Mall Rules

Chapter 12: Jeremy

The phone buzzes against my chest while I'm still unpacking. I dig it out of a box labeled MISC and squint at the screen. Unknown number.

"Yeah?"

"Hey. Jared. We've got a class together, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the anatomy lecture. You sit near the back. I've seen you at the gym too." His voice is easy, warm, the voice of a guy who's never had to introduce himself twice. "You're Jeremy, right? The transfer from up north?"

"That's me. Fresh off the truck, basically."

"Awesome. Look, I heard you're captain material, and the team could use you, so I figured I'd reach out before somebody else grabs you." I can hear him grinning through the phone. "You settling in okay?"

"Slowly. Half my stuff's still in boxes."

"Then this works out perfect. You need sportswear, right? Training gear, everyday stuff? I know every store in that mall like the back of my hand, and I know which ones actually fit guys our build. I'll come with you, help you stock up. My treat on the advice."

I look at the boxes stacked against the wall and laugh. "You know what, yeah. I do need everything. Shoes, shorts, all of it."

"Great. I'll grab Derek too, he's got a car. We'll pick you up in half an hour. Send me your address." He hangs up before I can ask anything else, which apparently is just how people do things down here.

I text him the address and go back to shoveling clothes out of a box, trying to find something presentable. Half an hour later I'm still in the same plain t-shirt I put on this morning when a car horn honks twice outside, short and cheerful.

I pull the front door open and stop on the threshold for a second.

Jared stands on my porch grinning at me, and he looks nothing like he does in class. He's in a cropped sports tee that ends well above his navel, the words PUBLIC DOMAIN printed across the chest in big block letters, and a pair of shorts so short they're basically a suggestion. The back of them has an actual hole cut in it, and I try not to stare, but there's an honest-to-god butt plug sitting between his cheeks, the base of it peeking out every time he shifts his weight. He acts like it's a watch.

Next to him is Derek, the guy from the lecture, the one always on his phone. Lean, brown-haired, hazel eyes. He's wearing almost the same thing, a cropped athletic top with CHAMPION across the front and those same backless shorts. His ass is just out, tanned and firm, no plug, but clearly on display as a matter of course.

"Jeremy." Jared sticks out his hand and shakes mine with a firm grip. "Good to finally meet you properly."

"Hey, man." Derek nods at me, thumbing something on his phone. "Ready to go?"

"Sure, just let me grab my..."

I look down at myself. Plain t-shirt. Shorts that hit below the knee. Regular sneakers. I look like I'm going to a barbeque at my uncle's place.

Both of them are looking at me now, and their expressions are doing something complicated.

"Dude." Jared tilts his head. "What are you wearing?"

"Clothes?"

"That's the question." Derek puts his phone away, which I gather is significant. "Nobody walks around here dressed like that. You're completely covered. How's anyone supposed to see your figure? Your legs? Your ass? Nobody can evaluate you at all like that."

"Evaluate me for what?"

Jared and Derek exchange a look like I said something charmingly naive. Jared reaches out and tugs at the hem of my t-shirt, pulling it away from my stomach and letting it snap back.

"Okay, this is an emergency, actually," he says. "You're built like a truck and you're hiding it under a tent. That's basically a crime down here. We're fixing this today. Sportswear for training, everyday stuff, all of it. You're getting the full kit."

"I came from the north, man," I say, feeling my face warm a little. "Things are different up there. Free use barely exists where I'm from. Give me a little time to adjust."

"Oh, we're not judging." Jared's already walking down my porch steps, completely unbothered, the plug's base flashing between his cheeks with every step. "Honestly it's kind of cute. We'll ease you in. Get in the car."

Derek waves me toward a car parked at the curb and opens the back door for me.

I get in, and that's when the day really starts.

The back seat is a landscape. There's a pile of used underwear shoved against the far side, briefs and jocks in every color, some of them visibly crusted. A few dildos of varying sizes roll loose on the seat, along with a couple of butt plugs and what I'm pretty sure is a harness tangled up with a phone charger. The whole car smells like sex, like warm skin and sweat and cum, with the leather underneath and a pine air freshener fighting a losing war above it.

I sit down very carefully in the only clear spot.

"You good back there?" Derek asks, pulling away from the curb. Jared's up front with him, legs up on the dashboard.

"Yeah. Just. Lots going on back here."

"Oh, sorry, we'll clean it out at some point," Derek says, completely unbothered, checking his mirrors. "We've been living in this car basically."

I settle in as best I can, and Jared twists around in the passenger seat, arm hooked over the headrest, talking to me like we've been friends for years.

"So how long have you been down here? A week?"

"Six days."

"Six days. Okay. So you haven't seen anything yet, no offense. Don't take it personal if we seem like a lot. The south is just... more. Way more. You'll get used to it, everybody does." He grins. "Where were you again?"

"Up near the border of the northern states. Free use is legal up there but nobody really does it. I've seen maybe two people use the rights my whole life. Mostly it's just a thing you hear about."

"Two people." Jared says it like I told him I grew up without electricity. "Wow. Okay. Derek, did you hear that? Two people."

"That's tragic," Derek says, eyes on the road.

"Right? Anyway. You want to hear about yesterday? Because yesterday was a great day for me."

"Sure," I say, because what else do you say.

"So yesterday I basically spent half the day in the third floor bathroom. The one by the science labs? Best one in the building, good acoustics, the door doesn't lock so guys can just walk in." He says all of this like he's describing a study session. "I got there at like ten in the morning and I swear I did not leave until three. Guys were lined up at one point. I sucked I don't even know how many dicks. Then I spent like an hour just on my back on the bench with my legs up while guys took turns eating my ass and fingering me. And I ate so much cum, dude. So much. That's the whole point of my diet."

