as boys do

The challenge: write something as erotic as possible!

They call it The Common. It's a wood actually: not many people wandered down there back then. It was near my grandparents’ house where we stayed that summer. My mother made me promise not to go there – something vague about strange men who hung around there. But I pushed the boundaries, as boys do: I used to go there almost every day and never saw any strange men. 

But on that particular day, I suddenly had the feeling there was someone else there. I had come to the clearing where the stream runs, as usual; bracken all around, waist high. This was my favourite spot, so calm and peaceful. I lay down by the stream and felt the pure joy of the sun on my face and of being alone.  Then through the ferns, close by, there was movement. Was it a flash of tanned skin?

'I thought there was someone there,' he said. He stood up. I was suddenly nervous, scared, couldn't speak. Not fear – it was this sudden closeness to someone so perfect.

And to me, he was perfect. Maybe a couple of years older, dark hair, a serious suntan, wearing faded Levis and nothing else.

He was smiling. I felt I had to say something. I sat up.

'I … I was just …' It was like I had to apologise.

'It's OK.' His smile grew wider: a huge infectious grin. 'Dead quiet here. Nobody ever comes in the week. You like it here too?' he said. The local accent. His blue eyes had fixed mine and I couldn't look away, though I felt I was staring. His eyes held me in their grip.

I wanted to say something clever, or at least sensible, but nothing came out. 'Yeah, dead quiet,' I said eventually.

He pushed through the ferns into my clearing. 'You don't live round here.' He looked at me closely. 'Holiday?'

'Yeah.' I leaned forward and hugged my knees, but still kept looking. There was a pause. 'I – I was just going to take my shirt off'. I don't know where this came from. I just said it.

'Go on then – you should. It's hot,' he said. Still grinning madly, the grin of someone who knows a secret, and who knows you know it too. 'I usually have a splash in the stream.'

I can't remember how but then we were both in the stream, in our underpants. And suddenly we were friends, splashing each other, just playing together, as boys do. I could talk, and laugh, and joke. But already I knew it was about more than just what boys did. I'd never done anything so intimate with a stranger, not even with the friends I fancied at home, and I suddenly realised I was very obvious in my briefs, and I got nervous again.

'Where you staying?' he said. I knew exactly what he meant when he said it: that grin again.

'With my grandparents – they're always in the house.' I answered the question he'd really asked.

He suddenly looked very serious. My eyes followed the line of his chest, his muscular arms, his brown torso against his white shorts. The unmistakable bulge there.

He quickly looked around, his eyes darting left and right, then back to me again. He lived very close, he told me. His mother worked every day. The house was empty. Now. His eyes were boring into me. His hand was moving down his body, feeling himself through the white fabric of his underwear. Unconsciously. Consciously.

We didn't need to say anything more. We dressed quickly.

* * * * *

We were lying down side by side in a derelict old building by the beach, a bunker left over from the war. We’d walked for miles after crossing on the ferry. I had wondered where he was taking me, it was so far. But by now I knew him well enough to know it would be something new, something exciting. There was no-one around and the beach was beautiful here. And so the afternoon slipped by.

We lay on the towels – wet from our swim and our sweat – on the hard floor, listening to the waves and seagulls, looking at the sky through the slit where a gun emplacement must have been. The breeze cooled our slithery bodies. A slash of sunlight swept across his body, the only brightness in the dim interior.

He sighed again. We were both in a half dream-like state, tired from the walk; and from the swimming, diving through the surf like little kids, pushing at each other, splashing, laughing, as boys do. And from the sex. My head rested on his arm, against his chest.

He started to tell me about his life before I met him. I had realised of course that I wasn’t his first.

How he used to come here to this very place in the summer with his cousins; how they’d messed around, flicking towels, pulling each other’s swimming costumes down, laughing, playing. Then one day he’d come just with the oldest of the three, the same age as him. How they’d started off in just the usual way and then it had started to get serious.

