He was a shorter boy than many of his contemporaries. It wasn’t that he was a short person, just that he hadn’t grown as much as many of them. Which made his presence at the first team selection of the season a bit surprising. Rugby isn’t the sort of game you can play if you’re small and weak. I should know, my dad spent my youth building me up, making me as strong as he is, making sure I could take the battering that he intended to hand out to me by putting me in his youth team. What he couldn’t have counted on was my injury, which effectively ended my playing life before it started, but some things catch you out.
Johnny, though, wasn’t even set up for it properly. He was 13, must have been since he was there, but looked a year or so younger, maybe even more. All of his colleagues outweighed him, all were taller, all more experienced. It looked like there was going to be a black mark against him before he even started playing. Still, my dad was as keen as anyone to see that everyone got their fair chance, and so I was instructed to treat him like everyone else. I couldn’t play, but I helped out whenever I could with the training, and I was still strong enough to teach the kids a thing or two.
I always thought of them that way, as ‘the kids’. But they were only a couple of years younger than I was. I was even at school with most of them, though off the rugby pitch it was deeply uncool to even be seen near them, let alone actually befriend one. But the moment I saw Johnny, I felt the unfairness of that unwritten rule for the first time in my life. Never before had I actually wanted to spend time away from the rugby field with one of the boys, but Johnny changed my mind about all that. I don’t know what it was about him that made me want to be his friend, but it was definitely a first sight kind of thing.
Of course, if this was Hollywood, Johnny would have been the most amazing, unexpectedly brilliant rugby player. He wasn’t. He was hurt, not too badly, but badly enough to realise that perhaps rugby wasn’t his sport. He was clearly a popular kid among his peers, and they made sure he didn’t get hit too hard, but it was clear come the end of the session that he wouldn’t be making the team.
Coward that he is (only kidding!), my dad always let me tell the boys who would and wouldn’t be making the team. Truthfully, though, he preferred to stay out of that particular part of process, for reasons that were all his own, and which he never volunteered. I think I sort of understood, because it hurt to see the looks on some of their faces, but the joy on the visages of those who had made the team made it all worthwhile. Until Johnny, that is. The look of disappointment on his cute face, deep in those blue eyes, hurt me somewhere inside. I actually saw his spirit fall, his whole demeanour deflating. Usually, I would leave the kids alone after telling them their fate, but I felt that I had to say something to Johnny.
‘Hey,’ I said, to his retreating back. He stopped and turned, that crushed look still in his eyes.
‘Sorry, did I do something wrong?’ he asked. It broke my heart to see the state he was in.
‘No, no.’
I shook my head to emphasize the point.
‘I just wanted to check you’re ok before you leave.’
‘Yeah, sure, no problem. I didn’t think I was going to make the team, but I wanted to try.’
‘Why do you want to play rugby?’
‘Why not?’ he replied, shrugging his shoulders. ‘There’s all sorts of reasons to play. Pick one of those, that’ll do for me.’
He turned away again, and started to leave. I jogged up to him and caught his shoulder, spinning him around.
‘Johnny, you have to realise that you’re not big enough to play, you might get hurt.’
The look in his eyes was embarrassment, mixed with anger, mixed with resignation.
‘I’m never big enough for anything. Anything. I thought if I could get here, I could get bigger.’
‘Johnny, it’ll take more than rugby for that, you know. There’s other factors involved.’
The anger melted, the fear dissipated, only the dejection remained.
‘I know. I’ve not grown yet. I’m never going to grow, am I?’
I tried my best friendly, reassuring smile.
‘Yes, you will, it might just take a little longer than your friends. There are things you can do to help yourself out, though. I can show you ways of building yourself up a bit, making yourself just a bit stronger than you are now.’
‘Yeah, right, pull the other one.’
‘No, I’m serious, you can do things to build yourself up before your growth spurt. I did, and look at the size of me.’
I pulled of my shirt quickly, which was my party trick with the girls. A great body always seemed to impress, and I had a great body. Despite the injury, I could still train well enough to keep myself in good shape. I noticed Johnny’s eyes lingering a little more than perhaps they should have.
‘Man, you’re built!’ he gasped after a moment. I just grinned at him.
‘I can’t make you this big, but I can help you on the way. Interested?’
‘Hell yes!’ he almost shouted.

It was that simple, it turned out, to become Johnny’s friend. I wasn’t actually that keen on hanging around with most of the people I went to school with, and so a few hours a day became devoted to Johnny. My dad noticed the interest I was taking in him, the way I was looking after him, taking him under my wing, and praised me for my efforts. He even spoke to Johnny a couple of times, telling him that there was still a possibility of getting into the team at a later stage in the season, if he really managed to improve his physique, and that only served to spur Johnny on.