"His diet," Derek says dryly.

"My sperm diet, yeah, I came up with it myself." Jared sounds genuinely proud. "See, I did the math on it. Protein content, loads of it, so I decided the most efficient way to take a load is orally. Straight to the stomach, no waste. So I told everyone who uses me, just finish in my mouth, don't waste it in my hole. I had like, thirty loads yesterday? Dozens. I lost count after twenty. My macros were perfect."

"That's why he's got those abs," Derek says, gesturing at Jared's exposed stomach without looking.

"It's discipline," Jared says.

I'm sitting in the back seat doing my best to have a normal face. A guy on the sidewalk outside waves at them as we pass. Derek waves back with two fingers off the steering wheel.

Jared's eyes drift down to the seat beside me, and he frowns.

"Jeremy, can you grab that dildo next to your leg and pass it up here?"

I look down. There is, in fact, a dildo right against my thigh, dark blue, and it is not clean. It's smeared with dried and half-dried cum, cloudy streaks along the shaft, a blob at the tip.

"Uh." I pick it up by the base with two fingers, like I'm handling evidence. "This one?"

"Yeah, that's the one." Jared takes it from me and turns to Derek, holding it up. "Derek. What is this. You just leave dildos lying around covered in cum? You never clean them? That's disgusting, man, have some standards."

"You left that one there," Derek says.

"I would never."

"Okay, well. To be fair," Derek says, and there's a smile pulling at his mouth, "I left that one there on purpose. Thought you might want to snack on it."

Jared looks at him for a second. Then he brings the dildo up to his nose and inhales, slow, eyes half closing like he's smelling wine.

"Huh." He turns it over, examining the dried streaks, sniffing again near the head. "Is this Alex's? Alex was in the bathroom yesterday, he came like three times."

"Nope."

"Marcus? Feels like the volume might be Marcus."

"Nope. Guess again."

Jared sniffs a third time, thoughtful, tongue touching his lip. "Okay. Slightly sweet, kind of a clean finish. Is it Nathan's?"

"Close, though. Same family."

Jared's eyes go wide. "No."

"Yep."

"Kalum?" Jared bursts out laughing, holding the dildo at arm's length like it's a trophy. "Kalum's cum is on this? Rich boy Kalum? The guy who wears turtlenecks and acts like we're beneath him?"

"That's the one." Derek's grinning at the road now. "Yesterday, after the lecture, you know Sam kept him behind for that follow-up thing? Well, that wasn't the end of it. Later Sam ran a practical session with him. Dildo training. Basic insertion technique, breathing, how to relax into it. I filmed the whole thing, it's on my phone. And at the end," Derek glances back at me, "Kalum came hands-free. Just from riding that dildo. Shot everywhere. Huge load, honestly impressive for a guy who came maybe twice in his life before last week."

"He rode it himself?"

"Sam made him. Had to demonstrate what he'd learned. And he got really into it by the end, you could see the switch flip. That's the load right there, from when he lost it."

Jared looks at the dildo again, a connoisseur assessing his find. Then, with zero warning, he puts it in his mouth.

I mean fully. He wraps his lips around the head and starts sucking, cheeks hollowing, working his tongue along the shaft and licking up the dried cum in long slow strokes. He's making these soft, contented sounds, moaning a little around it, and he pulls it out with a wet pop only to lick a stripe up the side and take it deeper.

"I'm not letting protein go to waste," he says, mouth full of dildo. "Waste not."

He goes back to it, and I watch a guy happily fellate a cum-smeared dildo two feet from my face while Derek drives us through afternoon traffic, both of them carrying on like this is a podcast segment.

"You know what's crazy," Derek says, "he's actually got great instincts. Kalum. Yesterday he couldn't even say the word hole without blushing. Today he's riding on command and coming on camera for half the class."

"You think he'll come around?"

"He came around a dildo, so."

Jared laughs so hard he nearly chokes on the toy, pulls it out, coughs, and goes right back to cleaning it, giggling around the shaft. The sound of it is obscene and cheerful at the same time.

"Anyway, he's got potential," Derek says. "Sam's got him booked again next week. Says he's going to build on the lesson. There's talk of putting him on a training schedule. Get him a plug of his own, start him at a low size, work him up like Jared did."

"Kid's got a future," Jared says, pulling off the dildo with a final lick and holding it up to the light to inspect his work. There's still a faint cloudy trace at the base, and he frowns at it, thumbs it off, and licks his thumb clean. "Not bad. Kalum's got a decent flavor profile, actually. Kind of sweet. That tracks with a rich kid, probably eats well."

"Speaking of which," Derek says, "I told Alan you'd give him feedback on his, but he said don't bother, he only eats what Marcus gives him now."

"That's so romantic," Jared says.

I clear my throat. Both of them look back at me, or Derek glances in the mirror at least.

"You okay back there?" Derek asks. "You've gone quiet."

"I'm fine. Just, you know. Adjusting." I gesture vaguely at the dildo, the underwear pile, everything. "Where I'm from, this is all, like, hypothetical. People knew free use existed. Nobody I knew ever did any of it. And you two are talking about cum flavors and diets and a guy from my anatomy class riding a dildo for credit like it's the weather."

"It basically is the weather," Jared says. "It's just around you all the time. You breathe it." He twists further around, and the plug base peeks out of the hole in his shorts again, and he clearly does not care. "Look, the only thing you actually need to understand is this. Down here, your body is a public thing. It's yours, but it's also available. That's not a big philosophical deal, it's just how it works, like sidewalks are public. You maintain it, you show it off, you take pride in it, and when somebody wants to use it, you're polite and you help them out. That's the whole culture. Everything else is details."

