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Holy shit, I thought. This is fucking amazing. I really, actually like this.

I liked the kicked-back ease of the descent, the gentle lean on the long sweeping bends, the sense of cutting a wake through space - I liked the speed, the exposure, the hint of risk, everything.

Hands on Quinn's waist, I decided I hadn't taken enough risks with my life. I told myself I'd make a move, I'd find an opening - or create one. The worst that could happen would be no more chances to do this...

He pulled up on the shoulder after taking the exit that led over to the Hutt Valley to check in with me once again.

"Doing okay?"

"Loving it!" Again, not exactly eloquent, but hey...

He gave me a thumbs-up and we were off. Less speed this time, noticeably more curves and corners and humps and bumps and hasty fixes here and there. My god, are they ever gonna finish working on this road? I inched forward and held on a little tighter.

Once the climb was done, we descended the steep incline of the Western Hutt escarpment with its final hair-pin bend and ran south along their flank a little way. Then instead of slipping off across the river and toward civilisation, cafes, etc. - he turned right, wending a leisurely path back up the same hills.

Where are we going? I wondered. Okay, so I never asked, but I had kind of assumed we were headed somewhere. But here there were only suburbs, houses and streets. Plenty of bends though, the bike in a constant fluid gyration, one side then the other. Don't you get it, Jeremy? It's the journey, not the destination...

It was both. We wound up at a lookout - actually it was a platform for a water reservoir - an elevated knoll with a vista to literally every point of the compass. Quinn made one slow circuit while I took in the same harbour I'd known all my life from a whole other perspective, before killing the engine and dismounting, fiddling under his chin with the helmet straps.

I followed suit, more clumsily. It felt weird to be separate from him, weird to be on my feet again, weird to have my head out in the breeze. I was off balance in a lot of ways in that moment, which was probably why, when he hauled his own helmet off, I blurted;

"Ohh, your curls are all squashed!" - instead of, I dunno, cutting out my tongue...

Quinn laughed and inclined slightly from the waist, leaning forward. "Go on, then..."

It was a clear invitation, and I accepted before I could overthink it, reaching out to ruffle things back to a semblance of normal.

He did the one-eyebrow thing. "Better?"

"Much better," I told him. And I'm never washing my hand again...

"Yours is definitely, ah, improved from the first time as well," he murmured.

Tell me about it..."Yeah, my barber finally got his cast removed and caught up on his backlog, so next time Lindsey sees me she's gonna have to find something else to criticise..."

He grinned. "Ahh...so that's why you were so sour!"

"I wasn't sour!"

That eyebrow again, eyes wickedly alive beneath, dancing. "You were sour..." Suddenly he was serious. "Jeremy? Do we...have something...here?" His finger, pointing first at his chest then mine, drawing a line, a connection. Then he was in retreat. "Or...I mean, maybe I'm imagining it, I know it could just be me-"

"It's not just you," I assured him. "Definitely not just you..."

His whole body sagged in relief. "Well, thank god. Because that would've been a hella uncomfortable ride back..."

I laughed. He laughed. I looked away for a moment, at the crumpled khaki hills receding to the north, then stole another glance. He was watching me, biting down a grin - trying to, but it escaped. I smiled back. He laughed. I laughed.

I wanted to touch him, really touch him, but we were in public - sort of. "Should we...maybe head home?" I prompted.

He nodded, still biting his lip to hold back his thrill. I didn't want him holding back. I reached out and untucked it - he growled and snapped after my retreating thumb like a dog. I laughed, he laughed, and instead of getting going we stood there doing that kind of shit for another ten minutes and it was just massively cheesy and dumb and so indescribably good...

When we hopped on the bike I wrapped my arms all the way around him for a moment and squeezed. God, he was thicc...in general I don't like to appropriate words, but there's just no alternative out there that captures the sheer glory of so. much. man.

It was like a dream, the return journey. Like a very good dream, where the guy you've been secretly lusting after for months is somehow inexplicably sitting all cosily tucked up between your thighs. I imagined us like that, leaning back in a dimly lit booth at a bar, on a sofa, in bed of a weekend morning...It'd work, I mused. There was a lot of him, sure, but he was shorter than me, so it'd definitely work...

