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There are thirty minutes before the ceremony, which is too much time and not nearly enough.
The other groomsmen have already drifted out, jackets buttoned, nerves managed, smiles practiced. Someone clapped Shep on the shoulder on the way out and said something about how good he looked. Someone else asked me if I had the rings. I said yes, because I do. They’re heavy in my pocket in a way that feels symbolic enough to be annoying.
Now it’s just the two of us.
Shep is standing in front of the mirror in his shirtsleeves, tie hanging loose around his neck, cuffs undone. His jacket is draped over the back of a chair like it knows it’ll be needed soon. The room smells faintly like starch and cologne and that clean, anonymous hotel smell that never quite goes away. Outside the door, there’s the low murmur of guests settling—chairs scraping, programs fluttering, a laugh that echoes too long.
Inside, it’s quiet.
He exhales, slow, then looks at his reflection like it might argue with him. “I keep doing it crooked,” he says, tugging at the tie again. “I swear I know how to do this.”
“You do,” I say. My voice sounds normal. Which feels like a small miracle.
I’ve known John Sheppard—Shep—since sixth grade. Since the day he transferred in mid-year and sat down next to me because the teacher told him to. Since the first time he laughed too loud at something dumb I said and decided, apparently, that we were a unit now. Inseparable is the word people use, like it just happened that way. Like we didn’t choose it every day.
He glances at me in the mirror. “You mind?”
I’m already stepping closer before he finishes the sentence.
This is safe. This is allowed. Best man duties. I’ve adjusted his tie a hundred times in my head over the years; the reality of it shouldn’t feel like anything. It’s just fabric. Just muscle memory.
I stand behind him and lift the ends of the tie, my knuckles brushing his chest as I do. He stills—not dramatically, just enough that I notice. The mirror catches it: the way his shoulders settle, the way his jaw tightens like he’s bracing for something that isn’t coming.
“Hold still,” I say, because it’s easier than saying anything else.
The knot is loose. I work it tighter, fingers sure, practiced. I’ve tied enough of these for weddings, for interviews, for him—because somehow I always ended up being the one to do it. My hands know what they’re doing even if the rest of me is busy cataloging things it doesn’t need to.
Like how close we are.
Like how the space between my chest and his back has always been a problem.
We don’t talk about high school. About that night when we were seventeen and drunk on cheap beer and possibility, when a game of truth or dare went too far too fast and then not far enough at all. That was a night I’ll never forget. We were in my parent’s basement—they thought leaving me alone while they went on a cruise was a good idea. Shep and I got so drunk we made out right there on the fouton while waiting for Call fo Duty to load. I never told him that was my first kiss and for one reason or another I compared every kiss after to that one. It was hot and charged and full of all the things that make two people hungry for one another but we were boys and we were drunk and I convinced myself it didn’t mean anything.
We don’t talk about college, either—the bus ride back from that rugby game, the way his thigh pressed into mine and didn’t move, the way his hand found my wrist in the dark like it belonged there. At one point, he slid his hand beneath the waistband of my shorts like he knew exactly what he was doing. I don’t remember much from the ride itself, but I remember him wrapping his hand around my cock and how good it had felt. I grabbed his cock over the fabric of his shorts and rubbed it until he was hard as a rock. He held back a moan and so did I. After a few moments, he grabbed my hand, I thought he was about to bust his load, but instead he took my hand underneath his waistband and beneath his underwear. That was the first time I touched a bare cock that wasn’t my own. It felt good. It was thick and stiff and leaking with precum. I used it as lube and stroked him a few times.
We sat there, in the back of the bus, everyone else none the wiser and we stroked each other in silence. Breath catching every so often. We were close, we both made eye contact. I felt something deep inside coiling to the surface and I could see the same was happening to him. He came first.
”Fuck!” He cried. More whisper than anything else. I felt his body jerk, cum coating my wrist and hand and the inside of his shorts and he tried his best to maintain his composure. I wasn’t as graceful. When I came, I nearly kicked the seat in front of me.
“Shit!” My body bucked and I tried to hide it. Luckily for us it was dark and everyone else was asleep. Hot cum coated the top of his hand and inside of my shorts. It was warm and sticky and incredible.
Those moments live in a locked room we both pretend not to have the key to—not because we’ve forgotten them, but because opening that door has always felt like choosing something we weren’t ready to name.
The mirror clears its throat. The present asserts itself.
I adjust the tie.
