When swimming practice started, our exclusive pool lane felt unexpectedly empty and somewhat quiet without Aidan. Red and Blue had a ton of activities for us to do but still, it felt like something was missing. "Hey," Red swam towards me after a while. "Billy." "Yeah?" I got instantly nervous. That always happened to me when one of them spoke at me directly. "Your googles." "My...?" I raised my hands to my head but they weren't there. "What...?" Red was pointing towards the bottom of the pool. I squinted my eyes and sure enough, my googles were there, sitting in the deep. "Sorry," I didn't know why I apologized for but I said so anyway. I swam towards my googles but once I was above them, I tried to swim to the bottom but my body didn't let me, it kept making me float to the top. In the end I gave up and tried to pick them up with my feet -I could barely touch the bottom of the pool- but that was difficult too. I was about to catch them with my toes when I saw Blue swimming in the bottom as if he was a dolphin, retrieving my googles with his hand before emerging at the surface with incredible grace. "Thank you," I my mouth was wide open. "How did you do that?" "What?" "Swim like that," I tried to immitate his movements with my hand. "Without floating up." "You don't know how to do that?" Blue was quite a bit shocked. "I..." my shyness got to me but I forced myself to keep talking. I really wanted them to like me. "No, no. When I tried to my body kept making me float." Blue gave me a long, lost look before turning towards Red and calling him. In that moment, both instructors came up with a brand new, homemade, excercise: Near the end of the pool was the deep area, about 4 meters deep. Needless to say, that was off limits for kids from the course but Red and Blue convinced the course leaders to let us go there. After all, it was only me and Mahomes they had to look after. The activity they came up with was really exiting: imitating what had happened before, Red let a pair of googles fall to the deep area of the pool and it was out job to get them back. "Why don't you go first?" Blue gave me a warm smile. "Me?" I hated him for chosing me but how could I say no. I put on my googles, took a deep breath and... I floated to the surface, unnable to do it. "Your turn," Blue patted Mahomes on the back. "Alright," Mahomes looked equally scared and equally exited. He put on his googles, took a deep breath and... floated up. That happened several times more. Googles, breath, float up. I couldn't belive how hard it actually was. When I dived in, I couldn't sumberge myself more than a few centimeters without immediately floating back up, face down, to the surface. "Okay, they aren't getting any better," Red turned towards Blue, as if Mahomes and I weren't there. "You know, I'm actually realived that the problem is they float too well. If they didn't then we would have a real problem." "Yeah, I'd rather have them float than sink." "But how do we...?" "What if you show us?" Mahomes intervened with a cheerful voice. Red and Blue exchanged lookes, so did Mahomes and I before our instructors smiled, put on their googles, took a deep breath and swam downwards to the bottom. Mahomes and I submerged out heards to look at them. And oh! What a sigh it was! They were moving as straight as arrows, all the way to the deep, almost as efortlessly as if they were flyng. Columns of bubbles surrounded their almost naked boddies as their hands touched the floor. I loved the way their bodies lookes. To be frank -at least from what I remember- their faces weren't particularly handsome. Not ugly, just regular faces. But their bodies, oh their bodies! Temples is a very suiting word to define them. Two marbled, carefully scuplpte temples. The right amount of muscle, their lean stomachs, their swift bodies, strong legs, and defined feet. They looked amazing. Combine that with their laid-back attitude, their confidence and their clear talent in the pool and boom, anyone could've fallen for them. For some reason, that made me respect them. Made me attracte to them. Made me want to be like them. "I wish I knew how to do that!" "Me too," and for the first time, my enthusiasm matched Mahomes'. "That was amazing!" I let out, almost too loud, when they re-emerged. "I'm glad you think so," Red gave a wide grin. "Because we are going to show you to do it." Then, something unexpected happened. Blue swam towards me and, without saying a word, he positioned himself at my back. Then, he got closer and closer until I felt his chest against me. For some reason, that left me speechless. I could feel the shape of his pecs with my bare back, his skin against mine. In front of us, Red got behind Mahomes in a similar position. "Ready?" Blue's lips where near my ear, his voice nothing but a whisper. "Take a deep breath." Panicking, I opened my mouth and took in as much air as I could and, a second later, my head was underwater. I wasn't sure what to do but soon I felt Blue's hands around my waist, taking me downwards. At first, it all happened like it did before: I was able to go down a few inches when my body suddenly started floating upwards. However, Blue was stronger than that. He grabbed me more steadily and dragged me deeper and deeper. I wasn't swimming as much as I was being pulled, still I felt like I was doing it myself. We kept going until my hands touched the bottom of the pool. Then, when there was no where else to go, my body tried to go up again but Blue hedl me in place. I could again feel the definition of his chest on my back, his hands holding my torso in place. In front of us, Red and Mahomes were at the bottom too. They, through their googles, were looking at us. Mahomes had the most excited face I'd ever seen while Red, holding him like Blue was holding me, smiled at me, knowlingly. And then, for a brief second, we four were all that excisted. Have you ever been there? At the bottom of the pool? That magic place with water all around you, where the sun doesn't shine in sunrays but in blue waves. We were no longer at a city but in a vast, quiet ocean, nothing but kilometers of sea arounds us and blue huggin every inch of ous bodies. We were slow-moving statues. Sculptures frozen in blue light. Red, surrounded by columns of bubbles, had the body of an Adonis. The shape of his chest, the muscles in his arms, the stiffness of his nipples. Even Mahomes -younger and not an atlete- looked like poetry. I wondered how I looked in the bottom; how I looked with Blue holding me from behind...
