Entry Level 02 (Patreon)

Everyone is 18+ and fully consenting.

Weekend story update: As I said in my post last week, every weekend, I’ll be adding a new chapter to a longer story. It’s going to be a novel, and you guys are the first eyes to see it! Enjoy the second chapter of Entry Level!

Chapter 2: Taste

I woke up Sunday with the couch scene already replaying in my head before I'd fully remembered where I was.

My mind didn’t give me a grace period in the morning. I opened my eyes and flashes from the night before were waiting for me. The porn. The rubbing. When he stood up. His hand around both of our manhoods.

And when I blew my load unexpectedly. 

When my heart really started to race, when he said handjobs aren't free, and looked at me without blinking. The part where he rejected my offer, but didn’t say “no”. He said he was too sober for that, which I had turned over so many times in my head that it had lost all meaning.

But I relaxed. By the time I'd put on underwear and shuffled to my door, I was laughing about it. I heard Decker in the kitchen, probably standing there in his underwear. Or maybe even naked. Maybe that would be the norm now? I stood there for a second with my hand on the doorknob. I shook my head at nothing in particular, and then I went out.

He was at the counter making coffee. Boxer briefs, no shirt. His back to me, one hand braced on the counter while the machine ran, looking at his phone. The boxer briefs hugged his glutes in a way that I felt strange for noticing. His back and shoulders looked toned. Even the backs of his arms were defined, and he was just standing there doing nothing.

"You want some?" he said, without turning around.

"Yeah, thanks."

He reached up to the high shelf for a second mug, and the motion pulled his muscles upward, his arm, his lats, the full length of him stretched. I watched his bicep and thought about how big it actually was up close, what it would feel like to wrap both hands around it and find out. Then he glanced back at me and I turned to look out the window at the building across the street.

He handed me the coffee. I took it. He leaned against the counter and looked at his phone again, his face sleepy and focused.

We didn't talk about the night before. Not a single word, not a look, nothing. He was just Decker in the morning, chill and unbothered, the same as he was about everything. I matched his energy. He made it easy to do so, probably without even realizing it.

It was a relief. It was also its own specific kind of torture. Both of those things at the same time, for the entire cup of coffee.

—[]—

Over the next couple days, we settled into a routine, and it started to feel like a whole life.

We got bagels almost every day at the same stand on 34th street in the mornings, same lunch table. We walked home together most nights, stopping for groceries sometimes, coming back and figuring out dinner. Decker liked to cook pasta, a few different ones, different shapes and sauces. I would sit at the kitchen island and chat with him while he cooked. I wasn't much help in the kitchen and I'd said so. "You're good," he'd said, stirring something without turning around. "Just keep me company."

He had opinions about each different pasta type, and I would listen to him tell me about them while I ate his work.

We sat around and watched stuff, we laughed at things, and we sat around in our underwear. It didn’t take long to get used to it.

He had a pull-up bar mounted in his doorframe and a set of dumbbells in the corner of his room, and working out became another thing that he did more and more around the house. At first, I would just sit around, doing work and chatting with him while he got sweaty, making the room warm and smelling like a man, until he finally finished. He would end with a stretching routine on the floor, a bit of light yoga on all fours, his shiny pecs rhythmically gyrating with his heavy breath before he would head into the bathroom in various states of undress to shower. I couldn’t admit it to myself, but I thought it was calming when he would drop his underwear casually on the way to the bathroom. It felt like camaraderie.

Sometime in the second week, he must’ve noticed me staring a lot, and he got me started working out with him. The gyms in Manhattan cost a stupid amount of money, so this was kind of the only reasonable way to work out. I'd been meaning to actually exercise more since approximately junior high, so it was an easy yes when he made it look this easy, and this attractive. We'd do it in the evenings before dinner sometimes, even spreading out the activity into the living room, and he'd correct my form on things in a matter-of-fact way that wasn't condescending, just competently helpful. He grabbed my hips once and adjusted my body while I did standing squats, and the touch was warm. I almost dropped the weights.

By the end of the week I was sore in places I hadn't known were capable of being sore, random muscles around my hips and sides that I didn’t know existed.

We were standing in the kitchen after one of those sessions, both of us in our underwear, sweating, catching our breath. 

“My soreness was insane after the first day,” I said, “but it’s gotten easier every day since.”

Decker nodded, half smiling. 

"Maybe that applies to a lot of things," he said. He narrowed his eyes at me slightly. Then he went to the fridge for water and didn't elaborate.

We started talking about something else, and I guess he decided it had been long enough that he wanted to talk about what happened the weekend before.

“So, are you always a… quick trigger?”

