Writer to Reader

I watch him sleep, but he doesn’t know it.

Several times I’ve woken during the night, bewildered by the pale light diffusing through the plastic blinds. My week at my dad’s house hasn’t helped my confusion. Each time I rouse asking myself the same questions: Am I in my bed at home? Or in the first house I bought? Or is this my father’s home and my old bedroom? Who's this beside me?

The false dawn is from a streetlight on a strange avenue. I’m in a state I’ve never before visited, naked in a stranger’s bed. My lover is a reader of my blog, who reached out to offer the comforts of his body on my drive home from Virginia. And every time I make the same startled realization, I become aware of that body beside my own, curled into a naked, white comma. His soft breathing is like a sleeping cat’s. It comforts me, and I sink back beside him, happy again to drown in the dark beneath the windowsill.

But now it really is after dawn. The weakest of sunlights has transformed the room’s shadows into actual objects: my sweatshirt and pants on the ground, crumpled where they fell. My knapsack in the corner, not touched since I dropped it there on my arrival. Books in shiny library wrappers on the shelves beside the bed, their titles nearly legible in the room’s blue-grey haze. A clock-radio on the floor, with its cord trailing to an outlet impossibly far away.

He’s lying there on his right side. His chest rises and falls gently. So deeply is he asleep that he doesn’t notice me separating our sticky bodies. I rest my head on my right hand, and watch him. We’ve been sharing a pair of quilts all night, huddling beneath them for warmth like boys on a sleepover. I’d meant to ask the night before who in his life had taken the time to sew the little patches together with such careful stitches, but other things had taken precedence.

Sometime in the previous hour he’d shed the quilts so that they covered only his pajamaed legs. His naked chest is a slender reed, pale and soft in the light creeping through the room. It’s hairless, save for his nipples, from which dark hairs hang like Spanish moss. His hair, wavy and thick but soft to the touch, lies in messy curls. His upper lip is clean-shaven, but a painter’s stroke of a beard covers his jawline, broad and dark. A knot of gray hairs interrupts that bold brush mark; they’re the same pale gray as the circlet of gray above his left temple. The evening before, when I’d pulled into the parking lot of his building and had seen him standing there at the back door, waiting and anxious for my arrival, I’d noticed that clump of gray. That and his wide, hazel eyes had put me in mind of a tufted owl—alert and watchful.

Through closed lids those eyes now dart back and forth, pursuing something in his dreams. He’s so deeply asleep that he doesn’t notice when I brush the curls away from his forehead to take a good look at the disfigurement they conceal. There’s an ugly zigzag of a cut there, a Harry Potter blemish that’s still scabbed and angry. Every time I’ve seen that scar I’ve wanted to pull him close to me, to hold him until both it and his memories of it vanish. There’s something about his face, his fetal position, his vulnerability that makes me want to rescue him, to whisk him away from all the world’s dangers. But I am no white knight, and he is no damsel in distress. He’s simply warm, and sleeping, and so very pretty, and trustful enough to dream while he lies in my arms.

He shifts again, spooning closer. His lips curve into the slightest of smiles as his cool back makes contact with the warmth of my stomach. “Hi,” he murmurs, his eyes opening to slits. With a sigh that sounds contented, he writhes backward until he’s completely snuggled against me.

“Hi,” I whisper. Once again I brush away his messy curls from his face. “How’d you sleep?”

His answer is unintelligible. It doesn’t matter. I’m more interested in the way his round ass is pushing against my groin. I don’t even realize how rigid I’ve been until he grinds against my hardness, up and down, up and down, sliding his crack against my cock. I reach down and rub my hand over the softness of his stomach. His hipbone digs against my forearm as I wrap my fingers around his penis. It’s like stone in my hand, made hot by baking in the sun.

His neck cranes as he turns his head over his shoulder to plant a soft kiss on my lips. Though I’m worried about my breath, I return the gesture. My hand dives lower; the elastic of his waistband slips down beneath his balls. His naked, furry butt grinds against me more insistently, and then he’s grabbing my dick and rubbing the head against his hole. I want to be inside him, like I was the night before, but I hesitate.

“You don’t have to do that,” I protest. When we'd fucked before we'd fallen asleep, he was so unused to a cock of my size that I’d hurt him. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t even known, until he’d told me afterward, that he’d bled a little.

“I want to,” he murmurs. “I want us to.”

Before I know it, he’s put me on my back. He’s gripping my dick so tightly that he seems to be hanging on for dear life. His hole is so tight, so resistant. But then I’m in, just an inch. Then two. “Oh,” I breathe softly, as he stares at me with those big, hazel eyes. I slip in deeper. “Oh. Oh, oh.”

He’s in pain again, I can tell. His legs shake as he slides up and down. He wants to please me, though, I can tell. I’ve traveled hundreds of miles out of my way for him, and he’s determined to make me remember and not regret my impulsiveness. “Lie down on your stomach,” I urge, more worried for him than anxious for anything I might desire. “Like you did last night. Just promise to tell me if I hurt you.”

His ass is beautiful as it turns itself up in the air. I spit on my dick to make it slicker and slide in. Soon I’m up to the base, and he groans with pleasure. I wrap my arms around his chest. Our fingers entwine as he grabs at them while I begin to stroke in and out. He’s tight like a boy, or like a warm, wet vise. It isn’t long before he speaks up, sounding nervous and worried. “Can you come quickly?” he frets, sounding apologetic. I can tell he’s on the edge of his endurance.

Usually I can’t shoot on command, but I want to give him what he plainly desires. I’m already turned on to the point that my skin is tingling and the base of my cock prickles with heat. The sensations of his hairy hole surrounding my cock are pulling me closer and closer with every thrust. I want to fill him up.

Then he murmurs three words guaranteed to make me fill him, as he stares at me over his shoulder, his head pressed against the pillows.

The words work. My breathing halts, and I hear myself groaning as I shove myself deep. My dick throbs, seizes, and before I can say anything, I’m delivering deep inside the load he so badly wants. “I can feel it,” he whispers, wonder filling his voice. “Oh, I can feel it.”

I pause for a moment, and pull out before he’s in too much pain. Then I hold him in my arms and wish away the hurts.

“If you blog about this,” he tells me at one point, “I don’t want you hold back. Don’t be anything but yourself.” He’s serious, but as he speaks I can't really hear the words he’s saying. All I can think is how adorable I find his sweet face. How pretty he looks. How I wish I could stay with him for days, weeks, or longer. I’ve a long road home ahead, though, and I can’t remain. Even though I want to. “Don't change anything just because you know I'll be reading. Say what you want to say.”

All right, then. Here’s what I want to say: I loved the night I spent with you in that untidy bedroom on that strange avenue in a state I've never visited before. I loved the smell of you, the peanut-butter taste of you, your hungry kisses, and the affection and kindness you lavished upon me.

But the sweetest part of all was when you were at your quietest and most unguarded. I’m honored to have watched you while you slept—though at the time you didn’t know it.

But once you read this entry, you will.