‘My cousin picked up the towel and came over to me and started drying my back. He’d never done that before. I thought it was strange. So I did the same to him. He turned around as if to say dry the front as well. I was still laughing, but I was a bit nervous. Like you were the first time, remember!

I tried to turn it into a game. He caught hold of my hand and pushed it down, over his chest, his stomach. He was looking into my eyes. I looked down. Now my hand was on his swimming trunks. I could feel him, hard as anything. We both were.’

In my mind it was me taking hold of Gary’s hand, me taking the lead. He sat up and turned his head to me, smiled. ‘Not again!’ he said. I looked down. We both were too.

‘He put his arms round me and held me tight, over there against the wall. I didn’t know what to do. I just let him. It didn’t seem like a game but it was still … fun. We pulled our trunks off. We looked down at our cocks, side by side. His was bigger than mine…’

‘Never!’

'Shut up!'

I could imagine him feeling it curiously, like it was something you find on the shore washed up by the sea, as I had with his, that first day in his house.

'…and he took mine in his hand. I did the same to him. Then he bent down and started to suck me off. It was so unexpected. It was like, ten times better than wanking myself off.’

He laughed at the inadequacy of the words. ‘You know what I mean.’ He smiled tenderly at me.

In my mind it was me sucking him. I knew every inch of his beautiful cock now, my tongue craved the feel of it and the taste. I shut my eyes and saw it in front of me, looked up at his head above me, his body pressed against the cold wall.

‘Then he stood up and spat on his hand. He turned me around to face the wall. Pressed his body against me. I knew what he was going to do, like. It hurt at first, really hurt. I s’pose I’d always imagined it would. Then it didn’t hurt – or I didn’t feel. I just wanted him to – fuck me.’

It was the first time I’d heard him use the word. It seemed to be shocking, forbidden: thrilling.

I wanted to be doing it. I wanted to be fucking him, like his cousin had, up against that wall, forcing his body against it.

He could see I was excited. So was he now. I sat up and moved my hand across his chest, urgently. We kissed, hard, our tongues forcing against each other. It was like we were fighting. We stood up, grappled with each other, kissing, biting, grabbing at arms and chests. He pushed me over to the wall. He tried to get me to face it.

I resisted; he was surprised, almost annoyed at first. Then his face softened. He slowly turned, arching his back with his legs rigid and spread, his arms out across the width of the wall.

He made a sound as I pushed – pleasure, pain, I didn’t know. I moved my hands to his waist, then tight around him. Now I was really pushing, pushing him hard against the wall, using my arms gripping his body to lever myself into him. My whole being was reduced to pure sensation, everything else ceased to exist. Just me – fucking – him.

The rush was indescribable.

Afterwards, I swung around so that my back was against the cool wall beside him. My heart was beating madly, louder than the sea. My breath was in short violent gasps. I felt I was going to faint. I looked across to Gary, still in the same position, head down, back arched. I saw the glistening patch on the wall in front of him. I nuzzled up to him and gently kissed the side of his head. He turned his face to me. For a second, we looked so serious: then we laughed. Cuddled and laughed.

‘Did you do it again with your cousin?’

‘What? – Of course I did, stupid.’

We collapsed in a giggling heap, two naked boys in a derelict concrete bunker by the gently lapping sea. Then he pulled me to my feet. The shaft of light fell across his face, dazzling. I saw he was suddenly serious.

'This is my dream,' he said. I was shocked – not that he had echoed my own thought, but that someone like me could feature in his dream. I didn't think of myself as desirable until that moment. 'Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I've been dreaming – this, you and me – and I've got a raging hard-on.' Then, unexpectedly, he blushed to have said these words out loud. He gave me a wry smile. For a moment he seemed vulnerable. I loved him for it.

I loved him.

'I wish this could last forever,' he said.

And I wanted to say, 'Why not? This is my dream too'. It will last forever, I thought. As boys do.

I should have known.