If only
From Metabods
I don’t think Steve realizes I remember what it was like before. But then, it seems pretty clear that Steve himself doesn’t remember. No one does.
Steve has always been – I guess you could say wistful. We’ve known each other since freshman year at State when we were first roommates, and one of the first things I remember was standing next to him looking out our window, which had a beautiful view of the botanic gardens at the edge of campus, and him being disappointed it wasn’t spring. He’s like that. He sees how things are good – he’s not a pessimist – but he sees how they could be better, too. His trademark phrase was “if only,” and because we all joked about how he always said “if only this” and “if only that” and teased him about his relentless desire for pushing anything that was good enough to the next level, he was aware of it and used his catchphrase often.
But it wasn’t all talk. If it was something he could do something about, he did it. For example he was very handsome in a tall, lithe, Nordic sort of way, but looking at himself in the mirror he thought he could be more attractive. So he spent a lot of spare time at the gym that year, and studied tai chi and meditated to promote stress reduction, and bought new clothes, and tried half a dozen other solid ways of improving his basic physical health and ability; and by spring break he had gone from handsome to hunk. And he saw a twin potential in me, to join him on this road – though I was even skinnier than he’d been and certainly too green-eyed Greek to remind anyone of him (though I’d certainly been told I was at least as handsome as Steve, if not more so), and no one was more pleased than Steve when I had to buy my first new shirts because my old ones wouldn’t fit anymore. Of course, he still wasn’t completely satisfied, and kept pushing me as hard as he drove himself. That’s Steve.
That was around the time when things started happening. I’m not sure exactly why, looking back on it. I know that when he came back from spring break in Hawaii he seemed a little preoccupied, and he had a dark green starburst tattoo on both his round deltoids he hadn’t had before. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten them – in fact he wasn’t clear on the last few days of his trip.
I was laying in bed reading something for school when he stepped through the door to our dorm room, shirtless and in shorts and sandals, looking even bigger than when he’d left and beautifully tanned, with just a duffel slung over his brawny shoulder, as if he were still in Hawaii and not upstate Vermont; and he grinned broadly to see me. I was wearing only boxers – the heat was on in the dorms still. I jumped up and grinned back, slapping him on the arms.
He drank me in. “Wow, Nick, you look great. If only everyone here were as hot as you!”
We laughed and fell into an embrace, and as we did I felt a queasy, wrenching twist in my gut as if between moments the world had folded itself inside out somehow. Of course I thought that it was all in my head – or rather, in my heart, because in that moment I was filled with a sudden swell of love for my roommate and my best friend and I was treasuring the feeling of his warm, hard body in my arms. I pulled my face back along his, feeling our stubble brush together (my bristle was stiffer than his soft blond beard) and our lips met for a brief, unexpectedly greedy kiss, our long tongues dancing for a perfect moment, before he pulled back, surprised – we’d never done that before.
My heard was pounding, but I asked innocently, “That’s how all good friends say hello, isn’t it?”
He broke into an easy grin. “If only!” And we kissed again, and again I felt the world shift, and I was convinced it was love. But it wasn’t all in my head.
We talked for a couple hours nonstop about his trip – he sort of skipped over the end, and I noticed but didn’t press him, and we both kind of ignored the obvious boner in my boxers, even though I have one of those cocks that’s kinda hard to ignore. After a while though we realized we were both hungry and, after I’d pulled on some pants (for some reason I didn’t feel like putting on a shirt) we set out for the dining hall, which was just reopening from break. But we hadn’t even made it out of our dorm hallway before we ran into another returning student – a very tall, very muscular, very handsome Asian guy who seemed very familiar. He was shirtless and wearing jeans, and even as I was drinking him in as he walked toward us, trying to figure out where I knew him from, he grinned broadly at the sight of us and planted a deep wet tongue-fuck of a kiss on Steve, and one on me!
“Brandon! How was your break?” Steve said happily, stroking a muscular tricep.
I started into black eyes as our kiss broke, and recognized him with – well, incredulity would be an understatement. This was Brandon!?
Yet I could see it was. The nerdy poly-sci major from down the hall, Brandon Park, who I’d never thought of as anything but a sweet, smart, ordinary-looking guy and a reliable friend, was suddenly as tall as me and as muscular as me and very, very handsome …
Already, even as Brandon disappeared grinning into his room, the back of my mind was connecting the dots, but for now I refused to discern the obvious pattern.
The campus was still pretty empty, but we still ran into a bunch of guys on the way to the dining hall, and every guy we ran into was tall, muscular and strikingly handsome – and shirtless, showing off gym-muscled torsos in the unusually balmy Vermont March evening. (Getting ahead of the story a little: I later learned that on his last day on the beach in Hawaii, Steve realized how much he enjoyed being half-naked and sighed to himself, “If only going shirtless were normal back home!”)
But we met another friend, Jake, who broke away from an animated conversation with a couple of friends to give us both luscious, sweet-tongued kisses before falling in with us as we headed for food. My head was still spinning, but Steve and Jake were talking excitedly about upcoming swim team tryouts like nothing odd was going on. I looked over at Jake, who was loping along in sweatpants and sneakers, his long black hair brushing his bulging traps. Jake had already been muscular – we’d worked out together several times – but anywhere I’d been ahead of him, like glutes, he’d filled out. But he’d stayed bigger where he was bigger, like in the lats. I didn’t know what to think, and my mind was a blank when Jake turned toward me and asked with a breathtaking smile if I was trying out too.
Steve laughed, because he knew I avoided swimming because of the whole overpacked trunks thing. “If only,” he said.
And I felt world shift and I knew I did want to try out for the swim team, and said so. Steve smiled at Jake. “See? I told you he’d want to!”