"That's actually a pretty good summary," Derek says. "I should put that on my page."

"Write it down, don't steal it." Jared points at me. "And you, my friend, are starting from zero. Which is fine. But that means today is a big day for you. New wardrobe, new attitude. First we fix the clothes, then we work on the rest."

"The rest being?"

"Standing right. Making eye contact. Not flinching when someone touches you. Knowing how to answer when a guy slaps your ass and asks if you need anything." He counts them off on his fingers. "Basics."

"Someone's going to slap my ass."

"Oh, definitely. You've got an ass guys will notice. It's thick, you're blonde, you're new, you're going to be popular." He says it warmly, like he's telling me I'll make friends easily. "First guy who does it, just be polite. Offer service if he wants it. That's all it takes."

"Is that what you did?"

"Everyone did, first time. Derek's first time was in a grocery store, tell him about it."

"Later," Derek says, flicking the turn signal. "We're here."

The mall rises up ahead of us, glass and steel gleaming in the afternoon sun. Derek swings into the parking lot, glides past a row of cars, and slides into a spot right by the entrance. He kills the engine, and for a second we all just sit there, the smell of the back seat hanging in the air, Jared still absently licking the last trace off the dildo in his hand.

Then Jared drops the dildo back onto the seat beside me, pats it like a pet, and points at the mall doors.

"Okay. Store's this way. They've got a full fitting section, mirrors, the works. We're getting you shorts with proper access, some training kit, a few tops that actually show what you're working with." He opens his door and swings out, stretching, the PUBLIC DOMAIN shirt riding up his abs. "And if you're good, maybe we get you your first plug. Consider it a housewarming gift."

Derek gets out too, and I follow, standing up on legs that feel a bit like someone else's. The parking lot is full of people, and now that I'm actually looking, I see it everywhere. Shorts with holes. Crop tops. A jogger slowing down as two guys pass him, one of them reaching out and squeezing the jogger's ass in passing, both of them smiling. Nobody reacting. It's just the weather.

Jared slings an arm around my shoulders, warm and heavy, and steers me toward the doors.

"Don't worry," he says. "By the end of today you're going to look like you belong here."

"Jeremy," Derek adds, falling in step on my other side, phone already out, "when we get inside, first thing we're doing is taking a before photo. For the progress comparison."

"Before photo of what?"

"Of you," they both say at the same time, and Jared laughs, and the automatic doors open, and I walk into the mall between them, one ordinary t-shirt in a crowd of skin.

The mall swallows us in cool air and wide glass corridors. Jared moves through the crowd like he owns it, chest out, the plug's base flashing at every step. Derek walks beside me scrolling his phone, half his attention on the storefronts.

"So which store are we looking for?" I ask.

"There's two good ones," Derek says. "FitLab near the east court has the access-cut shorts, and GearZone has the training kit. We'll do both." He glances sideways at me. "But first, a word on what you're looking at when we get there."

"Enlighten me."

"The south runs on one principle. Openness. The less clothes, the better, always. Fabric is a tool, not a cover." He says it like he's explaining parking rules. "You wear clothes to show the body, frame it, advertise it. Anything that hides is wasted fabric."

"So shorts with a hole cut in the back. That's a design choice."

"That's the correct design choice. Access cut. Your cheeks stay out, your hole stays reachable, and you still get a pocket for your keys." He taps his own hip. "Everyone wears some version of it. Trainers, coaches, guys in offices. The suits down here have zipper panels."

I'm still chewing on that when I ask the next thing, because it's been sitting in my throat since the car. "Can you just walk around with no clothes at all? Is that legal?"

"Oh, totally legal," Jared says, dropping back to walk with us. "I did it for a month when I first started. Nothing but shoes and sunscreen. It's great, honestly, you feel the air on everything, everybody can see exactly what you're offering."

"So why don't you now?"

"Because I got used less." He shrugs, like it's the simplest math in the world. "That's the thing nobody tells you. Naked, you've got no mystery. Guys see everything the second they look at you, so there's nothing to want. The whole point of clothes is taking them off. A shirt gives a guy something to pull over your head. Shorts give him something to push aside. Fabric is intrigue, man. Fabric creates desire."

"He's not wrong," Derek says. "Guys in full kit get stopped three, four times a block. Guys nude get a friendly nod and maybe a quick grope in passing. Boring."

"Naked is possible," Jared says, "but naked is boring. Trust me, I ran the experiment."

We pass a fountain, a cluster of guys in crop tops sharing smoothies, a man in a suit whose trousers are open at the back in a neat tailored slit. I keep my eyes moving and try to look like any of this registers as normal.

"Okay, but the cut matters too," Derek says, and stops right there in the walkway. He hooks his thumbs into the waist of his shorts and shuffles them down over his hips, turning his ass toward me, completely out in the open air. "Look at the difference. These are cut high on the cheek. They lift, they frame, the muscle sits out of the fabric instead of inside it." He rolls his hips once, showing me. "My ass looks twice the size in these than in regular shorts. That's the job. Emphasize your advantages. Make a guy want to grab it before he's even decided to."

And his ass does look bigger, rounder, tanned and framed by the tight fabric bunched beneath the cheeks. He's presenting it to me in the middle of a crowded corridor like it's a slide in a PowerPoint.

I open my mouth to answer and a hand beats me to it.

