Getting Together

Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong

===

"This is why I don't come to office Christmas parties," I thought to myself as I stood near the photocopier feeling awkwardly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

I was trying to look as casual I could, exchanging half-hearted pleasantries with guys from different departments who I barely knew, and trying desperately to spot Cameron through the throngs of tedious people.

There was an air of forced joviality about the event, almost like one would imagine Christmas day at a concentration camp. Someone had set up a portable CD player to play a tinny compilation of god-awful Christmas hits from years ago; the sort of painful songs that would have been mercifully long-forgotten if they hadn't referenced Christmas and weren't churned out on the radio year after year.

I noticed quite quickly that Matt Strickson was nowhere to be seen. He probably wouldn't be seen dead at something like this, with its paper cups full of cheap fizzy wine and hastily arranged bowls of multipack crisps and nuts.

Somebody tapped me on my shoulder.

I turned around and saw Cameron smirking at me. Thank God.

"You made it, then," he observed.

"Yes... and I'm having so much fun." My sarcasm was blatant enough for him to laugh.

"Give it time, it soon warms up."

My expression probably told him I was far from convinced.

"I've got someone to introduce to you," he went on, "although I think you already know him."

He grabbed my arm and guided me through the crowds of people across the room and out into the corridor.

He tapped another guy on the shoulder and Bradley Russell, the IT technician, turned around. He grinned at me in that slightly geeky way he had and whoever he had been talking to, perhaps about he and his girlfriend's imminent baby, took the opportunity to make a bid for freedom.

At first I thought Cameron must just be offering me a familiar face talk to, but it quickly became clear that our introduction was rather more significant.

"You already know Bradley, of course," Cameron smiled. I hoped to God he hadn't told him about the time he'd caught me with my nose pressing into his backside when he'd been on all fours under my desk fixing my printer.

Bradley winked at me, and that was the first clue I had that this wasn't a purely social introduction. "I know Rob... yeah, I know Rob well."

"Well, you guys have no idea how much you have in common," Cameron said with a grin.

We looked at each other, and recognition probably slowly dawned on my face.

"But I can see that now you do," Cameron chuckled. "I'll leave you to it. Enjoy yourselves... and... well... let me know how it goes!"

He wandered back into the busy room where the music was playing, and Bradley and I just gawped at each other. He had a half-grin on his face and maybe I did too.

I didn't know what to say: I had no idea. This bloke was a lot younger than me -- would I be attractive to him? Would he want to be sexual with me?

Bradley broke the silence. "D'you wanna go outside? I could murder a fag, and... you know... it'll give us a bit of space..."

I nodded and followed him downstairs and out through reception into the little courtyard outside the front of the building. We sat on the edge of one of the concrete planters, with overgrown shrubs jabbing into our backs.

Bradley took his cigarettes out of his jacket and lit one up. Before putting them away he asked, more through politeness, "You don't smoke, do you?"

I shook my head.

After inhaling a long drag and blowing it out slowly, he said, "Cameron said he was going to introduce me to someone, but I had no idea it would be you."

I nodded, smiling over at him. "Same here."

"I'm guessing that the fact he introduced the two of us means we're into the same things?"

"I would assume so."

He looked over at me, taking another draw on his cigarette. "Well, I'd better make something clear..."

I thought he was going to tell me that I wasn't his type or that I was too old for him or something, but he surprised me by continuing, "Whatever happens has to be completely for fun. No strings, no nothing. Just a one-off get-together with nothing more to it."

I nodded again. "That's fine with me, Bradley. That's exactly what I want too."

"I mean," he said quietly, "me and Stacey have a baby on the way and we're talking about getting married soon after that. So anything on the side has to be... you know... totally low-key and strictly on the quiet."

I smiled over at him. "I fully understand, Bradley. And I'm in exactly the same boat... I mean, I haven't got a baby on the way... well, I hope not... but I'm seeing a woman and I wouldn't want her to know that sometimes I get together with other guys."

He nodded and took another long, deep drag from his cigarette. The packet had said they were lights; from the way he was smoking them, he seemed determined to extract every speck of nicotine from them.

"So, do you want to hook up, then?" he asked. "With me, I mean?"

