i tape my boxer's wrists every fight night. after he won i made him keep his hands on the bench while i sucked him

Friday · October 2

Every fight night Julian sat down on the locker room bench, held out both hands, and said “tape me,” and every fight night I did it like it was a normal thing to ask a friend.

He’s an amateur boxer. He’s perfectly capable of wrapping his own wrists. I’ve watched him do it in the mirror at the gym, fast and sloppy, humming. But on fight nights he held his hands out to me, palms down, and waited.

I do it better. That’s the excuse. Pull, cross, loop around the thumb, back over the knuckles, tight enough to hold and loose enough to let blood through, and the whole time he watched my hands. Not the tape. My hands. I felt his eyes on my fingers like a hot lamp and I never once looked up, because if I looked up I’d have to admit I knew.

I’m the smaller one. I’m the one who wears the black nail polish under the wraps and gets a look from the front desk guy and doesn’t care. Julian is built like a door. Shaved head, broken nose, a quiet voice that makes grown men at the gym stand up straighter. And every fight night he sat on that bench and let me boss his hands around like he’d been waiting all week for somebody to.

I noticed the ritual way before I noticed the attraction. That’s the honest order. Then I noticed the attraction, and it hit me all at once, like a right hand I didn’t see coming.

He won that night. Split decision, bloody lip, a bruise already purpling under one eye. He came back into the locker room still buzzing and grinning with his gloves hanging off his shoulder, and he sat down on the same spot on the bench and held out his hands again.

“Untape me.”

I knelt between his knees on the cold tile. The floor was gross, there was somebody’s old sweat on it, I didn’t care. I took his right wrist in both hands and found the end of the tape and started peeling.

It came away slow. Sticky, damp, gray with sweat. His skin underneath was red and creased and hot as an oven and I could feel his pulse going in his wrist, a hard fast thump against my thumb.

He flexed his fingers when I finished the first hand. Looked down at me.

“You like telling me what to do before I fight,” he said.

I looked up. “You like listening.”

His smile went away. Not slowly. Just gone, like a light turned off, and what was left was his face with nothing in front of it.

“Yeah,” he said.

It was the quietest word I’ve ever heard come out of him. It went through me like I’d been hit.

I put his hand down on his knee. I stayed where I was, kneeling, close enough to smell the liniment and the blood and the soap he used.

He didn’t say anything else. He sat there in his trunks and his boots with one wrap still hanging loose off his left wrist, a long dirty strip of white trailing on the bench, and I decided I wanted him to leave it exactly like that.

“Hands on the bench,” I said.

He put them down. Both of them, flat on the wood on either side of his thighs. His shoulders rolled forward. The muscle there is ridiculous, I could see it bunch and settle, and I watched what that one little order did to the biggest man in the room.

“Good.”

He breathed out hard, a long shaky breath, and I got up off my knees and stood between his legs and put my hand on his jaw. The stubble was rough. I turned his face up to me and he let me, eyes open, a little glassy. A fresh cut at the corner of his lip was weeping and I thumbed it clean.

“What do you want, Julian?”

He laughed. Once, short, embarrassed. His ears were red. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Answer me.”

He looked at me. All that quiet under the bruise.

“I want you to get me off.”

My stomach dropped through the floor.

“Good,” I said, and went back down on my knees.

I felt his whole body change. It was like watching a man set down something heavy. The boxer who could take a punch to the face and walk it off couldn’t survive one calm word. His breathing hitched and his knees fell open a little wider, and he left his hands on the bench like I’d said.

I pulled the waistband of his trunks down. He was already hard, thick and dark and curved up against his stomach, with the head slick and swollen. I breathed on it and he twitched.

“Hands stay on the bench.”

He nodded.

I looked up. “Words.”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.”

His head dropped. His eyes closed. That did something to him I felt in my own cock, a hot punch of want, and I wrapped my hand around the base and took him in my mouth.

