PART 1

JJ does a little dance as he steps through his bedroom door. It’s all good vibes as he’s getting home from work. He’s always liked the ritual of it – pretty much the same thing every day since he got the job doing construction work out of high school. That was, what, four years ago now? Hanging out with Hawk has been taking up a lot of his time after work so it’s nice to finally be back into it, as great as Hawk is.

He puts some music on over his speaker and sways his tail left and right as he unpacks his bag. There’s a little grin on his face. He can’t help but smile right now. His muddy work boots go by the entrance to his room. He hooks his high-vis jacket on the door. His backpack sits on the edge of the bed. Midday light streams through the slats of his window. It’s so nice having a job that ends at 2 PM – he’s more than willing to wake up at the crack of crackfor it.

And now the rest of the day begins. He grabs the egg salad sandwich he bought at one of those roadside carts out of his bag and leaves it next to his bed. He’s fully prepared to not leave his bedroom until dinner time, maybe for a piss break but nothing else. Why would he need to leave his room anyway? It’s small but his daily rituals are built for that. The bed is tucked into the corner of the room, touching three walls, and it’s stacked up as high as is comfortable with blankets and bedding and pillows and plushies. He sits on the shag carpet and gets stoned, watches his old Survivor tapes on the big box TV someone left outside their apartment to throw out, and draws comics at his desk by the light of the string lights. What else do you need?

First, though, it’s time to cuddle up in bed. His body is sore in such a satisfying way. He stretches as tall as he can, his tail sticking straight out. His muzzle opens wide as he lets out a yawn – his toothy maw isn’t threatening in the slightest. He lets out a little noise at the apex of the yawn. It feels nice.

JJ catches a glimpse at the charming brown dog in the mirror as he strips down for bed. He ruffles his fur up more than it already is as he pulls his shirt off. He adjusts his gold nose ring so it’s in the center and unclips his golden earrings, then scratches his chest with his long nails. He looks good: strong and muscular from moving things around for a living but not overly defined. His stomach is taut – there’s the potential for abs if he really sucks it in, but there’s no need to do that.

He undoes the belt on his cargo pants and steps out of them, leaving him in just a pair of blue plaid boxers. They’re so convenient but such a sweat trap. He jumps into bed and lets the cool air of his fan wash over his body. It blows through his fur so nicely. He sticks his tongue out and closes his eyes and enjoys it. “Fuck yeah,” he whispers to himself. “Fuck yeah.”

Over at the side of his bed, he leans on a pillow and starts rolling a joint. He sprinkles the weed from his grinder onto the paper rolling paper like he’s done a million times before, rolls it up and seals it. JJ used to open the window and smoke while watching the people of New York City pass by (sometimes he still does that when he’s feeling particularly wistful) but recently he taped over the fire extinguisher and stuffed a towel under the door. It works just as well.

He lights the blunt with the lighter he keeps under his pillow. While looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars he put up on the ceiling, he takes a long drag in.

“Cool,” he says to himself. “Cooool.”

JJ puts the blunt on in his ashtray, grabs his sandwich and his phone. He responds to a text Hawk sent him while he waits for the weed to kick in. He wags his tail the whole time.

hey dude 🤙

whatcha up to

Hiii

Smoking a blunt in my room

Gonna zone out and watch some Survivor

The usual

What about you?

sounds awesome haha

at the pool

was wonderin if u wanted to go swimming

Oh sorry!

no but ur busy haha

its cool

We should go swimming again soon though

When I’m not stoned

lol dude

its irresistible

id love to get high soon

We can tonight?

wanna come over for dinner

get some pizza

ruin ur brain some more

Yeah!

Sounds fun!

cool 🏖️

ill leave u to it dude

Haha good it’s starting to hit

ttyl

Bye!

JJ puts his phone and the egg sandwich down and lies his head back down on his pillow. It feels fucking great. He giggles a little bit and closes his eyes. He’s figured out just the right amount to smoke so that he’s definitely high but it doesn’t impede him from doing the stuff he wants to do. Obviously JJ enjoys getting so high he can’t move as well, but this is a little more liveable.

Hawk is such a cool guy to be best friends with. JJ’s routine is nice but even now he has the yearning to go and hang out with his friend. They could go swimming and get sandwiches after. The weed quickly dissipates that – they’re doing dinner together anyway.

He just enjoys the feeling for a little bit. Wagging his tail feels fucking awesome. He strokes his paws through the fur on his stomach and it feels lovely. Every little strand of fur is so nice and warm. He scratches up and down on his arms and his thighs just to feel them.

After that he grabs his phone. He changes the music playing on his speaker to something less dancey and more calm. Birds chirp outside of his window. He pulls up Instagram and taps on

Hawk’s Story.

JJ looks at his story for a few moments. He pauses it to stare at it for longer than Instagram will allow him to look at it. It’s a photo of Hawk at his pool downtown. Hawk looks really good. It always escapes JJ’s mind when they’re at work installing windows or whatever because he’s decked head to toe in bright green workwear, but he’s a really good looking guy. The years of high school surfing aren’t lost on him even though he’s in the city now.

He leaves a like on the post and keeps tapping forward, then turns off his phone and closes his eyes.

Hawk is really good looking – JJ can admit that to himself – especially when he ties up his fur in a bun like that. JJ loves the way he does that – the sleeves of his jacket sloping down to reveal his muscular biceps, his casual grin, the sort of transition between a casual and serious state it implies. His expression is so cute, sticking his tongue out like that. Not to mention the speedo. It’s barely covering anything. It’s amazing how that’s something he wore to swim meets for all of high school, and surfing afterwards, and at the gym now, but he can definitely pull it off no doubt about it.

JJ thinks about the image for a few minutes. It feels great. He spreads his arms and legs out and lets the fan run over his fur and his mind runwild. He thinks about swimming with Hawk at the pool, catching a glimpse of him relaxing in the lounge chairs they have set up, beingin the locker room with him…

When he opens his eyes however long later, he realizes his dick is poking straight up out of his boxers.

He’s so stoned that it doesn’t quite make sense. “Woah.” He’s hard right now. He stares at his dick with earnest confusion. “Shit.”

He’s a big dog – 8 or 9 inches. He’s never measured. Nice and thick with no curve, a pretty pink head at the end. He grabs his dick and tries to put it back in his boxers in a stoned stupor but it’s already kind of difficult when he isn’t stoned. There’s no way it fits without lying it straight down along his thigh, and then the tip pokes out of the end of his boxers, and he’s too stoned to deal with that so he just lets it sit out.

It feels really good to be maneuvering it too. He bunches up the pillows behind him to prop his back up and scratches his stomach. Why is his best friend making him feel like this?

JJ grabs his phone and pulls up the image again. He looks so good. His pecs and his abs and his thighs and his bulge. He takes a screenshot and zooms in on his bulge – it’s just so fucking nice. He must have a really nice dick. Clearly he does, just based on the way the white light of the pool hits it and the Speedo strings land on it. He stares at the image and his heart thumps.

He grabs his dick and it sends a wave of pleasure through his body – he feels it in his chest and his paws and his tail and everywhere else. He’s too stoned to decide whether it’s a good or bad idea – all he knows is that his best friend has a great body and touching himself feels so good.

He uses the paw pad of his thumb to massage the head of his penis for a little bit, then brings his index finger in the same place on the other side. He moves slowly at first, enjoying the warmth of his stomach fur against his wrist, a little bit of precum leaking out. Precum drips down the length of his penis and leaks into his boxers.

“Grr…” he growls to himself. There’s no one home for hours but he’s learned to stay quiet anyway. The growling is a nice concession. “Mmmfph… fuck…”

He brings the rest of his paw around and begins to jerk himself off for real, keeping his thumb and forefinger positioned around the head of his cock. He grips tight. It feels so fucking good.

The phone shuts off in his other hand. He pulls it up to him and turns it back on. Hawk is so fucking hot but it feels wrong to him even now. JJ figures it might be okay to think about him, at least.

He does. Hawk will never find out about this. JJ probably won’t even remember it. He thinks about Hawk standing on the other side of his bedroom with a grin on his face – the same smile from the Instagram photo. He pulls his tank top off and stands right in front of JJ, positioning him so that his head is right up against his crotch. Hawk unbuckles his belt slowly, undoes the button, and brings the zipper down, revealing his beautiful bulge in his Speedo. He’s soft but quickly hardening. (JJ has no good idea of how big Hawk’s dick is and also a flimsy idea of how big an average dick is in general so he keeps that loose in the daydream.)

Hawk brings his hand to the back of JJ’s head and pushes him into his dick. JJ’s wet nose touches Hawk’s bulge and he shivers.

After nuzzling Hawk’s bulge for a bit, he finally smiles. “Dude,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“You wanna suck my dick?”

“I do.”

He gives a hang ten and sticks his tongue out. “Go ahead then, dude.”

And he pulls his Speedo down and lets his hard dick flop out onto JJ’s muzzle.

JJ barely gets to that moment when his dick is throbbing so hard he can’t help but get pulled out of the daydream. It feels so fucking good. It feels like Hawk is actually there and they’re actually having sex. He lets out little huffs of breath with each motion as he furiously touches himself, stroking as far as he can with each motion. His dick throbs every few seconds and when he does he stops touching himself completely, letting it build up as much as he possibly can.

He starts panting now, tongue fully out, tail fully thwappingagainst the bed. “Fuuuck,” escapes his mouth in sharp breaths. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

The image of Hawk’s dick enters his mind in quick bursts but he can’t hold onto it long enough to do anything with it. He’s basically just imagining a concept now – sucking Hawk’s dick. Hawk’s dick hitting the back of his throat. Hawk letting his load out and JJ swallowing all of it up.

That’s the image that sends him over the edge. It has to happen now. His arm thwaps against his thighs as he jerks off as hard as he can. He bucks his legs with each moment and humps into his own hand. It feels fucking good.

And then it happens. The orgasm starts a few seconds before he cums and all he can do is keep his hand moving. And then he begins to cum.

It feels like fucking heaven. It feels like pure warmth. He can feel it in every part of his body – pure, pure warmth. He can’t tell when he’s cumming and when he’s in between shots. It feels like pure warmth is pumping out of his body. He throws his head back and shuts his eyes as tight as he can and curls his toes and doesn’t dare to breathe. He pulls his foreskin back and keeps himself locked in that position – it would be impossible to move. It feels like fucking heaven.

“Hawk,” JJ moans into his hand. “Haaaaawk.”

And when it’s over, he thumps backwards into his pillow and takes in the deepest breath he can. He sits there and pants. He finally lets his fluffy tail lay flat.

“Shit.”

He opens his eyes and looks up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. His whole body is tingly. His paws feel like they’re buzzing. He smiles.

When he looks down, there isn’t as much cum as he thought there would be. There’s still a lot of cum – it’s pooling in his belly button and dripping down his dick and sitting on his hand – but it felt like there was cum shooting out of him for 45 seconds straight. He lets his hand rest in the cum and he takes another deep breath.

That was not part of his routine, that’s for sure.

JJ grabs the dusty glass of water by the side of his bed and satiates his dry mouth. He wipes the cum off of his stomach with his blanket (and even that feels really good). He grabs his phone.

The photo of Hawk is still open when he turns his phone on. He feels a pang of guilt looking at it – that’s his best friend. It’s his best friend. He just jerked off to his best friend. He deletes the image from his phone and turns it off. He sits up.

He’s less high now than he was before. The rest of his night unfolds before him. Take a huge leak, put a tape of Survivor on, draw some comics. Still nicely high, though.

When he looksover at his phone, there’s a message from Hawk.

cone over at 7?

come*

i am wet

wet dog

JJ’s heart skips a beat. They’re doingdinner later. They’re getting stoned later. And he just jerked off to a photo of him. JJ looks for the right response for a few moments. It’ll be fun. It’ll be great.

Yeah!

See you then :)

see you dude 🤙

PART 2

Opening the double glass doors to the pool blasts us in the face with humidity and it is oh-so good. These fancy New York City pools are beautiful. Gigantic glass windows with gorgeous views of the Hudson River. They know people aren’t really here to swim so they have lawn chairs lined up against the glass so you could sit there and watch the city go by for hours. I’ve sat there and done it before.

I look over and give JJ a smile. He’s fumbling with the strap on his backpack.

“Woah,” he says.

I chuckle to myself. “Impressed?”

“This is so nice.”

“Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. After we change I can go around and show you the digs.”

“Wow.” He stands in the doorway and just looks. The reflective strips of his high-vis jacket shine with the afternoon light streaming through the windows. “Wow.”

“I pay more than I’m willing to admit for a monthly membership to this place,” I say, stepping down the marble steps at the entrance and onto the concrete below. “I’m so glad you agreed to come with me.”

He takes a hesitant step forward.

“You okay?”

He folds his ears down and grins a little nervously. “Oh, yeah yeah yeah. Just not used to this.”

We walk over to the locker rooms, past counters with glistening dispensers for 15 different kinds of water with whatever cut citrus fruit you want, past the pool boy cutting up passion fruit, past an older executive-type doing laps in the water. Since our workday ends promptly at two, the place is pretty much empty of the office workers relaxing during their lunch break and no one else has gotten off of work yet. Besides a few older women who like to call me over and ask what a young man like myself is doing in a place like this, the pool is all ours.

“Locker rooms are over here,” I say.

We walk past the familiar tiled walls and luscious plants. The smell of rose wafts and I close my eyes for a moment to enjoy it. It’s so warm in here. JJ picks the row of lockers that happen to contain my usual spot — 180 — and sets his stuff down.

I catch a look at myself in the mirror. Oh how much life has changed. My high-vis jacket fills out my shoulders and my baggy cargo pants thicken my legs so I look bulkier than I already am. I’m still wearing one of my usual tank tops and my seashell necklace under that, but I look just like some New York City schmuck. I ruffle my fur a little and grin. JJ catches my eyes in the mirror and smiles as well.

“Dude,” he says.

“A man can check himself out!”

He chuckles. “So, uh, so all those razors and towels and stuff…”

“It’s so fucking nice. I literally grab a handful and stash it in my back every time. Towels for days, baby.” I look around. “What is there… cotton swabs, essential oil whatever, little shampoos and conditioners. It’s awesome.”

I stuff my jacket into the locker, making sure to hang up my seashell necklace with care, and go to take my shirt off. It is caked in sweat from the day’s job.

JJ grabs his duffel bag and puts it next to him. When I glance behind me, his eyes are wide. “Ah, uh, is there somewhere more private I can change?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, dude. Bathroom stalls are over there. And you can rinse off in the showers before you come on out.”

“Okay, cool. I just don’t really. I’ve never really…”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. I’m super used to it from being on the swim team but it’s not like, you know, a thing everyone’s used to.”

He lets out a sigh. “Hey, thank you.”

“Yeah!”

I hold my shirt in my hand and look JJ in the eyes. He stands up with his bag with a nervous expression on his face, but it quickly turns to relief. “Hawk?”

“Yeah, dude?”

“Thank you for inviting me here.”

I nod. “Dude. Yeah.”

I finish changing and get into my Speedo. I make sure to grab my seashell necklace and once I put it on I give it a kiss for good luck (since there’s no one else in this locker room). I do a quick rinse in the shower just so I’m not polluting the pool with my stank when I step in it. I lay my towel out on the bench and wait for JJ to finish up.

He takes a little longer than I expect. I can’t exactly place what he’s so nervous about, but not everyone’s as well acquainted with the pool as me. We’re also getting to be pretty close work friends but this is the first time we’re really hanging out completely one-on-one, so that could be it. There’s always Ramone or even just the jackhammer to retreat to when we’re on the job. Or maybe I’m just making things up. Who knows?

I look at myself in the mirror and flex once (also since there’s no one else in here) and then laugh it off when I look like an asshole. The swim cap sits in my hands and I consider putting it on for half a minute, and I take a big whiff of the soap, and then I walk over past the sauna and the steam room to the stall JJ’s in. I give it a knock.

“Dude?”

“Oh! Hawk. Hi.”

“You good?”

“Yeah, yeah. New swimsuit.”

“Cooool. I’m gonna go get my feet wet. Meet me out there?”

“Yeah.”

I give the door another knock. “See you, dude.”

I head outside and stand with my hands on my hips. It feels so good to feel my paws against the warm concrete. Breathe in the humid air. Look outside and see the city go by. Lookup at the tall ceilings. I take a step into the shallow side of the pool and feel the water lap against my ankles. Right now, I am the only person in the water. It is tranquil. It is calm. It is beautiful.

I tie my fur back with the hair tie on my wrist and I let myself dive forward into the water. I leave behind the land for just a moment and feel the pool splash all around me. Nothing else, none of my stressors, not my commute or my job or my memories, not even me, nothing exists right now except for the water. And it is wonderful.

I sit against the wall of the pool and look up at the ceiling. It’s so grand. It’s amazing to me that this place is on the somethingth floor of a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan. They snuck a whole pool up here — try being the people who have to build it, goddamn. The cool concrete feels good against the back of my arms. I close my eyes for a moment.

When I open them, JJ is standing right across from me at the edge of the pool.

Something in me flutters.

“Hey!” I say, staring at him. I try to say something else but nothing comes up.

He looks great. Really, honestly, he looks great. I’ve seen him in his work clothing before and he’s always been a handsome, albeit normal-looking guy. Brown mutt with a nervous face, buzz cut and a gold earring and nose ring. He rocks his high-vis and workwear well.

I’ve never seen him like this, though. He’s standing over me in just a Speedo that I lent to him actually, nothing else. He has a taut but not muscular stomach with a much more built up chest. Well-defined arms and legs. It’s clear he’s been working in construction for a bit because he has the body of someone who is muscular not for show but for use. His tail is tucked between his legs. He smiles at me sheepishly.

“Hey,” half-exits my mouth. “Come on in?”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” JJ quickly shuffles into the pool like he’s walking into the subway. There’s something that captures me even further about just his bust sticking up out of the pool, flowing waters obscuring everything below. “Hi.”

“Hey. How you doing, dude?”

He comes over to me and we stand a few feet apart. It’s not like he’s cornering me but I’d have to climb up to maneuver out.

“This is so revealing,” he whispers. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah, yeah, haha yeah it is. You kind of get used to it. Ummm… I know this place has swimsuits here for like youto buy if you…” I swallow. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really think about that when I lent you the thing, that everyone isn’t really. I’m sorry.”

“Do you think I look good?”

The question catches me off-guard. If he had asked if he looked fine it would have been one thing, but good is a different question.

He’s some sort of gay I know. As soon as the thought enters my head, something else flutters inside of me. I do not know what this is.

“You look great,” I say. “It’s always weird wearing a Speedo for the first time. You look great, JJ.”

And then he does something I’m not expecting. He smiles. He really, actually smiles, not nervously or sheepishly, but just like he’s truly pleased with himself.

“You wanna know something?” he says, joy in his voice.

“Dude?”

“I think I look great too.”

God, and there’s something about that that just makes me laugh. It’s normally nothing to do with my problem whether my guy friends think they look good. They do and they know they do or they don’t and they desperately want to and it just doesn’t matter to me. But JJ saying it just makes me happy. He laughs with me.

