In Like a Lion is a stand-alone sequel to Bearding the Lion. Both are collaborations with Sween McDervish. We hope you enjoy them.
1.
Even an outsider at the Triple Hit MMA Gym like David Levy knows when something is different. The cool March air is charged, and there are more guys than usual for any given weekend day. There’s the hardcore devotees, heavy with muscle and more than a few of them with some wear and tear on their mugs, the young guys trying it out, and the tourists who are flirting with MMA because of something they saw on TV.
David feels more tolerated at the gym than accepted, but tolerated is a big step up from where he started. A month ago, he was the reporter—one the gym’s owner, Ken Kelly, let in to shadow Kelly’s nephew, Connor Ryan. The enemy.
Now? He’s the guy who walked into the ring, kissed Connor, and blew up the internet. He’s not just a bystander anymore; he’s part of the gym’s lore.
Still, as he stands near the heavy bags, adjusting his skinny black tie and glasses. He feels the eyes on him, he can practically hear the whispers: That’s him. The reporter.
Reporters are close to the most undesirable types at a place like the Triple Hit, where the guys are by nature private and feel misrepresented in the media. Worse, no one wants how they train to be part of even an innocent story. They don’t want to broadcast their techniques and risk giving some opponent an edge to use against them.
That’s the first rule David learned from Connor: Never ever give up your moves.
But today David isn’t at the Triple Hit as a reporter. He isn’t even employed.
Since resigning from Zeitgeist, every editor in the business only wants one thing: the inside scoop on the kiss in the ring. "The Fighter and the Writer.”
When David refuses to turn his love life into clickbait, the offers dry up.
So, this gym is the single place he can’t report on. There’s the professional conflict of interest, but the personal one is the real wall—the line he drew in the sand, even if it cost him his paycheck.
He was mysteriously invited by Connor for “something special”, but as he is from time to time, the red-haired fighter is late. David is left milling about on his own and boredom makes him curious, even distracted as he is in the humid, testosterone-rich atmosphere of the gym. David realizes what is different. These tough guys are relaxed, social. Almost like this isn’t a training day, but more of a party.
He’s trying to not be a reporter, just one of the guys—an increasingly difficult task given his current unemployment and the way his face is now synonymous with the gym's rising star. But he can’t help his inquisitiveness.
“Hey, what’s going on?” David asks Jefferson, one of the more approachable regulars at the gym. Taller than David, and as broad as a barn door, the man is a physical marvel, his skin so dark and smooth he looks as if he were carved from black marble.
“St. Patrick’s Day,” he says, smiling, his brown eyes flitting down David’s slim-fit dress shirt, then up with a lively sparkle. His teeth are a brilliant, startling white against his dark face.
Was he just checking me out, David wonders?
“You did not wear any green,” Jefferson laughs, indicating the olive tank top that clings to his bulbous muscles like skin.
“Ugh, Ryan didn’t tell me anything. He said it was a surprise.” David’s palette tends to be monochrome, but he would have made an effort if he’d known there was a theme. He could have subbed in a green knit tie for the black silk one currently complementing his tailored slacks.
“So is Kelly going to serve up green beer or something?”
“No,” Jefferson replies, shaking his head with a knowing smile.
“REALLY? A big old-school Irish guy like Kelly? I figured he’d go all out on St Patrick’s Day. Fiddles, maybe a little Riverdance. A few leprechauns?”
“I do not know this word, leprechaun?”
“It’s like…a little Irish fairy?”
“Oh!” Jefferson snaps his fingers. “That is what Sean Macready called Ryan after their fight.”
David snorts, remembering that press conference. He’d sent a bottle of champagne to the reporter who’d retorted: “Well he just kicked your ass so what does that make you?”
Jefferson continues: “Do not worry, there is beer. And Kelly also serves up a big meal for anyone at the gym. But the main event is the arm wrestling.”
“Is that a thing? Arm wrestling?” David asks. “I’m not Irish.”
“Do I look Irish to you?” Jefferson asks, doubling down on his accent to make the point, then spreading brilliant white teeth wide in a dazzling smile. “I think it is his own tradition. Once a year, Kelly takes on all comers. When someone beats him or he is out of challengers, we get food and beer, but not before.”
“Cool,” says David, nodding. “Arm wrestling day.”
After an awkward silence David asks, “How long have you been in the US?”
“Three years,” answers Jefferson. “I am from Burundi.”
“In East Africa?”
“You know Burundi? No one knows where Burundi is, it is so small. When I came here I did not know anyone till this gymnasium.”
“Well,” David shrugs, “I only know one thing. There was an ’80s singer who used Burundi drums in his music. That’s all I know.”
Jefferson laughs, “The 1980s? I was not born then.”
“Oh no, I know,” David replies. Jefferson is in his early twenties, he guesses, a few years shy of David’s twenty eight. “Me neither. But old music is kind of a thing of mine.”
“Our drums are famous in Africa,” Jefferson says. "Who is the singer?"
“Uh, Adam Ant,” David answers, embarrassed by the name and his esoteric knowledge.
Jefferson quizzically pantomimes a scurrying insect with his fingers, and asks “Ant?”
David nods yes and they both laugh.
They go back to longer silences, but they’re less awkward. David knows more about Burundi than he let on—the kind of history that doesn't make for easy gym talk. He wonders what awful shit Jefferson has seen, and wonders if he would have had the balls to immigrate to the US alone and at such a young age.
“Where is Ryan?” Jefferson asks.
“He had a morning shift, but he’s supposed to be here,” David answers, a little defensiveness creeping into his voice. “I thought the schedule would ease up now. You know, since he won.”
Even saying it—he won—gives David a pang of pride. But also confusion. If Connor is a winner, why is he still punching the clock, less available than ever?
“You thought he would be done?” Jefferson asks.
“I mean… yeah. He KO’d the guy. We… he did the hard part. The story is out. I thought we were home free.”
Jefferson wipes his face. He looks at David with a serious expression.
“You are a smart man, I think,” Jefferson says, his voice dropping an octave. “But you are thinking like a tourist.”
“Excuse me?”
“You think because Ryan beat the first boss the game is over?” Jefferson shakes his head. “My friend, he just leveled up. He is a new player in a tougher stage.”
David blinks. “A tougher stage?”
“Before, he was an amateur. Now, he is a ‘Baby Pro.’ The costs are more: the food, the protein, the training fees, the physical therapy. And yet the purse from that first fight would barely cover his supplements for the month.”
David feels the blood drain from his face. Leveled up. He hadn’t thought of it like that. He thought they had crossed the finish line. Turns out, they just qualified for the race.
“Aw, fuck,” David mutters.
“Do not worry,” Jefferson says, clapping a heavy hand on David’s shoulder. “He is working hard to be the man… you think he is.”
