I Never

I never wanted to like you as much as I did when we first met. We were kids then, snot-nosed and zit-ridden, talking about our big futures underneath summer stars like Germany’s skies weren’t gonna end. Like I wasn’t going to catch one hell of a beating if dad found out. He didn’t raise no homo. He’da smacked me right back to the States if he found out.

I never wanted to look as long as I did when you tucked your bangs behind your ears and talked about situational bisexuality. I never wanted to kiss you, I swear. It just sorta happened. Life’s a bitch like that sometimes. One moment, your mom’s chased you outta the house because she found a skin mag your dad gave you, the next your worrying about not cumming in your pants while this guy you barely know is in your lap doing this thing to your ear.

I never should have fucked you. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. One moment we’re both beating off and then I’m on top of you, I’m between your legs, and I’ve only touched a real live pussy once in my life but I’m scared when I start to think this is better, this is so much better. The way you sounded that night, I finally got it.

I finally got it why adults called it ‘making love.’ Why it got such an elegant name. You were gorgeous. You’re still so fucking gorgeous.

And it’s wrong for me to think about you like this. I remember the night I found out: we were sucking down beers at a punk club. We talked about the band we figured we’d never really put together. I was looking at your lips around that bottle. Looking too much. You saw. You took me by the wrist to the bathroom.

It didn’t take much for me back then – hell, regarding you, it never takes much. Right there against that filthy wall covered in a language I still don’t speak well, you gave me the best blowjob of my young life. How old were we then, fifteen, sixteen? We were way too young for that. You were way too young to be good at that.

And yet there you were, mouthing me through my torn jeans and looking like the son the Devil had with an Angel. That’s human beings are, right? Both at the same time. You unzipped me. You licked me.

You laughed at tapped at the head and said, “You are circumcised. That means you’re less sensitive, ja?”

Like I could say no or yes right then. You swallowed me whole. And when I fucked your mouth, you sucked some part out of me that never came back.

(I never cum in your mouth anymore. No one gets everything of mine. Not even you.)

Loopy with teenage infatuation, I led you back out to the bar and ordered you another beer. When we were on the beer after that, I said, “So where’d you learn to do a thing like that?”

“From Kristoph,” you said, and you were wearing the sunglasses even back then. You didn’t like for the world to know how coldly you observed them.

You were waiting for my answer and I stumbled for one, “Like, he gave you a porn magazine? He told you about it?”

“He made me do it.” You shrug and I excuse myself, think I’m gonna throw up but I don’t. I get in a fistfight with a guy on the way out. No big deal, it’s a punk club.

I felt so much better, though.

I know now, looking back, that slump in your shoulders was saying, “Save me, Daryan. Save me before it’s too late. You have a chance now, Daryan. Take it. Take me away from all this.”

What the hell did I know back then? I was scared shitless. I didn’t know what to think. I’m sorry I didn’t call you, man. I’m sorry I ran away. And it’s the goddamn truth that dad got re-located. My sister got knocked up by some jackass. It was time to go home.

And the next time we meet you’re older, not that much older but enough older. It’s the USA now, my territory, but you’re already a lawyer, somehow. You’re a lawyer just like your big brother, but you think you pitch for the side of good. You’ve got a leather jacket but the first thing you do is sneer at my cigarettes. The words formed before I had a chance to think: “Fuck you. The hell do you know about it, queerbait?”

And your lower lip trembled and it’s hard to believe you were blowing me in your bedroom four hours later. Kristoph came home and didn’t say a thing, didn’t turn on a single light in the apartment but the one in the bathroom across the hall. He sat on the toilet. He watched. He didn’t say a fucking thing. I didn’t tell you. I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t believe me.

He was gone before I finished. I sprayed on your face and you got pissed off because I got you in the eye. “So next time, wear those sunglasses.”

“Those sunglasses cost almost three hundred dollars,” you sniffed, and went into the bathroom.

I leaned in the doorway, looking at the crack of light under the door of Kristoph’s room. I watched you trying to clean out your eye and swearing in German, cursing me up and down to hell, probably. I watched you and I thought I really wanted to fuck you, not just that between-the-legs thing we did last time.

“Your brother ever fuck you?” I asked it slow like honey, the words so thick they barely rolled off my tongue.

And you had that beautiful look in your eyes. Rabbit in the headlights, eyes darting.

“Ja,” you finally said. “But a lot of time, he can’t get it up. Never could. So he just puts things inside, or makes me suck him off.”

Those words hung so dreadfully in the air you tried to clear them up with a laugh. “It’s not like it happens that much.”

I never should have fucked you that night, or any other night. I did it anyway. I did every depraved thing I could think of. Licked your ass. Sucked your cock and your balls. Pinched you, slapped you, scratched you. Anything to make you scream, make you cum. To prove to that bastard in the next room I was better.

I made you feel good. And he listened to every moan, every breath, every scream, trying to coax some life out that sick, limp dick of his. Thinking like that, I always came hard. Barely remembered to pull out right before I did.

Thing is? I hated him. Still hate him. I was punishing him, because every time I was inside you, I thought about him. I thought about what this must’ve done to you. I was training up to become a detective. I studied psychology. I knew you were already growing into a steady steam of hurt that I’d never be able to drain or dam. Someday it’d overflow and we’d both be swept away. There was nothing I could do, and I was wrong to look at you if it was even slightly the same way your brother did.

Tonight, in the hotel room after the concert, I’m fucking you up against a window overlooking the pool. It’s you and me, baby, we’re the whole world. You’re scrabbling for a hold but there’s nothing to be had against slick glass. You pound on it then, and it could crack the glass. We could fall and be slashed to ribbon, bleeding into the turquoise pool -- that blue as bright as your gaze, as cold as your brother’s eyes.

He’s in here in the room with us now, even while he’s in prison a hundred miles away. He’s looking through his glasses with the gentlest smile. He’s twelve and you’re four and he’s sticking a Maglite up your ass because he wants to see what will happen. And when you sob out your orgasm, he’s there, looking over my shoulder, judging me for needing you like I do.

But you’re far from here, somewhere else entirely. I still don’t speak much German and you still don’t make much sense. I practically have to carry you to bed.

What have I done to you, treating you like this? When I ask what you want you only ever reply with a little grin I can’t read. I know pretty soon you’ll drift so far I won’t be able to see it, and the gall tastes like bile in the back of my mouth, sour, painful and constant.

Thinking like that makes me crazy, man. I dunno.

I never should’ve let you get mixed up with me.

End Notes: The shifts between tenses is on purpose - mimicking the way people tend to tell stories, going into present-tense when things are particularly vivid. After conferring with on it a bit, I decided not to change a single thing about how I originally wrote this stream-of-consciousness fic. I felt polishing it would take away from its bite - so take it as it is, scabs and mistakes and all.