“I was taking so long because I was looking at myself in the mirror and,” he makes a noise while trying to find the right word, “I dunno. I just. I think I look really good, you know? Like it feels good to look good. It’s nice.”

“I know.”

“You look great too. Like I get what the hubbub about the swim team is. It’s fucking awesome.”

“Just a couple of good looking guys.”

He swims backwards, satisfied. “Oh man, this is so nice.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Ah! This is great!”

I can’t help but smile. “I know, I know.”

There’s wonder in his voice. “The ceiling. The tiles. That bathroom is so fucking great. Oh, man, I don’t know what I was so nervous about. Like everything about this place is just so—”

I push my paws out and splash him with as much water as I can and I laugh so hard. When the water clears, he stands there looking sternly at me, trying to turn his smile into a straight face.

“What was that for?”

“Something to be nervous about.”

“Hawk,” he says with the lowest part of his voice. “I’m gonna get you.”

He splashes me back and I front stroke away.

I normally stay here for maybe an hour doing laps afterwards. Really only 30 minutes — I get most of my exercise from doing construction work anyway — and the rest of the time I just enjoy the atmosphere. Most of it is theritual for me. Stripping off my work clothes, cleansing, and getting to be in the water. Letting the day wash off of me. Doing the same thing every day.

JJ and I play for hours. I would use the word play. We swim around and swat each other with water, we sit on each other’s shoulders and walk around, we do marco polo to the chagrin of the people relaxing around us and then do quiet marco polo after we’re reprimanded by the 18 year old poolboy, we see how long we can hold our breaths, we do handstands, we do everything. It’s awesome. At one point I teach him pretty much everything I know about swimming and we do some of that together. It feels awesome imparting all of this stuff that’s been rattling around in my brain all of my adult life even if he doesn’t get the hang of all of it at first. He asks me why he can’t just doggy paddle everywhere and I laugh.

He shows me the pads of his paws as we’re walking to the locker room after.

“Woah,” I say, prodding at it. “Dude.”

He shows me how he can peel the top layer of skin away just by rubbing it. “Calluses, I guess.”

“Long day at the construction site.”

We lookout the window for a few minutes. It’s dark outside now. Admittedly, it’s the middle of winter so it gets dark pretty early, but it’s still surprising just how long we swam for. We’re only finishing up because the post-work crowd is coming in and JJ has to get home to see his sister. We walk into the locker room and there are men changing in pretty much every section.

“Woah,” JJ says. “Ah. This is a lot of people.”

I sneak into my section (which is thankfully the only one that is empty) and grab my bag out. It almost makes me sad to leave. I put my seashell necklace which was wrapped tight around my wrist up on the coat hanger and getmy briefs and board shorts on.

JJ returns with a worried expression on his face while I’m putting my tee-shirt on. “All of the bathrooms are being used and, uh, there’s a line.”
“You can change here if you want?”

“Can you sit with me?”

“Oh, sure, of course.”

“And just, like, make sure no one… I dunno. Yeah?”

“Yeah dude. Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

I sit on the far end of the bench and give JJ a smile as he puts the shirt he brought on. He smiles back. “How do you do this every day?”

“I think of it as a little ritual.”

He clearly likes that idea. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Wash off the old, bring on the new. A literal stripping and a metaphorical stripping. It’s a little woo woo but. It helps.”

He grins. “Ok. Speedo off now.”

I look down but I still see it out of the corner of my eye. His untucked shirt revealingsome of his fluffy back, his tail sticking up, and his ass and thighs. I can objectively call it a nice ass.

And I managed to forget about it the whole time we were swimming, but whatever that feeling is inside of me just creeps back. I’ve been on a swim team for years and I’ve never looked at another person this way in extremely similar circumstances, so I don’t think it’s something about me being attracted to men. I’ve never been attracted to men. I don’t have any hold up about it, I’m just not. But JJ…

I let a deep breath out. I don’t know.

JJ puts a hand on my shoulder when he’s finished changing. “You good?”

“Hm?”

“Oh, you just look like you’re thinking about something.”

“Nah, nah, nothing. Thinking about the subway ride home. You’re changed?”

“Yup!”

I throw on my sandals and jacket and we begin the journey home.

The cold air outside blasts my face and dries my skin. We chit chat about swimming on the way home, and when he gets off at 110th street I wave goodbye.

“Let’s do that again?” I say.

“Definitely.”

“Next week?”

He nods.

“See you, dude.”

“See you.”

And he leaves me. And I’m left on this subway train, high-vis jacket thrown over one of my old beach outfits, arm stretched up to grab the pole, cold dimpling all of my exposed skin, in the dead of winter, left to walk through the snow back to my apartment, alone. And something is different.

PART 3

This candle reminds me of home.

It’s so simple. It’s literally a sea salt candle that JJ bought me. He handed it to me wrapped in one of his old shirts at the end of yesterday’s shift with his usual sheepish smile, saying that he saw it at the grocery store and he thought it might help with my homesickness.

It wafts through the apartment. I sit at the counter with my cup of coffee and enjoy it in the mid-afternoon light. It warms my hand as I pick it up to read the label.

It says it’s a sea salt flavored candle that was made in California, as simple as that. It smells like more than just sea salt, though. It smells like the ocean, maybe, like digging your face in the sand and lying with your back out baking in the sun. Not quite, but the memory is so nice. Like eating as much as possible after swim practice and then passing out in the warm sun for three hours. Still not it, but that was so lovely.

I take another whiff and I realize what it is. It’s the feeling of driving home from the beach, a little sandy and a little wet, with the surfboard strapped to the top of the car, sand in your teeth, warm wind streaming in through the open passenger’s side window. That’s it.

I don’t know how JJ managed to get a candle that managed to make me feel all of these things. He probably just saw that it was made in California and chose it based on that. It’s all projection on my part anyway, obviously, I’m just seeing what I want to see in it, but it still sort of amazes me. I take another whiff before I drop off my coffee cup in the sink and sit on the couch.

“Okay okay,” I sing to myself, “Okay okay okay…”

I drop on the couch.

It is deadly quiet in here. For all of the horror stories I’ve heard about New York City apartments, this place manages to escape them. It is quiet. I can’t hear anything from outside. No people walking by, no cars, no sirens, no nothing. I can’t hear the neighbors; I can’t hear anyone walking in the hallways. Even inside the apartment, I can’t hear the rumble of the refrigerator or the radiator turning on. I can feel my own heartbeat.

I hold JJ’s shirt in my hand. I can’t quite piece together why he wrapped it in the shirt — I think something about hiding the gift from me in case I saw into his bag or something, but he didn’t need to give me the shirt with it. I also don’t know why I’m still holding it.

It’s a tee-shirt that I think used to be white but has since aged to an off-white color. It’s not dirty or anything — actually, it seems like he just washed it. It smells a lot like his detergent (kind of rose-y, kind of linen-y) but it also smells a lot like him. I don’t quite know how to describe his smell. Sweaty and oil-ish but not in any sort of negative way, just in the way that any construction worker would smell. It’s nice.

I wonder what JJ’s up to right now. Probably hanging out with his boyfriend. I consider texting him for a little bit to see if he wants to hang out, but we already hang out every day at work and he probably has more important things to do.

The days I don’t have work haven’ttreated me well. Of course I’m glad I’m not working 80 hours a week in the coal mines but it’s sort of the only time I get out. I can only spend so much time at the pool with people 40 years older than me so I’m kind of just sitting at home all the time.

I pull out my phone and start to text JJ: “How are you doing dude?”

I delete that and try again: “Are you free to hang out today?”

Nope. One more time: “Hey man. I really like the candle you got me. I have it lit right now. It’s really nice. I also have your shirt haha, if you want it back it’s yours.”

That’s it. I send the text and then stuff my phone between the couch cushions. I pull it back again and check the text for some reason. He hasn’t responded, unsurprisingly.

Dust floats around in the light. I watch it for a little bit with the shirt in my hands until my eyes unfocus.

I think I might jerk off now.

“Ehhhh,” I say out loud to no one. “Yeeeah. Okay.”

It’s so nice and warm and cozy that I don’t get up and go do it in the bathroom like I normally would. I know for a fact that Keoni isn’t going to be home for maybe seven hours and if it goes that long I’m more than willing to take this into the bathroom. I’m in the living room but I’ve been sleeping on this couch for long enough that I think it’s fine if I bust one out here.

I pull down my board shorts and pull my dick out of my mint green briefs. I’m already a little hard from the idea of masturbating because I’m a predictable little beast. I grab my dick with my paw and massage my foreskin for a little bit. It feels great.

I don’t really want to watch any porn right now. I think about the stock of women I’ve downloaded to my hidden folder but none of that feels like something I’d want to watch right now. It’s fitting, I guess. I lounge my head back onto the armrest of the loveseat and dangle my legs over the other edge and I start to massage my dick and just enjoy it. No porn, no images, no thoughts, just the emptiness of the apartment surrounding me.

I’m just about fully hardnow. I’m a good size I think. I’ve never measured myself but it goes about from the start of my hand to the end of my thumb with a little bit of a curve. I’ve been meaning to shave my pubic hair (especially since I’m wearing speedos all the time) but I haven’t gotten around to it. I think the happy trail is cute anyway.

I rub the head of my dick against my stomach. It feels really good. I figure I can be as loud as I want since the rest of the city is at work right now, so I let out a soft moan. It feels so good.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t masturbated in a while. I actually can’t think of the last time I jerked off. I did it a lot when I first moved to the city because I was super fucking depressed and there wasn’t anything to do but masturbate. Jerking off now, I realize I’ve been super pent up. It feels great.

“Fuuuck,” I say. “Fuck yeah.”

JJ and I had this conversation about masturbation the other day, about how sometimes it scratches an itch that sex doesn’t scratch. He was really right about that. It’s funny the way I know all of the things I like so well — just how hard to squeeze, how fast to go, just how long I can take it before I know I need to cum. JJ told me that he never watches porn because it doesn’t appeal to him which actually makes a lot of sense to me. There’s something really, I don’t know, mindful about jerking off with no porn. Just focusing on the sensation. It’s really nice.

JJ is so great. He’s such a good friend. For all of the time I spent on the swim team with the other guys, all the time I spent surfing, I don’t think I’ve met someone I get along with as much as JJ. It’s funny, because we seem so different on the surface but we’re so similar. And it’s been really nice just having another guy my age with my sensibilities to talk to. It’s been so lonely for so long and it’s been so nice to have him as my friend.

I think about us sitting together on the wall. Eating our sandwiches together, joking together, chatting for hours straight. I love the way he smiles. It’s so nervous a lot of the time but when he smiles happily, he’s really happy. He shows his teeth when he grins. It’s truly lovely.

And then I stop jerking off.

“Holy shit.”

It is dead fucking quiet when I realize what I was just doing. To what I was thinking about. And when I realize I’m gripping his tee-shirt tight to my chest. I realize my grip on it and my fingers physically feel sore from how tight I’m gripping it.

And for some reason, against everything my body tells me to do, it’s not the salt candle I’m smelling now.

I furiously masturbate smelling JJ’s tee-shirt. It smells so much like him. So sweet and so nice and a little rough in a lovely way. I drape it on my muzzle and hold it as close to my nostrils as I can so that the only thing I can smell is him, the only thing I can breathe is him. I pump my dick as hard as I can, enjoying every little thing about the way it feels. And you know what, I think about him. I think about his smile. I think about his septum piercing. I think about his earrings. I think about swimming with him. I think about catching a glimpse of him in the locker room.

And when I cum, it’s the hardest I’ve cum in a while. I’m not normally a shooter but I shoot all over my stomach, thick thick cum. I sit there with my head tilted back, tee-shirt covering my whole face now, and I just breathe for maybe two minutes straight. I breathe and enjoy the feeling of being there.

I wipe the cum off of my stomach with my tank top which I throw into my hamper and then sit up. I don’t know what the fuck just happened. I take JJ’s tee-shirt and I look at it for a few moments. The front has the logo for the construction company we work for on it. What did I just do?

I find my phone in the recesses of the couch cushions to check the time. It’s been half a fucking hour. And JJ just responded to my text.

“Hey!” he writes. “You can throw the shirt out, btw. I just wanted to keep it a surprise!”

PART 4 + 5

The little plot of land we picked out to camp on is really nice. We set up the tent right next to our company’s truck. I show him how to pick a good spot for the tent, how to set up the poles and get the actual material of the tent set up over that, and when it’s done we both step back and look at it. It’s really nice. The bed of the truck holds all of the supplies we brought with us — the lantern, our sleeping bags, some MREs we bought more for the fun of eating an MRE than the practical value of it — and all of the construction stuff we’re transporting back to the city. Beyond that is just the sun setting on the woods of Upstate New York.

“Okay,” he says. “Is that all the set up we need?”

“Yeah,” I respond. “Yeah yeah yeah. Now we can have some fun. You wanna hike around a bit?”

“Yeah!”

I start walking off. I get maybe 10 feet away before the trees have even started when I turn around and he’s still standing at the campsite, looking like a deer in the headlights. I laugh and then he laughs.

“Dude, c’mon!”

“Are we just going to leave our stuff h-here?”

“Dude, we are in the middle of the woods.”

He laughs. “I— Anyone could—”

“Oh my god, JJ, have you seen another human being besides me in 50 miles?”

“No. I guess it’s just the New Yorker in me. It’s like leaving stuff on your porch WILL get it stolen, so.”

I motion wide. “Come oooonnnn, let’s goooooo.”

He pretends to deliberate for a second, then laughs and runs after me. “Alright, alright.”

We walkthrough the woods for a little bit. It’s fucking awesome. It’s definitely not the kind of woods I’m used to — flat ground and relatively sparse trees. We don’t have too much trouble walking through. Maybe occasionally one of us has to duck under a branch but that’s just so that we can walk together. He for sure dressed better for the occasion. Just his normal construction fare: an off-white company tee-shirt, blue jeans, and nice work boots. I’m wearing sandals and a tank top and cargo pants cut at the knees. I probably should have thought about it.

“Are you getting nipped by these plants?” JJ says, motioning to these spiky plants along the ground. “You dressed okay?”

“I’m careful, don’t worry.”

“Okay okay okay.” He pauses for a second. “Do you hear that?”

“Hm?”

We stand still and listen to the sounds of the woods around us. Birds chirping, leaves rustling, running water. “Oh!”

“That’s water.”

“HOLY SHIT!” I actually jump up and down. “That’s fuckin’ water, dude! You think there’s a lake here or something?”

“It could just be a river. Or like a little burbling brook.”

“We have to find it. Holy shit. We gotta fuckin’ find it.”

We keep walking until we find a little stream, and we almost stop there because it’s a little buggy. JJ suggests we follow it just for a few minutes and I agree.

He walks on one side of the stream and I walk on the other. I get my feet a little wet and it’s so nice, and it’s real fucking water too.

JJ sees me smiling. “Youexcited?”

“I love water. I love real water. I hope there’s a lake here so fucking badly.”

“But you don’t do a lot of camping?”

“I mean.” I laugh. “I dunno. I got the beach, right?” I step over a large rock and it nearly knocks my sandal off. The trees go past us. “I’ve been camping once or twice. Enough to know, you know, how to camp. I haven’t gone in a super long time, though.”

“My family always stays at hotels. I dunno. When I was a little kid we’d actually come up here annually and do these little camping trips which were always really cute, but I never actually had to step foot in nature to do them.”

“New York City dog.”

“Got that right.”

“This is nice. This is really nice.”

And then we stumble onto it. Water. Fucking water. A whole fucking lake.

It is beautiful in the afternoon light. Shimmering and still but not musty or buggy in the slightest. It looks absolutely untouched — the foliage goes right up until the edge of the lake, leaving just a few feet of space for anyone who isn’t swimming in the water. It’s beautiful. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. It looks like this is just a little enclave of a much bigger lake.

I run over to the little landing area and start stripping down right there. I let go of my tank top, I undo my belt and take it and my briefs off in one swoop, and I kick my sandals off all in maybe 10 seconds, as fast as I fucking can, before I take the deepest breath I’ve ever taken and run and dive into the water. I don’t even think if I should test if it’s water appropriate for diving into until I’ve made contact with the water and by then it’s too late and I’ve plunged into beautiful cold luxurious grand water.

Water water water. I am engulfed in it as I fall towards the bottom of the lake — this lake gets pretty deep pretty quickly which is so lovely. I open my eyes and start swimming down really just because I’m not ready to breach the surface yet and I pretty quickly reach the sand. How lovely it is to be touching real sand, real rocks, to be swimming out in the actual world. My pool is so nice, of course, but nothing can beat feeling real water all around me.

I surface soon after that. I could usually give it another 30 seconds or so but it’s my first time in real water — I think it’s okay. I don’t want to breach the water until I do and I remember what it’s like to feel the cool air, to have the sun shining on me, to take a breath.

God, what a good life I live.

And when I look over at JJ, he looks at me like I’m the goddamn Loch Ness Monster.

And then I realize that I just stripped nude in front of him and then dropped into the water for the better half of a minute without even saying a fucking word. He probably saw my penis. He definitely saw my ass. Goddamn. God fucking damn. I open my mouth to say something because I am so fucking embarrassed… and nothing fucking comes out. I float in place and we look at each other for a half a second too long.

“Ummm,” he says. “Ummm… um, can I join you?”

I throw my hands in the air. “DUDE! FUUUUCK YEAH!!!” I swim over to the bank of the lake as he steps forward onto the sand. “Fuck yeah fuck yeah fuck yeah. Come on in.”

“Ummm…” He looks down. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit.” He pauses. “I mean, clearly that wasn’t a problem for you…”

I laugh. “Sorry. I should have asked.”

“It’s okay…” He looks around. “Ummm… okay, I don’t know why I’m trying to skirt around it, um…”

“You wanna skinny dip?” I say, beckoning him forth with my hands. “Duuude.”

“Okay, okay, ummm… okay.”

He swallows and then takes his shirt off.

“HOLY SHIT DUDE YES!”

He snickers. “Ummm yeah. Okay. Look away.”

I look down at the water. “Clear.”

I think he’s changed but he doesn’t give me a clear so I’m just floating here in the water looking down for half a minute. “How long does it take to take your pants off?”

“The water’s cold!”

“What?”

I don’t mean to, but the idea of him standing at the edge of the water buck naked afraid to go in is just so absurd and funny and just 100% JJ Hartford that I look up at him.

And he is fucking packing.

Oh my god.

I’ve seen him lift his shirt up to dry sweat from his brow, I’ve seen him in just a speedo, I’ve seen his ass in the locker room. Seeing him now is different. He’s like maybe 5 inches soft. I can’t say that for certain but it is definitely the largest penis I have ever seen. And he is just such a good looking guy. Such a good looking guy. His v-line is defined without him having to have 6-pack abs and his stomach is nice and taut — beautiful, well-defined arms, nice thighs, a strong neck, and that fucking dick.