My fingers linger longer than necessary. Not obscene. Not even obvious. Just long enough to feel the heat through the cotton of his shirt, to register the steady rhythm of his breathing. I flatten the knot against his sternum with my thumb and—fuck—it takes effort to pull my hand away.
In the mirror, his eyes meet mine. Not directly. Through the glass. Like that makes it safer.
“You okay?” he asks.
It’s a loaded question. He knows it. I know he knows it. That’s the thing with us—everything has always been layered, even when we pretended it wasn’t.
“Yeah,” I say. “You?”
He smiles, small and private. “Ask me again in thirty minutes.”
I finish the knot. It’s perfect now. Straight. Balanced. Ready for photographs and vows and a future I am genuinely happy for him to have. I smooth the front of his shirt, a reflex I don’t bother to justify, and step back.
The air rushes in where my body was.
He turns slightly, testing the tie, then looks at himself again. At us, really—our reflections aligned, the same height, the same familiar lines we’ve carried into our thirties. Two men who learned each other early and never quite learned how to let go.
“Thanks,” he says, softer now.
“For the tie?” I ask.
“For everything.”
Outside, someone laughs. Somewhere down the hall, music cues up, faint and distant. Time, doing what it always does.
Shep adjusts his cuffs, then reaches for his jacket. As he does, he leans in—not enough to touch, not enough to make a scene. Just enough that only I could hear him if he wanted me to.
“We always had terrible timing,” he says.
It lands exactly where it’s meant to.
He slips into his jacket. I straighten his lapel one last time, my fingers careful, professional. Best man. That’s the role. I know how to play it. Before I could pull away, he tilts his head and leans toward my face before setting a gentle kiss against my cheek. My hand instinctively reaches up and touch the place on my face where his lips had been. I stare at him for a long moment trying to read his unreadable face. In the absence of certainty, I always opt to taking chances. So I lean in and kiss him on the lips. I didn’t pull back right away because for one, he was kissing me back. Our lips collide in a surge of emotion. It was equal parts longing and something else I wasn’t ready to say out loud just yet. He cups my face with one hand and reaches down and grabs my ass with the other
A jolt of electricity cascade down my spine and through my cock which is already hard. I press my body up against his and I could feel his own bulge straining against the fabric of his slacks.
He pulls away and looked me in the eyes.
”Brent?”
”I know,” I say.
He slips my jacket off my shoulders and I do the same to him. We carefully unbutton each other’s shirts. And then pants. They fall to the floor, almost in unison. Without breaking eye contact, he steps out of his underwear and I respond in kind.
Standing there, bare, I glance down at his throbbing cock before lifting my eyes back to his—but he isn’t looking at me. He’s staring at my cock, unabashed. I take his hand and guide it around me, a moan slipping loose before I can stop it. He strokes me while his other hand works himself, the motion mirrored and unhurried. I reach down and take his cock from his hand, stroking him in return. He grips the small of my back and pulls me closer, closing the space between us. Our mouths meet again. My free hand rests on his shoulder while his slides to the crease of my ass, fingers brushing my hole.
”Fuck,” I say into this throat.
I drop to my knees, he threads his fingers in my hair. First I lick the tip, enough to make him shiver, then I swallow his cock whole. I use my tongue to work the underside as my head bobs in slow deliberate passes. I brace my hands on the back of his thighs and pulls him deeper into my throat.
”That feels so fucking good,” he says.
I keep going pulling off just long enough to say, “I take my best man duties seriously.” That gets a chuckle out of him. I go back to work sucking his dick in earnest, settling into a steady rhythm that pulls low sounds from his throat, my hands firm at his hips as the room narrows to breath, heat, and the weight of him above me. As his breaths turn into pants, he pulls me up by the shoulders. He turns me around. He spreads my cheeks and I feel his hands slide down my side to my thighs. And then I feel it. His tongue against my hole. It takes everything in me not to lose it. His tongue makes quick, deliberate swirls around my hole, slow at first, then tighter, before he presses in and starts fucking me with his tongue. The pressure is precise enough to make my knees wobble, breath tearing loose from my chest as another moan escapes my throat.
With one foot firmly on the floor and he lifts my other leg onto the nearby chair, setting my balance for me. With the new angle, his tongue grows more insistent—long strokes followed by quick, teasing flicks—until the sensation crests, overwhelming and electric, leaving me braced and shaking against the dresser.
”Jesus Christ—“
He frees his tongue and he stands up. I feel his cock pressed up against my hole. I hear him spit.
