What My Nephew Confessed in the Dark

Nicolás and I were always very much alike. More than a family is supposed to admit. We shared the same sense of humor, the same taste for weird movies, the same tendency to laugh when the situation called for anything but. He was twenty years younger than me, but there was something about him that felt familiar in a way that went beyond being related.

We came back from a family trip in the worst possible state. The two of us, at the same time, had picked up some bug that left us with no energy and no desire for anything. I told him to stay at my apartment while he was convalescing. That it was bigger. That this way nobody else would catch it. That he could keep me company, too. I believed myself.

The first two days were completely normal. Instant broth, blanket, and zombie-mode TV. We crossed paths in the hallway and asked each other how the other was doing without expecting an answer. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But once we started to feel a little better, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, the conversation topics began running out at surprising speed. And with the topics, modesty went too.

We started talking about personal things. First past relationships. Then experiences we’d had. Then things we hadn’t told anyone. He told me what kind of chicks he’d slept with, how many times a night, what they asked him for, what he liked. I gave him the same in return: I told him it had been months since anyone had fucked me properly, that the last dick I’d had inside me had been disappointing, that I masturbated almost every night just to be able to sleep. I said it in a flat voice, as if we were talking about the weather, and he listened with the same face.

I used to lie on the sofa with him to watch shows, and one day I left my bra on the bed without thinking. Nothing visible happened, but I noticed it. I noticed it in how he took an extra second to look me in the face, in how his eyes dropped to my tits under my shirt before lifting back up.

That night he said he’d rather sleep in the big bed than on the sofa. I told him it was a double bed, that we could fit perfectly fine without bothering each other. That there was no problem.

My mistake.

It wasn’t immediate. It took a couple of nights to start. First it was an arm that drifted toward my side while he slept. Then a hand trying to slide over my hip. I moved it away without saying anything and he didn’t insist at the time. But he tried again the next day. And the next.

What was funny was that, over time, I started to notice it didn’t bother me as much as it should have. That when his hand brushed my waist in the dark, I took an extra second to move it away. A second the two of us noticed and neither of us mentioned. A couple of times I also felt his hard cock against my ass through the pajamas, asleep or half awake, and instead of elbowing him I stayed still, counting his breathing.

Living together strips away certain defenses. Especially when you have nothing to do but exist.

***

His obsession with my feet started in an absurd way, like almost everything that matters.

Every morning he came into the room and said the same thing: “It smells like old socks in here, what’s wrong with you?” He lifted the duvet, looked for my feet, smelled them with exaggerated theatricality, and made a ridiculous face of disgust that made me laugh despite myself. It was a gross joke, but it was our kind of humor.

At first I resisted, pushed his feet away, told him he was a pig. He laughed and tried again. After a few days I started shoving my foot at him myself, putting it in his face before he got there. As if I were the one setting the pace of the game.

And the game changed slowly, without either of us naming it.

It went from smelling through the sock to pulling at the edge of the sock with his teeth to lower it a little. One day he ripped one off with a tug and smelled my foot directly. Then he bit the arch, I kicked him, and we both laughed, but he grabbed it again. I let him smell it for a moment before pulling away.

That was how it escalated, without either of us putting a name to what was happening.

Until one afternoon he walked into the room, carefully took my socks off, smelled one and then the other with his eyes closed, and when he started kissing them I sat up suddenly.

—Stop! —I yelled at him—. That’s disgusting, what the hell is wrong with you!

I said worse things than that. They came out of me without thinking, with a force even I hadn’t expected. He froze in the middle of the room with a look like he didn’t understand what had just happened. Then he left and closed the door.

We didn’t speak all day.

***

It took me hours to understand what exactly had happened to me.

It wasn’t so much what he had done. It was that for days I’d been letting him do it and then suddenly I’d reacted as if he’d attacked me. I had said things that didn’t match what I really felt. I had heard myself speak and not recognized myself.

I wandered around the apartment not knowing what to do. I saw him in the living room staring at his phone, not reading anything, with that posture of someone who doesn’t know where to put his body. He didn’t look at me. All afternoon he didn’t look at me even once.

When it was time for bed, I went to the living room door and told him to come to bed. That we needed to talk.

I put on the full pajamas, socks and all, and waited with the bedside lamp on.

He lay down beside me carefully, staring at the ceiling. His body was rigid as if he were expecting another blow.

—I know I treated you badly —I told him—. I said things you didn’t deserve. I’m sorry.

He took a while to answer. When he did, his voice came out lower than usual.

—I went too far too. I shouldn’t have done it without asking your permission.

There was a silence. Not one of those uncomfortable silences, but one that weighed because there was too much inside it.

Then he told me everything.

He said he’d had that fetish since he was a teenager. That he’d been jerking off smelling stolen socks since he was fifteen. That he’d never been able to talk to anyone about it. That with the few chicks he’d fucked he hadn’t dared mention it because he didn’t know how they’d react. That with me he’d let himself go because he felt comfortable, because we were alike, because we’d spent days talking without filters and at some point the line between what was allowed and what wasn’t had blurred.

He apologized twice. He told me he’d taken advantage of the situation without asking me. He told me that if I wanted him gone the next day, he’d understand.

I listened without interrupting him.

When he finished, I told him he didn’t have to apologize for having a fetish. That nobody chooses that kind of thing. That yes, he did have to apologize for doing it without asking me, and that that had already been said and accepted. That I also owed him an apology for yelling what I’d yelled, because he didn’t deserve it.

He looked at me for the first time in hours.

—Don’t you think this is kind of weird? —he asked.

—All of this is weird —I told him—. We’ve been sleeping in the same bed for a week. We passed the line for weird days ago.

Something in his face loosened. I turned off the light.

