I woke up at 3 in the morning drenched in sweat with my cock throbbing so hard I could feel my pulse in it.
The sheets were soaked and clinging to my skin and every inch of fabric felt like a hand, every fold and crease dragging against nerve endings that had no business being this sensitive.
The only thing in my head was the smell of Damjan Kessler’s skin, that same sharp, warm skin-scent, the electric thing underneath it louder now, amplified, playing on repeat behind my closed eyes.
My hips rocked against the mattress without my permission and my stomach was tight and slick with sweat and I was so hard it hurt and so confused it scared me and so angry at both that I bit the pillow and said fuck into it until the word lost its meaning.
I took a cold shower, stood under it gasping because the water hit my overheated skin and every droplet felt like a fingernail dragged slow across raw nerve.
My cock wouldn’t go down, it just stood there furious and aching.
Cold water pounded my shoulders and my back and ran down my stomach and none of it helped because the second I closed my eyes I could smell him again.
My body rolled toward the memory the way you’d roll toward a warm body in bed.
I had to brace both hands against the tile and lock my arms and breathe through my teeth until the heat finally, finally pulled back to a level where I could think about something other than a man I’d spoken 40 words to.
I didn’t sleep again, and I texted Tomáš at 4:30 because I needed anything in my head that wasn’t the captain’s scent and the captain’s jaw and the captain’s grey eyes moving down my body.
You awake?
Twenty seconds later: It is 4:30 Nico.
Why are you awake.
Are you dying.
Maybe.
Do not die before Thursday because I have a bet with Baresi that you survive the first week and I need the money.
Heartwarming.
Are you actually okay?
I typed something’s wrong with me and deleted it, typed I think I’m going insane and deleted that, sent I’m fine, go back to sleep and put my phone face down on the mattress.
Because my hands were still shaking and the sheets still smelled like my sweat and underneath my sweat there was another scent, faint, sweet, almost sticky, and it wasn’t a smell I’d ever produced before and it was coming from my skin.
By 6 I was at the training ground because staying in that flat with my own body wasn’t an option anymore.
The corridors were empty and I was heading for the gym when I smelled him, 30 seconds before he turned the corner, 50 metres of stone corridor between us.
And I stopped walking because my cock was already thickening in my shorts and my face was flushing and I pressed my back against the wall and breathed through my mouth and thought about cold water and tax returns and my nan’s cat and absolutely anything other than the scent that was making my blood run south so fast I was dizzy.
Kessler came around the corner and stopped dead.
“You’re— you’re early,” he said.
“Couldn’t sleep.” “That’s— that’s going to get worse.” “Why?” His eyes moved down my body, a fast sweep that caught on my flushed throat and my chest and went lower for a fraction of a second before snapping back up, and his nostrils flared and his jaw went tight and he stepped back.
“You didn’t take the supplements.” “I took them.” “Then they’re not working.” He gripped the back of his own neck, hard.
“You need to see Dr.
Vos today.” “I don’t need a doctor, I need you to tell me what’s happening to me.” “Wray—” “I heard you through a stone wall yesterday.
I can smell the groundskeeper’s coffee from a building across the car park.
I woke up at 3 in the morning with a fever that doesn’t register on a thermometer and my body doing things I can’t control, so either I’m losing it completely or you know exactly what this is and you’re choosing not to tell me.” “I’m not— I’m not telling you because you’re not ready.” “Bullshit.” “It’s not bullshit, it’s—” “When does it stop?
You said it gets worse.
So what, I just wait until I can’t function?
Because I’m already halfway there, I woke up tonight and I couldn’t—” I stopped because the next words were I couldn’t stop thinking about you, I was hard for an hour and it was your scent that did it, and I couldn’t say that in a corridor at 6 in the morning to a man I barely knew.
“Couldn’t what?” he said, and his voice had dropped low and rough and the sound of it went through my stomach and straight down.
“Forget it.” “Couldn’t what, Wray?” “I said forget it.” “You brought it up.
Finish.” I looked at him and he looked at me and neither of us was breathing right and the corridor was too narrow and too warm and he was close enough that his scent was thick in my throat and I could feel myself getting harder and I was praying he couldn’t see it but the way his eyes flickered down and back up told me he could.
“You told Henrik you know what I am,” I said, because it was safer than the truth.
“I do.” “Then tell me.” “I can’t.” “You mean you won’t.” “I mean if I tell you right now, in this corridor, with you looking at me the way you’re looking at me and smelling the way you smell, I will not be able to stop at telling you.” The words hit the air and his face changed as he heard what he’d just admitted, the crack splitting through 14 years of control.
He stepped back fast until his spine was against the wall and his hands were fisted so tight at his sides the scarred knuckles were white and his chest was heaving and there was a flush on his throat and his ears and the bridge of his nose and he was as wrecked as I was, the only difference was he knew why.
“Dr.
Vos,” he said, voice destroyed.
“Today.
Tell her— tell her Kessler sent you and tell her the supplements aren’t working.” He turned and walked and I called after him, “What am I becoming, Kessler?” and he stopped at the end of the corridor with his back to me, his shoulders rising and falling, and he said it quiet enough that no human should’ve heard it from that distance but I caught every syllable: “The same thing I am.” And then he was gone, and I was standing in an empty corridor at dawn with my pulse pounding and my skin on fire and the front of my shorts tented, humiliating, if anyone had been there to see it, and the taste of copper in my mouth and the scent of him still everywhere, on the air, in my lungs, on the surface of my skin where it would stay for hours no matter how many times I washed my hands.
I pressed my back against the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the cold stone floor because my legs wouldn’t hold me, and I stayed there until my breathing slowed and my cock finally softened and the corridor stopped smelling like him, and it took a very long time.