The man I think he is? David wonders what Jefferson means and chalks it up to something lost in translation. But just hearing Connor’s name at the gym tugs at his balls. The fighter’s jutting jaw and curling red hair get to David like no one else. In fact the only one who comes close is Ken Kelly, who’s really just a blond version of Connor with an extra 20 years and about 50 more pounds of muscle. David isn’t into daddies. At least not specifically. But Kelly is the kind of hot that transcends categories. Plus it’s nice to know Connor will keep his looks.
“So what is with you two?” Jefferson asks in lower, more private tones. “You are a… couple, now? Yes?”
David shrugs, feeling the weight of his new reality: Unemployed, waiting for a fighter to show up in a relationship he can’t define himself. “If you figure it out, let me know.”
2.
A roar goes up across the gym, and David sees the crowd part like the Red Sea as Kelly enters, marching to the corner of the gym with the free weights.
He’s imposing; his hulking muscles barely covered by an overstretched threadbare green ringer T-shirt that looks to be half again as old as he is. The faded print taut across his chest reads KISS ME, I’M IRISH.
He grabs a pair of fifty pound dumbbells and begins to pump out curls as easily as David would lift his laptop. A mix of MMA fighters and spectators crowd around him, cheering. Everyone is getting into it, pointing at his veiny arms as the muscle there bulges and ripples, taking pictures on their phones. Some of them look like they might have pre-drunk their green beer at home.
David approaches and Kelly spots him. He drops the weights with a clang for dramatic effect.
“Well, look who it is,” Kelly rumbles, his voice like gravel in a cement mixer. “Hey there, Newspaper. You trying to find an adjective for my traps?”
David blinks, his brow furrowing. “Newspaper?”
“Yeah,” Kelly says, looking David up and down. “Thin, black and white, folds easy. Plus, nobody’s got much use for one anymore, right?”
David feels the sting of it—the hit on his unemployment and his frame—but he can’t help pushing back. He nods at the shirt, fighting for its life to not split down the center.
“Kiss me, I’m Irish? Get many offers?” he asks, wickedly.
Kelly grins, out of character. “Lots. I’m like the Blarney Stone.”
Kelly brings his right arm in front of David’s face and flexes. A giant bicep erupts upwards like Mount Vesuvius.
“O-Oh!” David stammers, startled.
Kelly nods his head toward it. “Like I said, the Blarney Stone.” He stands there expectantly, staring David down.
Jefferson whispers urgently in David’s ear, “You are supposed to kiss it!”
“What?…” David’s brain fogs over, staring at the muscle, which looks shockingly like a prize-winning gourd surrounded as it is by vine-like veins and thick tendons. All he can think to say is: “Seriously?”
“Tradition, Newspaper,” Kelly barks.
He relaxes his arm and flexes again, the mound of muscle somehow peaking even taller, just inches away.
David feels his face go red, but he waits a fraction of a second too long, and Kelly moves on, moving toward the sparring ring.
David’s jaw drops as one by one, tough-looking, tattooed MMA fighters line up to slap and kiss the hard peak of Kelly’s arm. They all hoot and holler like it’s the coolest thing ever. One bearded dude who looks like a biker gang enforcer takes a goofy selfie while he gives the muscle a big smooch.
David licks his lips again, absentmindedly. Kissing the Blarney Stone is supposed to give you the gift of gab: eloquence. How ironic that the thought of pressing his lips to Kelly’s bulging bicep has rendered him speechless.
Finally, David shakes his head in disbelief, “Yeah, that’s not gay at all.” Jefferson cracks up.
At the center of the gym is the octagonal steel cage emblematic of mixed martial arts, and one which David knows intimately. It’s the spot where Connor first sparred with him, thinking to humiliate him into abandoning the story. He just didn’t count on David’s tenacity. The nearby boxing ring is where they later had their after-hours “bout”. Every time David sees it, he’s put in mind of their marathon first fuck there. He can almost feel the phantom burn of the canvas on his knees, and the memory tightens his briefs as he shifts to hide a reflexive semi-hard-on.
But today there’s a professional armwrestling table set up in the centre of the ring. This is serious business, David thinks. He’s never seen such a thing before. Kelly stands at the table and announces the rules, just as Jefferson had explained: all comers are welcome. When Kelly is beat or when there are no more challengers, they eat. Kelly gestures across the room to the party tins filled with corned beef and cabbage, and kegs of beer.
“Erin go Bragh. Ireland forever,” Kelly says and slaps a paw on his thick chest over his heart. “Today we’re all Irish, boys!”
His first opponent enters the ring: a Latino boxer David knows is called Guzman because the name is tattooed across his back. Kelly stretches his arms and rotates his shoulders. He shakes hands with Guzman, but subsequently doesn’t speak or make eye contact, looking very focused.
The center ring is surrounded by spectators eager to watch the battle unfold. And, looking almost as out of place as himself, David sees a tall woman with a regal bearing. Jameelah, Kelly’s lady. David uses the word lady deliberately. The first time he saw her he did a double-take, sure it was Angela Bassett on Kelly’s arm, unlikely as that might be. They hadn’t talked, but he’d been smitten by her commanding presence.
He walks up to her and says, “Excuse me, you must be Jameelah.” He extends a hand. “I’m David Levy, a… friend of Kelly’s nephew Ryan.”
She takes a long slow look from his fingertips up his wiry frame to his long face and glasses, before she places her hand in his. Her grip is firm, warm and intimidatingly composed. “Oh I know who you are.”
“Where is Connor anyway?” she asks.
“Morning shift at the factory,” David explains, silently noting that she calls Connor by his first name. The standard at the gym is guys go by their last name, like Ryan, or a nickname. “He’s supposed to be here any time.”
“Late on the holiday? Kenneth won’t like that.”
Kenneth? Why do I get the feeling Jameelah is the only one who could get away with calling Kelly that? David thinks.
“I guess not, but he does equipment repair and they’ve got a problem.”
“Hmmm.” She glances at a folding chair leaning against the wall. “Be a dear and fetch my chair, would you?”
It isn’t a question, and David obliges, immediately.
The ring’s bell sounds, cutting through the gym’s chatter, and David turns to see that the match has started. Guzman is about Connor’s size and has some impressive lats that are straining, along with all his other muscles, as he pushes against Kelly’s right arm. Kelly’s arm is tight and flexed—and completely immobile.
David notes that Guzman’s left hand grips an upright peg on the off-hand side of the table. That must confer some kind of leverage advantage, he thinks. But Kelly doesn’t even bother with the peg, keeping his left arm behind his back. After a twenty minute stalemate, during which Guzman’s back gets shiny with perspiration, he wilts like a leaf and Kelly pushes his arm to the pad smoothly.
Guzman gets up silently, the expression on his face hardly changed as he descends out of the ring. He knew he didn’t have a chance, David thinks.
Kelly pulls both arms up into an impressive double biceps pose and David swears he sees a few more threads pop on that thinly stretched shirt. He also hears the bearded biker let out a little girly shriek, before flushing red and looking around, embarrassed.