A soft slap lands on Derek's bare cheek. I flinch harder than Derek does. A man has come up behind him, mid-thirties, work boots, a delivery jacket, and his palm is still resting on Derek's ass.

Derek doesn't even turn fully. He looks over his shoulder with a calm, helpful face, the face of a guy at a customer service desk. "Excuse me, sir, can I help you with anything?"

"Yeah. Straighten up for me," the man says.

"Of course, sir." Derek squares up, bends his knees slightly, and pushes his ass back toward the man, adjusting his stance until his cheeks are properly offered. He holds there, looking off at nothing, relaxed.

The man starts kneading. Both hands, working into the muscle, pulling the cheeks apart a little, thumbs dragging along the cleft. Derek's expression stays pleasant. He shifts his weight once to make it easier.

Jared, meanwhile, has pulled out his phone and is scrolling his feed with his thumb, glancing up every few seconds like there's a mildly interesting video playing nearby. His face reads mild boredom.

I stand there in silence, staring. Nobody else in the corridor has stopped. A woman with shopping bags steps around the scene like it's luggage.

"Take off your shirt," the man says.

"Sure, sir." Derek peels the CHAMPION top up over his head and holds it in one hand. The man's hands roam his body, flat palms over his abs, tracing the ridges of his stomach, then up to his chest. He finds Derek's nipples and pinches them, rolling the small brown points between rough fingers.

Derek moans. Not politely. A real, throaty, involuntary moan, his head tipping back a little, his chest pushing into the man's hands.

I lean toward Jared and whisper, the words barely making it out. "Should I help him? It looks like he's about to get fucked right here."

Jared glances up from his phone, genuinely puzzled. "Help him how? This is completely normal, man. A guy's exercising his right, Derek's cooperating. If you don't want to watch, go look at your phone or something. Just don't get in the way of the man using what's legally available."

The delivery guy looks Jared up and down, then me, then shrugs. "Okay, sure, you'll do. You're not the best option around, but you'll fit. Nothing better nearby." He works at his belt with one hand and shoves his trousers and boxers down in a single motion.

His dick is completely soft. His balls hang loose and heavy behind it, and his crotch and groin are covered in a moderate dust of dark hair. Even after a full minute of groping Derek's body, feeling up those abs and those nipples, nothing has stirred. It hangs there between his legs, thick and sleeping, like Derek really is just the nearest convenient object rather than anything exciting.

"Kneel," the man says. "Get it hard."

"Yes sir, with pleasure sir." Derek drops right there onto his knees on the polished floor, discarding his top, and leans in. He cradles the man's balls in one hand, weighs them, and starts with soft licks, tongue dragging up the hanging shaft from root to tip, then again, wetter. He takes the head into his mouth and suckles it gently, humming, and little moans keep leaking out of him between the wet sounds, muffled and eager, like he's the one getting serviced.

It takes about a minute. The dick thickens on his tongue, fills out, rises in slow stages until it's standing rigid against the man's stomach, and Derek's mouth follows it up the whole way, never letting it slip free.

Then the man grabs Derek's hair and starts to move. He fucks his throat.

There's nothing gentle about it. He grips two fists of brown hair and pumps his hips, driving his cock down Derek's throat over and over. Derek wheezes around it. The wet choking sounds carry down the corridor, gagging, gasping, spit forced up around the shaft and stringing from his chin. His eyes water. His throat bulges. He holds onto the man's thighs for balance and takes it, moaning brokenly through the suffocation, and he is very obviously enjoying every second.

I grab Jared's sleeve and whisper, frantic. "Can I help him? He's going to suffocate, look at him, he can't breathe."

Jared looks up from his phone with the expression of a man being interrupted during a commercial. "You're a bore, you know that?" he says, quietly. "Instead of worrying about his throat, how about you worry about this guy's ass? Look at it. No attention at all. No affection. That's just rude." He nods at the man's bare hips, trousers pooled around his boots, the hairy cheeks completely ignored. Then he smiles at me. "Look and learn."

And Jared walks over, kneels down behind the standing man, puts both hands on those hairy cheeks, and spreads them. He shoves his face in.

I watch my new teammate bury his tongue in a stranger's ass in the middle of a mall corridor. He licks long and deep, dragging his tongue through the dark hair of the cleft, circling the hole, then pushing in, and the man grunts above Derek's head and fucks Derek's throat a little harder, because now there's a tongue working him from behind. Jared doesn't come up for air. He grips and spreads and licks like it's a meal, his face completely swallowed between the cheeks, only his eyes visible, closed, content.

The man suddenly yanks Derek's head off his dick by the hair. It comes free with a loud wet pop, ropes of spit snapping, and Derek whines, actually whines, like someone took his favorite candy away mid-bite.

The man gathers spit in his mouth and spits directly into Derek's open lips. It lands on his tongue.

"Thank you, sir," Derek says, swallowing. "Can I help you with anything else?"

"Turn around. Set up that ass."

Derek spins on his knees, then stands, bends forward at the waist, braces his hands on his knees, and pushes his bare ass out. Cheeks spread by the position, hole presented, back arched. He looks over his shoulder waiting.

Behind the delivery guy, Jared never stops. Even as the man shifts his stance, even as he grips Derek's hips, Jared's face stays glued between his cheeks, tongue working, adjusting with every movement like a man riding a mechanical bull.

The man lines up and pushes in.

Derek moans, loud and shameless, the sound bouncing off the glass storefronts. The man starts to fuck him with long, steady strokes, and the noise is filthy, wet, slurping slaps of hips against bare cheeks, Derek's hole making squelching sounds around the shaft, spit and friction. Derek's face is slack with pleasure, mouth open, moaning openly with every thrust, his hard cock swinging between his legs untouched.