I chuckled and got shy about it, which I couldn't fully hide.

“It happened to me before,” he said. “A thousand times, basically.”

"Really," I said, which wasn't quite a question.

"Yeah," he said. "And my brothers were ruthless about it." He dropped his underwear right in front of me, letting it all hang out, and I lost my train of thought before I could ask for more details, and he rustled off toward the bathroom.

—[]—

Another thing that quickly became cemented into my daily life was Tony. The broey, often annoying guy from work quickly became a permanent fixture in our text threads and a constant low-grade presence at the office. He wanted to go out every night, armed with fake IDs that nobody at any of the places we went actually asked to see. He narrated his own social life like a sportscaster and expected the same enthusiasm in return.

On Friday, after what had apparently been a long Thursday night for him, he was at the intern desk cluster going on about everything crazy that “we” were going to get up to that evening, listing venues, delineating various possibilities, asking rhetorically who was going to “titty fuck” a girl tonight and then answering the question himself. Decker sat across from him, nodding in the right places, eyes on his screen.

I texted Decker from my desk: We actually going out with him tonight?

The response came back in under thirty seconds: Fuck that.

We looked at each other across the desk clump, smiling at each other, while Tony kept talking.

Later that afternoon, Tony found me at the coffee machine, cornering me and effectively forcing me to hear details about his sex life. I looked for a way out, but I was unsuccessful. I had to hear about how he'd gone home with someone the night before. The story involved the phrase "she was begging for it" at least twice and a detailed accounting of his own performance, punctuated at intervals by him gesturing toward his crotch. At one point he made the full motion of ejaculating, the fist, shake, and release, fingers splayed open like a firework in front of his crotch. 

"Some girls can't take all eight inches of me," he said, with the specific lack of confidence of someone who probably watched a lot of “looksmaxing” videos.

"Nice," I said, at what seemed like an appropriate moment.

I finally got away during the slightest lull in the conversation, and I stepped into the bathroom. I was alone at the middle urinal for about five seconds before Tony and Decker came in together, interrupting my privacy and taking the two ends, flanking me without ceremony. 

Tony launched into a version of the same story he'd told me at the coffee machine, the details rearranged and slightly amplified. He was nine inches this time. Decker laughed at the right parts and tried to change the subject, but he went along with Tony much more naturally than I did. I started to wonder if a part of Decker really did enjoy the vibe that Tony gives.

They high fived again, right in front of my face this time.

I really have to start using the urinal on the end, I thought to myself.

—[]—

The boners had gotten worse.

They were more frequent and more specific, less explainable by anything I was willing to admit to myself. Decker would push his sleeves up at his desk and I'd register his forearms from across the room. He'd reach for something on a high shelf and I'd feel it. We'd be walking to the coffee cart in the morning and his arm would swing near mine and the rockets would fire below my waist.

I was spanking it every night, sometimes in the morning if I woke up early enough. It wasn't helping the way it usually did. I was still a soft breeze away from lift off at any point in the day, and Decker was always nearby.

Maybe it's when I relax, I thought one afternoon, watching him type from across the desk. And Decker's my best friend here. Maybe it's just that. Maybe it’s a male comfort thing.

One evening, we were hanging on the couch when he noticed a big tent in my pants before I even did.

"Damn," he said, nodding at my lap. "Watch that weapon. Don't want it to blast off again."

I laughed, which helped. I admitted it had been happening constantly, which was true and also felt insane to say out loud.

"You clearing the tubes enough?" He made the wanking gesture.

"Chronically," I said. "I'm rubbing that shit raw."

He laughed at that.

"Maybe he just likes me," he said, and poked my bulge with one finger.

I looked up and he was suddenly an inch from my face. The proximity landed before I could prepare for it. His smell hit me. It was the end of an evening, the unique aroma that by now I knew as specifically his. I looked at his jaw, the defined line of his mandible. The symmetry of his brow. He looked down at my mouth for a half second, licking his lips.

I felt my body almost shiver, and I felt it in my stomach. I shifted once, and so did he, and our legs were touching. I got the sudden sensation that I was about to jizz, and I stood up and went to the bathroom without saying a word.

I threw some wold water on my face. I looked in the mirror and actually laughed. The specific absurdity of me, a kid from New Jersey, nineteen years old, splashing cold water on my face in a Murray Hill apartment at ten on a Wednesday because my roommate poked my boner and looked at my mouth.

I was still laughing when I came back out.

Decker's door was closed. His light was off.

I stood in the living room alone for a second, the laugh fading.

