Chapter 7: Dinner in honor of the victory in the house of the Derek Family
Oliver had outdone himself. The long table in the living room gleamed under the light of the fireplace and the hanging fixtures, set with actual plates and cloth napkins, a roast sitting in the middle on a carving board with a ring of roasted potatoes around it. Nathan had lit two more candles. The whole house smelled like thyme and meat drippings and wood smoke.
"Gala dinner," Oliver announced, coming in from the kitchen with a bottle of wine in each hand. "Regional champions eat like champions. Sit."
Derek took the chair nearest the fireplace. Leo dropped into the one beside him, still in his neon-blue shorts even though Oliver had told him twice that dinner was a pants occasion. Jared sat across from Derek, freshly showered, in a clean tank top, the pink slap mark on his cheek long since faded. Nathan claimed the seat at Oliver's right and immediately started rearranging the potato ring so it looked symmetric.
"Glasses," Oliver said, pouring. "A toast first."
He raised his glass. The four of them raised theirs.
"To the three of you. Two weeks to state. You've made this house proud." He clinked Nathan's glass, then leaned over and clinked Leo's, then Derek's, then reached across for Jared's. "Proud doesn't cover it, honestly."
"Thanks, Mr. Whitlock," Jared said, warm.
"Oliver. At my table, Oliver."
Nathan speared a potato. "Okay, so, real talk. State means college-level judges, right? Like, actual university athletic board guys?"
"Some of them," Oliver said, carving. "The circuit overlaps with the collegiate league. Which reminds me. Derek, did you finish that enrollment application?"
"Mostly." Derek cut into his roast. "I still need the physical form signed. It's the same exam we already did at the clinic, they just want it on their paperwork."
"Get it to me this week. Marcus can sign it, he's the covering physician." Oliver set a slab of roast on Jared's plate without asking. "Eat. All of you. You're too lean for what's coming."
The front door was somewhere behind them, down the short hall past the coat rack. Nobody had thought about it since they'd all arrived. Oliver had been in and out of the kitchen four times, greeting everyone, and it had never once clicked shut.
The roast was good. Leo ate three potatoes in a row and Nathan told him to slow down before he ruined his appetite for the good stuff. The wine went around a second time. Derek's phone buzzed on the table and he ignored it.
"So," Nathan said, leaning back, "we should talk about the important stuff."
"Like what," Derek said.
"Like the fact that Tyler Munroe is enrolling at State in the fall."
Leo paused with his fork halfway up. "Tyler Munroe from the swim team?"
"Nine inches," Nathan said. "Soft."
"That's not true," Derek said.
"I've seen it in the showers after practice. Twice. Soft, hanging there like a hose. Imagine the hard version."
Jared laughed into his wine. "You can't just say that at dinner."
"Why not? It's relevant. College is where you find out what the gene pool actually looks like." Nathan counted on his fingers. "Munroe, nine soft. There's a guy on the wrestling team, Okafor, who's got that thick kind, not long but wide, like a soda can. And the lifeguard at the community pool, Danny, who's got the prettiest one I've ever seen, honestly. Symmetrical. Perfect head."
"You've given this a lot of thought," Oliver said, carving more meat, entirely unbothered.
"It's research. We're athletes. Athletes compare."
"Who's the biggest in our region, then?" Leo asked. "Competitively speaking."
"Honestly? Marcus," Derek said, and then caught himself. "Don't tell him I said that."
"Too late, I'm filing it away," Nathan said. "But yeah. That's the thing about him. He's not even showing off, he just has it."
The talk drifted, easy and warm, the way it always did at this table. Oliver asked Leo about his course load, and Leo said he'd registered for spring kinesiology, and Nathan said kinesiology was a joke major and Leo kicked him under the table. Derek mentioned that the gym had finally fixed the sauna, the new heater, and the whole room lit up.
"The sauna's back?" Jared said. "Thank God. That thing's been dead for a month."
