Chapter 13: Morning Reps
Finn woke to the dull, deep ache of used-up muscle and the sharp, bright memory of skin on skin. Sunlight cut across the unfamiliar ceiling, painting rectangles on exposed brick. He was on his stomach, face pressed into a pillow that smelled like clean cotton and Damon.
The arm draped heavily over his waist tightened, pulling him back against a solid wall of heat. Damon’s breath was warm against the nape of his neck.
“You’re thinking,” a sleep-roughened voice murmured. It wasn’t a question.
Finn hadn’t even realized he was awake. His mind was a slow, tangled reel of the previous night: the cold floor, the city lights, the raw confessions, the way everything had blurred into sensation. “My legs feel like they’ve been through a wood chipper.”
A low chuckle vibrated against his spine. “They have.”
Damon’s hand slid from his waist, tracing the line of his hip, then palming the sore curve of his ass. The touch was proprietary, assessing. “DOMS. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. It’ll peak tomorrow.”
“Fantastic,” Finn mumbled into the pillow.
The hand on him stilled. “The other soreness?”
Finn’s breath hitched. He felt a flush spread from his chest upward. He’d been trying not to catalog those specific aches, the intimate, stretched feeling that was entirely new. “A bit.”
“Good.”
Before Finn could process that, Damon shifted. His teeth grazed the tendon where Finn’s neck met his shoulder, a sharp, possessive scrape. Finn flinched, a jolt of something that wasn’t pain firing down his spine. At the same time, Damon’s thick fingers, still slick from somewhere—lube on the nightstand, Finn’s sleep-fogged brain supplied—pressed against him, working him open with a terrifying, efficient familiarity.
Finn gasped, his hands fisting in the sheets. “Damon—I’m… everything hurts.”
“I know.” Damon’s voice was a dark hum against his skin. His finger pushed deeper, a slow, deliberate invasion. “Recovery isn’t passive. Blood flow. Neural rewiring.” He added a second finger, the stretch burning in the best, worst way. Finn buried his face in the pillow, a muffled sound escaping him. “You think I’d let you lie here and stagnate?”
It was coaching. It was something else entirely. The lines had evaporated. Damon’s other arm hooked under Finn’s torso, and with a grunt of effort that spoke of carefully managed strength, he flipped him onto his stomach. The movement lit up every protesting muscle. Finn groaned, pushing up onto his forearms, but Damon’s palm pressed between his shoulder blades, holding him down.
“Stay there.”
The sound of a cap clicking open. The chill of more lube. Then the blunt, insistent pressure of Damon against him, not fingers this time.
Finn went rigid, his knuckles white on the sheets. “Wait—”
“Breathe out,” Damon commanded, his voice steady, a rock in the storm of Finn’s nerves. He obeyed, exhaling shakily, and Damon pushed in, one relentless, continuous motion that filled him utterly, stretching the ache into a sharp, stunning fullness.
A strangled cry tore from Finn’s throat. It was too much. He was too sore, too raw, too open.
Damon bottomed out, his body covering Finn’s, his weight a crushing comfort. He didn’t move. His lips were at Finn’s ear, his breathing controlled. “Now breathe in. Deep. Into your diaphragm.”
Finn sucked in a ragged breath, his body trembling. The initial shockwave of penetration receded, morphing into a deep, throbbing pressure. It wasn’t like last night. Last night was frenetic, equal. This was different. This was ownership. A claiming in the clear, sober light of morning.
“Recovery starts now,” Damon growled, and began to move.
His thrusts were slow, piston-like, and devastatingly precise. Each one dragged against every over-sensitized nerve ending, a brutal massage that bordered on punishment. Finn’s face was mashed into the pillow, his cries muffled. He clutched the sheets, the fabric threatening to rip. His muscles, already screaming from the competition, sang a new, discordant anthem with every stroke.
Damon’s pace was relentless, a metronome of possession. One hand stayed planted between Finn’s shoulders, pinning him. The other gripped his hip, fingers digging in, surely leaving bruises. He was quiet, save for the controlled rush of his breath and the soft, obscene sound of their joining.
“You feel that?” Damon’s voice was strained, tight with his own restraint. “That’s the inflammation. The micro-tears. I’m moving it through you.”
