– A Horny Short –

Owen looked up from his novel.  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he offered for the third time in the last painful fifteen minutes. Dean hadn’t moved much in that time. He was still seated on the loveseat, legs spread apart in that jock way guys often sit that’s apparently some kind of pheromone dominance thing. 

Surely David Attenborough could do a voiceover about it. “The male asserts his primal instinct to spread his seed whenever he encounters another male or simply moves to different surroundings in this display of penile access.”  At any rate, the only thing that had changed in Dean’s position since he had eased onto the shiny pleather couch was to put his head back, staring at the ceiling in silent defeat over a short battle with boredom. He didn’t even bother to raise it when Owen had broken the silence with his regurgitation of the only thing he could think of to say. 

“No man, still good. Thanks. Where did Mel say she was?”

“Farmers Market,” he mumbled over the top of his battered paperback. And he could fucking kill her for it. The one thing he had insisted when they agreed on renting a house together was that he not be put in situations like this. 

“Oh my God, Owen!” she had shrieked, turning a dramatic circle in the empty living room. It was small, but her voice echoed off the empty walls and laminate floor.  “Can’t you just see us here?  Walking to clubs and restaurants, grabbing coffee on Sunday mornings…”

“Me cleaning up all your shit off the floor and emptying the dishwasher while you go to clubs and restaurants?” Owen had corrected. Mel had feigned a hurt look that could not overcome her giddy excitement for the mental image she had conjured of their life in the townhouse. 

“We will both be responsible and we will both have social lives,” she declared prophetically. “Can’t you just see our stuff working so beautifully here?  And the light!  It’s amazing!”

Owen had scoffed. This wasn’t a penthouse apartment with sweeping park views. It was a skinny house squeezed into the center of Cynthia Avenue, an alley so narrow that the houses across the way cast purplish shadows in the front window most of the day. Mel recognized the cynicism in his face. 

“Come on,” she pressed gently. “This is supposed to be the short part of our lives where we do something crazy. We could have an amazing time here.”  Owen poked his head inside the tiny kitchen and absently tugged on a few drawers. When he turned to face her, she stood with her hands on her hips and an expectant look on her face. A look he had seen her make too many times over the last four years. 

“One condition,” he finally said. She squealed and clapped—because the condition didn’t matter. She had already won. 

What was the condition, you might ask? That Owen not be treated as merely an accessory to her life—a gay play thing, if you will. He wasn’t a colorful scarf that could be thrown on to look trendy, but then left on the floor if the mood wasn’t right. Yet here he was, babysitting her boyfriend of a month while she carried a baguette around in her new woven market bag.  

A loud crunching sound cut its way between Owen and his bitter thoughts. He snapped the paperback shut. Dean had put his shoes on the metal edge of the coffee table. They were Converse high tops—sexy olive-gray suede numbers that climbed his big feet and wrapped around his ankles. Owen traced the paracords with his eyes as they wound their way down  through the black eyelets to the unblemished cream outsoles, which were now trumpeting loudly as they were slowly dragged over the wide of the table. 

The shoes themselves were enough to spark a stirring in his loins. From the moment they had entered the house a quarter hour ago, Owen had gone out of his way to ignore them. He didn’t need to be getting a hard on over his roommate’s boyfriend. But Owen could see from the look on Dean’s face that the noise he was generating with them was deliberate. He was looking down at his feet with mild fascination. It was surely out of utter boredom, but to Owen it may as well have been in deliberate torture. 

Dean caught him staring at the converse, and chuckled.  “It’s loud, right?” He pivoted his right shoe and dragged it over the edge again, the entire table resonating with the squeal of the rubber like a tuning fork. Owen tugged his shirt down over his crotch and stood up. 

“I’m going to get some coffee,” he abruptly announced. He trudged to the kitchen where he emptied the last powdery grounds from the can of Folgers into to machine’s basket. He raised the can to his face and inhaled. The smell was one of his childhood. Of summer nights catching fireflies. For the longest time, Owen had actually thought that lightning bugs smelled like coffee. It wasn’t until years later that he had put together it was simply leftover fragrance of the recycled coffee cans his mother had given him. His nostalgic reverie was broken by the creaking of leather on the floor behind him. He looked down and saw the toe caps of Dean’s shoes taunting him from behind. 

