Chapter 2: First Time Tutorial
The button gave way with a faint pop. The zipper slid down, a rasping sound that seemed impossibly loud. James kept his eyes fixed on a crack in the linoleum floor, his entire body rigid with anticipation. He hooked his thumbs into the wet waistband of his jeans and pushed them down over his hips. The cold air hit his damp skin, raising goosebumps. He stepped out of the denim puddle, standing there in his soaked white briefs. They were plastered to him, transparent in places, leaving nothing to the imagination. He felt utterly, terribly exposed.
Ian didn’t laugh. He didn’t say anything. He just looked, his gaze a physical weight traveling from James’s flushed face down his lanky torso to his thighs. The silence was a living thing between them.
Then Ian moved. He closed the small distance, his own bare feet silent on the floor. He didn’t touch James’s skin, not yet. Instead, his fingertips found the elastic band of James’s briefs. He hooked his thumbs in, just as James had done with his jeans.
“These are wet, too,” Ian murmured, his voice low and matter-of-fact.
He began to peel the cotton down, the movement agonizingly slow. The fabric dragged against James’s trembling thighs, a damp, frictionless slide. James squeezed his eyes shut, his breath catching in his throat. He was hard, fully, achingly erect, and the cool air that met his bare skin was a shock. He felt the briefs slide past his knees, down his shins, and then they were gone, a wet heap on the floor.
He was naked. In the middle of the room. Under Ian’s steady, appraising gaze.
“Look at you,” Ian said, not a tease, but a statement. A observation.
James forced his eyes open. Ian was looking at him, really looking, and the expression on his face wasn’t mockery. It was something closer to concentration. Appreciation. The black lace of his jockstrap was a dark frame against the pale skin of his hips.
Then Ian placed a hand flat on James’s chest. The touch was warm, solid. He pushed, gently but firmly.
James stumbled backward, his legs hitting the edge of his twin mattress. He fell onto it, the springs groaning in protest. The sheets were cool and slightly damp from his earlier, fully-clothed collapse. He lay there, propped on his elbows, watching as Ian stood over him.
Ian’s hands went to his own button. He undid his jeans with a practiced efficiency and pushed them down, along with the lacy jockstrap, in one single motion. He was just… there. Tall and thin, his body a collection of sharp angles and smooth planes. And he was hard, his erection long and slender, curving slightly upward.
James’s mouth went dry. All his poetry, all his furtive imaginings, had never prepared him for the sheer, unadorned reality of another person. The scent of pine from the window box mixed with the smell of their damp skin and the faint, clean laundry smell of the sheets.
Ian knelt on the mattress, one knee on either side of James’s hips. He leaned over to the nightstand, and the crinkle of foil cut through the quiet like a gunshot. James watched, mesmerized, as Ian sheathed himself with a few quick, sure movements.
Ian looked down at him, his glasses slightly askew. He braced one hand on the pillow beside James’s head. “You’ve never done this,” he said, his voice a low murmur near James’s ear. It wasn’t a question.
James shook his head, a tiny, frantic motion. He couldn’t speak.
“So I’m going to make sure you feel every single second,” Ian breathed.
He reached between them, his fingers slick from the bottle he’d grabbed from the drawer. The touch was cold at first, then warming, a careful, insistent pressure. James gasped, his back arching off the mattress. His hands came up, gripping Ian’s bare shoulders, feeling the muscle and bone beneath the skin. It was too much. It was not enough.
Ian moved slowly, a gradual, yielding pressure that built into a deep, filling stretch. James cried out, a short, sharp sound he didn’t recognize as his own. His vision blurred at the edges, the posters on the wall swimming into meaningless color. Every nerve ending was on fire, singing a raw, electric tune. He felt split open. Remade.
Ian stilled, buried deep, letting James adjust to the shocking, full feeling. He looked down at him, his breathing ragged. “Okay?” he asked, his voice rough.
James could only nod, his throat tight. He dug his fingers into Ian’s shoulders, anchoring himself.
Then Ian began to move. A slow, deliberate rhythm that was both punishing and reverent. The old bedframe started a quiet, rhythmic creak, a base note to James’s ragged breaths. He shut his eyes, surrendering to the sensation, to the weight of Ian above him, to the smell of him—soap and snow and something uniquely, essentially Ian.
The desk lamp cast their moving shadows on the bare cinderblock wall, a silent, frantic pantomime. James felt a pressure building low in his gut, a tight coil of heat winding tighter and tighter with every thrust. He was murmuring nonsense, fragments of words, pleas and denials all mixed together.
Ian’s rhythm faltered, grew more urgent. His glasses slipped down his nose. “James,” he grunted, a sharp, final sound.
That was all it took. The coil snapped. White heat flashed behind James’s eyelids, and his body seized, a violent, shuddering release that left him boneless and gasping. A moment later, he felt Ian stiffen above him, a low groan vibrating through his chest as he pressed down, his own climax a final, deep pulse inside him.
The silence that followed was different. Softer. Filled with the sound of their panting breaths and the distant hiss of the radiator. Ian’s weight was a warm, heavy comfort on top of him.
After a long moment, Ian shifted, pulling away carefully. He disposed of the condom and then collapsed onto the mattress beside James, on his back. They lay there side by side, not touching, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.
The cold air began to prickle against James’s sweat-sheened skin. The world, which had narrowed to this bed, this body, began to expand again. He became aware of the lumpy mattress, the damp spot on the sheet beneath his hip, the profound, echoing quiet of the snow-bound building.
Ian turned his head on the pillow. His glasses were still crooked. He looked at James, his expression unreadable. He reached out and his fingers, gentle now, brushed a damp curl from James’s forehead.
“So,” Ian said, his voice hoarse. “Still think my underwear is weird?”