Let's Make a Deal

*The following account is based on a true story*

***

"How about this? I'll make you a deal..."

Oh great, Tyler's "deals" were usually nonsensical scenarios where both sides of the deal completely benefited himself.

"If you let me have the good bedroom, I'll let you touch my dick."

What? Holy shit, where did that come from? He really was drunk. Okay, I had to play it cool. I choked on my drink mid-swig.

"WHAT?! ... How is that- why would I want- why would you-" I sputtered, attempted to clear my throat while I tried to pick one clear thought at a time. "Jesus, you are drunker than I thought. First of all, how is that at all a good deal for me? You get to sleep in the comfy room in MY cabin, and as a reward I get the privilege of touching your dick? Why would I even want to touch your dick?"

In my head: 'Yes! Deal! Take the comfy bed! Whip out your dick right now, please!' Of course, saying that was not an option. A best friendship, the only real friendship I had, hung in the balance. This was just one of Tyler's weird drunk jokes where the punchline was 'Wow, what are you, gay?'

I kept my tone light. "Someone really has to teach you how deals work. You offer something that benefits the other person, in order to get something that benefits you."

Tyler looked dumbfounded. It was a cute, innocent look that he had that secretly got to me every time. Truth be told, I had given in to many of his nonsense deals in the past. None of them, of course, had friendship altering consequences quite like this latest whooper.

"Uh huh, well this does benefit you!"

"How do you figure touching your dick benefits me?"

"Oh come on! You know you want to." He gave me an exaggerated knowing look that both excited and infuriated me in it's truthfulness. I tried my best to hide both of those reactions. "I know you want to touch my pee pee..." he teased.

"Okay first off, never call it your pee pee ever again."

A flashed a coy smirk at that. He was certainly acting pretty drunk. But we'd been going drink for drink and shot for shot all night. I was definitely feeling the effects, but I wouldn't say I was hammered or anything. We had both definitely drank a lot more than this in the past.

So then, what was with the super-drunk act? Was this all really just a ploy so that if I finally relented and said 'okay then whip it out!' he could laugh and call me a fag? Or... did he really want me touching his dick? Shit, did I even want him to want me to touch it? I mean, yes, of course I wanted to. But, what would it mean for our friendship? Was the feigning higher inebriation a way of denying accountability in the sober light of day tomorrow? Was saying "Wow we were way too drunk last night!" excuse enough for some kind of sexual shenanigans between two straight best friends? Granted, the excuse had been used before after nights of debauchery. Drunk prank calls to bosses and ex-girlfriends were one thing, even skinny dipping in the middle of the night hardly compared to what he was proposing.

Clearly I should ignore the proposal. Laugh it off, say 'nice try, homo.' Better yet, just change the subject completely. I really did value the friendship too much. I shouldn't jeopardize permanently making it weird. I had gone this long keeping my strange desires to myself.

"Second of all, I think you are cut off from the Tito's for the night. And what the fuck makes you think that you know I want to touch your dick?" Okay maybe I wasn't ready to drop it just yet.

"Oh come on! Matt, come on!... Really, Matthew... come on-" He made a show of chugging down the remains of his drink and setting the cup down on the couch next to him. "... Come on, like it isn't obvious."

I groaned and rolled my eyes. "No.. it isn't at all. You aren't making sense you fuckin' weirdo."

"Oh shh shh shhhh Matthew. It's okay. I know. I knooow you want it," he motioned to his own body with his hands, like a Price is Right model presenting a new car. "I know you want this..."

If I was taking another sip of my drink I would have choked again. Quick, I needed an appropriate reaction. My face, and what I said next, couldn't reveal what my mind was screaming- that he had hit the nail on the head, that he had read me spot on. Was it so obvious? I thought I had been playing the perfectly cool, totally hetero, not-sexually-attracted-to-him best bro ever part convincingly all these years.

"Haha dude what the fuck!? Like.. what the actual fuck are you talking about?" Okay, keep it cool. I didn't want to make myself sound too angry or too shocked. To try and deny it too fervently would be tantamount to admitting guilt. He who smelt it, dealt it, to put it in terms of farts. Which, why would anyone do that? Anyway, I went with amused confusion instead. At least that was the look I hoped I had on my face.

