Too Shy Footguy
Kevin noticed him the first time at the café on 6th and Alder. Not because he was loud or charming—he wasn’t—but because his eyes never met Kev’s. They hovered, always, at ankle level. He wore boots that day. Thick-soled, scuffed leather. He remembered thinking, Freak.
He was there again the next week. And the next. Always alone, always watching. He began to vary his footwear. Sandals. Vans. Barefoot once, just to test him. His gaze followed, reverent and unreadable.
He told his friends. They laughed. “Faggot Foot guy,” they called him. “Creep.” He almost believed it.
Until the day Kev confronted him.
“You have a staring problem,” he said, standing over his table. “It’s disgusting.”
The youth, whose name was Daniel looked up, startled. And for the first time, he saw his eyes—wet, glassy, and full of something he couldn’t name.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not what you think.”
He folded his arms. “Then explain.”
He hesitated, then gestured to the chair across from him. He sat.
“My brother used to walk barefoot everywhere,” he began. “He said it made his feel grounded. Like he could feel the world’s pulse through the pavement. He died last year. Hit by a car while crossing the street barefoot.”
The older man blinked. His anger softened but didn’t vanish.
“I stare because I miss him,” he said. “Because feet carry stories. Scars. Choices. Defiance. I see someone’s feet and wonder where they’ve been. What they’ve survived.”
Silence hung between them. He looked down at his own feet—checkered Vans, smudged with dirt and worn.
“I judged you,” Thirty-year-old Kevin said quietly.
Dan nodded. “Most do.”
He stood to leave, then paused. “Next time, ask. People might surprise you.”
Daniel smiled, barely. “So might you.”
Things moved very quickly after that.
Their sexual relationship started with a sigh.
Not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, end-of-day sort that slipped from Kevin’s lips as he sank into the couch. His feet, tucked beneath Dan’s, throbbed from a long shift at the gallery. He didn’t complain—he rarely did—but the sigh was enough.
“I could… give you a foot massage,” Daniel offered, voice cracking like a teenager asking someone to prom.
Kevin blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, if you want. I read somewhere that it helps with circulation. And stress. And—uh—marriage.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
And that was the moment twenty year-old Daniel’s brain short-circuited.
He’d expected a polite decline. Maybe a laugh. Not actual acceptance. Now, with his feet bare and resting in his lap, he was sweating like he’d been asked to defuse a bomb.
He stared at them. Not in disgust—more like reverence. They were elegant, sure, but they were also feet. And he didn’t want to mess this up.
“Do I need lotion?” he asked.
Kevin raised an eyebrow. “You tell me, footguy.”
He dashed to the bathroom, returned with three options, and then spent a full minute reading the labels aloud like he was comparing wine pairings. “This one has eucalyptus. That’s calming, right?”
“Daniel,” Kevin said gently, “just pick one.”
He did. Then, with trembling hands, he dabbed a bit on his heel and began what could only be described as a hesitant patting motion.
Kevin bit his lip. “You’re allowed to press.”
“Right. Pressure. Got it.”
He tried again, this time with the intensity of someone kneading dough for the first time. His foot jerked.
“Too much?”
“Little bit.”
He adjusted. Then overcorrected. Then apologized. Twice.
By minute five, he’d knocked over the lotion, dropped his foot, and somehow managed to get eucalyptus in his eye.
Kevin was laughing now, full-bodied and warm. “You’re adorable.”
“I’m trying to be romantic,” he groaned, blinking furiously.
“You are. In a very Daniel Grayson way.”
He paused, defeated. “I just wanted to do something nice.”
He leaned forward, kissed his forehead, and took his hands in his. “You did. Even if you nearly blinded yourself.”
They ended the night curled up together, his feet tucked under a blanket, his pride slightly bruised but his heart full. And though the massage had been a disaster, the gesture—awkward, earnest, and entirely Daniel—was perfect.
Then they switched up.
After stripping himself and Daniel naked, Kevin knelt before the younger boy’s bare feet and just massaged them for a while. He caressed and massaged them so well that it wasn’t long at all before Daniel had fallen asleep. Or perhaps he’d fainted? Kevin couldn’t tell.
Kev took hold of Dan’s heels and raised the sleeping lad’s bare feet high towards his face. He stuck out his tongue and slid it along the underside of the youthful, sweaty toes, from the pinky to the big captain. Forcing his tongue against the crevice where the toe joins the foot, Kevin danced his tongue along the underside a second time. Daniel didn’t have very long toes, but they were long enough … and they smelled just enough and had pristine, clear toenails. The older man used his tongue to trace one of those pristine clear toenails--the nail of his pinky toe, running down along the side, along the bottom, up the other side, and across the tip, which was cut straight and just back from the tip of his toe. Kevin created a wedge and forced his warm, wet tongue between Dan’s smallest and next largest toe and wiggled it madly in between them.
It was when Daniel began to awaken that Kevin Harris II started nibbling the younger man’s ankles. Laughter began welling up inside of Daniel as Kev got closer and closer to his sensitive, beautiful soles. He didn't even bother pleading; he knew that if he had me in a similar position, he certainly wouldn’t stop now.
Kevin would tongue torture Daniel Grayson’s sensitive soles until he fainted yet again!