I hope I show no reaction on my face. I try to play it off like this is just a thing guys do, like guys just see each other naked all the time and it’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s not a fucking big deal, I’ve seen my friends naked in the locker room before and it wasn’t a thing, but right now this is so different. This is just a thing guys do. This is just a thing guys do.

He opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t, and after a second of deliberation he dives into the water.

We do the same thing we always do. Swim around, splash water at each other. This time we get the opportunity to explore the lake and swim around for maybe a whole mile, looking at trees and skittering deer. The lake is lovely — not buggy at all, pretty clear, not muggy or disgusting. I have fun like we always do, but one I can’t stop looking down and trying to see JJ’s penis through the water (which is just such a strange thing to be doing that I don’t even know what to think about it) and I can’t stop thinking about what we’re going to talk about when we stop playing.

After maybe 30 minutes I just completely lose the ability to do it and we swim back to the shore. I swim in the front and JJ swims behind me and I cannot think of a single fucking thing except what I know in my heart. I might be gay for him.

And that’s the one thought that feels right. Just acceptingit. I might be a little attracted to him.

We face away from each other as we get dressed and begin the walk back through the woods. It’s starting to get dark. When I look at him and he smiles, I can’t help but want to ask the question I’ve been thinking the whole time.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“And you don’t need to answer it, by the way, if you don’t want to, because I’m realizing that it’s kind of invasive… uh… yeah.”

He smiles at me. “Yeah!”

“Uh, how did you realize you were gay?”

He thinks about that for a second. “I mean, I’m not really gay…”

“Oh, I mean attracted to men—”

“No no no, yeah, I get what you mean.”

“Sorry, I’m just not used to—”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

We’re both silent after stumbling over each other. I look up at the trees for a little bit while I wait for him to figure out what he’s saying.

“Ah. Well. Okay. It’s kind of a long story if you’re okay with— yeah, you asked. Um… I feel like most people figure out that they’re gay kind of early, you know. It’s like this thing that’s always been with them. I didn’t really, but I wouldn’t really call my younger self straight either, you know? I was kind of… I’m not using this word correctly, but I was kind of asexual. It didn’t really mean I wasn’t a sexual being, though… like, I masturbated… you know. And I had sexual thoughts. But none of them were particularly about any one person in general.”

We stop walking along that stream and back through the woods to our tent. “Did you ever have crushes?”

“No. Yeah, no. None of that. I was attracted to people but it was never specifically sexual, you know, like there was this disconnect between sexuality and romance… and so I met…” He stops and thinks about it for a second. “Okay, this part is kind of confusing.”

“That’s okay. Thank you for telling me.”

“I met East, uh, and I was instantly very attracted to him. He’s a trans man, but I was attracted to him as a man before I realized he was trans, but when we started dating and we, you know, had sex, I was attracted to his pussy like. Too. Ugh that makes no sense.”

“I think I’m getting it.”

“Like I think that’s a good example. I am attracted to vagina and I am attracted to masculinity and the two are a completely separate thing but with East they’re also one. You know?”

“That makes a lot of sense.”

“Ummm… I guess the answer to your question is that I realized with East.” He watches his boots as he steps.

“Can I ask another question, dude?”

“Yeah.”

“East is the only guy you’ve been with?”

“Guy or person? Answer to both is yes.”

“How do you know you’re attracted to men? Or penis, I guess. You don’t need to answer that if you don’t want.”

“Ohhh… Hm.”

“Just like if porn is a thing you don’t really like and your sexuality is so disconnected from everything else.”

“That’s a good question. That’s weird. I guess I don’t really know if I like…” He chuckles. “I dunno. I like dick. I don’t think I can really give you, ah, proof, you know, but I do like dick.”

We walk in silence for a few moments.

“Why do you ask all that?”

“Oh.” My heartbeat quickens. “Um. I…”

And then we push past the final tree and we’re back at the campsite.

We drop it for now as the sun sets on us. We set up inside the tent, rolling out our sleeping bags next to each other and cooking our MREs over the stovetop the package includes. Both of ours include a bag of tea that we brew even though we don’t like tea, crackers, an oatmeal cookie, and vegetable barley stew along with utensils, napkins/toilet paper, and a mint for morale. It’s quite cozy in our little tent — two sleeping bags on the ground, a lantern, and our little dinner.

My heart is pounding the whole time. We don’t talk much so it leaves me with all the time in the world to think about what I’m gonna say. I think I just have to say it.

“So,” he says, right on cue, “What were you gonna say before we got back?” He sits on one corner of the tent and I sit on the other. We are basically right next to each other, though — there isn’t much more room than enough for both of us to lie out flat.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, um. I think I’m realizing that I might be interested in men.”

“Oh!” he says, pursing his lips. He’s trying to hide a smile. “Oh. Cool. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Uhh…” Not the question I was expecting, somehow. I look up at the roof of the tent. “I dunno. I’m from Santa Cruz so it’s obviously not a problem, you know, like I have nothing against gay people and I don’t have any issue with it on any moral or whatever level… but it’s just kind of weird for me, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Like. I’m gay.”

“Bisexual, or pansexual maybe.”

“Bisexual. Maybe. What do you call yourself?”

“Just gay,” he says. “Queer if you want.”

“Hm… yeah.”

“Doesn’t really matter. That’s so cool that you figured that out about yourself. Can I ask how?” I think he can see my face flush, even in the low light, because he immediately backtracks with a, “And of COURSE you don’t have to answer,” which is the anthem of the night.

“Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“Um. Wow. Okay.” I swallow. I can’t believe I’m saying this. “Okay, this doesn’t mean anything, I want you to know, like this means nothing at all besides what I’m saying and there’s no subtext and no anything like that… I, uh, in becomingfriends with you… I think it was you… you know?”

He grins. “What?”

“Oh, don’t make me say it again.”

“Oh, wow.”

“You’re just a good-looking guy,” I say through gritted teeth. “And, I dunno. Like it doesn’t mean anything and you’re in a relationship and I’m not like. Like. I’m not trying to marry you. Oh my god what am I saying?”

“An open relationship,” he says, which he immediately rescinds. “No no no, you’re cool, you’re cool.” He tucks his head between his knees and rubs them. “Oh man. Can I tell you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Same here.”

I can’t hide this smile any harder than I already am. I don’t know why I try to play stupid but I do. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno. I’ve always thought. Like. Like when I first met you I went home and I was telling East about you and he was like. ‘JJ, you are so attracted to this guy it’s not even funny.’”

Oh my god. All of the tension I was feeling is released. We both giggle for so long, first me then him, until it turns to full on laughing. When I finish laughing, I try to take in adeep breath. We both breathe in. Crickets begin to chirp. It’s dark outside now.

And then something awful comes over me, but I can’t help myself. “You’ve never seen a penis before?”

“In real life… yeah. Let me think.” He gulps. “No, yeah. Never.”

“Me neither,” I say. “I mean, you know. In the locker room. But never…”

“Hm…”

There is so much fucking tension in this room you could cut it with a fucking knife. My heart is racing. And I am rock hard.

“I mean. You know. I have a dick. I dunno. We could compare?”

“Oh. Yes. Yes.” He is smiling so hard into his hand. “Yeah. Wanna do that?”

“Sure.” I put my hands over my belt and pause. “It’s okay if I…?”

“Yeah. Yeah, please.”

I undo my belt and undo the button. I take my shorts and underwear off in a single swoop and my dick hits my stomach with force.

“Oh, shit,” he says. “Shit. Wow. Look at that.”

I smile. “I, uh, when we were skinny dipping earlier… I saw you a little too…”

“Yes, yes, let me.” He unbuttonshis jeans and slipsthem down. He’s still wearing boxers, but his erect dick is running along the length of his thigh. The head of his dick pokes out of the bottom.

“Dude. You have the biggest fucking dick I’ve ever seen.”

He smiles nervously and covers his face with his hand. “Yeah. Yeah. I… yeah.”

And we’re just two guys sitting in a tent with our dicks out, rock hard.

“Should we compare?” I say.
He nods.

I sit up onto my knees and I move in front of him. I hold my dick, taking great care to make sure we don’t touch. I align my dick with his so that the tip of his is almost touching my skin. I know I have a nice dick but he’s maybe four inches bigger than me and a little thicker too. “Jesus Christ,” slips out of my mouth, and then I just fucking go for it. “Holy shit, dude. Holy fucking shit.”

He still has his hand over his mouth. He takes a few deep breaths in and we just hold our dicks there. He swallows.

“Hey, I…” he says.

I pull away and I try to position my dick so it’s not so prominent. “Yeah, dude?”

“I think maybe, uh…” He swallows, putting up his legs to hide his dick a little. Not that it’s easy to hide. “Uh…”

“Time for bed, maybe?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Is that okay?”

“Of course. Of course. Long day.”

He puts his dick away and I put mine away too. Doesn’t change the fact that we’re both rock hard or that it’s maybe only 9 PM.

“Hawk?” he says after he’s climbed into his sleeping bag. I’m still kneeling, preoccupying myself with the trash from earlier.

“Yeah, dude?”

“Thank you,” he says. I look over and he has a tear in his eye. He hides his face again. “I think I… oh, man. Thank you. Thank you, Hawk.”

“Yeah, buddy.”

We both lay down in our sleeping bags and I blowout the lantern. It’s still warm. The crickets chirp in droves.

After I close my eyes he speaks up again. “Do you think you’ve figured anything out?” he says.

“I do.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

I don’t go to sleep for hours, and I gotta say, I don’t think JJ does either. I think about him all night. His body, his smile, everything. I’m hard for hours. He’s right next to me and I’m left to think about him until my brain finally gives out how many hours later.

It’s almost like it didn’t happen the next day. We clean up the campsite, talk about our usual things like camping and water and the beach and houses, and we get back to New York two hours later without a single word about the events of the previous night. I give him a hug when I drop him off at his apartment and he holds on for a few seconds more than I expect, and then we’re standing there in the street hugging for two minutes straight.

When I let go, he’s smiling. “Okay. See you at work?”

“Yeah, dude. See you at work.”

PART 6

I wait at JJ’s front door for a second before knocking, then I go for it. I hear him moving on the other side of the wall and then he opens it up.

JJ grins at me and I feel all the tension melt away. He goes in for a hug and I hug him back and we’re standing there in his hallway hugging and it’s all okay. I’m still in my workwear, so the shiny parts of it rub noisily against his tee-shirt and boxers.

I take a step back and smile at him. “JJ.”

“H—hawk.”

“Hello.”

“Here,” he says. “Come in. My family isn’t home right now but they will be, uhhh, you know. Whenever. Yeah.”

He steps in and I step in after him. The apartment is actually really nice. I know Keoni’s apartment is nice as well — as in it’s in a nice part of town and it’s bougie — but he is a bachelor living in a one-bedroom he hasn’t decorated beyond the surfboard on the wall. Someone in his family has got style. Money and style. We walkthrough the kitchen and the formal dining room on the way over to his room wordlessly. I look around at everything, a little impressed. JJ slows down so I can do it.

“So,” he says, outside the door to his room. “Ummm…”

“It’s a little messy?” He nods. “Don’t worry, really. We’re guys. I get it.”

“Yeah. Um. And. Yeah. It’s a little. Y—you’ll see.”

He opens the door and lets me step in.

His room looks like the room every 13-year-old dreams of having, and I can’t say it isn’t fucking awesome. It’s not too big, enough to fit a console with a TV on it, a nice shag rug, and the bed that he has tucked against the wall on three sides. It’s dark in here, with the blinds drawn completely down. He has string lights cozily draped over the bed. There are posters for a few of the things I know he’s been interested in forever — Minecraft and Survivor and some webcomics. They cover most of the walls, besides a blank space which perfectly fits where a bunch of 4x6 photos would be. Those photos are on his dresser, flipped over. The bed isn’t made and blankets and pillows are cascading off of it. The floor is covered in clothing as well. The trash can is overflowing.

Survivor is playing on the TV — looks like one of the new seasons, although I don’t know much about it beyond what he’s told me. Over on the bed, I can see he was playing The Sims and eating a slice of pizza. The room smells strongly of weed.

He steps in behind me and closes the door. “Yeah.”

“Not bad!” I say. “Really really really. Not bad, dude. It’s not.”

“Yeah,” he says, and then he sniffs in. “Can I h—hug you again?”

“Of course.”

I place my backpack on the floor and we hug again, this time for much longer. He places his head in the nape of my neck and keeps it there, I think crying or at least loudly sniffling. I don’t mind it at all. It’s just nice to see my buddy again. I rub his back and let him do what he needs to do. After a minute or so he lets go. His eyes are red.

“I’m sorry,” he says, giggling. “I’m a little s—stoned right now.”

“Dude,” I laugh. “Actually or are you joking?”

“A little.” He sits down on the bed. It actually looks quite comfy, with the darkness of that side of the room just barely broken through with the glow from his computer and the lights. “A little stoned, I mean. I’ve been ranging from a little stoned to very stoned for, you know, ten days now.”

“Ah,” I say. “Uh, shoes off?”

“Crap. Should h—have told you at the door.”

I take my work boots off now and place them next to his door. I hope I tracked mud all over the floor — that would be a good impression for me to make. He pauses Survivor and puts some sad indie girl on the speaker he has on his desk.

“Um. If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s all good, but…” I swallow. “How has it been?”

He laughs at that. “It’s so— fucking weird. Ugh. And I’m s—sure you noticed, but my stutter h—has been really bad recently, so.”

“No, it’s all good.” His stutter was never awful like what little kids have in TV shows, so I got used to it pretty quickly. It is much worse than usual right now. I don’t quite know how to describe it. It’s something in between a block (where the words are just not coming out) and a traditional repeating-first-consonantstutter. I’ve always found it endearing, but right now it’s just kind of sad. “Yeah. Shit dude. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. I dunno. This is my…” He puts his head in his hands. “Aahh.”

“We can talk about it later.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just that I’m h—having trouble finding both the words and then m—making the goddamn words. It’s weird! It’s weird it’s weird it’s weird.” He pauses. “I don’t know. I miss h—him so much. And I know it’s not… uh… a normal breakup. Because we’re still… I don’t know. Involved? But he’s in Washington now and h—he’s already making friends and I’m. I’m h—here. And. I’ve just been so depressed.”

“Can I sit next to you?”

“Yeah.”

I do. “What do you want me to be today? Like, do you want to talk, do you need help cleaning up, do you just wanna watch TV and eat pizza and get stoned? I’m up for anything.”

“Can you just be a warm body?”

“Fuck yeah, dude.”

He lies backwards on the bed. His tee-shirt rides up and shows a bit of his tummy. He’s gained a little weight since the last time I saw him — nothing too big, but he definitely has a bit of a gut now. I try not to think about his bulge right now but his dick is running down his left thigh. I’m pretty sure if I got the right viewpoint, I could see it poking out the fly a little. I let that idea fade from my mind because it is not appropriate right now in the slightest.

Instead, I lie down next to him and look up at the ceiling. It’s covered in those little 90s glow in the dark stars. I can’t tell if they’re put up purposefully — I can make out the Big Dipper in them, but I could just be seeing things. That’s what happened with the original constellations anyway.

We sit and listen to his music for a few songs. I’ve heard this stuff before over the radio but I’ve never purposely sat and listened to it — it’s great. Synth and drums and guitar. We sit and listen and I watch his chest rise up and fall with each of his breaths. Our knuckles are touching but neither of us move our hands.

After maybe 15 minutes, I shift my body and suddenly remember I’m wearing a jacket inside his house. The air conditioning is nice but not enough for me. “Ohh…”

“Are you okay?” JJ says.

“Lemme take off my jacket.”

“Oh, of course.”

He sits in the corner of the bed hugging a large stuffed tiger while I stand up and put my jacket on my backpack. “I don’t really wanna wear my work pants right now…”

“You can take them off,” he says, and then maybe he realizes the nature of that sentence because he immediately follows it up with, “Or go through my closet for something.”

“Can I?”

“Yeah.”

“Sleepover!”

I lookthrough his closet for a little bit. Most of his clothes are on the ground but those are just the underwear and shirts. It seems like he hasn’t worn a proper pair of pants for a little bit. There are some pajama bottoms and jeans but nothing I really want to put on right now. The air conditioning feels great against my fur anyway.

I turn around when I hear his tail thump against the bed. He’s smiling.

“Dude.” He giggles. “Dude, what?”

“Oh. Uh. Just wondering if you would want to sleep over, actually.”

“Yes,” I say, not even thinking about it. I piece together my schedule. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“Cool. Yay. I can get the air mattress out later.”

“Cool! I loved sleepovers so much, dude. Dude, we would do sleepovers like every weekend.”

“I never actually really did any,” he says. “I was i—invited to them, just so you know, I just really… I have rituals before bed and I don’t like changing them.”

“Yeah. You were invited to them.”

“Shut up!”

I laugh, then slip off my work pants and put them with the rest of my stuff. I’m wearing a pair of briefs right now — I catch myself in the door and my bulge is particularly emphasized, pointing up and to the right. It’s not anything more than what I look like in my speedo every day, except these are light gray so it’s pretty obvious. When I look back at JJ, he doesn’t have a look of horror on his face, so I think it’s okay. He hugs the tiger close to him.

“What do you wanna do?” he asks. “What do you do at sleepovers? I think I h—have an idea of what you do at girl’s sleepovers but not boys.”

“What happens at girl’s sleepovers?”

“They… talk about boys and do make up and stuff? I just said that because my sister has a lot of sleepovers.”

“That sounds right. Boys talk about girls. They play tag. Play video games. Drive places. Steal parent’s alcohol. Eat snacks. All that stuff.”

“Can we have a boring sleepover?”

“Dude, we can have the most boring sleepover ever.”

“Can we watch Survivor?”

“We can watch Survivor.”

“Can I explain every single thing that’s happening to you?”

“You can.”

“Oh thank god.”

JJ gets one of his VHSes out and sticks it into the TV. His tail is wagging furiously. He sits down and starts telling me as much as he can about this season without telling me any spoilers. I have to pick a favorite in the first 5 minutes to appease him — I pick a surfer girl that I immediately forget the name of and he seems to be satisfied. I really enjoy watching him smile and just get completely engrossed in something. It’s wonderful to watch. He’s also memorized the ads in the commercial breaks. He started out by asking me every five seconds if this was okay but by 10 minutes in, he felt more than okay about it.

When we get to the second act break, he lies down and looks at the ceiling. “Eye strain.”

“Staring at that old television.”

“I know.” He looks serious for a second. I stand up and begin to collect all of the pillows and blankets on the ground and throw them onto the bed. His mattress is comfortable enough but it’ll be a lot nicer with all this. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah?”

“Did gay things happen at the sleepovers you went to growing up?”

I throw a pillow at him. “What?”

“I dunno! That’s what they do in like. Like that’s the rumors, you know?”

“Hmm…” I throw the last blanket on the bed. “Not at any I went to, but I do know what you’re talking about. It’s not really GAY, from what I hear. It’s experimenting.”

“Ohh… okay.”

“Oh, but you know what does happenat sleepovers?”

“What?”

