it’s 1:52am and i can still taste him so i’m writing this down before i talk myself out of it.
i close the garrison rec center four nights a week. that’s the grad assistantship. second year of an m.s. in kinesiology at weller state, tuition paid and eleven hundred a month to swipe ids at the front desk, wipe down the squat racks, and walk every floor at 10:50 saying “we’re closing in ten” to guys who pretend they can’t hear me over their airpods. i do it in a staff polo i cropped with kitchen scissors, black joggers, and lilac nail polish the undergrads stopped asking about in week two.
at 11 i lock the front doors. the lights on the upper track go off on a timer. then it’s me and the hum of the vending machines and the drip in the men’s locker room that facilities has had a ticket open on since march.
and on tuesdays and thursdays it’s me and mason.
mason is the fifth-year senior, finishing a construction science degree he stretched out on purpose so he could play one more season of club rugby. he’s a prop. if you don’t know rugby that means he’s the guy whose entire job is to be a wall. thick neck. cauliflower ear on the left side. thighs like somebody poured concrete into jeans. he’s always the last one out of the weight room because the rugby club doesn’t get the good rack until 9:30.
he’s straight. he’ll tell you he’s straight. he had a girlfriend all of junior year named kaylee who sold lash extensions out of her apartment. he talks about her like a season he doesn’t want to rewatch. i don’t care. that’s not what this is.
the staff room · 11:02
here’s the setup, because the setup is the whole thing.
beside my locker in the staff room there’s a shelf. on tuesdays and thursdays, at 11:02, after i’ve locked up, i put three things on it:
a clean white towel from the laundry cart, folded in thirds.
a travel bottle of listerine zero, the purple one, because the blue one burns and i am not going to wince in front of him.
my phone, leaning against the wall, with a timer set to 15:00. not started.
that’s it. that’s the ritual. i set it out and i sit on the bench and i wait.
the first few weeks, back in september, he’d come in and stand in the staff room doorway with his gym bag on his shoulder and ask every single time. “you sure?” “you still want to?” “is this weird?” one night he asked three times before i’d even gotten his shorts down and i put my hand flat over his mouth and said “mason. i set out the towel.” and he laughed into my palm and after that he stopped asking. he’d just come in, look at the shelf, look at me, and press start on the timer himself.
that’s the permission. him pressing start. me setting it out. neither of us has to say anything.
the fifteen minutes is mine, by the way. he thought it was about his time. it’s not. i picked fifteen because i like having a clock to beat. i like watching him look at it. i like that at 14:30 he’s usually past being able to read numbers.
anyway. tonight.
11:06
tonight he came in at 11:06, which is late for him, and he didn’t look at the shelf.
he looked at me.
he was still in his practice stuff. gray weller rugby shirt soaked dark down the chest, black shorts, knee sleeve on the right leg, grass stain on the other thigh from the field before the weight room. he smelled like the field and like the rubber floor of the weight room and like sweat that had dried and gotten fresh again. he dropped his bag.
“can i ask you something.”
my stomach did a thing. that’s the sentence people say before they stop doing something.
“you’re gonna ask anyway.”
“why do you do this.”
i didn’t say anything.
“like.” he rubbed the back of his neck. “the towel. the. mouthwash. you set it all out like it’s a job. and i just. show up and i—” he stopped. his ears were red. “cole told me about the watch party thing. like the whole house knows now. and i started thinking about how i never. i don’t do anything for you. i come in here and use your mouth for fifteen minutes and leave. that’s using you. that’s what that is.”
so that was the thing. he’d been thinking. he thinks slow and then all at once, like a scrum.
i stood up. i’m 5'8 and about 140 and he’s like 6'1 and 250, and i walked right up to him until my nose was basically in his wet shirt.
“did you think i did all this by accident,” i said. “did you think i fold the towel in thirds by accident. i buy the purple one. i timed my walk-through so i’m done at 11:01. i like it, mason. i like it more than you do. you don’t get to feel bad about something i built.”
he looked down at me. i watched him hesitate, i watched it go through his whole face, the old careful thing, the “is this weird” thing.
then his hand came up and cupped the back of my head.
“yeah?”
“yeah.”
he reached past me without looking and pressed start on the timer.
15:00. 14:59.
i put the towel down on the rubber floor and knelt on it. that’s what it’s for. the floor in the staff room is that black recycled tire rubber and it tears up your knees.
i pulled his shorts down, compression shorts with them, to the middle of his thighs.
ok. his cock. i’m going to describe it because i think about it at inappropriate times, like in my biomechanics seminar. he’s not long exactly, maybe six and a half, but he’s thick, like, really thick, thick enough that i can’t close my hand around the base. cut. the head is wide and flat and goes almost purple when he’s really hard. there’s a heavy vein that runs up the underside that i like to put my tongue on. and he’s always half hard by the time he gets to the staff room. he told me once it starts in the weight room when he looks at the clock and sees 10:45. tonight he was more than half. tonight he was already all the way hard and leaking, one clear drop at the slit, and his balls were drawn up tight and sweaty.
i leaned in and breathed in first. sweat and skin. that thick salt smell that’s just him. i know that’s gross to some people. it’s my favorite smell in the world.
then i licked the drop off the tip.
he exhaled like somebody had punched him. slow. “fuck, elliot.”
i took the head in and just held it on my tongue, sucking gently, and looked up at him. he was watching the timer. 14:12. i pulled off and said “look at me not the phone” and he said “sorry” and looked at me and i went down on him.
the stretch at the corners of my mouth is always the first thing. then the weight of him on my tongue. i went slow, halfway, back, halfway, back, working the underside with my tongue flat, getting him wet, spit starting to run down to his balls. his hand in my hair was light. it’s always light at the start.
