Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Florian
Music fills the bedroom. I think Mateo means for it to be calming, but nothing can be calming under these circumstances.
It’s a massage. I have had many massages before. This is nothing special. Nothing extraordinary.
My bed does not have a cradle for my head, and I glance up at Mateo.
The man is so beautiful.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
And then he touches me.
His touch is firm, like last time. He knows what he is doing. He knows how to touch bodies, how to make them feel better.
I tense beneath his hands, but Mateo is patient. He kneads my muscles and slowly, slowly, slowly I allow myself to relax.
I have been in pain. Pain I ignored yesterday, but which was impossible to ignore today. Unfortunately, my family noticed my absent-minded attempts at self-massage.
I let Mateo focus on my muscles. I let his strong, firm hands touch my bare back, and later I allow his strong, firm hands to touch my bare neck and then my bare legs.
My body tingles, because this is Mateo.
This is a shiny, sparkling man with a kind heart who lied about being someone he wasn’t to protect my feelings, who lied to my family for me, who lied to his workplace, even though workplace relationships can’t be encouraged even if they are tolerated.
He spent his free evening at my side, even though he knew it would be awkward. And now he’s massaging me.
He is not my boyfriend.
He is a man who did not like me.
I hope he doesn’t feel that way now. I do not think he does.
Mateo continues to massage and massage and massage, and my mind clears as I focus on the music and the touch of his fingers.
He works my thighs.
And though my thighs are not near my cock, not that near, at least, in an unprofessional sense, my body does not understand.
My body only understands that a beautiful man is touching me.
My body is a fool.
Once again, I harden. Once again, my cock grows.
I shift against the mattress. It is too soft compared to the massage table. I feel even more unsteady than before, and my heartbeat quickens and quickens and my nerves zing and zing, even though I tell them not to.
This is not special.
This is not Mateo, my boyfriend.
That man never existed. One day Mateo will be the boyfriend of someone who woos him properly, who gives him everything nice, who does not hide in janitor’s closets when he approaches, amidst the strong-smelling detergent and the not very clean mops, gray from overuse, and the yellow plastic cart with all its easy access to cleaning tools to wipe away any signs of twenty-something messy hockey players.
But my cock still grows because I am a foolish man. I wriggle again under the sheets.
“It’s fine,” Mateo says, his tenor voice stretching over the music. “Everything is fine. Just relax.”
And so, I try to. I try to listen to Mateo.
“Turn around,” Mateo says.
“I—”
“It’s fine,” Mateo repeats.
And maybe it is.
I turn around, and my towel still covers me. My boxer briefs are still on, and perhaps he can’t see anything.
Perhaps it will be fine.
But Mateo gasps softly, and I shoot him an apologetic look.
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “It’s just—”
I stiffen.
“You’re sort of big.”
“I am tall.”
He nods, but he bites his lower lip and glances again in the direction of my towel-covered bulge before he quickly moves to my chest. He inhales again, like touching me has its own pain.
“We don’t have to—” I say.
“Close your eyes, Florian. Relax. No thinking.”
I shoot him a look that reminds him that my parents both have graduate degrees from Harvard University, my father is a professor at Ludwig-Maximilian University, and my sister is pursuing a master’s degree in microbiology at Heidelberg University and will almost certainly enroll in a PhD program later.
Thinking is something that comes naturally to me.
Not thinking is difficult.
But I try to relax anyway.
I shut my eyes and take in the sound of the music.
I allow myself to enjoy the touch and feel of Mateo’s hands as they stroke my body and ease away my pain and leave me feeling like I’m not only in the presence of one of those curly-haired angelic men in centuries-old paintings in museums, but that I am also floating on a cloud with him.
My cock hardens more.
I’m leaking.
Mateo’s hands shift to my legs, working up from my ankles.
And then Mateo stops.
It is over.
He has massaged me.
My family will be happy. And now I know he gives excellent massages. It was never something I doubted about him, but it is now official in my mind.
Some people I assume are excellent drivers, but when I get into their cars they honk and huff and swerve too fast around places they shouldn’t and proceed too slowly in places that do not require it.
That was not the case with Mateo. I knew it wouldn’t be.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome, Florian.”
Mateo’s gaze turns to the towel.
I glance down.
It is big.
“I apologize,” I say. “I, uh—”
His gaze softens. “You have a healthy body, Florian. That’s a good thing.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s beautiful.”
My eyes flicker to him, and his skin reddens.
“I could take care of it,” he says.
My eyes widen.
Mateo didn’t suggest that.
He couldn’t have— No. I am wrong. Of course I am wrong.
The beautiful man before me does not want to touch my cock. No.
His cheeks become rosy. “I’m sorry. You’re just...”
“What?”
Virginal? Silly? Overly serious?
I’m not sure how I manage to be both silly and overly serious, but I am certain I have succeeded at that.
I excel at both athletic feats and massive embarrassments. Whoever bestowed traits on me when I was born gave me both.
I squirm.
“I like you,” he says softly.
“I like you too. You are an excellent man, Mateo.”
And then my skin heats because of course I remember all the times I told Mateo just that. I remember how I outed myself, even though I promised myself years ago that I never would, not without a real reason.
Mateo knows I like him.
God. I told Mateo I loved him.
But then he told me he loved me back.
