by Paul Russell
Tracy was the one to break the perfect, scary link that bound them. He shifted his stare off toward a far corner of the candlelit room. He unclenched his fist and splayed his fingers, palm down, on the surface of the table. “Let’s just say,” he mused haltingly. “Let’s just say that…whatever happens here is special. It’s set apart. I mean, from everything else. It’s something that happens. Part of a continuum.”
Whatever it is, just say it, Noah thought, exhilarated by the direction he thought the words were heading, but also irked that it all seemed up to Tracy now. What if he’d changed his mind since this morning? That thought apparently hadn’t occurred to Tracy, who seemed more intent on reliving his private past than sharing their present.
“If this happens,” Tracy said gravely, assuming they both knew quite clearly—and were perfectly agreed on—what this was, “and I’m only talking theoretically here, but if this happens, it has to be like it never happened. You want this and I want this, but the stupid rules say we can’t either of us have it. Think of today as a snow day: the rules get suspended, but then you have to go back to how things normally are.”
Noah was listening hard, but he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure what was being said, exactly. Why were things never spelled out the way you wanted them to be, so there wasn’t any doubt?
Then Tracy said the astonishing thing that made it all blazingly clear, like sunlight on snow. “I’m doing this because I love you,” he said simply. “And I want to help you. I want you to have what I never had.”
In the dream adventure Noah could barely reply, his throat too tight, his eyes about to well up with tears. His answer was the hardest, most brilliant thing he’d ever said. He punched all fifteen parched years of his soul into it. “I want you to fuck me,” he said.
“I know,” Tracy said. “I want to fuck you. I want this to be something really beautiful, Noah.”
It was all Noah could do to nod solemnly. So the dread thing was going to happen after all. Tracy Parker was going to put his penis inside him till Noah whimpered that mysterious amalgam of bliss and agony that had obsessed his imagination for so long.
You don’t have to do this, he reminded himself. It’s not too late. You don’t have to go over to the dark side.
It will be like it never happened, Tracy had said. That was where Tracy Parker, for all his vast and enviable experience, was so dead wrong.
“Come,” Tracy beckoned. He held out his hand across the table and Noah accepted it. Together they stood up slowly, eyes locked again, gazing at each other, it seemed, with a tenderness so languorous and melting he’d never imagined such a look possible. Stepping around the edge of the table, Tracy pulled him slowly into a great embrace. “I love you, Noah,” he whispered reassuringly, nuzzling his ear, and Noah told him back, though under the circumstances it sounded ridiculous, even vaguely suspect, “I love you too, Trace.” Together they swayed a little drunkenly without having had hardly anything to drink, arms locked around one another, not exploratory—he took his lead from Tracy—but just holding tight as if in panic or great relief. Tracy’s pelvis pressed assertively against his, and he returned the pressure, feeling his thickening cock, and Tracy’s too, mashed between them.
Releasing his grip, Tracy sounded like nothing so much as a stage manager on opening night. “Let’s bring the candles to the bedroom.” And as Betsy loyally roused herself to follow: “Here, why don’t we put you in your cage? I’m really not up for a threeway.” He laughed skittishly. “Can you take care of her? I’ll go put some nice music on.” Noah didn’t mind; he liked it that his teacher was taking so much trouble over him. It made him feel wanted, even if the jubilant abandon he’d expecting hadn’t quite materialized. Those few afternoons with Chris Tyler had been pure sex—sex talking through them, sex using them like mad puppets. This, on the other hand, was something more considered, deliberate—both disappointing and weirdly arousing. The love feast, he said to himself, unsure where the phrase had come to him from, but struck by its solemnity, and entirely clear about its effect on his dick, which had never in his life felt harder or grander.
Classical piano music began to play softly. He knew nothing about music, was indifferent to it, both the corporate noise his peers listened to and the baffling monotony of the so-called classical.
“My favorite piece,” Tracy proclaimed fervently. “Franz Schubert, the B-flat opus posthumous. Do you like it? I think it’s so gorgeous.”
“Sorry,” Noah apologized. “I’ve got a tin ear.”