"Harder," Derek gasps. "Please, sir, harder."

The man gives him harder. The slapping gets louder. Jared's hands hold the man's cheeks spread the entire time, and once the man half-stumbles with a deep thrust and Jared just rides the movement, face crushed against him, tongue never losing its rhythm.

People walk past. A teenager films a short clip on his phone and keeps moving. A security guard nods at the delivery guy in passing.

The man's rhythm shortens. He grunts, sinks in balls deep one last time, holds there, and slowly cums. I can see it in his hips, the lazy grinding pulses, emptying himself into Derek's ass in long slow spurts while Derek groans and shivers under him.

He stays in for a moment, breathing hard. Then, still buried, he says, "You. Clean me off."

Jared surfaces from between his cheeks, lips shiny. "Yes, sir, cleanliness is a guarantee of health."

The man pulls out of Derek with a wet sound and turns, his cock smeared and softening, streaked with a mix of spit and the milky trace of his own load. Jared kneels in front of him and takes it into his mouth without hesitation. He works his tongue around the head, down the shaft, into the mess of the groin hair, lapping everything up, sucking gently at the tip to draw out the last drops. It's thorough, unhurried, methodical.

The man lets him work for a while. Then he grips Jared's hair with force, hauls him off, and spits straight into Jared's open mouth.

"Thank you, sir," Jared and Derek say, almost in unison.

The man rubs both their heads, like you'd ruffle a dog. "Not bad. Something to learn, though. The throat was sloppy, and the rim came in late."

"We'll work on our technique," Derek says earnestly, from his knees, cum starting to leak down his thigh.

"See that you do." The man pulls up his trousers, buckles his belt, checks his watch, and walks off toward the loading docks, delivery jacket swinging.

And that's it. The corridor carries on. Derek stands, wincing slightly, and starts pulling his shorts back into position, his used hole visible for a second before the fabric frames it again. Jared wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

I am still standing exactly where I was. My mouth is open. I close it.

They come over and each put a hand on my back, patting me, warm and easy.

"Welcome," they say.

Jared turns to face me, and that's when I actually look at him. There's a smear of spit at the corner of his mouth and a faint milky trace clinging near his chin, transferred from the man's dick. He grins at me with it still there.

"Hey, you want to lick the rest of this off my face? It's fresh."

I stare at his face. The offer hangs there between us.

He watches me for a second, then laughs, bright and easy. "You don't want to. Whatever you want, man." He scoops the mess off his chin with two fingers, pops them into his mouth, and sucks them clean, humming happily. "Mm. Hairy guy. Kind of bitter. Not my favorite, honestly, but free protein."

"Free protein," I repeat, faintly.

"That's the spirit," Derek says, tucking his phone away and pointing down the corridor. "FitLab's this way. You're going to love the fitting room."

They start walking, and after a second my legs remember they belong to me and follow. Jared falls into step beside me and slings his arm around my shoulders again, his cheek still faintly shiny.

"So," he says. "Thoughts? First live demonstration. Be honest."

"I don't have thoughts. I have a ringing in my ears."

"That's normal, it passes. You'll know it's passed when you catch yourself volunteering." He winks. "Happens to everybody."

Derek holds the door of the store open and waves me through. The shop is bright, mirrors everywhere, racks of the tiniest shorts I've ever seen, and a wall of plugs sorted by size like dumbbells. Somewhere behind me, Jared calls out a question about whether I want the access cut in black or navy.

I hear myself answer, "What color shows off an ass better?"

I don't even know where that came from. Derek grins at me across the racks.

We drift deeper into the store, past racks of singlets and jockstraps, until we hit a whole wall dedicated to shorts with the back cut out. Dozens of them. Different lengths, different fabrics, a rainbow of access cuts displayed on headless mannequins whose cheeks hang out the same way Derek's do.

I pick one off the rack and turn it over in my hands. The seam in the back is reinforced, doubled stitching. Built to last.

"Hey, can I ask something kind of personal?" I say.

"Clearly, yes," Jared says, digging through a bin.

"How often do you actually get used? Like, spontaneously, during a normal day. Is it constant or...?"

Derek holds up two pairs of shorts, comparing the cut of the leg. "Depends on your day. Zero if you stay home. I've had days like that, just gaming in my room, nothing happens. Ten if you walk through a crowded place. The mall on a Saturday, forget it, your ass doesn't get a minute."

"Ten times. In one trip."

"Ten's a light Saturday," Jared says. "Some guys hunt in packs. You get tagged by a group of three, that's three uses right there, one after another."

"Okay, but how do you live for yourself in that situation? Like, your own plans, your own day. How do you get anything done?"

Jared stops digging. He looks at me with an expression I can't read at first, and then I realize it's pity. Genuine, warm pity, like I asked him how he survives without music.

"You don't live for yourself, Jeremy." He says it gently. "That's the thing. You live for others. To please, to serve, to be what some guy needs when he needs it. That's not the cost of the culture, that's the whole point of it. It's the most beautiful thing in the world, honestly. When a stranger finishes in you and pats your head and walks away better than he came in? That's a life. That's a good life."

I stand there holding the reinforced shorts and don't know what my face is doing.

Derek saves me. "What about you, though? Anybody use you in the north before you moved? You said two people, ever. What were the two?"

I feel my neck go hot. "One was nothing. Guy at a gas station, grabbed me in the parking lot, got me off in the bathroom, done. Five minutes."

"And the other?"

