What the Lockdown Awakened Between My Son and Me

Elena looked at herself in the bathroom mirror for longer than she would have admitted out loud. Forty-three years old, five foot five, with her dark hair still wet and falling over her shoulders. She wasn’t the woman she had been at twenty, but she wasn’t the woman she imagined when she thought of “the mother of an adult son,” either. Three gym sessions a week for the last five years had done their part. Her breasts were still large, her waist still had shape, and the mirror didn’t lie, even if sometimes she wished it would.

She ran her hand over her damp stomach, distracted. Outside, the silence of the street was absolute. They had been locked in for seventeen days and the whole city seemed to have disappeared. All that was left was that seventy-square-meter apartment, the refrigerator’s nighttime noises, and Marcos sleeping on the other side of the hallway.

She wrapped herself in a white robe and went to wake him.

Her son was twenty-two. She watched him from the doorway before going in: lying on his back, arms stretched out at his sides, the sheet bunched around his feet. He was only wearing boxer briefs. At some point between adolescence and that morning he had turned into a man with broad shoulders, defined abs, fair skin stretched over muscle. Elena knew it all at once, like someone finally noticing something that had been there in front of them for a long time.

Close your eyes. Call him. Go back to the kitchen.

She went into the room.

She sat on the edge of the bed more calmly than she felt. She placed a hand on Marcos’s stomach and shook him gently.

—Good morning —she said when he opened his eyes.

—Good morning, Mom. —Marcos blinked, still half asleep, with that hoarse voice he had in the mornings since he was sixteen.

Elena’s hand stayed on his stomach. Neither of them moved. The room smelled of sleep and of the cologne he used, and her robe had opened slightly at the overlap. Marcos lowered his gaze for a second and lifted it again. And in that second everything changed.

He was the one who reached out first. He was the one who ran his fingers along the edge of her robe until he found the skin of her thigh. Elena didn’t breathe. Then she breathed too hard. Then she closed her eyes and let her hand slide down her son’s abdomen to the elastic of his boxer briefs.

—Marcos —she said. It wasn’t a question or a warning. It was just his name in her mouth while the world they had known until that moment came to an end in silence.

He kissed her. She let him kiss her. Their mouths met with an initial awkwardness that lasted two seconds and then disappeared, because the body knows what it wants before the mind understands it. His tongue was warm and direct, with none of the circling of someone feeling their way. Elena’s robe fell onto the bed.

Marcos sat up and looked at her. He looked at her for real, without the politeness of looking away that the two of them had practiced without realizing it over the past year. Elena felt the heat of that gaze in her throat, in her chest, lower down.

—Mom —he said softly, with a mix of astonishment and hunger she couldn’t quite decipher.

—I know —she replied.

Marcos lowered his head to her chest. He took one of her nipples into his mouth with a concentration that stole Elena’s breath. He was neither clumsy nor hasty. He was methodical, attentive to the way she responded: how she tensed when he increased the pressure, how she let out air when he eased off. Quick learner, she thought, and then stopped thinking.

Elena’s crotch had been wet since she crossed the threshold of that room, though she wouldn’t have admitted it even to the mirror. When Marcos’s hand got there, it found exactly what he expected and they both knew it at the same time. He shifted the fabric aside just enough, brushed her wet folds with his fingertips, and slid slowly, feeling the heat and softness, the way she opened herself under that touch.

—You’re soaking —he murmured, his voice carrying an almost cruel disbelief.

—And you’re hard —Elena shot back, never breaking eye contact.

Marcos barely smiled, a brief, taut curve of the mouth, and kissed her again with more hunger. He yanked down her underwear, just enough to leave her naked from the waist down. Elena spread her legs on the bed, offering her center shamelessly, feeling the cool air against skin already burning. Marcos settled between her thighs and placed a hand on her stomach to hold her still, gently.

First he licked her on the outside, long, from bottom to top, tearing a rough moan from her. Then he did it again, this time opening his mouth wider and plunging his tongue into her wet slit, gathering the salty taste, the strong scent of her arousal. Elena clutched the sheets while he worked with his tongue and fingers, alternating pressure and slowness, seeking out the most sensitive part of her flesh with almost insolent precision.

