yet soft on the outside, throbbing in my palm, and something inside me flipped over.

—Relax —he murmured—. You do it like this.

His hand settled over mine and started to guide the motion. Up, down, unhurried, closing my fingers just below the head, showing me how to pull the skin back until the crown was exposed, red, shining with moisture. I let myself be carried along, hypnotized, feeling how he responded beneath my fingers, how he got even harder with every stroke. The video kept playing in the background, the woman moaning while they shoved it down her throat, but I could barely hear it anymore. All my attention was on that contact, on his breathing growing heavier, on the way he half-closed his eyes.

—That’s it, perfect —he whispered—. Squeeze a little harder down there... yeah, fuck, like that.

When he saw I’d gotten the hang of it, he withdrew his hand and let me go on alone. It was a strange moment, almost like a test, as if he were giving me control to see whether I really wanted it. And I did. I kept doing the movement he’d taught me, now on my own, fascinated by the texture, by the firmness, by the feeling of power it gave me to see him react to what my hands were doing. I ran my thumb over the head, spreading the drop of fluid that had beaded there again, and he let out a low groan that went straight through me.

—The tip —he panted—, play with the tip, like this...

I did as he said. I wrapped my fist around the head and twisted half a turn, squeezing, then slid my hand down to the base, gently tugging his balls with my fingers. Bruno spread his legs a little wider in the chair, offering himself, letting me do it. I saw his thighs tense beneath the half-lowered jeans. His cock twitched between my fingers on its own, hard as stone.

He leaned all the way back in the chair, head thrown back and lips parted. Every so often he let out a deep, restrained sound, a whispered “fuck,” a hoarse “keep going,” and each of those sounds lit me up a little more. I could feel my own cock pressing against my pants, soaking the fabric inside, but I didn’t dare touch myself. I was too focused on him, on not stopping, on doing it right.

I don’t want this to end.

Without thinking too much, I brought the palm of my other hand to my mouth, moistened it well, and went back in. The saliva ran over the head and down the shaft, and all at once everything became slicker, more obscene, wetter. The sticky sound of my fist sliding up and down his cock joined the moans from the video. Bruno muttered a curse through his teeth and arched his hips against my hand.

—Shit... like that, faster, fuck, faster.

I obeyed. I started pounding him with a loose wrist, fast, never taking my eyes off his face. He had his mouth open, sweat beading on his forehead, and every so often he looked down to watch my hand closed around his cock, and that gesture —watching himself being handled— made me even hotter. I could feel his balls tightening, lifting, the flesh hardening still more between my fingers.

Time turned elastic. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, me working him with my hand and him letting me, both of us breathing harder and harder in that silent room. The screen had ceased to matter. The only real things were the heat of his body and the pulse I felt under my fingers, that cock jerking in my fist on the verge of exploding.

—Wait —he said suddenly, voice rough—. When I’m about to, grab a tissue. I’m going to cum now.

I nodded without stopping, squeezing a little harder, searching for the right rhythm. With my free hand I groped across the table until I found the box of tissues beside the keyboard and pulled one out, clenching it in my fist, ready. My heart was thundering in my chest. I watched him squeeze his eyes shut, his fingers gripping the chair arms, white from the pressure.

—Now... —he panted, tensing his whole body—. Now, now, don’t stop, fuck, don’t stop.

I barely had time. I brought the tissue up just as he came, and I felt him convulse under my hand in a series of hard spasms that ran through his whole cock from base to tip. Thick, warm spurts came out hard and white, and though I tried to catch them with the paper, the first one caught me off guard and hit my fingers, my wrist, a little on the edge of my pants. The next ones landed inside the tissue, hot, while his cock kept throbbing in my hand, expelling semen in weaker and weaker waves. I felt that unexpected heat on my skin and my breath caught. I didn’t let go. I kept moving my hand slowly, dragging the last drop over the head, squeezing him until he gave a near-painful moan and gently pushed me away.

Bruno stayed still, catching his breath, his chest rising and falling quickly, his cock still reddened and halfway softening between his spread legs. A slow smile crossed his face.

—Fuck —he said softly, almost laughing—. You did that so well. Like you’ve been doing it your whole life.

I wiped my hand with another tissue, still dazed, still not able to believe what had just happened, his cum smell clinging to my fingers no matter how much I rubbed. He sat up, checked that everything was in place, adjusted his clothes calmly and tossed the tissues in the trash as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That naturalness of his was as disarming as it was attractive. I was still hard, pressed against my jeans, but he didn’t say anything and I didn’t dare ask him to return the favor. Not yet.

—You okay? —he asked me, and for the first time all afternoon I heard a little uncertainty in his voice.

—Yeah —I said, my throat dry—. Yeah, I’m fine.

And it was true. I was more than fine. My head was spinning and my body was still vibrating, my cock throbbing inside my pants, but there wasn’t a single part of me that regretted it.

***

What came after was the strangest part of all: normality. We went downstairs to the kitchen, he took two soft drinks out of the fridge, and we sat at the table talking about the next game, about an exam we had the following week, about any little thing. As if we hadn’t just crossed a line I didn’t even know existed between us.

But inside, I was still somewhere else. I kept looking at his hands while he talked, remembering their weight and heat from a little while earlier, how the vein had bulged under my fingers, how his cock had jerked when he came. Something new had settled in my chest, and lower down too, a mixture of arousal and something deeper that I still didn’t dare name.

At one point, when he got up to fetch something, I looked at my hand. Almost without thinking, I brought it to my nose. There was still a faint trace of his scent, of sweat and semen, that intimate mix that clings to the skin, and instead of making me recoil it sent a jolt of desire through my lower belly that made me squeeze my thighs together. My cock went hard again under the table. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know why I liked smelling him on my hand so much, knowing that a little while earlier he had come because of me. I only knew that I liked it.

When it was time for dinner, I grabbed my backpack and said goodbye at the door. He gave me a pat on the shoulder, the same one friends always gave each other, but the touch stayed with me all the way home.

I walked through the dark streets with my head in a cloud, going over every detail of the afternoon again and again. The way he’d taken my hand. The whispered “you do it like this” in my ear. The way he had let me do it, trusting me, spreading his legs in the chair, showing me something I had never imagined. As soon as I got home I locked myself in the bathroom and jerked off looking at my fingers, imagining his cock throbbing again under my fist, and I came in less than a minute, my mouth clamped shut so not a sound would escape, spraying semen all over my hand just as he’d sprayed it over mine.

If he wants to do it again, I won’t hesitate.

That was the thought that stayed stuck in my head as I went up to my room that night. Now we both knew the house was empty on Thursdays. We knew that there was this possibility, this new territory we’d accidentally leaned into and from which neither of us wanted to pull away completely. And I was already thinking about next time, about whether I’d dare kneel between his legs, put it in my mouth, find out what he tasted like.

I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, phone in hand, waiting without really waiting. A few minutes later it vibrated. It was him.

“My parents are getting back late again next Thursday,” the message said. And below it, after a few eternal seconds: “In case you feel like another game.”

I stared at the screen with a stupid smile on my face and my heart racing again. I took a while to reply, not because I was unsure, but because I wanted to savor the moment. In the end I typed the only thing that made sense to type.

“I’ll be there.”

And I knew, with a certainty that warmed me from the inside, that that afternoon had only been the beginning.