"I went yesterday," Derek said. "It's good again. Properly hot. And the locker room was full, so it was a whole scene."
"Full how?"
"Water polo practice had just ended. Fourteen guys, all of them packed in there, and I'm sitting there in the corner just trying to breathe."
"Did you look?" Nathan asked.
"Obviously I looked."
"Who had the best body?"
"The blonde one, the setter. His back is unreal. And his ass, when he bent over to fix the stones, I mean." Derek shrugged, refilling his glass. "I'm not made of stone."
"You're made of something," Nathan said. "Speaking of the locker room. Can we address the underwear thing?"
"What underwear thing," Oliver said, though his tone said he already knew.
"Nathan," Derek warned.
"No, this is a public health issue. Somebody in that locker room has been taking guys' briefs from the neighboring cubbies. I know this because Pete left his grey pair hanging on his bench and they were gone in twenty minutes, and when they came back they were damp in a way that wasn't sweat."
Jared put his fork down. "Damp how?"
"Damp how, he asks." Nathan spread his hands. "Somebody had them on his face, is my theory. There's a guy, the one with the mustache who always uses the third cubby, and I have seen him, twice now, lean over while pretending to tie his shoe and just. Sniff. Deep. Like he's checking for truffles."
"The third cubby is mine on Thursdays," Leo said, very seriously.
"Then you should know your jock was returned inside out last week."
"That explains so much," Leo said, and everyone laughed.
"Whose smell is the best, though?" Nathan pressed on, undeterred. "This is the real question. Be honest. You've all done it. I've done it. Dad, back me up."
Oliver sipped his wine. "The swim guys post-meet. Chlorine and sweat together. It's a specific smell and it's excellent. I'm not ashamed."
"See? He gets it."
"You're all disgusting," Derek said, grinning.
"Says the guy who described a setter's ass in detail four minutes ago," Jared said.
"His ass is public knowledge."
It was somewhere around the second round of potatoes that the front door, unlocked and unattended, opened without a sound. The hallway light didn't come on. A figure came in, closed the door just as quietly behind him, and stood there a moment in the dark. Then he took off his T-shirt, folded it over the coat rack, stepped out of his torn jeans, his boxers, and left everything in a neat pile by the shoes.
Marcus walked into the living room naked, silent, his cock already thickening as he moved, and nobody looked up.
He went first to Leo. Leo was mid-sentence about his kinesiology syllabus, one arm over the back of his chair, and Marcus simply walked around behind the chair, put his hands on Leo's shoulders, and slid his hardening cock into the gap between Leo's neck and the chair back, nudging it forward until the head bumped Leo's cheek.
Leo kept talking. "So the lab component is Thursdays, which conflicts with my training block, so I'm trying to swap into the Tuesday section," he said, while Marcus turned his head with two fingers at his jaw and pressed the head of his cock against his lips. Leo's mouth opened and took him in, mid-syllable, and he sucked calmly, cheeks working, while he finished his sentence around the thickness spreading over his tongue.
"Swap into Tuesday," Oliver said. "The Tuesday section has the better TA anyway."
"That's what I heard," Leo said, pulling off for exactly as long as the sentence took, then turning back and opening wide so Marcus could slide in again. Marcus set up a slow, even rhythm, hands resting on the chair back, hips rolling, feeding Leo his cock with the patience of a man reading a newspaper. Leo sucked him without missing a beat of dinner, swallowing around him when Marcus pushed deep, his eyes on his plate.
"Anyway," Leo said, pulling off to breathe, a string of spit swinging from his chin to Marcus's cock, "Tuesday section. Definitely."
Marcus wiped the head of his cock across Leo's cheek, leaving a wet smear, and moved on.
He stopped behind Jared. Jared was listening to Nathan rank the wrestling team by ass and had one elbow on the table. Marcus put a hand flat on the table beside Jared's plate, hooked his other hand into the back of Jared's tank top, and pulled it up over his head in one motion. Jared lifted his arms to let it happen, kept chewing.
