“Do it again,” said Tommy as he tossed the basketball back to Martin. He was standing near the hoop to catch rebounds wearing his adidas shorts and matching black shoes. The sweat on his bare chest was drying up now that he was standing still, waiting for Martin to make the shot.
Martin dribbled the ball twice as he paced the three point line. He wore dark blue shorts and white runners that shone in the warm spring sun. Sweat dripped off his face and he kept needing to brush hair aside to see. His mom always told him it was getting too long, but that only made him want to avoid cutting it more. Even if it was making it impossible to sink a shot.
He dribbled and ran forward to layup into the hoop, his hair covering his eyes as he tipped the ball up off his fingers. It smacked the rim and backboard and ricocheted off.
“Fuck!” said Martin as he walked in a circle and lay down. The black asphalt was hot against his naked back, but he didn’t care. He lay his arms out in defeat and stared into the empty blue sky.
Tommy walked into his eyeline holding the ball, silhouetted against the sun. “You sure you don’t want to just get a haircut?”
Martin groaned and covered his eyes.
A little later they were back in Martin’s room.
Tommy stood in front of the tall mirror on Martin’s closet door, flexing his arms and poking at his bare chest trying to decide if the regular workouts were making a difference to his skinny body.
Martin was sitting up in his bed focused on the notebook. “What if I joined the swim team instead?” He asked.
Tommy looked at him in the mirror and replied, “I don’t think they have spots open. We’re more than half way through the year, dude, it’s too late to switch.”
“Fuck,” Martin muttered. He looked down the list of options they had crossed out at the start of the year, looking for an alternative to the basketball team.
Tommy bumped his shoulder to make space and Martin moved over so Tommy could join him on the small twin bed. He tried to cheer his friend up, “You don’t have to play a lot to be a part of the team, you know. It’ll still count for the applications.”
“I know, but I wanted that moment like in Teen Wolf when he wins the first game for them.” Martin looked over at Tommy, who was looking back at him like he was an idiot. “What?”
“He was a fucking werewolf.”
Martin went back to the notebook, “You know what I mean.”
“There’s lots of other things you’re on track for, don’t get hung up on the sports moment. You can still be Valedictorian or Prom King.”
“Come on, you’re going to be Prom King.”
Tommy grinned and said, “I know,” so Martin elbowed him in the ribs. It was basically an act of war, so Tommy pounced on Martin and wrestled him off the bed. They fell to the carpet in a tangle of limbs as they tried to pin each other, but they were on the basketball team, not the wrestling team, so they both fought dirty and tried to tickle or poke the other boy into submission.
In the end Martin was pinned to the ground with his face in the carpet, his hands behind his back, and Tommy straddling his ass.
“I win again,” Tommy said, grinning.
“Fine! Uncle.”
Tommy let go of his hands. Martin tried to get up but Tommy wouldn’t move, so he got up anyway on all fours with his friend riding his back like a cowboy.
“Yeehaw!”
Martin knocked him off and got back up on the bed with the notebook.
On the carpet, Tommy stretched out and put his hands behind his head, resting his bare feet on the wall with one leg crossed over the other.
Martin flipped to the pages of tallies and asked, “How many times have you and Rebecca made out this week?”
Tommy thought back, “I think four times.”
Martin added it to the tally. He scanned through the list for more stats to update, adding ticks to his column for the two music lessons he’d had that week.
The boys had been keeping records all year, getting together on Saturdays to figure out all the things they needed to do before High School was over. Everything in their lives had been building to these moments, these landmark events in their lives that would define everything for them. It had been drilled into them from a young age from teachers and parents and movies that they had to have a good job to have a good life, and to get a good job you had to go to a good university, and to get into a good university meant doing well in high school, and doing well in high school meant having good grades and a good social life, and a good social life meant having a girlfriend and going to Prom, and going to Prom meant getting the tuxedo and corsage and limo and learning how to dance, how be charming, how to kiss. It was a tonne of work, but they agreed they had to do it.
“Did Rebecca say anything about your kissing technique?” Martin asked.
Tommy thought seriously but shook his head, “No, but she left early on Thursday. She said she had something but I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Were you doing it differently?”
Tommy shrugged. “What about Elizabeth?”
Martin shook his head. “We kiss a bit and then she wants to go to the mall or something. We never really make out.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Well, what if we suck at kissing?”
Tommy got up and pushed Martin aside to get back on the bed as he said “Fuck you, I’m a great kisser.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know, I know what I like and I do it to her.”
“How do you know she likes it?”
“Because. You know. She moans and stuff.”
“What if she’s faking it?”
“You think Elizabeth is faking it when you kiss her?”