“Who’s next?” Kelly growls.
Jefferson appears again at David’s side. “He always takes it easy on the first guy. He has to do that or else he would not get any more volunteers to start off—”
“That was him taking it easy?” David interjects, his thumb hovering over his phone.
“—but now watch this!”
The next three matches are over in a flash as Kelly slams his arm down to the table like a spring-loaded bear trap. One enormous man with tattoos up and down his neck, arms and face is the first competitor who’s appreciably bigger than Kelly, and when the gym owner crushes him, he bursts into tears.
“Aw, jeez—” Kelly swears under his breath, and looks uncomfortable. David is startled but then he remembers Connor’s take on some of the Triple Hit’s clientele, that their tough-guy exteriors hide a lot of insecurities. David thought teardrop tattoos on the face meant something else, but he shrugs. Guess he’s just a crier.
"Where are you?" he texts Connor. "It’s starting!"
"Don’t worry Driver! It’ll last a while!" Connor responds.
"I don’t know." David insists. "Some of these guys are even bigger than him."
"LOL. It’s like lifting Thor’s hammer." Connor replies. "It’s not all about size."
Thor’s hammer, thinks David, gears turning in his mind, I’ve just got to be worthy.
The next guy up is an eighteen-year-old with a gymnast physique who tries to get the crowd going by pulling off his shirt to show off a shelf of pecs carved with a t-square. He flexes his arms and does some pro wrestling-style grandstanding until Kelly yells:
“Cut it out, kid.”
Whether it’s because he’s mindful of this guy’s age or the fact he made his last opponent cry, Kelly takes some time to teach the dude a couple of specific lessons:
“This is a Wrist Curl.” He pulls the kid’s wrist away from him by flexing his own. “And you can shift from that into a Top Roll.” Kelly rolls his hand over, bending the kid’s wrist back completely into an awkward looking position.
David listens closely, and slides his tablet out of his day bag. *Top Roll*, he notes. This could come in handy.
When they finally get to the match, Kelly slams down his arm like it’s made of cooked pasta, and the young guy does a head-over-heels flip and pitches himself into the fight ring’s ropes, entangling himself comically. The crowd roars with laughter and even Kelly cracks a smile before shouting, “Get out of here, ya clown!”
3.
In the third hour Jefferson goes in. So far nobody has even budged Kelly’s arm from the vertical, and David notes that his strategy with the bigger, more muscled fighters is to let them exhaust themselves against his immovable might before crushing them with a dominating arm slam. A rare few have managed to halt the final destruction briefly, but all it seems to do is make Kelly mad. David saw one bodybuilder shake out his hand after his match, as if Kelly had crushed his fingers as punishment for his defiance.
“I hope they wore him down a little for me,” Jefferson says to David.
“Good strategy,” the reporter replies, trying not to look skeptical now that he has formed a bit of a kinship with the well-built fighter.
Jefferson laughs, rolling his shoulders and stepping into the ring. Kelly eyes Jefferson’s gleaming muscles evenly, and takes a step away from the table to stretch, but David sees it’s just a cover. When he steps back to link up with Jefferson’s thick hand, his off-hand grips the upright peg for the first time. David wonders if he was the only one who noticed, but the quieting chatter suggests otherwise.
At the bell, Jefferson’s back muscles explode under his skin-tight olive tank and he lets loose a warrior’s cry. He drives the full might of his whole upper torso into Kelly’s hand, pulling on the off-hand peg like he wanted to drag the Irishman’s whole arm there.
Kelly’s forearm muscles actually tremble under the strain, though his hand doesn't drift. The tension in his off arm is tremendous. He needs the leverage to keep Jefferson in check. David’s new friend grunts, his spherical delt swelling to a terrifying size as he tries to leverage his shoulder.
David watches Kelly’s face carefully, his mouth tightens and a bead of sweat forms on his craggy brow. After two minutes, holding off the big African, his lips curl into a half-grin. He’s not scared, David thinks, he’s loving the challenge.
“Think you can beat me, do ya kid?” He grunts into Jefferson’s face. His opponent bares his gleaming white teeth and snorts, unable to form words through the strain of his exertion. “Ya thought the others wore me out? Guess again.”
“You… are… bluffing…” Jefferson manages to croak.
“You’re damn strong, I’ll give you that.”
Jefferson gasps at the compliment from the hard-ass coach. “Really?”
Kelly slams his arm to the pads.
“Another victim of the blarney!” A cheer goes up from the crowd. It was the most exciting match so far, and by a lot.
As Jefferson shakes his head, pushing his big frame up from the crouched position, David can see the sweat running down from his pits has turned his tank top translucent, the fabric clinging to the heavy, heaving slabs of his chest, barely cupping his slick, massively pumped pecs.
“I gave you a hard time, yes?” Jefferson says to Kelly, laughing breathlessly.
“You did okay,” he answers, and David sees Kelly rub his chin to hide his smile.
Thinking he’s not likely to get a better chance, David steps up to the table. There are laughs and a few hoots from the crowd, but in his head David invokes the time he first got into the ring with Connor Ryan. He was knocked down three times then, but dragged himself up after each. You can do this, he tells himself. It’s Thor’s hammer. I just have to be worthy. Glancing over his shoulder he can see Jameelah take an interest, leaning forward and running a manicured nail along her juicy bottom lip.
As David takes the seat opposite Kelly his shirt sleeves are rolled up as they usually are, his lanky forearms bared displaying his two tattoos in typewriter script. Rarely pure, never simple inside his right forearm, 1/10,000 inside the left. He positions his hand and wrist just the way he saw Kelly demonstrate a few minutes earlier.
“Who taught you that?” Kelly asks, nodding his approval.
“You did,” David says proudly, then takes a second to throw his tie over his shoulder.
“Worried you’re gonna get that caught somewhere, Newspaper?” Kelly sneers with a raised eyebrow.
David looks at the steel muscles of Kelly’s pumped right arm. With its ridges, striations and snaking, hose-like veins it does indeed seem like some kind of hydraulic machine up close. “It could happen,” David jokes.
David’s own hands, like his feet, are bigger than ordinary, but in Kelly’s meaty paw his palm feels insubstantial. At the same time, David squirms in his seat, his semi-hard cock angling for a place in his briefs. Fuck, Kelly looks so much like Connor, and he even smells like him, and sitting there face to face in this ring of all places charges David up.
The whistle blows and David throws his entire one hundred fifty pounds against Kelly’s standing forearm, easily thicker than David’s own upper arm. He almost twists himself out of his seat trying to angle for a position, while Kelly sits calmly still as if he’s carved from stone.
“You’re not even trying, are you?” David asks through gritted teeth.
“Not so much,” Kelly answers, looking bored.
“Are you gonna—”
Kelly answers by slamming David’s arm down flat, faster than the reporter can even see. Hell.
Everyone laughs around them but Jameelah, though even she has a sly side-smile.
