Chapter 2: The Grinding Proposition
Seven hours later, and the word still hung in the air. It had a shape, a texture: crystalline, brittle, shimmering just out of reach like the neon Café sign sputtering to life across the street.
Benji sat on the flimsy balcony chair, legs propped on the railing, trying to absorb the noise of the city so it would drown out the word echoing in his skull. Handjob. Mohammed had said it like offering a spare cigarette. Then his knee had vibrated against Benji’s under the little metal table, a frantic tremor at odds with his casual smirk, before he’d retreated inside, mumbling about a paper due tomorrow.
They’d orbited each other all day. Breakfast had been a silent symphony of cereal crunch and phone-scrolling. A mumbled “you good?” over lunch. The tension wasn’t bad, just… present. A live wire laid across the hall between their rooms. They were both hyper-aware of it, stepping carefully so as not to trip. The deal they’d struck—friends first, exploration allowed—felt theoretical in the harsh afternoon light.
The balcony door slid open with a gritty rumble. Benji didn’t turn. He knew the footfall, the soft sigh as Mohammed settled into the other chair. The scent reached him first: a fresh hit of that sweet, earthy hash from their little brass pipe, mixed with Mohammed’s clean soap smell.
Mohammed placed the loaded bong on the table between them with a soft clink. He lit it, the bowl glowing a furious orange in the gathering dusk. He took a long, practiced pull, held it, then exhaled a plume of smoke that melted into the city’s smoky halo. He passed the bong over without a word.
Benji took it. His fingers brushed Mohammed’s. A deliberate touch this time, not an accident. He mimicked the ritual, the heat in his lungs a welcome, familiar burn. He let the smoke go, watching it twist towards the bruised purple sky. The high came on gently, softening the sharp edges of the day, of the word.
“Still thinking about the movie?” Benji finally asked, his voice raspy from the hit.
Mohammed gave a soft, dismissive puff of air. “I was thinking about before the movie.”
The directness was a surprise. A pleasant, terrifying shock. Benji lowered his feet from the railing, turning in his chair to face him. In the fading light, Mohammed’s profile was a study in soft angles—the slope of his nose, the full curve of his lower lip. He was staring straight ahead, as if addressing the city.
“Yeah?” Benji prompted, his pulse a low drum in his ears.
“Yeah.” Mohammed took another quick hit off the blunt he’d rolled, the ember flaring. He spoke on the exhale, the words wrapped in smoke. “You said something. That night. When we were… you know.”
Benji knew. The memory was a visceral loop: his hands on Mohammed’s ass, the perfect, heavy weight of it in his palms. The words he’d grunted, half-teasing, half-drowned in sensation.
“Which part?” Benji asked, playing dumb, needing to hear him say it.
Mohammed shot him a look—don’t be an asshole—but there was a faint, nervous smile playing on his lips. He looked down at the blunt between his fingers, rolling it nervously. “You said… you’d been thinking about my ass. For months.” He finally glanced over, his dark eyes searching Benji’s face in the twilight. “Did you mean that? Or was it just… a thing to say in the moment?”
The question hung there, more vulnerable than the offer of a handjob. This wasn’t about physiology or a transaction. This was about acknowledgment. About being seen, in a specific, desirous way, for a long time.
Benji didn’t smirk. He didn’t deflect. The weed and the falling night made honesty feel like the only solid ground. “Yeah, Mo. I meant it.”
He let the statement sit, simple and clean. He saw Mohammed’s chest rise with a deeper breath.
“Why?” Mohammed whispered, the word almost lost to the traffic hum below.
Benji leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Because it’s fucking perfect. It’s… sculpted. It’s the first thing I noticed about you, after your eyes.” He felt a flush creep up his own neck, but he didn’t stop. “I’d see you bent over getting something from the fridge in those stupid grey sweatpants and my brain would just… blue-screen. Every time.”
A soft, incredulous laugh escaped Mohammed. He looked equal parts shocked and deeply pleased. He shook his head, taking another drag, buying time. The shared silence was warm, charged with a new kind of electricity.
Benji felt the bravery of the high, of the confession. He pushed further, voice dropping, a raw edge to it. “Can I see it? Properly? Not… through clothes.” Before Mohammed could react, he added, the wanting clear, “Can I touch it?”
Mohammed’s knee started bouncing again. He stubbed the blunt out in the glass ashtray with excessive focus. He didn’t say no. He didn’t flee.
