caleb can squat four hundred pounds and one word from me nearly put him on the floor.
i didn’t mean to find that out. i want that on the record. it was a tuesday, the gym was half dead, and i was spotting him because i always spot him. he’s a big stupid wall of a man, shoulders like a vending machine, and i’m the guy in the pink lifting socks and the shorts that are maybe a little too short who stands behind him with two fingers under the bar feeling very unnecessary.
he ground out the last rep. reracked it with a clang that shook the whole platform. and i slapped his sweaty shoulder, grinning, and said, “good boy.”
joke. it was a joke. i say dumb stuff like that to everybody.
caleb went completely still.
not the normal still of a guy catching his breath. still like somebody had put a hand on the back of his neck. his shoulders dropped an inch. his eyes went somewhere past the mirror. and the back of his neck, which i was looking right at, turned red from the collar of his shirt all the way up to his hairline.
i took my hand off him real slow.
he saw me notice. i saw him see it. and neither of us said one word about it for the next forty minutes while he finished his workout and i did mine badly, losing count of every set.
gym floor · after his PR attempt
the gym empties out around nine on weeknights. by the time the last guy with the headphones left, it was the two of us and the hum of the lights and the dumb pop playlist nobody had turned off.
“the praise thing,” i said.
caleb stared into his water bottle like it had written something on it.
“what praise thing.”
“you almost dropped the bar because i called you good.”
“i did not.”
“you absolutely did. i felt it through the whole rack.”
he looked up. gym-flushed, jaw tight, big hands wrapped around that bottle, and what i saw in his face was not annoyance. it was the opposite. it was something raw and nervous and starving.
“do it again,” he said.
my stomach flipped over. “here?”
“there’s the private training room.”
i looked at the door at the back, the one with the little window papered over, the one personal trainers use for assessments and nobody else ever touches. then i looked at him. he was already walking.
i followed. i locked the door behind us. the click was loud as a gunshot.
the room smelled like rubber mat and disinfectant. one bench, one mirror, a rack of kettlebells in the corner. caleb stood in the middle of it with his hands hanging at his sides and no idea what to do with them, this giant man who takes up the whole doorway, and i realized he was waiting for me to say something.
so i walked behind him. i reached around his waist and undid the buckle of his lifting belt, tugged it free, and dropped it on the bench.
“hands on the wall,” i said.
he did it so fast. too fast. he crossed the room in two steps and put both palms flat against the cinderblock before i’d finished the sentence.
i smiled. i couldn’t help it.
“good.”
his head dropped. just dropped, chin to chest, and a sound came out of him that i don’t think he knew he made. low in his throat. i felt it in my own stomach.
there it was. four hundred pounds, and i had him with one syllable.
i stepped up behind him. i put one hand flat on his waist, right over the damp cotton of his shirt, feeling the muscle jump under my palm.
“yeah?” i said.
“yeah.”
“say it right.”
“yes,” he said, rough.
“good boy.”
his whole back rolled. he pressed his forehead to the wall and breathed out through his teeth, and i felt it down to my knees, how big he was and how he was doing exactly what i told him because he wanted to. i’m five-eight. i weigh a buck sixty with my wallet. and this man was shaking under my hand.
i slid my palm down his stomach, under the hem of his shirt. hot skin. hard as a board. i dragged my nails lightly over the line of hair under his navel and he made that sound again.
“turn around.”
he turned. his back hit the wall and he looked down at me with his lips parted, and his gym shorts were doing an honestly terrible job of hiding what was happening. the fabric was tented hard, a dark patch already spreading at the tip.
“look at that,” i said. “that’s from one word.”
“shut up.”
“ask me.”
he laughed, once, embarrassed, dragging a hand down over his face. “seriously?”
“ask.”
he swallowed. i watched his throat work. his eyes went to my mouth and away again.
“i want your mouth.”
i tilted my head. “again.”
his face went red all over. “i want you to suck my cock.”
“there it is.”
i dropped to my knees on the mat.
his breath was already coming fast, and i hadn’t touched him yet. i hooked my fingers in the waistband of his shorts and pulled down, not far, just enough, and his cock sprang out thick and flushed and heavy against my wrist. it was so hard it bobbed. leaking at the tip, a clear string of it stretching when it brushed my chin.
“pretty strong reaction,” i said, “for one word.”
“leo.”