“good,” he said. “that’s good.”
i hummed and took him deeper and he hit the back of my throat and i held him there until i gagged, a real one, loud in the empty room, and my eyes flooded. his hand went tight in my hair out of reflex and then loose, fast, like he’d touched a stove.
i pulled off, coughing, spit on my chin, and grabbed his wrist and put his hand back on my head and pressed down on it.
“don’t,” i said. “don’t get careful now. you just told me you wanted to do something for me. this is it.”
he looked at me for a second.
then his hand closed in my hair for real.
“open.”
i opened.
he pushed in slow and kept going. i breathed through my nose. the head of him went past where it hurts and into where it just feels full, my throat stretched around him, his pubes pressed into my nose. he held me there. three seconds. four. then pulled me back and let me breathe and did it again.
“look at you,” he said. his voice had gone low and rough. “you like that?”
i nodded with him in my throat.
“say it.”
he pulled me off. “yes. i like it. i fucking love it.”
“yeah?” a little meaner now. he slapped his cock lightly against my cheek, wet, heavy. “then take it.”
and then he used me. hips moving now, short hard strokes, his hand holding my head exactly where he wanted it. the wet sound was obscene in there, echoing off the lockers. my cock was so hard in my joggers it ached and there was a wet spot through the gray fabric that i could feel going cold every time i moved. i put one hand on his thigh to feel the muscle jump. with the other hand i cupped his balls, heavy and slick with my spit, and rolled them and he groaned so loud i’m pretty sure the drip in the locker room stopped out of respect.
i heard the phone buzz. 5:00 warning. i’d set it that way.
he didn’t look.
and then he did something he’s never done.
he pulled out of my mouth. i made a stupid little sound. and he hauled me up by the arms and sat down on the staff bench with his legs spread and pulled me into his lap. straddling him. my knees on either side of his hips on the bench.
“mason—”
“you said let me do something.”
he yanked my joggers down in the back and the front, clumsy, one handed, got them caught under my ass, and my cock sprang out and slapped against his stomach. he looked at it. he’s never looked at it. i’ve never let him. he looked at it like he was reading something.
“is this ok,” he said.
it was the only time all night he asked, and it wasn’t a rules thing, it was just a guy who’d never touched another guy’s cock asking in a small voice. i put my forehead on his and said “yes, please,” and he spit in his hand like he’d seen it done and wrapped it around both of us.
his fist around both our cocks. his was so much thicker than mine. hot and slick against the underside of me. he started stroking us together, slow, and the friction was insane, the ridge of his head dragging along my shaft every stroke, and i grabbed his shoulders and my whole body just started shaking.
“oh my god. oh my god mason.”
“good?” he sounded shocked. like he couldn’t believe it was working.
“don’t stop. don’t stop don’t stop.”
he didn’t stop. he got faster. i was humping into his fist like an animal. his other hand was on my lower back holding me there, huge, his thumb in the dip above my ass. i came like thirty seconds later, embarrassing, a sharp twisting pulse that went all the way up my spine, all over his hand and his cock and his stomach and the hem of that wet gray shirt. i was saying his name into his cauliflower ear.
“fuck,” he said, looking down at it, awed. “fuck, elliot.”
“now you,” i said. “my mouth. finish in my mouth.”
i slid off his lap back onto the towel on my knees and took him right back in, covered in my own cum and all, and i didn’t care. it was salty and bitter and hot and it was mine and it was his. he grabbed my head with both hands.
“fuck. elliot. i’m close.”
i looked up at him and nodded and he thrust into my mouth once, twice, and on the third one he held me down.
and then he broke.
his thighs locked. his hips jerked up off the bench. a low sound came out of him from somewhere in his chest. the first pulse hit the back of my throat, hot and thick. then another. i could feel his cock jump on my tongue with each one, the heavy throb of it against the roof of my mouth, his balls tight against my chin. he was filling my mouth faster than i could swallow. i swallowed anyway. some ran out the corner of my lips. he was saying “fuck, fuck, fuck” like a prayer. four. five. he pressed my face all the way down and held it and i took every drop.
the phone went off on the shelf. the full 15:00 alarm. that stupid radar chime.
he reached over without letting go of my head and slapped it silent.
he didn’t look at it. i felt him keep pulsing, slower, in my throat, a few seconds past the end of the timer.
after, he got me a cup of water from the cooler in the hallway. i did the mouthwash. he watched me swish it around for thirty seconds like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. i spit. he handed me the towel. then he sat back down on the bench next to me and put his big stupid hand on my knee and left it there.
“the timer went off,” i said.
“i know.”
“you turned it off.”
“yeah. stop pretending you set it for me.”
lot f · 11:31
i locked up at 11:31. walked him to his truck in lot f. he drove off without saying anything else. i thought that was it.
it’s 1:52 now and he just texted me a picture.
it’s my locker. he must have come back in with his rugby club key, which i didn’t know worked on the staff door (i’m filing a ticket about that).
on the shelf there’s a brand new bottle of listerine zero. the purple one. the big bottle, not travel size.
and a sticky note stuck to it, in his terrible sharpie print:
15:00
except he crossed out the 15:00.
and under it he wrote:
TAKE YOUR TIME. -M
i don’t know what to do with that. i’m going to go to sleep. it’s thursday tomorrow.
