Always Conditions

“Sorry to hear about your mom.”

“Thanks, Coach. Say, the team’s looking pretty sharp out there.”

“Yep. I think we could go all the way this year. Of course it would be easier if you were on the team.”

Ken sat up on the bleacher seat from where he’d been sprawled back with his shoulder blades and elbows propped on the bench above it. He’d come out to watch the local college football team practice. He was about to shove off to St. Louis for a special summer job, and if he could get the coach’s attention, he wanted to check out what his prospects were for getting back on the team in the fall. The coach had noticed him in the bleachers and had come over to talk to him; he sat down on the next bench seat below Ken and between the younger man’s spread legs.

“I don’t know. Lawrence is looking pretty good out there,” Ken said, torn between wanting the position back and wanting to stay loyal to his boyfriend. Besides, he did think Lawrence was doing a good job at the position he’d had to give up.

“Yes, Lawrence is fine. But he’s not as good as you are yet.”

“But he might be by fall.”

“Yes, he might be by fall.”

“So, Coach . . .” Ken paused because what he asked now was really important to him. “. . . So, what are the chances I can get back on the team in the fall if I can get back into the college?”

“Hmmm. That might be possible . . . depending. You’re going to be away still when we start summer drills, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I guess I will be. But I think I can be back before the heavy practicing begins.”

“Well, it would be a stretch . . . and I don’t think I could put you right back on first string. Lawrence is doing me fine. But maybe I could get you back on scholarship and you could move back up. There’d be conditions, of course.”

“Conditions?” Ken asked. He looked down and saw that the coach had a hand on his leg. Clyde had called it “conditions” as well. Ken thought of it more as blackmail.

“Yeah conditions. I know about you and Lawrence . . . and if you were to give me what Lawrence . . .” Coach’s hand moved to Ken’s crotch.

“You’ve been balling Lawrence?” Ken exclaimed. It didn’t surprise him that Coach leaned in that direction. There had been rumors and Ken had seen how Coach would come into the locker room after practice and watch the guys shower and dress. But Lawrence? Ken now wondered what Lawrence had done to get his position on the squad. Maybe Lawrence wasn’t really as prepared to step into Ken’s position on game days as Ken thought he might be. But Lawrence was a top. And coach was acting an awful lot like a top now too.

“I . . . I don’t know, Coach.”

“I could show you a good time,” the coach said, giving Ken’s cock a squeeze through his jeans material, leaving no doubt what Coach wanted. “I know you are giving it to Clyde Snepp too, Ken. No, no, don’t be like that. Just calm down. There are just a few conditions—nothing you aren’t doing for others, Ken. But there are always conditions for getting anything you want, you know.” Coach’s fingers were on the zipper pull for Ken’s jeans.

“I don’t know,” Ken managed to say, sitting up straighter on the bleachers and causing the coach’s hand to drop off his crotch. It still seemed more like blackmail to him. “I’ll write to you from St. Louis. We’ll . . . see.”

Always these conditions. Ken felt his life was beginning to be ruled by conditions. And it was like a vice closing in on him—all of his options being reduced to the same one—with just the name of the guy who wanted him varying from moment to moment.

A whistle blew from the field, and the team was moving into another drill. The coach grunted and stood up from the bleachers. “It could be fun, Ken. And you’d probably get your starting position back in no time. Anyway, think about it. And, again, I’m sorry about your mom’s passing. I know it makes it rough on you.”

Yes, it made it rough on Ken. It did so partly because it meant he was losing the roof over his head within a week. The rent was due and now the Social Security checks his mother had been bringing in on her own account and her husband’s survivor’s benefits had dried up. Ken was over eighteen and on his own. It was all he could do to scrape up that $800 Clyde wanted for Dusty and then he’d have to move someplace else anyway. He only had $600 of what he needed now. Coach knew he needed $800 and he was having trouble putting it together. He played that card.

“You still need $200 to get that dog you want, don’t you, Ken?”

“Yes, so?”

“So, I got $200 right here.” He pulled it out of his pocket.