“Okay,” he said, finally, the word so quiet Benji had to lean in to catch it. Mohammed looked at him, his expression a complex map of fear and want. “But… only if you… if I…”
“If you what?”
Mohammed swallowed. “Only if I get to… be on top. Like, grinding. Like last time. Against you. I want to do that, but… with less clothes. A lot less clothes.” He was babbling now, the clinical terms he sometimes used dissolving into a frantic, honest desire. “I liked that part. The… the pressure.”
Benji’s breath hitched. The image was immediate, incendiary. Him, laid out beneath Mohammed, feeling all that perfect weight moving against him, skin on skin. It was a hotter, more intimate prospect than anything clinical. It was a dance.
“Yeah,” Benji said, the word a rough exhale. “Okay.Yeah. We can do that.”
The decision, once spoken, seemed to vibrate in the space between them. The remaining tension wasn’t awkwardness anymore; it was potential energy, coiled and ready to spring.
Benji stood up. He offered a hand.
Mohammed looked at it, then up at Benji’s face. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it. His palm was damp, warm. Benji pulled him up, not letting go as they slid the balcony door shut, leaving the city and the half-finished bong behind.
The living room was dark, still a mess from days prior. They didn’t turn on a light. The glow from the streetlamp outside bled through the blinds, painting the room in stripes of dim amber and deep shadow. It felt right.Anonymous. Theirs.
They stopped in the middle of the room, facing each other. The air was thick with the scent of their shared smoke, mingling with the faint, lingering jasmine from last night’s incense.
“How do you want to…” Benji started.
“Bedroom,” Mohammed said, his voice firmer now, more certain. “My bed’s bigger.” Then, as if remembering their pact, he added, “It’s cleaner too.”
A small, real laugh broke from Benji. “Always a critic.”
He followed Mohammed down the short hall. Mohammed’s room was always neater, the sheets military-tight. A single framed Arabic calligraphy piece hung on the wall, a gift from a long-gone uncle. It felt more intimate here.More vulnerable.
Mohammed didn’t turn on the light. He walked to the side of the bed and, without ceremony, pulled his t-shirt over his head. His torso was pale in the stripe of streetlight, soft and plump, the dark trail of hair Benji remembered leading down. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and boxers and pushed them down in one motion, stepping out of the puddle of fabric.
He stood there, naked. Not posed, just… waiting. His back was to Benji, offering him exactly what he’d asked for.
The sight stole the air from Benji’s lungs.
It was better than memory, better than imagination. The streetlight cut across the elegant, full curves, highlighting the deep cleft and the smooth, generous swell of each cheek. It was an achingly beautiful, profoundly masculine shape. It was Mohammed, utterly exposed.
“Fuck,” Benji breathed, the word full of reverence.
He approached slowly, as if not to spook a wild creature. He stopped a foot away, just looking. He could feel the heat radiating from Mohammed’s skin. He saw a fine tremor run through the muscles of his lower back.
“Can I?” Benji whispered.
A single, sharp nod.
Benji raised his hands. He let them hover for a moment, then placed his palms flat against the warm skin. The contact was electric. Mohammed’s skin was impossibly soft, but the muscle beneath was firm. Benji’s thumbs settled into the deep dimples at the base of his spine. He applied a gentle pressure, spreading his hands, mapping the topography with his palms. He kneaded gently, feeling the incredible, resilient give.
A broken sigh fell from Mohammed’s lips. He arched his back slightly, pushing into the touch.
Emboldened, Benji leaned forward, pressing his lips to the spot between his shoulder blades. Then lower, following the line of his spine with his mouth, a trail of soft, closed-mouth kisses. Mohammed shuddered violently, a shaky inhale catching in his throat.
“Benji,” he whispered, a plea and a prayer.
That was the signal. Benji straightened up. He quickly stripped his own clothes off, letting them fall to the floor. He guided Mohammed onto the bed. Mohammed went willingly, lying on his back, his eyes huge and dark in the semi-darkness, watching Benji crawl over him. Their cocks brushed, both hard, sending a jolt through them both.
“You said on top,” Benji murmured, shifting. He lay back against Mohammed’s pillows. “Come here.”
Mohammed moved then, with a newfound urgency. He swung a leg over Benji, straddling his hips. He paused, looking down at him, his hands braced on Benji’s chest. The streetlight caught the sheen of nervous sweat on his temples, the determined set of his jaw.