I did it slow. The way I wrap hands. Find the angle, keep the tension even, adjust when the body tells you to. He tasted like salt and sweat and a long night, and he was so hot against my tongue that I moaned without meaning to, and his hips jerked toward me.

I pulled off.

“Hands.”

He flattened them again. Instant. His fingers curled against the wood, white at the knuckles, trying so hard.

“Good.”

“You’re an asshole,” he said, hoarse.

I went back down. He stopped talking.

I worked him with my fist at the base and my mouth up top, wet and loud in the empty room. Locker room acoustics. You could hear every bit of it, every slick suck, every time I came up for air and went down again. He tried to be quiet and it came out of him in pieces, little grunts, a curse he swallowed halfway.

His hips shifted. A little roll, forward, into my mouth.

He froze.

“Can I move?” It came out ragged. Rough. Like asking for something at a funeral.

I nodded, mouth full. I let one hand drift up to the inside of his thigh and squeezed.

“A little,” I said, when I came off to breathe. “Slow.”

He did. Controlled and careful. He rolled his hips into my mouth in short, tight strokes, hands still gripping that bench, and every time he pushed in I let him have a little more throat. It was the most careful I have ever seen a big man be. I loved it. I loved it even more than if he’d taken me by the hair and used me.

Because that was the whole thing, you know? It was never about who was stronger. He obviously was, he could’ve picked me up and tossed me over the locker room. It was about being told exactly what to do, and doing it, and wanting to.

“Good boy,” I said, and licked up the underside of him, slow, from root to tip.

“Fuck.”

I smiled against his skin.

He felt it. “Don’t.”

I pulled back, lips shining. “Don’t what?”

“Look so—” He shook his head, face burning under the bruise. “Pleased.”

“Can’t help it.”

He covered his eyes with his arm, one hand off the bench, and I let it go. Then he said it into his own elbow, small and desperate:

“Again.”

“Good boy.”

That nearly finished him. I saw it hit. His abs went tight and his thighs started trembling against my shoulders, and the wrap on his wrist slapped against the bench with every shake.

I took him deep. I made a wet, filthy, deliberate sound and his hand went down and gripped the edge of the bench so hard the wood creaked.

“Noah,” he said. “Noah, I’m—”

I took him all the way in and stayed. I put both hands on his hips and he went over. A roar came out of him, low and cracked, a sound I’d never heard from him even in the ring, and he shot hot and thick onto my tongue, pulse after pulse, his whole body locking up and then shaking apart on that bench. I swallowed. I swallowed again. I kept my mouth soft around him till his hand came down and touched the top of my head, light as anything, and I felt him shudder one last time.

I sat back on my heels.

I was so hard I could barely think. I’d gotten nothing, not a touch, and I’d have come from nothing, too, if I’d looked at his face for one more second.

He saw. Of course he saw. He was breathing like he’d run ten miles but his eyes went straight to the bulge in my jeans and the wet spot spreading on the front of them.

He leaned down and hauled me up into his lap. One arm around my back. The other hand went right down the front of my jeans and he gave me one look, his face wrecked and soft and absolutely done pretending.

“Hands on my shoulders,” he said.

I put them there.

“Good.”

I came in his fist in less than a minute with my forehead on his collarbone, shaking, his split lip against my temple, his big hand cupping the back of my head the whole way through.

After, we sat on the bench for a long time. The showers dripped. Somewhere down the hall a door banged and a guy yelled something about the ring girls.

Julian sat there wrecked and smiling with his trunks half down and one wrap still dangling off his wrist. I picked it up. It was filthy. I wound it carefully around his sore wrist, snug, checking the swelling with two fingers. It was puffy, and warm. I’d put ice on it in a minute.

He watched my hands the whole time.

“Next fight?” he said.

“I’ll tape you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I looked up from his wrist. His eyes were steady and dark and absolutely not joking.

“I know,” I said.

Three weeks later, the night before his next fight, my phone lit up on the nightstand.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I could feel him going red from across town.