“I don’t know, maybe? How can I know? How do you know that Rebecca isn’t faking it?”
“For fucks sake, man,” said Tommy and he simply grabbed Martin’s face and mashed their lips together.
Martin was too stunned to react. His mind went blank. Tommy’s tongue slipped through his lips and he felt himself pushed against the wall as his friend demonstrated his abilities.
It felt… interesting.
After a few seconds Tommy pulled away and raised his eyebrows and asked, “So?”
He didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, so Martin went along pretending that his heart wasn’t racing and said, “Um… I think… It seemed good.”
“See?” Tommy said enthusiastically and he smacked Martin’s shoulder, but then his expression soured, “What do you mean ‘seemed good’? Was it good or not?”
“I mean… I think you caught me off-guard, so it was just… a surprise.”
“Oh, yeah that’s fair. We can do it again.”
Tommy started to lean in but Martin put a hand on his bare chest to stop him and said, “Hold on!”
“What?”
“You really want to just start making out? With me?”
“Sure, yeah,” Tommy shrugged again. “It’s just to figure out what feels good. It’s like practicing your layups.”
“Right, but… it’s not really the same, right? We’re not… you know.”
“Not what?”
“Not… gay.”
“We’re not professional basketball players either. You were the one panicking about kissing the girls, dude.”
Tommy’s calm logic was extremely disarming and Martin found himself half-shrugging, half-nodding, and a moment later Tommy’s lips were back on his, a hand touched the back of his head and he felt Tommy’s fingers slip into his hair.
Martin wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. It happened with Elizabeth too when they first started kissing in a movie theatre he hadn’t known where to put his hands. Do you hold their shoulders or their waist? Or should you hold their head like Tommy was doing? Tommy was already holding his head, so maybe he should go for his waist?
But then Tommy shifted and moved his legs while still holding Martin’s head and suddenly Tommy’s other hand was sliding under his arm over his ribs. It sent a shiver through Martin as Tommy straddled him at the waist, slipping his knees around him and dropping some of his weight down on Martin’s cock. It felt amazing and Martin’s hands went to Tommy’s hips out of instinct to pull him closer to hold on to the warm feeling of their bodies pressing together.
Then Tommy pulled away and said, “You know it’s a lot like kissing Rebecca actually because of your long hair. We should have practised sooner.”
Martin licked his lips and said, “Yeah, it could have saved you from that embarrassing first kiss.”
“You dick!” Tommy joked and he poked the soft ticklish spot under Martin’s ribs, which started another wrestling match.
They managed to stay on the bed, but Tommy still came out on top, holding Martin’s hands to the mattress above his head and sitting on his stomach.
Martin huffed, out of breath, “How do you always win?”
“I practice. Jake and I wrestle all the time, and he’s joining the team so he knows some proper techniques.” Jake was Tommy’s younger brother who had joined them in high school this year and was charting a course to outshine them both as the golden boy of his grade.
“It’s always practice,” Martin groaned.
Tommy smirked, “How else are you supposed to get good at anything? I was going to say we need to practice a lot of things to get ready for Prom and stuff.”
“Like what?” Martin’s mind was racing through the lists in the notebook and couldn’t help but still taste Tommy on his lips.
“Dancing, for one.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And public speaking if you’re going to be valedictorian.”
“Sure.”
“And we should practice putting on condoms, for after Prom, too.”
Martin kept his mouth shut and just tried to nod casually.
“Actually, have you ever cum in front of someone before?”
Martin shook his head, ‘no’. He was painfully aware of what Tommy was sitting on.
Tommy sat up and let his hands rest on Martin’s bare stomach, absent-mindedly playing with his belly button as he thought and looked away.
“I haven’t either, come to think of it. I’ve done it when Jake is in the room, but he’s sleeping so it doesn’t count.” He looked back at Martin below him, “What if we can’t cum?”
Martin realized he still had his arms up and tried to look cool as he crossed them over his chest and said, “I don’t think that’s usually the problem.”
“What is?”
“Well, don’t guys usually cum really fast their first time?”
“That’s even worse!”
“Is it?”
Tommy leaned forward in a pushup position on top of Martin to get their faces closer as he said, seriously, “Of course it’s worse. You want to lose your virginity before it’s even inside her?”
Then Tommy thrust their cocks together twice and made a grunting cumming sound as he mocked fucking Martin and said, “Like that?”
“I… uh… see your point.”
“So we should practice, right?”
Martin’s cock was already hard. He didn’t know how they got to this point, but he was completely on board with whatever Tommy wanted to do. He nodded.
Tommy grinned, “Awesome, so do you want to be the girl first or should I?”
“What?!”