I smiled at him getting straight to the point. If only he could be so brisk with his IT work: the computer network would run far more smoothly.

"I didn't want to assume," I replied. "I mean, I'm a bit older than you and --"

"I'm not interested in that," he cut in. "Like I said, it'd be just for fun. It doesn't really matter how physically similar we are, or whether we make a good couple, does it?"

I shrugged. "Not to me."

"It'll have to be at your place, though," he said. "I've got a flat, but... well... you know... it could be a bit tricky."

"That's fine," I agreed, mindful of the perils of girlfriends with their own keys. "I'd kind of assumed as much."

He stood up. "Well, if we're gonna do this... we might as well get going. No point going back in there, is there?"

Christ -- he was quick! I wondered if he already had a hard-on he needed me to attend to.

"You mean, you want to come over to mine tonight?" I asked.

He nodded. "Would that be okay?"

I smiled. "Yes, of course. It's just that... well... this is actually my first time at having a guy come back to my place, actually. My first time in having sex -- I mean, full sex -- with another man, to be honest. It just seems a bit quick, but I'm guess I'm more used to having to jump through all the courtship hoops with women before they're willing to come home with me."

Bradley laughed. "Yeah, it doesn't quite work like that between blokes, Rob. That's part of the appeal."

I smiled, pleased that we could dispense with so much unnecessariness, and then he queried, "So it's your first time... you know... going the full way?"

I nodded. "I've rimmed a guy and been rimmed myself, but no -- so far, I haven't gone further. Is that a problem?"

He shrugged. "Not to me, no. I guess you'll be wanting to give some other stuff a go, though, will you?"

Christ, he was well up for it! His cock must be rock hard in those trousers of his!

I smiled again. "Yeah. Very much so."

"Well, that sounds fine with me, then," he said with a grin.

I thought back to the time he'd been under my desk. He'd had a nice arse -- a little bit feminine for my tastes, perhaps -- and the suggestion of a nice, big pair of balls hanging down between his legs.

I rather liked the fact he might have an erection at the prospect of coming back to my place. If he was desperate for sex, that was something I could relate to. He was a bloke, after all: that kind of thing happens to us.

After the shenanigans that I'd gone through with Debbie the previous night, the prospect of tending to a younger guy's hard-on was attractive in its simplicity. I could suck him, he could wank himself while I was rimming him, he could take me from behind or I could let him rim me... the possibilities were refreshingly straightforward and practically endless.

The best part was that it was going to be purely sex between the two of us without any emotional baggage being attached to it.

"I left my jacket in my office," I said. "If you give me a minute, I'll meet you in the car park. You can drive behind me... follow me home."

"Actually, could I have a lift? I cycle into work but I'll leave the bike here."

I nodded, feeling pleased he was a cyclist: his arse was likely to be nicely muscular. "No problem."

I left him waiting for me outside the front door and darted back into the building. This was going to be a good night.

Thank you, Cameron! I owe you big.

===

As we were pulling out of the car park, I asked Bradley how his interest in other men had developed.

"Me and my brother used to wrestle and fun fight together when we were kids," he explained. "It started out innocently -- just boys being boys -- but when we were in our mid-teens, after puberty had kicked in, it kind of developed into something more..."

Bradley seemed to want to leave the story there, the outcome just hanging in mid-air, but I wasn't going to let him tease me like that.

"Come on, you've got to elaborate a little," I encouraged him, as I waited for a gap in the evening traffic on Rockingham Road.

He smiled. "It's a bit weird, though... you know... with the two of us being brothers..."

I shook my head, pulling out onto the main road. "I don't think it's weird at all. I think it's very sweet and very natural, actually. I only wish my relationship with my brother had been closer."

Bradley nodded. "It started out completely accidentally, if you can believe that. We would wrestle on the floor of my bedroom and we used to try and get our bums in each other's faces. Just joking around, like lads do.

"I wouldn't say I deliberately chose to lose, but I used to love having Garth's bum in my face... for some reason I really liked his smell back there."

He glanced over at me a little sheepishly, as if his confession might shock me, but I just smiled and nodded.

We both knew that Cameron had introduced us for a reason. And now it was clear what that reason was.

"Bradley," I said, as reassuringly as I could muster, "I only wish I'd discovered how amazing guys 'smell back there' in my teens. For me, the discovery came way too late. But go on, what happened next?"

