by David Connor
He tapped out “I love you” behind my ear as he squeezed me tightly at the airport, just as he had then and the day I’d left without him. I drew the shape of a leaf on his back over his shirt, just before letting my hand wander down to where he had one in permanent ink.
“Let’s go back to the house you’re renting and make love,” I whispered.
“Uh-uh.” He pulled away. “No way.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I don’t believe in that anymore.” I led him toward the exit.
“You’re just saying that because you’re horny.”
I laughed and thought about that. “No. I’m saying it, because… you and I aren’t competitors anymore, not right now, anyway, so we can do it all we want, at least this one time before I’m on lockdown in the village.”
“Oh.” His brows came together. He was obviously bouncing that idea around. “So, there was never a moratorium on sex, just sex with me?”
“That’s how I took it.” I enjoyed teasing him.
“Hmm.”
“You were there. Am I right?”
He thought some more. “Hmm.”
We walked slowly, hand in hand. “Besides, winning isn’t everything.”
He froze in his tracks—shocked.
“Oh. I’m going to win, but I’m not going to win every race. Not this time. That’s the reality. There will be a superstar here—my teammate—one of them. He’s not a bad guy either. I found out his hand’s as big as my whole head.”
“He had your head in his hand?”
I chuckled as we started walking again, and I told Mathias how I’d grown up. “I used my downtime to finally look up all the stuff I never had, like how a group of falcons is a cast and why the rainbow flag is a rainbow.”
“Why?”
“Look it up—the pink triangle too. Better yet, we need to talk to people. Cal’s boss, he knows this guy who’s a hundred—literally—a gay man of color. Imagine the things he’s seen and been through. Cal and I can’t wait to sit down with him.”
“And me. I want to come.”
“Of course. It’s important for our generation to know about the pioneers, I think, those who lived the beginnings of the civil rights movement and didn’t just learn about it in school.”
“You’re right.”
“See. I matured.”
“That’s good, though I also liked you the way you were, all arrogant and fueled with resentment and lust.”
Even without his grin, I’d have known he didn’t believe what he was saying. “That guy will be back as we get closer to 2020. I want gold in every race in Tokyo. That could be a reality. And by 2024, the entire country will want me to do it again. The definite reality now is I have waited so long to be with you I can’t wait another minute. At this point, it’s no longer frustration. It’s desperation, and I think if we wait, I’d just want the whole thing over with—the swimming—in order to get to you. That’s not good. This way, I can get with you, concentrate on what I came here for, and then get with you again after.”
“And you’re positive Coach Keller is going to be okay with that?”
“Unless you want to invite him to join us, he’s no longer interested. We both figure I can make those sorts of decisions on my own now. He trusts me… he said that… to know what I want and to do what I need to in order to get it.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
THE SAND was already warm between my toes, despite the early hour. The house was beautiful, of course, but I had no desire to go inside. We had a good stretch of private beach all to ourselves. Why leave that? I figured, and also, “Why are we wearing clothes?”
“Good question.”
“Come here.” I took Mathias’s shirt off. I looked at him, touched him, and kissed him. I knew we had to watch the damned clock. Otherwise, I would have taken all day just there.
Completely naked, unless one counted flip-flops, we kissed some more.
“I think it’s perfect here,” I said. I’d gotten him down on the sand, right near the water, where it lapped up as far as our thighs once in a while, teasing me like Mathias’s fingertips.
“You know where I wish we were? I wish we were at your house,” he said. “Or in your backyard under the tree. Of all the places I’ve been—and I’ve been to a lot, for swimming and with my family—I think that will always be the best.”
I got up.
“Where are you going?”
I ran back to where I’d seen a stick the perfect size. Mathias flipped over onto his gut to watch, and I envied the sand that felt his cock plunge deep down into it before my ass could. I started near his head and ran two long lines on either side. I had to think a moment. Though I had excelled at a great many things back in school, art had never been my forte. I decided to go with the kindergarten kind of tree that looked like a huge head of broccoli. Then, in the middle of the top part, I did my best to recreate one giant leaf.
“It’s a tree.”
“Yes. We’re under a tree. I’m not sure they have maple trees here.”
“Is that something we should know for sure?”
I chuckled as I settled in back beside him. “Probably.” The whole sky was orange, yellow, and purple, as the sun was still only partway up. “All the colors of fall in New York are right there, though.” I pointed upward, but when Mathias went to roll over to look, I threw myself on top of him. “No. Stay there.” I kissed my way down the back of his neck and the entire length of his spine. I slipped one hand under, so I could touch his cock too, as I prepared to eat his ass for the first time. “You know what I felt my very first time in the water?”
“What?”
“Horny.”
“With me? In our pool?”