"The other was... okay, the other was a medical exam." I put the shorts back on the rack, buying time. "Right before I transferred. The college required a full physical before they'd release my records. So I go in, and there's this doctor, older guy, big hands, and a nurse, and they said because I was going south they had to do a deep examination. Their words. Deep."

"Deep how?" Derek's eyebrows are up.

"Deep like..." I rub the back of my neck. "The doctor bent me over the table and did the prostate exam, except it wasn't a prostate exam, it was just him fucking me. Slow at first, then not slow. And the nurse, while that was happening, he fed me his dick and just held my head and used my throat. For like forty minutes. The doctor kept going, changing angles, checking my, I don't know, my elasticity or whatever, and the nurse kept my mouth full the entire time."

Jared has gone completely still, listening with his mouth slightly open.

"And afterward," I go on, because apparently I'm telling this now, "I couldn't sit properly for a week. My hole ached every time I shifted in a chair, and my jaw whined for days, like a toothache but in the joint. I ate soup. I lived on soup because chewing hurt."

Derek tilts his head, thinking it through like a math problem. "Two guys, one at each end, at the same time. Did they do double penetration? Both in your ass, I mean."

The question hits me like cold water. My face goes red and I know it, I can feel the heat all the way to my ears.

"Jeremy," Derek says.

"Okay. Yes. There was a double." I hold up a hand. "Near the end, the doctor had me on my back on the table, legs in the stirrups, and the nurse got up on the table too, and they both put it in. Together. The doctor held my hips and coached me to breathe and they just, both of them, worked it in. I saw stars. I thought I was going to pass out, and then I didn't, and then they did that for a while, and then they finished in me, both, one after the other. The nurse came down my throat and the doctor came in my ass and I just lay there dripping on the exam paper for ten minutes while they wrote notes."

Silence. Then Jared smacks the rack so hard it rattles.

"Wow." He points at me, delighted. "But you'll never tell, you said, it's private, it's medical. And it turns out you do tell, and there's a double in your history. Dude. There's hope for you. Not everything is lost. Not even close."

"I'm not telling this to be converted."

"You're telling it because deep down you want us to know," Jared says. "That's how it starts. Everyone tells the doctor story first. Everyone."

"Is that true?" I ask Derek.

"Mine was a dentist." He shrugs. "Don't ask."

Before I can decide whether to believe him, a voice pipes up at our elbows.

"Hey guys. Looking for shorts? I can help."

The consultant is young, maybe nineteen or twenty, tall and thin as a coat rack, wire-frame glasses slipping down a nose with a couple of pimples on one cheek. His name tag says TRENT. He's wearing the store polo, one size too big, and the smell reaches me a half second after he does. Unwashed. A whole week of it, sweat and stale fabric and something older underneath, sour and human.

"Perfect timing," Jared says, and turns on the full smile. "We need a set. Shorts for all occasions. They've got to take a beating. Group use, spanking, a guy gripping them for leverage while he's fucking you, all of it. Durability is the number one spec."

"Got it. All-purpose." Trent nods like Jared just asked for running shoes. "What's the build we're fitting?"

"This is Jeremy. New guy."

Trent turns to me, and his eyes do a slow pass down and then up. "Okay. Turn around for me?"

"Uh. Sure?"

I turn around. There's a beat of nothing, and then both his hands land on my ass through my baggy shorts. He kneads, like Derek's delivery guy did, fingers pressing into the muscle, thumbs measuring the span of each cheek, working his way down to the thigh and back up. His palms are warm and slightly damp.

"Very cool ass," he says behind me, conversational, professional. "Dense. Good projection. The glutes sit high, that's great for the frame cut, it'll hold the fabric up instead of sagging. I'll get everything and the shorts will fit you perfectly." He gives me one final squeeze, pats my hip, and walks off toward the counter.

I turn back around slowly. My face is doing the thing again. Jared is watching me with his chin propped on his fist, thrilled.

Trent comes back digging through a drawer behind the counter, and holds something up. Red. Bright, saturated, cherry red, the fabric so thin I can see the weave.

"Try this first. New line, high-stretch, double seam in back. Color's doing a lot of work for you too."

"Great option," Derek says. "That's a good pick."

I look from the shorts to the racks to the far end of the store, where I can see three curtained alcoves with benches inside. "Where's the fitting room? I'll just..."

"Jeremy." Jared takes the red shorts out of my hand. "Why do you need a fitting room? There are no fitting rooms in the south. You try on right here. That's the whole system, everybody sees, everybody can give input. And take your underwear off first, otherwise it's unclear how they actually sit. Underwear distorts the fit, that's just science."

"Right here."

"Right here."

Trent is already pulling more options, not looking up.

I blow out a breath. Then I hook my thumbs in my waistband and push my shorts and my boxers down in one go, stepping out of them, and I'm standing in a brightly lit store in a thin t-shirt with everything else out. The air conditioning hits my skin. Three guys at the adjacent rack glance over, nod politely, go back to shopping.

I take the red shorts. They're soft, almost nothing to them. I step in and pull them up, and the fabric settles, high on the cheeks, and then the back seam splits around the access cut and my ass pops out into the store lights like it's been waiting all day.

"Turn," Trent says.

I turn.

"Perfect," he says.

"Cool dick, buddy," Derek adds, looking directly at it, because my whole front is also on display and the thin fabric leaves nothing open to interpretation.

Trent's hand lands on me again, one palm on my bare cheek, kneading once, and his other hand cups the front of the shorts, fingers curling around me through the fabric, measuring the hang and the fill. "Yeah, they fit perfectly," he says, and lets go, and walks back to the counter like he's handing someone a receipt.

I exhale through my teeth and look at the ceiling.