“Sorry if I’m getting in your way,” Dean offered. “I didn’t realize that Mel would be so late.”  Owen pulled a mug from the dish rack. 

“You’re not in my way,” he said softly. “And it’s not your fault about Mel.”  When he turned to grab the half and half from the fridge, he saw that Dean had placed his left foot to the seat of a kitchen chair. His hand was holding his chin, and his elbow resting on his raised knee. Like the Thinker, Owen thought. But with shoes. His eyes lingered on the zipper that slanted up the side of the high top. For the briefest moment, he thought about pulling it down and peeling the shoe back like layers of an onion to reveal the sexy foot inside. The look didn’t escape Dean. 

“Hey, I can take my shoes off if it bothers you. I didn’t know if there was a house rule or something.”

Owen tried to act casual as he watched the coffee dribble into the pot. “I’m not bothered. There’s no rule—your shoes are fine.”  But even mentioning Dean’s shoes to Dean sent an electric current through him. 

Dean studied him warily. “You sure?”

“Positive.” For added measure he turned and looked him in the eye. “Your shoes are nice.”  The moment it was out, Owen realized it had been a mistake. Dean’s eyes narrowed slightly.  The kitchen grew silent with only the coffee maker ignorantly slurping it’s way to the bottom of the reservoir. 

“You’re gay, right?” Dean finally said, as though musing out loud. 

Owen’s eyebrows shot up. Surely Dean knew he was gay. Undoubtedly it had been the first qualifier used by Mel when she had mentioned she had a roommate. So what was he after?  “That’s right, Dean,” he said as cooly as possible.  He poured half and half into his waiting coffee cup. He never put it in before the coffee, but he needed a prop to look nonchalant. “I am a homosexual.”

Dean put his foot down and pulled the chair to the center of the tine kitchen straddling the chair’s back as he sat. It was hard to miss the shoes now that there were literally front and center in the room. And his crotch—again with the dominant stance thing.  “Don’t gays have a thing for feet?” he asked.  There was no apparent derision in his tone.  It seemed genuinely conversational. Curious, even. 

Owen swallowed.  “You mean a fetish?  Some do, I guess.  Why?”

Dean cocked his head at him. “And?” he prodded. “Do you?”

Owen flushed. He had never uttered a word of his sexual proclivities to a soul, let alone been asked. And yet a denial would feel so hollow. And so obvious.  Owen scraped a fleck of petrified melted cheese from the edge of the Formica countertop with a thumbnail.

“Yes,” he answered simply after a moment. He hated how small he sounded. He straightened up and looked at Dean, who was clearly surprised at his honesty. “I have a thing for feet.”  It was no small irony that Owen was having this conversation with Dean—the quintessential jock archetype. This guy probably couldn’t list the three branches of the U.S. government, and yet had somehow managed to suss out his most buried secret after a few errant glances.  So now what?

Of all the possibilities, Owen least expected Dean to break into a winning smile.  And yet he sat there, poised on the kitchen chair, beaming. He bobbed his head as if agreeing with an unheard voice that this was the best revelatory conversation he had ever engaged in. “Okay,” he mused out loud. “Okay. I get it.”  He pulled his right heel up to the rung of the chair and let his Converse dangle tantalizingly over the kitchen floor. A crescent of white sock appeared between the tongue of the shoe and his black jeans. Dean’s eyes flitted from his foot to Owen’s face, searching for a reaction, testing. “So is this doing something for you?” he queried. There was no edge to his voice. No implied “perv” or “fag” in his address as Owen might have feared there would be. He spoke in earnest. 

Owen stood rooted to his spot, his mug with a splash of warming half and half cradled in his hand. He furrowed his brow. “I can’t really help when I react—“ he began. Dean shook his head and cut him off. 

“Come on, man. I don’t care that you’ve got a thing. It’s cool. What I’m asking is—“ he stood and crossed the kitchen, which in this case took about two steps, and stood with his rubber toecaps just inches from Owen’s socked feet — “what’s it doing to you when I come and stand right here like this?” Owen looked down, feeling Dean’s gaze on him as he did. He didn’t have to answer. His body answered for him. Dean whistled. “Damn. You’re getting hard. That’s intense!” he smiled at Owen as though they had just made some breakthrough together. 