“Again,” says David, cracking his neck and shaking out his hand.
“You lost, Newspaper,” Kelly grunts. “Next!”
“Waitwaitwait. That was a practice round,” David pleads. “I’m a writer. That was just a rough draft. I need a revision.”
Kelly snorts, but he puts his elbow back on the pad. “Fine. One more. Then I put you in the recycling bin.”
The second round begins much like the first, David positioned against Kelly’s arm, as if he were trying to push down an oak.
“Funny to lose in this ring of all places,” David whispers loud enough for just Kelly to hear, “I usually come out *on top* with Ryan here.”
Kelly raises an eyebrow, and he mutters, “Get outta here.”
“Five times in fact,” David whispers through his grunts, leaning in closer so the crowd can’t hear the heresy. “Right here. But don’t worry.” He lowers his voice. “It’s all after hours.”
Kelly’s eyes narrow, but his arm doesn't budge. David realizes he needs to paint a picture.
“And just so we’re clear on the mechanics, Kelly” David whispers, drawing it out. “I’m not the one on my back.”
A flicker of pure, cognitive dissonance crosses Kelly's face.
“He takes it like a champ,” David hisses, feeling Kelly’s grip tighten. “ Face down. Eyes rolled back in his head. Tongue hanging out on the canvas. Begging for it. You should have seen it, Kenneth.”
The effect is instantaneous. It’s like a circuit breaker flips in Kelly’s brain. The image of his nephew, the Baby Pro, being dominated by the Newspaper in his own sparring ring is a violation of the natural order that Kelly can’t process.
Kelly flinches.
David immediately presses in hard, with a Wrist Curl into a Top Roll. Kelly’s arm falters, tipping without warning.
It moves just an inch before Kelly catches it. But it moves.
“OH HO!!!” shouts Jefferson, the first to see it.
The rest of the guys hoot and lean in, stunned that the stick-figure writer actually moved the mountain. Jameelah arches an eyebrow high and purses her lips.
But the moment is short lived. Kelly slams David’s arm down as if he’s made of wet paper. The THUD shakes the table.
“You’re done here,” Kelly says. His voice is flat, but his skin is a deep shade of crimson.
David stands up, cradling his throbbing wrist. But totally worth it, he thinks.
Without thinking he raises his hands high punching the air, and shouts “LEVY IN THE HOUSE!”
There’s a smattering of confused applause—most guys aren't sure why the loser looks so happy. A few chuckles ripple through the crowd, Jefferson claps him on the back, and Guzman gives him a nod.
It was just an inch, but an inch more than anyone else got.
David’s elated, having never expected to get that far. He only wishes Connor had been there to see it.
4.
Filled with ridiculous vibrating energy, David steps into Kelly’s office to text Connor. It’s too audacious to sit in Kelly’s chair at his heavy oak desk—that feels like an act of hubris the universe would punish immediately. But he sets his daybag there, and leans against the wood, needing a moment to process the adrenaline.
David: "You missed my ritual St. Paddy’s self humiliation!"
Connor: "You tried to beat Kelly? LMAO! How bad was it?"
David: "I didn’t try to beat him as much as not get destroyed. But listen - I made him twitch! His arm gave way a whole inch before he busted me!"
Connor: "What? HOW?"
David: "Eh, I have my ways."
Connor: "Driver, you have balls. I’ll give you that."
David: "Yeah and my balls are wondering where you are."
Connor: "Dude I’m dying here missing the best day of the year. Grrrr. Let me see them."
David: "The guys?"
Connor: "Your balls. Let me see them."
David: "What? You dork."
Connor: "No YOU dork. And your dork. Come on, let me see those big armwrestling balls."
Connor asking this is almost more intoxicating than getting Kelly to falter. David steps to the office door and peers through the blinds out into the gym. There are more guys lining up to try their odds with Kelly, and Jameelah is crossing and recrossing her legs like a twitching cat.
With all eyes focused on the arm wrestling, it seems a safe bet David has the run of the office. Connor Ryan, he thinks as he unzips his pants and pulls himself up onto Kelly’s heavy oak desk, you really are making me into a ridiculous person.
David pulls his semi out of his briefs, which goes full on erect by the time he’s got his balls out. He’s been more or less hard since he got to the gym, awkwardly confined in his trim briefs, and it feels good to let his considerable cock stand free, his balls swaying below. He holds his phone out and snaps a photo of the package dangling over the edge of Kelly’s desk and hits send.
Connor: "Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Send one so I can see your face too, stud."
David flushes hot. He’s been called smart, smug and even smarmy, but never a stud. Even if Connor means it ironically, it charges him. The antidote to being called Newspaper.
He carefully angles the phone with one hand, holding his erection with the other. He snaps a photo with his towering cock and balls in the forefront and his face behind—flushed, glasses askew, biting his lip—and hits send.
Connor: "Oh damn! STUD! Tell me again. How much did you move Kelly’s arm?"
David: "An inch. But don’t make fun of me."
Connor: "Dude I’m not making fun. You’re the man! You’re moving me more than inch."
David: "Oh yeah? Send me a pic. Let me see."
A minute later a quick series of photos ping onto David’s screen. The first is Connor’s handsome mug, looking over his shoulder at the factory floor, surrounded by grim machinery.
The second is a blurry shot into his jeans held open by his free hand. David can just make out the shape of Connor’s pale erection nestled into his fiery pubes framed by grease-stained denim.
The third is Connor looking straight into the camera with a huge grin. The last is not explicit, but the golden stubble and eyebrows against Connor’s flushed face gets David at his core just the same.
This is the Baby Pro reality—dirty, exhausted, working double shifts, but still hard for David. He strokes his cock a few times, working up a glistening bead of precum and snaps another photo for the fighter.
David hears a roar outside the office that shakes the glass in the door, and jumps off the desk, his erection and balls bouncing, and waddles over to the office door to see what’s happening.
Kelly’s taken down another contender, and it must have been something to generate a roar so many hours in. The guys look more intense now, and even Kelly’s Kiss Me I’m Irish shirt is damp with sweat. David’s own stomach is growling, and he assumes others’ are too.
Without a word, Jameelah suddenly sets both feet down on her stylish heels, and rises straight up. Fuck, thinks David, she’s more fit than half the guys who train here, and is more deliberate and self-possessed than all of them combined.
“Queen,” David mutters, without thinking.
She walks through the guys as if she were passing through pampas grass, fighters spreading to clear the way for her to stand at the table, looking meaningfully at Kelly.
“We gotta be done soon,” he says to her, “sooner or later, y’know?”
“I am in town for precisely 36 hours,” she says, “and not back for another three weeks. And this is how I’m spending my Saturday, Kenneth?”
“It’s St. Paddy’s Day!” Kelly bellows. “It’s tradition!”
“Do you know what one of my billable hours is worth?” Jameelah asks, invoking her costly attorney fees. Her voice cuts through the gym clatter like a bell.
