Yes, Wyatt is back at Alabama in his sophomore year! His fraternity might be different, but his enemies are still the same. If you have enjoyed his story up to this point or just want to give me some feedback, I reply to all emails at [email protected]
The UREC
The HVAC in the Sigma Chi house always clicked twice before the heat kicked on: once like a throat clearing, once like it was warning me. By the spring semester of sophomore year, I’d learned to tell the time by how the house breathed. Late afternoon meant the sun slanted through our blinds just enough to put a warm stripe across the carpet between the two beds Elliot and I shared.
He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by papers as if he were filing for a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Envelopes from his family’s law office, a legal pad full of notes, and a thick packet with a brass fastener across the top.
I’d been pretending to read my psych textbook, but I kept glancing over every thirty seconds.
Finally, I gave up.
“What is all that?”
Elliot didn’t even look up. “Trust documents.”
That jolted me upright a little. “Already?”
“Yeah.” He flipped another page, sighing. “My trustee wants everything in order before May. Clean transfer.”
May. His twenty-first birthday.
I sat up straighter. “So that means… you’ll have access.”
“Full access,” he said, still reading. “Grandfather wanted it earlier. Something something ‘a man needs the tools to build with.’”
I snorted. “So what’s the number?”
He hesitated just long enough for me to realize he wasn’t going to dodge the question.
Then he said it:
“Four and a half.”
I absorbed it without flinching. I knew the world we came from. One, two, three million… it was Monopoly money to families like ours.
Still, hearing it out loud did something to me, something small and sharp in my chest.
“And six if I go to grad school,” Elliot added, flipping another page like he hadn’t just altered the gravitational field of our shared bedroom.
I huffed a breath. “That’s a hell of a launchpad.”
He finally looked up, mouth curling. “You’re next February, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “When I turn twenty-one. Pawpaw Briggs did it for all the grandkids, the part my parents have zero control over.”
“And?” he nudged. “What’s your number?”
“Two.”
Elliot’s expression softened. “Hun, that’s still amazing.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t about amazing, it was about what it meant.
“It’s not ‘check out of life’ money.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s build-your-way-out money. Which is better.”
I went quiet because that hit too close.
After a moment, he asked, “So what’s the first thing you’re doing with it?”
“Paying Macy back,” I said instantly.
Elliot froze. “How often was she sending you something again?”
“Every month.” I swallowed. “Since Dad cut me off. Not a ton, just enough. I think it adds up to maybe twenty-four grand. So I’m paying her back at least thirty. Not like she needs it; she probably still has half her trust left even after med school.”
“Jesus, Wyatt…”
“She’s the only one in my family who acts like I still matter.” My voice cracked before I could stop it. “I owe her more than money.”
The room went still, warm with late-afternoon sun and something like hope.
Elliot said quietly, “We’re close to it, you know.”
I looked up. “To what?”
“To getting ourselves out from under all this.” He gestured at the trust papers, the frat house, the whole machine. “Once yours kicks in… we’ll actually have choices.”
A future, with our own choices.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “We’re close.”
The silence that followed was golden, fragile, and ours.
Until a knock rattled the door, two confident hits.
“Briggs? Withers? You two love birds decent?”
Tate’s voice.
Elliot and I exchanged a look.
The HVAC clicked twice.
And everything tilted, like the air had shifted direction.
Tate didn’t wait for us to answer; he never did. The door swung open, and he stepped inside, as if the whole house belonged to him. Maybe, in a way, it did. Being Sigma Chi Consul (President) came with that kind of gravitational pull.
He was still in his workout gear: black Nike shorts, the hem and logo of black UA compression shorts just barely visible, Sigma Chi intramurals tee clinging to him like it was tailored. He looked like he’d jogged up from the basement gym: flushed cheeks, faint sweat at his temples, dark chestnut hair pushed back by a hand that had clearly run through it on the way up the stairs.
“Good,” he said, nodding once like he’d expected to find us exactly like this. “You’re both here.”
Elliot sat up straighter. I put my psych book aside.
Tate hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his shorts. “So, the last batch of UREC spring intramurals starts up in March. Pickleball league, especially.”
I blinked. “Pickleball?”
“Pickleball,” Tate repeated, dead serious. “We field a competitive team every spring. The playoffs are usually dominated by Phi Delt, which…” He shrugged, the corner of his mouth curling. “Which is… not acceptable.”