He gave me another one of those exaggerated knowing looks again. One that made me want to simultaneously punch him in the face and jump on him and tear his clothes off at the same time. "Seriously, bro. I see the way you look at me. The way you try to act like you aren't paying attention but at the same time stare too much any time I take my shirt off. I mean, I can't blame you, have you seen these muscles?" He said it jokingly, but with a cockiness that his dedication to the gym had afforded him.

"Wow, I knew you were full of yourself, but I didn't know you were actually delusional," I countered. "How many times do I have to tell you that everyone doesn't want you. Every dude that looks at you is not gay. Every guy that talks to you isn't hitting on you."

"Maybe, but I know you are."

This bizarro conversation still had an air of drunk jokiness to it, but not nearly as much as when it had first begun, and it was dissipating fast. It was being replaced fast by the feeling that I was being called out on years of bullshit that I was under the impression I had been expertly concealing.

"I mean, why else do you let me get away with all the shit I get away with? Why do you pay for most of the stuff we do? Why else would you want to hang out with me so much?" He continued.

"Dude, that is the strangest combination of cockiness and self-doubt I've ever heard. Uhhhm maybe because we are best friends? So you are saying you think you use your sex appeal to get me to do what you want? I pay for trips and stuff because of your gorgeous male body?"

"Hey your words not mine."

I rolled my eyes and continued, "Or maybe it's because you are always broke and I'm not, and sometimes if I didn't pay we'd never do anything and I'd never do anything fun at all cause I don't have any other real friends?"

"Woah, this conversation just got real," he mused. "Okay so that might be some of it but the other part is cause yoooou waaant meeee."

I rolled my eyes. Jesus, I needed to go to bed and hope we woke up tomorrow and at least pretended this conversation had never happened. Oh, and furiously masturbate, I'd also need to do that before I went to sleep.

I actually tended to do that rather frequently after nights spent hanging out with Tyler. It was all part of some strange infatuation that I'd developed at the start of our friendship that I thought I was cleverly hiding for the past 4 years. Maybe I should try and explain a bit.

I met Tyler 6 years ago when he was a fresh new baby-faced employee at the dead end retail job I'd been wasting away at. At the time he was just out of High School, and I had recently graduated college, and we were friendly with each other at work but not entirely on each others' radars. At the time, I was actually in what I thought was a healthy relationship with a girl I imagined I'd marry someday. When that relationship went south, due in large part to my inability to move on and make something of myself after college, we broke up and I moved back in with my parents and continued not making something of myself.

I was always a bit of a loner, and didn't maintain many friendships while I was in that relationship. Once it ended I started trying to hang out more with my co-workers, the closest thing I had left to any friends. I got roped in with the younger crowd to go out and celebrate Tyler's big 21st Birthday party. I say younger because by then I was 26 and still hanging around with the largely younger college age group of retail workers who had yet to presumably move on to bigger and better things.

Anyway, turns out everyone else bailed for various reason's on the night we were supposed to go out for Tyler's big Birthday blow out. So it was just me and Tyler. And we actually ended up having a really fun time. Out of this, a quick friendship formed. Despite the fact that he looked like a cliched meathead jock, he was actually kind of a nerd who just happened to work out at the gym a lot. And despite the age difference, and the fact that I avoided the gym like demons avoid churches, we actually shared a lot of interests, and also bonded over both going through recent break ups.

We went out for drinks a lot, or hung out in my parents' basement and watched movies or weird youtube videos. At the risk of sounding really lame, a best bromance formed. We'd go on what Tyler would call "adventures" together; road trips to see shows, or hunt ghosts in supposedly haunted places. At some point I finally got promoted to manager at our crappy retail job and even as manager and employee we were still inseparable. We'd schedule our vacation times together and go on camping trips to my family's cabin in the mountains. These trips were basically just days on end of goofing off and getting drunk in nature. Which actually brings us back to what we were doing now, fighting over who gets the comfiest bed in the cabin. Or more accurately the only bed that didn't feel like sleeping on a pile of rocks.