It was insane. It was physiotherapy from a demon. A sob hiccupped out of Finn. It wasn’t from pain, not exactly. It was from the overwhelming, contradictory flood of sensation—the hurt and the pleasure knotting together until he couldn’t tell them apart. His body, wrecked and victorious, was being worshiped and dismantled all at once.
Damon’s rhythm hitched. His control slipped a fraction, his thrusts coming faster, deeper. The bedframe knocked softly against the wall in a steady, rhythmic tap. The morning sun felt accusatory, illuminating the dust motes dancing above their tangled forms.
“You’re my good ache,” Damon rasped, the words fractured. His hand slid from Finn’s back, around his flank, finding him hard and leaking against the rumpled sheet. He took him in hand, his grip firm and perfectly synchronized with his drives.
That did it. The twin pressures, inside and out, coalesced into a single, unbearable point of tension. Finn shattered. His release was wrenched from him, a silent, back-arching convulsion that squeezed around Damon, pulling him over the edge a moment later. Damon’s final thrust was a stutter, a deep, grinding press as he emptied himself with a low, gut-punched groan.
The silence afterward was absolute, broken only by their labored breathing. Damon collapsed onto him, his full weight pressing Finn into the mattress. The smell of sex and sweat was overwhelming. Finn felt boneless, liquefied, completely remade.
After a long minute, Damon rolled off, lying on his back beside him. He stared at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling. Finn didn’t move. He couldn’t.
“Shower,” Damon said finally, his voice flat. “Then food. Your macronutrients are behind.”
An hour later, Finn was scrubbed pink and dressed in a pair of Damon’s sweats that swam on him. He sat at the polished concrete kitchen island, watching Damon move with a focused, economical grace. There was no trace of the animal from the bedroom. This was Coach Kage, analyzing, providing.
A plate slid in front of him: six egg whites scrambled with spinach, a perfect scoop of avocado, a complex carb source of roasted sweet potato. A tall glass of water with an electrolyte tablet fizzing inside completed the picture.
Damon leaned against the opposite counter, sipping black coffee from a plain white mug. He was watching Finn eat. “Your glute medius will be the limiting factor tomorrow. We’ll do isometric holds. Active release.”
Finn chewed, the food tasteless in his mouth. The domesticity was weirder than the sex. “You don’t have to… I can get my own food.”
“Your food is wrong,” Damon stated, as if commenting on the weather. “You under-eat protein and over-rely on simple carbs post-workout. It’s why you crash.”
“Right.” Finn poked at his eggs. The silence stretched. The memory of Damon’s body moving over him, inside him, was a live wire in his brain. “Your back… is it okay?”
Damon’s eyes flickered, a brief storm crossing his features before it was shut down. “It’s fine.” He took another sip of coffee. “You need to foam roll today. Twenty minutes minimum. I’ll show you the points.”
“Damon.”
“What.”
Finn put his fork down. “Last night. You said things.”
“I say a lot of things.”
“About your disc. About me being your… proxy.” The word felt ugly now, in the sunlight.
Damon was quiet for a long moment. He set his mug down with a definitive click. “It’s the truth. It’s not a secret anymore. Does it change the programming?”
“I don’t know.”
“It shouldn’t.” Damon pushed off the counter and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to Finn. The city sprawled below, indifferent. “The programming works. The results are real. Your body is the proof. My motives are irrelevant.”
“They’re not irrelevant to me.”
Damon turned. His face was unreadable. “Why? Because you thought it was all about you? Your potential? Your pretty green eyes?” He shook his head, a sharp, dismissive motion. “It’s about the work. The work is pure. I use you to do the work I can’t. You use me to learn how. It’s a transaction. A highly effective one.”
It was the coldest thing he’d ever said. Finn felt it like a physical blow to the sternum. A transaction. He looked down at the perfectly arranged food, the fuel for a machine. Is that all he was? A vessel for Damon’s abandoned ambition?
“The other stuff,” Finn whispered, his voice small. “The… everything else. Is that part of the transaction?”
Damon didn’t answer immediately. He walked back to the island, placing his hands flat on the cool surface. He looked tired. Not sleep-tired. A deeper fatigue. “No,” he said, the word quiet. “That’s the complication.”
He looked at Finn, and for a fleeting second, the coach was gone. It was just a man, standing in his sunlit kitchen, looking at a wreck of a boy he’d pulled from the competition floor and into his bed. A man with a broken back and a fire he couldn’t put out.