—[]—

Friday we had dinner at home. I was relieved when he said that he wanted to stay in with me. Decker made gnocchi this time, a different one than normal, something with a white sauce that smelled good from the hallway. I sat at the kitchen table and watched him work and didn't help with anything and we talked about nothing important. We still joked, but I noticed that we shared slightly fewer laughs than normal. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was slightly different. His back was to me most of the time, stirring, tasting, and adjusting.

"Someone's coming over tomorrow night," he said, facing the stove.

"Oh yeah?"

"Girl I know from the city. We've hung out a few times."

"Cool," I said, but inside I felt a little twinge of nerves.

He glanced back for a second, checking something, then turned back around. "You don't have to disappear or anything."

"It’s your place too," I said. “I can head out for a night.”

I couldn’t read his expression. I wondered if he wanted me to stay during his date, if he wanted me to see her for some reason.

We ate and talked about work and he didn't bring her up again. I went to bed at a normal hour and lay there in the dark thinking about it in what I told myself was a completely neutral way. I wondered what the girl looked like, whether I'd be able to hear them from my room if I stayed. I wasn't jealous. That would be genuinely insane. I was just processing logistics.

—[]—

Saturday evening, Decker was getting ready, and I thought about leaving before she got there. I looked up the Barnes and Noble on East 17th Street, checked the hours, felt the specific stupidity of what I was doing and closed the tab.

Then Tony texted: Decker already has pussy lined up tonight. You down to clown?

I stared at that for a minute. Then I went against my instincts, and said, “Sure”.

It was just the two of us, which turned out to be a different experience than Tony in a group. Without an audience to perform for he was somehow less obnoxious and more human, cycling between loud and weirdly candid in a way I hadn't seen before. We went to a bar in Chelsea, got in without anyone looking at our IDs, and Tony ordered for both of us before I'd looked at the menu.

At some point we ended up in the bathroom at the same time and he was still talking, which I'd come to understand was just his natural state, words running continuously whether or not a topic was present. 

I was feeling bold, and interrupted him. “Why do we always end up in the bathroom at the same time?”

He must have been feeling bold as well, because he replied, “Honestly? I like to pee with someone to talk to. I follow you guys in sometimes.”

“I knew it.”

He chuckled, and continued talking, eventually bringing up his dick again. I rolled my eyes, and he must’ve had a rare sense of awareness that his talking wasn’t landing, or something like that, because next thing I knew, he stepped away from the stall, dick still out, and faced me.

He presented himself to me.

I tried not to look, but when I finally did, I raised an eyebrow, my eyes frozen. When he saw my reaction, he stopped talking for the first time, maybe ever.

“Jesus christ. You weren’t exaggerating.”

He chuckled through his nose, wiggling his hips a bit as a long, thick, glistening piece of meat swung back and forth out the fly of his pants.

"How many inches is it… really?" I said.

"Close to eight. But I round up. Or just say a random number sometimes," he said. There was a thread of honesty in his voice I hadn't heard before. My eyes were still on it, which I became aware of a beat late.

"I always kinda thought you'd secretly have a tiny one," I said.

"Fuck you," he said, laughing, quickly stuffing it back in and zipping up. He clapped me on the shoulder on his way past.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a second, then followed him out.

—[]—

I got home a little after eleven.

I smelled a girl’s perfume before I saw anything. It was soft and sweet in the air of the apartment, a trace of perfume settling into the furniture. Even though it wasn’t Decker, it was someone else, it made me happy that it made me think about him. The lights were low. A candle was going on the coffee table. The TV was off.

Decker was on the couch, phone in hand, a blanket draped across his lap and pooling half off onto the cushion beside him and the rest on the floor. In the low light I could see his bare leg, his bare shoulder, the line of his nude lateral muscles meeting his enviable glutes showing.

I waited in the entryway for a moment, listening for any sign we weren't alone.

He looked up from his phone and smiled at me, a look of satisfaction on his face, the specific smile of someone whose evening had gone the way it was supposed to.

"Hey," he said.

"She's gone?" I said, quieter than I'd intended.

"Just left."

"How'd it go?"

He just nodded, the smile widening. Pure, uncomplicated satisfaction. I sat down next to him and put my feet on the coffee table. He shifted to make room for me, not even covering himself up completely. We looked at our phones. He showed me a dumb meme, and I showed him something dumb in return, we laughed at the same stuff we always laughed at.

As we shifted, the distance between us on the couch was shrinking, the way it had the other night, the way it kept doing when we ended up here in the dark. I was aware of it. It hit me that it always happened like this, and I became aware that there must be a reason we were always this close. It wasn’t just a brotherly thing.

He threw the blanket over my lap without asking. The warmth was welcome, and I curled the blanket around my feet.