“You wake up with the hardest cock of your life and you can’t do anything about it.”

“Dude…” He clearly likes that idea. He covers himself with every single blanket and pillow and lays back onto the bed. He has like six normal pillows and then six throw pillows, not to mention the comforter, the throw blanket, and all the plushies. “Woah.”

“Ugh. So embarrassing. I just. Dude, I just fucking remembered I got a wet dream at one.”

“Really?”

“I was like, shit, 14? 14. It was our first like teenager sleepover… we stole road signs, we drew on the face of Zephyr Lansbury, we drank Chris’s dad’s Vodka and replaced it with water… and I woke up with cum soaking my fucking briefs.”

“What did you do?”

“I woke up first, thankfully, so I just. You know. Dealt with it.”

He sits up. “Do you get a lot of wet dreams?”

“When I’m, like, pent up. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t get wet dreams but, uh, you know precum?”

I snicker at that. “Do I know precum?”

“I know some guys don’t do it!”

“Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Hey, give me a pillow.”

He hands one over and I hug it. I cozy up into the corner. It’s so much nicer feeling my fur against the blankets.

“I… oh my god, okay, stop me if you don’t want to hear this, I precum super easily.”

“Really?” I think about that for a second and feel my face tighten. I hope he can’t see me in the darkness of the room. Is that why he’s been covering himself with all those pillows? “Like, what?”

“Like… pretty much as soon as I get a boner. Sometimes even if I don’t have a boner and I just get aroused. Oh this is so embarrassing…”

“I’ll say something embarrassing about myself after.”

“No, ah, just like. Oh my god I cannot believe I’m saying this to another guy.” He lies down on the bed in front of me and covers his face with his hands. “Like pretty much every day I come home from work or whatever and there’s a precum stain in my boxers.”

“Woah!” I say, grinning. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles.
“What’s got you so worked up?”

He grins. “I don’t know! W—whatever!”

“I get it, I get it. Sexy construction dudes. Bending over. Fat asses.”

“Shut up!” he giggles. “Okay. You say your thing now.”

“What thing?”

“You said you’d say something!”

“Shit, right. Okay. What’s my thing?”

“You know it deep down.”

I snort and sit back. The vibes in here are so nice. I appreciate it for a moment. All the various textures on the bed, the different colors of the light as the images on the TV change, JJ’s little noises. It’s definitely dark outside now. The commercial break ended so we’ve been talking through the show for a few minutes.

“I got it.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh. Dude.” It’s so fucking embarrassing. I don’t even want to look at him. “I, for as long as I’ve… been a sexual being… I have always loved my own cum.”

JJ sits up and looks at me, ears back. “Hawk.”

“I know.”

“Wait, tell me more.”

“Like… ugh. Like half the time I masturbate I position myself so I can give myself like, a facial, you know, or like so I can drink it. Ew. Drink it.”

“Woah. Can I ask a question?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the appeal?”

I think about that for a second. “It’s. Ugh. Oh this is so stupid. I like the way it mats my fur up, you know? I like how warm it is on my muzzle. It’s just nice.”

“Ohhh…” he says. “You know, I can… suck my own cock.”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah.”

I imagine that. Fucking awesome. I look down at him and he has this half-smug, half-embarrassed look on his face. That’s fucking awesome. “Shit dude. Oh, I get close but I can’t— really?” I mean, with the pipe that he has, like obviously, but that’s still awesome.

“I can get the whole thing in there.”

“REALLY?”

“Yeeeah. All the way down. Like balls on my muzzle.”

“That’s so fucking cool.” That makes me warm inside. “That’s so cool. Do you ever like cum in your own mouth?”

“All the time,” he says. “Yeah.”

“Oh that’s so cool. How do you do it? Like do you flip over onto yourself?”

“I do that, but I’m also, uh, like…”

“Big enough?”

“Yeah. Big enough that I can just do it sitting.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit dude. That’s awesome.”

We sit here for a second, basking in the glow of getting to talk about this kind of thing. I’m not hard right now but I realize with any jostling I probably could be. He’s covering himself up enough that he could have been hard this whole conversation and I wouldn’t know.

“What is sucking dick like?” I ask. “Like your own compared to another?”

“I’ve never sucked another dick,” he responds.

“Right right right. Forgot.”

“But sucking your own feels really good. Like, especially when you have a good amount of it in your mouth? It’s so nice. I’ve always wanted to suck another guy’s dick.” He swallows. “Have you? Don’t need to answer that, by the way.”

“I mean. I dunno. I’m just getting used to the idea of calling myself attracted to men and it’s always been very abstract…” I think about that time I masturbated to a photo of JJ’s face. “I’d tryit, definitely. Another guy cumming on my face sounds nice…”

We make eye contact and I swear to god “We could try that together” almost comes out of my mouth. I don’t know. JJ and I compared dicks once but I don’t think anything’s ever going to happen between us, especially right now. I don’t even know if that’s something I’d want. Then I think about sucking his dick and I get a little hard right there.

“Now that you’re single…” is what I say instead.

That piques his interest. “Yeah?”

“Oh, just, you know. There’s a whole world out there to enjoy.”

He smiles. “Yeah, yeah. Ramone.”

“Untapped fuckin’ market!”

We laugh at that for a second and then sigh. It’s quiet for a little bit. The episode of Survivor ended when I wasn’t looking.

After a bit, he sits up. “I’m gonna go use the bathroom,” he says.

“Sure.” I think I killed it by mentioning him being single. “Is your family home?”

“Yeah, definitely. I can grabus some dinner too? More pizza?”

“Fuck yeah.”

He stands at the door and smiles. “Thank you for coming over, Hawk.”

“Of course, man.”

And I swear to god, I see a glimpse of the front of his boxers as he goes to put his pajama bottoms on, and there is a huge wet spot of precum dripping down the front.

We spend the rest of the night doing normal sleepover things. I meethis sister and his parents and we all eatdinner together, actually. They know a lot about me. We rewind the episode of Survivor that we talked about sex through and watch four more after that, and we do some drawing just for the hell of it. We don’t even get high — that’s how much fun we’re having. At around midnight my body gives out from all of the swimming and construction work I did today and he offers me the bed to sleep on.

I tell him we can just both sleep on the bed and we do. We sleep in opposite directions, both facing out towards the rest of the room. We say goodnight and I close my eyes, then watch him do his full nightly routine. It’s cute.

When I wake up in the morning, I’m rock hard. It’s not funny.

We only exchange a few words since I have to sneak out to work, but about an hour later he sends me a text saying that he had lots of fun and we should do it again sometime, and that he’ll be back at work soon.

I don’t know what kind of game we’re playing, but I can’t say I mind it.

PART 7

I’ve taken to sleeping on JJ’s floor recently.

It happened seamlessly. A single sleepover just for fun turned into another one – we get high after work or we go swimming and I don’t feel like sleeping on Keoni’s couch again or I know his mom keeps the fridge well-stocked or literally anything and I’m sleeping on the blow-up mattress on his floor. Some of my clothes are in his closet. It feels like I should be paying rent at this point.

I wanted to suggest we sleep together in his bed, but as it turns out there wasn’t only one bed. Sad. I huff at that and then grin at the absurdity of the situation. Sleeping on the floor of my bedroom who I have a desperate crush on while he’s snoring away right up there.

The floor mattress wasn’t half bad, actually. I suppose I’ve been sleeping on a couch for the last year or so, so this is actually a step up. He snored all night but consistently enough that I didn’t really care. Plus, his room is super cozy. The soft drone of the fan and the string lights and the walls covered in posters for things he’s loved since he was a little kid.

Branches tap at the window. Light pours onto me. I yawn and scratch my tummy.

I sit up softly and let my blanket tumble off me so I can look at JJ. He is still fast asleep.

It’s a good view to be looking at him from – underneath. He sleeps on his back facing upwards with his paws tucked neatly on his chest. His maw is wide open and he is still snoring. It’s adorable, though. His wet nose and his teeth that are so sharp a little too yellow, the way a little bit of his voice pokes through his snoring. His shirt is riding high, showing his scruffed up tummy fur that I just want to dig my hands into. And, of course, he’s rock hard, because why wouldn’t he be. The universe is just taunting me with JJ’s cock at this point.

He has a gorgeous cock. It’s riding down the length of his red checkered boxers along his right thigh, and I don’t quite have the best angle but based on what I’ve seen before and anecdotal evidence, the tip is poking out of his boxers.

I can’t believe he’s really packing that. I always sort of suspected he had a big dick, even when we first met and I wasn’t constantly haunted by dick all the time. All the squatting and lifting we did on that construction site and you just build up an idea of how big someone’s dick was. Also, I swear to god he had an erection once and he was holding a jackhammer to hide it. Gotta do what you gotta do.

I have a hard-on too. I guess what we were talking about last night is true, huh? I don’t exactly feel myself, but I do shift my dick into a more comfortable position. It’s pretty great.

JJ is so pretty. These are the kinds of thoughts I’m allowed to have right now. He is a gorgeous guy. I want to get up there and cuddle with him. I want to lick his face. I want to kiss. I want to feel him.

Do I have a crush on him? That’s such a weird idea. I was thinking of it as a crush earlier but I also just woke up. I am definitely very attracted to him and I am letting myself run a little wild with it, but I don’t know if that’s a crush. I stare at his snoring face the whole time as I think. Occasionally I look at his dick. Shoot me.

I remember how I felt when we first met. He’s the first person who ever got me. He showed me around the construction site and taught me everything he knew and we just got along. We talked at lunchtime while eating sandwiches about being the middle boy in all girl families and being a surfer in New York City. He was just nice to me. Good and kind and nice.

I’ve dated three girls in my life, and the way I felt about them… might just be how I feel about JJ now. I guess if I want to kiss him and feel him cum on my face then that very well might be considered a crush.

Woah.

I think I would date him. I know I would never have sex if I wasn’t in a relationship, but wanting to date him is separate from that. I think. This is confusing.

His eyes flutter open and he looks at me. He grins. Thank god I was looking at his face. “Good morning.”

“Hey dude,” I say, sitting up. He sits up too, strategically pulling the blanket over himself. “You sleep well?”

He yawns, spreading his maw wide. “Yeah, yeah. You?”

“You snore.”

“I do?”

I smile. “You snore like a fucking lawnmower.”

“Sorry.”

We sit in the warmth of the sunlight for a little bit, I’m sure both still rock hard.

“You have a wet dream?” I ask. I scoot myself on the bed by his feet. He looks at me embarrassed. “What? Did you?”

“No no no,” he says. “No.”

“You blasted ropes of cum in your sleep, didn’t you?”

He giggles. “Hawk. No.”

“What are you so embarrassed about then?”

He sighs. God, he looks so cute when he’s embarrassed. I want to wipe the gunk out of the corner of his eyes. I want to brush his teeth. I want to kiss him on the forehead and cuddle until it’s noon. “We talked about waking up with the hardest cock of your life?”

I smirk so stupidly and tilt my head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait,” I say, playing dumb. “Right now?”

He giggles. “I dunno. Yeah.”

“Me too, dude.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Hawk.”

“JJ.”

We both sit here, acutely aware that the other has a boner. Life is fucking awesome.

“So… what do you do about it?” he asks.

“Like at a sleepover?”

“Yeah.”

“You just sit there with the boner for an hour until everyone wakes up. You’re not going to jerk off in Chris Zimmerman’s mom’s basement’s bathroom, are you? No, you’re not.”

“Okay,” he says. “Checked that one off.”

“Ohh,” I respond, “I see what you’re saying. I guess you awkwardly hide your boner with the blanket.”

“Check.”

“And then breakfast?”

“With the boner?”

I grin. “Dude, we’ve been around each other naked before.” That’s for sure. “No need to be embarrassed.”

“You mean that?”

“Hm?” That catches me off guard. “What do you mean?”

“Oh. Just like. I think being naked… uhhh…” He thinks about it for a second. “I’ve always wanted to be able to be naked around my friends. Just chill, you know? Like it’s so natural…”

“Dude.” I can’t help but grin at that. “Reading my mind.”

“Really?”

“I’m a surfer, man. Yes, of course. It’s beautiful.”

He grins. “That’s awesome.”

“I actually had a kind of crazy question.”

JJ looks at me like I just hit him with my car. “What?”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Sorry, no. Sorry. I get anxious when people… sorry.”

I think he thinks I’m going to ask him if he wants to fuck right now. Actually, the thought didn’t even cross my mind. Now I’m kind of worried I’m going to say it too.

“You’re good, uh. I was going to say that maybe… okay, this is super crazy, but maybe we could be roommates.”

He lights up at that and flaps his paws a little. “What?” He grins and I grin back. “What?”

I don’t even realize the gravity of what I’m saying until I say it. “Like. I dunno. You live with your mom and I live with my cousin and… like you broke up with East recently, right? Like we could go live in California–”

“Really?”

“I mean, what’s keeping you in New York?”

He looks at me blankly for a second. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah?”

“We could live in California.”

“Dude.”

“Woah.”

“And we could be naked all the time.”

“Woooah.”

I check my phone. “Um. We should go to work soon.”

“Can we talk about this?”

“Of course, man.”

“Like at work?”

“Yeah!”
He stands up, his dick poking a little out of his boxers, and of course he doesn’t go to fix it. I go and get dressed too. We stand facing away from each other but I can still see him in the mirror.

These days. These days are so good.

PART 8

It’s a lonely night.

Normally, Keoni is at his desk typing at hislaptop, or wandering around the kitchen with his head in his hand, or staring out the window, or watching TV while muttering to himself. Man has the world’s worst work-life balance but I don’t need anything more from him than to be a warm body. I like it. He’s already been a gracious enough host letting me stay in his apartment without even asking for rent (because he has all of the money he could possibly need) so I don’t need him to be everything else for me, but it’s good having someone to exist around. Evidence of life. Anything.

I’ve been watching videos on my laptop of people surfing huge waves while listening to my electro folk music for hours. I only realize it when I look up from leaving a comment about missing the beach life and I am starving and it is pitch black outside. Normally Keoni gets home at some awfully late time and that prompts me to get up and go make a sandwich in the kitchen or order takeout with him, but I look down at my phone and he sent me a text two hours ago that he would be sleeping in the office overnight. What a fucking life.

Can’t say I’m doing much better. I close my laptop and all of the light gets sucked out of the room. I stand up and stretch. My fingers almost hit the ceiling fan. I rub my eyes and I stretch out my arms to the side and my legs to the side and I stretch my fingers out and open my mouth as wide as I can just to feel something. The microwave clock says it’s 11:07 PM.

My sleep schedule is totally fucked up too. I’ve been taking these long naps after work that kill the middle of the day, and then I feel weird about going to sleep at my normal bedtime when I’ve barely been awake all day so my night stretches all the way out until 4 AM.

I go to the kitchen and make myself what is technically lunch, just given the way my hours awake fall. I figure it should look like lunch too — a ham and cheese sandwich, a handful of grapes, some pretzel crackers, and a can of soda. It looks like what a reasonably responsible 12 year old would make for himself if he was left home by his parents. It really looks like all those meals I would make for myself on beach days. What I really wanted was chicken — fried fucking chicken — but the ham and cheese sandwich was a good alternative. I sit at the counter and eat it while staring at the magnets on the fridge. There’s a calendar Keoni put up where the actual dates are practically unreadable under all of the deadlines in front of them.

What am I going to fucking do?

I think about masturbating for a little bit, but I’m not horny. Masturbating is just something I can do that fills up time. I could take a bath too, but same logic. Just fills up time.

When I turn my phone on, there’s a message from JJ. A few minutes ago, he sent me a video of a guy catching a barrel. It’s an impressive feat and it makes me really yearn for the beach for a few seconds, but there’s nothing too distinct about this video. It makes me think he just sent it to me because it has surfing in it. I do like surfing.

I watchit again. The guy looks like one of my old friends, not because they’re identical twins or anything but just in the way that all surfers have that same look to them. I’m glad JJ sent this to me.

A response doesn’t come instantly. I don’t know how to describe what I want to express, or even just what I want to express in the first place. Something about how I’m glad he thought of me, and that I’m glad he’s awake, and I’m glad he sends me stupid surfing videos even if they mean nothing to him. I end up just sending a surfing emoji back, but I stare at the keyboard for a minute after that. I follow that up with:

how are you doing

He responds shortly after:

Good :)

Chillinin my bedroom

I smile at the text — all of it. The little smiley face and the fact that he wrote “chillin” and the idea of him chillin’ in his bedroom. I go back to the couch and spread myself out.

cooooool

I take a selfie of my self hanging ten. It’s a funny picture. I’m happy — genuinely happy — and it shows on my face, but the only illumination coming from my phone flash and me otherwise sitting in a dark dark room is really funny. I send it and add shortly after:

livin the life

He sends a photo back. He is, indeed, chillin’ in his bedroom. The TV is on behind him. He is sitting in bed in a tee-shirt with a thing of slime in his right hand. Typical JJ night.

He definitely did not mean to include this in the photo, but I think he’s wearing a new pair of briefs. It’s lit up a little by the glow of the TV. They’re cute. He’s not a briefsguy so I’m intrigued. (That is to say I have seen him in boxers so many times it’s almost not a thing in my brain anymore. Just boxers. Sexy boxers. Jeez.) He also adds a caption:

God bless

are those new briefs

I don’t even really mean to say it but I do.

Yeah!

I like boxers but I’ve seen you in briefs and thought they might be comfy

they totally are

idk i like how they keep everything supported

i mean im used to speedos so that might have something to do with it

They do

I think I look good in them too

idk i didn’t get a good look

I don’t even realize how presumptuous I’m texting until he sends another image back. Texting is a whole different beast. Bring me to the beach goddamnit — that’s where I know how to talk.

The image is of him standing in front of his floor mirror. He’s gotta know he looks fucking great, right? He’s wearing his work shirt and the briefsand nothing else. There’s a sheepish expression on his face and a little grin showing just a few teeth. His earring and nose ring glint in the light. His fur is all scruffy and he could just flatten it with a little bit of water. Not to mention his bulge. My best friend being well-endowed will be a constant source of fun forever. I find it interesting he positions his dick downwards. I feel like that would be really uncomfortable.

yeeeah

you look great

Hehehehe thank you

do you position your dick down?

Ohhhh

Yeah I do

I know you don’t

I dunno my dick doesn’t really rest that way

it’s not uncomfy?

It’s def new

IDK I’m used to boxers where you’re basically not wearing underwear

But these are very comfy too in a different way

cool cool cool

go briefs

Go briefs!

I smile at my phone. I could do this forever.

up to anything else?

Watching Survivor

I wonder who’s going to go home LOL

I’ve seen this like 200 times

Yeah what r u up to?

noooothing

i am glad we’re talking right now

bc i am sitting here doing nothing

Do you wanna facetime

We don’t need to talk

We can just hang out

dude

yes

He Facetimes me a few seconds later. I feel so much relief it’s not even funny.

“Hey!” He waves at me fervently from the soft glow of his bedroom. “Hi, Hawk.”