Dean’s cell rang at that moment in a few measures of marimba—ear-splitting for how quiet the kitchen had become—and he brought it to his ear. “Yeah, babe,” he said, not taking his eyes off Owen. 

Mel. 

God. What was happening?  Owen was getting hard over his roommate’s boyfriend and now she was on the phone. She may as well have been with them in the room. He wanted to walk off, to pretend none of this had happened, but he was effectively penned into the tiny u-shaped kitchen with Dean standing before him, hot converse planted firmly on the tile. 

“Don’t worry about me. Your roomie’s got me entertained,” he was saying.  Owen turned toward the counter and pulled the coffee pot from the machine, thankful for the distraction as he poured the steaming liquid into the waiting mug. “Yeah, would you mind grabbing some more coffee before you head back?”  Owen looked up. Dean was staring at him with a half smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Owen just used up the last. I think he’d appreciate it you grabbed us another can before you come home.”  A pause. “Great. Love you, babe.”  Dean pocketed the phone and locked eyes with Owen, who felt a little like a cornered rabbit. “Mel’s going to be a little while yet,” he said softly. 

The mug trembled in Owen’s hand as he held it between them. “What are you doing?” It was practically a whisper. Dean considered. 

“Offering help to a friend, I guess.” He studied him as he cowered against the cabinets. “Buddy,” he said quietly as though soothing a child. He bent down to catch Owen’s downcast eyes. “You’ve got this all wrong. I’m not doing anything to you. I swear.”  He put his hands out in a gesture of surrender. “Tell you what—I’m going to go back to the sofa. You can join me there if you want.”  He started to back away. The converse crunched across the tile. “We can talk. Or…we can do other stuff.”  He winked, then turned from the room. 

Owen stood in the kitchen and blinked.  Was Dean really offering this?  Was he brave enough to take him up on it?  He went to the kitchen doorway and looked at Dean, who had returned to his previous position on the loveseat. But this time, the widespread legs and the foot up on the coffee table felt like an invitation.  Dean grinned as Owen shuffled into the living room. 

“Yeah, I thought you might,” he chuckled as Owen sat on the edge of coffee table opposite him. “Whether you’re gay or straight, once the dick takes over, that’s the end of it for us guys. Am I right?” He nodded at Owen as though they were bros. 

“Tell me why,” Owen said, laying his hand on Dean’s shoe. The smooth rubber toe cap was cool under his palm. “Why would you do this?” Dean regarded the hand, and shrugged.

“I’m curious,” he said simply. 

“Sexually curious?” Owen probed, lightly running a finger up the tightly pulled laces. He pressed gently on the center of the tongue. It creaked softly under the slight give of Dean’s foot. Dean continued to watch, almost impassively.  

“Naw.” He shook his head. “I’m pretty much as straight a person gets.”  Owen nodded. That sounded about right. “But I always appreciate making someone cum. Doesn’t matter who they are.”  Owen glanced up at this, studying the look on Dean’s face. There was nothing disingenuous there.  He hooked his finger around the rim of Converse by Dean’s ankle, felt the sock against his fingertip, and the heat rising up from the inside of the shoe.  His cock was confidently hard now, and the first traces of precum were just soaking through his khakis.

“Damn, son,” Dean chuckled. “You’ve barely gotten started. Are you going to even make it?”

Owen felt a grin play on his lips for the first time since Dean had arrived. He picked up his foot with both hands and brought it to his lap, letting the diamond patterned tread nestle against his throbbing crotch. The signature fuzzy fabric on the sole had not yet worn off.  “Tell me something,” Owen asked, clasping the shoe with both hands as though to massage it. “How is this okay?  You’re my roommate’s boyfriend.”

Dean flexed his foot against Owen, causing him to catch his breath in his throat.  “I’m not having sex with you, man. That’s not what this is. As far as I’m concerned, you need to sneeze, and I’m just offering you a Kleenex.”  He pointed his toe, letting the rounded cap probe at Owen’s sticky bulge. Owen exhaled loudly through his nose, his brow furrowed in pleasure. “You like that?” Dean asked, sounding satisfied with himself. 

“I like it.”  His voice cracked. 