But somewhere along the way, I developed an oddly strong crush on Tyler. Okay, so I am not going to sit here and pretend that up until I'd met Tyler, I had never thought of a man sexually. It was always kind of a fantasy I'd kept somewhere deep in my mind. Some kind of attractiveness to hot dudes that was strictly physical, even though I considered myself straight and was physically and emotionally attracted to women. Whatever, it's the Twenty-First Century, I don't have to explain my orientation to anyone. Suffice it to say, this physical attraction to men had never been so strong or real for me until I met Tyler, and then I went and made a best bro out of him.

Alright, back to the story at hand. Tyler's nonsense deal to get the good bedroom and have me touch his dick. He appeared to be drunkenly stumbling all over the truth of the matter of me crushing on him, and my plan was to continue to straight up deny it.

I sighed, "well, I think it's time for bed. Tomorrow let's say we were too drunk to remember what the eff we talked about tonight, okay?"

Tyler shrugged. "Okay- but wait, we never decided who gets the good bed!"

"Oh, I obviously do, because it's my cabin."

As I came to this decision, Tyler slid off his couch and onto the spot directly next to me on the love seat.

"But what about my deal?"

Another groan from me, "Are we still on this bullshit deal? Let it go, shithead."

Ignoring me, Tyler began pulling his under armor t-shirt off over his head. As he did, my heart skipped a beat. I immediately fell into the pattern that Tyler had laid out a minute before, trying to side-eye stare at his bare upper body and also act like I could care less at the same time. As he lifted his arms to pull the shirt over his head, I watched his muscles stretch and flex, from his abdomen to his shoulders.

"What are you doing? Put your shirt back on, pal."

He tossed the shirt aside. I took in the sight as much as I could while pretending not to. When the clothes came off the age roles oddly reversed, although I was 29 and Tyler was only 24, he became the man and I felt more like a boy myself. His chest sported a respectable spread of short brown hair. Enough to come across as manly, but not so much that it completely hid the clearly worked on and well defined pectorals beneath it. The hair thinned out further and traveled down the middle of his upper body, over ripply abs, and then spread out to a bit wider area beneath his belly button and down into his gym shorts. The shorts rode down low enough for me to see the hypnotizing lines that formed a V disappearing beneath. A V that I knew would be even more defined if he had been standing instead of sitting inches away next to me.

Beneath my shirt, I would be sporting the figure of a near 30 year old who counts walking around at work all day as his main source of exercise. Rather than a short, even coat of hair on my chest, I sported a patchy sparse V of dark hair that went between my decidedly not worked on pecs. My mid-section then, for the most part, was not hairy save for a patchy path beneath my belly button that led down into my sweat pants. There was no rippled abs or enticing hip-V to speak of. My tall frame and some genetic luck meant that I wasn't fat. I just definitely was not in-shape; somehow overall boyish in spite of my age and attempt at a beard.

But that was me, and I was not the one who had just carelessly pulled off and tossed aside my shirt. Nor did I intend to.

"Come on, bro, take the deal." Tyler cooed, playfully running a circle around one of his nipples with a finger as he stared at me in what he must imagine was a mock seductive manner. This joke had gone beyond too far.

"Oh. My. God. Are you high AND drunk? I am not touching your junk, man."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes."

"Really?" I noticed at that, that he'd shifted his gaze downward. I followed it. He was looking at my crotch. Damn it, there was a bit of a noticeable bulge there. Fuck. Mortified, I grabbed a pillow next to me and jammed it down on my lap over my uncooperative member. I wanted to tell it to cool down, we were almost out of here and I could tend to it in the privacy of my room.

"Don't look at my crotch! Eyes up here!" I countered.

"Come on dude it's getting late, we are both tired and need to get to bed. Just reach in and grab it. You know you want to."

My head was spinning, not from the booze, but from the surrealism. This was my fantasy come true, and my nightmare all at the same time. he wasn't giving this up. It was an awful lot for him to go through for some kind of "Caught you being gay" prank. But the fantasies usually ended after I'd blown my load on my belly. In real life, we had our camping trip to continue tomorrow morning, and a friendship to continue. Was that even possible if I gave in?

"I am not going to just reach in and grab it."

"Why not?"

"Because... I don't know maybe because I'm not gay?"

"Hey-" He put up his arms, his deliciously muscled arms, in surrender, "-I'm not gay either. But you still want to, don't you? And I want to help a brother out."