Then he lowered himself. Not onto Benji’s cock, but onto his stomach. Their bodies aligned, skin to skin, from chest to thigh. The full, heavy warmth of Mohammed’s ass settled against Benji’s hips. The feel of it, bare now, was unbelievable. Soft, hot, absolute.
Mohammed let out a long, shaky breath, as if he’d been holding it for years. He began to move.
It started slow, tentative. A rocking motion, the delicious friction of his cock dragging against Benji’s stomach, his perfect ass moving in a slow, circular grind against Benji’s own hardness. His eyes were shut, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Like that?” Benji gasped, his hands coming up to grip Mohammed’s hips, feeling the muscles work beneath the softness.
“Yeah,” Mohammed breathed, his rhythm gaining confidence. “Yeah, just… just like that.”
He picked up the pace, his movements losing their hesitation, turning into a hungry, rolling undulation. The slick heat between them grew. The sound of skin on skin, of their ragged breathing, filled the dark room. Benji’s thumbs dug into the glorious flesh of Mohammed’s ass, pulling him down harder with each grind, guiding him.
“It’s so good, Mo,” Benji grunted, arching up to meet him. “Your ass… God, feeling it move…”
Mohammed moaned, a low, guttural sound that seemed ripped from a deep, hidden place. He was no longer thinking, just feeling. Chasing the pressure, the friction, the dizzying freedom of it. He rode Benji’s stomach with a frantic, beautiful abandon, his head thrown back, his throat working.
Benji watched him, mesmerized. This was the exploration. This was the map being drawn in real time, in the sweat-slick dark of a bedroom that smelled like them. It was clumsy, it was hot, it was profoundly real.
And it was just the beginning.
And it was just the beginning. The world narrowed to the creak of the bedsprings, the humid slide of their bodies, the raw symphony of their breathing. Mohammed moved with a gathering desperation, each rock of his hips a question Benji answered with his own upward thrusts, their movements falling into a frantic, wet syncopation.
His eyes were squeezed shut, face a mask of intense, private focus. Sweat beaded along his hairline, tracing a path down his temple. Benji watched it, mesmerized by the complete surrender. He wanted to crack him open further.
His grip tightened on the generous curves of Mohammed’s ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh, guiding him harder, faster. The slap of skin grew louder, more urgent. “That’s it,” Benji rasped, his voice thick. “Just like that. Use me. Feels so fucking good.”
Mohammed’s eyes flew open. They were glassy, unseeing for a second, then they sharpened, locking onto Benji’s. His rhythm faltered for a heartbeat. A flush, deeper than exertion, bloomed across his chest and throat. He wet his lips.
“Say more,” he breathed, the words barely audible over the noise they were making. He didn’t stop moving. If anything, his grinding became more deliberate, a demand.
Benji’s brain stuttered. “What?”
Mohammed leaned down, bracing his hands on either side of Benji’s head. His face was inches away, his breath hot and ragged. “Talk.” He rocked hard, a punishing, perfect grind. “To me. Like you did before. That… dirty talk.”
The request wasn’t shy. It was a direct order, shaky but clear, shot through with a need that went beyond the physical. He wasn’t just asking for words; he was asking for permission to be someone else in this dark room, for Benji to paint over his old scripts with something new, visceral, and theirs.
Benji felt a surge of power, hot and dizzying. He tightened his hands on Mohammed’s hips, stilling him for a moment, forcing him to feel the tension coiling in both of them. He looked up into those dark, pleading eyes.
“You want me to tell you how good you feel?” Benji’s voice dropped, low and rough, stripping away the last of his playful charm. “How your fat, perfect ass is grinding my cock into the mattress? How I’ve thought about this exact thing, you riding me just like this, every goddamn time I’ve seen you in those fucking sweatpants for the past year?”
A full-body shudder racked Mohammed. A choked, grateful sound escaped him. He nodded frantically, his hips giving an involuntary jerk.
“Yeah,” Benji continued, the words coming easier now, fueled by the raw feedback of Mohammed’s trembling. “You’re doing so good, Mo. Taking what you want. You look so hungry on top of me. Your body is fucking insane.” He let one hand slide from Mohammed’s hip, down the slick curve of his ass, his thumb brushing the tight, forbidden furl nestled between. Mohammed gasped, his back arching sharply. “And I want to touch you everywhere. Especially here.”
“Benji,” Mohammed whimpered, his composure fracturing. His movements turned jagged, losing their rhythm, driven purely by the sound of Benji’s voice wrapping around him.
“Come on,” Benji growled, pushing up against him. “Keep going. Show me how much you like hearing it. Let me hear you.”