We got back to mine and dismounted, shucked off our helmets. I reached out to 'fix' his hair uninvited - this time he leaned into my hand, prolonging the contact, and I pulled him in for a quick hug on the driveway, but once we got inside and he shed his riding gear, he seemed to retreat into himself, arms crossed over his chest, fingers fidgeting on opposing biceps.

I wondered if he was discomfited by his surroundings. My parents' house isn't palatial by any means, but it does have sea views, glossy matai floors, designer rugs, up-to-the-minute furnishings...

"Are you alright?" I asked him, running a finger down one of those very un-still arms.

He blinked rapidly. "I'm...like, you should probably know, I'm kinda new to this. I mean, not brand new, to be clear, but just..."

And yet you managed to reach out, make the first move, while I was still second-guessing myself...

I tugged his hands away, stilling their strange dance so I could hold them, only the tips of the fingers, connection but distance.

"I'm just happy you're here. Seriously. I'm so happy you're here right now, and anything we do is okay, including nothing. Don't stress about getting things wrong - as long as we keep the communication channels open, there is no wrong."

His laugh was awkward, and he still looked off-balance, but what came out of his mouth was bold as hell.

"Mate. I'm not here to do nothing..."

I knew there was a little bit of faking it 'til you make it in there, and I loved him for it. I wrapped my arms about him again, front-wise this time, making a few seconds' contact with all that solid bulk, before stepping back to survey him, letting him feel the heat of my gaze, from his feet all the way up, lingering on those enticingly full lips...

"You into kissing?"

"Yeah," he gulped hoarsely.

Yeah. He was. He really was. I sat on the couch and pulled him down to straddle my lap, the insides of his meaty thighs planted hard over mine, and after only a couple of minutes making out I could feel tiny courses of shudders transmitting through from them, little puppy-shivers of need. When I palmed his back, his sides, I felt them again. Electric with excitement, all in, all over...

While my hands roamed everywhere, his were laser-focused, first impatiently working my top free at the waist, then fumbling and fumbling with the buttons on my jeans fly. He lost the rhythm of our kiss when he switched his attention there properly, which was fine because it gave me an opportunity to break off and lavish some attention on his neck - and coax a couple of infinitesimal whimpers out of him...

Then my buttons gave way at last, and in an instant Quinn was reared back, meeting my eyes, his own wide and stormy, before literally tumbling off my lap and onto the hard wooden floor between my knees.

"Please...?" He was panting, quivering. Goddamn.

I touched his cheek with the back of my hand. "Anything you want, baby."

Okay, so it wasn't the most sophisticated head I ever got, but who cares about finesse when hunger's in the room? I didn't need to be seduced. I was already there with him, had been since day one - but even if I hadn't? The way he took me in...I'd never witnessed anyone in such utter bodily desperation to get a piece of me...

Feeling myself getting close a few minutes later, I pushed him back, the heel of my hand on his forehead, my throbbing tip an inch from his searching mouth. He resisted hard, zeroed in on the prize...

"Hey," I cooed, "hey, shh, it's okay...you're gonna get it, don't worry. Just let me have a moment here, alright?"

Obviously he heard me, but I don't know that he actually made sense of what I said. There was far more tempestuous want than understanding in the look he gave me. And...goddamn again...he was as smokin' with his sulky face on as he was with his sunny one, the inadvertent protrusion of his lower lip stupidly sexy...I ran my hand up my shaft, squeezing tight, milking a few drops of clear fluid onto the knuckle of my index finger, offering it up as he strained forward.

"Lick...." I whispered. "Yeah, that's it...you like that, hmm? Want more? Okay, but we're gonna slow it down for a bit now, uh-huh?"

I clasped his head in my hands and guided him back onto me, rocking slow and shallow.

"Soft mouth now, yeah? Wet and loose...make yourself all soft for me...just hold on gentle with those pillowy lips and let me do the work..."

From the way he melted, sagging into my encircling hands and going with the flow I was establishing, he clearly liked the chat - so I kept it up, coaxing, encouraging and praising until my voice started to crack.

"Soon, soon...you're gonna get it soon...aggh, here it comes, baby..."

I felt him tense up between my palms and suddenly remembered he was 'kinda new at this' - but it wasn't fear, it was expectation, eagerness - that wild want from earlier, raging to the surface...

"How are your knees?" I asked, as he drew back from me and I released his face.

He laughed awkwardly, eyes downcast, a little shy now - hopefully not regretful. "Uhh, sore..."

