The locker room by the gym stood empty at this hour.
There were no practices, and the long rows of green lockers stood in silence, broken only by the steady drip of water somewhere in the showers and the hum of pipes in the walls. Simon had drifted here, barely remembering how — his legs had carried him on their own, away from the cafeteria, from the laughter, from other people's eyes, to the one place that was empty now. The cola had dried in his hair, drawn the skin on his neck into a sticky crust, soaked through the collar of his hoodie. He needed to wash it off. Wash all of it off.
He began stripping off the cola-ruined clothes — the hoodie over his head, the T-shirt, everything else — until he stood naked in the middle of the empty, echoing locker room.
His body matched his whole life — as if made to be hidden from other people's eyes. Skin pale to the point of translucence, almost glowing in the grey light, without a single trace of a tan, thin and delicate as tissue paper: the skin of someone who is rarely in the sun and even more rarely touched by another's hands. Beneath it lay a fragile, unshowy beauty — the long line of the neck, the graceful collarbones, the smooth hairless chest, the narrow hips. A body untouched, clean, almost virginal — one that had never known a single caress, not one tender touch in all its life.
And across that pale, untouched body, cancelling out all its fragile beauty, spread the bruises.
There were many, and all of them were different. Yellow-green ones, already fading, on his ribs. Fresh, purple ones, the imprint of someone's fingers, on his shoulder and forearm. Old ones, eaten into the skin like a dark shadow. A whole map of pain that Simon wore on himself the way others wear clothes — and every mark had its own author. There were Jacob's marks, left almost carelessly, in passing. There were the traces of Craig's heavy fists — that one hit in earnest, with a wind-up, with relish. And beneath them, deeper and older than all the rest, lay the very first ones — his father's. The ones it had all once started with; the ones that had taught him, back in childhood, a simple and terrible thing: .
Thin, wiry, without a single ounce to spare, all sharp little bones and long lean muscle under glowing skin. Fragile. Defenceless. Beaten. And still — agonizingly, wrongly, painfully beautiful.
One of those bodies you cannot look at calmly. One of those that wake two desires at once — equal in force and opposite in nature. To break it — to finish it off, to shatter it completely, to erase that irritating, defenceless, undeserved beauty so that it no longer existed in the world. Or, on the contrary, to shield it with yourself, to screen it from everyone, to carry it off somewhere no one could ever touch it again — not with a fist, not with a cruel word, not even with a glance. And nothing, nothing at all in between.
He stepped under the shower and wrenched the tap all the way, to the hottest.
The scalding water struck his shoulders, the back of his neck, burning, and Simon nearly choked — but he didn't turn it down. He wanted it hot. He wanted the water to wash away not only that sweet chemical filth, but the stares, and the laughter, and his own cracked reflection. Steam rose around him in a thick curtain, settled on the tiles, blurred every outline, and in that hot white haze Simon finally felt covered. Hidden. He pressed his forehead to the slick tile, closed his eyes, and the hot water ran down him, mixing with tears he no longer noticed.
But what was inside, the water could not wash away.
Because even now — crushed, emptied out, under the scalding streams — he felt the same thing rising in him against his will. The moment he let his thoughts go, he surfaced again in the hot mist. Jacob. His hands, his voice, his weight. The scene in the cafeteria ran in circles through his head, but warped, poisoned: here was Jacob tipping the bottle over him — and the next instant memory slipped him not the cola but those fingers at the back of his own neck, that hot breath at his temple.
Simon slammed his palm hard against the tile. Stop. Stop, stop.
How he hated himself. For the fact that even now, after everything, after the public humiliation, some sick, rotten part of him still reached for the person who was destroying him. For the one who had just poured cola over his head to the laughter of an entire hall. It was wrong, perverse, shameful enough to make him want to tear off his own skin. And still — it reached.
He didn't know how long he stood there under the water. When he finally shut off the tap and the silence came crashing down on him, ringing in his ears, his skin was burning red. He wrapped a towel around his hips, pushed open the shower door — and stepped out into the locker room, certain it was still empty.
He was wrong.
On the bench by the far wall, sprawled out at his leisure, sat Jacob.
He wore almost nothing — just white briefs hugging his hips; his large, solid, tanned body lounged easily across the bench. He had evidently already stripped down for his workout. Hearing footsteps, he raised his head without hurry.
And for a moment went still.
Before him, in the shower doorway, stood Simon — wet, in nothing but a towel at his narrow hips, dark strands plastered to his forehead. Water ran down his pale, glowing skin, over his jutting collarbones, down his wiry arms. Slight, bared, defenceless, not yet cooled from the hot shower.
Jacob ran his gaze over him slowly, attentively, without the slightest embarrassment — from top to bottom and back. And somewhere deep inside, in that place whose existence he denied even to himself, the familiar hunger suddenly grew thicker, denser, heavier. Jacob didn't understand what was happening to him. He just felt his mouth go dry.
A familiar, predatory, triumphant smirk slowly surfaced on his face.
— Hey, baby, — he drawled quietly, and there was something new in his voice, a thick, drawn-out huskiness.
Simon froze. His heart dropped. Naked under the thin towel, wet, and not a single path to the locker with his clothes — not without passing right by him.
— Jacob... — Simon's voice trembled and broke. He backed away, pressed his shoulder blades into the cold metal of the lockers, and tears were already standing in his eyes. — Please. Leave me alone. Enough. I can't take any more, just... get off me, I'm begging you.
He was almost sobbing — hunted, pitiful, without a drop of his earlier defiance. Nothing remained of the boy who, only an hour ago in the cafeteria, had spat "jerk" at him through gritted teeth: before Jacob stood a boy scared out of his mind, driven to the very edge, ready to beg.