—Marcos... —she said, breathing in gasps, her hips already lifting on their own.

He didn’t answer. He held her hips with both hands and licked her with more dedication, sliding one finger inside, then two, opening her slowly while he kept lapping at her clit with an insistence that made her arch her back. Elena let out a cry she didn’t try to control. The sound broke in her throat when the orgasm began to build, first as an intense throb, then as a wave that tightened her stomach and thighs.

—That’s it —Marcos whispered, looking at her between her legs—. Just like that.

Elena came with a violent shudder, involuntarily squeezing her fingers into his hair. Marcos kept licking until he drew out the last tremor, and only then did he lift his head, his mouth shining with moisture.

Then Elena looked down at him and understood this wasn’t over. That it had barely begun.

***

The days of confinement became long in a different way after that. The apartment, which had once felt small, now had corners. The morning shower, the couch after lunch, the kitchen at midnight when neither of them could sleep.

They didn’t talk about it in direct words. There was a kind of tacit code the two of them understood: a lingering look, a hand that brushed a little too much, the distance that shortened for no apparent reason. And the other would respond, always.

One rainy afternoon, Elena came into the living room with a cup of coffee and found Marcos stretched out on the sofa watching a series at low volume. He was wearing pajama pants and an old T-shirt. Elena sat beside him and set the cup on the side table.

He didn’t take his eyes off the screen, but he draped an arm over her shoulders with the ease of someone who had been doing it for years. Only his fingers didn’t settle on her shoulder, but on her neck. And it wasn’t a son’s caress.

Elena turned her head and he was already looking at her.

They kissed slowly, without rushing, with the television murmuring in the background. Marcos’s hands moved beneath her shirt. Elena’s skin was hot to the touch. He found the bra clasp and undid it with a ease that made her raise an eyebrow before the thought dissolved into something else. His palm slid up her side, squeezed one breast firmly, and Elena gasped when his thumb brushed over her already hard nipple.

—Take it off —he said quietly.

Elena took off her shirt. Marcos looked at her the way he had looked at her that first morning: with total attention, without hurry. Then he lowered his head and took his time with her. First one breast, then the other, licking, sucking, biting just enough to make Elena writhe and bury her fingers in his hair.

When she wanted to return the favor, she pushed him gently until he was reclined and knelt between his knees on the floor. She looked at him before pulling down his pants. It was the first time she had seen him fully in daylight, without the urgency of that morning, and she felt something that wasn’t only desire. It was also a strange, disturbing kind of pride that she preferred not to analyze.

She pulled down his pajama pants and boxers in slow movements, watching his face to savor the effect he had on her. Marcos’s cock sprang free, thick and hard, swollen, the tip shiny with precome. Elena placed her hand at the base and squeezed once, feeling him swallow. Then she took him into her mouth.

She took him in her hand first. Then she studied him with her mouth. Marcos breathed in ragged bursts and rested his head against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed. Elena took her time, learning too, taking him down as far as she could without gagging, letting him go with a wet sound before lowering herself again. She licked the head with her tongue, ran her tongue along the frenulum, and he began to moan under his breath, more broken each time.

—Fuck, Mom —he murmured, his voice in pieces.

She smiled around his cock and kept going, enjoying the tremor in his legs, the way his hand tightened on the edge of the sofa to keep from touching her yet. The pleasure she felt was not only the pleasure of giving, but also of having that power, that absolute intimacy with the body of her own son.

—Stop —he said after a while, his voice tight—. I want to be inside you.

Elena stood up. She pulled down her sweatpants and left them on the floor. Marcos drew her toward the sofa and she climbed on top of him, facing him, with her knees on either side of his thighs. She guided him with one hand. When she felt him enter, she let out a sound she had been holding back for days.