Then I notice Jared has stopped moving. He's staring at Trent's waist, where the man's loose polo hangs untucked over his pants, and there's a clear ridge pushing the fabric forward. Trent is hard. Fully, visibly hard, and he's sorting shorts in the drawer with a perfectly neutral face.

Jared crosses the floor without a word, drops to his knees in front of the counter, and looks up at the consultant.

"If I see an erect dick, I can't pass by and not help," he says. "It's my duty. That's how I was taught."

His hand comes up and strokes the ridge once, light, through the fabric. "Wow. And here's a good size. There's a lot of work to do."

"Thanks," Trent says, and hands me a pair of gray ones. "These run snug, try them too."

I take them. I genuinely take them.

Jared's fingers find the waistband of Trent's pants. He stretches the fabric out and pulls it down, pants and underwear together, and a dick springs free and slaps him across the cheek. It's long, not especially thick, with a slight downward bend near the head, and the groin above it is a jungle, dark hair spreading over the balls and out toward the hips, months of it, untrimmed.

Jared laughs, cheek pressed against the shaft. "Buddy can't wait to get into my throat, huh."

He leans down and pushes his nose into the sagging weight of the guy's balls and inhales, deep, eyes closed, one long pull through his nose.

"Okay. You haven't washed in at least a week," he says, muffled, reverent. "Sweat, musk, straight masculinity, all of it, it's all in there."

"It's been nine days actually," Trent says. "I keep meaning to."

"I love this smell." Jared starts kissing the hairy groin, open-mouthed, dragging his lips through the thicket, then licking, long flat strokes over the balls, up the sides of the shaft, working the whole unwashed territory like a man greeting a meal.

Derek looks up from the rack he's been sorting for me, follows the smell with a slow breath in, and nods. "Yeah. That's great. You can't pass by that." He walks behind Trent, kneels down on the polished floor, and pushes his face between the guy's thin cheeks. One hand comes around and takes the hanging balls, massaging them gently while his tongue works the hairy cleft behind.

And Trent keeps working. He pulls a pair of black shorts from the drawer, lays them on the counter, says, "These are mid-length, good for everyday," and then, "try the gray ones now," and it's like his knees aren't currently bracketed by two sets of shoulders, like his dick isn't disappearing into my teammate's mouth.

I take the gray ones into the corner by the mirror, tug the red ones down, step into the gray. My face is burning. Behind me in the mirror I can see the whole scene at once, Jared's head starting to bob, Derek's hand kneading a pale cheek while his face disappears between it, and Trent, glasses flashing, holding up another pair for my opinion.

I'm shocked. Fully shocked. And I'm also standing in front of the mirror in shorts with my ass out, and I don't leave.

"So which of these is better for training?" I ask, holding up two pairs, my voice cracking slightly on "training."

Trent pulls off Jared's dick with a slurp to answer. Wait, no. Trent answers. Jared is the one attached to his dick, and it's Jared who doesn't stop, and Trent speaks over the wet sounds with a calm that belongs at a register.

"The gray has better recovery. The fabric springs back after stretching, so if a guy grabs and twists them during use they hold shape. The black looks better but pills after a few hard sessions." He pauses, thinking. "For your build, gray for daily, black for going out."

I look at the two pairs in my hands. This is real advice. This is good advice. The man giving it is being deep-throated at the counter and rimmed on the floor, and his voice never changes.

Behind him, Jared has escalated. He's tilted his head back at the right angle, opened his throat, and he's sitting down on the guy's dick, actually sitting on it, taking it inch by inch until I can see the outline of the shaft pushing the front of his throat, a long bulge traveling up his neck every time he sinks. He's wheezing around it, his face flushed dark red, tears sliding out from under squeezed-shut eyes, and the moans coming out of his nose are small and frequent. His hands grip the counter edge for balance.

Derek, behind Trent, has his face buried to the root, and his other hand has moved from the cheeks to the balls, rolling them, massaging each one between his fingers.

Trent holds up a fourth pair. "These have a reinforced crotch panel. Some guys prefer them for sitting."

"The gray," I manage. "You're saying gray."

"Gray for daily. Yes."

He reaches down without looking and puts his hand flat on the back of Jared's head. He presses. Just presses, steady, and Jared's throat opens another inch and the bulge climbs higher and the choking sounds turn liquid, and the tears run off Jared's jaw onto the counter, and Trent holds him there, scrolling a screen of inventory with his other hand.

Then his hips jerk, once, twice, small controlled movements, and he exhales slowly through his nose, and I understand he's cumming, pumping it straight down into Jared's pinned throat, load after load while Jared's fingers scrabble at the counter edge and his whole flushed face shines with tears.

Behind them, Derek's mouth has moved too. He's got both of the guy's balls in his mouth now, the whole hairy sack, and he rolls them on his tongue, slow, gentling them through the finish like he's coaxing the last of it down.

Trent lets go of Jared's head.

Jared comes up off the dick in stages, coughing, gasping, a thick rope of spit and cum swinging from his chin. He wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand, smearing tears, and blinks around the store with a dazed, blissed-out grin.

"Man," he rasps, voice wrecked down to a gravel. "I haven't had such a thing for a" long time," Jared rasps, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His voice is scraped down to gravel, and he's still sitting back on his heels on the store floor, blinking up at Trent like a man who just witnessed a sunrise. "That's not a dick, man. That's a gift. Long, with that curve, that bends exactly where a throat wants it to bend. It would be a crime not to suck it. A literal crime. Somebody should arrest me if I ever walk past this counter without at least saying hi to it."

