It was the final thought that made him pop a boner. he’d rushed to the bathroom and locked himself in one of the stalls. he was so flustered he didn’t do the usual check for stale shit sitting in the toilets, and so he’d found himself facing a toilet bowl with the stench and visible evidence of someone taking a massive dump hours before.

The lucky part of this mishap was the immediate deflation of his boner before anyone noticed. Naturally, he couldn’t stop thinking about his body’s reaction to something as mundane as his friend’s back. So, when he got home that night he’d done what any fifteen year old would do in his situation— look up gay porn. 

And he didn’t hate it. he got hard like before, but couldn’t quite bring himself to follow through with masturbating. he felt foreign in his own body, like someone had rented it and he was returning to stains on white carpet that were impossible to remove. 

he finally got his answer a few weeks after this foray into gay porn. It was some cheerleader’s party and one of the male team members kept looking at him from the corner across the living room. his friend was nowhere to be found and he’d thought it was his best chance to get an answer. 

What an answer it was. 

Being intimate with a man required more prep work, which he at first was admittedly bad at. But being inside a man’s ass was just as warm and tight as being inside a woman. It had felt just as good, if not better, but it took him a while to find release. Since then, whenever he sleeps with men, it takes him twice as long to orgasm as  when he slept with women. 

The day he realized his feelings for his friend had morphed into something entirely new was the night of graduation from university. At the time, He was dating some chick who always chewed gum with her mouth wide open. Rather than party with her and their friends, he decided to actually celebrate, and went to the strip where the gay bars were. 

After he and his prey for the night locked themselves in a bathroom stall, his hips had ruthlessly thrusted forward. No matter how many times his partner for the night clenched around him and sucked on his sweating flesh, he couldn’t get off. As his partner leaned forward, gripping the wall for balance, he was briefly reminded of his friend’s back that day, years ago. 

And he came immediately, so forcefully that his release spilled onto the floor. In the aftermath he was disgusted with himself and what he’d done. he thanked the Universe that he had a train ride home the next morning. Sitting by himself, falling in and out of sleep as the train chugged home, he kept thinking about his friend and what his shifting feelings meant.  It resulted in the longest he went without seeing Him.

Every time he dozed off, images of his friend in compromising positions plagued him, all of them involving his friend covering him with His larger body, gripping, scratching, biting at his slippery skin as He desperately took him over and over again. he realized, as the train came to a stop in front of the station that he had feelings for his best friend of some twenty-odd years, and that maybe he’d always loved Him.