***

I don’t know exactly when I decided what I decided. Or maybe there wasn’t a decision as such, but a series of small things that piled up in the dark until they stopped being small.

We took off the top half of our pajamas. We’d been doing that since the second day, never talking about it, it just happened. The heat under the duvet, the habit, whatever. That night he didn’t take off his T-shirt. I noticed it as soon as I leaned against his back like I always did. I tugged the fabric upward and pulled it off him. He lifted his arms to let me take it. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

I stayed still for a moment, listening to him breathe. I pressed one bare tit against his shoulder blade on purpose, without covering myself, and felt his breath catch.

Then I sat on the edge of the bed and slowly took off my socks. I held them in my hand and moved toward him in the dark.

—Can I confess something to you?

I felt him tense without moving.

—I’ve got weird things too —I told him—. I’m not surprised you like this. What gets me off is being in charge. And tonight I feel like taking charge of you.

I put the sock over his face before he could say anything. I covered him up to the nose and held his head with gentle but firm pressure. He tried to turn. I told him in a low voice not to move.

—Smell it properly —I whispered in his ear—. I’ve had them on all day. It’s what you’ve wanted for a week, isn’t it?

I heard him swallow. He breathed deeply against the fabric and I felt his chest swell, heard a low moan slip out of him that he tried to smother and couldn’t. I pressed the sock a little harder against his nose.

—Don’t cover yourself. I want to hear you.

I lay against his back. I pressed my bare tits against him and felt him breathing differently, faster, more shallow. I put my hand on his hip over the pajamas and yanked his pants and underwear down together, no ceremony at all. His breath burst out of him. I ran my hand over his thigh, over his stomach, not touching his cock yet, even though it was already hard as a stone. I brought my lips close to his ear.

—This isn’t happening more than once. And you can’t tell anyone. Understand?

He nodded without speaking.

—Say it.

—Understood —he murmured against the sock, his voice muffled.

I ran my hand over his cock without closing around it. It was rock-hard, hot, with the head already wet. I brushed the tip with my thumb and got another groan out of him. I smiled in the dark.

—Look at you. All worked up over a sock. Your head is seriously fucked, you know that?

—Yeah —he said.

—Yeah, what?

—Yeah, I’m fucked up.

I took his whole cock in my hand, not squeezing yet. I slid my hand slowly, closed my fingers around it, and started moving from the base to the tip very slowly, stealing his breath. I took the other sock and wrapped it around his cock, using it as an improvised sheath. The texture of the sweat-damp cotton against his taut skin, the darkness, the silence of the apartment broken only by his increasingly ragged breathing. Everything felt strangely concrete, like when you’re so focused on something that the outside world turns blurry.

I started jerking him off slowly, with the sock wrapped around his cock, dragging the fabric from his balls to the tip and back. I ran my tongue along the nape of his neck, bit his earlobe, drove my hard nipples into his back.

—Do you like it when I work your cock with my dirty sock? —I said in his ear—. Answer me.

—Yeah…

—Harder.

—Yeah, I like it, fuck…

He tried to turn around to look at me. I shoved his head into the pillow.

—I told you not to.

He tried to take my other hand to his mouth. I pulled my fingers away.

—No.

He wanted to kiss me, turned his head toward where I was. I dragged my lips over his cheek very slowly, barely a touch, and pulled away.

—Stay still. You don’t touch me. Tonight you do nothing. Tonight you take it.

He obeyed me, and for some reason I didn’t try to analyze that night, that made everything more intense. I gripped his cock harder, moved my hand faster, and felt his whole body tense every time I slid up to the head.

I let go for a moment, tore the sock off his face and put two fingers in his mouth.

—Suck them. Good.

He sucked them like his life depended on it, with his whole tongue, wetting them all the way to the knuckles. When I pulled them out I took them to my own cunt and touched myself for a moment in front of him, even though he couldn’t see me, letting him hear perfectly how wet I was, the liquid sound of my fingers sliding in and out. A whimper escaped him.

—Hear that? —I told him—. That’s what you do to me. And you’re not going to taste it. Not even a little.

I grabbed his cock again with the sock and squeezed hard. I started jerking him off faster, my wrist twisting a little on each upward stroke, the way I like to do it to myself. He tried to hold on, jaw clenched, but moans kept escaping him into the pillow.

—Let them out —I said—. I want to hear you lose control.

He moaned louder. The bed started moving with the rhythm of my hand. I slid my other hand underneath, took his balls carefully, pinched them with my fingertips, and felt him shudder all over.

After a while he started moving against my hand, in a cadence he couldn’t fully control, fucking my sock-wrapped fist like it was a real cunt. He told me he was close.

—Ask me —I whispered—. Ask me to let you come.

—Let me… let me come, please…

—Again.

—Please, let me come, fuck, please…

—Good boy.

I squeezed the sock against his cock and sped my hand up, going up and down fast, giving him no relief. I felt it before he said it: the change in his breathing, the way he went still for a second just before, how his balls tightened in my hand. I felt his cock pulse and the sock fill hot with his cum, shot after shot, while he forced the air out in one burst, forehead buried in the pillow, with a long groan that came from the bottom of his throat.

I kept stroking him slowly until the last drop, until he shuddered and put his hand over mine to make me stop because he couldn’t take any more.

We stayed like that for a moment. The two of us saying nothing, just his breathing slowly easing and my nipples still hard, pressed into his back.

Then I got up, went to the bathroom, tossed the soaked sock in the trash, and washed my hands looking at myself in the mirror, cheeks flushed and cunt throbbing. When I went back to bed he still hadn’t moved. I lay down beside him and stared at the ceiling.

—We’ve got four days left —I said.

He didn’t answer. But in the dark, I could tell he was smiling.