After that I was able to swim downwards. I don't know how I managed to do it but it was as if a new ability had unlocked inside me. Now, I could easily retrieve the googles from the bottom. Suddenly, there were no corners of that pool we couldn't reach. As I got out of the pool I was so excited for my new ability that I didn't even notice I had entered the locker room until I was standing inside. "Oh... I... what..." I was standing still in the middle of the room, frozen. To my side, Mahomes was standing still too. That was usually the moment when Aidan would tell us to follow him to the stalls but... "Aidan isn't here," so then why were we just standing like fools? My mind started racing. The swimming team was arriving, all of them walking to their lockers. None of them were paying us attention, yet I felt observed. Mahomes, slowly, turned and faced me. I wanted to get changed with the guys, take a shower with them. Yet, I didn't know what to say without sounding weird. My mind tried to find the right sentences to say, the right words, when... "Do you want to take a shower?" Mahomes asked, suddenly. I looked at him, perplexed. Aidan made us dry up and get changed without taking a shower, he was of the idea that showers had to be taken in the privacy of your own home, not where a bunch of teens or moms could see you. Yet, there was Mahomes, asking if I wanted to take one. Was he also sick of Aidan's insistence of changing in the stalls? Was he thinking the same thing I was? I didn't know but there was only one way to find out. "Yeah," I smiled. "Let's take a shower." Mahomes grinned enthusiastically and, without another word, we both headed towards Red's locker. We both grabbed out towels and, slowly but surely, grabbed the waistband of our swimsuits. I closed my eyes, hid my exitement, and took a deep breath. Air in -my grasp around my waistband became firmer-, air out -with a single movement I pushed my only piece of clothing to the floor. For a second, we didn't move. Neither of us, Mahomes and I, were openly looking at the other but we were stealing glances. It wasn't intentional or advertised, but it wasn't done in secret. I could tell he was looking at my naked boy as well as he could tell I was looking at his. I was the skinnier of the two, I was also taller. He, however, had an easier smile. His chest, although not defined, looked strong for a pre-teen. His legs were starting to show a few traces of hair but his member was completely smooth. To contrast, I already had a few hairs down there, not many but you could see them. It didn't matter since, around us, half of the swimming team was shaved while the other wasn't so we both felt at home. When our eyes met we both smiled, shyly, almost ashamed, but also happy. Maybe we both were waiting for this. As we made our way to the showers, our towels on our shoulders, we started feeling more and more eyes on us. This time it wasn't my imagination, the guys from the swimming team were actually looking at us, smiles on their faces. "Billy! Patrick!" Red raised his hands under a stream of hot water. "What are you doing here? I thought you didn't like taking a shower after class!" "Well," I looked away, "we changed our mind." The other guys in the swimming team started to come near us. It was such a weird but incredibly exciting sight, a bunch of 17 year olds, all of them naked and wet, walking towards us, encouraging us. "You are men now!" Someone said. "We are all boys here, don't be ashamed." Blue added. "So you do have cocks," another one said. "Yeah, we are all bros here." I am not sure what happened, maybe it was the fact that I was exposed or the thrill that I was among their youth but, when I looked down, my boyhood wasn't resting anymore. As stiff as a mast, it was now pointing at the wall. I looked up, afraid everyone would judge me and walk away but no, they didn't go anywhere. That was the first time some other boy -or in this case a group of boys- saw me hard. Surprisingly, I wasn't alone. Mahomes was also hard. He was trying to cover his erection with his hands. You could see the embarrassment in his face. However, no one seemed concerned or about to make a big deal about it. We must've been very obviously ashamed because Red walked towards us and said: "Don't worry," he whispered. "It happens all the time." Discretely, Blue poited with his chin towards a guy un the swimming team, soaping his naked body on the corner, minding his business. I didn't understand what I was supposed to see when... "he's hard" my eyes opened wide. He wasn't doing anything in particular, yet he was hard too. Then Blue pointed to someone else, then someone next to him. They were all hard. "What are you telling them?" The guy asked Blue when he noticed we were talking about him. "I was telling them to be careful, you are going to poke someone's eye out with that stick of yours!" I couldn't believe he had said something like that in such a casual,way. "Jealous because mine is bigger?" The guy said, wasn't embarrassed by his erection but actually showing it off to the others. "Just don't jack off here," someone told him. Oh, how wonderful are the things that only happen when boys are alone? That special something that comes to life when teenagers are together and naked. Who knows what happens then? I know and I'll tell you: they all become shameless. It's magical and weird and it defies all common sense but that's how it usually goes down. Suddenly, I was laughing with them. Of what? I didn't know, it was just a bunch of guys having a good time. Who would've know than being naked was okay? Being hard, making comments about it? Who would've know that it was just natural?
The next day Aidan was sick again and, for a second time in a row, Mahomes and I weren't ashamed of being seen naked in the locker rooms. This time, however, there was no swimming team with us, only Red and Blue so we joined them in the showers. "Oh, so Aidan was the only one that was embarrassed," Red guessed after we opened the showers next to him. "I didn't think you'd shower today, too," Blue winked at us. "I'm glad." The horsing around and playful banter of the day before had disappeared (the soccer moms were there, after all. None of them was openly looking at us but I bet some of them were stealing glances). Still, the courage and confidence remained. The moms made no comment on our state of undress. We just chatted a bit with Red and Blue, showering, before going back to the locker area and getting changed as if it was no big deal. I was sure then: I'll never wear clothes again.