She turns slightly and bends at the waist, resting her arm in the middle of the armwrestling table. With deliberate care, she places her left arm behind her back. “Let’s do this.”
“J, c’mon!” pleads Kelly. “Not you!”
“I heard this is all comers?” she asks, feigning shock.
“Aw crud—” Kelly grimaces, putting his arm up in place. His forearm is as big as three of hers at least, and after three hours of arm wrestling it’s shot through with veins and ridged muscle. Hers is smooth, her nails lacquered in aubergine and flawlessly manicured.
Their palms slap together, pale skin against dark. Jameelah goes steely-eyed. Kelly frowns.
Whatever happens between them is in their eyes, not their arms or hands, as they silently stare off. Something is passing between them that no one else is party to, even surrounded by onlookers. It creates a vacuum of silence in the gym. David has never seen anything like it.
After a few minutes of this, Jameelah’s lips curl at the corners, and her arm slowly takes Kelly’s down in a smooth arc, his knuckles tapping the pad with a soft thud.
Kelly rolls his eyes as Jameelah sits back, her handsome jaw held high.
“Well, I guess that’s dinner time boys!” Kelly shouts. The crowd roars its enthusiasm.
"Oh my fucking God!" David texts Connor "You missed the match of the decade. Jameelah just mental-judoed Kelly into submission."
He curses himself for having not thought to record it, even from this distance.
The guys rush the food tables set against the gym walls, and lines form as two of the gym staff peel the foil off the party-size trays of corned beef and cabbage, while another opens the tap on a huge keg of beer. Kelly and Jameelah stand up.
"WHAT HAPPENED?" Connor texts.
David is about to respond, but notices Kelly and Jameelah have turned and are walking straight to the office.
To him.
With his pants open and his erection standing free.
Oh fuck!
5.
David backs away from the glass like he’s seen a ghost: The ghost of his future self after Kelly snaps him like a twig.
He stumbles backward, frantically trying to zip his pants with one hand while clutching his phone with the other. His shoes slip on the polished wood.
"Oh fuck, oh fuck," he whispers.
He hits the floor with a loud THUMP, his legs splayed in the air, his tie flopping over his face.
"No, no, no," he wheezes, scrambling backward on his hands and feet like a crab, dragging his pants up as he goes.
Looking around, he sees no other way out. He scuttles across the floor and slides under Kelly’s sturdy oak desk.
He jams his knees against his chest, tucking his head down, compressing his lanky 6’2” frame into a tight, rectangular box. He realizes with a sick jolt of irony that he has done exactly what Kelly said he would do: folded himself up—just like a newspaper.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Kelly groans, entering the office.
A damp wad of green is thrown to the floor, right at the edge of the desk. It’s Kelly’s shirt, now dark with sweat. David gapes. He wants to grab it, but doesn’t dare. He can’t help but wonder if there’s a way to pull it under the desk without being seen. The scent of it—dank musk and iron—waft under the wood, and David’s nostrils flare involuntarily.
“I was ready,” she purrs.
“Shhhhhh,” groans Kelly. “There’s guys out there. They hear everything.”
“Everything?” she asks, mischievously.
“Aw come on,” Kelly gently laughs. David notes this is a voice he’s never heard from Kelly before. It’s… submissive. “The guys, babe—”
“The guys what? You think they don’t know you’re the top man here? You just proved it, and looked damn good doing so.”
“J…” Kelly protests feebly, as David hears Jameelah rest her weight up on the desktop. The wood creaks above David’s head. He can see the bottom of her heels as she pulls herself up one foot at a time.
“Best remind them all,” she says in a deep rolling voice, “the king only bows down to his queen.”
Kelly drops to his knees with a thud, just inches from David on the other side of the desk.
"David? What’s going on?" asks Connor by text.
Jameelah’s heels shift, up and down and side to side, and something silky smooth slides down one foot. A slight garment, plum color and silky, falls to the floor.
Oh my God, thinks David, is that her PANTIES?
It hits him so hard he almost laughs. The king of the Triple Hit who calls David ‘Newspaper’ for being weak is currently on his knees, serving at the pleasure of the matriarchy.
He can see Kelly come forward in three steps on his knees, stopping at the desk, between Jameelah’s legs. He can hear a womanly sigh and a sound like tongue kissing, but based on where her heels are, there’s no way it’s her mouth Kelly is tonguing.
OH. MY. GOD! David thinks, throwing his hands over his ears.
As much as he doesn’t want to listen, for his own reasons as well as his horror at invading their privacy, David can’t keep himself from imagining Kelly eating out Jameelah’s pussy. He even uncovers his ears from time to time. Certainly his boner isn’t fussy.
Twenty minutes later, David’s beginning to ache and twists around to find a better position, lying on his back, which gives him a better view under the desk’s wooden back-slat. He can see Kelly’s knees and barely suppresses a gasp as he spies the tip of a thick, massive prick straining against the stretchy grey material of Kelly’s sweats. David feels his armpits and crotch get damp and sweaty. He ponders trying to contort himself further to get a better look at that cock.
Your curiosity is going to be the end of you, David thinks, as Kelly rises up from his knees onto his thick scuffed sneakers.
Fuck it, I’m going for it. David darts his hand out and pulls Kelly’s sweaty t-shirt under the desk. He presses the damp fabric to his face, inhaling the raw, alpha scent of the man who just beat thirty guys in a row.
"David?" Connor texts, David slamming hard on the phone to turn off the buzz function.
Kelly’s masculine scent is already filling the small space and David’s cock is getting unbelievably hard. He can even feel his hole winking. Is this how Kelly beat all those guys? Was it alpha male pheromones wafting across the table? He thinks of the biker who shrieked with glee and wonders how jealous he’d be of David’s position, on his back under the arm-wrestling champ.
Kelly’s sweatpants drop to the floor, and with them his white cotton briefs, stray blond pubes in them and a barely visible piss stain.
"All good. Trapped. Will explain later." David responds, suppressing a gulp.
As the desk begins to rock back and forth with Kelly’s thrusts, David’s eyes fall to his own erection and the sticky precum leaking out. He wonders how much damage Kelly could do to him if he finds him there like that, and the thought of Kelly’s rough hands on him prompts another surge of precum.
Even his hands over his ears can’t dim Jameelah’s gasps or Kelly’s heavy groans, and his own erection is near painfully swollen, as the desk continues to rock. As the pounding intensifies and Kelly’s thrusts get faster, David’s phone shakes.
David grips the wood of the desk as the heavy oak rattles all around him; he feels each pile-driving thrust as Kelly goes for the Olympic medal in fucking. Suddenly the vibrations stop and he ducks his head down to see Kelly’s heels lift off the ground. His muscular calves bulge with might that transmits up his powerful thighs for one final thrust.