He looked between the two of us.
“I’m playing,” he said. “But I need the right squad. Obson has already graduated, and Crawford doesn’t want to play this year. Three-man rotation. I want you two.”
I sucked in a breath. Elliot did too, I could see it in the slight stiffening of his shoulders.
Tate’s gaze flicked to him. “Didn’t you play tennis in high school, Withers?”
Elliot swallowed. “Yeah. JV.”
“Good,” Tate said. “Footwork matters. And Briggs,” He pointed at me. “I’ve seen you move. You’re quick. And you don’t crack under pressure.”
That one landed deep. Half compliment, half test.
“We’ll train twice a week,” Tate went on. “I’ll get us jerseys made, get you ranked. It’s a good morale booster for the house. Good for you. Kind of…” His eyes took on a meaning I couldn’t decode fast enough. “A chance to show where your loyalties are these days.”
There it was.
Uneasiness crawled over my skin. Elliot shifted on the bed.
“Uh… we’ll think about it,” I managed.
“Yeah,” Elliot agreed. “We just have a lot going on.”
Tate didn’t look offended. He looked amused, like he could see the wheels turning in both our heads.
Then his eyes drifted down.
He noticed the stack of documents on Elliot’s bed instantly: the ones spread out like a miniature law library. He walked closer without asking and tapped a finger against the top page.
“Aha.” His tone sharpened, but in a knowing way. “Trust access paperwork.”
I swear the temperature in the room changed. Tate’s eyes did this flicker, not envy, not surprise, recognition. Understanding. Calculation.
“You close to twenty-one, Withers?”
“May,” Elliot said quietly.
Tate nodded once. “Big year.”
Then he glanced at me. A heavier glance.
“You too, Briggs,” he said. “Next February, right? That’s when everything changes.”
Everything. The word felt loaded enough that I could almost feel the heated air from the registers across my face.
Tate stepped back, taking us both in, and for a moment, I couldn’t tell if he was proud of us… or preparing to use us.
“Think about the team,” he said. “We start training next week. I need players I can count on.”
He lingered in the doorway for half a heartbeat.
“And boys?” His voice softened, almost friendly. “Pickleball’s not just a game.” He grinned, bright, wolfish, then closed the door behind him.
The HVAC clicked twice.
Elliot exhaled.
My chest tightened.
We were being pulled into something: a team, a test, a hierarchy, a trap.
And Tate had just made sure we knew it.
The silence after Tate left had a new quality. It wasn't empty; it was charged, like the air before a lightning strike. His words: Pickleball. I want you two. Think about it, it wasn't a question. They were a seed planted in the fertile soil of our debt to him.
At dinner, Elliot and I avoided eye contact with Tate, but we both knew we couldn’t avoid it for much longer. When we retreated to our room for the night, Elliot hadn't touched his trust documents since the afternoon. They sat in a neat, accusing stack on his desk.
As it got late, the house was quiet. We were in that suspended state between day and night, between the performance for the outside world and the truth of our room.
I was lying on my bed, staring at the uneven ceiling. Elliot was at his desk, but he wasn't sketching. He was just sitting, spinning a pencil between his fingers.
"He's going to keep asking," I said, my voice too loud in the quiet.
"He's not going to ask," Elliot corrected softly, still spinning the pencil. "He's going to present it as the only logical option. And we're going to agree, because what's the alternative? Going back to being castaways?"
The word hung there. Castaways. Rejects. It was what we were before Sigma Chi. What would we be if we said no to Tate on that October afternoon last year.
I sat back up. "Come here."
He looked at me, the pencil stopping. After a beat, he stood and crossed the room. He didn't lie down beside me. He stood by the bed, looking down, his expression untraceable.
I reached out and hooked a finger into the belt loop of his jeans, giving a gentle tug. He let himself be pulled forward until his knees hit the mattress. I wrapped my arms around his hips, pressing my forehead against his stomach. The soft cotton of his t-shirt smelled like his Dior body spray and him.
His hands came to rest on my shoulders, then slid up to cradle the back of my head. It was a gesture of such unguarded tenderness it made my throat tight.
"We don't have to say yes," I mumbled into his shirt, the lie obvious.
"Wyatt," he said, his voice a low sigh. His fingers threaded through my hair. "We already have. He just needs our signatures."