— Bro, chill. — Jacob rose lazily from the bench, and every movement of his was unhurried, assured, like a predator who knows the prey has nowhere to run. — I was here before you. Just got changed for practice. It starts in a couple of minutes.
He moved toward Simon — slowly, with a swagger, his body blocking off the already cramped space. Simon pressed himself harder into the lockers, but there was nowhere to retreat, and Jacob saw it perfectly well. Saw the fine trembling that ran through him — naked, wet, cornered, covered by a single towel. Saw the drops still running down the pale skin, the eyes wide with terror, the chest heaving in spasms.
And from this sight — from another's helplessness, from the way this slight, shaking boy pressed his back into the cold metal, unable either to flee or to fight back — something inside Jacob rose again, grew heavy, filled with a dark heat. He liked it. Liked it far more than he should have — and the thought of that, sliding along the very edge of his consciousness, was at once thrown off, crushed down, forbidden.
He stopped right up close. So close that Simon felt the heat of his skin, caught that very smell — heated, heavy, male, the one that clouded his head in waking life the same way it clouded it in his shameful fantasies. Large, hot, almost naked, Jacob loomed over him and braced a palm against the locker right beside his head, sealing him between himself and the cold metal.
— You know, — he said almost tenderly, and that tenderness sent a chill down Simon's spine, — I think I went a little too far in the cafeteria.
There was not a drop of remorse in his tone.
— But you were the one who called me a jerk first. Remember, baby?
Simon was breathing fast, shallow, ragged. He looked up into the darkened eyes of his tormentor, and he was shaking — he no longer knew himself whether it was from fear or from that dark, shameful thing rising in him in answer.
— Why do you keep doing this... — he forced out, almost without sound. — I never did anything to you.
Instead of answering, Jacob slowly raised his hand. Firm fingers closed around Simon's chin — hard, proprietary, forcing his head up, making him offer his face. The thumb settled on his lower lip, pressed slightly. Their faces were very close now, their breathing mingled.
— If you want me to go easier on you, baby... — Jacob breathed almost against his very lips, his voice gone hoarse, dropping low, — ...then ask. Ask me nicely.
Simon trembled harder. He knew he should push that hand away, turn aside, run — but he couldn't. His body was betraying him in the most shameful way: his breath kept catching, gooseflesh ran over his skin, and to his own horror he didn't pull away from the fingers on his face but leaned into them, barely perceptibly, the way one reaches toward warmth.
And Jacob felt it.
He went still for a moment, and something new flickered in the darkened eyes — surprise, recognition, and beneath them, deeper, a dark, lingering satisfaction. With his thumb he slowly traced Simon's trembling lower lip, tugged it down a little, never lifting his heavy gaze from him.
— Well, look at that, — he breathed hoarsely, almost mockingly, but the old lightness was gone from the mockery now — his voice had grown heavy, turned thick. — You actually like this. Don't you, baby? You like it when I'm this close.
— No... — Simon forced out almost soundlessly, and that "no" came out like the most pitiful lie in the world. Tears of shame stung his eyes. — Please...
— Please — what? — Jacob pressed closer still, flush against him, and now his hot, almost naked chest nearly touched Simon's wet one. Simon felt the icy metal of the lockers at his back, and at his front — the scorching heat of another's body, brimming with strength, mere millimetres from his own skin. Two unsteady breaths, fast and ragged, mingled in the hot air of the locker room. — For me to stop? Or not to stop?
Simon didn't answer. Couldn't. He looked up at the other's lips — a few centimetres from his own — and not a single coherent thought remained in his head. Only that deafening, shameful hunger built up over years, filling him entirely, to the brim, leaving no room for fear or for reason.
And in that instant .
The hot steam, the other's heat, the breath on his lips, the fingers on his chin, the sleepless nights, the pills, the murky daze of the last few days — all of it merged into one slow, dark, deafening wave. The thin line between what Simon had run through his inflamed mind so many times at night and what was happening now, for real, grew thinner — and snapped. How many times had he imagined this: the heat of another's body, the smell, the low hoarse voice right at his ear. And now all of it was real, mere millimetres away, and his exhausted, poisoned mind could no longer tell waking life from feverish delirium. Where the Jacob of his fantasies ended and the one standing before him in the flesh began, Simon could not have said. His body moved on its own, past reason, past fear, past any instinct of self-preservation — driven by that one shameful, pulling hunger, built up over years, which he could no longer resist.
Simon leaned forward — reached for Jacob's lips, wanting that kiss with his whole being, wanting for one single instant to have the thing he had been losing his mind over for so many nights.
Jacob didn't move.
He simply watched — frozen, attentive, cold. Watched this wet, trembling boy reach for him, and not a single thing stirred in his face: not an answer, not desire, not even disgust. Only the cold, tenacious curiosity of a predator before whose eyes the prey suddenly does something unheard of.
Because unheard of it was. All these years Simon had only submitted. Endured, bore it, gave himself up — meekly accepting everything done to him, and never, not once, daring to take a single step himself. And now this quiet, browbeaten, ever-obedient boy had suddenly reached for him on his own. Decided on his own. Of his own will, had moved to act.
And this was the thing Jacob could not stand.
In an instant the cold curiosity on his face gave way to a hard, angry, almost offended expression — like that of someone whose possession, always lying obediently in his hands, had suddenly dared to stir on its own. Who had allowed the prey to make a move? Who the hell had given it permission to reach for him first?
And, not letting the other's lips touch his own, Jacob shoved Simon away, hard, with both hands.
The screen goes dark.
To be continued in the next episode.