Dan and Brian lived upstairs from me. I had lived in the building for about two months when I started running into to them more frequently at the mailboxes in the lobby. The building had more than a few gay men and couples living there. While many of the other guys in the building were playfully flirty (and sometime more earnest than playful) Dan and Brian were at first, always polite but never much more. They were rare that way and maybe that was what made them intriguing.
They were incredibly sexy devils. Both had salt and pepper hair closely cropped and piercing eyes; Dan's were brown while Brian's were a cool shade of gray blue. While Dan looked about thirty-eight, I guessed that Brian was about forty-two. More or less the same height they both stood just above six feet tall. Clearly, both of them were in shape from the way they filled whatever clothing they had on when I bumped into them. After we found ourselves meeting at the mailboxes (sometimes I would bump in to one or the other, sometime I would see both after one of their bike rides) I started to say hello and after some seeming initial hesitation, they begin to reciprocate to the point we established a polite but limited repartee. I readily admit that I snuck a few looks at them at the mailboxes. Catching glimpses of Dan's sexy hairy chest through the opening of his button-down business shirts when he came back from work. Following the lines of the lean muscle of their backs when they came back from a workout with their T-shirts stuck to their bodies with sweat. What made them attractive was that they were men, and not the little boys that seem to populate the building and spill over into the surrounding neighborhood. They had the weathered look that comes from exercising outdoors rather than spending their time down the street at the gym doing endless hours on the elliptical machine that often felt like a staircase to nowhere.
After a few months our conversations started to get a little longer, bit by bit, even though my new work schedule made our run ins at the mailboxes less frequent. It got to the point that it felt like we were at least on friendly terms, catching up on how work was going, (I found out that Dan worked for a start-up tech company and Brian had been at the "green" non-profit he worked at since he first graduated college. Both careers seemed far more interesting than my job as an accountant at HR firm downtown.) and hearing about their weekend plans. Although I never got an invite for dinner or go out for drinks and I never extended one myself, I didn't think too much of it as I had been seeing a guy named Jonah I had met at the gym and he kept me occupied a number of evenings a week. The other nights I was too exhausted from work.
A few months into it, it was clear than things with Jonah were not going to work out. When Jonah finally broke it off after a few weeks of half heartedly trying to make time to hang out together, I wasn't left devastated by I was understandably disappointed. Once more, unlucky in love, I thought.
Back to my single guy routine, I wound up running into Dan and Brian more in the lobby. Seeing me particularly mopey, one day. Dan asked what was up.
"Just got dumped" I replied. "Feeling a little down."
"Oh, sorry to hear than, man," came the reply. "I know how tough break-ups can be." And with that Dan, absent mindedly sifted through his mail and head towards the elevator. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that the didn't chat me up more.
A week later, I bumped into Brian at the front door. After a quick hello, he mentioned that Dan had told him about my recent break-up.
"So what are you doing to get through it?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Well, are you doing any thing to keep busy? Keeping busy, exercise got me through a few rough break-ups."
"I guess I go to the gym." (It sounded so lame coming out of my mouth.)
"I'm talking about getting into the outdoors. Some fresh air might do you good."
Having grown up in the city and having spent my whole life enjoying the perks of urban living, I had no real idea of what he was talking about.
"Dan and I are heading out to Azores's National Park this weekend for a bike ride. We have an extra bike. Come with us." Brian offered.
It didn't sound all that fun to be honest, and I think it showed immediately on my face, because Brian broke out into a laugh.
"Oh, come on. Try something new. It will be a quick ride," he promised.
Sizing the situation up, I agreed. This was the first invite I had gotten to do any thing with them. And I had ridden a bike before. Couldn't be that hard. Hop on and pedal right? It sounded like it would be a quick jaunt at any rate...
Four hours after we headed out that Saturday morning, we made it back to the building. The sun had beat down on us the entire time. And while we had stopped for breaks to accommodate my pace, it was without a doubt the most strenuous thing I had ever done. I wasn't convinced I had fun—the one saving grace had been when Dan had stripped down to his waist to air out and I got my first full look at his magnificent torso, sweat glistening off the ringlets of fur that covered his front.
Back at the building, I think they saw the damage they had done, particularly watching the wobbliness in my legs as I got the bike they lent me through the door. I think half feeling sorry for me, they invited me up for dinner. "It's the least we can do." Dan said.
I washed up, took a nap and arrived at their apartment sore but with a bottle of wine in hand a few hours later.
Over dinner, I found out more about them. They seemed liked genuinely nice guys. I think the bottle of wine that I brought and the wine they pulled out of their cupboard to supplement it certainly helped the conversation along. They told me that they were essentially quiet homebodies and that they more or less kept to themselves; that a lot of folks thought them aloof when they didn't enter into easy conversation right away. I gathered that they were shy, which was a nice change from the over the top in your face queens that filled the neighborhood bars.
The conversation turned to my recent romantic woes. Not very interesting stuff but my new comfortableness with the two led the conversation from basic questions into more and more scandalous territory. "Was he at least any good in bed?" they asked laughing after I told them about the increasingly boring conversations that marked our last weeks together. "Well...." I started hesitatingly... which only brought even more laughter from them. Getting bolder from the rush of the day and the evening, I asked them how long they had been together and if the sex ever got stale. I had been with Jonah only a few months and the after a few weeks it felt fairly routine. All the while I noticed I was getting hard from our new topic of conversation. I think part of it was the excitement of having been invited into their world. The sudden intimacy made me feel a little flush. The wine wasn't hurting. And either was my view of Brian and Dan's chests ringed with salt and pepper hair underneath their unbuttoned at the top shirts. The proximity to both of them made the air feel still and suffocating.
Both of them looked at each other. "Sure you go through rough patches" Brian said. "But you think of ways to keep it fun." With that he ran his hands through Dan's hair, innocently kissed him on the mouth and went into the kitchen for another bottle. He and Dan started toward the living room as I excused my self to I head into the bathroom.
"Down the hall and on your right!" Dan called.
They laughed as they saw me wobble down the hall. Thankfully they didn't see my hard-on busting up against my jeans.
I stared at myself in the mirror. I little wobbly from the wine and the ride, I propped my self against the counter, hoping that my erection would go down. No such luck. While I had secretly thought about each of them in fleeting moments, I was surprised to find myself where I was at that second. While my surprise at our sudden familiarity and the buzz from the wine was slowly starting to wear off...my sudden horniness was not.
I realized I wanted them both.
Feeling a little flush again, I started to unbutton the top two buttons on my shirt to air out. The sight of my own chest hair, made me think of the two of them, laughing away in the other room. They were such incredibly sexy fuckers. What would their lips feel like on my nips I wondered. Hesitating for a second while I ran my cool fingers across my nipples, I then unbuttoned all the buttons of the shirt and pulled it out of my jeans. I wet a finger and ran it in circles across my nipples. I could feel my hard-on throb. Taking my shirt off I let it fall to the floor.
For a pregnant second I looked in the mirror.
I figured the worst that could happen was I could make a fucking fool of myself and claim it was the alcohol that made me do it.
