Chapter 5: The Coach
The chlorine sting was a permanent fixture in the back of Bart’s throat, a chemical ghost that lingered days after the team had finished practice. He knelt on the cold, damp tiles of the locker room, the rough grout biting into his knees. The air was a thick soup of steam, cheap body spray, and the fertile, salty smell of exertion.
“You’re getting faster, at least,” Chloe said, her voice echoing from the bench where she lounged, toweling her short blonde hair. “Still using too much teeth.”
“Sorry,” Bart mumbled, the word muffled.
“Don’t apologize, just do better,” Val called from her open locker, not even turning around. She was a silhouette of taut muscle and disdain in the steam. “It’s not complicated.”
He’d lost track of the days since the party at Val’s house. A strange, brutal routine had cemented itself. A text would come—never from Val, usually from Sonia or Maria—with a time and a location. The janitor’s closet. The visitor’s bleachers after a game. Once, terrifyingly, the faculty parking lot. He’d show up, heart hammering, and they’d use him. For his mouth, mostly. Sometimes just to make him watch, to tease him until he ached, a game of touch-and-don’t-come supervised by Val’s glacial stare. Bex’s strap-on had remained in its toy bag since that first night, a promise and a threat that hung over everything.
He was finishing with Kimberly, his jaw screaming in protest, when the main door to the locker room swung open with a decisive thud.
The change was instantaneous. The lazy, post-coital chatter died. Kimberly scrambled back, grabbing for her towel. Val slowly closed her locker door, her movement deliberate. Bart remained on his knees, frozen, a deer in the stark fluorescent light.
Coach Tiana Mills stood in the doorway, a clipboard tucked under her arm. She was in her late forties, built with a former athlete’s powerful frame that her tidy polo shirt and track pants couldn’t soften. Her gaze swept the room—the scattered towels, the half-dressed girls, Bart kneeling shirtless and exposed in the middle of the tile floor. Her expression didn’t change. It was a flat, professional mask of assessment.
“Ladies,” she said, her voice a low, resonant alto that required no amplification. “Showers. Now. Dressed and outside for post-game cooldown in five.”
No one moved.
“I believe I gave an instruction,” Coach Mills said, her eyes now fixed on Val.
That broke the spell. Like scolded children, the team grabbed their things and filed into the adjoining shower room, a silent procession. Val was the last to go, shooting a look at Bart that was impossible to decipher—a warning, maybe, or just indifference. The door swung shut behind her, leaving Bart alone in the vast, echoing space with the coach.
The hum of the lights seemed to grow louder.
“Get up,” Coach Mills said. She didn’t shout. She didn’t need to.
Bart stumbled to his feet, fumbling for his glasses on the bench, pawing at his jeans. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t get the button done.
“Leave them. Follow me.”
She turned and walked out, not checking to see if he obeyed. He had no choice but to follow, clutching his unbuckled pants, his socks slipping on the polished hallway floor. They passed the empty pool, its blue water eerily still, and entered a short corridor marked ‘ATHLETIC DIRECTOR.’ Her office was a small, cluttered space smelling of old coffee and liniment. Trophies lined a high shelf. Team photos stared down from the walls. She pointed to a hard plastic chair in front of a cluttered desk.
“Sit.”
He sat, perching on the edge. She walked around the desk and settled into her own chair, which groaned under her weight. For a long moment, she just looked at him. Her eyes traveled from his flushed face, down his bare chest, to the obvious, humiliating bulge straining against his open fly.
“Bartholomew Higgins,” she finally said, reading his name off a file she hadn’t opened. “AP Computer Science. No athletic enrollment.”
“Y-yes, Coach.”
“Explain what I just saw.”
The lie tumbled out, rehearsed in a hundred terrified daydreams. “They… they made me! Val, she texted me, and they forced me, I didn’t want—”
She held up a single hand. He fell silent.
“Bart,” she said, almost kindly. She leaned forward, lacing her fingers together on the desk. “Do you see that little smoked dome up in the corner of my locker room? By the emergency shower?”
He looked up, though he couldn’t see it from here. He knew it was there. A security camera. His blood turned to ice.
“I review footage. Routinely. For security. For… player safety.” She picked up a remote control and pointed it at a small monitor on a shelf. The screen flickered to life. It showed a grainy, high-angle view of the locker room from three days prior. A figure—him—crept in, went straight to the large hamper of used towels, and buried his face in it, his shoulders heaving.
“The towel bin thing,” Coach Mills said dismissively, clicking the monitor off. “You weren’t forced. You’re a Peeping Tom who got peeped. A little pervert who followed his dick right into the lion’s den.”