“Even before that. I’m a little jealous of it, because you know how it gets everywhere? I mean, did you notice it touches everything, your chest, the head of your dick, your asshole? It didn’t feel all that much different in trunks or a Speedo than naked.” I took that back pretty quickly. “It did, of course, but you know what I’m saying.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish I could feel you everywhere.”
“You’re touching me everywhere.”
“Not really.” The fingers of my right hand were wrapped around his hard-on, and two fingers from the left were running up and down the split of his ass. “It’s different, you know?”
“No. Yeah. Because… stop a minute.”
“Stop?”
“Just a minute. And come up here and kiss me.”
I did as he asked.
“Close your eyes.”
I did that too. He kissed me.
“Now concentrate. I’m going to do it again.”
He did. I caught his tongue, and then kissed him back.
“Not just the lips, right?”
“Hmm. One more time,” I said. My eyes were still closed, but I felt him smile against my mouth.
“You got it.”
I was still on top of him, my stiff cock where my fingers had been. All of my front was on all of his back, and I still wanted more. Then I got what he was saying. Every time he kissed me, I felt it everywhere, not just my lips. “Yeah… you’re right. Yeah.”
“What. You get it?”
“Yes.”
“For real?”
“Truth.” I got an extra sensation with that word. He did too; I could tell by the shudder.
NATURALLY, WE had to get in the water, and of course, it turned into a race.
“I’m going to kick your ass,” Mathias said. “If FINA and NCAA Sports allowed nudity, I could have distracted you into losing every time.”
I couldn’t help but think of that ancient movie The Blue Lagoon and how my mother would turn it off whenever one of us kids came into the room. The moment we got Internet, I watched online—over and over—those few scenes she had to shield from us where Christopher Atkins swam naked. Staying beneath Mathias as we warmed up, seein
g the way parts of him shimmied under the surface, I thought he might have been right. It was entirely possible I would be too distracted and far too excited about what was about to happen next to beat him. I was going to try, though.
Not long after “Ready, set, go!” I swam up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, riding him almost, like I’d seen people do with dolphins. Our bodies intertwined, and I suggested, as we floated to the top, that we forget about the competition and just get on with the lovemaking. “We’ve waited a pretty long time.”
“You chickening out?”
I closed my legs tightly around him and twirled, taking us both down. I left him there, released him, and then rocketed back up to the surface, where I waited what seemed an eternity to make things fair. “The real race is back to shore. Go!” I smacked his bare ass hard, and off we went.
“You let me win,” he said as I wrapped my arms around him and lifted him up off the sand, both of us on shaky, waterlogged legs.
“Nuh-uh. Maybe I’m not used to competing naked. Or maybe… you should think about taking another run at things in four years.”
“Hmm.”
I kissed him. “Consider it. I’m not being bossy. I… I just want you to be sure.”
I took him down, closer to the water this time, so it could join in and play with us as he fucked me. I’d tasted his ass and his cock, his precum and his release when he exploded against the back of my tongue before our impromptu race. I hadn’t wanted anything to interfere with any of that, but now, the tickling waves at our feet would only enhance what we were doing. Mathias had carried a bag along when we’d left the villa. He’d left it on the beach, at the spot we were back to now, after exploring the area and playing in the sea.
“It’s like Coach Keller’s bag,” he said, pulling the zipper down the long black track.
I had to chuckle at that, because ours had sex supplies. We spread out a big, thick blanket. Mathias grabbed the condoms and some lube, tossed both aside and kissed me maybe a hundred times. I got down on my back when the kisses and both of our thickening dicks left me desperate for his to go inside me. I opened my knees and took a deep breath. I held it as he got down on his and leaned over to smear some blue gel, warm from the sun that had penetrated the nylon bag, around my asshole.
“That feels nice,” I said.
Mathias kissed my forehead and then rolled a condom down his fat, throbbing cock. “You ready?”
Taking his arms in both hands, I held him still a brief while. “In a sec.”
“What?”
“I’m just trying to decide if I like you better with or without hair.” I’d felt its prickliness as I’d rubbed against him, but it was hard to see anything yet, as the down on his body, even at its fullest was so fair.
“And what’s the consensus?”
“I love you… period.”
“Good answer. I feel the same way. Though I still can’t wait to pick hair from my teeth when you’re all Big Foot beastly again.” He shoved me back.
“Wait. One more thing.”
Mathias growled with frustration. “What?”
“When you look at me… what do you see?”
He answered quickly. “The man I love.”
“Do you ever think about my skin color? My ethnicity?”
His response took a while now.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I don’t think I ever did. Is that wrong? Should I?”
His uncertainty made me smile—and also want to kiss him—so I did both. “I’m not sure. I never did… back when I was really little… not a lot. Then Jeff Ackerman asked what I was. Since then, I can’t seem to stop. That’s not necessarily bad, I figure.”
“You’d maybe like to know for sure?”
“Maybe. Not right now. Thanks for being honest. We’ll definitely talk about it more.” I attacked him with kisses. “Later on. Now I want us to fuck.”