"I'd set it up so he'd think he was getting the better of me and would let him pin me down and rub his backside up and down against my nose"

"What were you guys wearing when you did this?" I asked, slowing the car as the lights ahead changed from green to amber.

"We mainly did it around bedtime, so we'd be in our underwear or in our pyjamas. I really loved the smell of his underwear -- the briefs he'd worn all day -- and it really excited me to have my face pressed into them, right between the cheeks."

He paused and I smiled. Sensing he needed some encouragement to continue, I said, "You don't know how lucky you are to have been so physical together."

Bradley nodded and went on. "Well, we started getting hard-ons -- it was kind of funny to both have stickie-out dicks when we were rolling around together -- and I suppose then I realised that Garth was enjoying what we were doing just as much as I was. That he actually liked having my face down there and that we were both getting hugely turned on by it.

"One evening, when we were messing around, Garth took our game a step further by pulling the back of his pyjamas down when he was straddling me, and then pushed his naked arse into my face. He was already quite hairy and I was completely overwhelmed by his smell -- excited way beyond what I might have expected.

"I started licking him -- I couldn't help myself -- and all the time he was laughing and grinding his butt-crack into my face. I pushed my tongue between his cheeks and he sort of yelped and grabbed my head and shoved my face more firmly into his splayed bum. Before I knew it, I was pushing my tongue into him... deeply... so desperate to taste him. Pushing it right up inside him... you know?"

I nodded, pulling away as the lights changed back to green. "The first time I did it had a similar effect on me."

"I was so turned on," he said, "that my cock must have been poking out from my pyjama fly, probably harder than it had ever been and sopping wet."

"Did you need to masturbate?" I asked. "I found I had to... I was compelled to."

"It didn't occur to me to masturbate," Bradley went on. "Garth's smell... the taste of his arse... completely blew me away. I wasn't really in control. Which maybe explains what I did next..."

He hesitated, again needing encouragement, so I nodded across at him, keeping my eye on the road through the fine drizzle that had started up.

"I wriggled away from him but I guess Garth thought we were going to keep wrestling. We struggled against each other and I must have ended up behind him... with him bending over. The back of his pyjamas were still pulled down... his arse was slippery from my mouth... my cock was still rock hard and poking out of my fly, dripping with precum. Well... you can probably do the math..."

"Ah."

"Exactly. Ah."

He stared across at me as I drove through the town, perhaps searching in my expression some sign that I might be shocked or disgusted by his implicit admission.

I just nodded my understanding and conveyed, I hope, my belief that what he'd done had in no way been sordid or unnatural. I wanted to smile, to show him my acceptance and encouragement, but I thought it could be misconstrued so I kept my face impassive.

"Was Garth upset?" I asked eventually.

Bradley chuckled. "No, he was loving it. He was pushing his bum against me... kind of riding me... laughing and gasping. If he'd have been have upset, I'd have stopped."

"So what happened next?"

"Well, we didn't last long... I just grabbed his shoulders and bucked my hips back and forth as fast as I could. I knew what I was doing -- we both did -- but we couldn't stop ourselves. We were like a couple of rabbits... a few frantic seconds... a frenzy of thrusts... and it was all over."

"It might have been brief but it sounds pretty intense," I ventured.

"It was. It was one of the most erotic moments of my life. The smell of his arse as I went for it... that incredible smell of sex between guys the first time I experienced it... it just blew me away. I didn't even care that my bedroom door was wide open. I mean, if my dad had happened to look in... well, it would have been pretty obvious that we weren't just wrestling."

I chuckled, although I wouldn't have liked being in the father's shoes on catching his two sons in such an indecorous position. It was bad enough walking in on Jake enjoying his solitary pleasures.

"What happened afterwards?" I asked.

"We needed to get cleaned up as quietly as we could. Garth desperately needed the toilet after what I'd left inside him, and I fished around for some fresh pyjamas for him."

"Fresh pyjamas?"

"The front of his was soaking wet and sticky. Like I said, he'd enjoyed what we'd done just as much as I had."

"Ah, right."

"Later that night, after bedtime, Garth sneaked into my room and got into bed with me. He didn't say anything but I knew what he wanted. I rolled over onto my front and let him do his thing."

