the story starts with me on my knees between numbered bins of shoulder pads, which will make more sense in about two minutes.
okay. backfill.
for six weeks grant had been helping me fit practice uniforms after hours. i volunteer with the men’s rec league, he runs the equipment room, and nothing in that building has ever been labeled correctly. so every tuesday and thursday after everybody left i’d stand in the back under the humming fluorescent lights and he’d hold a jersey up to me with a crease between his eyebrows.
“arms up.”
he’d tug it down over my head. his knuckles dragged down my ribs. i’d stand there, ears hot.
“turn.”
he’d smooth the back. his palm stayed flat between my shoulder blades a half second too long.
“these shorts are wrong.”
and he’d kneel, actually kneel, on the concrete in front of me with a cloth tape and measure my inseam. very serious. very professional. the tape ran up the inside of my thigh and his thumb followed it and neither of us believed in the tape anymore. i’d stopped breathing around week three. by week five i was wearing the tight briefs on purpose and he knew it, because he’d gone quiet when he saw them and said “those work” in a voice that didn’t sound like his.
week six he left the door unlocked on purpose, i think, and put me in the little changing alcove with the curtain half pulled and handed me a pair of white game shorts a size too small. “try those.” i came out in them. he looked at me for about ten full seconds and then said, very quietly, “go home, theo,” and i went home and jerked off in the shower with my forehead on the tile, saying his name into the water.
the seventh week i said, “you know you keep inventing reasons to touch me.”
he froze with the tape around my thigh.
“you want me to stop?”
“no.” my mouth was dry. “i want you to stop inventing reasons.”
he stood up. very slowly. he’s tall, broad through the shoulders, forearms like he lifts crates for a living, which he does. he looked at me, then past me at the door, and walked over and turned the deadbolt. the click was the loudest sound i’ve ever heard.
he came back. he put both hands on the shelving behind my head, one on each side, caging me against the bins. we both laughed once, short and dumb, because of the absurdity of it. then it stopped being funny.
“theo,” he said.
i went down on my knees.
i didn’t decide to. my legs just did it. the concrete was cold through my shorts and the bins of shoulder pads were stacked right by my head and i looked up at him and he looked down at me like i’d done something he’d been trying not to ask for.
equipment cage · deadbolt thrown, tape on thigh
his hand settled on the back of my head. light. the same touch he used for positioning pads on a rack, careful, practical. there was nothing professional left to hide behind.
“look up.”
i looked.
something in his face gave way. “good.”
my stomach flipped over. “again.”
he smiled, small, a little cruel. “good.”
that was all it took. i went for his waistband and he caught my wrist, big fingers closing all the way around it.
“wait.”
i froze. not because he made me. because it hit exactly where i wanted it to.
he watched what it did to me. “tell me what you want.”
i swallowed. my own voice sounded far away. “i want your cock in my mouth.”
his grip loosened. “good.”
i opened his shorts. he was already hard, straining the gray cotton of his boxers, a dark wet spot at the tip. i pulled them down and he came out heavy and thick and hot against my cheek. i laughed softly.
“inventory issue?”
“shut up.”
i took him in my mouth.
his hand went back into my hair. still careful. i went slow, tongue flat along the underside, lips tight, all the way down until my nose touched the coarse hair at his base. then i pulled off, breathed, and went back down.
his voice stayed practical. that was what undid me. like he was giving me instructions for a jersey.
“slower.”
i slowed.
“eyes up.”
i looked up at him. his mouth was open. his chest was rising and falling under the club hoodie.
“that’s it.”
the praise made me want the next instruction before he’d given it. the room narrowed down to bins and cold light and his hand in my hair and the wet sounds i was making and absolutely hoped nobody outside could hear. someone’s cleats scraped in the hall once, far off, and i sucked harder out of sheer nerves and grant made a sound like he’d been punched.
his hips moved. just once. then he stopped, right away, hand tightening.
i pulled back, saliva on my chin. “you can move. fuck my mouth.”
he stared at me. then he did. small at first, controlled, a slow roll of his hips that pushed him over my tongue and back. i took him deeper on every pass. my jaw ached. my own cock was so hard in my shorts it hurt, pressed against the zipper, and i palmed it through the fabric while he watched me do it.
“fuck,” he said, head dropping forward. “look at you.”
i smiled around him, as well as i could with my mouth full.
“pretty proud of yourself?”
i pulled off just enough to answer. “very.”
he laughed once, a breathy broken laugh. then i went back down and the laughing stopped, and he got rougher, deeper, his thighs trembling, hand locked in my hair. i gagged a little and he eased up and i grabbed his hips and dragged him back in.
“theo. theo, i’m close.”
i looked up at him and didn’t move.
i grabbed the backs of his thighs and held him in so he knew exactly where.
his hand clenched. “good.”
he came with a groan and a shudder. thick, salty, hot across my tongue. i stayed on him for every pulse. i swallowed and sucked him through the end of it and only let go when he hissed and flinched from how sensitive he was.
he stood there with his back against the shelf, breathing hard, shorts around his thighs. i sat back on my heels. my knees were dead. my own shorts were a mess.
grant looked down at me and at the tent in my shorts.
“you didn’t come.”
“i’m fine.”
“theo.”
“i’m fine, honestly, i’m just—”
he pulled me up by the hoodie and turned me around and bent me over the bin of shoulder pads. i yelped. he yanked my shorts and briefs to my knees and his hand slid between my legs and wrapped around me from behind. his chest was against my back. his mouth was at my ear.
“you’ve been walking around my equipment room for six weeks like this.”
“yes.”
“knowing i’d look.”
“yes.”
“good boy.”
i came in about eleven seconds. his hand was big and rough and it moved fast and he kept saying it, good, good boy, and i spilled all over his fist and the side of a pad bin and my forehead dropped against the plastic. he held me up by the waist while my legs shook.
he didn’t let go right away. his lips were against the back of my neck, just resting there. he was still breathing hard.
“i’m going to wipe that down,” he said eventually.
“it’s an equipment room. it’s literally all sweat.”
“theo.”
“sorry.”
we sat on the floor afterward with our backs against the shelving, drinking vending machine water out of the same bottle. the clipboard lay face up on the concrete where it had fallen. i looked at it.
“helmet count?”
grant stared at me. “absolutely not.”
i laughed until i had to put my head on his shoulder.
after a minute he picked it up, flipped a page, and frowned at it.
“we still have twelve helmets.”
“you’re joking.”
“inventory waits for no man.”
we finished counting. mostly. i got to eight and he put his hand on my thigh, and by nine we’d started over.
he walked me to my car. at the door he said, “thursday?”
“i’ll need a new jersey fitting.”
“i’ll order the tape,” grant said, and unlocked the deadbolt, and held the door.
thursday he didn’t even pretend. there was no jersey. he had the lights off except the one over the bins, and a folding chair set in the middle of the floor, and he sat down in it with his legs spread and said, “inventory,” and i was on my knees before he finished the word.
i didn’t count a single helmet that night. i counted other things. the veins along his shaft under my tongue. the little noises he made when i used my hand and my mouth together. the number of seconds he lasted when i took him all the way down and swallowed around him, which was not many, and which he complained about afterward while i grinned up at him with my chin wet.
he came on my tongue again and pulled me up into his lap on the chair and kissed me, hard, and told me i could stay as late as i wanted.