“Hey, dude.” I hold the phone out in front of me and grin. “Hey.”

“Thanks for calling,” he says, scratching his chin. He sits against the wall hugging a pillow. “I was kind of lonely.”

I’m still grinning. “Yeah, I feel that. My cousin isn’t home and I was sitting here just like… I wanna talk to JJ. You think you’re going to be up for a bit?”

“Yeah, I think,” he says. “I was thinking about packing a bowl or something.”

“Smoke weed dude.”

“Duuuuuude.”

I prop the phone down on the desk. He props his phone down too.

“It’s weird sleeping alone,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Like, the first couple of weeks were really bad, but I was too absorbed in the sadness of it all for it to be too big of a problem, if that makes sense.”

“Sure, like it’s sad that you’re sleeping alone but it’s even more sad that you don’t have a boyfriend anymore.”

“Yeah, exactly. That. And now it’s now and it’s… really sad. I miss East a lot.”

“Have you been talking?”

“We’ve been calling every other day but we’re not going to sleep together. And. You know. He’s got a whole life to live.”

“Ruff. That cannot be easy. I’m sorry, man.”

He smiles. “And you know what?”

“What?”

“I haven’t had sex in fucking months.”

I laugh. “That’s how it fucking goes, man. It’s awful.”

“Like, I don’t think I’m owed sex, but you forget just how much the human body yearns for it.”

“I haven’t had sex since I was in California.”

“Oh, that’s bad. That’s bad.”

We both giggle about it for a second. Sexless nobodies. Maybe that’s why we’re both so fucking horny.

“What do you think,” he says, “Like how do you think that’s going to go for you?”

“I don’t know, dude,” I respond. “I’m not into, uh, hook ups, you know? I think they’re so gross. I think if I meet the right girl it might happen again but until then I can just think about sex really really hard.”

He laughs. “What h—have you been missing the most?”

“Ohhh…” I think about that. “Ohhh man. All of it? Oh man…”

“Haha, sorry. Loaded question.”

“No, it’s a good one. I miss… I don’t know. Being with another person and just being so in sync… I miss pussy.”

He giggles super hard, pressing his face into his pillow. “Yeah…”

“I miss fucking pussy, goddamnit. Like, pushing my dick into a nice pussy and feeling her body tighten and relax and just fucking going for it, and our breathing synchronizing, and finishing in a girl as deep as I can be in someone… god, it’s fucking nice.” That leaves me with half of a boner, thank god. It’s a beautiful image.

“I miss pussy too,” he says with a smile.

“I always forget East didn’t have a dick.” I imagine them having sex for a second and I realize it has nothing to do with how they have sex in real life. No one is entering anyone else. “Wait, what?”

He hides his face behind a plush. “Hm?”

“How did… how did you and East like… do it?”

“Ohh,” he says. “Like who was in who?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want the explanation? It’s kind of a lot.”

“Yes.” I jump at it and try to back off. “Yeah, dude. Shoot.”

He sits up and grabs his phone and brings it right up to his face. I still do love his nose ring. “Heh heh. Okay. Sooo… I’ve told you about how he was the dom in our relationship, right? Actually, do you know what dom and sub means?”

“They’re gay things.”

“They are gay things! Can I explain?”

“Yeah. I gotta study up.”

“So top and bottom — this is important, haha — the top is the person who is penetrating during sex and the bottom is the person who is being penetrated.”

“Oh, so like if I was with a girl, I’d be the top.”

“You are catching on, hahaha. Yeah. It’s more of a thing with gay people but, say you’re using a strap on, then the girl could be the top too.”

“Okay, sure.” Mmm girl with a strap on. That’s sexy.

“And then separately there’s dom and sub. Dominant and submissive. The person who’s dominating is in the, ah, dominant position, and vice versa. I think I’d need to explain it with examples.”

“Like when people start slapping each other in porn?”

“Yeah, exactly. That’s a dominant thing to do. Dirty talk or bondage or anything like that. It’s related to BDSM (that’s what the DS is) but plenty of people have dominant/submissive elements in their relationships. And so the thing is that people sort of have this assumption that dominant means top and submissive means bottom and that’s not true.”

“Ohhhhh. Ohhhh okay. Okay okay okay. Cool. That makes sense.” I smile. “Dude. Look at me. Learning.”

“No, it’s so cool. It’s sort of just an idea we have as a society. But with East, we had this sort of relationship where I was the top but also the submissive and East was the bottom and the dominant.”

I blush. “That’s hot.”

“Isn’t it?”

“That’s fucking hot dude.” I’mdefinitely hard now. “Shit. That’s sexy.”

“I know. It was so good.”

“Wait. Can I ask a question?”

“Yeah!”

“Did you… oh, I have so many questions. Did you, like, did you fuck his pussy or his asshole? Hahaha gross.”

“His pussy. God bless.”

“Was that not weird for him? Since he’s transgender?”

He swallows. “He had… like, we never used a strap-on either, because he didn’t like the sensation of having a penis. That’s a conversation for a different day.”

“Cool, cool.”

“But it still worked out really well, haha.”

“So you’re topping but submissive… like what would you do?”

He grins. “It was fuckin’ awesome. I would fuck him but he was in charge. And he’d like. Call me a good dog and stuff.”

“Woooooah.” That makes my dick pulse. What a good fucking life. “Good dog?”

“Yeah,” he says sheepishly. “Yeah yeah yeah.”

“Okay. I see.”

“Yeah. Good dog. He’d scratch my chin. And like tell me I was doing a good job. And whisper into my ear. And kiss me. Ohh it was so nice.”

“That’s so fucking cool, dude. You are a good dog.”

“Ahh!” he says. “Hawk!”

“Ahahaha. Sorry.”

“Ugh. I do miss it though.”

“Have you ever wanted to bottom?”

He scratches his chin. “Yeah. With the right person. Gently.”

“Coooool.”

“Would you?”

“Hmmm…” I think about that for a second. “I agree. In the right moment. The sensation of like. A dick entering me. Feels like a lot.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m big.” He’s in his head for a few moments and then freaks out when he realizes what he says. “I mean like I’m, like, endowed… haha… and just like I don’t know what that would feel like to have in someone.”

“I get you, I get you.” God he is so hot. I’d take him for sure. “Yeah. I dunno. I’d try it gently.”

“Me too, me too.”

I think we both realize what we’re talking about, because it’s silent for half a minute. It’s comfortable — how could a silencebe uncomfortable in a bedroom like that — but it’s long. I look around my bedroom for the whole time. I’m here. He’s there. We could be together.

“Have you considered us living together at all?” I ask.

“I have,” he says. “I would do it.”

“Yeah?”

“I wanna do it.”

“Pack up and move to California?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Really?”

“Do you want to do that?”

“Yeah!”

“You were telling me about all of those houses for rent by the beach…”

I think I might be crying a little. “JJ.”
“Yeah?”

“Let’s do this.”

We discuss it for hours afterwards – moving, plane rides, apartments, living by yourself, everything. And it’s kind of crazy, but at the end of it we both want it more than when we first started discussing it. And then even crazier, we both book a flight to California.

PART 9

JJ falls asleep pretty much immediately. They dim the lights of the airplane to a soft blue and he is out. I pull out my Switch and hold it in my lap but I’m too excited about everything that’s happening to think about anything else right now. I’m moving back home with my best friend. We’re going to live together. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.

He’s snoring softly right now – thank god he isn’t doing his normal level of snoring because then this entire plane would be awake right now. And of course he’s packing a stiffy. His huge dick is poking up and to his right, positioned obviously in his green sweatpants. I don’t know how that’s comfortable. Actually, he’s expressed to me that erections for him are sometimes really uncomfortable and adjusting them is even worse because it looks like he’s just playing with himself. The plight of having a big dick. I’m pretty big, so I get it, but I’m not that big.

I hold my Switch in front of me but I stare at his dick. He takes in deep breaths as he sleeps. I watch his clothing shift with each inhalation. When his dick pulses once and pushes the fabric out even further than it was already I decide that’s my time to look away. None of my business.

I play Stardew Valley for however many in-game days longer. I know I can’t sleep on flights no matter what but I also know that I am stupid tired. At least I know I can play Stardew Valley and plant crops and go fishing for literally an entire day straight, so I’m not too worried.

At maybe 3 AM, JJ stirs beside me. He stops breathing for a second then snorts out, a sound I have heard many times before around this time. After he does that he stops snoring. He’s still rock hard (or maybe he lost the erection and gained it again, who am I to say?).

I try to keep playing but I notice his eyes flutter open and I can’t help but say hi.

“Hey,” he whispers. “You’re still up?”

“Told you I can’t sleep on flights,” I whisper back. The hum of the airplane masks our conversation but I wouldn’t try to talk any louder than this.

He leans over, elbow balanced on the armrest, so that our faces are only a few inches from each other. “Oh my god. Ugh.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Normally I can go back to sleep but my body isn’t having it right now.”

“What,” I whisper, “Because of the erection?”

He blushes and smiles. “Shut up!”

“You are so hard right now.”

“It happens. Erections happen. It’s fine.” He makes no effort to cover it up, which makes me feel really good. I like that this is just a thing we can do now. “Oh my god, do you think everyone can see?”

“Yes. I think they’re all looking.”

“Shit.”

“No, it’s 3 AM, dude.”

“Okay. Yeah.” He giggles. “Yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re right. I feel like if I can’t sleep I normally just go and bust one out.”

“Do you do that when I’m sleeping over?”

“Ummm.”

“What?”

“No, I go tothe bathroom.”

“Dude. Busting a nut three inches from my face. Not cool.”

“If I get up now I’m going to walk past everyone with a boner.”

“You’re going to go cum in the bathroom?”

We both giggle incessantly at that. I have to cover my mouth so I don’t get too loud.

“It’s 3 AM!”

“You can’t jerk off in the airplane bathroom!”

“Don’t they do it in porn all the time?”

“I feel like they get the boner in the bathroom.”

“I dunno. I dunno. Am I just going to sit here with a boner for an hour?”

I balk. “Do you think you’re going to have a boner for the next hour?”

“You know how you can’t sleep on flights?”

“Dude.”

“I can’t get soft on flights.”

“This is so stupid, dude. Oh my god. Go jerk off in the bathroom. It’ll be funny.”

“You think I should?”

“Wrap your sweatshirt around your waist and go.”

JJ smiles. “Okay. If you say so.”

JJ takes his sweatshirt off in his seat and wraps it around himself. He stands up and scoots past me. His dick is three inches from my face, I think deliberately. I swat at his leg. Thank god we’re in a two-seater. JJ gives me a thumbs up and I stick my tongue out at him and he goes to jerk off in the airplane bathroom.

I am so fucking tired when the plane lands. JJ basically stumbled back into the seat and instantly fell asleep with a stupid grin on his face so he got a full night’s rest, but I shambleoff the plane ready to pass out on the toilet. Since JJ can’t drive and doesn’t have a driver’s license (New York City dog) I’m the one who has to rent the car. My driving is remarkably good for someone who hasn’t driven in a year and who is deathly tired, but the apartment won’t even be ready until 4. We drive out of SFO down to the Bay and park the car along the water. I fall asleep under the shade of a tree while the water laps in front of me. And it is glorious.

PART 10

The first day in the new apartment is just plain stupid. JJ and I meet our landlord in front of the building and he shows us all the amenities of the apartment (i.e. the fact that there’s a front door and we’re not outside living in a box) and the apartment itself. The thing is a box with a window and a bathroom. We checkaround for damages that were already there so they couldn’t take it off of our security deposit and we plop our duffel bags onto the floor and we’re moved in.

After that, I takethis awful nap on the floor. I use one of JJ’s hoodies as a blanket and my duffel bag as a pillow and fall asleep right there on the faux-hardwood paneling, mid-afternoon light shining on my face until the sun sets.

When I wake up, it’s pitch black outside. I actually don’t know where I am until I look over and JJ is next to me. He’s lying with his head on a duffel bag just like I am, watching a Youtube video on his phone with earbuds in. It’s like we’re in bed together.

I watch him for as long as I can without him noticing I am awake. I watch the way his tail subtly shakes back and forth, the way his chest rises and falls with each of his inhalations, the way he scratches his cheek and wrinkles his forehead and plays with his nose ring.

I’m in love with him. I think I can admit that to myself now. I’m in love with my best friend. It’s such a loaded word, you know, and years and years of poems and movies and TV have tried to give it a definition that I’m not letting influence what I’m thinking right now. I don’t know what it means that I love him, but I love him.

After maybe 10 minutes of watching him, I finally stir. He looks over at me and smiles.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“You were really tired, Hawk.”

“I told you!” I sit up and let the sweatshirt fall off of me. “I get tired on planes.”

“And you went to sleep at the beach too.”

“That was a catnap.”

“Yeah, this was hours.”

It’s quiet for a second. I listen to the ambient noise of the apartment – low rumbling from the fridge or some electricity and the sounds of a tree tapping on the window. It sets in.

“We’re in our own apartment.”

“I know.”

“We’re in our own apartment! Dude! This is so fucking cool! Remember when we met like a year ago and I was just some random dog you had to train on the construction site and now we’re best friends? Living together? This is so fucking awesome.”

“Can I hug you?”

“You can hug me.”

JJ leans in and puts his arms around me. We’re sitting on the floor of an unfurnished apartment, so it’s less of a hug and more just cuddling, but I don’t move from the position. I let him keep his arms around me. He doesn’t move them either. He places his chin on my shoulder.

The urge to kiss him surges through me. He could put his paws wherever he wants. I wouldn’t mind.

“This place is gonna look so cool,” I say instead.

“How many square feet is it?”

“400-ish?”

“I mean, how are we gonna set it up?” We look around the apartment. The full moon is the only light but it brings just enough light in. There’s a very basic kitchen with an island, a connected living/sleeping space, a closet, and a small bathroom (with included washer/dryer!). Not very much to even discuss. “Two beds, maybe a couch, TV… do we need that much else?”

“We could get bunk beds.”

“I always wanted a bunk bed.”

“They seem so fun! You could get a loft bed and put, like, a drawing desk underneath.”

“That’s a really good idea, actually. Oh! A little space for my comics. Fun.”

“We could just get a king-sized bed and sleep together.”

He grins. “Yeah, maybe.”

I don’t even know why I said that. He’s still holding onto me. That’s probably why. I’ve reached a casual kind of infatuation now – I think that’s what this feeling is.

“Maybe like…” he starts, “Loft bed with a desk for me, a regular bed for you, maybe a big big bean bag chair for guests, and then we turn the closet into a weed closet.”

“What do you do in a weed closet?”

“Smoke weed.”

“Deal.”

JJ grins. “I got you dinner by the way.”

I notice the paper bag sitting on the counter and I walk over towards it. My back does not feel happy after sleeping like that. “Really?”

“I took a little walk around while you were asleep.”

“Thank you!”

I pull out a plastic container of baked ziti and french fries. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I held the warm containers in my hand. I could cry.

We stayup the rest of the night talking. It helps that his sleep schedule is already so fucked up where he was going to bed at 4 AM and that I napped the whole day, and it especially helps that it’s three hours earlier back in New York. It feels like nothing. We talk about the neighborhood, we make plans to go back to my hometown so I can show him my favorite beaches, we talk about the half of a semester I spent at UC Santa Cruz before I dropped out, we talked about decorations and being adults and construction work and our life together.

Half-way through the night, we decide that we should get naked given that that’s what we moved across the country to do. We both giggle deliriously while we strip our clothes off on the wooden floor, empty baked ziti containers sitting next to us. It’s that time of night. Everything’s funny now.

We keep talking until the sun rises, and we do it naked. It’s so funny. There is no reason we need to be naked and yet we’re naked the entire conversation. I’m not even looking at his body. We spendan hour looking up at the ceiling.

When the first sign of sunlight comes through the window and the morning doves begin to coo, we decide we should probably go to bed. Funny how that is. He digs his bathrobe out of his duffel bag and I slip my briefs back on. He takes all of the toiletries we packed to the bathroom.

And we brush our teeth. And we laugh the whole time. At everything. From being so tired that nothing isn’t funny. From finally having what we want. From memories of jokes we told five hours ago. From the absurdity of brushing our teeth together with our dicks out.

PART 11

These first few days back have been great.

Neither of us are employed yet – thankfully, JJ’s been sitting on a stack of cash since he lived with his mom back in New York and the little money he was spending was going towards refilling his bong. I’ve been going out a lot. Out to the beach, out to coffee shops, out to breathe in the fresh air of a world I used to belong to. I haven’t gone back home yet. I haven’t even called my parents yet. That’s all okay.

JJ’s mostly been back at the apartment getting high, but that’s already what he was doing beforehand. It’s cool.

Today, I went to a few surf shops to see what was available. My surfboard’s still back in New York. I paid a fortune shipping it over there the first time and I just don’t have those kinds of funds now, so I said my goodbyes to my beautiful surfboard and resolved to get another one as soon as possible. There are some beautiful boards out there. I haven’t made a choice on one yet.

Otherwise, I’ve just been enjoying the weather. I’ve gone sunbathing every day since we’ve gotten here. I haven’t convinced JJ to come with me yet but I will soon. Now I’m walking back to the apartment, warm from the sun and cooled from the stars coming out, sand still caked between my paws.

And when I open the door, JJ is completely naked. JJ is masturbating. He’s lying on the mattress with most of his body propped up against the wall, thighs hanging over his body, big dick pressed up against his muzzle. And he is looking directly at me.

“Oh, shit,” I blurt, and then slam the front door of the apartment.

“One second!” JJ says on the other side of the door. I’m standing in the shoddily lit hallway of our apartment building, fully within earshot of all of the other tenants. I stare at my sandals and the tile door and smile to myself. He is fucking hot. “Okay,” he says.

I step back inside and close the door behind me – if anyone walked by with the door open, he’d be fully in view. JJ is sitting on the bed with a sweatshirt pulled over his dick. It’s obvious he still has an erection under that. He looks at me with a sheepish expression on his face – I can immediately tell he’s high from his bloodshot eyes. The bong next to him also helps.

“I’m sorry,” I say, dropping my backpack to the floor. “I didn’t realize– I…”

“It’s okay,” he says slowly, cracking a smile. “We shoulda… we should’ve talked about this before…”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, I’m high right now so I’m a little… high.” He shifts a little. “You walked in right when it was getting good, holy crap.”

I snicker. “I’m sorry, dude.” Our apartment is still completely bare except for the mattresses – I lean on the island in the kitchen and look down at him. “Okay, uh, if you wanna go ahead I can go take a lap around the block, but, uh…” I look at the floor again. “Were you sucking your own dick?” I notice now a little bit of spit dribbling down his chin. He was definitely sucking his own dick.

He laughs in that cute way he does when he’s high. “I told you I could.”

“I didn’t believe you, I guess. Isn’t that something all guys try?”

“Yeah,” he laughs again, “And I can!”
“I dunno man. You weren’t actually doing it.”

JJ smiles slyly at me. “You want me to prove it?”

My life is so fucking great. “Yeah. Prove it.”