"Pass the salt," Nathan said, reaching across.
Marcus pulled Jared's chair back from the table and bent him forward over it, one hand between his shoulder blades, and pressed his thumb straight into Jared's hole through the fabric of his shorts. Jared spread his legs without looking up from his plate and pushed back a little, an automatic adjustment, the trained response of a body two months deep into permanent use. Marcus tugged the shorts down over his cheeks in back and spat onto the exposed hole, thumb circling, working the spit in.
"So Okafor," Nathan was saying, "wide beats long. Discuss."
"Wide is better in a station," Oliver said, serving himself more potatoes. "Long is better in a lineup."
"Long is better everywhere," Derek said.
Marcus pushed his cock into Jared in one long, silent press. Jared's fork stopped an inch from his mouth. His mouth stayed open, and a low sound came out of him, quiet and unbothered, the sound of a man being filled while he ate. Marcus started moving, a steady roll of his hips, fucking him right there over the dinner table, and the chair creaked once and nobody turned around.
"Jared, you had a thought," Oliver said.
Jared pulled his head up. Marcus's rhythm didn't change, the slap of his hips against Jared's cheeks a soft, regular undertone to the conversation, like a clock.
"I was just gonna say," Jared said, breathing level between thrusts, "Munroe's soft length doesn't mean anything without the hard numbers. You need both. Data."
"Fair," Nathan said. "Somebody get his hard numbers."
"On it," Derek said, raising his glass.
Marcus sped up. Jared put the forkful in his mouth and chewed through it, his cheek pressed to the cool table, his fingers white-knuckled on the edge, a flush creeping up his neck. His ass jolted with every thrust, the roast potatoes trembling on the board. Oliver reached over and moved the carving board six inches out of the splash zone without interrupting his own sentence about the wine region.
Marcus pulled out at the edge, slick and thick, and Jared made a small huffing sound at the emptiness. Marcus stood him up by the shoulder, turned him around, and pushed him down to his knees on the floor beside the table. Jared went down easy, knees on the hardwood, and took Marcus back into his mouth, cleaning himself off him with long, slow strokes of his tongue while the conversation moved on without him.
"Anyway, the sauna," Derek said. "You should all come Thursday."
"I'm coming Friday," Nathan said. "Thursday's leg day."
"You do legs every day."
"Legs are a lifestyle."
Marcus put his hand on the back of Jared's head and held himself deep in Jared's throat, and Jared swallowed around him, eyes watering, making an indistinct glottal noise.
"Sorry, what?" Derek said, squinting at Jared.
Jared pulled off, a wet gasp, wiped his mouth. "Legs are a lifestyle," he repeated, clear as anything. Then he turned back and opened his mouth and took Marcus in again, all the way, his nose pressing into the dark hair at the base.
"Thank you," Nathan said. "It's not a joke, it's a discipline."
Marcus held Jared there for a long ten seconds, his hips giving small lazy pushes, then let go and slid out of the kid's throat with a slick sound. Jared sat back on his heels, breathed, licked his lips, and reached for his wine glass on the table without getting up. He drank half of it, still kneeling, still naked from the waist down with his shorts tangled around his thighs, then set it back and looked up at the table.
"Is there more roast?" he asked.
Oliver passed him the board. Jared carved himself a slice off his knees, ate it off the fork, and Marcus pulled him back into position by the hair and fed him his cock again, patient as ever, using the boy's mouth the way another man might lean on a doorframe.
The conversation rolled on. Leo talked about his lab partner, a guy named Christopher who apparently changed in the slowest, most theatrical way possible every single class. "He does the shirt last. He stands there in his socks for like two minutes." Derek said the volleyball guys at his gym had started a thing where they compared tan lines in the sauna. Oliver told a long, rambling story about a company retreat in his twenties and a hot tub and a colleague whose foreskin he still thought about "for scientific reasons," and Nathan cackled so hard he knocked over his glass, and Derek caught it without looking.
