They hadn’t actually known each other during the summers before, but from the stories they had exchanged since the morning it felt like that might as well have.
The shared experience of locker rooms. Scents and sights. Best mates in sneakers, they thought were just cool at the time. Borrowed t-shirts they didn’t want to wash or give back.
As they reflected now in the sunshine of the park where they’d strolled to, it triggered something. He grabbed him by the wrist remembering -“let me show you something”.
A few feet down the path he turned pulling them beneath tree branches and over undergrowth. Back flexed and extended along the line of a home cut tank top, calves pulsing above confidently mismatched highlighter sneakers as he strides an incline.
“I come here for coffee with mates all the time, but hardly anybody realises this is here.” He said stopping and turning to make smiling eye contact, just behind. amongst behind a thin line of shrubs – there was a low concrete wall.
He gestured to follow, and they pulled each other forearm over forearm to the top – to reveal an old skate bowl. Hopping down inside they paced the circumference, standing close, arms occasionally touching. Examining the graffiti of decades since it had been fenced in.
Eventually both reclined into a patch of sun, exhaled and extended beside one another, onto sun-baked concrete. The pleasant sensation of fur, and weight, musk lingering. One watched the other peel a shirt off overhead, “You mind?” “Course not bro.”
A throbbing outline beneath red sports shorts. A softly placed hand. An arm around a waist.
They stroked each other like that, exchanging words in one another’s ears, while the background hum of the world continued, birdsong in the surrounding growth, the movement of the trees, and the distant sound of other people off in the open areas of the park.
After the release came, they both lay intertwined, atop half bunded hoodies, shorts pulled low along waistlines, the familiar scent of sweat, heavy breath and the vibrant feeling of touch, and being close.