I hissed as he entered me, gently shoving the widest part of his girth past the tightest part of my opening.
“You all right?”
I made another sound in place of words and hoped he’d take it as affirmative, because I wanted him all the way in, until I could feel the scratchy hair in his pubic area on my smooth, sweaty skin and hear his balls as they slapped against me with every thrust. The intimacy of our first time, just the two of us on that beach in a place where six and a half million people lived and hundreds of thousands more were expected to visit over the next couple of weeks, had me feeling as if there were no other people in the world. As he pushed deeper and deeper up into me, grinding his lower gut against my swollen, eager cock, it was just Mathias and me. I buried my face in his neck and licked at the beads of perspiration as salty as the water we’d swum in at our private lagoon and his cum when he’d released early on into my mouth. I could tell by the slowing of the rhythm and the thickening of his already fat shaft that he was ready to go again. I told him I loved him one more time, with the touch of my fingers—dot dot; dot dash dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot dash, dot; dash dot dash dash, dash dash dash, dot dot dash—and in words. “So much. And I need you, here and back home… always.”
“I believe it,” he said. “I feel it, and I love you right back.” And then he bit my nipple and I felt his heat inside. He drove me into the soft sand, pushed me backward some, and the coolness of the water contrasting with the temperature of his body and the flexing and pumping deeper and deeper made me shiver. A long string of clear, shimmering fluid came from my slit and stuck to his pelvis as he bucked back one last time. Mathias collected it on his finger and then fell against me, bringing it to both of us. As our mouths came together again, he pulled out of my ass. That sensation itself—one totally new to me—brought unbelievable pleasure and sent a jolt to my gut I often felt while competing.
I came with him grinding against me, covering both of our cocks in my cum. Mathias continued to rub in it afterward, and that drove me crazy. I made a noise that had never, to the best of my recollection, come out of me before.
He laughed. “Is that a happy sound?”
“It was a lot of emotions all in one.”
“Yeah?”
“Contentment, happy, for sure, nervous, excited, anxious, eager, determined….”
“All that? Not just my dick?”
I kissed him. “A lot of stuff… years and years of it… is kind of all—Boom!” I clapped my hands together over our heads. “Coming all together. Since fourth grade, you were in the back of my head, and the Olympics was too. I just didn’t know how yet. It feels like ten minutes ago and sometimes a hundred years.”
I WAS still thinking like that as I stood with the rest of the US delegation as we waited to march out into the stadium to start the Games of the thirty-first Olympiad. We wouldn’t have to wait as long as I’d initially thought. Like I always had back in school, even college, because of my last name, I’d figured our team would come toward the end of the Parade of Nations alphabetically. Imagine my delight when I learned we’d be marching out with the E’s, because in Portuguese we were Estados Unidos da América. Just like when Mrs. Smeckler started at the back of the grade book, I dug that.
Modern technology meant not only could everyone maybe see me, but I could see them watching. As we stood there antsy with anticipation, just as I had during that vocabulary bee that sort of started it all, I could scroll through pictures Mathias and Devon sent of the two of them hanging out—just as impatient—and my parents still holding hands.
I’d heard from just about everyone I’d come in contact with on my way to the Olympics, from my band teacher and drama club director, to my Academic Olympics coach, and, of course, the one who’d first brought me and Mathias together.
“You always knew what you wanted to be, Reed. You worked hard and made it happen. So proud.”
I had messages from all my captains from Cloverton too. Captain Falcon had chosen a picture of the two of us as his avatar on social media and proudly put in
his profiles I know this guy! Go, Reed! Team USA!
Everyone from school—Mike, Trish, Shawn, and Joss from swim team, Christine and Johnny from Academic Olympics, and even Jeff Ackerman—sent congratulations. Caryn, of course, was the first and most frequent well-wisher.
My favorite post was from the boy who had written me to tell me he was gay and feared he would never be accepted by his father, because they were African American.
“I don’t get it, really,” I’d said to Mathias when we first had read it together. “How me coming out would make a difference.”
“Somehow, it did. Justin said so.”
Justin was the boy’s name. He was fourteen. He was way ahead of me as far as revealing his true self to his parents.
Thank you, he wrote. I think things are going to be OK. I showed my dad the story on the “Out and In” website. Then I showed him your parents, and the part in the article where you said both of them were always supportive, loving, concerned, a little nosy, and totally great. All I said to my father was “What if…” and then he threw his arms around me and we cried. I might have to find out later why he was crying. I know why I was—because of how bad I wanted that hug—but I wonder what he was thinking. He promised to never desert me. That’s what I was afraid of. He swore he could never hate me. That was what almost killed me. Thank you, Reed, for your honesty and all your help.
“I still don’t think I did a whole lot,” I had said to Mathias as we’d read the note.