He moves the sweatshirt aside – still rock hard. His erect dick is just as gorgeous as the first time I saw it – a nice and thick base with a beautiful pink head. It rests on his stomach.

JJ moves slowly and deliberately. “Fuck. In high school I used to be able to just lean over and suck it like sitting down, but I’m not that flexible anymore.”

“Shit dude, really?”

He looks at me and smiles. “Yeah.”

“I tried, like, so many times. Never happened.”

He lumbers his thighs up onto the wall. “Shit. Oh I’m high. Okay. Yeah. So just like this, you move your legs over your body,” he does so. His big dick flops over his face – without much movement at all he’s able to get the tip of it pressed against his muzzle. “You ready for this?”

My erection certainly is. Thankfully I’m hidden behind the counter because it is not subtle in these shorts. I nod. “Show me, dude.”

He opens his mouth and his dick slips right in, like it’s nothing. Seriously. Every time I’ve tried this, I’m straining to even get it a few inches away from my face, but his torso folds over like there’s nothing there. He pulls the inches out of his muzzle.

“Holy shit.”

JJ laughs at the shocked expression on my face. “Isn’t that awesome?”

“Holy shit, dude.”

“That’s the only way I masturbated for years. Cock in my mouth.”

“Does it feel like sucking dick or having your dick sucked?”

“Sucking,” he says. “Uh, well, I’ve never sucked another guy’s dick, but it doesn’t really feel like much.”

“Why’d you do it so much then?”

He grins. “Why not?”

“Is that all you can fit in?”

“Oh, I can go all the way to my balls.”

I almost pound the counter at that. “You’re kidding me.”

“No.” It’s funny watching him sit in that position, dick dangled right over his muzzle, and the casual way he looks at me. “Not at all.”

“Go ahead then.”

And what a fucking fool I am, because he does it. He opens his maw all the way and lets his dick drop in. He has to position his paws on his thighs to guide it in correctly, then when it reaches his throat he has to take a deep breath in. And like he said, he’s balls deep. His balls sit on his muzzle like it’s nothing.

Finally, he throws his head back down onto the mattress and lets his thighs collapse to the ground. “Oh my god. Fuck.”

“You feeling good, bro? That was crazy.”

“Yeah.” He pants. “Holy shit. No, it just hit the back of my throat and it like. I don’t know how to describe it. It made my body feel all funny. Hahaha.”

My dick is throbbing in my shorts. I’m too weak to have an insanecrush on my best friend. I’m too weak for this. “That’s so fucking awesome.” I sniff. I want to keep asking questions but he’s high right now and anything more than this feels a little iffy. “Should I go take a lap?”

“Oh,” he says, staring at his dick. Given the placement of his hand, I think he was about to start masturbating again. He giggles. “Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. And when you get back do you wanna smoke some weed?”

“Fuck yes I do.”

He smiles as I head towards the door. “Okay. I’ll be done in a second.”

PART 12

JJ isn’t masturbating when I knock on the door, which is, you know, good (I needed to save my dick the boner), but he is staring at his laptop with his brow furrowed when I enter. His face immediately changes when he looks up at me and sees me smiling.

“Dude,” I say.

“Hawk,” he responds. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

“I wanna fucking jump up and down,” I respond, “But the neighbors are already giving us shit for the weed, okay, okay, doesn’t matter. Guess what I got?”

“What?”

“I got a surfboard.”

“What?” He springs up from the mattress and raises his paws into the air. “Hey! Awesome! How did you finally decide?”

“It’s still in the rental car. Can I go show you? Actually, can we go to the beach right now?”

He giggles. “You are so excited.”

“Can we go to the beach, pleeeease please please?”

JJ shuts his laptop with his foot and starts rooting around in his duffel bag. “Uh. Can I change here?”

“Oh, we’re going swimming too!” I need to fucking sit down. “Fuck yeah.”

“I thought–” He looks back up at me and grins. “Yeah. We’re swimming.”

“Cool!”

“I still don’t own a bathing suit, though.”

“You still have my Speedo, right?”

“On the beach?” he says. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“You can put it under your jeans and just take ‘em off at the beach. That’s what I do.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay.”

JJ slips his boxers off, dick just completely out, and slips the black Speedo on. He roots around in the duffle bag for a pair of jeans and slips those on too. We don’t even need to talk about getting naked anymore; that’s how fucking awesome things are around here.

I give him the slightest amount of privacy and look around the room while he changes. No bed frames yet, but we got a good old BILLY bookcase and all of the boxes finally came in the mail. His posters are up on the wall, all of his VHS tapes are on display, a bunch of weed we couldn’t bring on the airplane is sitting in the cabinet, and best of all my sea salt candle is displayed prominently on the counter. Things are shaping up around here.

“Alrighty. I’m ready.”

“Let’s go!”

We walk down the stairs, me leading the way. My flip flops squeak against the tile. “What were you so focused on, by the way?” I ask.

“Oh. Job hunting.”

“Good fucking idea. Renting a car and buying a bunch of furniture and moving across the country and everything we are doing right now is not cheap.”

“Applied to a bunch of construction jobs,” he says. “Considering I have done nothing but construction since I was 18, I think I got it in the bag.”

We step outside. The warm summer sun blankets my skin and it is still as good as the first time. There’s a light breeze against the fur on my legs. Our rental car is parallel parked on the curb with my beautiful surfboard strapped to the top of it. JJ’s face lightens up.

“Oh, wow.”

“I know.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“I KNOW!”

“Look at that.”

It looks pretty similar to my old surfboard, but the blue is a lot more saturated and there’s no divide halfway through the thing. It is gorgeous. I can imagine many a day surfing the waves with this thing, and once I pick up my old wetsuit I can go whenever the hell I want to. I climb into the driver’s seat and JJ takes the passenger’s seat and we’re off.

I take a sip of my raspberry soda in the cupholder and put my surfing playlist on and we drive to the beach like gods. It’s not the worst walk in the world, actually, but why walk when we’re a few minutes away from being in the ocean?

We park at the beach and JJ helps me unstrap the surfboard from the top of the car. I show him the best way to hold it and how to apply surf wax and then I excuse myself to put my Speedo on in the car. It’s this sexy orange one I picked up at the surf store – I really couldn’t help myself. I swear to god I catchJJ taking a peek in the car when I’m changing. No comment on that.

The two of us walk down to the beach and the place is empty. Probably because we’re going in the middle of the day in the middle of the week when everyone else is at their jobs. There are a few teenagers and a few stragglers but from any given point there isn’t anyone else in eyesight.

“Is this water good for surfing?” JJ asks.

It’s funny that he even has to ask that. There are practically no waves. I haven’t been surfing in maybe two years now so I appreciate that the big one isn’t coming right now, but they are very small waves.

“They’re good for learning how to surf?” I say, wagging my tail.

“You’d teach me?”

“Can I?”

“Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah. Get changed. Let’s do this.”

We pick a spot up on the beach and lay our towels down. My drink spills into the sand. JJ looks at me.

“That Speedo is new.”

“It is. Do you like it?”

He smiles sheepishly. “It looks really good on you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Emphasizes all the right things.”

“Oh. Wow.” That makes my dick pulse. I cannot get a boner here. Not in front of the ocean. “Thanks, dude.”

He slips his jeans off, revealing his Speedo underneath. I would tell him he looks great as well, but I really don’t feel like getting hard right now. His tail pushes sand out of the way as he wags it. “Do you think I can keep my shirt on?”

“You’re definitely gonna get wet, but hell yeah, if you want.”

“Cool cool cool.”
“Hey, before we do anything, can you get a photo of me? I wanna remember this forever.”

“Post it on your Instagram?”

I smile. “Might just be for me.”

“Don’t want them to know how hot you are?”

And that makes me alittle hard. This fucking dog, goddamnit. I just laugh it off and hope I can kill the erection.

I kick off my flip flops in my sand and I go stand on a rock just off the shore. The water feels amazing against my toes. I hold the surfboard in one hand and put a peace sign up with the other. JJ snaps a picture and grins. I did not kill the erection.

“Hawk,” he says. “Are you hard?”

“JJ!” I yelp back, with no defense. He has the stupidest smile on his face. “No, JJ–”

“Dude, you’re hard.”

“Dude. Dude. It happens sometimes.”

“At the beach?” he teases. “Your sacred beach?”

“Oh my god.”

He turns his head left and then right, I think scanning for people, then looks right back at me. “You should take it out.”

“What?” I grin. “Shit, dude, what?”

“Take it out! For the photo!”

I snicker. “You’re crazy.”

“Okay,” he says. “No, yeah. Whatever. Stupid joke.”

And then I slip my dick out. I feel crazy doing it at a public beach but no one’s around and I don’t want to disappoint my best friend. I slip it out for only a second but he manages to get a picture in that time.

When I step down, he smiles at me. “You look good.”

“Let’s do some surfing.”

“Let’s do some surfing, man.”

We’re back to usual as I show him everything I know about surfing. I don’t have a leash for him but I promise to go and grab it if he falls off of it. I show him paddling, I show him popping up, I show him everything short of actually catching a wave. They’re not big enough today, but neither of us really care. It’s just great to be lapping around in the water.

He’s been getting more overt. I’ve been getting more overt. And yet, I don’t know what this is. A year ago he was too nervous to be seen at a swimming pool and now we’re doing this. Maybe that’s just it. It’s not that anything is happening between us, I’ve just been able to bring out a more confident side in him. We’re just two guys doing guy things and there’s nothing more to it.

That’s what I think to myself on the drive home. That’s what I think to myself when he takes a big nap afterwards, snoring on the bare mattress while I make us pasta for dinner. That’s what I think to myself when I’m applying to all the same construction jobs as him. But something in me hopes there’s more. Something in me knows.

PART 13

I am going to ask JJ out.

The thought swirls in my head like sand in my pockets – always there, sometimes a lot and sometimes a little, but I always let it out on my bed at the end of the day.

I’m not serious about it. That’s what I think when I’m out running in the morning, when JJ and I are at the new construction site and I’m pounding away at the concrete just like I was doing in New York, when I’m at home alone getting dressed to go to the beach. But, my god, when I see that dog’s face it all changes. When I wake up after dreaming about him with a boner; when I jerk off to the idea of him at night and I still want him afterwards.

I’m pontificating on that at work today. You don’t move across the country with someone just to end up in the same construction position if you’re not a little in love with him, right? But being in love with him is a completely different game than asking him out. Would I even ask him out? We nearly touched dicks that time in the woods – I’m sure if I just asked we could be fucking it out in a public bathroom in 10 minutes.

I don’t want it like that. I can’t treat him like that. He means more to me than that.

I’m suddenly thrown out of my daydream when I look up. I turn the jackhammer off and take off my ear protection, because standing there is Mrs. Morriseau.

“Hawk?” she says, clearly repeating herself. “Hawk Addams?”

“Mrs. Morriseau.” He walks up to the edge of the picket fence. She looks the same as she did a few years ago. She’s wearing the same athleisure as she wore years ago. I know exactly where in the house she kept those sunglasses that are sitting on the top of her head. That was so long ago now. “Hi. It’s so nice to see you.”

“Hawk,” she says like her heart is melting. “Oh, Hawk. I heard from your mother that you moved away a few years ago now, and now you’re back? You have to come over sometime. We have to catch up.”

I scratch my head. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Um. Yeah, I did move away, just to get away from… everything… but my life’s been different recently and I thought coming home would be good for me.” I swallow. “I missed California.”

“Naturally.” She laughs at herself like she always used to do.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay. I’m okay! Life goes on.”

“It does.” I look behind me. JJ is standing a few feet back, looking over with concern. “Speaking of which, I do have to get back to work.”

“Construction worker! Look at that.” She’s probably thinking in her head “this kid used to be the captain of the swim team and now he’s hammering concrete for minimum wage” but at least she doesn’t phrase it like that. “You have my number,” Mrs. Morriseau says. “Please call me, if you’d like.”

“Okay. Bye. It’s nice to see you.”

“Goodbye, Hawk.” And then once more for good measure. “Goodbye, Hawk.”

She thankfully walks off without looking back, because otherwise she would see me standing there, boots planted on the concrete, not getting back to the job I said I have to get back to.

JJ steps up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “What just happened?”

“Um.” Our shift is over soon, I know. “Can we go home and get super super high before I talk about it?”

He grins and, despite everything, I still feel it in my chest. “I would like nothing more.”

I think we’ve reached the end of decorating our apartment. It’s not that it’s complete – I’m sure my mom would have something to say about the sparse walls or JJ’s mattress on the floor – but our energy is going to other things now. We’ve made the Ikea trips and we put together the furniture. Nothing else.

JJ strips down his construction outfit as soon as he gets through the door and goes to his corner of the room to roll a few blunts. The way he has it set up is fucking adorable, by the way. We hauled this gigantic box TV up the stairs and set it up so that he can watch his Survivor tapes whenever he wants to, and sitting there with him is one of the coziest things ever. I always wanted a bunk bed so we decided to get a desk for the both of us to share and put the bed over that. It’s fucking awesome.

I stand at the door and watch him roll the blunts, dick out, and the same thought moves through my head. I am going to ask that dog out.

“Wanna light?”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

I throw my clothes off too and join him over there. We’re not quite at the level where we’re taping over the smoke detector so we lean out the window and smoke our blunts instead.

We sit on his bed, legs spread, and he organizes his tapes while we wait for the high to hit. And when it does, it feels fucking good. I don’t like to get too toohigh because I still want to be completely in control, so I just feel warm and bubbly instead. Normally JJ gets fucking blazed but he also dialed it back today. Might be good for his brain.

“That,” I say, trying to just spit it out. “Was…”

“Yeah?”

“Oh fuck. Okay. That was Angela Morriseau.”

“Is she like a celebrity?”

“Um. Haha, no. Um. Have I ever… um.” I swallow. “Okay, dude?”

“Yeah?”

“I am going to tell you something that I have never told… anyone.”

“Oh my god.” He looks up at me. “Okay. Yes. Tell me.”

“Have I ever told you about Sydney?”

“Your high school girlfriend.”

“Yeah. Um. How much did I tell you about her?”

“She was on the girl’s swim team and you were on the boy’s… you dated…”

“Me and Sydney met in our freshman year of high school. It was so… I mean, now it seems a little movie-ish, but it was so fun. She was the most popular girl and I was, uh, one of those sporty jock boys who’s generally popular for no reason, so we were the it couple for all of high school. You know how sitcoms have the main couple that’s like the driving force of the show? We were that couple. Everyone was so dramatic and high school around us and we weren’t. We’d swim together, we’d go to each other’s meets, hang out at each other’s houses – that’s where I know Mrs. Morriseau, by the way, because I was spending every day in her room. I thought she was the one, you know. I thought we were going to get married and make a million babies. Actually, you know that seashell necklace I’m always wearing?”

“I do.”

“It was her’s. She gave it to me when we were first dating and I’ve had it ever since.”

“Aww. That’s really sweet.”

“We lasted all the way up until my freshman year of college.”

“You went to college?” He grins. “Is that your big secret? Agh, you got me high to tell me you got a degree in philosophy. Shit.”

I snicker. “I went to a single year of college. Go Banana Slugs. I got a swim scholarship and studied Marine Biology. She was working and I was in college in our hometown so we kept dating.”

“And then what happened?”

I stand up. My body feels all warm and tingly in the way that you do when you’re a little high. I climb up to my bed and lay on it. I like staring down at him from up here.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you miss East?”

He lies down on his bed too. His dick is out. My butt’s up. Whatever. “Yeah. A lot.”

“It’s been months now.”

“Yeah. We still text and call every so often but… you know. We ended very amicably and we’re still friends but it’s sad that this big thing in my life that was so important to us is just over now.”

I sigh. “Um. Do you ever wonder why I moved across the country?”

“I always figured that… I dunno. I guess I didn’t really wonder. I always thought it was just happenstance, especially considering you were living with your cousin.” His eyes widen. “Did you break up?”

“She, um, died.”

He sits up. “Oh. Oh, H-Hawk I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah.”

We sitin silence for a moment, the afternoon light diffused through the curtains. The fridge rumbles. JJ breathes in.

“Isn’t that funny?” he says.

“What funny?”

“I dunno. We both had these… and they’re not the same, of course, but the person we thought was gonna be it left, and then we both found each other afterwards. And we just had to move across the country for it.”

He smiles at me and I smile back.

“I love you, dude,” I say.

And I know I’m high, and I’m in a heightened emotional state, and I attached the word “dude” at the end to dilute the sentence a little, but I mean it.

“I love you too,” he says back.

I am going to ask JJ out. That’s all I know. I’m going to ask him out.

And I’m going to do it the only way I know how.

“Hey,” I say. “Uh. When we’re not high later, do you wanna go swimming?”

“It’s gonna be dark.”

“Night swimming! It’s so fun.”

“I do,” he says. “Please.”

PART 14

Let’s do this.

JJ and I are walking down to the beach, Speedos on under our clothes. We had a long debate about skinny dipping when we were back at the apartment. I cautioned us against it for whatever reason I gave, something about wanting to do some actual swimming and not just playing, but I think we both knew I had some other reason to be saying that. He conceded, and I didn’t have to tell him that I wanted us to be clothed for what I was going to say.

Now, he’s telling me about this old TV he found on Craigslist he was thinking about picking up. I look at the sidewalk ahead of us and nod. We’re going to be at the beach soon.

“You okay?” he asks with a smile.
“Yeah,” I respond. “Yeah.”

“Okay… are you sure? Sorry if that’s…”

“I just wanna swim.”

“Normally you’re a little more excited about it.”

“It’s just… I dunno. I’ll show you.”

He grins. “Cool.”

He pipes down and we make the rest of the walk quietly. He looks at the plants on the way there, reaching his paw out to touch some of them. I look at his face. My heart is pounding.

No one is at the beach when we get there. We pick a nice spot and strip down to our Speedos.

The water isn’t cold at all. I dive in with a splash and JJ follows after me.

“Let’s swim out,” I say.

“Okay,” he responds. “Yeah.”

We swim out pretty far. There is practically no tide right now – there’s a few ripples in the water from our bodies but it really feels like a lake more than the ocean. Once we get far enough from the shore, it’s hard to make out anything. I can see just a little bit of white light on the top of his head, just a few ripples of water. We float in place and let the water settle around us.

Black water below and night sky above.

“This is such a weird feeling,” JJ says.

“No kidding.”

“It’s so different out here. It’s like infinite water. It’s like the void forever.”

“When I was a kid, I used to do this a lot. You know what my favorite part is?”

“What?”

“Try floating up and down, like this.”

He follows my example. “Holy shit.”

“You can’t tell the difference between up and down. It’s all the same.”

We do that for a little bit. We feel the oblivion of the ocean at night. I can see his smile by the light of the moon.

I think I’m ready.

“JJ,” I say.

“Yes?” he whispers.

