Chapter 5: The Night Before
Derek's house smelled like the fire Nathan had already gotten going in the living room, wood smoke and the faint citrus of the candle on the mantel. The big table in the center was covered with water bottles and protein bars and a plastic tray of cold cut sandwiches nobody had touched yet. We'd been sitting there for twenty minutes, supposedly going over Saturday, and so far the only thing we'd agreed on was that the second-place team looked like they had one guy with weak lungs.
Derek sat on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, picking at the label on a bottle. Leo was sprawled in one of the armchairs, head tipped back, eyes half closed. I was on the floor with my back against the couch, arms resting on my knees.
"Okay," Nathan said from the doorway. He'd been hovering for the last few minutes, leaning against the frame, arms crossed, wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants. "I've been listening to you three go in circles since I got here. You're not planning anything. You're just tired and nervous and pretending you're not."
"We're not nervous," Leo said.
"You're playing with the label, Derek."
Derek stopped picking at the bottle and put it down.
"You want my help?" Nathan said. He came into the room and walked around the table, taking a seat on the arm of the couch. "I've competed. I've won. I know what the night before feels like. You don't fix it by talking about it. You fix it by moving."
"Moving," I said.
"Rehearsal." Nathan shrugged. "Like a practice run. You three got a circuit to run tomorrow. What happens between the two of you, the timing, the rhythm when you hand off from one station to the next, that's what wins it. Not how big your lungs are. Not how tight your hole is. The handoff. The teamwork."
Leo opened his eyes and looked at him. "You're suggesting we rehearse. Here. Tonight."
"Why not?" Nathan said. "You got the time. You got the space. You got me, and Dad's in the study, but he'll come out if I yell. What's the problem?"
The fire popped. Derek looked at me. Leo looked at Nathan, then at me, and something shifted in his face, a grin starting at the corner of his mouth.
"It's not the worst idea," Leo said.
"It was a joke," Nathan said.
"No it wasn't," I said. "You meant it."
Nathan held my eyes for a second, then let out a breath and laughed. "Okay. Fine. I meant it. But I'm not the one who decides. This is your team. If you three say no, I shut up and we watch a movie and you go to bed early."
"Who goes first?" Derek asked.
"That's the thing about a relay." Nathan stood up and walked over to the fireplace, resting his arm on the mantel. "The order matters. You run single file. You pass the baton, which in this case is whoever's in front. First station tomorrow is oral. Who's got the throat for a lead?"
"Derek," Leo said.
Derek shook his head. "I take too long. I got better at the clinic, but I still take too long. Jared's faster."
"I'm not saying you're the one doing the throat," Nathan said. "I'm saying you're the one who decides who does. That's what the lead does. That's the drill."
Derek was quiet for a moment. Then he stood up and walked around the coffee table and stopped in front of me. He looked down at me for a second, and I saw the thing settle in his face, the same look he'd had at the clinic when Marcus told him to open his jaw.
"Jared," Derek said. "You're first. On your knees."
He didn't say it loud. He didn't have to.
I got up and came around the table and knelt on the rug in front of the fireplace. The wool was rough under my knees, warm from the fire, and I could feel the heat on my back. Derek walked in front of me and stopped. He had gym shorts on, grey, loose, and I could see the outline of him against the fabric.
"Go on," Nathan said from the other side of the room. "Show me the handoff."
Derek pulled his shorts down. He was already half hard, thickening as the fabric cleared his hips, and I watched it rise until it stood out from his body, aiming at me. He took himself in his hand and stepped closer.
"You ready?" he said.
"Yeah."
He put his hand on the back of my head. Not rough, just there, a weight. He guided himself in slow, and I opened my jaw and took him, the warmth of him sliding over my tongue.
I heard the sofa creak as Leo got up. He came over and stood behind me, and I felt his hand on my shoulder, a steadying kind of touch, and then his fingers in my hair alongside Derek's.
"Good," Leo said, quiet. "That's a good angle. Look up when you take it."
I looked up. Derek was watching me the way he'd watched Marcus at the clinic, a focus in his eyes that wasn't about sex, wasn't about anything except completing the circuit. He had his hand splayed on my head and I took him deeper, felt the tip of him press at the back of my throat, and I breathed through my nose and let him in.
"That's it," Leo said. "That's the first station. Now who's second?"
"Leo," Derek said. His voice was strained. "Switch."
He pulled out of my mouth with a wet sound and stepped aside, and Leo stepped into the space in front of me. Leo was already naked from the waist down, his shorts dropped somewhere behind the couch, and his cock was hard, curved slightly, familiar from the food court and the bottle game and the clinic floor.
"Same thing," Leo said, and he took his length in his hand and tapped it against my lips once. "Show me the handoff."
I opened and took him in. Leo was a little longer than Derek, a little thicker at the base, and I had to work my jaw wider as he pressed in. He didn't push. He let me take him the way I was trained to, slow and steady, and when I got him all the way in, to where his dark blond pubes brushed my lips, he held there and let me breathe.
"You feel that?" Leo said. "That's a full station. That's a clean throat. Now hold it. Count to ten. Don't move."
I held. My eyes watered. The fire crackled and I heard feet on the stairs, and then the study door opened down the hall, and footsteps came toward the living room.
Oliver came in. He was in jeans and a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up, reading glasses pushed up on his head. He stopped in the doorway and looked at the scene in the living room, took it in without changing expression.