His naked thigh was warm against my hip, and he was definitely naked under there, and my stomach did the thing it had been doing for two weeks now, the specific flip that I had a hundred explanations for, none of them true. I heard his breathing change slightly beside me.

"So," I said, my voice coming out smaller than I'd planned. "What'd you do with her?"

He shifted toward me. His mouth was close to my ear when he said it.

"We banged." A beat. "She's still all over my fingers."

The air went out of the room. Or out of me.

I looked at him and leaned forward, not all the way, not enough to be a statement, just a degree past what was explainable as two straight guys sitting on a couch. My shoulder pressing into his. I let him know, in the smallest possible way, that I was okay with this. That whatever this was, I wasn't going to stop it this time.

He looked at me for a second, reading me. I looked away, wondering if I was making a mistake. I scooted away.

Then he shifted like he was going to make more space, and I felt the distance open, and before I could process the specific disappointment of that, his fingers were on my jaw, two of them, turning my face toward his.

He closed the distance, and I felt his face touch mine. 

The surreal nature of the moment made me take two seconds to even realize it was a kiss. His tongue pressed into my mouth, even though I knew in the back of my head that this was going to happen, the shock of it ran from my face all the way down. His mouth was warm and he tasted like her and like himself, clean sweat and something faint and sweet underneath that I recognized from the air of the apartment. Our hands found each other and he pushed me back slowly until my head touched the fabric of the couch cushion. He climbed above me, and I let it happen because there was no part of me that wanted to stop it.

His weight settled on me and the blanket fell away, revealing his completely naked form, every part of him, the body I'd been clocking since move-in day now right here, close enough to feel the heat coming off it. His chest was against mine, and our breaths synced up somehow. His arms moved around on either side of my head, braced against the cushion, the shape of them changing constantly as he flexed and moved on top of me in waves.

He kissed better than me. I was aware of this in a distant, objective way while it was happening. He was more deliberate, less rushed. I tried to keep up. I was catching up, I thought.

At some point my pants were gone. That had happened incrementally enough that I couldn't point to the moment, but there I was, bare from the waist down on the couch in the living room.

He pulled off my mouth and kissed down the side of my face, his breath warm against my neck, tickling me almost.

"So," I said, exhaling. "You're not too drunk or anything, or…"

He lifted his head and looked down at me. His eyes were clear and present and serious.

"I'm sober," he said.

His hand reached down and wrapped around my member. The tingle was immediate, the same as the first time, except this time my whole body didn't flinch away from it. I made a sound into his shoulder and wanted to take it back and didn't particularly care.

"There we go," he said, low and easy. His grip tightened at the base, steadying. "Easy, boy."

I laughed internally at that. He was taking control and we both knew it and I lay there with my jaw set and let him, trying to hold on and last longer than thirty seconds, which felt like the only goal that mattered.

He held me tightly, working me slowly, like he wanted me to last. He was more deliberate than I ever was with myself, more pressure but less hurry. His face was close to mine.

I reached up and touched his jaw without thinking about it. I felt his cheek, the line of his jaw. He turned his head slightly and without understanding how I got there, two of his fingers were in my mouth.

Two fingers played with my tongue and the insides of my cheeks, and I could taste both things, his skin, warm and clean, and underneath it something faint and sweet that was the girl he had been with, the same trace I'd caught in the kiss. I closed my eyes and held on.

He made a sound above me. Quiet, unperformed, involuntary.

His grip tightened.

I grabbed his arm, the bicep, finally, the one I'd been wondering about since move-in day, my hand wrapped around it exactly the way I'd imagined, and I grabbed with my other hand as well. Both of them together didn’t fit all the way around it, and it was exactly what I'd thought it would be, the muscle solid and shifting under my palm as he moved. 

I finished onto my body and his hand, harder than I ever had before, and I made a sound that I would have been embarrassed by if I'd had any shame left in me.

He stayed above me for a moment. His arm was warm under my hand as he continued stroking me slowly, milking out the last of me. 

His weight was a specific thing I was aware of wanting to stay, like it was holding me in place, and if he left I might fall off the face of the Earth.

He brought his hand to his face, still looking me in the eye, and licked off a bit of my essence that was dripping off of him.

He moved beside me on the narrow couch, his shoulder against mine, and we lay there in the quiet and I listened to my own breathing come back down.

A minute passed.

"That was fun," he said.

"Yeah," I said between breaths.

The ceiling looked the way ceilings look. The candle was still going on the coffee table, throwing low light across the room.

I opened my mouth.

"She tasted good," I said, before I could not say it.

A beat of silence. Maybe two.

"So do you," he said.