Marcus moved through the room the whole time, silent as a drafts. He stepped away from Jared's mouth, walked around the table, and stopped behind Leo. Leo was mid-bite. Marcus put his palm between Leo's shoulder blades and leaned him forward over the table, nudged his legs apart with a knee, and pushed two fingers into him, then three, quick and businesslike. Leo swallowed his bite and kept both hands on the table, hips tilting up, and Marcus took his cock in hand, lined up, and pushed in.
"Oh," Leo said, one syllable, and kept chewing.
Marcus fucked him over the dinner table. No ceremony, no acknowledgment, just the steady drive of his hips and Leo's body rocking forward against the tablecloth with each push, the candle flames wobbling. Leo's face stayed calm, almost bored, his eyes half lidded, an occasional grunt coming out of him between sentences.
"So anyway," Leo said, breathing hard on the downbeats, "Christopher. Every class. Same routine. I could set a metronome to it."
"You could set a metronome to you right now," Derek said, watching the salt shaker skid across the table with each thrust.
"Ha," Leo said, flat, and Marcus pushed deep and held, and Leo's sentence dissolved into a long slow exhale.
Marcus pulled out of him, wiped himself on Leo's discarded tank top from the back of the chair, and crossed the room to Nathan. Nathan was leaning back in his chair, ankles crossed. Marcus turned the chair sideways, knelt in front of it, and took Nathan's cock into his mouth without so much as a glance up.
"Oh, okay," Nathan said, delighted. "Okay. Yeah."
He kept both hands on the table and let it happen, his head tipping back, his breath going long and slow. Marcus worked him thoroughly, slow deep sucks, tongue flat, the kind of head that got arranged like a station. Nathan kept one hand loosely on Marcus's short brown hair, petting, entirely conversational.
"This is what I'm saying about him," Nathan said, to the table in general. "The technique. No teeth. Perfect pressure. He could do this professionally."
"He has a profession," Oliver said.
"Yeah but imagine if this was it. GUYS." Nathan snapped his fingers. "Marcus for state anchor. He holds his breath forever, we've seen the clinic footage."
"He's a doctor, not a competitor," Derek said.
"He could be both. Reclassify." Nathan's hips gave a small involuntary lift. Marcus took him deeper, throat relaxed around him, and Nathan's words trailed off into a hum. "Okay, wow, okay. Doing that thing with the tongue. Okay."
He came a minute later with a groan, gripping the table edge, and Marcus swallowed every pulse, drew off slowly, and stood. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, walked around the table, and sat down in the empty chair at the far end. Nobody's chair. He pulled Jared over by the wrist, turned him around, and pulled him down onto his lap, facing away, and lined himself up and sank Jared back down onto his cock. Jared settled onto him with a sigh, full to the root, and started eating his roast again, riding slow little circles while he chewed.
"This dinner is elite," Leo said, serving himself more potatoes, a thin runnel of Marcus's spit still drying at the corner of his mouth.
"The house is elite," Oliver said, lifting his glass. "The company's not bad either."
Marcus reached around Jared and poured himself a glass of wine from the open bottle. He drank half of it, set it down, put his big hands on Jared's hips, and lifted and lowered him in a slow, deep rhythm, fucking up into him with soft, regular slaps. Jared fed himself a potato between thrusts. His eyes were glazed and happy.
"Two weeks," Oliver said, to no one in particular. "State."
"Two weeks," Derek said.
"Men, not boys," Jared quoted, around a mouthful, bounced once hard on Marcus's lap, and reached for the salt.
Behind them, down the dark hall, the front door stood exactly as it had all evening. It didn't click shut. It didn't need to. At the far end of the table, in a chair no one had set, an empty wine glass caught the firelight, and no one looked at it twice.