He was right. The moment Tate singled us out, our choice vanished. This was the price of the sanctuary: our autonomy.
I tilted my head back to look at him. The dim light from his desk lamp caught the worry in his blue eyes, the set of his jaw. I saw it then: not fear of the game, but fear of what agreeing would mean. The new layer of ownership.
I pulled Elliot down onto the bed with me. It wasn't a passionate move; it was a need for proximity, for solidity. He came, settling beside me, facing me. We lay nose-to-nose in the semi-darkness, breathing the same air.
My hand found his under the sheets. I laced our fingers together, squeezing tightly, as if I could anchor us both to this spot, to this version of us that existed before we became "Tate’s new players."
He brought our joined hands up and pressed my knuckles to his lips. A silent kiss. A promise.
Then he leaned in and kissed me. It was a different kind of kiss than we’d shared before. It wasn't hungry, celebratory, or desperate. It was deliberate. A slow, deep sealing of a pact. His mouth was soft, his tongue tracing a claim that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with mutual survival.
We undressed each other without hurry, not to climax, but to reconfirm. Every inch of skin revealed was a quiet defiance: This is still us. This is still ours.
His body was a familiar landscape I navigated not with lust, but with a heartbreaking sense of documentation. Remember this. Remember the feel of his hipbone under your palm. The soft sigh he makes when you kiss his throat.
My fingers traveled the known routes, mapping him like a chart I was memorizing for a coming storm. The smooth, almost hairless plane of his chest, the slight dip of his sternum, the gentle ridges of his ribs. I traced the line of his collarbone with my thumb, feeling the delicate strength beneath. My touch drifted down his flank, over the subtle curve of his waist, to the sharp angle of his hip. Here, the skin was softest, a vulnerability he only showed to me.
Elliot lay still beneath my touch, his eyes closed, his breath a steady, trusting rhythm. His hands were at his sides, fingers uncurled, a surrender more profound than any passionate embrace.
The silence in the room was a third presence, thick with the unspoken dread of Tate’s demand and the preciousness of this moment before the performance began.
My journey continued downward, over the taut muscle of his thigh, the smooth skin of his inner knee. It was an act of reverence, of reclamation. This body, so often a source of anxiety or a tool for others’ expectations, was here, in our private dark, simply his. And mine to honor.
When my fingers finally brushed the soft, dark curls at the junction of his thighs, he let out a shaky breath. I looked up at his face. His eyes were open now, watching me in the dim light, a world of trust and trepidation in their blue depths.
I held his gaze as I shifted lower on the bed, the sheets whispering against my skin. I moved between his legs, the intimacy of the position feeling both sacred and defiant. Here, in this act that I once understood through power, transaction, or desperate worship, I sought only to give solace. To anchor us both.
I leaned in, and my breath ghosted over him. He tensed for a fraction of a second, a reflex, before consciously relaxing, his legs falling open a little wider in silent invitation.
I didn’t take him in my mouth immediately. Instead, I pressed a soft, closed-mouth kiss to his inner thigh, feeling the muscle tremble under my lips. I kissed a path upward, a slow procession, until I nuzzled against him, breathing in his clean, uniquely Elliot scent: fresh soap, faint sweat, and something indefinably sweet.
A low, helpless sound escaped his throat.
Finally, I took him into my mouth. Not with manic hunger, but with a slow, consuming tenderness. He was already hard, the silken skin over firm heat a familiar and beloved weight on my tongue. I moved with a languid, rhythmic certainty, my hands coming to rest on his hips, my thumbs stroking the sharp bones there.
This was the antithesis of every secret, shameful encounter last year. This was communication. Each swirl of my tongue, each gentle suction, was a word in a silent language only we understood: I’m here. We’re together. Whatever he makes us do out there, this is real.
Elliot’s hands found my hair, not to guide or push, but to hold on, his fingers tangling in the natural blonde curls as if they were lifelines. His breaths became ragged sighs, punctuated by soft, choked whispers of my name. “Wy… God…”
I could feel the tension coiling in his body, the tremors in his thighs. I looked up, meeting his gaze over the plane of his stomach. His eyes were glazed, his lips parted, his expression one of overwhelmed, vulnerable pleasure. In that moment, he was utterly, beautifully unraveled, and it was because of me, not out of fear or leverage, but out of trust.