This shocked, appalled act on my part was starting to get exhausting. Especially since he was right. I just couldn't admit it, right?

"...No. I know you! I reach for it and you pull away and say 'woah, it's just a prank bro! what are you gay?' or something ridiculous like that. Hell, I tickled your foot once as a joke three years ago and you still haven't let me live it down."

"Yeah well that was pretty gay."

"Ugh! Goodnight." I went to get up from the couch. He reached out and grabbed my forearm, stopping me.

"Wait! What if I put your hand on it for you? That way I can't pull away and say it was a prank."

"Jesus this is getting ridiculous. You really want me to touch your cock?"

He winced. "Ooooo I don't know if I like you calling it my cock. Sounds pretty gay."

"That's what sounds gay about all of this?!" I asked, incredulous. He still had his hand on my forearm. I felt a stirring in my pants under the pillow from that simple touch. I imagined the pillow rising up off my lap as if by magic.

It was Tyler's turn to sigh, and to apparently finally get serious. "But seriously, we are up here alone, there's no one around. I'm horny, I think you want this. I think you always have. Sounds like a win-win to me."

I had to remember to swallow the saliva building in my mouth. He looked down at his own lap, I followed his gaze and noticed there was something of a noticeable bulge beginning in his shorts now.

I guess he took the fact that I didn't protest further, didn't pull my arm away from him, didn't get off the couch, as my consent for him to continue. I guess he was right, because he took my arm and guided my hand over to his lap and to that tantalizing beginnings of a bulge that had now stolen my attention.

He lowered my hand down into the fabric of his shorts and released his grip. I didn't try to pull away. Instead I felt the hardening shape of my best friend's cock beneath my hand and through the thin fabric. My mouth went dry. I could tell through the clothes that he was only semi-erect at this point but it felt like it was already growing to my touch. Okay, what was I supposed to do now?

"See? you like it don't you?"

I couldn't respond. I just stayed there, staring at my hand pressed down on his crotch. I didn't know where else to look, too afraid or embarrassed or I don't know what to look back to his face and make eye contact. Maybe I was afraid some spell would be broken.

Tyler rocked his hips ever so slightly.

"You can rub it if you want."

I did want. Very much so. I began rubbing my hand gently up and down over the bulge in his shorts. I rubbed in a circular motion as the bulge became more of a tent. I tried gently squeezing and moving my fingers over it, getting a feel for the size and shape of his hard cock straining against the fabric. I could hear him heavily breathing. He was ever so slightly grinding and swaying his hips into the couch. I had to remind myself to swallow the lump in my throat.

I traced my fingers up the shaft, and began rubbing my fingers around the outline of his cock head. He let out a deep sigh and I braved a glance up from his lap to his face. He looked back at me, an infuriatingly cute smirk on his face. I lost my nerve and looked back down at my work.

"Go in my shorts."

What? this was madness. I didn't want to take my fingers away from his dick-outline, but I did. Instead of going up to the waist of his shorts, I went down his muscled thigh, until my hand felt the tight hairy skin of his thigh instead of cotton fabric. And then I went back up into the leg hole of his shorts. The son of a bitch was free-balling. No underwear tonight? How long had he been planning this?

Up my hand went. It was downright steamy inside those shorts. Finally my fingers encountered his balls, I gently squeezed them and moved on, up the shaft pressed against his lower abdomen. I felt a stubbly patch of what seemed to be shortly trimmed pubic hair and then ran my finger tips around the head. My fingers felt the slickness of a bit of pre-cum.

Tyler let out a content sigh. I was now turned sideways on the couch next to him. My left arm up his shorts giving his cock a rub down, and before I knew it, my right hand was reaching out and I was running my fingers over the muscles of his chest, over hardened nipples and then down across the little ridges of his abs and then back up.

Tyler's sighs and breaths told me was enjoying all the attention, and I felt emboldened rather than hesitant. As one hand worked a circle around the cock in his shorts, and the other rubbed any muscle I could reach on his shoulders, arms, abs and chest, I leaned forward and flicked my tongue out over his nipple. Part of me expected some sort of freak-out on Tyler's part at this more intimate touch. Instead, Tyler exhaled another heavy content sigh at the tongue to nipple action.