I’d tried Dr.
Vos twice already—once from the training ground car park, hunched in my car with the door locked, and once from the flat, standing in the kitchen with my hands shaking so hard I dropped the phone.
Both times, voicemail.
The call went to voicemail for the 3rd time and I left a message that was mostly breathing and the words “call me back, it’s Nico, it’s…
just call me back” and hung up and set the phone on the kitchen counter because my hands were shaking too hard to hold it.
Half past 7 in the evening and the flat was quiet because the bakery downstairs was closed and the couple upstairs were out.
I was alone and my body was making me pay for it.
Training had been 40 minutes of trying not to exist, 3 missed passes I’d normally play blind, the whole cool-down spent at the far end of the pitch because Kessler was at the near end and every time the wind shifted I could smell him from 60 yards and my cock would start to fill, so I’d have to turn away and pretend I was stretching my hamstrings.
Tomáš texted while I was standing in my kitchen staring at a bowl of pasta I couldn’t eat.
You were strange today.
Not funny strange, but worry strange.
Call me if you need to.
I typed I’m fine and deleted it because the words had stopped meaning anything 3 days ago, typed the truth and deleted that too, sent a thumbs up and put the phone down.
I tried the shower, cold, but the water on my skin was making everything worse because every drop was landing amplified, each one a small bright point of contact that my body was reading as touch, actual touch, fingers and palms on my shoulders and my chest and running down my stomach, and my cock was hardening under the spray and I turned the water off and stood there dripping and furious with my own biology.
My mum rang while I was standing naked in the bathroom with my hands braced on the sink and my erection curving up against my stomach.
“Hiya love, just a quick one—” “Mum, I can’t talk right now.” “2 minutes, your nan’s boiler’s gone again and she’s staying at mine and she wanted me to ask if you’ve been eatin’ the—” “Mum.
I really can’t.” “You sound funny.
Are you sick?
Because you sounded funny yesterday too and I’ve been worrying and your nan says—” “I’m in the shower, I’ll ring you tomorrow, love you, bye.” I hung up on my mother for the first time since I was 16 and she caught me sneaking out to a house party in Croydon.
I felt guilty about it for approximately 4 seconds before my body redirected every nerve I owned back to the situation between my legs.
The situation was this: I’d been semi-hard since lunchtime, I’d been fighting it for 8 hours, and the fight was over.
I didn’t make it to the bed, just wrapped my hand around my cock right there against the bathroom wall, back against the cold tile, and the contact of my own fist pulled a groan out of me that echoed off the walls and I stroked once, twice, and pre-cum was already running down my knuckles and my hips were jerking forward into my grip.
I closed my eyes and there he was behind my eyelids, Kessler, grey eyes and the scar through his eyebrow and the flush crawling up his neck in the corridor that morning and his voice saying I will not be able to stop at telling you.
And I tightened my grip and pumped harder and a sound came out of me that was his name, the first syllable swallowed by a moan that bounced off the tile.
I was thinking about his hands gripping my hips, his scarred fingers pressing into skin, his mouth on my throat, his voice in my ear telling me to stay still, and my hand was working my cock fast and rough.
And I was already close and the orgasm was building at the base of my spine and then my other hand was reaching behind me because my body was demanding contact I hadn’t planned on, and when my fingers slid between my cheeks I stopped breathing.
I was wet, soaking, warm and dripping, and the wetness had no source I could name, it was just there, leaking out of me, running down the inside of my thighs, and I should’ve stopped and I was scared but my fingers were already circling my hole and the sensation was so intense my knees buckled.
I slid down the tile wall until I was sitting on the cold floor with my legs spread and my cock in one hand and my other hand between my legs and every rational thought I’d had this week dissolving in the fever rolling off my skin.
I pushed one finger in and my mouth opened and no sound came out because the feeling was past anything I had a noise for, wet and tight and my body pulling my finger deeper, clenching around it in pulses.
And I’d been fucked before, 2 times, both times quick and forgettable with a bloke whose name I’d scrubbed from memory years ago, and neither time had felt like a 10th of this because my body had never been this responsive, this open, this desperate to have fingers inside it.
I pushed a 2nd finger in and started riding my own hand and I was gone, past embarrassment and past confusion and past any thought more complex than more and harder and don’t stop, and my cock was leaking a steady stream down my wrist and the wet sounds of my fingers inside me were obscene and loud in the tiled room.
I was rocking my hips down onto my hand and stroking my cock and the two sensations were feeding each other, the fullness inside making my cock leak harder, the pressure on my cock making me clench around my fingers.
And every clench sent a spike of pleasure through my stomach and up my spine and I could feel the orgasm building in two places at once, at the base of my cock and deep inside me, converging, climbing, and I was saying please out loud to nobody and meaning it.
I came with Kessler’s name in my mouth and my back slamming against the tile and my cock pulsing so hard the first shot hit my collarbone and my hole clamping down on my fingers in waves that rolled through me one after another after another, each contraction firing a bolt of pleasure up through my chest and behind my eyes.
I kept coming, couldn’t stop coming, the orgasm rolling through me in sets, one peak cresting into the next, and my voice was cracked and raw and I was saying fuck, fuck, fuck in a rhythm that matched the clenching and the pulsing and the warm fluid leaking out around my fingers and dripping onto the tile beneath me.
When it stopped I couldn’t move.
My legs were shaking so hard the muscles were jumping under the skin and my hand was still between my legs and pulling my fingers out made me whimper, a small ugly sound I bit my lip to kill.
My cock was softening against my thigh.
And cum was drying on my stomach and my chest and the tile behind my head and the floor underneath me was wet, not from the shower but from me, the clear warm fluid pooling between my legs, more of it than made any sense, smelling sweet and thick and animal in the small tiled room.
I lifted my hand and looked at my fingers and they were coated, glistening under the bathroom light, and the scent hit me full in the face, the same sweet smell from yesterday but denser now, richer, and it was coming from inside my body.
My body was producing a fluid I had no name for from a place that shouldn’t produce fluid, and it had given me the most intense orgasm of my life, and the residual pleasure was still humming through my muscles, and even now, spent and shaking on the bathroom floor, a part of me wanted to push my fingers back in and chase it again and that wanting was louder than the fear and I didn’t know which part of that scared me more, honestly.
I sat there for— I don’t know, a long time, with my back against the wall and the evidence of whatever I was becoming drying on my skin and cooling on the tile, and I didn’t cry but I stared at the ceiling and breathed and pressed my thumb against the compass tattoo on my wrist until the shaking stopped.
My phone buzzed on the sink above me.
“Nico, it’s Dr.
Vos.” Calm and clinical with an urgency underneath that I’d never heard from her.
“I got your messages.
I need you to listen to me.” “What’s happening to me?” “Your body’s— your body’s changing, and the changes are accelerating faster than I anticipated, and I need to see you before they progress further.” “That’s not a fuckin’ answer.” “It’s the only one I can give you over the phone.” She paused and when she spoke again her voice was softer.
“Come to the clinic tomorrow, 6 sharp, before anyone else arrives.
I’ll explain everything, Nico, I promise, but I need to examine you first.” “Am I sick?” “No.
Your body is doing what it’s supposed to do.” “That’s the scariest thing anyone has ever said to me.” “I know.
6 o’clock, and— and Nico?” “What?” “Don’t shower before you come in.
I need to smell you.”