”Shep—“ I start to protest.
”I’m not married yet,” he says, cutting me off. And for some reason that’s good enough for me.
He lines himself back up. The wet tip teasing my hole.
”C’mon,” I say, “fuck me!”
And he does. He pushes inside in one fluid motion, steady and sure. I gasp at the stretch, fingers curling against the dresser as my body adjusts to him. Three thrusts in and he’s found my prostate, the pressure precise enough to steal my breath, and every subsequent thrust sends bright sparks skidding across my vision.
”Yeah, just like that,” I say, breathless.
”Holy fuck,” he says, voice low.
My brain scrambles to catch up, but one thing is undeniable: Shep is fucking me—hard, sure, and exactly the way I like it.
I reach my arm back, hooking his neck, my breathing coming in short bursts.
”Shit! Don’t stop,” I say as I kiss him.
I turn my head and watch us in the mirror, the angle unforgiving and intimate. Seeing his cock piston into me—steady, relentless—pushes me right to the brink. His body is tight against mine, heat everywhere, his hands gripping my shoulder and waist as he drives in—deep one moment, pulling back the next, setting a rhythm my body locks onto. I start jerking my cock with my free hand, breath stuttering, the dresser cool beneath my palms as my head falls forward.
”Damn,” he says, “I’m so close.”
”Me too,” I respond.
He picks up speed for a moment, thrusts sharpening and shortening as his body begins to tense and jerk, a low, guttural moan tearing loose from his throat like he can’t hold it back anymore.
”I’m cumming,” he barely gets the words out before I feel it. Warm pulses filling me up. “Fucking hell!” His body relaxes and he grips me tighter. My own release just moments away.
”Cum for me, Brent, cum for me.”
”Ugh, Shep! I’m cumming, I’m cumm–” the words cut off.
One, two, three ropes of cum shoot from my cock and onto the dresser just barely missing my jacket.
”Fuck!”
We’re sweaty and spent, and he’s still inside me. His cum starts to leak out as his cock softens. The room smells like sex.
“C’mon,” he says, already moving, one hand firm at my wrist as he leads me into the bathroom. He turns on the shower and steam blooms almost instantly, the sound of water filling the small space. We step under it together, the heat stinging as it cuts through sweat and cum, rinsing us clean.
For a moment we just hold each other there, weight shared, foreheads nearly touching, letting the water do the work. He kisses me—slow, grounding—and I kiss him back, softer this time, like we’re sealing something we don’t have words for.
”That was incredible,” I say.
”Yeah, it was.”
After we’ve cleaned up, we go back into the room and get dressed. Movements are efficient now—shirts, buttons, cuffs—like we’re following a script we’ve practiced. I redo his tie, careful and exact. He does my cufflinks, fingers steady, eyes down. When he checks his watch, the moment tightens.
”I guess I have to go get married now.”
There’s a knock at the door before I can respond. A voice calling his name. The moment collapses in on itself, neat and efficient, like it was never there at all.
When the door opens and the noise floods back in, Shep steps forward into it without looking back.
I follow a beat later, fingers brushing the outline of the rings through my jacket, their weight familiar and steady against my chest.
For a moment, I let myself stand there before stepping fully into the hallway. Long enough to feel what we took with us settle into my chest. Long enough to admit that some things aren’t meant to last—they’re meant to be held, briefly, fiercely, and without apology.
We didn’t need a future. We didn’t need permission. For what it’s worth, we got one last thing that was just ours—thirty minutes carved out of the noise and the obligation and the lives we kept choosing anyway. A pocket of time that belonged to no one else.
You can want something with the abandon of a child and still let it go. You can love the moment without asking it to stay. Maybe Shep is right about timing. Maybe timing is everything. But some things don’t happen because they’re convenient—they happen because they’re inevitable.
I have no regrets. Not about the wanting. Not about the way it burned bright and then passed. If this is all it ever gets to be, it was enough. I feel the rings warm against my chest on last time. I square my shoulders. I step out and make my down the hall ready to take my place.
Behind me, the door eases shut with a soft click, sealing the room away—not as a loss, but as a moment completed. For thirty minutes, two men who had been circling each other their entire lives finally stopped moving long enough to collide. It felt like that brief moment when rival nations raced toward the sky—not to conquer it, but to see if it could be done—and for a heartbeat, suspended above the noise of the world, they touched the face of God. Not because it was meant to last, but because some moments exist only to prove they’re possible. And for a brief, impossible stretch of time, it was ours.