Marcus drew off Nathan's cock with a last slow pull of his lips and stood, unhurried. He wiped his mouth and walked around the table, and Nathan let out a long breath and sagged back in his chair, reaching for his wine.
"So Munroe," Nathan said, still breathless. "Nine soft. What's he hard? Anyone know?"
"Fourteen," Derek said.
"That's a rumor."
"It's from Okafor. Okafor's seen him hard twice."
Marcus stopped behind Derek's chair. He stood there a moment, hands on the back of it, then pulled the chair out from the table and turned it sideways so Derek faced the fireplace. Derek kept talking, mid-sentence about his statistics lab, and Marcus dropped to his knees between Derek's spread legs and pushed his thighs up, hooking an arm under each knee.
"She has a mole above her lip, I can't stop staring at it," Derek said. "And she's, like, eighty percent jokes. I got a ninety on the midterm because she kept making me laugh."
Marcus pressed his face between Derek's cheeks, spread them with his thumbs, and put his tongue flat against the hole. Derek's sentence faltered for exactly one beat, a hitch in the rhythm, and then picked back up.
"Anyway. Ninety. First time I've had an A in anything since October."
Marcus ate him slowly, methodically. His tongue circled, pressed in, dragged up the whole length of the crack. Derek's knees came up over Marcus's shoulders and his head tipped back against the chair and his voice went a half-step deeper, still carrying the conversation.
"Have you looked at the registration list for that lab yet?" Nathan asked.
"Looks like forty people. Most of them seniors. I'll be the only sophomore."
Marcus pushed his tongue deep and held it there, and Derek's hips rolled up into his mouth once, a reflexive buckle. He cleared his throat.
"So. Senior-heavy. Could be fun."
"Bigger guys," Leo said, slicing meat. "Seniors are bigger."
"That's what I heard."
Marcus worked him open, saliva running down his chin, the soft sounds of tongue and hole audible between the table talk. Derek's hands found the arms of the chair and held on, and his voice went long and low when Marcus pulled back and replaced his tongue with two fingers, then three.
"Your friend Christopher," Derek said, around a shallow breath. "You think he's got game?"
"Craddock," Leo said. "No game. Pure theater. I watched him drop his towel for an hour and nothing happened."
"Some guys are like that. All show."
Marcus curled his fingers and Duncan rolled his hips into them, a slow grind, eyes half shut. He moaned, low and quiet, then found his voice again.
"Anyway. Thursday. Sauna. You're all coming."
"I'm coming Friday," Nathan said.
"We established that."
Marcus pulled his fingers out, wiped them on Derek's thigh, rose, and moved on.
He stopped beside Jared, who was still kneeling on the floor beside his chair with his shorts around his thighs, finishing his roast. Marcus put a hand on the back of Jared's head and drew him away from the chair by the hair, pulling him out onto the floor a few feet from the fireplace rug. Jared came easily, plate abandoned on the carpet.
"So my brother Alan gets back from the army on Tuesday," Jared said, from his knees.
"Oh, nice," Oliver said. "Stationed where?"
"Fort Irwin. He's been there for fourteen months." Jared shut his eyes as Marcus settled between his open legs and pushed him down on his back. "He's twenty-three now. Short red hair, real athletic, not too muscular. He's got this way of walking into a room. You feel it."
"Dominant type?" Nathan asked.
"Yeah. Real dominant."
Marcus flipped Jared's hips up off the rug, bent him over, and lowered his face between Jared's cheeks. Jared's breath caught and his hands went flat on the floor and he kept talking through it.
"He doesn't accept any of the free use stuff," Jared said. "This is the thing. Our whole family's normal about it except him. I had to sneak a pillowcase out of his old room once because my mom was storing his stuff there."
"Pillowcase for what?"
Jared's voice cracked as Marcus's tongue pushed in. "Smell, man. You know. You don't know what army smells like until you've got it on your tongue."
"He's not gonna like this conversation," Derek said.
"His problem."