When his climax hit, it was a quiet, shuddering release. His back arched slightly off the bed, a stifled cry caught in his throat, and his hands tightened in my hair. I stayed with him, swallowing every pulse, until the last tremor passed through him and he collapsed back onto the mattress, limp with sweat and covered in my saliva.
I crawled back up his body, the taste of him lingering, a private sacrament. He pulled me into his arms before I could even settle, his embrace fierce and clinging. He didn’t speak. He just held me, his face buried in my neck, his breath hot and uneven against my skin as we both fell asleep in my bed.
Four days later, Elliot and I folded.
Not dramatically. Not with some formal sit-down or handshake. Just… inevitability wearing us down, exactly the way Tate knew it would. Every time we saw him in the house, every nod, every “you boys thinking about it?” chipped away at us until the only answer left was yes.
When we finally told him, Tate just smirked like he’d won a bet he never doubted.
“Good,” he said, pulling a manila folder out from under his arm. “I already filled out the UREC registration. Just need your signatures.”
Of course, Tate had.
Elliot and I exchanged the same resigned look, which only made Tate grin harder.
“And because I’m not a tyrant,” he added, “you two get to go gear up. Dick’s Sporting Goods. House treat.”
He turned his attention fully on me, eyes flicking down once, deliberately.
“Get something decent. You’re not strutting onto the court in those shiny green Lululemon shorts you have, Briggs.”
My ears burned. Elliot choked back a laugh. Tate just smirked like he’d said something generous, not surgical.
It was almost a consolation prize. Almost.
He handed us a Sigma Chi house Debit Card, the communal one, the one even the executive wasn’t supposed to use without permission, and clapped us both on the shoulder like we’d passed the first part of some exam. Then he sent us on our way.
Dick’s was buzzing with Saturday spring energy: dads comparing Yeti coolers, middle school boys swinging bats they had no idea how to hold, groups of sorority girls trying on tennis skirts purely for vibes. The whole place smelled like rubber, antiperspirant, and ambition.
Elliot headed straight toward the men’s compression section because he learned from me too quickly.
“Okay… black or white?” he muttered, flipping through Nike Pro Combat shorts like he was choosing a wedding tie.
I wasn’t paying attention. Something in the corner of my eye snagged me before he finished the sentence.
A mannequin.
Not even special. Just a standard display figure decked out in the full Alabama Nike kit: crimson hoody, white base-layer compression top molding along its torso, fitted white leggings under athletic shorts, everything sculpted and perfect and impossibly still.
But it wasn’t the clothes.
It was the form underneath. The silhouette. The proportions that were athletic without being bulky, powerful without ostentation. A body built for performance, discipline, glory.
A Bama god.
My heart lurched in a way that made no sense and too much sense at the same time.
That same carved-out-of-marble feeling I’d spent more than a year trying to suffocate broke the surface again: the memory of the gods, the athletes, the untouchable ones from freshman year.
That display figure might as well have had Grant’s shadow at its back.
I froze midstep. The air felt thick as syrup.
Behind me, Elliot called, “Wyatt?”
I didn’t answer.
“Wy.”
His voice edged closer.
“Wyatt.”
My name finally punched through whatever spell I’d fallen under.
I blinked hard and dragged my attention away from the mannequin.
“You okay?” Elliot asked, brow creased with something between worry and recognition.
“Yeah. Yeah.” I forced a breath. “Just… zoned out for a bit.”
He looked at me for a second too long, like he knew exactly what I’d really seen.
Then, gently:
“You think I should get the white Nike Compression Shorts? Or is that too, like….” he gestured vaguely at the display “....‘Roll Tide mannequin thirst trap’ vibes?”
It startled a laugh out of me. “No, you’d pull them off.”
“True,” he said, smug enough to be back to normal.
Eventually, we wandered toward the shorts. Mid-length Nike training shorts, practical, safe, something that wouldn’t make Tate raise an eyebrow like the satin green ones he mentioned.
“I’m going baby blue,” I said, pulling a pair from the panoply of colors on display.
Elliot held up a soft gray pair. “Thinking these.”
We checked sizes, added a couple of basic dri-fit shirts, grabbed wristbands because Tate would comment if we didn’t look “prepared,” and headed to checkout with a quiet, shared sense of… nerves? Hope? Something fragile and complicated.
As we walked out into the late-afternoon light, bags in hand, Elliot nudged me.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, and maybe this time it wasn’t a lie.