"And what was 'his thing'?"

"The same as I'd done to him, pretty much. He licked me 'til he got really horny, and then got on top of me and pushed himself into me. Within a few dozen frantic creaks of my bed -- the two of us grunting and gasping like a couple of tennis players -- he'd finished off. We both had, actually."

"More hunting around for fresh pyjamas?"

Bradley smiled. "After a couple of nights, supplies were running pretty short."

"A couple of nights? It continued?"

"Of course it did! We were a couple of horny lads who'd discovered something that felt amazing to us both. We didn't know we were doing anything wrong."

"How could it be 'wrong' if it wasn't doing anyone any harm?" I insisted. "I've realised over the last few months that what's 'wrong' and what's 'right' isn't always so clear-cut."

He nodded. "We discussed what we both thought of it, years after we started and we were still doing it... not every night but pretty regularly. We talked about the whole 'incest' thing, the rights and wrongs of it. And we decided that since it felt so natural to us and that it wasn't affecting our relationship as brothers, we'd keep doing it."

"You guys are so lucky to have such a closeness," I commented as I pulled onto the dual carriageway.

I wondered how many other pairs of men who are similarly close to one another enjoy a secret sexual dimension to their relationship. I felt it must be far more common than one would suspect.

"These days we don't see each other so much. Garth moved to London and neither of us gets the time to meet up like we used to. I guess that's why I sometimes hook up with other men: if Garth was around maybe I would have just continued doing stuff with him."

"Obviously your girlfriend doesn't know about any of this?" I asked.

"Of course not!" he chuckled. "It's not like it's any kind of threat to what we have together... it's just an occasional thing I do... me and other straight men who share whatever weird sexual quirk I happen to have."

"Weird sexual quirk?"

"Well, I'd count myself as straight -- one hundred percent so, actually -- and I love my girlfriend to bits, but I can't help the fact that I love the smell and the taste of a guy's arse. I can't explain why, but I do. It's got nothing to do with shit, though; I should make that clear... I'm not into that at all."

Bradley looked over at me, no doubt wanting to make sure that the line he'd drawn was in no danger of being crossed.

I smiled over at him. "Don't worry, Bradley. I know exactly what you mean, and it goes for me too."

"It's a bit strange that the smell of shit disgusts me... I mean, public toilets can make me retch... and yet I get so turned on by having my face down there... sniffing and licking a guy's arse-crack. And the smell of having sex with another guy -- that really distinct, totally unique, whiff of a cock pumping another bloke's arse -- well... it's right off the scale!"

I nodded. "I love the earthy whiff from the back of a man's underwear and the stronger, seedier scent from inside his arse crack and around his hole -- and, to be honest, I can't wait to have sex with another man -- I mean... you know... full-on sex -- to find out how amazing it smells when we do it."

He beamed back at me, as if pleased to have found a fellow connoisseur of the male rear.

"Believe me, mate," he asserted, "from what you've said, you'll fucking love it! The whole buzz you get from connecting with another bloke like that..."

Pulling onto my estate, I smiled back at him. "I must admit, the idea of that excites me a lot. Four months ago I wouldn't have dreamed I'd be having this conversation, letting alone contemplating actually having... you know... penetrative sex with another man."

"It really is amazing, Rob!" he extolled. "Totally fucking hot! You'll have never done anything like it!"

I smiled more broadly. "It sounds like we're pretty compatible."

"Yeah, I think we're a pretty good match. Cameron's usually pretty astute about this kind of stuff."

I turned right onto my cul-de-sac and, pleased to have established that anal sex was on the cards for one or both of us, asked him, "Did you ever try rimming your girlfriend?"

He shook his head. "That's another weird part of it. It has to be with another guy. The idea of doing it with a woman just doesn't do anything for me. There's something about the male smell, I guess."

I nodded. "Yeah... I've never been attracted to doing it to a woman, either. I'd be curious about a woman doing it to me, but I don't think it's something I'd feel able to ask for."

"It's not just another guy's arse smells," he went on. "His cock and balls can smell really good... his sweatiness... his armpits... his feet... the smell of us both when we're having sex, whichever way round we do it... it's all really intense and erotic."