“I have known you for a few years now. You are my best friend in the world. I wake up every day and I’m so thankful I stumbled into this little thing we have, that we get to hang out all the time and be so cool together and…” God, I am not a wordsmith. I cannot make out the expression on his face but I can feel that he’s close to me. I feel his warmth and I feel the movement of water. “Remember when we first went swimming together, back at that pool in New York City? I remember that so well. I think about it all the time. All of those little sleepovers we had, and all of the times we’ve gotten high together, and all the time we spend at work joking around… oh, JJ…”

“H–hey,” he says, stuttering over his words. He grabs my paw. “Hey. Let’s go to the sand. I want to feel the sand.”

“Yeah?” I can feel my body dissolving. “Is that what you want?”

It’s over. I shouldn’t even have tried.

He starts swimming back to the beach, and I follow him. I watch his tail poke out of the water as he swims doggy style to the beach. I want to do breast strokes away until I’m so far into the ocean I can’t come back, but I don’t. I swim just behind him.

The light changes as we get closer to the land. I can make him out now.

I get out first. He watches lumber out of the water, fur dripping wet. JJ sits in the water with a smile. I stand on the beach, just above him.

“C’mon,” I say.

“Hawk?”

I swallow. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

And then he stands up and grabs my paws.

One of us is in the water and one of us is in the sand. It’s just not who I expected.

“I love you,” I gasp back.

And he kisses me.

It’s like being hit by a wave. One second I thought it was all over and the next JJ is kissingme. I am feeling his muzzle pressed against mine, our wet noses touching. His paws are in mine and my heart is exploding.

He pulls away. “I’m sorry, I– I should have asked, I–”

“Shh.”

I massage his paw with mine and grin at him. He grins back. I look into his eyes, illuminated by the moonlight, and we are grinning like the two happiest goddamn dogs on this planet. His tail is shaking like an earthquake. Mine is tucked between my legs.

“Can I kiss you again?” he asks.

“You may.”

And he does. It’s much longer, much softer. He grabs my shoulder and holds me. I can feel his canines against mine. I want to remember this forever.

I take care to not press my body into his – I am too jumbly for this to ever be a horny moment, but I realize we are standing here in our Speedos, water dripping off of us into the sand below. Good thing I cautioned him against skinny dipping. When he pulls away, he’s flapping his paws a little.

“JJ,” I say. “Do you want to try, ah, being more than friends?”

“Like…” he asks, his face flushing. “Boyfriends?”

“Yeah. Like boyfriends.”

“Yes,” he nods. “Yes. Yes. I, uh. Yes. I would like to try.”

“Okay.” I smile and he smiles back. “Okay. Let’s try.”

PART 15

After JJ and I kissed, he asked if he could go back to the apartment to get some alone time. I asked if he was feeling a little overstimulated and he said he would have lunged at my muzzle if he spent another second there. Fair enough. I sat in the water and looked up at the night sky for who knows how long, giggling to myself with glee, before eventually making the trek back myself. He was asleep when I got back. I found that odd until I went to bed and was immediately plunged into warmth and coziness, falling asleep not long after that. It turns out falling in love with your best friend makes you feel pretty sleepy.

It’s the morningnow. I watch JJ lumbering around the kitchen, making a cup of coffee. He’s fully dressed, which is a little surprising. Given the circumstances, though, I think I should get dressed too.

I stretch up with a yawn. JJ looks at me and grins. “Hey.”

“Good morning, dude.” I have a killer hard on, but I don’t mention it just this second. “How are you?”

“Really good. Really good. I’m sorry I fell asleep before you got home–”

“Totally cool. No worries.”

“I was just, you know. Like feeling so much at once. Do you want breakfast? I can make eggs.”

“For me?”

“For us!”

“Aww.” I start to climb out of my stupid little bunk bed but I still have a hard on. “Okay, shield your eyes for a second.” He puts a paw up in front of his eyes and I climb down the ladder. I throw a pair of shorts and a tank top on and I walk over to the kitchen. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

I kiss him on his stupid dog muzzle and it is lovely.

He pulls back, blushing. “Hey, before breakfast, can we just talk outside?”

“Yeah, of course, dude.”

He puts his flip flops on. I just go downstairs barefoot.

It’s beautiful outside. We siton the curb in a nice sunny spot. The concrete is warm on my feet but not burning me up, and the luscious plants behind us provide a little bit of coolness. We look out at the quiet street. JJ is profusely smiling at me, legs shut tight. I sit a little more casually. I want to grab his hand but I decide to give it a break. I just touch his knee instead and stick out my tongue playfully.

“So I just wanna…” he says, “Uh. Have a talk about us. Nothing bad. Just, like, defining…”

“Of course.”

“And boundaries… and all of that.”

“Sure. What are you thinking, dude?”

“Um. I want to be your boyfriend–”

“Yay!”

“And I want to be your boyfriend, like, seriously.”

I smile. “Yeah?”

“And…” He stares down at the pavement with that nervous smile he always has, then he giggles a little. “Oh, man.”

I think I know what he’s so nervous about. “What’s that?” I tease, pointing to his crotch.

“Oh my god.” He shuts his legs even tighter. He is popping a boner right now in front of the whole street. There’s no one here to be privy to it, but it’s obvious. “I’m just excited. I’m just excited.”

“That’s okay!” I say, trying to be more supportive than horny even though I could fully well be horny right now. “I get it.”

“Um. Yeah. So. Like this is what I’m thinking about. I know we’ve had some… really intimate moments together…” We both think about comparing our dicks in the woods, I’m sure. That was a great day. “Um. But I think I need a little bit of time before I’m…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. We’ve talked so much about sex and masturbation and nudity and everything under the sun that it’s kind of adorable to see him so nervous right now.

“Ready?” I provide, and he nods.

“Yeah. Um. I…” He starts playing with his paws. “I like you a lot. And I think you’re really pretty. Um. And I want to make sure I’m being… intentional… with you.”

“Okay,” I say. I want to kiss him right now – I’ve never been called pretty like that before and it’s making something in my heart swim – but I’ll be intentional too. “Yeah.”

“And I know we’re both coming from previous relationships, not in the most traditional sense but we both have… people who are important to us who aren’t here anymore. And I just want to say that that is okay.” He’s tearing up a little. “It’s okay.”

“Can I hold your paw?” I ask. “It’s okay if not.”

“Yes.”

I hold his paw on the warm concrete. We look up at the clouds in the sky and just sit.

“It’s okay,” I whisper.

“Boner killer,” he whispers back, and we both laugh.

“Is there anything else you wanted to say?”

“Um… well. No. I think I’ll figure out anything else that I want to say and I’ll tell you… but I’m okay for now. What about you?”

“Oh!” I look over at him. “Hm. I’m bisexual.”

“Really?” he giggles.

“I mean. Yeah. I’d hope.”

“How does that feel?”

“Uh, awesome? It feels awesome, dude.” I squeeze his paw just to emphasize it. “Different. I never thought I would be in a relationship with a man, but it feels good.”

“I’m glad.”

“What else? I agree – I want a serious, committed relationship. Um. I know you and East were in an open relationship…”

“We were. I never had sex with anyone else. I mean, you know that. He had, like, hookups, but nothing serious.”

“I gotta say, I don’t really want to be in an open relationship.”

“That’s okay. It’s not important to me.”

“We can talk about that more if you want.”

“No, I’m not really polyamorous – or, rather, polyamorous at all – but East wanted that and it was okay with me, you know? Plus it was weird. He had all this tension with our other roommate and sometimes I would look at them and be like… they’re kind of hot together. And that was just a whole thing.”

I laugh. “Dude.”

“They were kind of hot together! East was like this little trans goat and he was this big chubby pigeon dude and it was like, Jesus, someone get me a glass of cold water.”

“None of that here. We’re two dogs only.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I got carried away. Continue, please.”

“Hm… anything else? I agree with everything you’re thinking. I’m so happy to be in a relationship with you. OH.”

“Oh?”

I grin. “Uh. If we wanna be dating, I gotta take you on a date, right?”

“I suppose.” He flaps his paws a little. “Yeah, maybe.”

“There’s a coffee shop I used to go to all the time. I wanna show you it. Can I take you there?”

“You can!”

“Tomorrow? After work? Dress up all cute?”

“I’ll be there.”

“We can go together.”

He smiles. “Can we sit out here a little longer?”

“Yeah. Please.”

PART 16

All of the other guys on the construction site probably think we’re the gayest fucking dogs in the world.

To be fair, there was always a bit of a divide between us and them. Back in New York, me, JJ, and Ramone were the only guys who spoke English as our primary language, and now in California, me and JJ are the only ones that are gay for each other.

I’m being tongue-in-cheek, obviously, but anyone who was really looking at us could tell something’s up. The way we wander off to take our lunch breaks by the water, the way we lounge under the palm trees on our 10 minute breaks, looking up at the sky together. When we whisper jokes to each other and crack up at them. We’ve been working on a motel recently, which means a lot of buddy shifts. Of course JJ and I take every single one of them together and I relish every opportunity I get to foot the ladder for him and look up at my boyfriend as he ascends. My boyfriend. What a good word.

The most obvious way to tell, I think, would be the way we hold paws after the day is over. Maybe the way we kiss.

I love JJ’s smile. I love his smile so much. I grabbed his paw without asking and he is beaming at me, the cutest fucking smile on his face. “What are you smiling about?” I ask.

“Nothing, nothing.”

“God,” I say, “My back is killing me. I’m 22.”

“You’re a construction worker.”

“Yeah yeah. It must be all freaking knots back there.”

We’re walking down the sidewalk and stop at the bus stop near our worksite. The sun is warm on our faces. I wouldn’t stop holding his paw for anything in the world. Even though we’re about to go have a date, we both decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of heading back to the apartment just to get changed, so we’re both going in our workwear.

“Can I tell you something?” JJ asks.

“Yeah, dude.”

“How do I phrase this…” He looks down at the concrete. His tail is wagging profusely. “We are so hot.”

“Fuck yeah we are, dude!” I punchhis arm. “I like to hear it.”

“Yeah!”

“We are the hottest people California has ever seen.”

“Just like. I dunno. Ever since I was a kid I always thought construction workers were hot, but there was always a piece of it missing for me.”

“Being gay?”

“Yeah. Being gay.”

I snicker. “I mean, haven’t construction workers been fucking each other in gay porn since the dawn of gay porn?”

“That’s true, but they’re not actually construction workers. We’re the real deal.”

“Yeah we are. And we’re cute fluffy dogs.”

“Hottest guys, I’m telling you.”

The bus pulls up and we climb onto it. We picka cozy seat on the back of the bus. I let JJ sit against the window so he can press his forehead into it and look outside (and he immediately does), and I take the seat next to him. I try to scoot my leg away from him at first, but I decide that if I can be pressed up against a stranger on the New York City subway, I can be pressed up against my boyfriend on the bus.

The bus rumbles beneath us as it takes off.

“So what’s the place that we’re going to?” he asks.

“It’s this cute little… I think I described it as a coffee shop but it’s more accurately like… a drink store? It’s this place I would go to pretty much every day after swim practice back in high school.”

“So we’re going back to your old neighborhood?”

“Yeah.”

He swallows. “Do you think you’re ready for that?”

“I mean. What the hell, you know? I’ve gotta do it sometime.”

“Yeah.” He smiles softly. “Okay.”

“Can I put my arm around you?”

“Please.”

I do. We’re the sexiest dogs on that bus for the rest of the ride as we quietly discuss porn and being cute fluffy dogs and such.

When we step off, we’re right outside my school’s swimming pool. “Woah!”

“Is this—”

“Dude, holy shit. I completely forgot the bus got off right here.” We stand and stare at it. My old swimming pool. The banners in the school’s colors, the entrance to the locker room, the lifeguard’s tower, beautiful palm trees sprung about. Many a day I spent kissing Sydney under those bleachers. It’s around 2 right now so there wouldn’t be anyone practicing in it. I’m definitely not allowed in there without being a high school student or watching a meet, but even staring at it through the fence is bringing back so many memories. “I had so many good memories here. Holy shit.”

“It’s your swimming pool!”

“I’d wake up at the crack of dawn to come practice for our meets. Fucking awesome.”

“Do you miss it?” JJ asks.

“The swim team?”

“All of it.”

I put my paw up to the fence and hold on for dear life. That’s everything I ever used to be in there.

“Parts of it, definitely.” I smile. “You wanna get some drinks?”

“I do.”

We walk towards the drink place, my maw open in awe. Everything’s the same. I point out the ramen shop I would eat at every day during lunch, and the old calligraphy shop I for sure thought was a mob front, and the post office, and the place where I found a one hundred dollar bill once, and the scaffolding (that’s still here, god bless) where one of the freshman on the team when I was a senior would always be doing pull ups. My mouth is dry when we get to the drink shop.

We sit down and I order a brown sugar milk with boba for JJ and a strawberry matcha latte (my old order) for me. They have sandwiches too, so I get a strawberry cream sandwich for us to share. When I look over at JJ, he’s staring out the window and wringing his tail in his hand.

“It’s so funny,” I say as I sit down, “We are two construction workers in my cute little drink shop. You’re covered in mud.”

He smiles nervously. “Yeah.”

“Everything cool?”

He chuckles. “I just. First date jitters.”

“Awww. Is that what it feels like?”

“I mean it is our first date.”

“We know each other, though. There’s no, you know, date mode. I just wanted to call it a date for bookkeeping.”

He chuckles. “So everything’s the same?”

“Well, I think you look beautiful.”

“That’s different.” He slumps a little in his chair as the waiter brings us our drinks and the sandwich. JJ smiles. “Ooh, this looks so good.”

“It is so good. Trust me.”

He takes a sip. I love the way he smiles as he does it. “Yeah. Yum.”

I take a sip of mine too. The colors are beautiful. The air conditioning and the soft lo-fi music and the memories are all so lovely.

“Can I try this sandwich?”

“Yeah!”

He takes a big messy bite of it and there is whipped cream all over his muzzle. I wipe it away and we both giggle.

“You were telling me about your swim team?” he says. “That’s a first date question, I think.”

“Oh, yeah. I miss the vibes, you know? We had this whole thing where it was like, especially my senior year, I was like the dad almost since I was the captain. There was this great male energy where we all respected each other and teased each other and like it was just fucking cool to be with a bunch of guys like that.”

“Was being captain that important?”

“Oh yeah. It’s like instant respect. Like second in command to the coach and there’s all this weight on you and pressure but it’s so rewarding.” I take a sip of my matcha. “It feels so good.”

We spendthe rest of the date talking. I forget it’s a date, honestly, which makes it so much easier (not like I’ve had a lot of first dates in my life). The nervousness slowly melts from him and it’s so nice to see.

Near the end of the date, I bring up my back again.

“Would you ever wanna massage me?” I ask.

He blushes. “You… want me to?”

“If you’d do it.”

“It seems easy. I mean.” He makes a chopping motion. “Just that, right?”

“Sounds right.”

“We can… we can go home and do that?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Good date!”

“Good date!”

I take my tank top off in a single swoop and throw it and my jacket on the kitchen counter. JJ is clearly enchanted.

“You’ve seen this before,” I say.

“I–” He smiles. “I…”

“Want me to flex?”

He nods profusely.

I flex my abs as hard as I can, then stick my biceps up and flex them too. All that time I’ve spent surfing and swimming and doing construction work has rendered my body pretty nice, although I’ve always thought of myself more of a cute dog than a sexy beast. JJ is blushing so hard.

“I would bounce my pecs if I could right now.”

“You look so good,” he whispers. “You look so good.”

“You think?” I look down at my abs. Maybe I do look so good. “Thank you,” I say with a smile.

“Let’s,” he says, “Uh, let’s lay you down.”

“Good idea.” I lay down on the yoga mat to save JJ any more strife, my head resting on my arms. I look at where the wall meets the floor as I feel JJ position himself over me. His crotch is parked up against my butt but I don’t mind at all.

“Wow.” I feel his soft paw touch my back with uncertainty, just barely pressing into my fur. I know the expression on his face without even looking at him. “I haven’t really done this before.”

“I know there’s definitely a knot at the base of my back,” I motion to it with my paw, “So if you could just dig into me right there.”

“Okay. Yeah. Tell me if I’m hurting you, please. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I will, dude. Don’t worry.”

He puts his paw right over where I told him to and waits for a moment. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, dude.”

He presses in.
“FUCK!” I bark.

“Oh my god.” He pulls his paw away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Hawk, I–”

“No. Shit.” I grit my teeth. “Oh my god, do that again.”

“What?”

“That felt so fucking good.” I say it with animal desperation.

“Okay. Okay.” He digs his paws in again and I resist barking this time. It feels like pure tension being released. Every time he pushes his paw pad in there is a sharp sensation of pressure followed by warmth. “That’s so weird. You can actually feel the knot right there.”

“Try again on the other side.”

He does, and I let out a grunt of pleasure when he does so. My head is pushed down into the pillow and my teeth are bared. I exhale in pointed pleasure as he pushes his knuckles into me.

“Keep going up.”

He does. I push my head further into the pillow and enjoy the work of JJ’s paws.

“That feels so fucking good, JJ. It’s just like the old days.”

“What?”

“It’s like being with the swim team.”

“You were doing this with your swim team?” he yelps, pulling his paws away.

I look back at him as best as I can and smile reassuredly. “No no, not like.” I laugh. “No.”

“Okay. Whoo.”

“I’m sorry, was that…”

“Just images were flashing through my head of you and your Speedo dog teammates and your rock hard abs all massaging each other’s shoulders against the walls of the locker room.”

“Are you aroused or jealous or scared?”

“Uhh… you weren’t massaging each other?”

“No.”

“I think I can find it hot because it’s not real.”

I grin. “Is something up?”

“What’s like being with the swim team?”

“We weren’t going around massaging each other— we weren’t doing this, obviously. You’re my boyfriend. But there was a non-sexual… closeness, if that makes sense, that comes from being in such a small and masculine space.”

“Oh. Okay. So you weren’t slapping each other’s… okay.”

“Did you want us to?”

He grins but there’s a waver in his voice. “I dunno. Yeah. Swim team guys.”

“We were fucking cute, that’s for sure. Braiding each other’s hair. Et cetera.” He presses into my back again. “Oh fuck yeah. That’s exactly where… fuck fuck fuck.”

He pulls his paws away and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t put them back down when I expect him to.

“Is it weird?”

“What?”

“Being with me?”

I flip over. JJ’s lip is quivering.

“Hey, baby, what’s going on?”

“I dunno. You’re just such a guy.” I sit up. JJ is holding his paws in front of his face. I put a paw on his leg. “You’re such a guy, you know? Like you were the captain of your swim team and everyone looked up to you, and you get to hang out with all of your cool straight guy friends and talk about cool straight guy stuff, and you walk around in your Speedos and it’s not an issue. And you’re an awesome construction worker and we’re on a date in a drink shop and everyone can tell I’m so nervous and scared but you’re just so confident and manly… and then we go home and you take off your shirt and you look like that. And I’m trying so hard to hide my boner while I press into your back and it’s not even a thing for you. It’s not even sexual for you and it’s this whole experience for me. You just grunt and groan like a man and it’s not even a thing.” He starts crying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is so stupid.”

“Hey, JJ. JJ. Shh. Can I hug you?”

