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The observation earned him a glare.

“Did I give the impression that I was sleeping during the last match?” Coach’s eyes narrowed. “Or are you suggesting that, just as long as you win, there’s never any room for improvement?”

Brayden gave me a look, one which made clear he was sorry he’d interjected in the first place. Not that I could blame him.

“No, sir. Sorry, Coach.”

A sharp nod suggested his contrition had been noted. Though there was a fifty-fifty chance Brayden would find himself running laps, or on mat clear-up duty, or facing some other simple but tedious chore after our next practice.

“Good match, overall,” Coach told me, brusquely. As though, once Brayden had pointed it out, he felt self-conscious about the praise - or, until then, its absence.

“Thanks, Coach,” I said, obediently, and resisted the urge to groan in relief when it was clear I could sit down again.

Brayden leaned over again, when it no longer felt like we were being watched.

“It was better than good, lil bro.” He winked at me. “I knew from the start that you had that guy.”

I was tired, but my grin was genuine. “Thanks.”

It felt disloyal, even if only to myself, to admit that I hadn’t been so confident. Had tried to mimic my big bro’s attitude, his brash “this’ll only take a minute” cockiness, while inside I was far from believing that. Coach had been right: I’d been late to the pin, and weak with my elbow, and generally lacking in focus. Surprised, even, that I’d finally won the match, because of how distracted I felt. And it wasn’t like I could tell Brayden, or indeed any of my teammates, why.

Because it wasn’t my distraction - my secret - to share.

It’d been an accident, spotting him. Earlier in the semester it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to scan the bleachers before a competition; only after Adam and Clay had started coming along to cheer us on, did the thought of picking out a familiar face seem relevant.

I’d done that today as we walked out from the locker room, out of habit more than anything. What’d caused my step to falter was seeing a face that was familiar, but not because I knew it from my dorm or classes.

I’d only seen Coach’s boyfriend once, for scant seconds, but the circumstances had been enough to sear him into my brain.

I wanted to glance up again, to stare even. Check whether it was all just paranoia: a man’s face, sure, but not that man’s face. Only the terror of inadvertently locking eyes with him stopped me.

“Shocked,” Coach had said of his partner, when he’d explained why the dancer they’d just watched jerk off on stage was no stranger. At the “blurring of worlds,” or so he’d put it. I’d not been able to shake the fear that, in reality, it’d been shock that such a person might be on his boyfriend’s squad.

More questions than answers, then, and than opportunities to ever get those answers. Not like I could ask Coach, after all, though I had to assume he knew his other-half was among the spectators. That in itself remarkable, if not momentous: Coach had been clear that the line drawn between their home life and his work meant his boyfriend had never attended one of his matches. Either back when he’d been wrestling, or more recently, with the teams he’d been coaching.

Or maybe it was presumptuous of me to figure Coach even knew that his boyfriend was there. It was possible that, by asking, I’d ruin some grand surprise. Or - worse still - perhaps Coach was never meant to know that the man he was seeing was secretly in attendance to cheer him on. Something my naive, curious questions would drag uncomfortably into the spotlight.

I watched Carlos’ match listlessly, struggling to focus. Knowing I should pay attention: that I’d be expected, just like everyone else, to make real contributions in the post-mortem of the competition. It didn’t matter if we’d all won, or all lost, or whatever combination of the two. Coach’s attitude was that perfect was only ever a target, not something you could achieve, and so every outing to the mat was an opportunity to lean and improve.

No hardship to watch Carlos in action. His muscles already sheened with sweat, the tight white singlet only seeming to emphasize his form. You got used to an absence of modesty in wrestling, given the clinging nature of the mandatory outfit. And yet the sight of my big bro, his darker skin looking richer and more delicious against the crisp, bright white, was enough to hurtle me back to my very earliest days. When the stretchy, silky fabric was something unspeakably exotic; enough to get me hard in mere moments.

I shifted uncomfortably on the bench. Hyper-aware that there was no way to hide my erection, and little to explain it beyond the fact that simply watching Carlos was sufficient to turn me on to the point of drooling.

And from there, my treacherous brain thought nothing of leaping to Coach Bennett, back in his college days. Before he’d left the team - no, before he’d been forced from it; the victim of blackmail, and fear, and a close-minded world - and in a secret relationship. Had his boyfriend felt that same shiver of illicit arousal, seeing Coach in nylon and elastane so tight it may as well have been sprayed on?

Donny slid down the bench, closer to me. I knew him well enough to understand that the more innocent his grin, the more apprehensive I should be.

“You got a plug in or something, dude? You can’t stop wriggling.”

I gave him what I hoped counted as a withering look.

“Stop projecting.”

Donny laughed. “So it’s just watching Carlos that made you bone up, got it.”

He was correct, though I didn’t want to admit that. Nor reveal the extra detail, that thinking about Coach and his boyfriend - imagining them around our age, what they’d been like together - had been no help at all in taming my unruly dick.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted.