Exhibitionism
Mac finally encountered the infamous Malcolm at the beginning of his shift on Monday. He was stretching with Travis—and in response to a tease that he was being a baby, he wasn’t whining about how much his muscles hurt, but god, lifting with Trav was agony—when a man he didn’t know walked up and stared at them.
Everything in Mac’s body went tense. He hated this dude. He wanted to fight him. Right now. The way he was looking at them, like they were meat, like they were beneath him—
Mac’s mouth flooded with saliva like he was just about to deal out a punch. Or take one.
Travis laughed. “First one here, Malcolm? You miss us?”
“Apparently I missed something. Who’s the new guy?”
“This is Mac. Mac, this is Malcolm. Mac’s in his final week of training.”
Mac couldn’t decide if Trav had emphasized the last bit or if he’d just imagined it. Either way, Malcolm’s gaze took him in like he was deciding if he wanted to kick the tires or take a test drive.
“How intriguing. I heard a rumor about a new guy. Are you the one Mistress Lupe set up?”
I’m going to hit this asshole, and Coach is gonna have to fire me. Goddammit.
Malcolm, whose slight build and neatly trimmed beard didn’t exactly match his reputation, smiled at Mac’s non-response. “Oh, I might take you on the floor so everyone can watch. The ones who hate me are my favorites, new guy.”
Mac couldn’t rip his eyes away from the other man’s, and he could feel himself losing hold on his composure, he could feel his blood hot in his veins, demanding he move.
Travis laughed again, this time just a little bit strained. “Yeah, torturing Mac when he’s still in training is hilarious. Come on, Malcom. Lay off.”
“I will. Until next week. Kiss kiss, boys.” He walked away, in no hurry, and settled himself at a treadmill.
“I can’t,” Mac muttered. “Travis, if you leave me alone with him, I’ll hit him.”
“I want five more push-ups before you start your shift.”
Mac goggled. “I almost threw up from the last five.”
“Yep. After these five, you won’t be able to hit anyone.” Travis gestured to the mat. “Do it.”
“Fuck you.” But Mac went back down. The first three were okay after that little bit of break. He was shaking by the fourth.
“Form, Mac. Watch your form. Tighten your core. Squeeze your ass. You got one more in you.”
Mac doubted it, but he wouldn’t get anywhere arguing with Trav, so Mac tensed every muscle in his body and powered through one last push-up.
Then he collapsed, to applause. Travis, and Rhys, and oh fuck, Coach, all clapped for him. Coach came over to look at him, curled and shaking on the mat.
“Get your lazy ass up. It’s time for work.” He grinned and offered a hand.
“Trav is trying to kill me. You don’t have a problem with that? He’s damaging staff.”
“You’ll live. Go smoke and shower, but be back down here in fifteen.”
“I won’t even make it to my locker in fifteen.” Mac tried to shake out his arms, but they merely flopped.
Travis punched him loosely on the shoulder. “Yeah, that was the goal.” He lowered his voice. “We’ll talk later. I get it, about Malcolm, but he’s mostly bark.”
Mac sighted the man across the room, then deliberately turned his back. “Yeah, okay. Take your word for it, I guess.”
Another friendly punch. “Go destroy your lungs.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mac hesitated, then looked at Coach. “We might have a problem. But I’ll—” Try not to physically assault any clients. Today, anyway.
Coach lightly slapped his cheek. “You aren’t alone. Remember that.” Then he shoved Travis. “Hey, we have a new client coming in who wants to know if we can provide a CrossFit program for them.”
“They’re big into puking? I can make that happen, Coach. Mac’ll vouch.”
Mac dragged himself up to grab his cigarettes, and finally to the roof, where he smoked looking out into the sky, thinking about his job, and Jem’s house, and the foam rubber “mattress” he and Jem had picked up over the weekend to serve as an actual bed for him.
Jem had begged him to buy a real mattress, but you couldn’t fit a mattress in a car, so he’d balked. Since Jem wasn’t dense—and since his overnighter with Coach he’d been a little distant—he didn’t pursue it.
“Love” wasn’t the kind of thing Mac could identify. He didn’t even know for sure it was a thing he could feel, except in a way he loved his mom, and he remembered loving both his dad and Joseph, though that was a cold, hard, brittle thing inside him now.
But these people? He couldn’t account for how he felt about them, except that it felt stupidly nourishing, and he wanted more.
The door opened. He had a cigarette lit for Lupe by the time she walked over to stand beside him.
He considered her profile for a long moment as she smoked, thinking about what Coach said, about her parents kicking her out for not being what they wanted her to be. About Lupe’s hands on his ass before she spanked him, saying she could make it good for him. She might get this thing where he didn’t know how to even think about what he felt. “Do you love people?”
“What people?”
“Any people. Do you…feel love? For anyone?”
She thought about it for most of her cigarette. “I feel love, yes. Not often. But when I do, it’s like sharpened claws around my heart. A dangerous thing, Mac. And painful.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to love people,” he mumbled, feeling obscurely scolded.
“Oh, honey, I know. I know. But then you’re suddenly surrounded by these beautiful good-hearted people and it’s like you’ve been in the desert all your life and you’ve finally felt rain.”
He swallowed, looking back out at the sky. “I want them to think I’m not a piece of shit.”
“Being invested in the opinions of others complicates everything. But we should get down to the floor.”
“Hey, yeah, what’re you doing up here? Did Coach—”
“No. The Professor.”
He froze. “The Professor what?”
“Said I should come share a cigarette with you before shift. Or, actually, she said it looked like you were going to be late for your shift, and I should keep you company.” She snapped. “And poof. Here I am. I’m familiar with the struggle. It’s hell, trying to meet people’s high expectations. Some days I don’t know why I bother.”
“And other days?”
She grinned. “Other days I tie up Coach and make him watch Jem get you off. Not exactly a drudgery. Let’s go to work.”
And it didn’t matter that he was blushing, and that she probably knew it. “Shut up, Lupe.”
“Don’t be a baby, hermanito.”
An echo of Travis’s earlier tease. Jeez. Assume they know everything. Fucking cult, Mac thought, but without any derision this time.
They took their showers and went to work.
* * *
No more run-ins with Malcolm for the rest of the shift, which was good. Mac took his last client on the workout mats with the mirrors, and figured he had the guy pegged as one of those people who liked to watch themselves being serviced by staff. It had seemed kind of demeaning when he’d seen it before, but he’d gone to his knees and started in on his mental blowjob checklist.
Until the guy stopped him before he even got the dude’s pants down.
“Could you slow down?” It wasn’t a demand. It was way too gentle to be a demand.
“Sorry.” Shit. “Sorry, I’m still, uh, learning how to do everything.” He still got hard going down on guys mainly because he referenced going down on Jem in order to do it right. It was weird to think of it as a thing he could learn, but he thought he’d been doing pretty well. Until now.
The guy’s hand coaxed Mac’s face up until he couldn’t avoid making eye contact. There was something sort of sweet about the face looking down at him, something inordinately kind about his eyes. He was maybe of Indian descent, or Middle Eastern. Light brown skin, brown eyes, dark lashes.
“A whole lot of interest can make up for very little skill.” The dude smiled. “I had a really bad day. I just want to enjoy this moment for as long as I can before I go back to my actual life.”
Mac bit down on the inside of his cheek, strangely moved by his client. “I get that. Sorry again. And you might…you could tell me. What you want.”
“For a second I thought you were saying I could tell you about my day. Which would very definitely not get me off. No matter how skilled you were.” The guy—and Mac wished like hell he’d asked a name, but some people didn’t share by accident, and some didn’t share for reasons, and he wasn’t good yet at gauging which was which—shook his head a little. “I know I’m like the last table you have to serve tonight, but if you could linger just a little, I’d appreciate it. It’s…I get so tired of being invisible, you know?”
“You aren’t invisible,” Mac said. He ran his hands up the guy’s thighs, covered in expensive track pants. “You can take your time. Is that what you want? Because I think I can manage it.”
A long exhale. “Yes. Please. That’s what I want.”
“Sure.” Most of his clients hadn’t demanded a lot of creativity. A little, here and there, but on small levels—a different twist to the hand, a different rhythm. For the last client of the night, though, Mac found so much more to give. He went slower than he’d gone with anyone he’d ever been with, rubbing his cheek against the man’s pants until both of them were hard, fingers teasing under the waistband, inching his pants down until his dick was revealed.
Most of the time dick was still a little weird, especially on the floor in front of everyone, but maybe all the lead-in changed things, or maybe the client did. This time Mac savored the guy’s skin, his scent. With closed eyes and questing fingers, he mapped this particular man until the guy had to lean one arm onto the mirror over Mac’s head in order to stay upright.
With anyone else, it would have spooked him. With this guy, and his nameless sadness, Mac considered it a triumph.
The guy came, eventually, and Mac swallowed (he still worried about swallowing). He didn’t pull away immediately, even though that was his instinct. He lingered, yeah, and carefully reassembled his client before looking up. Still on his knees.
“Thank you,” the guy whispered.
“Anytime.” And, for the first time, Mac meant it. He got to his feet, and didn’t register Coach’s presence until he spoke.
“Manu, it’s been far too long. I hate taking your money when you leave us for those stretches of yours.”
Mac, attuned to Coach’s tone, tried to covertly watch his client’s face. The guy flushed.
“I don’t mean to go so long without stopping by. But the days follow days…”
Coach gripped the client’s—Manu’s—arm. “I know they do. But this is a place that exists just for you, and I can see how much you need it.”
Manu glanced at Mac with another smile. “Tonight exceeded expectations.”
What the hell. Mac held out a hand. “I’m Mac. This is my last week in training.”
“Then my timing was perfect. Good to meet you, Mac.”
“Yeah, you too.” He was ten minutes past the end of shift already. “I’ll, uh, see you around.”
“I hope so.”
Mac touched off a casual salute to Coach and left the floor.
He was totally unprepared for the kitchen to be full of people, mostly guys, and for all of them to greet him at once, a jumble of “Hey, Mac!” and “Mac!”
He’d been lost in thoughts—of Manu, and his sadness, and how Mac had thought the idea of actually looking forward to clients was ridiculous, except now he could see it, feel it, in himself.
He blinked at the assembled staff. Jem, sitting in the back corner, offered a sweet smile. At least there was that. No group Jem was part of could be bad.
Mac stood very still. “What’d I do?”
Travis clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Thought we’d tell you our Malcolm stories.”
“Seriously?”
Punky got up from the table and grabbed the pot from the stove top. And a fork. “Eat the rest. And I’m glad that jerk likes boys more than he likes girls.”
“Who’s a jerk?” Coach asked from behind Mac.
Punky winced. “Um. Sorry, Coach. Never mind. Going now.”
“Try not to call the clients names, Punky.”
“Yeah, sorry.” She ducked out and he tugged lightly on her hair as she passed. Forgiveness, Mac thought.
Travis clapped his hands. “I now bring this meeting of the Malcolm club to order!”
A few boos, a few laughs.
“Who wants to go first?”
Coach propelled Mac into Punky’s abandoned chair and took up a spot on the wall. “We telling stories?”
“Not bad stories, Coach. Just ‘how to deal with Malcolm’ stories.” Travis, whose good cheer was hard to resist, clapped again. “I’ll start. It was a dark and stormy night—”
A snack pack of Oreo cookies hit him in the chest.
“Hey! Okay, okay. So Malcolm came for me two whole months into working here. Apparently I wasn’t oppositional enough for him.”
A few people laughed at that. Coach, leaning against the wall across from Mac, smiled.
“And the first fucking thing he says is, ‘I love making straight boys uncomfortable. You got a girlfriend, boy?’ And because I was new, and stupid, I said, ‘I have a wife.’ You know, thinking I was pretty badass, maybe I’d surprise him. But he only got way the fuck more excited.” Travis pointed at Mac. “Don’t tell him any personal information, seriously.”
Someone else said, “For real. That ass— I mean, Malcolm has a really good memory.”
Coach raised his hand. “I, uh, told him my name.”
“Wait.” Rhys glanced around. “Like, your real name?”
“In my defense, he was doing obscene things to me at the time, and he told me he required my name in service.”
“And you fell for that?” The guy on the other side of Rhys elbowed him. “Uh, I mean, sorry, Coach.”
“No, you’re right. It was a line, and yes, in the heat of the moment, I fell for it and told him my name.”
“But…” The guy to Rhys’s right shook his head. “But it’s only your name, right?”
Coach raised his eyebrows. “Do you know my name, Damien?”
“Uh, no.”
“Two people in this room, and four in this building, know my first name. And Malcolm. But that’s a good example of the way he works. On the floor he only ever calls me ‘Coach,’ but the second we’re alone he exclusively uses my name. And man, I gotta tell you, it’s fucking effective.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Travis said. “Because me being married is pretty obvious if you look at my ring, but he talks a steady stream of shit about how much my wife would like to see me take it up the ass, and how she’d probably love to plow me—” He shook his head.
The guy next to Mac, who had neat dreadlocks and was already dressed in street clothes, said, “Yeah, but you don’t tell her, right?”
“Are you joking? I don’t have to tell her. Marissa knows it’s a Malcolm night just by looking at my face. Gets her hot, too. And that’s the thing. The first time I came home after he was my client, I was all messed up in the head about it. Because let’s fucking face it—the dude knows how to fuck, and he knows how to talk, and he knows how to make it good, especially when you don’t want it to be good. But I didn’t like that he was bringing her into it, and I told her the whole story.”
A chorus of “ooh” and “oh damn” and “shit” went through the room.
“What? I tell Marissa everything, shut up, y’all. Anyway, I told her the story and that I felt sick about it and she goes, ‘But was he disrespectful?’ And I’m like, ‘The hell? Of course he was disrespectful! Dude fucked me in the ass and told me how much you’d like to watch! He showed disrespect to our marriage, baby!’ Except he hadn’t. Like, at all. Sure, he had that tone, and he wanted to fuck with my head, but he’d been nothing but respectful when he was talking about her. He even spun out some shit about how she could tell him what to do, and he’d do it to me.” Travis, blushing now, squared his shoulders. “And that shit was hot. No shame, right? That shit was hot.”
Rhys rubbed the top of Travis’s head. “Did Marissa think so, too?”
“Hell yes. Girl has ideas.”
“No shame,” Coach said, with finality. “Who’s next?”
Not everyone had a Malcolm story to tell. But a lot of them did, and it turned out that Malcolm was inventive as fuck; he never used the same line twice, messing with each of them in a different, customized, way. With some of the guys he used race, but all of them were quick to point out he wasn’t a racist dude. With some of them he used the idea of force, of his power over them, like he had with Mac.
He hadn’t, Mac noticed, taken any of them on the floor. So everyone can watch. The remembered words made him tense up.
Across the room Jem widened his eyes, a wordless inquiry: Are you okay?
He was. But he needed this extended day to be over soon.
As if Coach had heard his thought, he called an end to the informal gathering and told everyone who hadn’t already clocked out to do so, adding he’d give them all overtime for supporting staff. Mac took the mac and cheese pot up to the sink and cleaned it while most people cleared the room, thinking about how stupid he felt for apparently needing a support group, but how much better he felt after hearing that he wasn’t the only one who wanted to punch Malcolm in the nose.
Coach sidled up next to him. “I have an errand. Come up to the office when you’re done here?”
“I don’t want to cause more, like— You don’t have to waste more time trying to make me feel better.”
Coach cuffed the back of his head. “Yeah, it’s all about you, genius. This was a good move on Trav’s part, and I’ll tell him so. Not just for you, for all of them. It’s good to get some things out of your head. Come up when you’re done, and bring your roommate with you.”
“Sure thing, Coach.”
Jem was waiting next to his locker when he came out of the shower. “That was pretty intense earlier.”
“Yeah. I feel a little silly.”
“You shouldn’t. Malcolm hangs over a lot of people’s heads until they work with him. And for some people he still hangs over their head after that.”
Mac grabbed his hoodie. “You don’t mind him?”
“He doesn’t ask for my service. Just the once. I think maybe I tried too hard to please him.” Jem offered another one of those slight smiles.
Dammit. “Jem—are we good?”
“Of course. Of course we’re good. What’s up?”
Except if Jem was pretending nothing was up, Mac couldn’t explain that he felt like that wasn’t quite true. Something had changed over at Coach’s, or maybe before that, and he wanted to ask if it was his fault, whatever it was. But he couldn’t. Because it might be, and he didn’t want to know that he’d hurt Jem.
Instead, he said, “I’m really glad you’re my friend. Coach said we should go up to the office.”
Jem blinked. “He texted. The Professor’s office now. And I’m glad we’re friends, too.”
There was still more, even if Jem didn’t want to admit it, but this was enough.
Mac didn’t know if he’d ever feel comfortable in the Professor’s office. But Lupe was a welcome surprise.
She pointed at him, then Jem, then the couch in front of the Professor’s desk, on which she was currently sitting. “Story time, children.”
The Professor was typing away at her computer. She didn’t look over when they sat down, but when Lupe’s golden nails started tapping a beat on the wood, she flattened her hand over Lupe’s without speaking.
Lupe sighed. “Where is your exhausting husband?”
“Working, I presume. Mac, fetch Coach.”
If it had been anyone else, it might have been funny. But he wasn’t all that sure the Professor didn’t see him as a dog, so he tried to keep the irritation off his face and went next door.
“Come in!” Coach smiled, like he always did, like he was happy to see Mac. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” He shut down his computer and locked up his desk. “Some days, Mac, this place amazes me. Hey. You amazed me today. What you did for Manu was deeper service than you can possibly know.”
Mac shrugged. “He, uh, asked me to go slow. He said he wanted to enjoy it for as long as he could until he had to go back to his actual life.”
“Yeah. We serve as an escape for almost all the clients, but for some more than others. You did good, kid.” He hooked Mac in by the neck, and without fully meaning to, Mac turned it into a hug. “You did good,” Coach repeated.
“I started to screw it up. But I don’t know. Now I kind of, uh, I kind of hope he wants my service again.”
Coach kissed the side of his face. “Told you so.”
Mac led the way next door and sat down next to Jem again. Coach went around to stare over the Professor’s shoulder, after kissing Lupe’s cheek.
“Woman, we just fucking got done with taxes. What’re you doing?”
“Only a vain, vain man would eschew his reading glasses in order to look cool. This isn’t taxes.”
Coach leaned in closer to the monitor. “Oh. It isn’t. Fair enough. Are you tuning in for Lupe’s show?”
“I’m letting you do this in here, aren’t I?”
“Hey, I offered my office.”
“Oh really?” The Professor pushed her own glasses up into her hair and peered up at Lupe, who ignored her. “Well, isn’t that fascinating?”
“You have a guest starring role in this story. Now will the two of you kindly shut the fuck up so I can speak? I don’t have all morning to sit here listening to you play.”
Mac shot a look at Jem, who barely let his mouth twitch in amusement.
“I’m looking forward to this.” Coach settled himself in the middle of the couch. “Your story, my lady.”
She recrossed her legs in the other direction and exhaled long, which seemed incomplete without a cigarette. “If ever there was anyone who deserved to cut Malcolm into tiny little pieces and scatter them in all directions, it was me. And I didn’t. So I expect you, Mac, to keep your cool.”
He hadn’t expected a challenge. “He said—he wanted everyone to watch. Every time I think about it, I want to kill him.”
“Cool, tiger.” Coach’s fingers gently unfolded his from the fists they seemed to have formed.
“I don’t want to make you fire me, but even just talking to him for a minute made me homicidal, Coach. If you leave me alone with him— I don’t know.”
“Listen, then. Listen to Lupe and don’t kill anyone quite yet.”
He subsided and looked up at her. “What did he do?”
“Oh, it’s never what he does. All of Malcolm’s venom is in what he says. And the first thing he said to me, in the very beginning of his membership, was ‘Who do you think you’re fooling, mami?’”
“He did not!” Jem sat forward. “Did he mean—”
“I think we know what he meant, hon. I looked down at his smug little face and waited. You can’t let them know they have you, even when they do. And he did, immediately. I hadn’t felt that fucking small since Coach burned my clothes and forced me to pick out new ones.”
Jem gasped. “You burned her clothes?”
“Not all of them. Just, you know, some of them. Symbolically. And it was for her own good.” He reached out. After a second she allowed him to kiss her knuckles. “Forgive me?”
“You are ridiculously forgivable. There’s no accounting for it.”
The Professor cleared her throat. “Get on with it, would you?”
Lupe sighed. “This sonofabitch cracker had the audacity to say that to me. Then he smiled and demanded a private room and my first thought, literally my first thought was: A good place to kill you where no one will see.”
“You mean, except for the eight thousand cameras?” Jem asked.
“In my haste to commit murder I forgot about them. Briefly.” She glanced back at the Professor, who didn’t look up. “I claimed a room like it was my fucking birthright, like I was a queen and I intended to make this man grovel. And I didn’t have all this”—she gestured to herself, down, then up—“back then. I was a whole lot more attitude than I could pull off, but that didn’t matter. Malcolm saw me, and knew me, without makeup and nail polish and extensions.”
“But…” Mac frowned. “But he said…the thing he said.”
“‘Who do you think you’re fooling, mami?’” Lupe, unexpectedly, smiled. “He called me ‘mami,’ and he meant it. But I didn’t hear that until later. At that moment all I knew was he’d treated me like an imposter, and since I felt like one, it was a crime worthy of execution. I laid into him like you wouldn’t fucking believe. I told him that as far as I knew he only played with boys and if he thought for a fucking second that’s what I was, then he was an idiot, and I’d be happy to show him just what I thought about idiots. I couldn’t stand still. I was pacing, and raving, and all because he said Who do you think you’re fooling?”
Mac bit down on his tongue. If he ever heard someone say that to Lupe on the floor, he’d have to seriously take a step back. Not that she couldn’t take care of herself, but fuck, that was a line designed to be a knife to the heart.
This was what Coach meant, about how he’d have to walk away when he wanted to fight.
“He came up behind me and pushed me into the wall, which apparently is a move that works pretty well with the boys, but I’ve been grabbed plenty of times and I swung around and knocked him to the ground. Which is about when the Professor decided to get involved.”
“I didn’t see that part. I started walking downstairs the second he touched you.” The Professor picked through the stack of papers beside her keyboard and wrote something on a neon orange sticky note. “I didn’t see him on the floor until I walked into the room.”
“Good timing,” Coach murmured.
“Oh, Lupe wouldn’t have hurt him. Not by then. Because he was talking again.”
Lupe took up the story. “He said every horrible thing in my head. He laughed at me, even as I stood over him, and told me he could see right through me, that I was a frightened little boy and if I didn’t grow up, that’s all I’d ever be. A frightened little boy wearing mommy’s clothes. And the Professor slams in—huffing and puffing like it about killed her to walk that fast—”
Coach snorted. The Professor rolled her eyes.
“And Malcolm drags his ass up off the floor and says, ‘We don’t have a problem here. Do we, mami?’ And that’s when I heard it. Even after all that, he addressed me like a woman.”
“So like…it was just okay then?” Mac didn’t know what he wanted, but that wasn’t it.
“Hush, sugar. Mama’s talking. I look at him like I want to slice the skin off his face and feed it to him, and the Professor says, like it’s fucking nothing, ‘I have a problem. Lupe, you can’t knock clients to the floor.’ Fucking cunt.”
This time the Professor smiled down at her papers.
“And do you know what that bastard did?” No one spoke. “He defended me. He told her that it wasn’t my fault, he’d come on too strong, misjudged the moment, and he didn’t expect the Professor to be there, and on and on until she swore she wouldn’t write me up for assaulting a client.”
“Or fire you,” the Professor added. “I started at firing you, and let him talk me down to writing you up. Then, after a great deal of careful consideration, I permitted him to talk me out of disciplining you for gross insubordination.”
“She played him like a fiddle, in other words. The Professor played Malcolm like he plays everybody else, and he fell for it. When she left he looked at me and said, ‘When I’m good, I’m good.’”
“Which is where you should have left it, except you’re a know-it-all.”
Lupe sighed. “Maybe I should have let him believe that. But what I actually did is detail exactly how he’d been played.”
“Ohhh,” Jem muttered. “Why did you do that?”
“Because he was a jerk and I wanted the last word. But he still wanted my service, which I forgot. So instead of getting the last word, I got…”
The Professor looked up. “‘Seduced’ is the word you’re looking for, Guadalupe.”
“Bite me, old woman. He didn’t fucking seduce me.” She looked at Mac. “He fucked me, and the things he said weren’t easy to hear, Mac. Things about what I wanted, who I was, what I was afraid of. But the first time he touched me, I knocked him flat. After that he was deliberate. He approached from the front, he telegraphed his moves. He asked me if there were positions I wasn’t willing to be in with him—just like that, with him—and he listened when I answered. I’d like him to be a villain, but he’s just a client with a very, very specific kink for making people uncomfortable and exposing their nerve endings.”
“Sounds like a dickhead to me.”
Coach’s arm tightened around him. “What’re you afraid he’s going to do? What is it you think I’d let him do to you with my consent, Mac?”
Put that way, he couldn’t think of anything. “You won’t be there.”
“I am everywhere. Professor, why were you watching the monitors at the very moment Lupe needed you?”
“Because I watched her in the monitors all the time.” She glanced up over her glasses at Mac. “He watches you in the monitors all the time, in case you need him. He watched Jem, too. And Travis, Leanna, a few of the others. We watch the ones who are special, Mac.”
Coach kissed the top of his head. “What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t want to disappoint you.” It was stupid, and childish, and it was all he’d been thinking of all day.
“You mean by attacking Malcolm?”
At least Coach didn’t make it seem like a joke. His tone was even, like this was a thing that could happen.
Mac had known from the second he saw Malcolm that he could lose everything if his control faltered for a second with the guy. If someone made light of it…he wouldn’t hurt the people in this room. But they could hurt him just by laughing at the wrong moment, and the realization took his breath away.
Coach side-hugged him, but it was Lupe who spoke.
“Safeword. If it’s that close, if you think you’re going to do something you can’t take back, say ‘red.’ He won’t ignore it.”
“And come to me before you do anything else. But you won’t need to.” Coach turned until he was fully facing Mac, then tilted Mac’s chin until they were looking at each other. “I know exactly. Exactly. He called me ‘Eric’ so many times in his first session that I wanted to use him as a punching bag. And every time he did it, he smiled, because he knew I hated myself for telling him, he knew I’d figured out I should have said there was no damn reason for him to know my name.”
“So what, dude has a magic dick and everyone forgives him?”
“It’s not about his dick. It’s about the way he talks while he’s touching you, and the way he focuses everything he has on you, like you’re the most important thing in the world.”
Mac pulled away. “I don’t want to be the most important thing in the world. To anyone.” He thought that was still true. Mostly.
“I know. I’m not worried about you cracking Malcolm. But if you don’t want to disappoint me, Mac, you’re gonna have to work on this thing where you’re only willing to accept attention from other people when it reinforces how undeserving you are. Because that breaks my fucking heart.”
“Why do you care?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and now he stared at his hands, sitting here with Coach, and Jem, and Lupe, and the goddamn Professor.
“I don’t know, kid. But I do.”
Then Mac had a lapful of Coach, who was kissing him, kneeling over him, pinning him to the couch. And it wasn’t just the two of them, Jem was right there, and Lupe, and the fucking Professor, watching Coach kiss him like they were the only people in the room.
He couldn’t do this. He shoved at Coach until he could get out from under him and headed for the door.
“Mac—”
But he didn’t wait. He was already feeling for his cigarettes long before he got to the roof, knowing even as he swiped his card that they’d know that’s where he’d gone. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t leave until Jem was ready anyway, and he didn’t want to. There was something painfully comforting about knowing he was safe here, safe on the roof. That they knew he was here, and they’d give him the space.
The ones who hate me are my favorites. Mac cast his mind back to the beginning of shift, trying to remember the lines of Malcolm’s face. Lupe laid him flat. He called Coach “Eric” knowing it called up a part of him that he didn’t let show at The Gym. He brought up Travis’s wife to mess with him, and all of those people thought he was okay. Even Lupe defended the asshole. Why? Because he was a client? But Lupe would talk shit about clients, even in front of Coach.
What the hell was it about this fucking guy?
Mac was on his third cigarette when the door opened. He expected Lupe, but it was Jem.
“Hey,” he mumbled. “You didn’t have to come all the way up here. I’m not gonna jump.”
“Don’t even say that.” Jem slid down to sit beside him, but didn’t say anything more.
Jem was another thing, another piece of all this chaos in Mac’s head, another bright flare of light he hadn’t asked for. Another complicated jumble of emotions he couldn’t sort out.
And Mac, who’d never had a friend worth fighting for, wasn’t sure how to keep this one. “Did I do something wrong?”
“What, down there? No way. I mean, I wouldn’t have walked away while Coach was trying to kiss me, but he doesn’t take stuff personally.”
“Not that. Jem…” Dammit. I feel like you’re pissed at me. Or upset. Or that I make you sad. Who the fuck was he that he now had all these thoughts about other people’s feelings? Who was he that he suddenly cared?
Jem intertwined their fingers. “Let’s cuddle tonight, okay? No drinking. Let’s just…lie together, and be there, and not think about anything else. Is that okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”
“You ready to go?”
Mac finished his cigarette. “Ready.”
They got to their feet. Jem hesitated, then kissed him. “I hate kissing smokers.”
“Sorry.” Neither one of them moved right away. Mac closed his eyes and leaned in until they were kissing again.
They were at The Gym. It was safe. It wasn’t against the rules.
The wind picked up, ruffling through his hair. Jem’s hands framed his face, kissing him harder. Not for long. Only until Jem gently pushed back.
“This is going to make cuddling harder, you know.” His thumb smoothed over Mac’s lips. “Let’s go home.”
“Okay.”
This time they passed on the dubious comfort of Jem’s couch and cuddled in his bed. Mac stayed there while he slept, well into the afternoon. There was no kissing.
* * *
The next day was back to normal. No Malcolm to screw up Mac’s equilibrium on the floor.
Next week he’d no longer be in training. He’d be taking clients in the private rooms, just like the rest of staff. The cameras were always there, which was partly reassuring and partly unsettling, but at least the eyeballs watching him would be on the other side of a screen somewhere.
Mac was about done with his every move being monitored by everyone on the floor.
Lupe grabbed him at some point after lunch. “You. Come with me. Got a client for you.”
“I—but—Lupe—”
She hauled him toward the punching bag in the mirrored alcove, and he recognized the guy standing there. Edward.
The guy smiled and held out a hand, which Mac shook. “Good to see you again, Mac.” Then he raised his eyebrows at Lupe.
“Edward needs your service, Mac.” She pulled him so his back was against her and he was facing Edward. When she spoke, her voice was low. “You remember the scene he and I did? You’re playing him. Ready to learn a little bit about boxing, hermano?”
The ramifications hit and he went tense. “Jesus, Lupe.”