My cock is still hard, like it is trying to hide in a rock museum.
“Would you like me to?” Mateo asks.
“You would?”
“I would do anything for you,” Mateo says.
“Okay,” I say softly.
Mateo lifts the towel from me. A wet spot is against my briefs just like I feared.
“I am dirty,” I say apologetically.
Mateo smiles like I’ve said something amusing. “Let me remove that for you.”
His fingers slide underneath my briefs. No one has touched my skin there, and I shiver against his touch.
“Lift your bottom,” he whispers, and I press my feet against my mattress and raise it.
He moves my briefs, gently sliding my briefs over my cock so it does not snag it.
My head bursts free, red and leaking, the color bright against my white cotton briefs.
Mateo’s throat moves. Maybe he thinks it will be too big against his hand. Maybe he is regretting volunteering to touch it at all.
He continues to slide my briefs down. I am completely exposed.
No one has seen me there.
No one except the occasional doctor.
No one who wanted to see it.
“You can sit back,” Mateo says, and my skin heats because I should have figured out that that was the appropriate thing to do without Mateo telling me.
He only smiles, and doesn’t seem upset, so maybe I am fine after all.
Mateo moves my ankles up and removes my briefs gently. He steps away and puts them in the dirty clothes basket. He then moves past me, and my heartbeat quickens, because now I am lying naked on the bed, and I cannot see him.
Then a drawer opens.
A drawer that sounds like it comes from his bedside cabinet drawer.
Well, not his bedside cabinet drawer.
Dummkopf.
Shame fills me as I remember our trip to the pharmacy. But then he is once again standing in my eyesight. He opens something up, and I recognize the unopened bottle of lubricant.
My breath halts.
This is happening.
Mateo pours some lubricant on his hands, then he places the bottle on my bedside table. The plastic packaging promising pleasure is garish.
I should have more strength. I should not yield to baser impulses.
I should tell Mateo never mind. I should thank him for offering and send him on his way. I should—
And then Mateo touches me.
He touches me there.
On my cock.
Which of course is exactly what Mateo offered. Still, it is one thing to know that Mateo hypothetically intends to touch that area, and it is another to have him touch it.
Because the touch is…
Well, it’s different from when I touch it, under the covers, conscious that I am imagining the wrong-gendered person when I let myself touch it.
That I am doing a biological activity that shouldn’t be performed solo.
That is intended to be done by couples that are together and are in love and that I am alone and touching myself and imagining things my teammates, at least in Mannheim, would squirm at, and that I am behaving completely insensibly when all I try to do is to be sensible, when all I desire is to be good and well-behaved and make people proud.
But now Mateo is touching me… there.
Even though he doesn’t have to do so.
Even though he could be on his way back to his apartment.
Even though this is not part of any massage.
His fingers stroke my shaft, and my whole body feels amazing.
This is incredible.
His hands move with confidence, and he touches my balls lightly.
That also feels amazing.
I gaze up at him, startled, and he smiles.
He moves his fingers over my shaft, over my balls, and a blissful look comes over his face, like he is really enjoying doing this. He is seeing the most private part of my body, the strangest looking portion, and he is enjoying it.
At least, I think he is.
He looks like he is.
“Relax,” Mateo soothes, and I attempt to do so.
I am floating on a cloud, and Mateo is beside me and all my worries are far, far away.
Mateo continues to stroke me. His fingers don’t reach around my shaft, and I crane my neck up to watch his fingers move up and down.
His eyes meet mine. “Why don’t you sit up? Then you can see.”
He drops his fingers, and I scramble back. He puffs a pillow for me, so I am comfortable leaning against the wooden headboard, chosen more for its aesthetic pleasing worthiness than as a location for handjobs.
I worry for a moment that he will stop entirely and that awkwardness and embarrassment will replace this moment, but instead he kneels on the bed. I spread my legs to accommodate him.
This is… intimate.
Exceedingly intimate.
Mateo can see all of me in this position.
He can see my head—the sexual one, of course he can see my normal one too, and he can see my shaft and my balls.
Everything is redder and harder and wetter than normal.
But if he looks down, he can see more. He can see my bottom.
He can see the place I once imagined he would enter.
The place I assumed that he had been before.
He avoids that area of course.
He is not my boyfriend.
He is not going to have sex with me.
But this is also sexual and intimate. Normally when I touch myself there, I do not think to use lubricant.
I do not go into pharmacies normally and buy material to touch myself with.
Normally if I touch myself—and that is not a frequent occurrence, hockey is long and demanding and I feel foolish wandering the internet with its vulgar websites and pictures and videos of people who might not want their pictures and videos to be published, and I feel foolish letting my imagination run wild, lest I accidentally imagine someone I should not be imagining: a teammate or friend or acquaintance who might be horrified that I am imagining them doing acts that involve little clothes.
I do not want to see them later and blush and stammer.
It is better to avoid that section of my body as much as possible, to wait until retirement, to think maybe I am asexual and none of it is necessary, even though I do not feel asexual in my heart, not even a tiny bit—though thinking that doesn’t help me either.
Mateo’s hands feel so good.
His hands move faster and faster, and everything in my body tightens and tightens and tightens. My breath quickens, and I gaze at Mateo and his beautiful face and his sweet concentration and his amazing, amazing hands.
And then my body dances, and I am not thinking at all.