Oh shit! David almost shouts aloud and he grabs the frame of the desk tightly. BANG! The desk is shoved back at least a foot and Kelly bellows and huffs out an orgasmic moan. David screws his eyes shut, scared the desk will either flip over or snap in two. Jameelah lets out a sound that starts out as the low roar of a lioness and ends up a high pitched scream of ecstasy.
His phone vibrates and David opens his eyes to check it. "I’m coming!" Connor texts, accompanied by a new gleeful pic of his handsome face.
As the sound of Kelly and Jameelah heaving and gasping fills the office, David dares to loosen his grip to text back: "You’re not the only one!" David has never heard a woman cum before and it’s fascinating and terrifying.
"Huh" Connor asks.
"Nothing—get your ass here now!"
There’s at least another fifteen minutes of quiet murmuring and soft laughter from above the desk during which David keeps a hand around his oozing cock. He’s utterly aroused, and the thought of Kelly jackhammering Jameelah’s pussy, his thick Irish squatbutt thrusting hard, has gotten so far into his head. Plus the photo of Connor is right there, so handsome with his coppery curls. David’s hole is puckering and he’s so close, all it would take is one more stroke.
“J,” he hears Kelly say, “I hate to ask… I’m a little dehydrated...”
“You want your awful green beer, dear Kenneth?” she asks.
“Would ya?” Kelly answers.
“You earned it,” Jameelah says, as her slim heels touch down on the floor.
“J, take it straight from the keg,” Kelly chuckles, as she weaves out of the office. “Give the guys a thrill.”
David waits hoping Kelly will also leave so he can make his escape, but instead he sees the sneakers plant themselves squarely in front of his face.
“You gonna come out of there, or do I need to drag you out by your skinny tie?” Kelly asks.
Fucking Kelly, thinks David, as he struggles to tuck his erection awkwardly into his slacks and zips up. He crawls out and stands on numb legs, his briefs twisting uncomfortably. “This is not what it… actually it is. It is just what it looks like.”
Kelly shuts him up with a raised eyebrow. He’s still covered with dewy sweat. His pecs are thick and flushed, and the dirty blond hair in his pits is matted. There’s a pale treasure trail leading down into the low slung sweats, tenting with Kelly’s still half swollen cock.
He stares at David for a long second, then lets out a short, sharp bark of a laugh—the kind of sound that suggests he’s finally realized that for all his thin, black-and-white fragility, David Levy is surprisingly hard to get rid of.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Save it,” says Kelly. “Only reason I didn’t say nothing was to keep J from skinning you alive.”
Kelly folds his arms across his chest, and his expression shifts. He stares at the space where Jameelah just walked out as if she left a trail of fire behind her.
He lets out a long, shuddering breath. “That one. She goes in like a lion.”
David tries to keep his eyes off Kelly’s thick, glistening body. He’s seen him before without a shirt, but not like this. “Daddy AF” he can imagine his former editor Jeff saying. The gym owner’s right arm is still pumped huge from dominating a room full of tough guys with ease, but right now he looks like a lovesick teenager. David shuts his mouth to keep the saliva from escaping. I never got to kiss the Blarney Stone.
Kelly’s reverent look fades into a grimace, but the heat is gone.
“You can go now. Levy. And leave the shirt.” His voice is gruff, but softened. “Your… bag is on my chair.”
David flushes at the sound of Kelly calling him by his name. He gives the sodden shirt one last squeeze and opens his hand. The sweat soaked green ball of fabric hits the floor with a heavy, wet thud.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Kelly,” David says.
Kelly just grunts, moving to sit in his chair, looking exhausted and satisfied.
Well, thinks David, as he grabs his bag and scurries toward the door, at least he didn’t call it a purse.
6.
Exiting the office, David’s heart lifts at the sight of Connor. The fighter is talking with the guys, so at ease in this setting, stuffing his mouth with corned beef and washing it down with beer. His green Henley reveals the broad spread of his chest and the gold hairs curling against his ruddy skin.
Connor spots David across the room. He winks with his green eyes, holding up a plastic tumbler in a mock toast and wrinkling his nose. They both chuckle, and David runs a hand over his chest, smoothing his tie.
It’s crazy, David thinks, that for all his rough good looks and muscles, it’s Connor’s coloring that gets David the most. And his completely goofy laugh. He wants to run to the fighter and kiss him more than anything in the world, but tells himself to play it cool.
“He used to call you Driver, didn't he?” David hears.
He turns to find Jefferson at his side.
“I remember hearing it before,” Jefferson continues. “But you said Levy earlier. And today Kelly calls you Newspaper.”
“Driver was… an old joke from when we first met. Because I wear glasses I use for… driving,” David answers, adjusting the frames self-consciously. “Newspaper is… well, that’s just Kelly being Kelly. What about you? Is Jefferson a Burundian name?”
“In Burundi,” Jefferson says, “names are not like here. We do not pass on father’s last name. We pick names we like or that mean something. When I came to America, I spoke to one of my elders. I told him I wanted a strong name. A true American name.”
Jefferson puffs out his chest slightly.
“He told me: Thomas Jefferson. A father of the country. A man of big words and big ideas.”
David bites his tongue hard. His brain instantly flashes to Sally Hemings, to the contradictions of liberty and slavery, and the problematic legacy of the Founding Fathers. Big words, sure, David thinks, but also a lot of baggage.
But he looks at Jefferson—standing there sweating, proud, and entirely self-made in this new country—and decides that the history books don't matter right now. Jefferson has claimed the name. It belongs to him now.
David looks down at his own hands—hands that used to write stories for a living, hands that just moved an immovable object by an inch. He’s been The Reporter, Driver, Newspaper, and Levy. He’s been drifting, letting other people label him, feeling lost in the space between his old career and this new, raw world Connor inhabits.
He envies Jefferson that clarity. To just pick a name. To pick a self.
David nods. “It’s a strong name. It suits you.”
“So you guys are—a thing?” Jefferson asks, nodding at Connor across the room, knocking back a beer.
The other shoe.
It’s the question David’s been asking himself for weeks. Are they a thing? Partners? Friends with benefits? It’s not the sort of thing Connor likes to talk about—Why do I have to spell it out?
“He’s my buddy,” David replies. It’s not perfectly accurate, but it’s true enough for this room.
Even though this is the one place David can’t write about, not after his last story, his reporter instincts keep processing.
A Mixed Martial Arts gym isn’t what you’d think of as a den of progressive values, he longs to write. And in most ways the Triple Hit isn’t. Your sensitivities will get no regard. There are no trigger warnings.
At the same time, it’s a peculiarly egalitarian place, where your value is in what you can do, how much you’re willing to try, not who you are or where you’re from. It’s a little like St. Patrick's Day - if you show up, you’re Irish.
And it’s not all physical strength. Strategy, strength of will and strength of character count just as much.
The greatest struggles are fought in the silence of one's own heart, David composes the lede in his head. And that’s where the victories that count are won.