"Thanks," Trent says, and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. "It's the length, mostly. Guys say it hits deep."

"It hits deep," Jared confirms, solemn as a judge.

I'm standing by the mirror in the gray shorts with my ass framed out the back seam, holding both pairs of black ones I've accumulated, watching my newest teammate conduct a sincere review of a store employee's cock. Somewhere in the last twenty minutes this stopped being shocking and started being Tuesday. I'm not sure when the switch flipped. I'm not sure I want to find the switch.

Jared gets up off his knees. His legs wobble once and he steadies himself on the counter, laughing at himself. "Okay. Okay. I'm good. Let's get you dressed, buddy, you can't stand there with your pants around your ankles, this is a family store."

"It's really not," Trent says.

"Family store," Jared repeats, and reaches down.

He grabs the waistband of Trent's pants on one side. Derek surfaces from behind him, cheeks flushed, lips shiny from working the guy's sack, and grabs the other side. Between them they haul the pants and underwear up over the hips in one practiced motion, like two stagehands resetting a set. Trent helps by lifting his feet one at a time so they can pull the fabric clear. Derek does the button. Jared pulls the zip up slow and careful, guiding the long shaft flat against the guy's stomach so it doesn't catch in the teeth, and pats the resulting ridge through the fabric with real tenderness.

"There you go. Tucked in safe," Jared says.

"Appreciate it," Trent says. He adjusts the polo over the bulge, straightens his glasses, and turns back to me like a man resuming a spreadsheet. "So. You decided?"

Derek looks over at me and grins. "By the way, did you even pick shorts? We were both kind of distracted there for a while."

"I picked." I hold up the gray pair I'm wearing and the two black pairs in my hand. "These. Gray for daily, black for going out. Your consultant said so while his dick was down your friend's throat, and honestly it's the most confident purchase advice I've ever gotten."

Jared beams at me. "Great choice. That's a great choice. Gray with that build, with that tan, with that ass? People are going to line up." He turns to Trent. "See? He's a natural. Twenty minutes in the south and he's already shopping by function."

"He tried them on without being told twice," Trent says, ringing something up on the counter screen. "You'd be surprised how many still ask for the fitting room on their first visit."

"Everyone asks the first time," Derek says. "Then the second time they don't."

"That's what I keep telling him," Jared says, jerking a thumb at me.

I look down at myself. Thin gray fabric, high cut, cheeks fully out the back seam, and my whole front on display through material you could read a newspaper through. An hour ago I'd have sooner died. Now I'm just standing here deciding whether the black ones go better with my eyes. The ringing in my ears Jared promised has passed. I notice this and decide not to think about what that means.

Trent gathers everything, folds each pair into crisp squares, and waves us toward the register at the front of the store. We follow him like ducklings. He scans the gray, the two blacks, and a red pair that apparently I'm also buying because at some point Jared put them in Derek's hands and Derek put them in the pile and nobody asked me. Fine. Red for occasions I can't yet imagine.

"That's everything?" Trent asks.

"That's everything," Jared says, then leans on the counter. "Wait. Do you have the spray? The fabric refresher? He's going to be getting gripped a lot, the gray will show hand marks."

"Under the counter." Trent produces a small bottle and adds it without comment. "It's enzyme based. Marks wipe out in a minute."

"See, this store thinks of everything," Jared says to me, delighted. "This is why you shop local."

I pull out my card. Derek waves his phone at the terminal for his own stuff, and Jared pays cash, counting out bills like a man from another century. The total is embarrassingly small. In the north these shorts would cost triple and come with a lining and a shame pamphlet.

Trent bags it all into one big paper package, folds the top down neat, and holds it out to me with both hands. "Here you go. Come in again."

"Counting on it," I say, and then the thing comes out of my mouth before my brain can file an objection. "Honestly, it's a pleasure coming to a store where the consultant works with a dick like that. I mean it. Most stores you get some bored guy who doesn't even look at your ass. Here you get a full assessment and a show. Give it a month, there's going to be a huge queue in here. Guys are going to come from other districts. You should put it on the sign. 'Consultant with a gift.'"

Trent's ears go pink above the wire frames. He actually laughs, a surprised snort. "I'll mention it to my manager."

"Don't mention it to the manager," Jared says. "Mystery is intrigue. Fabric creates desire, remember, Jeremy? Same principle. Nobody needs to know the exact dimensions. They just need to know there's a reason to come here."

"You two have a weirdly coherent philosophy for guys who spend half their day on their knees," Trent says.

"It's a lifestyle with internal consistency," Derek says, and shoulders the door open.

The mall air hits us again, warm and bright after the store's air conditioning. I carry the package against my hip, my new ass-out shorts already on my body, my old baggy ones stuffed inside with the tags. Jared falls in beside me and slings his arm around my neck, pulling me down into a sideways hug, my cheek nearly in his armpit. He smells like a stranger's ass and floor polish and I don't even flinch, which is its own disturbing data point.

"So," he says. "Scorecard. You got felt up by a consultant, you bought four pairs of access-cut shorts, you watched me take a nine-day load down my throat, and you told the double penetration story without dying. That's a solid first afternoon. Some guys take a week to get there."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"It's an assessment. Like Trent said, dense, good projection. Same goes for the rest of you, honestly. You adapt fast."

"I didn't adapt. I stood there with my mouth open for most of it."

"Sure," Derek says, scrolling his phone with his thumb, walking backwards ahead of us so he can face us. "And you also told Trent there'd be a queue. Volunteers, Jared said. When you catch yourself volunteering, it's passed."

"I hate that you both quote each other."

"We rehearse," Jared says.

"For what?"

Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.