But as we crossed the parking lot back to Elliot’s Tesla, my eyes kept flicking, involuntarily, to the white compression sleeves folded neatly in the plastic bag.
The ghost of that red Nike Pro shirt, bought in this same store, for a different god, seemed to rustle inside the bag.
A warning.
The UREC Pickleball league played on the indoor basketball courts in March, the air smelling faintly of polyurethane and whatever industrial cleaner the university bought in bulk. The floors gleamed like they’d been polished for a tournament instead of a Tuesday-night club practice.
Tate was already there.
Not just there, set up.
Water bottles lined up on a bench. A clipboard. Three paddles lay out like weapons. And, folded with surgical precision on the bleachers, three Nike Dri-FIT jerseys.
He tossed one at Elliot, one at me. “Welcome to the team, boys.”
Coach-Tate was another creature entirely. The smirk sharpened into focus. “Warm-up laps. Go.”
No arguing. We ran.
After a circuit, he stepped on court with a paddle. “Withers, you’re up. Show me footwork.”
Elliot snapped into the drill: quick steps, sharp slides. Tate’s eyes tracked him with a seriousness that made my pulse tick up. "Good. Didn't expect less." he said, then he turned to me. "Briggs. You're up."
I stepped onto the court, paddle in hand. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and for a second, the polished floor blurred into something else: the clay courts at the Mountain Brook Club, eleven years old, my mom lobbing balls at me in the late afternoon heat. "Footwork first, Wyatt. The stroke follows the feet."
Tate fed me a ball. I moved.
He pushed us. Ran rotations. At one point, he stepped behind me, a hand between my shoulder blades. “Lower. You play too tall.” His palm stayed a second longer than necessary. Or maybe I only imagined that.
Tate blew a whistle after an hour. “Good start. You two might make us contenders.”
Approval hit harder than it should have.
The UREC locker room smelled of bleach and damp concrete. After Tate gathered up his stuff, we followed him in, our paddles dangling like strange, exhausted limbs.
Tate’s movements were efficient, unthinking. He pulled his Sigma Chi jersey over his head, not with a flourish, but with the unselfconscious practicality of someone who owns the space.
The body he revealed was not that of a Bama god. There were no swimmer’s tapered lats, no diver’s explosive quads, no football player’s impossible bulk. He was, by athletic standards, average. A swimmer’s lean frame but thicker through the chest and shoulders from the basement weight rack. The muscles were defined but functional: the kind earned through consistency, not genetics or scholarship. A faint dusting of dark hair across his chest trailed down past his navel, disappearing into the waistband of his black Under Armour compression shorts, which were the only real echo of serious gear on him.
But it was his presence that filled the room, not his physique.
He stretched, clasping his hands behind his head, elbows wide. His torso lengthened, the muscles in his sides and across his stomach pulling into clean, simple lines. There was no performative flexing, no checking his reflection in the locker door. His comfort was absolute, a form of authority in itself. The compression shorts, practical and tight, seemed less like athletic wear and more like a uniform of control, hugging the solid, unremarkable curves of his thighs and backside.
He was not built for the stadium. He was built for this, for the rec league, for the house gym, for moving through the world with the unassailable ease of a man who’d never had to question his place in it. He possessed the casual dominion of an athlete without the title, the unshakeable confidence that usually came from a jersey number, but in him, it came from something deeper: from being Tate.
He turned to grab his towel from the bench, and the sweat on his skin caught the fluorescent light. He wasn't looking at us, but the space around him hummed with his awareness.
“Good work today, boys,” he said, his voice a low grumble in the tiled room. He hooked a thumb under the waistband of the compression shorts, adjusting them at the hip with a familiar, proprietary tug. “You keep showing up like that…”
His eyes finally landed on us, sharp and evaluating, a smirk playing on his lips.
“…we’re gonna run this league.”
He said it like it was already a fact. Not a prediction, but a decree.
Then he turned and walked toward the showers, his stride even and unconcerned. Elliot swallowed, and it was audible in the sudden, hollow quiet. I realized I hadn’t taken a breath. We were just standing there, a sophomore and a junior, frozen in the wake of a passing ship, the scent of his sweat and his certainty hanging in the air, and for a moment, I hated how familiar the feeling was to that spring afternoon in Mountain Brook.
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