“If it’s just being on the floor, you’ll have to get over it. We’re gonna help. Right, Edward?”
Edward shrugged. “I think I can probably help you forget you’re on the floor. Also, I have a reputation to protect, so if you could look like you’re having a good time, that’d be appreciated.”
Mac huffed a laugh. “Shit. Sorry. It’s not— It’s not you, it’s this whole thing where I’ve been under all these eyes for a week and a half now. And I’ve—I’ve done it on the floor with people already, I’m just sick of it.”
“I get it. Lupe said you’re official next week, so congratulations on that.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
“So. I’ll teach you a little bit about form, if you’re up for it.”
“Edward is an excellent teacher,” Lupe purred in his ear.
He elbowed her and she released him.
“Sure,” Mac said, because it was his job, and this was a client, and also because he trusted Lupe. He glanced at her. “You gonna watch, sister?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “You engineered the whole thing.”
She chucked under his chin. “It’ll be good for you. And Edward is very, very good. Like I said.”
Good at fucking guys in the ass. Right. Got it. Mac took a breath, thinking about Coach watching the monitors, thinking about the mirrors, and the fact that last time Lupe had picked this spot specifically because of how everyone else on the floor could see what happened in the alcove.
It was his job. And he didn’t want to disappoint Coach, or Lupe. Plus, he was pretty sure he liked Edward.
He turned and flashed his Gym smile. “So how do we start?”
“You ever punched anything before?”
Only people. “Once or twice.”
Edward smiled. “Let me show you how to punch harder. Sound good?”
“Yeah.”
Both of them lost themselves to their fake lesson. Edward was ruthless and exacting, but Mac could see getting into this. It felt good, hitting something he couldn’t hurt. Beating on something that let him know he had a target, finding the right stance, the right way to hold himself so he could feel the force in his core, not his wrists. Edward touched him here and there, but never like it was part of a game. His shoulders burned, and every muscle Travis had worked out the day before was back with a vengeance. Which is when Edward held up both of his hands with a slightly rueful smile.
“You should come down to my place one of these days, Mac.”
“Man. I’m exhausted now.”
Edward’s smile quirked up. “You’re not done quite yet.”
Mac flushed.
“Take hold of the bag. Lean over a little. I’ll do everything else.” He grabbed hold of Mac’s upper arm. “I don’t top as hard as Lupe does. That all right?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s good.” It was a little weird Mac had a reference for how hard Lupe topped, and maybe weirder that he knew he wouldn’t want it that hard.
Edward’s hand slid up, landing on his shoulder, guiding him forward. For the first few days he’d had to fight resistance when they touched him like this, showing him where to go, but Edward didn’t make him want to pull away. He did as ordered, remembering watching them two weeks ago, remembered fucking Edward last week. Willing himself to think of that, not everything else.
Then he caught his reflection in the mirrors and had to take a breath and calm himself down.
I can’t do this in front of a bunch of fucking mirrors. Jesus Christ, Lupe. What the fuck?
“Shh, hermanito.” She was there, coming around to his side. “Should I cover your eyes so you can’t see?”
Edward slid into position behind him, though both of them were still fully dressed. Mac swallowed against the now-familiar mix of desire and fear, feeling Edward hard against his ass.
“But you’re so good to look at,” Edward said. “You don’t like bottoming?”
“I like it.” Technically he’d only bottomed to Coach and a couple of clients. He hadn’t hated it, anyway.
A hand slipped around Mac’s body, running along his dick. “You want it, Mac?”
Even if he wanted to pretend he didn’t, Edward would have felt the truth. “Yeah. I want it.”
“Glad to hear it. Not that I thought Lupe had steered me wrong.”
She laughed. “You’d better not think that. I gotta go take clients. You treat mi hermano well, Edward.”
“You know I will.”
Lupe kissed his temple, and Mac closed his eyes. “You’re a good boy.”
“’M not a dog.”
She laughed again and walked away.
“I love that woman,” Edward said, keeping his voice very low. “If she could feel for me the things I feel for her, I think we’d be happy together.”
Mac opened his eyes, searching for Edward’s in their reflections. “She doesn’t?”
“She says she can’t. But oh, if she could.” This time the smile was sad, but as he watched, Edward caressed his dick more boldly. “I don’t go in for a lot of prep, especially not here. Is that all right?”
“Let’s find out.” And Mac could meet Edward’s attempt at regaining a lighter tone with a smile, even though he was nervous. Even though he thought on the prep continuum, he probably rightfully belonged on the “a lot of prep” side of things.
It was rough at first. Mac froze his facial expression, mindful of the mirrors, and breathed slowly through his nose. He chewed his tongue until it bled, which was good, because then he could focus on something other than Edward forcing his dick into Mac’s ass.
Which hurt. Not like the first time, with Coach, when Mac had been stupid. That had burned and screamed over his nerves like a train braking hard on the rails. This was a steady pressure, and it still burned, but it was more deliberate, and it was slow enough so he could feel it all as it happened. He pushed out—he remembered that much—and it helped, but it still hurt.
His heart pounded and he gripped the bag for all he was worth. The only way he got through it was Edward, who offered to stretch him (Mac gritted his teeth and shook his head), who praised his tightness (which was a weird compliment), and who ultimately left finger mark bruises on his sides, sank himself deep in Mac’s ass, and held very very still until Mac could breathe again.