I taught him everything I knew about getting a decent diet, doing all the right kinds of exercise to build up the right areas, and we would train together in the gym my father had built in our basement. As had always been the way, I stripped down to just shorts to train, the hot air in the basement preventing me from wearing anything more, and soon Johnny became comfortable doing the same. He always had on a pair of running shorts, the type with the little slit up the side, and with nothing else on, they didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. I even thought to myself once or twice that he wasn’t wearing underwear, and then caught myself thinking it, chastising myself for even considering what the kid might or might not be wearing under those satiny shorts.
I wasn’t so sure back then about my sexuality. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of not being straight until I was about 14. There just wasn’t another way. I came from a church-going family, and was raised solely by my father after my mother died when I was two. He was always the macho man, big and strong, though infinitely gentle behind it all. He couldn’t find a new wife, and thinking about it he probably didn’t want to, so it was just me and him. He threw his efforts into his rugby coaching career, and did pretty well for himself. He was still coaching big teams, on the verge of a national team call-up, when I met Johnny. The kids’ team was, for him, part hobby, part academy. The very best of those who played for his youth team would go on to great things, with his reputation backing them up all the way to the top. So, you can see, I came from an environment where I couldn’t even consider the possibility of being anything other than a perfectly straight guy, who would grow up to be a loving husband and father. I guess that’s why my father missed what was going on between Johnny and I, putting our budding relationship down to nothing more than my instinct to help others out when they needed it.
To be honest, that’s what I thought it was at first. I thought that I was doing all this because I’d seen that Johnny really needed help, and that I was able to offer that help, and therefore should do so. The realisation that perhaps subconsciously there was something else going on didn’t hit me until about a month into our training, when I started to have dreams about Johnny. Not nice dreams, either. They were the kind of dreams as a boy growing up you really don’t want to be having about your friends, especially when they’re a few years younger than yourself. They were always set in a health club, where Johnny and I would spend several hours training and swimming together. Then it would be time to leave, and we would head for the showers. Johnny would strip, walking away from me naked so that I couldn’t see the front of him, and disappear into the shower block. I would follow, to see him standing beneath a showerhead, his back still to me. Then, slowly, he would begin to turn around, and it would be that moment that I would come awake very suddenly, covered in sweat, and sometimes something else too.
I tried to convince myself that the dreams meant nothing, that perhaps, as we’d been told in class, my mind was just using a handy image which just happened to be a bit taboo to play out my fantasies with. I didn’t believe a word of it. I realised that I desperately wanted to know whether or not Johnny really did wear any pants under those shorts, and what he would look like in my dream if he made it all the way round before I woke up.
Of course, I couldn’t let anything happen between us. It was totally out of the question. I needed to make a little space between Johnny and myself, but at the same time not make it look like I was pushing him away. He had plenty of friends, but for some reason craved the attention that I gave him, electing to train with me rather than do anything else. And he wasn’t helping, either. The shorts stayed short, I was now convinced that there was nothing beneath them, and he started leaving the bathroom door open when he went to the loo and my dad wasn’t around. Of course, in the few years since I had been Johnny’s age, I had forgotten quite how horny being thirteen made you. I was quite prepared to believe that he had no carnal desires whatsoever. After all, he was just a 13 year old boy, who hadn’t even gone through his growth spurt. There was no way what he was doing was anything other than relaxing around me, becoming more comfortable in my presence.
I found out exactly how comfortable he was with me when we hired a movie one night. We were alone in the house, a little bored of training, and had decided to rent a movie and sit down for once, rather than tiring ourselves out completely. My dad was out of town with his proper rugby team, and would be for a couple of days, leaving me the run of the house. I’d not had a babysitter since I was 13 myself, and was quite used to spending time on my own while dad was away. This time, though, Johnny would be staying with me, occupying the guest bed while his own parents were having a well-earned holiday. I had asked Johnny why he hadn’t gone with them, and he had blushingly explained that they were having the sort of holiday where he might feel somewhat uncomfortable. I laughed, bringing forth a giggle from Johnny, who was still blushing furiously.
So it was that we were sitting in front of the TV, eating pasta, and watching, for some reason, Billy Elliot. It was a strange choice for two teenaged boys to sit down and watch together, but I had given Johnny free reign in the video shop, and that was what he had come back with. Johnny was engrossed, though. He laughed at the funny bits, cried at the sad bits, and didn’t seem to mind that I saw he cried. I didn’t want to point anything out, didn’t want to embarrass him, so I just continued watching, somewhat less affected by the story. About half way through, Johnny had shifted slightly, leaning across from his side of the sofa, edging closer to me. We were still wearing just our shorts, and Johnny’s naked left arm and leg were within inches of my right hand side. I could feel the heat radiating off him, could see a little pulse on his chest as his heart beat strongly behind his ribcage, could see the beads of sweat forming on his still-smooth upper lip.