He entered slowly, centimeter by centimeter, opening her with a firmness that made her press her lips together and then release them in a trembling exhale. Elena felt the initial burn, the delicious pressure as Marcos’s cock sank into her wet, hot cunt, filling her to the depths. When he was fully inside, they both went still for a second, breathing hard, looking at each other as if that union were impossible and, at the same time, inevitable.

He started moving slowly. He held her hips without forcing the rhythm, letting her set the pace. The rain kept striking the windows. The television kept murmuring. Neither of them paid any attention to it.

This can’t be real, Elena thought. This shouldn’t exist.

And yet it existed, with a clarity and intensity that made everything else seem blurred. She quickened the rhythm. Marcos thrust upward to meet her. The two of them found a cadence without agreeing on it, and the pleasure kept piling up layer by layer until Elena had to rest her forehead on his shoulder to keep quiet.

She failed.

Marcos grabbed her by the ass, held her tight, and began to fuck her with harsher, deeper strokes, driving her to the edge again. Elena felt his cock rubbing the exact spot over and over, the pressure becoming unbearable, her belly tensing until it hurt. She came again, harder, shaking on top of him, and he kept driving into her with growing brutality that left her breathless.

—Yeah, Mom, like that —Marcos growled, digging his fingers into her flesh—. Stay on top of me.

The orgasm shook her from the center outward. Marcos held her firmly, his arms wrapping around her back, and let himself go too, her name in his mouth mixed with something that wasn’t a word. His come burst hot inside her, a thick pulse that made him shudder beneath her while he kept thrusting a few more times, short and hard, until he emptied himself completely.

Afterward they stayed still for a while. Both of them breathing normally again. Her weight on him. His hands still on her back.

—Are you okay? —Marcos asked.

—Yes —said Elena—. I’m fine.

And it was true, and that was what worried her most.

***

The quarantine lasted for weeks more. Outside, the world remained stalled, and inside, theirs had reorganized itself around something that had no acceptable name. During the day they were mother and son: cooking together, watching movies, reading. At night, or in the morning, or whenever the tension between them reached a certain threshold, they crossed that other boundary without ceremony and without apologies.

One night Elena couldn’t sleep. She got up to drink some water and stood in the kitchen with the glass in her hand, staring into the darkness of the inner courtyard. She heard Marcos’s footsteps in the hallway before he appeared in the doorway.

—You can’t sleep either —she said. It wasn’t a question.

—No. —Marcos came closer and took the glass from her hand. He set it on the counter. Then he looked at her—. Do you regret it?

Elena took a moment. Not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she wanted to give the right answer.

—I should regret it —she said—. That would be the sensible thing.

—That’s not what I asked.

She shook her head slowly.

—No —she said—. I don’t regret it.

Marcos nodded. Then he kissed her on the forehead, on the cheek, on the mouth. Elena raised her hands and rested them on his chest and felt the heartbeat beneath her palm, steady and firm.

That night she led him by the hand to her room. To the bed that had been hers alone for years. And that too was different, slower, with a kind of tenderness neither of them would have known how to explain.

Marcos undressed her slowly, never taking his mouth from her neck, leaving wet kisses that raised goosebumps on her skin. Elena took off his shirt, then his pants, and stood looking at him in the half-dark, his cock hard again, pointing at her like an obscene promise. She knelt on the mattress, licked the tip, and made him moan before lying on her back and spreading her legs for him.

He settled over her, entered her with more calm than before, as if they wanted to stretch the moment instead of breaking it. Elena felt him moving inside her, slow and deep, the wet brush of their bodies, the dull thud of the mattress accompanying each thrust. They kissed with dirty tenderness, with their breathing mixed together, with bodies tired and satisfied and still hungry.

When they finished, they lay there staring at the ceiling, not speaking. Marcos’s hand found Elena’s and held it. Outside, the streets were still empty and silent.

—What happens when all this ends? —he asked after a while.

Elena closed her eyes. It was the question the two of them had been avoiding saying out loud for some time.

—I don’t know —she answered honestly—. I guess we’ll find out when the time comes.

Marcos squeezed her hand.

—Okay —he said.

And for that night, that was enough.