What the fuck!? My mouth fell open but no words came out. Steve was acting like I’d been sure to go for the swim team, and in fact I was totally looking forward to it now (despite the fact that I would still have to face the insurmountable Speedo problem), and yet I knew – knew – that a minute before I had definitely not wanted to – and that Steve had known that I wouldn’t.
The dining hall was full of 6’3”, 220-pound shirtless hunks, all unbearably gorgeous. Friends were greeting each other with deep kisses all over the cavernous space. Steve turned to me and grinned. “I love this school!” he said reverently. We waded into the masses, French-kissing all our beautiful friends.
Eventually the three of us were seated at a square table and digging into our totally unremarkable welcome-back cheeseburgers and cold fries. “Man, if only the food here were better,” Steve said, and as soon as my stomach stopped feeling the tilt of the universe I realized I was tasting a significantly more delicious cheeseburger. I reached for a fry. Piping hot. Delicious. Best fry ever.
I was starting to get it. And suddenly I giggled to myself. French fries!
Jake was reaching into the pocket of his sweats. “Anyway, I got something for you,” he said to Steve, spilling a puka necklace into Steve’s palm. “A kind of a welcome back thing.” Steve was genuinely touched and pulled Jake into what I was already thinking of as a “friendship kiss.”
“You are so sweet,” Steve said. “If only there were more guys like you!”
I glanced up sharply at Steve and then at Jake, and then my vision blurred for a split second and there was that moment of universe-shifting – and suddenly there were three gorgeous Jake hunks sitting at our table, two on Steve’s right and one on my left. Or rather, as my mind caught up with reality, our friends the identical trips Jake, Jack, and John. All of them were grinning, and Steve was holding three necklaces.
“Thanks guys!”
“Too bad I don’t have three necks to wear them round!” Jack said, and Steve laughed happily. “Wow, yeah. If o – ”
“Steve!” I blurted, and he looked at me, surprised. The trips looked at me expectantly too. I of course had no follow up other than an urgent injunction to stop talking. The dots had all connected, and I had dawned on me that the most important part of the picture was that Steve was totally clueless about what I knew was happening every time he said something like that. I could see what was going on, but Steve himself was as in the dark as everyone else to what was going on – everyone but me. I was the only guy in the room with a flashlight, and suddenly I was simultaneously thrilled, fascinated, and scared shitless.
They were all still looking at me. I cleared my throat and asked Steve, kind of lamely, to pass the salt. All four of them looked first at the salt shaker in front of Steve, and then at the other one, which was three inches from my left hand, and then back up at me. I nodded at the shaker as if it were the only one in existence and Steve was an idiot for not handing it to me right away, all the while feeling my cheeks burning (fortunately with my complexion it’s not always obvious).
It was kind of comical, actually. I laughed – later.
Steve passed his salt to me and then turned back to the trips. “Anyway, thanks guys.” And they started talking about movies the trips had seen over break, and I heaved a sigh of relief – knowing, however, that I was only entering a labyrinth without even a ball of twine to bring me home.
After a while I came out of a reverie and resumed eating, half-listening. The others had long since finished their food and were still chatting away about recent films. “I kinda liked that movie Fireflies in Winter,” John was saying. “Too bad about Keanu.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “If only he could act.” I was taking a drink of soda at that moment and almost swallowed the wrong way, instead spraying it out undemurely over my half-eaten dinner – and sure enough, as the queasy moment passed, I knew that Keanu Reeves was widely considered to be one of Hollywood’s most talented young actors. I tried to laugh but there was still soda in my throat and I ended up coughing uncontrollably. Steve and Jack, on either side of me, both slapped my naked back. Their hands lingered as Steve said, “You okay?”
I looked up at him, into his bright blue eyes, and suddenly I didn’t want to share him even with the beautiful Larson triplets. “Actually I feel kind of funny. You about ready to head back?”
Steve looked concerned. “Of course.” He stood and helped me up, and we kissed the trips goodbye and headed back across the twilit quad.
It felt good to be shirtless in the night air. I could feel my nips firm up pleasantly.
We held hands silently as we walked, and we’d never done that before either, but it felt natural. I wondered if I’d missed something Steve had said. I didn’t think so. Our intimacy had been growing steadily and comfortably before break. No prompting from whatever new talent Steve had was necessary.
When we got back into our dorm Steve just said, “Let’s get you to bed.” I submitted compliantly as he eased me onto my bed and gently shucked my jeans. He looked at the tenting boxers and said, “Might as well make you completely comfortable.”
He peeled off the boxers, freeing my ten-inch, wrist-thick boner.
Though he had seen my cock many times before he’d never really seen it completely hard in all its majesty, and he stared at it appreciatively, a little in awe.
“You like it?” I said sheepishly.
“I love it,” he said. “If only mine were that big. Hell, if only everyone’s – ”
I leapt up and kissed him, stopping him. When the world was done twisting I knew that only Steve now had a cock like mine. I checked his shorts and, sure enough, he was now boasting quite a package. He laughed at my eagerness and pushed me gently back.
“I can’t believe how much our cocks look alike,” he said. “I mean, look at them!” He pulled off his shorts (no underwear – no tan line!) and straddled my legs, slapping his growing boner against mine. They were identical in size, though his was a shade lighter. “They’re like twins! Can you imagine, if you had twin cocks?”
My face flushed. “If only,” I blurted suddenly.
He grinned back. “If only,” he agreed. And then a moment later he was saying, “Dude, I still can’t believe you have twin cocks!” He was gently stroking his huge cock between my two boners and grinning like a maniac.
There was not much more need for words that night. And if the world changed any more during our lovemaking, I didn’t notice.