Though there was something gorgeous, if not about the music itself, then about the music together with the candles lighting the darkened bedroom as to the two of them stood before one another, on the verge of it all happening, finally and at last, just the way it was supposed to.
When Tracy reached out to undo the buttons of Noah’s shirt—Tracy’s shirt, actually, a too-big blue-and-black flannel he’d lent him—Noah matched his progress button for button, a reflection in a mirror, till they both stood thrillingly bare-chested. Tracy laid an outspread palm on Noah’s shallow chest, right in the middle, and Noah reciprocated, flattening his hand over the more heroic, lightly furred cleft of a truly muscular chest. Imperfect twins, alas, though Tracy hardly seemed displeased or disappointed; they moved their hands slowly clockwise, counterclockwise, over nipples, throat, belly, till with a sigh Tracy drew Noah to him and kissed him lusciously, a mouthful—and minute full—of juicy spit and tongue. Hands found the waist of his borrowed chinos, loosened the belt that cinched their extra inches around his hips, and began to mirror-unbutton buttons they had unbuttoned dozens of times before, back in the world before this candle-flickered world. He sprang free, both pants and boxers dropped to his knees, his penis proud and aching as Tracy knelt worshipfully before him and slurped him into his mouth. Hardly had he registered that amazing fact—Tracy Parker was actually sucking his cock—before he said “Oh!” his ejaculation taking him utterly off guard, though Tracy seemed unfazed, pumping him in and out of his mouth as Noah felt three distinct, obliterating spurts spatter the back of that prayerful throat. Taking Tracy’s head in his hands, he skewered that mouth on his dick, which did not diminish but stayed agonizingly firm as lips and tongue and throat continued to work him avidly, so avidly in fact that his shaft was suddenly supersensitive, its nerves raw and painful as happened whenever, disappointed that his orgasm had failed to be as allencompassing as he’d looked forward to, he continued to jack himself vigorously after coming.
“I didn’t mean to shoot,” he said, pulling himself out of Tracy’s mouth, which nonetheless followed his cock an inch or two like a baby after a tit.
“Ah, the spirit of youth,” Tracy murmured, looking up with a smirk of rebuke, eyes aglitter, still on his knees and clasping with his big hands the backs of Noah’s thighs. He let the tip of Noah’s cock brush his closed lips, at the same time reaching one hand around to tug gently at his tender, spent balls. Carefully Noah stepped out of the pants and boxers gathered around his ankles. He let Tracy peel off one white sock and then the other. Sliding out of the rest of his own clothes, Tracy stood and faced him, his big cock standing straight out from him.
The time had come. For one terrible moment Noah quailed at the thought of how much it would probably hurt, the damage it would do; then he pressed resolutely on. “Let’s go over to the bed,” he suggested.
Tracy followed, and when Noah reached the futon, he moved in close behind him, circling him with his arms, chest to back, his cock pressed up lengthwise against the crack of Noah’s ass. “Noah, Noah,” Tracy murmured swooningly into his ear. “I want to fuck you.”
“Go ahead,” Noah said, his voice cracked and hoarse. His heart fluttered in his throat. “Put it in me.”
Surprisingly, Tracy released him from his embrace. “Brief intermission,” he announced unromantically. “Don’t move.” Noah’s cock had cranked back up, though his stomach felt woozy with dread. When he touched a finger to his asshole
to make sure it was clean, the sensation sent shivers through him. The secret to getting fucked, Chris Tyler had told him, is total relaxation. Just open up and let it in.
He tried, not very successfully, to squelch the worrying thought that he wasn’t a very relaxed person in general, and this was certainly not a very relaxing situation. Meanwhile, the man who was going to fuck him was back, holding a condom in its square of gold foil and what looked mysteriously like a tube of toothpaste.
“What’s that?”
“Lubricant,” Tracy explained. He must have still looked puzzled, because Tracy added, “It’ll make it easier.”
He’d never used anything like that with Chris Tyler, and wondered what other surprises might be in store.