That unlocked it. Mohammed’s careful control shattered. A low, continuous moan tore from his throat, raw and unfiltered. He fucked down against Benji with a frantic, grinding intensity, his head falling forward, forehead pressing into Benji’s shoulder. His breathing hitched, became sharp, desperate little pants.
“I’m close,” he gasped, the confession hot against Benji’s skin. “Please, I’m—“
“Do it,” Benji commanded, his own release a blinding pressure at the base of his spine. “Come all over my stomach. Let me feel it. Now.”
The words were the final trigger. Mohammed cried out, a sharp, broken sound muffled by Benji’s shoulder. His body seized, hips stuttering in a final, brutal grind as he spilled between them, hot and wet. The sensation of it, the violent pulse of him, tipped Benji over the edge a second later. He came with a guttural groan, his vision whiting out at the edges, his fingers leaving imprints in Mohammed’s skin.
The aftershocks were long and slow. Mohammed collapsed onto him, a boneless, trembling weight, soaked in sweat and spent. The room was silent save for their ragged, slowing breaths. The stripe of streetlight cut across Mohammed’s back, rising and falling.
Benji’s hands, still on his ass, gentled. They stroked the damp skin, slow circles of aftermath. He turned his head, pressed his lips to Mohammed’s damp temple. He tasted salt.
Mohammed didn’t move for a long time. Then, with what seemed like monumental effort, he pushed himself up on shaky arms. He looked down at the mess between them, then into Benji’s face. His expression was utterly wrecked—raw, vulnerable, satiated, and scared.
He opened his mouth.Closed it. Swallowed. Finally, a whisper.
“No one has ever talked to me like that.”
The words hung in the humid dark between them, raw and delicate as a exposed nerve. Mohammed’s admission wasn’t just about sex. It was a testament to a loneliness so profound it made Benji’s chest ache. He felt the weight of it, the trust in that simple statement, and his usual arsenal of deflections shriveled to ash on his tongue.
Benji’s hands, still resting on the warm slope of Mohammed’s back, gentled their circling. He watched a bead of sweat trace the line of Mohammed’s spine, disappearing into the mess they’d made. The air smelled of them, of spent pleasure and nervous truth.
“Mohammed,” he began, his voice sounding rough, unfamiliar to his own ears. He waited until those dark, vulnerable eyes found his again in the dim light. “I didn’t… I didn’t expect any of this. When I moved in with you.” He swallowed, forcing the honesty up from a place deeper than charm. “I didn’t expect to feel so… safe. To want someone so much it feels like a physical fact.”
He let out a shaky breath, his thumbs stroking the soft skin under his palms.
“I didn’t think I could just… say those things,” Benji continued, his gaze holding Mohammed’s. “And have them be true. And have you hear them.” He gave a small, helpless shrug, his lips quirking in a shadow of his usual smirk. “I didn’t think I was allowed to want them to be true.”
“I didn’t think I was allowed to want them to be true.”
The admission lingered, heavier than the cooling sweat between them. Benji’s words tasted foreign in the dark, like a spell spoken aloud for the first time and tasting of copper and clover.
Mohammed absorbed them. His body, still draped over Benji’s, trembled once with a final, exhausted shiver. He looked away, his gaze fixing on the Arabic calligraphy on the wall, a solid shape in the blurry room. His voice, when it came, was small but solid, like a stone dropped into a deep well.
“I want you to.”
Benji’s heart, only just slowing, stuttered. “Want me to what?”
Mohammed turned his face back. There was no smirk now, no playful challenge. Just a stark, breathtaking honesty. “I want you to… prove they’re true. All those things you said you wanted.” He paused, the bravery visible in the tight clench of his jaw. “I want you to do more than talk about it.”
Benji’s hands stilled on his back. “Mo…”
Mohammed pushed himself up fully, straddling Benji’s hips. The streetlight caught the slick trails on their stomachs, the flushed tip of Benji’s softening cock. He gestured between them, a single, awkward wave of his hand that took in the room, the situation, the previous nights.
“We keep… this. This talking, then touching, then stopping. It feels like a… battery at half charge. A song that ends before the chorus.” He took a ragged breath, his chest rising. “Tonight, I want it fully charged. I want the whole song.” His eyes held Benji’s with a gravity that pulled all the air from the room. He clarified, his voice a low, clear instruction. “I want you to finish. On me. While I’m underneath you. I want you to come while grinding on my ass.Just that. Until you do.”
