Sid laughed, then sobered again. “You know, I can actually come without getting hard. How weird is that?”
“For real?”
He nodded. “If I watch porn, I get horny and feel it everywhere, even in my dick, and then I come, like, in my belly, it’s so fucking strange, but still no boner.”
“You’re right. That is weird. Maybe you should get someone to fuckyou, then you don’t have to worry about it.”
“Two problems with that,” Sid said. “One, I don’t have the spoons to explain myself every time I want to hook up—especially as there’s no guarantee I’d even get horny. Two, I haven’t bottomed since I was a clueless teenager, and I don’t want to relive that mess with some faceless dude from Grindr just to check my P-spot still works.”
“What if you only went on Grindr when you were already horny?”
“What if it was gone by the time whoever got here?” Sid countered. “Trust me, I’ve been through every possible scenario in my head over and over and over, and it all ends the same. Either I let someone down or I wind up with a cock inside me I don’t even fucking want.”
Wow. Mind blown.While Sid glared out of the window, Dante took a moment to process and tried to marry what Sid had told him with how it had felt to hold him, breathe him in, and kiss him. He thought back to Sid’s strong body against his—his warm skin, hot lips, and roaming hands. Naïvely, he hadn’t thought about Sid’s cock, only his own, and how it had ached all night long after. “Tell me what you were going to say, before, when you cut yourself off.”
Sid tore his scowl from the window. “I can’t tell you because it’s a total contradiction, and it’s creepy as fuck.”
“Creepy for who?”
“For you. I didn’t even know you then.”
“How is it creepy if we’d never met? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything. It was me.”
Dante reached for Sid’s weed tin for something to do. He popped the lid and slid a paper from the cardboard sleeve. “Okay, you got me. You have to tell me now, orI’lldie of curiosity.”
“I think I’d rather let you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re too nice for that.”
“Maybe I’m more nasty than you know. Ever think of that?”
Dante crumbled fragrant weed buds into the paper, rolled it up, and built a roach from the skins packaging. He tucked it into the end of the joint, but the urge to light up was dormant while Sid dangled whatever horrors he had to hide just out of reach. “If you’re in the least bit nasty, it’s the good kind. I know the difference.”
“How?”
“Because I’ve known bad people, and you’re not one of them. It’s not even a discussion, mate. You’re salt of the earth, whether you like it or not.”
“What if I told you the last time I got hard was the night I opened the email with your picture attached to it?”
“Then I’d ask you to tell me all about it because I’m a sex-starved motherfucker who doesn’t deserve attention from someone like you.”
“Deserveit? What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means you’re you, and I’m me. You know the rest.”
“You don’t think it’s pervy that I saw how hot you were and my dick agreed with me?”
“I get hard when I think about you all the time.”
“You do?”
It was Dante’s turn to flush. “Yeah, I mean, I’m not walking around with a permanent boner, but I think about you, and it gets me hot, becauseyou’rehot.”
“There’s nothing hot about a flaccid cock at the wrong moment, trust me.”
“No.”