“Lie down on the bed,” Tracy commanded him mildly. “On your back. That’s good.” Noah tried to relax, despite Tracy’s rapt scrutiny of his nakedness, his adamant erection pointing due north toward his navel. Looming over him, Tracy lowered his mouth to his belly, his tongue teasing the dimple of his navel, then drifting south to browse in his public hair, to lap at his balls, finally to capture, once again, the whole shaft of his penis. Hands found his ankles and lifted them up, and Tracy’s mouth moved toward the nether regions. Noah couldn’t believe it: Tracy actually had his tongue there! It flicked lightly around his hole, then settled in for some serious work. Oh my God, Noah thought, unable to help himself, Oh my God, oh my God. He tried very hard to relax, to welcome each foray of Tracy’s marauding tongue.
With a great contented sigh Tracy pulled back, gazing down at his captive with that glazed, dreamy expression Noah had seen in Chris’s eyes as well. The eyes of a creature completely taken over, possessed by desire. “What a beautiful asshole,” Tracy said incoherently, like a madman. Then it struck Noah with the force of a revelation: what if his asshole really did look beautiful when seen through eyes taken over by desire? What if everything you naturally assumed could be overturned in an instant, just like that? It was as if, all along, Tracy had known a secret, been carrying it inside himself without saying a word, and now Noah had caught a glimpse of that other life Tracy lived, the life of desire where a gross thing like an asshole was beautiful and what other unheard-of things might not also be true?
“Just relax,” he heard Tracy saying. “I’m going to loosen you up a little here.” He dabbed lubricant on his finger and rubbed in cold circles around Noah’s asshole. Then he sank his finger in.
Noah hadn’t been prepared for that at all. He felt himself clench in panic around the intruder.
“Easy, easy,” Tracy soothed. “It hurts at first. You’ll get used to it.” He pressed in a little more, and Noah, who’d prided himself on his general reticence during sex with Chris, found himself unable to suppress a groan. “We’ll just go slow,” Tracy coaxed, rotating the finger gingerly in its socket. So far, Noah was not liking this feeling one bit, but he told himself this was only the beginning: the amazing part, or so he hoped, was yet to come.
He tried to put himself on a flat, sun-warmed boulder in the woods, where on summer afternoons he’d lain spread-eagled and naked waiting for something or someone to come upon him, but only blue dragonflies had danced in the sultry air. Now a man was probing him with his finger. “Oof,” he said involuntarily as the finger removed itself.
“Good, good,” Tracy encouraged. “You’re doing great.” Then the invader was back, though two fingers, surprisingly, felt better than one, especially when Tracy twisted them slowly inside him, their thickness opening him up, squishing audibly in that slick hole Tracy had called beautiful. “How you doing, gorgeous?” Tracy whispered.
“Fine,” Noah whispered back, as if they’d descended so far into something secret neither dared speak it aloud. Poised above him, Tracy stared unflinchingly down into his eyes, an intent, questioning expression on his face. Noah tried to connect those fingers inside him to those serious eyes; tried to imagine what impulses were traveling up the nerves of Tracy’s right arm to the dome of his inscrutable brain. And back down to his cock, which loomed as erect as ever.
“I’m going to fuck you,” Tracy said clearly, lucidly. His fingers pulled most of the way out, then pushed back in, deeper than before, once, twice, the third time releasing an embarrassing fart Noah hoped Tracy didn’t hear. But far from spoiling things, the low note drew a smile from his partner who slowly, even reluctantly withdrew his fingers, saying, “Don’t worry. It happens.” Wiping his fingers along the inside of Noah’s thigh—was there gunk on them? Noah wondered squeamishly; he hadn’t really considered that part of it too much—Tracy groped for the condom he’d dropped beside the lube on the mattress. He brought the foil square to his mouth and bit off the corner.
“No condom,” Noah said firmly. He reached out to close a fist around that big, stiff, unprotected cock that was finally going to penetrate him. He’d thought about it: he wanted Tracy, not latex. Total connection or nothing.
With a sigh of exasperation, Tracy rocked back on his haunches. “Are you crazy? There’s no way I’m going to fuck you without a condom,” he said adamantly. “That’s lesson number one. Never, never, never fuck without a condom.”
Noah rubbed his thumb across the little fish mouth at the tip of Tracy’s penis.
“Noah, this is not good,” Tracy complained. “This is not a good habit for you to get into.”