“Amazing,” Dean murmured appreciatively. “When did you first know you had a thing for this?” Owen was holding Dean’s shoe as he raised his hips and ground against it, his khaki’s gripping the sole and sliding over his aching cock.  

“Probably about the same time that you knew you had a thing for pussy.”  The words tumbled out and felt dirty on his lips. He stopped and looked at Dean.  “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Dean dipped his head to the side in contemplation. “It was fair.”  He dug at Owen’s fly with his toe. “Are you going to open those pants up or keep dry humping my shoe?”  

Owen closed his eyes, enjoying the pressure of the sole of the converse against him and knowing that there was a man’s foot behind it. “Just let me savor this a little.”

Dean scratched his forehead. “I’d love to do that for you, man. I really would. But we are playing against time here.”  Owen open his eyes and blinked at him, and he continued. “While I may be happy to oblige in helping you scratch your itch, I don’t really know which side of this my girlfriend would fall on.”  He pulled his foot back slightly as he leaned in to make his point. “I’d rather not find out, you know?”

Owen knew he was right. He sighed and slid his hand up the sloping collar of the shoe at fingered the zipper tab.  “What is it you do, Dean?” he asked.  Conversation, which just minutes before had eluded him, was suddenly easy, the exchange of words between them like a textured layer through which this interaction felt more intense.  He slowly pulled on it the zipper tab.  As it clicked across the teeth, he felt the shoe slightly unfurl around Dean’s ankle. 

“I’m a UPS driver,” came his response. Owen looked up and found Dean looking at him as though watching for a reaction.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.  Why, you got a thing for uniforms, too? Because it’s not like I’m wearing it under these clothes,” he joked mildly. 

Owen heaved a gusty sigh as he slid his hand inside the opening in the Converse high top and splayed his fingers around the back of Dean’s heel. “Oh my God, that’s sexy,” he moaned at the ceiling. “You don’t even have to be wearing them.”

“Yeah?” Dean leaned back against the sofa, amused. 

“I’ll bet you wear boots,” Owen wondered out loud. With his hand wrapped around Dean’s ankle inside the sneaker, he drew it into his crotch in a series of sharp tugs, feeling not only the pulse against his cock, but the way the foot moved inside the loosened shoe. 

“Have to,” Dean said, observing the look of delight on Owen’s face as his foot was repeatedly slammed into his balls.  “I wear black tacticals.”  

“Tall ones?”

“Mmhmm. With the standard issue UPS logo socks,” he added, sure it would crank Owen up further. Sure it enough, Owen began to fumble with his fly.  

“I’ll bet it gets tiring, being on your feet all day,” he said breathlessly as his cock, sheathed in damp cotton, slid from its denim shroud and pressed against the textured bumper. 

“It can. Especially when it’s hot out.”  Owen inhaled deeply as if imagining the aroma of his boots after a shift on a steamy summer day.  Dean felt oddly gratified that he could so easily manipulate him.  “But sometimes,” he went still further, “on a cold day, it can be hard to get the package car started.  They can be a little temperamental. So you have to feather the gas a little, like this.”  He gently rocked his foot inside the Converse, pulsing it against Owen’s accelerator. Owen began to feel his RPMs climb. He ran a finger along the underside of the shoe and it came back glistening with his precum. Dean nodded approvingly. “Oh, you want more of that, don’t you?” he teased.  Owen whimpered softly. Dean pivoted the ball of his foot against him. The unzipped Converse contorted under the pressure and the lining rubbed against Owen’s fingers, still tucked inside and wrapped around his heel. “Are you going to turn over for me?” Dean coaxed as if speaking to his truck. 

Owen was tipping over the cliff. He panted and looked at Dean, completely relaxed on the sofa and letting his foot do the work.  Dean flashed him an encouraging smile as he smashed his shoe against him.  Owen felt as though his deepest fantasy had been given life, and Dean had played his role in the most unexpectedly perfect way.  Well, almost perfect. There was one thing he still wanted to do. As he began to feel the build swelling deep between his legs, he pulled his hand away from Dean’s ankle and dislodged the high top with it. Dean’s foot began to leave the insole. 