Ken was bent of a massage table in the locker room, deserted because the guys were out on the field, practicing. He clutched the far edge of the table with his hands to hold himself steady, and looked up at the puke-green cinderblock wall behind the table as Coach hovered over him, hands gripping Ken’s hips, and fucked him doggy style. Coach was thicker and with more vigorous thrusting than Clyde was. Ken moaned from the suffering of being fully possessed and worked, but he also moaned from realizing that he wanted this from a man, that he wanted to be submissive to a man’s desire and thrusts.

* * * *

It wasn’t just Clyde Ken needed to service but to try to stay away from now. It was Coach too. That’s why Kem had taken a summer job out in St. Louis. He’d be working in a training kennel there and hoped to maybe pick up some marketable skills in training service dogs. That would earn him enough money to get back into college in the fall, it would provide him room and board, and, the clincher, they’d said he could bring a dog with him.

The one thing Ken knew was that he wanted Dusty. He wanted one thing he could cling to that gave him loyalty and affection that didn’t come with conditions. He’d thought that Lawrence could provide that—but if Lawrence was doing the coach behind Ken’s back to get his position on the football team, Ken knew he couldn’t count on even Lawrence.

When he’d come, Coach pulled out, laughed, peeled off his condom, and tossed it in a trash barrel as he left Ken bent over the table and strutted to his office. “Nice,” he tossed over his shoulder. “We need to do this again real soon.”

Ken climbed off the table, went to the showers to clean himself up, silently dressed, and headed for Clyde’s. Coach was humming in his office behind a closed door. Although he certainly wasn’t in the mood to face Clyde, Ken had time to put in at Clyde’s kennel and he now had his $800 to pay for Dusty.

“Dusty?” Clyde asked. Then he laughed. “No, I don’t remember telling you that you could pick which of the three pups you could have for $800. For that you can have Dexter. That one’s eating me out of house and home anyway.”

“It’s Dusty I want,” Ken said stubbornly. “All along it’s been Dusty we’ve been talking about. Dusty’s the runt. You’ve never considered him worth anything. It’s Dusty. Why do you suddenly value Dusty higher than Dexter?”

“You know why. It’s not the money I want.”

Ken cast his eyes down at Dusty, who was squirming with delight in his lap as he crouched down. Ken was almost in tears, and he buried his face in Dusty’s neck so that Clyde couldn’t see the effect this was having on him.

“These are my conditions, Ken. You can have Dusty, and you can have him for the $800. If. If you move in with me—in my bed—but I keep the papers on him. You let me take you down to my basement and bind you and use my toys and you can have Dusty for free, with the papers.” Clyde laughed. “I figure after that experience, you’ll want me so much you’ll just move in here and Dusty won’t be going anywhere. Those are the conditions. Or, give me $1,200 and you can have Dusty here, on the spot, complete with papers. Otherwise walk out of here for your summer job and take Dexter for the $800. It’s up to you. Pretty good deal, I think. I don’t know why you don’t jump at it. I know you’re doing it with Lawrence. I’ve seen you off on Larson’s lane and doing it in the backseat of his car. And I’m twice as good as he is, I don’t doubt.”

Clyde knew Ken didn’t have $1,200 and couldn’t get it. He was surprised as hell that Ken had managed to scrape up the $800.

“Tell you what, you give up the idea of going off for the summer and move in here with me and give me pleasure down in my basement. You satisfy me, and I’ll sign over half the kennel to you—on the condition that you continue satisfying me. That would solve all of your problems.”

Ken shuddered and stood up, releasing Dusty with great reluctance. Dusty wove in and out of his legs, rubbing against him and pawing at his calves.

“I’ll be back at the end of the summer with the $1,200 for Dusty. Take good care of him until then, please.”

And then Ken turned and strode out of the barn without a look back. He knew if he took another look at Dusty, he’d start crying. Worse, if he did that, he was afraid he would cave in to Clyde’s expanding conditions—all given with every prospect that Clyde would just keep dangling new conditions in front of his face and not honoring them.

[To be continued.]