A sharp, hot coil of desire wound itself around Benji’s spine, pulling tight. The specificity was a white-hot wire, grounding their nebulous explorations in a single, visceral goal. “You want to turn over?”
Mohammed nodded, a single, deliberate dip of his chin. He didn’t wait. He slid off Benji’s body, the mattress shifting as he turned onto his stomach, burying his face into the pillows. He reached back with one hand, fingertips just brushing Benji’s leg.A summons. His voice was muffled by cotton, but the words were sharp. “Show me what my ass is good for, besides filling sweatpants.”
The words, crude and desperate, burned away any last hesitation. This wasn’t the poised, stoic Mohammed. This was the raw core of him, pleading to be used in a way that made sense only to them, in this room.
Benji moved.
He positioned himself between Mohammed’s parted legs, his knees nudging the soft insides of Mohammed’s thighs. The view was paralyzing. In this new, vulnerable posture, the curve of Mohammed’s back, the deep dimples, the full, generous sweep of him was an offering, an altar. The faint, dark furl nestled between was a dark asterisk Benji’s mind couldn’t stop circling.
He didn’t enter him. That wasn’t the deal, and the thought, while blazingly present, felt like a different country for a different night. He lowered himself, his own chest pressing against the sweat-slick plane of Mohammed’s back. He aligned their bodies.
“Okay?” Benji breathed into the nape of his neck.
A muffled, impatient sound from the pillows. A shift, a push backwards, was his answer.
Benji rocked forward. His hardness, renewed and urgent, found the hot, damp cleft. The sensation was shocking, slick and velvet-soft with a pressure that threatened to unmake him. He wasn’t inside, but he was enveloped. He set a slow, deep rhythm, a deliberate grinding that drew a raw gasp from Mohammed, whose fingers twisted in the sheets.
“Like that?” Benji grunted, his voice already fraying at the edges.
“Harder,” came the choked reply. The pillow ate the word, but the demand was clear.
Benji obeyed. He braced his arms, his hands gripping Mohammed’s shoulders, and pushed. His thrusts became sharper, deeper, less of a grind and more of a driving pursuit. The room filled with the sound of their straining breaths, the soft, wet friction of skin, the rhythmic creak of the bed frame. The previous nights had been clumsy, frantic searches. This was something different. Purposeful.He talked. He couldn’t stop. The words spilled out, tumbling over the cliff of his restraint, whispered hoarse and urgent into the hot shell of Mohammed’s ear.
“You feel that? This… god, this is all I’ve seen for months. Just this.” He thrust harder, chasing the coiling pressure building low in his gut. “Every time you bent over, every time you walked away. I’d picture this exact… this shape. And me, right here.”
Mohammed shuddered beneath him, a low, continuous moan vibrating through his body and into Benji’s chest. “Yeah,” he managed, the word shredded. “Say more.”
“I’d watch you cook,” Benji panted, his hips snapping forward, losing their rhythm to pure sensation. “Those stupid little shorts you wear. And I’d imagine my hands… right where they are. Holding you open. Feeling you get hotter and tighter around me like you are right now. Christ, Mo…”
Benji’s control was a frayed thread. The friction, the heat, the whispered filth echoing in the dark, the sheer physical reality of Mohammed giving him this—it was a feedback loop threatening to blow every circuit in his body. His words dissolved into gasped fragments.
“Can’t… close… you’re so fucking perfect… I’m gonna…”
He felt it, the tsunami building from his toes, surging up through his core. His entire world compressed to the searing point of contact between his cock and the slick, yielding heat of Mohammed’s body. His vision tunneled, sparking at the edges.
He buried his face in the sweat-damp junction of Mohammed’s neck and shoulder, his body rigid, a final, desperate thrust that was less a movement and more a surrender. A raw, guttural sound tore from his throat, sharp and animal, as he came.
It was a profound, obliterating release. He spilled hot between their bodies, the pulses intense and seemingly endless, his mind a white, roaring silence. He collapsed onto Mohammed, his weight a dead, shuddering anchor, his face still hidden, his lips pressed to the frantic pulse beating in Mohammed’s neck. He rode out the aftershocks, each a weaker tremor, a distant echo of the earthquake.
Beneath him, Mohammed was utterly still. Then, after a long moment where the only sound was their combined, slowing breath, Mohammed turned his head, just enough for his lips to brush Benji’s temple.
His whisper was calm, clear, and absolute.
“My whole song.”