“Eat your food, Finn,” he said, his voice softer now. “The protein is for your muscles. The carbs are for your central nervous system. My issues are mine to manage.”
Finn picked up his fork. He ate. It was fuel. Damon was right. The work was pure. His body was his own. It was stronger today than it was yesterday. That was the only truth that mattered.
The rest—the hands on him in the dark, the words spoken into his skin, the terrifying, addictive feeling of being used and seen all at once—that was just a complication. He’d train around it.
He’d train around it. The thought became a mantra as he methodically finished every bite on the plate, the eggs and sweet potato a bland, necessary paste. Damon watched him, silent now, sipping his coffee as if waiting for Finn to bolt. Finn didn’t. He drank the electrolyte water, the faint citrus taste doing little to cut the bitterness in his mouth.
“I need to get my stuff from the arena,” Finn finally said, pushing the empty plate away. His voice sounded foreign, detached. “My phone, my clothes.”
Damon gave a single nod. “I’ll drive you.”
“It’s okay. I’ll take the train.”
“The train is a forty-minute trip with a transfer. The DOMS will lock up your hips.” Damon’s tone brooked no argument. It was pure coach-logic, unimpeachable. He was already moving, rinsing his mug in the sink. “Shower again if you want. I’ll be downstairs in ten.”
The drive was silent. The SUV smelled of the same sterile lavender, the city passing in a blur of grey and green. Finn stared out the window, watching people live their normal lives. He felt anything but normal. He felt dissected, reassembled with a new, fragile wiring.
Damon pulled into the arena’s nearly empty lot. The giant structure felt hollow in the daylight, a carcass picked clean. “I’ll wait here,” Damon said, putting the car in park but leaving the engine running. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
Finn just nodded, getting out. The walk to the competitor’s entrance was longer than he remembered. Each step sent fresh jolts of pain through his quads and glutes. He found his bag in the lost-and-found, a lonely lump on a metal shelf. As he slung it over his shoulder, a wave of dizziness hit him—exhaustion, low blood sugar, emotional whiplash.
He steadied himself against the cool concrete wall, breathing through it. His phone, dug from the bag’s front pocket, showed several missed calls from Sarah and a string of texts that grew increasingly frantic. The last one read: Where did you disappear to? Diesel whisk you away for a secret podium celebration? ;) He shoved the phone back, his face hot.
On his way out, he passed the main hall. The competition floor was already being dismantled, workers rolling up mats and breaking down scaffolding. In the centre, a janitor was mopping the exact spot where he’d collapsed into Damon’s arms. Finn stood watching for a moment, the roar of the crowd just a ghost in his ears. That person, the one who’d crossed the finish line, seemed like a stranger now.
When he returned to the SUV, Damon was on his own phone, his voice a low, professional murmur. “...metrics were clean. The spike was expected given the final push… Agreed. Next cycle will focus on that threshold.” He ended the call as Finn got in, tossing his phone into the centre console.
“Your public awaits,” Damon said flatly, nodding toward Finn’s bag.
“Just Sarah.”
“She’s your team. You should answer her.”
“I will.” Finn fastened his seatbelt, the click loud in the quiet cabin. He didn’t know what to say. Sorry, I was busy being unraveled by our coach. Then served eggs.
Damon didn’t drive off immediately. He drummed his fingers on the wheel, staring ahead at the now-barren asphalt where the crowd had been. The tension in the car wasn’t about competition now. It was about everything that existed in the silent spaces between his professional summary. It was about two showers in two hours and the careful distance he kept between them.
“This complicates things,” Damon stated, as if reading his mind.
“You said that.” Finn turned to look at him. Damon’s profile was sharp, a little drawn in the unforgiving morning light. “The complication.”
“It does.”
“So what’s the protocol?”
Damon finally looked at him. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “There isn’t one. This is off-script.”
“You hate off-script.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Damon’s lips. It was gone in a flash. “I do.” He started the car and pulled out of the lot. “The training continues. The goals remain. Nothing changes there.”
“And the rest?”
Damon drove for a full minute before answering. “We manage it.”
They were back at the apartment. Finn felt unmoored, a spectator in his own life. Damon moved to the open living area and picked up a dense foam roller from beside the sleek sofa. “Shirt off. On the floor. Face down.”
The command was so clinical it was a relief. Finn peeled off the borrowed sweatshirt, lying prone on the expensive, low-pile rug. The air was cool on his skin.