He stayed that way for twenty minutes or so, during which time I could feel a little blood going south every so often, not enough to make me hard, but enough that I knew I wanted to be. He was so enticing sitting there, but what he did next sent me to paradise. With a sigh, he grabbed a cushion from the far side of me and placed it on my lap, lying his head down on top of it, stretching his fine legs away across the rest of the sofa. I didn’t know quite what to do, though fortunately my dick doesn’t have to wait for me to make my mind up, and went painfully hard straight away. It was right underneath the cushion, and I prayed that Johnny couldn’t feel it pressing into his left ear. He was lying facing the TV, with both legs stretched out away from me, his hands both on the cushion beneath his cheek, and his exposed flank right where my right hand would naturally lie. In the absence of a better place to put it, I placed it directly onto his translucent skin, feeling the ribs jutting through from beneath.
He was so hot that for a second I nearly took my hand away, fearing that it might burn. Never before had I had my hands on such hot skin. I let it drift forward a little, pretending that it was natural for my hand to fall forwards, and let it come to rest on his tummy. That, too, was hot as hell, and so very soft. There was a hardness beneath, a strength and muscle tone that was the result of our training, but the skin was softer than any I’d ever felt. I started moving my hand a little, hoping beyond hope that Johnny wouldn’t mind. The reaction couldn’t have been further from being upset about where my hand was. Johnny sighed again, this time nearly a moan, and rolled back towards me slightly to allow fuller access to his torso. Looking away from where my hand was, I glanced up for a moment to Johnny’s face, to find that his eyes were closed in contentment and he was no longer watching the film. I chose to leave it running, though, so as not to break the spell.
My hand lingered on his stomach for a good ten minutes, fingertips tracing up and down, around and around. It wasn’t enough, though, there was an air of expectancy in the room, and, with my heart beating a mile a minute, I let my hand drift a little lower. The moment my fingertips brushed across the top of the waistband of his shorts, Johnny moaned again, and thrust his hips up a little. As I repeatedly toyed with the very lip of the waistband, going slowly as to not frighten him, I saw a definite tent growing in the front of his shorts. I knew then that he wanted this as much as I did, and knew exactly what the consequences of our game would be.
When he was as hard as he was going to get, and the waistband was pulled away slightly from his body by the erection below, I let my fingers drift into the space it had left. Johnny’s tummy had been hot, but it was nothing compared to the inferno coming from his shorts. This was a boy who very much needed the attention he was about to receive. My hand trailed down his stomach to his pubic bone, the backs of my knuckles brushing the soft skin of his shaft in passing. I found a few very fine, soft hairs there, and let my fingers play through them before moving on.
His shaft was almost impossibly hard, not slightly spongy as mine had grown in recent years, and slightly thicker than my thumb. I guessed it to be about four inches long, maybe a little longer, but certainly not five yet. Working my way up to the top, I was glad to find that he, like myself, was not circumcised, and even with a steel-hard erection, he still had skin puckering over the end a little way. I rolled the excess skin back and forth between my fingers, a favourite technique of mine on my own dick, which made Johnny gasp and thrust his hips upwards again, harder, more insistent. He wanted wanking, not teasing, making his point by reaching down and yanking the shorts off, throwing them across the room, and settling back, his eyes shut the whole time.
Seeing his dick for the first time nearly made me come in my pants. It was beautiful, straight, soft, with whiter than white skin, translucent enough to show the blue veins running not far beneath the surface. The dusting of hair around its base was dark, like the hair on his head, and a little wetness glistened on the end of the puckered foreskin. I didn’t waste too much time looking though, eager to please Johnny, to make sure that he enjoyed himself, and so I went to work, rolling the foreskin up and down his dick with two fingers and a thumb. He tensed almost immediately, and I could feel a little extra hardness in his dick, so I knew he was about to shoot. I sped up to push him over the edge, and then he was bucking, humping into my hand hard, gripping the sofa with white knuckles.
He shot maybe three or four spurts, and they were mostly clear, but it was enough for me. Some dribbled out onto my hand, and before Johnny’s eyes opened, I quickly licked it off, enjoying the salty heat of it. The rest was on his tummy, in several places, a little dribbling out of his now-deflating dick. His eyes fluttered open briefly to smile up at me, a warm, loving smile, his post orgasmic smile, before shutting again, this time more permanently. He was fast asleep, and didn’t stir as I lifted him off me and took him to his bed, deciding at the last minute not to stay there with him. Naked and vulnerable, he looked so cute, and I placed a soft kiss on his forehead as I drew the blanket up and over his shoulders.