Marcus rimmed him deep and patient, hands holding Jared's hips to him, and Jared talked through it in a voice that went ragged at the edges, a long monologue about Alan's sense of smell, how Alan could tell when anyone had been in his room, how he once came home on leave and found Jared asleep in his bed with his face buried in the sheets and hadn't said a word, just threw Jared out by the collar of his shirt.
"He knows, man," Jared said. "He knows what I did with his underwear. He found them in my drawer one time. I had four pairs. He laid them out on my bed in a row and stood there looking at them, and he never said anything. He just. Knew."
"Four pairs," Leo said, approving.
Marcus turned Jared over and lay on top of him, weight pinning him to the rug, and pushed into him in one long press. Jared's whole body rocked with it and his mouth fell open and he made a noise that wasn't a word, face up, firelight moving over him, Marcus's hips starting their slow drive above him.
"So Tuesday," Jared said, breathless, hands gripping Marcus's forearms. "He comes home. I haven't seen him in a year."
"Who's got a bigger dick?" Nathan asked. "Him or Marcus?"
Jared laughed, broken, as Marcus drove into him. "I don't know. That's the problem. I'm gonna find out. He owes me one, honestly. He's been gone for a year, somebody's gotta keep the family standard up."
Marcus rode him with the same patient silence, every thrust driving a short grunt out of Jared's chest, and Jared's words came between them in fragments. "I had his grey ones. The military issue ones. They were so soft. He washed them with that strong detergent and it stayed on them for months. I'd just sit in my room and hold them to my face and breathe."
"What was his reaction when he found them?" Oliver asked.
"That's the thing," Jared said, hips rolling up into Marcus. "He wasn't angry. That's what got me. He was cold. Quiet. He just looked at me and I felt like I'd been caught doing something way worse than stealing underwear. He didn't punish me. He just left them in a pile and walked out and by the time he came back to the house the drawer was empty."
"Empty how?"
"He took them all. Every pair." Jared's voice went dreamy. "He took them back."
Marcus came with a long held stillness, deep inside him, and Jared breathed through it, eyes on the ceiling. The fire popped. Somewhere in the kitchen the timer for the vegetables went off and nobody moved.
"So he's coming home," Jared said, when Marcus drew out. "Tuesday. I'm gonna be ready for him."
Marcus stood over him, wiped himself off on his own thigh, and walked around the table again. He stopped at the sideboard, picked up the salt cellar, and set it back down, then came around behind Oliver's chair. Oliver kept talking about his company retreat, the one with the hot tub and the colleague's foreskin, and Marcus reached down and undid Oliver's belt, pulled his trousers and boxers down to his knees, and knelt behind the chair.
"Oh," Oliver said, mid-sentence. "Well then."
He widened his legs. Marcus leaned in and licked him, a long deliberate stroke from perineum to tailbone, and Oliver hummed and kept talking.
"Anyway, the colleague, Bennett. We were in the hot tub and he got out and he had the kind of body you see once a decade. Swimmer's build. And his thing was genuinely, I mean this, genuinely a souvenir. I've thought about it for fifteen years."
"Did anyone ever mention it to him?" Nathan asked.
"Nobody. That's the rule of the free use world. You see the details, you keep them."
Marcus ate Oliver's ass thoroughly, hands gripping his hips, tongue working. Oliver held his glass of wine and kept it steady and the conversation rolled over the sound of it like water over a riverbed.
Across the room, Jared got up off the rug and pulled his shorts back up and went to the table to pour himself more wine. There was a shine on his hole, evidence of Marcus's work, and he didn't bother to wipe it off. He took a long drink and looked around the table.
"Alan's gonna be at the mall on Thursday," he said. "Coming home's a thing, he's, like, meeting up with his old high school friends. I'm gonna go."
"Derek's sauna plan is Thursday," Nathan said.
"I'll cut it short. He wants to see what I became." Jared sat back down in his chair, wincing slightly, and reached for the potatoes. "He's gonna be surprised."