At the Triple Hit, with the tone set by the Pater Familias, Ken Kelly, it doesn’t matter if you’re an immigrant reinventing himself, an attorney with a winning hand or even a skinny reporter trying to figure out who the hell he is… you might find a teacher, a role model, a friend. He glances at Connor. Or something more. You might find a place here.
David sighs deeply. Fuck being cool. He needs so much to be near Connor. He needs to know who he’ll be, and he’s the only one who can decide that.
He claps Jefferson on his broad back and nods as if to say Later. He makes his way through the crowd to the fighter’s side and nudges his shoulder.
“I thought you left!” Connor says, swallowing a massive bite.
“Before you even got here? Nah, just got a little distracted,” David replies. They stand awkwardly close, resisting the urge to lock lips, until David clears his throat to break the spell. He picks up a tumbler of beer and taps it to Connor’s. “Happy St. Paddy’s Day.”
“I missed it all!” Connor groans. “I missed the Blarney Stone! I didn’t even get a shot at Kelly!”
“You look tired,” David says, seeing Connor’s puffy eyes. “You okay?”
“Mmmm, worked the gym last night, the factory today, school yesterday morning. But I can’t skip St. Paddy’s dinner.” He pops a potato into his mouth and his jaw rolls, continuing as he chews. “So… how’d you beat Kelly?”
David prepares to boast, but looks across the room to see Kelly glaring at him as he leans against Connor. Jameelah looks put-together next to Kelly, poised and feline in her stance. Remarkably put-together, in fact, having just been thoroughly fucked on Kelly’s old desk. He notes that Kelly and Jameelah’s public life only hints at something much deeper between them—and they seem okay with that.
Kelly catches David’s eye. He gives a single, sharp nod.
“I didn’t beat him,” David says shyly, turning back to Connor. “It was just an inch.”
“An inch is epic against the Irish Jackhammer. That’s what he was called during his fighting days, y’know.”
David practically spits out his beer. Seriously? Kelly holds his gaze from across the room, and nods as if he just read the reporter’s mind. Yes, you better believe it, kid. David recalls the admiring gleam in the gym owner’s eyes when he described Jameelah. She comes in like a lion, that one.
David juts out his jaw and arches an eyebrow as he wraps an arm around Connor’s thick bicep, squeezing the hard muscle. “Let’s get outta here. This place is giving me ideas.”
Connor grabs another serving of food with his bare hand and dumps it onto his paper plate as he takes David’s lead and they trail outside. They pass under the sign over the door, TRIPLE HIT MMA GYMNASIUM.
“Hey,” Connor says as they hit the street, his cheeks full of corned beef, “did you know ‘gymnasium’ is Greek? It means to exercise naked, cause that’s how the Greeks did it.”
David shakes his head laughing, about to burst after nearly a day of sustained erections. “You don’t say.”
7.
They weave their way to Connor’s apartment which like the Triple Hit is located in The Den, the city’s worst neighborhood. It borders the more recently redeveloped neighborhood where David lives, a stark line separating the rent-controlled struggle from the young single professionals.
Connor’s studio is a small, immaculately organized brick box, featuring a wall of bookshelves he installed himself. At his makeshift desk is a tiny speaker, which David uses to plug into his own phone. He knows Connor’s playlist and cringes at the thought of Metallica killing the mood. He nearly laughs as he imagines mischievously loading some Motown onto Connor’s phone.
He spins through his own music, looking for Sharon Jones. He cried miserably two years ago when she died, and it took almost a year before he could listen to her music without weeping. But this is something special to him. Something he wants to share with Connor. He presses play.
Let them knock upon my door / Until their hands are black and blue / I'm not answering for no one / Until my man and I are through
Connor wraps a strong arm around David, pulling him onto his mattress with mismatched sheets, The frame groans under their combined weight, his wobbly bedside table trembling, and the taped up paperbacks on it tumbling. Their lips meet and their tongues wrestle, wet and eager for each other.
David unbuttons Connor’s jeans and slides them down to expose his fat erection, not as long as David’s but similar in girth and throbbing with a ruddy flush. He shucks the denim away, his eyes fixed on the ruddy, throbbing weight of Connor's erection. He pulls the jeans off one leg at a time and considers getting his mouth around that cock, but instead he pulls Connor to the edge of the bed and straddles him.
“Get in me,” he says.
Connor reaches blindly for the bedside table, his hand brushing past a stack of books before finding the squeeze bottle he keeps ready.
Connor pries David’s cheeks open as they kiss, coating his fingers in slick lube and working David’s hole, letting the head of his hard cock tease at the entrance. David grinds his slim body against Connor, smearing the golden hair on the fighter’s belly with precum, and then back again for his pucker to meet the pink cockhead.
David sighs as the fighter opens him and slides into him, filling him. Connor’s arms gather him up and he wraps his own long fingers around Connor’s head, the ginger hair curling around them as their bodies rock together.
“You feel so good,” David groans, his insides adjusting to accommodate Connor’s cock, the fighter’s meaty hands pulling his lean torso tight.
“YOU feel so good” Connor replies, working his hips to drive into the reporter.
People, they ask a lot of me / Always want more than they got of me yeah / Let them say I'm hard to find / I know what I've got to do / And bring it all home to you / It's your love I got on my mind
“Give me the Blarney Stone,” David moans.
It takes Connor a second to get it, but he lifts an arm and flexes a bicep nearly as big as Kelly’s, the skin tight over the hard muscle. David kisses it and Connor wraps his arm around the reporter’s head, pulling him close and into his armpit. As they grapple, Connor lifts David’s arm, and pulls it in to a flex position. Connor growls as he runs a hand over it and pleads, “Do it.”
David flexes his own bicep, smaller than Connor’s, but firm—lean and defined.
“Fuckkkk,” Connor moans. He presses his flattened tongue against David’s lat and runs it up into his pit, then up along his bicep, kissing the Blarney Stone. He licks and gnaws at the long arm as his balls issue a thick load of precum into David.
Let them wait, let them wonder / Where I go and what I do, oh yeah yeah / I'm not answering to no one / Until you and I are through
With the fighter’s cock pushing into him, David finally strokes his erection. He’s been hard so much of the day he won’t last long. He pulls Connor against himself, burying his nose in the fighter’s curls. Oh God, he smells like Kelly.
He feels his cock swell in his hand and his hole hungrily pulls Connor’s cock deeper into him. In one hard surge his balls spew a hot load on Connor’s chest and belly, followed by another and another, leaving him gasping and trembling.
Connor starts to slide out, but David stops him. “Finish in me—” he groans, his cum still streaming, lifting his ass just to slam back down again.
“Yeah?” Connor asks, his tough guy jaw jutting out. “You want it in you?”
“Fuck yeah,” David growls. “Cum in me.”
Connor pumps harder, his lips latching onto David’s nipple as the reporter rides him.
“You should have seen it,” David grunts, “the look on his face when I tipped that big arm.”