Dean looked puzzled. Owen cupped one hand over the heel cap and the other on the toe and in one forceful move, he wrenched the sneaker from Dean’s foot, allowing his cock to drag the length of the sole as his did. In one quivering hand, he brought the shoe to his face and breathed in its warmth while holding Dean’s socked foot to his sticky crotch in the other.   The tangy scent of the sneaker played his nostrils and hummed through his body, mingling with the wave that was continuing to bloom down below, lending it power. 

“Okay, Owen,” Dean said, sounding slightly nervous for the first time.  “Give me my shoe back.”  He bent forward to reach for it, pulling his foot back as he did, but Owen clasped it tighter against him. 

“In a moment,” he gasped. “Please,” he practically begged. The wave was about to crest. It was just roiling to the surface. His entire body was at the ready—every pore poised to release the energy. “Let me do this.”

Dean’s face was blank for a moment, as if he was struggling within himself. Then he relaxed, a small smile on his lips. “Okay, buddy. Let’s see what you’ve got.”  His words were spoken quietly, but almost as a dare. Owen released a shaky breath as he jerked his underwear from his cock, which had already started to dance. He ground against the bottom on Dean’s foot, the sock beginning to glide on his skin as the knit cotton became saturated with him. Dean brought his other foot up the edge of the coffee table and raked the rubber toe cap of his shoe down the shaft, pressing against and pulling down on Owen’s balls as he swayed his hips. 

“Oh, fuck!” Owen howled as the pain met the pleasure and amplified it. He eyes rolled back as he felt himself explode against the sock. 

“Yeah, yeah!” Dean encouraged like a spectator, the pressure from his shoe against Owen’s urethra causing him to feel every drop of semen as it pulsed its way through toward the open air and Dean’s waiting foot. Owen hadn’t cum in months. It made his orgasm all the sweeter and his juices all the thicker. By the time the last of the aftershocks had swept over him, thick creamy globules were running toward Dean’s heel and softly plopping to the carpet below. 

“Holy shit, man!” Dean laughed when Owen finally released his foot and he bent to survey it. “That’s a lot of fucking jizz!”  Owen managed a watery smile as he leaned back on the coffee table and caught his breath, his cock still jumping. 

“That was…incredible,” he stammered. “Mind-blowing.  Thank you.”  His heart was hammering in his throat. 

“Hey, man,” Dean beamed. “My pleasure. Well—I guess, you’re pleasure,” he laughed at his own wit. “I know the whole thing is weird, so I might as well risk making it weirder and say that I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t think you had the balls to do this.”  He kept his soaked foot awkwardly elevated off the floor. “Uh, got a towel or something?”

Owen smiled. He scooped the Converse off the floor and—before Dean could protest—slid it onto his foot.  Dean wore a lopsided grin as he watched Owen zip the shoe up and give it a squeeze for good measure. He felt the warm damp of Owen begin to seep against his skin in the tight confines of the shoe.  “How does that feel?” Owen asked him, playfully thumping his hand over the toe cap. 

“Like you’ve just marked my foot as your own territory,” Dean replied. 

Owen pulled his pants up and sighed. “Maybe I have. But I’m also smart enough to know this was a one-time thing. But seriously—I’ll never forget it.”

The two had just stood and made sure they looked presentable when Mel walked in, coffee can swinging in a plastic grocery bag. After a few minutes of strained conversation between the three of them, Dean and Mel were off. Owen watched for a wink or a knowing glance from Dean as he left, but he didn’t give one.

---

The next day, after Owen had scrubbed the sticky spots from the rug in front of the sofa, Mel came home from her date and–in typical fashion–began to offload the gruesome details.  

“Normally I’m up for anything,” she prattled as he carried water glasses into the kitchen, only half listening.  “But I’ve never been asked to hump a guy’s foot before.”  Owen’s head snapped up from the dishwasher, the glass he was loading suspended above the rack.

“What?” he demanded.

“Haven’t you been listening to what I said?” She threw up her hands in exasperation.  “Dean wanted to watch me get off on his foot last night.  It was weird.  I mean, don’t get me wrong–I’ve gotten off plenty of times myself by…”

Mel’s voice receded as Owen turned back to the dishwasher and smiled to himself.  Again, the David Attenborough voiceover permeated his thoughts. “…once learned, the stylized mating ritual involving the male’s feet becomes the preferred interaction in all subsequent sexual encounters…”