"Hop up here," I told him, patting the couch beside me. "Let me have a look."

I got him arranged along the cushions, feet in my lap, and twisted to rub and massage the red pressure marks, allowing one of my hands to drift teasingly up into his shorts while the other did the work, swapping between them, mixing it up, edging ever closer to his groin without ever arriving...

"Yeah, my knees are fine now, Jeremy," he drawled after a few minutes. "You can move on, y'know..."

"I'll get there eventually," I murmured, giving him my best shit-eating grin.

"Take the direct route," he growled, with that jutting chin I'd initially seen when he said, 'I asked first'. My heart swelled. God, you're perfect. Perfect. A total puppy...who bites now and then...

It was a culmination, a could-die-happy moment, just to have him in my mouth. To be in close, washed in the scent and taste of him...it needed nothing more, but as I suckled and swooped he rewarded me with a near-continuous seepage of sweet-salty slickness that - I'm not sure I believe in this kind of thing, but it felt like I got high on it - and higher and higher and higher, knowing I was taking him with me...

There were no hands on my body caressing or cramming, no urgent filthy whispers, no moans to goad me on...he was still the staunch silent soldier that straight guys learn to be, even the quiver deserted him now - but he was here, with me, and ever-more-helplessly leaking to the tune I was playing...

I laid my cheek on his hip after drinking him down, drowsy with feel-good chemicals, blinking intermittently at his slow-deflating cock, and Quinn finally unhooked a hand from behind his neck, reached out and made contact, jogging my head gently side to side.

"Damn. You really meant that, didn't you?"

"Yup. But if you feel like clarification is needed, I'd be happy to supply it any time. Like, any time at all..."

He laughed, a delicious chesty rumble, as he reached down to pull his shorts up. "I'll let you know."

I thought that was a wrap - non-committal answer, clothes back on, time for awkward shuffling exit and then...who knows - but he dragged my head back down where it'd been and left his hand resting on it, comfortingly weighty...

"So-oo," I sighed, "you wanna explain kinda-new-but-not-brand new to me?"

He lifted his head a little and smiled crookedly in my direction. "Uhh...well, I guess you already know I'm a teeny bit dumb, so this might almost be believable..."

"You are not!" I protested, sitting up again. "You're a guy with a disability who came up with inventive and effective workarounds for that disability without any outside help! That's the exact opposite of 'dumb', and I am not just saying that to make you feel good about yourself."

The smile was a smirk this time. "That's a relief, 'cos I don't see how you'd top the way you made me feel good about myself five minutes ago. But seriously, I must be a little bit...yeah, slow, given how long it took me to realise..."

There was a pause while he tapped his lips with his knuckles, arranging his thoughts.

"You have to understand," he said as he began again, "that not a lot of people hang around the kind of place where I was born once they're done with school. Not a whole lot of people hang around in Taupō even. It's more, people come there or come back there when they're old and have the money for lake views. And especially - especially - girls don't hang around. And why would they? There's far more jobs for guys, or at least more jobs that you'd typically associate with guys."

"So what you have," he continued, "is you have this...wider environment that's really male-heavy, and so there's...ah...a lot of competition, maybe? Or not even that. A lot of lack of opportunities...and I lived and worked in this environment of lack until I was twenty one years old, surrounded by dudes who were constantly bitching about how long it'd been since they got laid, and the whole thing was just never a giant problem for me."

He half-sat and swivelled around so his head was down my end of the sofa, resting in my lap. Looking up, he murmured;

"To be clear, I did get laid occasionally, and I...y'know, it was...great. But I didn't, like, obsessively think about it all the time in the way the guys around me seemed to, like it was an itch they just couldn't get scratched, and I...I guess I concluded I had, like, a lower sex drive than them. But, hey - whatever. As I said, it wasn't bothering me."

My thoughts flicked to his hands scrabbling at my shirt as he tried to get it free. There was nothing 'whatever' about the hurricane of passion I felt and saw there...I reached down and traced his eyebrows, booped his nose.

"So...who was it?" I whispered. "Who turned you all the way out, gorgeous?"