Damon knelt beside him, his weight causing the floor to creak faintly. He placed the roller under Finn’s right quad. “Breathe in.” Before Finn could ready himself, Damon pushed down, rolling the firm cylinder along the length of his thigh.
A searing, bright pain lanced through the muscle. Finn hissed, his fists clenching. “Fuck!”
“Breathe out,” Damon instructed, unmoved, holding the pressure on a particularly vicious knot. The pain was exquisite, a deep, mechanical scream from within the tissue. He worked the roller slowly, meticulously, from hip to knee and back. Tears of agony pricked Finn’s eyes.
“This is fascial release,” Damon explained, his voice a detached monotone. “It hurts. It’s supposed to.” He moved the roller to the inner thigh, eliciting another sharp gasp. “The other night, the competition, the… everything. It’s all created adhesions. We’re breaking them up.”
It felt less like therapy and more like a tactical dismantling. Each precise, painful movement was a correction. Damon’s hands were impersonal, guiding the roller, applying pressure. Yet Finn was hyper-aware of every point of contact, the warmth of Damon’s fingers against his trembling skin.
When Damon shifted to the glutes, Finn buried his face in his crossed arms. This was worse. The roller found the deep, aching soreness from that morning, amplifying it into a sharp, singular point of torture. He couldn’t stifle a low groan.
Damon paused. His hand, which had been guiding the roller, stilled. It rested on the small of Finn’s back, just above the waistband of his sweats. The touch was different. It wasn’t guiding anymore. It was just… there. Warm. Heavy.
Then, without a word, Damon’s fingers curled. They dug into the sore, overworked muscle of Finn’s right glute with a purposeful, possessive pressure. It wasn’t part of the release. It was a grip. A claiming.
“You will be sore tomorrow,” Damon said, his voice low and close to Finn’s ear. The clinical tone was gone, replaced by something dark and deliberate. “You will feel this. Here.” He pressed harder, his fingertips surely leaving marks. “Every time you sit. Every time you move. You will remember.”
DAMON MARKS HIS TERRITORY.
It wasn’t a bruise from passion. It was a calculated imprint. A reminder that would bloom under the skin, a dark constellation of ownership Finn would carry with him into lectures, into the gym, into his own bed. A stamp on the very engine of his performance.
Damon released his grip. The air rushed back to the spot, cold and shocking. He picked up the roller again, moving to the other leg as if nothing had happened. “Your turn. Show me you remember the protocol. Left quad.”
Finn’s mind was reeling. He took the roller with shaking hands, mimicking the motion on his other leg. The pain was secondary now, drowned out by the throbbing echo of that grip. It wasn’t a complication to be managed. It was a fact, pressed into his flesh.
He finished the set, the movements robotic. When he sat up, Damon was standing by the window, his back to him, looking out. The city was waking up, unaware.
“We train tomorrow at six,” Damon said, not turning around. “Bring your gear. Your macro plan is on the counter.”
Finn dressed in silence, pulling on his own clothes from his arena bag. They smelled of yesterday’s sweat and triumph. He walked to the kitchen island. There was indeed a single sheet of paper, precise macros and meal timings laid out in Damon’s sharp handwriting. Next to it sat a small, unmarked tub of a salve. Arnica, for bruising.
He picked up the paper and the tub. The cool metal of the salve container felt like an accusation. He looked at Damon’s broad back, still turned to him, a silhouette against the vast window.
“Damon.”
A pause. “What.”
“Is this part of the transaction, too?” Finn held up the salve.
Damon finally turned. His face was guarded, but his eyes held a faint, weary challenge. “That’s for the muscle soreness. The marks are collateral.” He took a step closer, his gaze dropping to the paper in Finn’s hand. “The plan is for the athlete. The rest…” He stopped, seeming to choose his words with unusual care. “The rest is for the complication.”
Finn held his look for a long moment, then turned and walked to the door. He didn’t say goodbye. The elevator ride down was a descent into a new kind of quiet. The soreness was a deep, pervasive ache. The specific, bruised spot on his ass was a brand.
He stepped out into the morning, the city noise crashing over him. He had a macro plan in his hand, a bruise forming on his body, and a complication buried in his chest where his lungs still burned from the race. He started the slow, painful walk to the train station, each step a reminder. He would train around it. He would have to. The mark was already made.