“Are you afraid I’m going to get AIDS from you?” he asked.
“I’m just not going to fuck you without a condom,” Tracy said. “For your own good, okay?”
“Then why’d you swallow?”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice there, now did you? Besides, two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“I’m not happy with this,” Noah said.
“Trust me,” Tracy told him. “It’s the thing to do. Now help me get back in gear. I seem to have lost it.” His cock was, in fact, disappointingly flaccid, but Noah stoically seized the opportunity. Shifting himself around, he went at his task with all the resolve he could muster, though he still gagged unappealingly as the big thing poked the back of his throat.
“Easy,” Tracy said. “Watch the teeth.”
His ineptitude infuriated him. He should’ve practiced more on Chris; he should’ve done that threeway and learned everything he needed to know. He hated being the ignorant kid, the one who always got failing grades in everything.
“Use your lips more,” Tracy urged. “Use your tongue. That’s it. That’s great.”
Noah relished the murmurs and sighs he was managing to extract, as well as the increasingly satisfying heft and girth that filled his mouth. Relinquishing his catch, he took the condom and rolled it down the length of Tracy’s shaft—which hardly seemed diminished by it. The latex stretched nearly to transparency. “Lie back,” Tracy prompted. “I’ll go easy. I won’t hurt you.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Noah told him, the end of the sentence choked off by the sudden, brutal stab of pain. “Oww,” he cried in spite of himself. It was more embarrassing even than farting, but he felt sickeningly stuffed, like a big fecal log was lodged up there and he wasn’t able to shit it out. The pain grew and grew like a fire lit inside him. So this was the feeling faggots were so greedy for. Now he thought he understood.
Do you like to get fucked, Tracy Parker? he wanted to ask, concentrating on formulating that question as clearly as he could in order not to focus on the searing jolt as Tracy pushed deeper.
“I’m inside you. How does it feel?”
“Like hell.” Noah grimaced. “Like a pain in the ass,” he tried to joke.
“Take a minute to get used to it, beautiful.”
So Tracy’s cock was in him. At least he’d scaled that fine peak of accomplishment. The idea of it, more than the immediate feeling, made him feel triumphant, since the immediate feeling was just a little short of agony.
Tracy began a few tentative thrusts. Being in him clearly didn’t mean being all the way in, as Noah painfully discovered.
> People were so stupid. They said, I’m on fire for you. They said, I’m burning up with desire. He wanted Tracy to make him blaze.
But Tracy had become a blind pumping machine. His eyes went vacant with lust. “Uh, uh, uh,” he grunted almost dutifully, with each focused piston thrust—or was that Noah’s own voice calling out, or even better, the two of them together, locked in this thrilling mortal combat?
Hit me harder, Noah coaxed. I’m a boxer, I’m staggering woozily around the ring, you’re landing punch after punch where it really counts, you’re punishing me mercilessly, you’re knocking the living daylights out of me.
His cock sprang alive at the sweet thought of the pummeling he was taking.
Look at me, Dad, he thought, fisting himself roughly while Tracy methodically made contact with some amazing bright spot located deep in his gut, just look at your stupid faggot son in his burning glory, he hissed as a second load of jism sprayed his heaving stomach.
“Oh fuck,” Tracy said sharply. He pushed himself farther in than ever and held there spasming, teeth bared, his face a greedy wolf-snarl of pleasure.
Noah felt a droplet of sweat hit his chest, then another. Tracy bent forward, hair hanging into his eyes, and lowered his lips to Noah’s. His tongue entered there gently even as his cock still pulsed in Noah’s ass; each flex sent a profound shiver all through Noah’s body, and Noah responded by experimentally clenching his sphincter around the buried length of flesh. For several long minutes they lay like that, sharing heavy sour breaths, their bodies signaling back and forth, call and response. Then gently Tracy withdrew himself, like pulling a stopper—Pock!—the sound of lips kissing air.
They were in a room flickering with candles. The soft piano music was still playing. Somehow, at least for a few moments, Noah had left all that behind. Maybe he’d even left Tracy behind, because he was startled to hear the voice next to him saying, almost prayerfully, “You’re so beautiful, Noah. Do you even know how beautiful you are?”