"Rehearsal," Nathan said from the mantel.
Oliver nodded once. "Okay. Don't break the couch."
He left. The study door clicked shut.
Leo counted all the way to ten and then pulled out, and I got my breath back and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
"Second station's anal," Nathan said. He came around the table and stood over me, looking down. "Who's getting used and who's doing the using?"
"Jared," Leo said. "He's the strongest on the ride. I've seen him. He outlasts everyone."
"Good," Nathan said. "Jared, on the chair. Leo, you're the judge. You set the pace. Derek, you're on deck, you wait your turn."
There was a chair by the window, heavy, wooden, with arms. I got up and went over and stood beside it. Leo walked over and sat down in it, spreading his legs, and he looked up at me with that calm, confident look he always had when he was about to use his body.
"On me," he said.
I stepped forward and straddled him. His cock was still hard, slick from my mouth, and I reached down and took him in hand and guided him to me. The first press of him against my hole was familiar, a stretch I knew, and I lowered myself slow, letting the heat of him fill me inch by inch, and I heard Leo's breath catch when I seated myself to the root.
"There," Derek said. He'd come over and was standing beside the chair, watching. "That's the station. That's the handoff."
I rode him. The chair creaked under us and the fire light moved over Leo's face, and I found my rhythm, dropping my hips in a circle that made him groan. His hands came to my waist and held me, not to guide me, just to hold, and I saw his jaw relax and his head tip back against the chair.
"Faster," Nathan said, from somewhere behind me. "That's competition pace. You're not at home. You're on the floor."
I sped up. My thighs burned and I felt the sweat break on my back, and Leo's hands tightened on my hips and his hips started to rise under me, pushing up into the rhythm I'd set. Derek was quiet, watching, his cock standing up from his body where he'd forgotten to pull his shorts back up.
"Now switch," Nathan said. "Derek, you're the next judge. Jared, you move to the bench. Leo, you get used."
Derek came around behind the chair. Leo lifted off his cock with a wet sound and stood up, and Derek took his place in the chair, settling back, spreading his legs. He looked at me, then at Leo.
"Give me a hand," he said. "I'm still up from my mouth, but not enough."
I knelt and took Derek in my mouth, working him up fast, and I felt him harden against my tongue and heard him breathe out through his teeth. Then I stood and moved to the bench at the side of the room, where Derek had set his water bottle, and I lay back on the padded cushions and held my legs open.
"Nathan," Leo said, and he was standing over me now, his shadow blocking the firelight. "You want to run a station?"
Nathan looked at us for a long moment. Then he came over, quicker than I expected, and he stood at the foot of the bench between my legs. He pushed his sweatpants down and his cock came out, thick and uncircumcised, the head gliding free of his foreskin.
"Competition rule," he said. "No gentling." He leaned over me and took a firm grip on my hair, tilting my head to look at him. "You know how to take a station clean?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Show me.”
He pushed into me. Not slow. In one movement, slick and full, and I groaned at the stretch and took him, my hands going to his hips. He held there for a moment, letting me feel the whole length of him, and then he started to move, and I let him take me the way the judges would tomorrow.
Across the room, I heard Leo grunt as Derek took him, the chair creaking, and I heard the sound of skin on skin.
I got Nathan running at speed, his weight open over me, his hands in my hair and on my shoulder. My body responded the way it had trained to: open and knowing. I held his look, and I let him work me through him. It took a while, but I worked him until his rhythm broke and he laid himself into me and finished with a cut-off groan.
He pulled out after a second, stepping back and stood up, breathing. He wiped the sweat off his mouth, ran a hand through his hair.
"Clean station," he said.
I lay on the bench for a moment, catching my breath. Across the room, Derek had Leo bent over the arm of the couch, both of them moving together at a pace that had the wood creaking. Oliver's study door opened again, and he stood in the doorway with his reading glasses in his hand, watching.
Leo was the one who noticed him. "Dad."
"Don't stop," Oliver said. He leaned against the doorframe. "This is what I built the room for." He watched for a moment longer. "Derek, your lower back's flexing too much. Ground with your hips, not your spine. You'll be in a station and you'll run out of capacity at the minute mark."
Derek adjusted, and I saw the difference in an instant, his rhythm settling deeper, more stable.
"Better," Oliver said. "Nathan, finish up and then it's Jared's turn again. Three stations, full circuit, then you go to bed. You'll need your sleep."
He went back into the study and shut the door.
I lay on the bench and watched Derek work Leo. Nathan came and sat on the floor near the fireplace, glassy-eyed and spent, and we watched the two of them move until Derek's rhythm broke and he held Leo hard by the hips and finished inside him.
Leo got up on unsteady legs. He walked over and dropped onto the couch, lying on his back, one arm over his eyes.
"Your turn," he said to me. "Full circuit. Start at the mouth."
I looked at Nathan. He looked at the ceiling. Then he stood up, came over, and knelt in front of the bench where I lay, his spent cock soft in his hand.
"One clean circuit," he said. "I'll give you the mouth. Dad'll give you the mouth if you ask. But you're gonna run it all the way."
I was already getting up. I knelt on the rug, took Nathan in my mouth, and brought him back to hardness with the kind of rhythm I'd be running for real tomorrow. Leo came to the door, watching through half-lidded eyes, and spoke against the back of my shoulder: "You ready for Saturday?"
I pulled off just long enough to answer, "Yeah," then swallowed him back down, ready for anything.