But didn’t speak. Not right away.
The Gym carried on around them and no, no one was really watching. Mac was aware enough to realize that any momentary buzz was gone by now as staff and clients continued their nights. Boxing too long had served to make them boring, which suited him. Maybe suited them both at this point.
Edward’s fingers brushed over his skin beneath his shirt. “Is this a kink of yours? Taking it tight like this?”
“Nuh…” Mac cleared his throat. “No. Uh. Just. You seemed to want to do it this way. I was…trying to do what you wanted.”
“Oh, god.” Edward slid one hand lower, over Mac’s pants, teasing his softened dick. “Next time, tell me if you haven’t done this in a while. You aren’t a Fleshlight. I want to please you, too.”
Before Mac had a chance to respond, Edward began to move. He withdrew slowly, with infinite care, one hand on Mac’s hip, the other on his dick, and it wasn’t comfortable at first, but it was no longer agony.
He’d been fucked on the floor three times in a week and a half, and Jem said that would probably end up being the high range, that some people just liked a taste of the new person on staff. All three of them had been standard encounters, somewhat methodical and straightforward. None had been terrible; none had been great.
Edward seemed pretty determined to be better than not terrible. He also seemed to know when to back off, and how to make Mac’s dick desperate without taking it too far.
“Come on, man,” Mac panted finally, thrusting into his hand.
Edward laughed into his hair, pressing in close. “Fuck me back. Don’t just stand there, fuck me back.”
And wow, yeah, okay, that was interesting. Also, the punching bag was kind of a bitch. It wasn’t stable enough for Mac to really get leverage on it, and if he tried to push back too hard, the bag nailed him with just enough momentum to keep him off-balance.
In one of those moments—him clutching the bag as it swayed beyond his immediate ability to stop it—Edward slammed forward, until Mac was mashed against leather.
“Ow! My dick—”
“Fuck the bag and get yourself off, Mac.”
Which was probably impossible, but Mac was damn sure going to give it his best.
He jackrabbited his pelvis against the bag, working angle after angle until he found the right one, and Edward stayed in him the whole time, somehow fluidly taking cues from Mac’s motions without losing a step. Mac moaned when he found just the spot, and didn’t remember until he’d already let go that this was service, and he was probably supposed to be getting Edward off as a priority.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, resting his head on the bag and panting. “Shit, sorry.”
“Why? Now brace yourself.”
Mac braced.
Edward’s long strokes deteriorated into a half-sideways slam again and again, and maybe he wasn’t as hardcore as Lupe, but damn, this was a serious pounding, and maybe no one was paying attention before but now the chains of the bag were rattling. They had to be the loudest attraction on the floor, but Mac refused to open his eyes. He was fucked-out, his spent dick was still hitting the bag in a not wholly pleasant way, and Edward was fucking him for all he was worth.
Edward’s groan, when he finally came, made Mac feel triumphant. Sure, he came first, and forgot he was working. But he made Edward groan like a man whose release came at the end of a year-long dry spell, who’d forgotten what an orgasm even felt like.
Then Edward leaned against him, letting Mac take some of his weight, and that heightened the feeling of success. I’m strong enough to hold him up. And he knows it.
Breath disturbed the hair at the back of his neck. “Fuck, Mac. Thank you.”
“Uh, you’re welcome.”
Edward laughed.
They cleaned up (and Mac cleaned up the bag; he’d have to ask Punky if there was anything special for that). Edward shook his head again.
“What I said earlier? Do me a solid and don’t tell her. I mean, she knows. I already told her. But don’t…tell her I was talking about it. A man has to have a little bit of dignity.”
“Yeah, sure. I won’t.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you around, Mac.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Edward started walking away. He called back, “And I meant what I said. Ask Lupe if you want to know where my gym is!”
“Okay!” An hour left of shift. He decided a quick trip upstairs was in order.
Mac wasn’t totally shocked to find Coach lingering in the locker room after he’d showered and changed clothes. “Were you spying through the monitors?”
“It’s not spying. It’s monitoring. And yes. You good?”
“My ass is sore. But yeah. I’m good.”
Coach smiled. Weird how a smile on one person could have no effect on him whatsoever, but a smile on Coach and Mac’s stomach tumbled.
You do not have a crush on Coach. That would be stupid.
Not that he wasn’t stupid.
“I don’t get off on it,” he said, to keep himself from thinking. “I mean, being on the floor. That still weirds me out. But Edward seemed to like that part.”
“You’ll find exhibitionism is a kink we’re well set up to serve.”
“Yeah.” He had to go back downstairs. Maybe last week Coach would have asked him back to the office. To check in, or whatever. But now Mac was almost a full staff member. Coach didn’t check in with staff like that. “Anyway, I should get back to work.”
“You should. I’m paying you right now.”
“Yeah, okay. See ya, Coach.”
“See ya, Mac. And one more thing.” Mac turned, and Coach kissed him, in no hurry, eyes open. “You’re doing really well. You make me proud.”
Mac swallowed. “Uh. Really?”
“Oh yeah. So damn proud.” Another kiss. “Get to work.” Coach walked out.
But Mac just stood there for a few minutes after the door closed, letting his face stop blushing and his heart stop beating so fiercely.
Coach was proud of him. He couldn’t think of any other person in his entire life who’d ever been proud of him.