Connor looks up at David’s face, caught off guard by the boast. His cheeks go scarlet and his breath comes in a deep heave. He groans out loud as he thrusts up hard, shooting deep inside David. His arms buckle and he whimpers as his cum surges out of his balls and into David, filling the reporter and grinding in with all his strength.
Afterwards they lie in the bed, sweaty and intertwined. David runs his hands over Connor’s skin, tracing patterns in it and watching them go from pale under the pressure of his fingertips back to Connor’s warm color.
Connor has David recount the day to him, from the guys kissing the Blarney Stone to who took Kelly on and Jameelah’s victory. David keeps to himself the episode under Kelly’s desk. He doesn’t need to share everything.
“So how did you do it?” Connor asks. “How’d you get to Kelly?”
“I may have implied that I banged his nephew in his sparring ring after hours,” David answers.
“NO!” Connor laughs. “You goof! Oh my God. He’s gonna make me clean the lockers with a toothbrush for that.”
David can’t resist smirking, feeling full of himself.
“You got lucky Driver,” Connor says, poking his ribs.
“Lucky my ass!” David boasts. “I had a strategy! Here, look, put your arm up.” He positions his elbow on the mattress, and their hands meet, wrapping around one another. “I let him get comfortable with the usual guys, so defending against the usual moves was reflex. Then I made him think I wasn’t serious. Then I surprised him. And just when he was off guard I made my move. See? Here’s how you hold your wrist, and when your opponent gives an opening, you push like this.”
He applies some pressure and Connor lets his much stronger arm glide down in one smooth motion with no resistance.
“Unf, you beat me,” Connor says, flopping onto his back in mock defeat.
“Oh yeah?”
“You act like you have no game, but you’re all game.”
“I might have a little game,” David says. “Reporter game.”
“Just one thing,” Connor says slyly, “you just told me all your moves.”
Fuck. Fuck the stupid Blarney Stone and its gift of eloquence. With his jock body, good looks and boyish demeanor it’s easy to forget how fucking smart Connor is.
“You got me,” David answers, exposed.
Connor sees the shift in David’s demeanor. A mischievous glint enters his eyes. He reaches out and gives David’s nipple a sharp, playful pinch.
“Ow!” David yelps, jumping back. “What was that for?”
“St. Paddy’s rules,” Connor grins. “You’re not wearing green.”
“You’re not wearing anything!” David counters, reaching out to pinch the fighter’s side in retaliation.
“No, no, no!” Connor squeals, squirming away and tucking his elbows in, suddenly the ticklish boy instead of the MMA pro. “I’m safe! I’m safe!”
Breathless, he points two fingers to his own face.
“Green eyes,” he pants, breathless from laughing. “Built-in pinch protection.”
David chuckles, the tension melting away into warmth as he looks into those mossy eyes.
Connor’s eyelids drop, and his voice with them.
“Hey,” Connor whispers. “If you get inside someone with green eyes… does that count as wearing green?”
The suggestion—so stupid, so sweet, and so dirty—bypasses David’s brain and goes straight to his groin. His blood heats up instantly.
“Pretty sure,” David murmurs.
“Yeah. Come put me on,” Connor dares him.
The fighter rolls over onto his belly then, hiking his white-as-milk ass up. The mounds are rounded and firm, and the baby hairs are so pale as to be invisible until you get close. David’s eyes glaze over with lust as he takes it all in.
David’s semi goes to full mast. He grabs the bottle, slicks himself up, and guides his heavy length to the entrance. He pushes forward, and the moment he is enveloped by the tight, impossible warmth of the fighter, his body responds with a vengeance.
“Oh, fuck,” David breathes, swelling rock-hard inside him instantly.
“There he is,” Connor grins into the pillow.
David holds still for a breath, savoring the tight heat enveloping him, letting the connection ground him.
As he builds up a rhythm, he takes in the sight of Connor’s strong back, and the hills and valleys of the muscles there. It’s like a topographic map, and it turns David on so much. He grabs onto the yoke of Connor’s trap muscles and feels how hard they are.
Connor wiggles his butt back into David’s pelvis and looks over his shoulder, his green eyes gleaming. “Do it stud—breed my Irish ass. Do it for St. Paddy.”
The words catch David by surprise. He feels a sudden vigor flood his body. He pushes up onto his long lean arms and rocks his pelvis back and forth, gradually building up to the fastest pounding rhythm he’s ever managed.
Connor’s voice drops to a whisper, “Yeah, David, feels so good. Uhhhhh.”
It’s hard to keep it going; the friction is overwhelming. But when David feels himself flagging, his mind conjures a phantom in the corner of the room. He imagines Kelly standing by the nightstand with a towel over his shoulder, coaching him through the final round.
*Arms tight and your pelvis loose. That’s it kid. That’s why they call it the Irish Jackhammer.*
“Oh shit,” David yells, “I’m cumming!” and he feels his cock and balls tighten. He thrusts powerfully one more time and suddenly floods Connor’s hole with hot cum.
After only a moment, David rolls off and pushing roughly, flips Connor over onto his back. He takes one look at Connor’s swollen pink cock and dives onto it, taking it right to the root. He can’t get enough of the fighter in him, but knowing he’d blown a load into David earlier makes him want it even more.
Connor’s breath gets faster and his thick fingers tighten in David’s black hair. He thrusts into David’s long throat and moans like an Irish banshee as his cock swells. He pumps out a load that goes right down David’s gullet, the reporter doubling down to take every drop. When he releases the hot dick, he has the taste of Connor’s cum in his mouth.
“Unnnh those fucking lips,” Connor moans, pulling David up.
When they kiss their mouths smack together with thick salty spit.
“We’re one-one, we gonna go for a tie-breaker?” David asks, winking.
“Mmm, you bet,” says Connor, his eyelids heavy. “Let me just close my eyes for a minute first.”
David snuggles against Connor’s shoulder. It’s solid and feels reliable. He thinks again how like Kelly the young fighter is. He flirts with the idea of being with Connor at that age.
“Do you ever think about the future?” he asks.
David waits. In the silence that follows, the only sound is the ticking of the old fashioned alarm clock. The seconds stretch.
He hears a gentle gasp and a wheeze.
“Connor?” he asks again. “Ryan?”
There’s a light snore in response.
He looks up to see Connor’s eyes shut, the blond lashes pressed softly against his ruddy cheeks.
David sighs, knowing Connor’s been up twenty hours or longer.
He watches the red-gold flecked chest rise and fall.
“I think I love you, Connor Ryan,” David whispers, the words barely louder than the hum of the heater.
He watches Connor’s face, waiting for the green eyes to open, waiting for the rejection.
Instead, Connor lets out a long, contented sigh, nuzzling his cheek deeper into the pillow.
He’s out like a lamb.
Probably.
David kisses the gold stubble on the fighter’s jaw, and settles in to sleep.
END
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