“good boy.”
he groaned, head thumping back against the wall.
i took him in my mouth.
slow first. just the head, tongue flat underneath, tasting salt and sweat and gym. he was so hot. his thighs went rock hard on either side of my shoulders and his hands, god, his hands stayed on the wall behind him like i’d told them to. that’s what got me. he could have lifted me off the floor with one arm. he could have bent me over that bench and done whatever he wanted. and he stood there flattened against cinderblock with his palms pressed flat because i’d said so.
i pulled off, wet, my mouth shining.
“look at me.”
his eyes came down. glassy, wide.
“good.”
his thighs shook. i felt it under my hands. i smiled around the next lick, up the thick vein on the underside, and he said, desperate, “you’re enjoying this way too much.”
“correct.”
i took more of him. swallowed around the head, sank down until i felt it hit the back of my throat, and he made a noise i’m going to hear in my head for the rest of my life. one of his hands left the wall. hovered. hung in the air over my hair, shaking.
i pulled back just enough to talk. “go on.”
his fingers sank into my hair, careful, so careful, like he was afraid he’d break me.
he held. big warm hand cupping the back of my head while i worked him, wrapping my fist around the base to take the rest and bobbing my mouth up and down the top half. the wet sound filled the little room. my knees ached on the mat. my own cock was so hard in my shorts it hurt, caught against the waistband, and i didn’t touch it, because i wanted to get him there first.
“fuck,” he kept saying. “fuck, leo. leo.”
i looked up. i made him look at me. drool on my chin, my mouth stretched around him, and i let a little smile happen right there.
“good boy,” i said, around him.
his whole body jolted. his fingers tightened in my hair and i moaned, it just came out of me, and that was enough to make him buck forward. his cock hit the back of my throat and i gagged and hung on and took it, eyes watering, because i wanted it.
“sorry, sorry—”
i pulled off, coughing, and grinned up at him with spit all over my face. “don’t you dare be sorry. again.”
“again?”
“yes. praise too.”
he stared down at me like i’d handed him the moon. then his mouth moved, rusty, trying out the words. “you’re—you’re doing so good.”
oh. oh, that undid me. four hundred pounds of man, shaking, telling me i was good. i went back down on him so hard i almost swallowed him to the root.
he said it again, and again, between curses, hips rolling in little shallow thrusts i let him have. his hand shook in my hair. i could feel him getting thicker in my mouth, the pulse of him on my tongue, and his stomach went tight and flat.
“leo,” he said. “leo, i’m gonna—”
i pulled back. just to the tip. i held him there, looking up with my lips wet and swollen.
“where?”
his mouth opened. something stuck behind it, pride or shame, i could watch it fight his throat. i waited. i stroked him slow with my fist and waited.
“in your mouth,” he got out. “if you—please.”
“good.”
i went back down. i took him as deep as i could and he came apart. he shouted once, a raw cracked sound, and his whole body shuddered against the wall and he spilled hot and heavy on my tongue, pulse after pulse, so much that i had to swallow twice. i kept my mouth on him through all of it, soft and slow, until he flinched and made a noise like he was in pain.
i let him slide out. wiped my chin with the back of my hand.
caleb slid down the wall. just slid, boneless, until he hit the mat sitting down hard with his shorts still shoved under his balls and his chest heaving, and stared at the ceiling tiles like the set had actually beaten him.
i stayed on my knees. i was still hard, aching, my shorts soaked through at the front. he saw it. he looked at it, then at me, and he reached out one huge hand and pulled me in by the front of my shirt until i was half in his lap.
“your turn,” he said, voice wrecked.
he got his hand down my shorts. it was so big it covered me completely, and he wrapped it around my cock and i was gone in about forty seconds. i hid my face in his neck. i came all over his fist and the inside of my shorts while he muttered into my hair, “good, good, you’re so good,” in that clumsy low voice, and i almost cried.
mat · cool-down, water bottles
we sat there for a while on the mat. water bottle passed back and forth. his arm around my shoulders, which i’d been wanting for a year and had decided never to mention.
“you are never spotting me again,” he said finally to the ceiling.
“lie.”
he turned his head. sweat drying in his hair, the red still hadn’t left his ears. “thursday?”
“thursday.”
we pulled his phone out and built next week’s training plan right there on the floor like nothing had happened, sets, reps, rest days. i typed it because he spells everything wrong. then he took the phone out of my hand and typed one more line at the bottom and handed it back without looking at me.