He pinked up a little - just a tiny bit, high up on his cheeks. "I, uh, went on a holiday," he mumbled. "Not to have sex, okay! Just...to do something different. Nobody in my family ever went anywhere except maybe over to Hawkes Bay for some camping in summer. I had money saved - still living at home - and I just...got this idea to go to Japan. I booked on one of those super-organised trips where the accommodation and the activities and the food are all chosen for you and they just haul the group around the place in a minibus and throw experiences at you all day long, and I, uh, shared a room...hey, stop it! Stop laughing, bitch!"

"I'm not laughing," I told him. Which was true. Smirking? Yeah, I was smirking...

He glared up at me, but it didn't have much of an effect, because he was insanely beautiful even when he was trying to be fierce...but I tucked the smirk away. He's telling you about the first time, Jeremy. That's serious stuff...

"Don't stop now," I urged. "You're just getting to the good bit..."

Quinn nodded. "Yeah. Anyway, I shared a room with this guy. Hayden. He was from Adelaide. Same sorta age as me, good bloke. Also a first-timer in Japan. We hung out quite a bit over the course of the week because most of the other folk were like, older, paired up, etc."

I watched the solid lump of his adam's apple bob as he swallowed once, twice, before saying; "So, the fifth night, we were...had the lights out, and just talking, y'know? - and then Hayden's like, 'hey, can I ask you something?' and I told him sure, and he says, 'would you be up for a bit of fooling around?', and I went to say, dude, no! but then I had this thought...like, literally why not? Nobody's gonna find out, and I'm already here doing stuff outside my comfort zone, so...

"Hayden put the light back on and we sat up side by side on his bed and we...uhh...gave each other handjobs, and it was..." Quinn trailed off into silence.

"It was...?" I prompted.

There was a long pause before he quietly said; "It was a lot of things. Maybe even all of the things. Like, I just don't know how to tell you how completely different touching another guy's dick is, compared to touching your own - but...yeah, I don't need to, do I? - not with you."

Not with you. I felt the weight of his confidence, the beautiful burden of it, and accepted it for the gift that it was.

"Not with me," I promised.

A stunner of a smile in return. "Well, we get to the next night," he continued, "and we're back in our room, and it's the last night, have to get up at five in the morning for flights out, and Hayden's like, 'so, you in?' - and all day, all day I'd been trying to tell myself that I only got such a buzz from that because it was different, taboo, whatever. Not because...

"Anyway, I said yes even though I'd been going to say no, and straightaway he asked if he could go down on me, and I...I hesitated, I guess, and he was like, 'you don't have to do it back, you don't have to do it back', so I agreed...and he did it, and afterwards he thanked me - he thanked me - and then went and shut himself in the bathroom, presumably to bust one out, then he came back and got into bed and fell asleep-"

He looked at me, right in the eye, as he tapped his chest. "Whereas this dumbfuck? He spent the whole night lying awake after it was too late wishing he'd grabbed that golden, golden opportunity right by the balls that were on offer and just gone for it...

"I got home," he said. "I went back to work, back to normal. I expected to forget about it, but I didn't. I thought about sucking dick continuously - honestly, it was like some kind of illness - and eventually I decided I wasn't gonna get this out of my system without actually, y'know, trying it. Which meant I needed to save up and go on another holiday."

At that point I did laugh. "Let me guess - Adelaide?"

Quinn shook his head, still in my lap, then turned a little more to nuzzle at my junk through my jeans. "Nah - Gold Coast, actually."

"And did the Gold Coast provide you with a cartload of delicious Aussie dick to sample, beautiful?"

"Um, well...two? Which was - I didn't need to break any records or anything, I just wanted to try it. I wanted to know." He swallowed. "I came home again, I went back to work, I thought about dick. And I realised I didn't actually have a lower sex drive than the guys around me, I just..."

"Just what?"

For the first time, he shut his eyes to me. "I just...like...different...things..."

His lids stayed closed, but I could see the eyes flickering, fluttering, underneath - unrestful, disturbed. This new-but-not-brand-new reality of his, it hadn't fully sunk in yet. Recounting isolated episodes? - fine. But confessing, more globally, that he was turned on by different things? - still tough.

Looking down at his shrouded, troubled face, I felt a rush of understanding, of empathy for his experience, so far removed from mine in every way. I never found being gay to be anything but awesome, but I grew up in the right kind of town and the right kind of house - and crucially, I never had anything to compare it to. Whereas if you assume you're straight and then discover you're not? Sure, there's something to gain - the sex doesn't lie - but there's also a lot to give up, maybe even to grieve, alongside...