Bart felt the room tilt. There was no air. His confession, his secret shame, played back for this intimidating woman in a stuffy office. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“You think I don’t know my girls?” she continued, her voice dropping to a confidential murmur. “I’ve coached Val since she was fourteen. I know the look she gets when she’s found a new toy to break. They’re champions. They carry a lot of pressure. They need… an outlet. A stress relief.” She let the term hang in the air, thick and purposeful. “Apparently, they’ve chosen you.”
She stood up slowly. The chair rolled back and hit the wall. She walked around the desk, her movements fluid and full of a contained, athletic power that made Val seem like a coltish teenager. She stopped in front of him, so close he could smell her perfume—something clean and sharp, like gin and ice.
“So here is what is going to happen,” she said, her tone leaving no room for discussion. “You are going to continue to be their stress relief. You will be discreet. You will be available. And you will not complain. Because if you do, that tape, and several others, gets emailed to the disciplinary board. And your life, as you know it, is over.”
He was crying now, hot, silent tears of shame and helplessness. He nodded, a jerky, broken movement.
“Good.” She reached down and undid his button and zipper herself, her movements brisk, efficient. “Now. My girls have been working you over pretty good, huh? All that mouth stuff.” She pushed his jeans and boxers down to his ankles. “But they’re kids. They play. They don’t understand real… appetite.”
He stared, mortified, as she turned and leaned over her desk, shuffling some papers aside with a sweep of her arm. The track pants she wore stretched taut over a backend that was legend in the school—broad, powerful, seemingly carved from oak and then generously rounded. She looked back over her shoulder.
“You’re going to fuck me, Bart. Right here. And you’re going to do it properly.”
“I… I can’t…” he whispered.
“You can,” she stated. “And you will. That’s not a request, it’s the next drill. Consider it… advanced training. For your new role.”
She produced a small bottle of lotion from a desk drawer, squirted a glob into her palm, and reached back. There was a soft, slick sound. Then she looked at him again, her expression now one of bored expectation. “Now. Unless you want me to press ‘send’.”
Something in him fractured. A final, thin veneer of resistance shattered. He stood on trembling legs, his awkward, ungainly body moving as if commanded by wires. He stepped out of the pants pooled at his feet and moved forward, the cold air of the office a shocking contrast to the heat of his own skin.
It was nothing like the comics, nothing like his furtive, frantic imaginings. It was a brutal, mechanical transaction. She guided him with a practiced hand, a low, grunted “Easy” her only instruction as he pressed forward into an impossible, tight heat. A choked sound escaped him—part pain, part shock, part overwhelming, degrading sensation.
She didn’t moan. She talked. “That’s it,” she muttered, bracing her hands on the desk, her head bowed. “There you go. God, they weren’t kidding about the equipment… fucking hell… alright, move. Don’t just stand there.” Her voice was a steady, commanding rhythm underneath his ragged breaths.
He obeyed, his hips moving in clumsy, desperate pistons. The sounds were obscene, wet and sharp in the quiet office, underscored by the squeak of her desk with every thrust. Trophies rattled on the high shelf. A framed photo of a championship team wobbled. He was adrift in a sea of sensation—the pungent smell of the lotion, the coarse fabric of her track pants under his fingers where he gripped her hips, the overwhelming, clenching pressure that threatened to unravel him immediately.
“You belong to the team now, Bart,” she said, her voice strained but controlled as she pushed back against him. “You’re our little secret. Our pet. You come when you’re called. You understand?”
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, his glasses slipping down his sweaty nose, his entire world narrowed to this dark, demanding heat. He was a tool. A thing. The realization was horrifying and, in some deep, shameful recess of his soul, perversely liberating. All the anxiety, the social fear, the awkwardness—it was all burned away in this crude, defining fire.
“Coach—” he gasped, a warning.
“Not in me,” she ordered, shoving him back so suddenly he almost fell. He stumbled back, releasing onto the industrial tile floor with a shudder that racked his whole body, a sharp cry torn from his throat.
For a moment, there was only the sound of his panting. Then, calmly, she straightened up, pulling her clothes back into place. She plucked a few tissues from a box on her desk, handed them to him without looking, and then used a few for herself, discarding them in the trash can with a finality.
“Clean yourself up,” she said, her voice perfectly normal again, as if they’d just discussed play strategies. She walked back around and sat in her chair, opening the file folder. “The team has conditioning at seven AM tomorrow. I’ll let Val know you’ll be by after school for… recovery. Don’t be late.”
He dressed with numb fingers, the silence in the room louder than any noise. He was at the door when her voice stopped him.
“And Bart?”
He turned.
A small, cold smile touched her lips. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Welcome to the team.”