“I need a second.”

“Okay. That’s fine.”

He sits in front of me, trying to regulate his breath. He rings his tail in his hands.

When it seems like he’s calmed down a little, I hold his paw. “Hey. This isn’t stupid. Let’s talk.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

“So… you’re feeling like I’m masculine and straight and… I’m sorry, can you explain it again?”

He takes a deep breath. “I feel like I’m not… enough for you.”

“What? Why do you think that?”

“Because you’re… because I’m just some dumb gay ADHD-riddled dog who doesn’t have any friends and you’re… Hawk. You’re Hawk.”

“JJ, hey.”

“Can I just say something else?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, please tell me.”

“You were, you know, straight when I first met you. And you were just a guy. Masculine, male friends, normal interests. That’s what I mean. You’re my boyfriend and I’m so nervous… I love you so so so much but I am so nervous… and you’re just so confident and so manly. You weren’t nervous about kissing outside of the site, you weren’t nervous about our date, you weren’t nervous to take your shirt off and have me massage you. And it’s… hard. It’s hard.”

He throws his arms around me and cries into my shoulder. I rub his back under his shirt.

My face burns until a tear escapes my eyes.

JJ lets out a gasp and pulls back. He covers his face. “I’m sorry. I love you. I hope you don’t–”

“JJ, I love you. We’re okay. Let’s talk. I’m not mad.”

“Okay.”

I lie down onto the bed. JJ joins me. We hold hands and look up at the ceiling.

“JJ, can I tell you why I like you?”

“Okay.”

“Let’s see. Well, the first thing I ever noticed about you is how you made me feel. It was my first day on that construction site and I was really nervous.”

“You were?”

“It was my first job after… years of being depressed.”

“I didn’t know that at all.”

“You didn’t?”

“I was so nervous about meeting you and having to train someone…”

I smile. “JJ. I was such a wreck that day. And the language gap between me and everyone else didn’t help… and Ramone was crazy.”

“Ramone was crazy. He’s a real straight boy.”

“But I remember you. And how welcome you made me feel. Your smile. Your calm voice. Everything about you.”

“Oh.”

“And when we became friends, you know what I liked about you?”

“What?”

“I liked how real you were. How real you are now. To you, I was your friend, yeah, but also just a straight masculine dude, you know? You didn’t have to be so vulnerable and so open and so honest. Like. There’s a reason I didn’t figure out I was gay until now. I didn’t talk about my emotions with a guy ever. Not once. So yeah. You get stoned every night and kiss your sheep plush and play with slime. I don’t care! You like it, awesome! I like that you like it. I like that you care about it and you share it with me.”

I sit up. JJ is still lying down. “JJ,” I continue, “I like you. I like all of you. I mean it.”

He’s still crying, but it’shappy now. He wipes a tear away with his paw and sits up, tongue out. He paddles his feet on the floor. “Thank you.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

He grins. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah.”

We kiss. And then we kiss again. And he has to physically restrain himself to stop himself from kissing me a third time. I feel a magnetism in my chest. His tongue is out.

“On the topic of sexual experiences for the both of us…”

He stands up and giggles. “Oh my god. Next time. Next time. I’m not that kind of dog. Not on our first date.”

I smile. “I’ll get you, JJ.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

PART 17

JJ looks so cozy watching Survivor over there in his bed. He’s wrapped in a blanket so tight that I can only see his muzzle poking out of it and his eyes are transfixed on the TV. He’s absentmindedly stretching a thing of slime in his paws. I can see his tail wagging just by the movement of the blanket.

“Hey!” I call out from the kitchen, putting my dishes in the sink. “Can I join you in there?”

“You wanna cuddle?” he asks.

“Fuck yeah.”

He opens the blanket for me. “Come on over.”

I plop myself down next to him and put my arm around him. We lean on a big stack of his pillows and cuddle. We’re not yet at that place where our limbs are intertwined and our fur is merging and you can’t tell where I begin and he ends, but our bare skin is touching and it is so lovely. He leans his head on my shoulder.

“What’s happening right now?”

“That guy,” he points, “Has an immunity idol, and everyone is really mad at him, so we’re going to see what happens at tonight’s elimination.”

“Awesome.”

We sit and watch the rest of the episode. I don’t know what season we’re in – I know the first season pretty well at this point, as well as the most recent one, but they made like 40 something seasons of this show and I do not know all of them. JJ knows every single contestant, when they were eliminated, and 10 fun facts about each one, but he stays quiet so I can enjoy it.

I’m actually getting pretty into the episode when I notice that JJ isn’t looking at the screen anymore, and if there’s anything I know about JJ, it’s that he can watch an entire season of Survivor without blinking. I rub the fur on his tail. “What’s up, dude?”

“Oh, uh. Nothing.”

“You sure?”

He sticks his face down. “I’m just, uh. Happy that we’re cuddling.”

“Happy?”

He covers his muzzle with his paw. “Whatever.”

“Can we pause for a second?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He pauses the show. All I do is give him a face.

“I don’t think you understand how strong my libido is,” he says.

“I know you’re hard right now.”

“Oh, shut up,” he giggles. Most likely true.

I ruffle the fur on the top of his head. “You want me to dial it back?”

“Mmmmm. I dunno. No.” He smiles. “I like it.”

“What were you saying? About your super strong libido?”

“Ugh. I mean, I guess you do know a little bit about it.”

“No, no, now I wanna know.”

“I jerk off three times a day.”

“What?” I pull my arm off of him and open my mouth, faux-shocked. “You what?”

“I dunno. Yeah.”

“I’ve had, like, days in high school where I was bored enough to do that, but every day?”

He smiles. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m telling you.”

“Like, you have to jerk off three times a day?”

“I mean, no one has to jerk off–”

“In today’s America…”

“But. I just get so horny, you know?”

“Aw, dude,” I grin and ruffle his head again. I can now identify the emotion I was feeling during all of those horny conversations we used to have, which is pure adoration. He is the cutest fucking dog I have ever met. “Dude.”

“Like I wake up every day with a raging boner.”

“I know that one full well.”

“And I have to deal with it before I can do anything else.”

“That’s why you wake up before me.” I think about those days I’d be sleeping on his floor and he’d get these awful boners about 10 minutes before he woke up, like clockwork. Maybe it’s good he wake up first now – the world isn’t ready for how hard is dick is in the morning. “Coooool.”

“Yeah. And, well, at least before we moved in together, I’d jerk off every day after work.”

“Okay, well that one makes perfect sense.”

“You think?”

“You build up like… all this…” I laugh. “Energy? I get it. I do that sometimes. There’s just this perfect combination of, you know, it’s midday and the sun is streaming through the windows and I’m all sore and laying on the couch and, oh, look at that, my cock’s hard, might as well jerk off now.”

“Yeah. That’s it exactly. And then, okay, I also have to jerk off to go to bed. It’s just like. Okay, well, you know that sheep plush I have?”

I pick it up. I’ve seen exactly what he’s done to this thing. “Yes.”

“I have this routine I do… I’ve done it through high school. It’s like the only way I can go to sleep. I don’t know what it is about it but my brain will not turn off until I do it.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I brush my teeth and I brush my sheep’s teeth too. That’s the only way I remember to do it. It’s…” Fucking adorable? He scratches his head in embarrassment. I just smile back at him. “It’s what I do. And after that I get nice and stoned. Lol. No matter what, even if I haven’t smoked at all that day, I always do it before bed. And, uh, I kiss my sheep plush on the head and wish it good night.”

“You say all of this like we don’t live in the same room and I don’t hear you do it every night.”

“Well, that’s not the end of it.”

“What, you masturbate?”

He smiles. “Yeah.”

“I hear you do that too.”

“What?”

“You moan, dude.”

“Oh my god, what?” He straightens out, alarmed. “What?”

“I think you must be too high to notice but you moan. Not loudly but I can hear it. And then you fall asleep like a minute later and you start snoring.”

“Oh my god, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t mind. Guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right?”

He stares down. “Oh my god.”

“I know your masturbation schedule like the back of my hand.”

JJ giggles. “Oh, wow. Okay. Sorry.”

“I really don’t mind. Can you hear me jerking off?”

“No!”

“Okay, so you’re the loud one. Glad we cleared that up.” I put my arm back around him and get us back to cuddling. “You have to do all that to sleep?”

“Yeah.”

“What about all those times we hung out?”

“I’d have to sleeping pill myself, or else I’d just think about you all night.”

“Aww.”

“Ugh, and then I’d get these nasty wet dreams. I get wet dreams when I don’t jerk off, you know.”

“Really? About me?”

“About, uh…” He thinks about that for a second. “About you, once. I don’t really remember it. About East sometimes… or about just random people. Ramone a few times. That was a nasty era.”

“Woah. Like every time?”

“Pretty much.”

“What medication do you take again for your ADHD?”

He laughs. “You think this is a medication thing?”

“You are one horny horny dog is what I think.”

“Vyvanse.”

I find my phone and look up “vyvanse” and “hypersexuality” and sure enough results come up. “Dude, look at this.”

He reads my screen. “Woah. Woah.”

“And it’s also just linked to ADHD in general.”

“Am I just horny all the time because of my ADHD?”

I snicker. “Is that bad?”

“Wow. First I failed all of my classes in high school and now I’m horny all the time.”

“That’s right!”

We become silent for a moment. I look over at JJ and I can tell there are wheels spinning in his head.

“What’s up, dude?”

“Uh. Does it bother you that… we haven’t had sex?”

That’s a question. “We’ve been dating for a week,” I say, although truthfully I would have sex right now if he wanted to.

“But like. I don’t know, if I’m so sexual. Does that make sense?”

“Hm… do you want to talk about having sex, and maybe that’ll help clear this up?”

He nods.

“What are you thinking, dude?”

“Um. Um. Okay.” He swallows. “I feel like there is so much tension… between us…”

I giggle. “Yeah. Agreed.”

“And I’m… I don’t think… I feel bad that I’m putting it off, I guess, when there’s so many times that like… it could have happened, I guess. I guess I’m a little scared.”

“Why are you scared?”

“Because I love you, and… I’m worried things could change if we have sex. Like that things will be different.”

“Like I wouldn’t like you anymore?”

“Um… that we wouldn’t be… like guys anymore. Like, we’d be boyfriends. That makes no sense.”

“I think I get it. You’re worried about our relationship transitioning into something that it wasn’t originally.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a good way of describing it.”

I smile. “Dude. That’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, we just had a non-sexual conversation about how strong your libido is. That is like, the exact kind of thing we were talking about before. You brought up wet dreams and I was about to say something before I remembered I told you something like it that day I was sleeping on your floor for the first time. We’re still two dogs. Just dating now.”

He nuzzles his head into my shoulder. “You’re right.”

“Cool. Cool.”

“Um. Okay. Maybe can I suggest something?”

“Of course!”

“Can we pick a day to… have sex?”

I blush. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, nevermind. Sorry.”

“No, I was just surprised. Dude. Awesome. Yes.”

He smiles sheepishly. “I just think it would be good for my brain. To know it’s happening, you know?”

“You do realize…” I want to tell him that we are going to spend the entire day being so horny and so nervous, but I don’t want to back out on the offer now. “That sounds awesome. That sounds so awesome.”

“Umm… Saturday, maybe? So we don’t have work?”

“Yeah? You wanna? And you can say no at any time if you don’t want to?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Okay. It’s a deal.” I grin. “You wanna finish this episode, dude?”

“And the rest of the season?”

“We’ll see what we get to.”

PART 18

This damn dog.

We sit at the kitchen counter, eating eggs for dinner. Vampire Weekend plays over JJ’s speaker. The afternoon light is streaming through our windows. And his legs are shaking like he’s being battered by the ocean.

JJ stares at his plate, clinking the fork to tempered glass. I put a paw on his shoulder. We didn’t speak much today – he got stoned and watched Survivor and drew some comics like he usually does. I put my wetsuit on and went surfing like I usually do. I know exactly what’s ailing him, but I don’t want to say anything in case it’ll just pass and everything will be fine.

I take a deep breath in. I took a chance to ask him out and I have to take another chance now.

“How are you doin’, dude?”

“Okay.” He smiles nervously at me. He can’t hide anything from me, even when he’s trying.

“It’s Saturday.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And on Saturday, we agreed that…”

His tail is shaking. His legs are shaking. He covers the edge of his muzzle with his paw.

“Hey, dude, it’s cool if you don’t want to do this. You are allowed to not want to. We always agreed on that. I don’t mind.”

“No, it’s not that…”

“What is it?”

He rotates to me in his chair and spreads his legs. He is erect right now, boner clearly running down his right leg. Dare I say there is a spot of precum at the end of it.

“I am so fucking horny right now,” he whispers.

I grin so wide. “Dude, what are we doing eating eggs right now when–”

He’s still whispering, refusing to look me in the eyes. “Oh my god, you were out surfing all day and I didn’t want to bother you in case you… and then you made us eggs and I didn’t wanna–”

“JJ!” I jump up out of my chair. “Dude, oh my god. I would never surf again if you wanted to–” I shake my head. “Hey, look at me.”

He does so, which makes the instant erection I got even stiffer.

“Hey. Let’s go do this, okay? Let’s go do something fucking great, huh? Let’s go do something great.”

He smiles. “Take me.”

I grab his paws and pull him out of the chair, leaving our eggs on the kitchen counter to get cold. I lead him over to his bed and push him down. He lands softly, leaning on his forearms to look up at me with the cutest smile ever. His tail is batting the bed like crazy. His erection is pulsing even now.

I kneel above him, my legs around his thighs. I situate my paws right between his armpits and hold myself up, nothing crucial touching but everything oh so close.

“We can stop at any time,” I say. “And that’s for anything. If you want a break or want to talk about what we’re going to do or you want to stop entirely. Please don’t be nervous about saying so.”

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. Okay.”

“I can’t believe you let me go surfing when this is the state you were in.” I laugh. “Dude, were you just sitting here with a boner the whole day, or–”

“Oh my god, just kiss me.”

And I do. And it feels so fucking good.

I start just by licking his face. Give him the ol’ doggy lick. By the way I have myself pinned over him, it feels less like we’re about to have sex and more like we’re wrestling. That totally makes it make sense, somehow. We’re just two dogs wrestling. I kiss him all over his muzzle, all over his cheeks. I give him a lick on his neck and he lets out a loud moan. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear him moan until just now. Of course I’ve heard him moaning when he jerks off, but this is different. I did it. I made my boyfriend moan. I made my best friend moan. I fucking did it.

He’s not kissing me back just yet. I think he’s just taking it all in, letting me lap at his muzzle all I want. We’re both smiling so hard. It makes the whole thing a little hard to do, actually.

I push his face down into the bed. He closes his eyes and breathes out as I kiss his neck, probably doing his best not to cum this second. I have to readjust my grip and it ends up pushing our crotches together – feeling his bulge against mine is the best feeling in the world. That’s what a cock feels like.

And then he turns his face towards me and starts kissing me back.

His tongue is so soft. His mouth is so warm. Our spit becomes one as we lap at each other’s tongues. I let my upper body go as well and I am laying completely on him now. Both of our tails wag furiously together. We breathe in time. Our hearts beat in time.

I nip at his neck a little. He lets out another moan. “Thank you,” he whispers, barely audible. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

We do that for longer than I expect. I, of course, love making out. I can appreciate a nice long making out section, all wet and warm and fun. With our stiff cocks poking into each other and JJ spending the entire day in a horny stupor, though, I expected this to go a little faster. The only thing I can think about as we kiss is JJ. His beautiful body, his warm breath, the vibration in his arms. When an hour passes with nothing but making out, the music in the background keeping us in a lovely rhythm, I think nothing of it. Our shadows grow long as the sun begins to set outside.

“Hey,” he whispers between kisses. “Hey, can we…”

“Do you want to stop?”

“For a second.”

“Okay, okay.”

I pull just off of him. The bedsheets learned our bodies and shifted accordingly. I didn’t realize how sweaty it got until now, seeing that his water cycle tee-shirt is damp with our sweat. I pull a little further and I realize his shirt isn’t the only thing that’s wet – his dick is poking out of his sweatpants and pulling away from him stretched a thick string of precum between us. Of course his dick was poking out – there’s no way something that big would have fit in there otherwise – but it’s still so surprising to see. I look up at him with a goofy grin on his face and he smiles his nervous smile again.

“I don’t know how that got out,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Dude. Wet dog.”

“Can we take our shirts off?” he asks.

“What, with all the sweat?”

He is beaming. God he is so adorable. “Is that okay?”

“Yes, please.”

We take our shirts off together. As nice as our clothed period of early dating has been, it’s so nice to see JJ shirtless again. This is how this dog should be. He is as beautiful as the day I met him, muscular and slim in the way a construction worker is. He has arms built for moving heavy things around, beautiful soft pecs and a lovely stomach just begging to be pet. Of course his big doggy dick is poking out too, sitting in a little pool of precum.

“How about,” I say with a smile, “We take it one step further?”

JJ flaps his paws in front of his chest. “What are you thinking?”

“Why don’t we get this out too?” I place a hand on my bulge. “You wanna help?”

“Oh my god. Yes. Yes.”

He sits up and begins to unlace my board shorts. My dick pops out and hits my stomach.

“You’re so hot,” he says. “You’re so fucking hot.”

Look at our dicks together. The last time we had our dicks together like this, we were sitting in a tent in the middle of the woods. Even though neither of us say anything about it, we both take a second to compare cocks like all good dogs should do. He’s still bigger and thicker than me. It’s amazing that a person can have a cock like that at all. That doesn’t mean I’m not packing something good either – I’m still a good six inches – but my god.

“Are you ready to keep going?” I ask.

He grabs a sip of stale water sitting on the window sill and then nods. “Yes.”

I lie back down on him. Our dicks naturally find a good place next to each other and we start kissing again. We quickly settle back into our groove, but with the feeling of our dicks throbbing together, I can’t help but be distracted.

I find that a grinding motion helps the pressure from building up. I don’t even realize I’m doing it at first, but when JJ starts moaning expletives under his breath I realize I’ve been rocking us both back and forth for a few minutes now. I push my ass in and our dicks press together even further, then I pull back out.

Soon enough, we’re not kissing anymore. I squish my head into his and we face our muzzles towards the wall, our cheeks together. With each moan, I feel the breath leave his mouth and enter mine. He begins to grind with me, pushing his crotch into mine, pushing our cocks together.

“I need,” he whispers. “I need you to touch me.”

I pull up off of him. He is so beautiful, trembling on the bed, waiting for my touch. I realize as I pull my dick away that I’ve precum a little too, and I’m not a precummer.

I place my paw on his chest and start rubbing it. He closes his eyes and sticks his tongue out. As I rub his belly, he begins to pant. And as I bring my paw down to our dicks pushed together, he begins to shake once more.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

TO BE CONTINUED

HAWK x JJ

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4 + 5

PART 6

PART 7

PART 8

PART 9

PART 10

PART 11

PART 12

PART 13

PART 14

PART 15

PART 16

PART 17

PART 18