Gabe-o Pt. 02

Author's note: This is a continuation of my previous story, Gabe-o.

//

The guys started arriving a little after six. It was the second weekend of the semester, when every year I hosted an annual "welcome back" barbecue for my wrestlers. This year, instead of at the usual local park, I held the barbecue in my back yard. Well, more accurately, the back yard of the athletic director's house. She was away on a year-long sabbatical and she had offered me the house-sitting gig. On the phone with her, glancing around my spartan apartment, I had quickly agreed, it was a no-brainer. Her house was a beautiful, restored Victorian on the edge of the town, in the neighborhood where all the university muckety-mucks lived.

It was early September and still hot and sticky, the dregs of a brutal Midwestern summer. I was at the grill, sweaty and slinging burgers and sausages, pushing meat on the guys who needed to bulk up, and cajoling my big guys, shooing them away from the chips and soda over to the "healthy" table where my ACs and I had laid out a large spread of fruit and green salad.

The volleyball net was getting put to good use and the scene before me, in the setting sun, was, for the most part, a joyful one. My eyes flicked over the young, muscular bodies of the guys playing volleyball, arcing and flexing in the golden light, but didn't linger, of course. Here, as ever, I was the consummate professional. I tried to notice only the mechanical and the mundane - Josh with his tight hamstring limping after a stray ball. Nick, putting on some serious muscle, yikes. It would really throw things off if he had to move up a weight class. And Danny. Oh, poor Danny. He tried so hard, even now, in a casual game of back yard volleyball - desperate to be good enough, to match his peers' athletic abilities, but there was just something off about the kid. Too small? No, I definitely had wrestlers smaller than him. Maybe his proportions, his coordination? I just couldn't quite put my finger on...

"Hey coach."

The deep, familiar voice knocked me out of my thoughts. I turned and saw Gabe standing about five feet from me. He must have just come from the gym. He was wearing a light gray tank and black shorts, and his face, arms, and torso were flushed red. There was fresh sweat on his exposed skin. He pulled the bottom of his tank up to wipe his face. Involuntarily, my eyes tracked down to the fuzz on his exposed belly. After coming back heavy from the summer break, he had dropped the excess weight quickly, as I knew he would. In these pre-season weeks he was hovering around 290, still a little high, but rapidly replacing fat with muscle.

"Hey Gabe," I said, turning back to the grill. Even in the late afternoon heat, I felt a chill descend on me, an extension of the dark cloud that had been gathering the last few weeks.

We stood there together, somewhat awkwardly, at the edge of the grill, our eyes fixed on the meat sizzling there. Unspoken between us, ever since the Expo last weekend, was a reality that neither of us were quite prepared to acknowledge.

"So, uh..." Gabe said, rubbing the back of his neck after a long beat. "I guess I'll grab some fruit."

"Yeah," I said, and started flipping burgers that didn't need flipping. I didn't meet his eye but I turned to watch him lope over to the healthy table and leap onto the back of Dylan, one of the other heavyweight wrestlers. Dylan's plate of fruit went flying and in spite of myself, I felt a tightness in my groin as they went down and started to wrestle in the grass. I swallowed past the lump in my throat and turned back to the grill.

"Fuck," I breathed to myself. Even goofy, the way Gabe's body moved was any coach's dream, a fluid line that defied sinew, muscle, and bone. Hard and soft, the bulk of him flexing on top of me, his erection lodged firmly against my...

"Coach!"

I snapped back to reality and smelled burning meat. Danny was standing across the grill from me, gesturing at the grill with an empty bun.

"Oh, man," I said, and I quickly began to shuffle the burgers and sausages off the heat and into a foil tray. I looked up at Danny who was watching me with a raised eyebrow. He held out his bun and I tonged a blackened sausage into it.

"Thanks..." he said, eyeing the sausage suspiciously.

"No sweat," I said, ignoring the awkwardness of the moment. I handed him the full tray of sausages and hamburgers. "Hey Danny, take the rest of these over to the meat table, will you?"

~

By any measure except the churn in my guts any time I caught sight of Gabe, the picnic was a success. The guys were in great spirits - it was that magic series of weeks before the reality of the season started in earnest, before classes started started to get difficult earnest, while everything was still fresh and new. The Expo, which we had hosted the previous weekend, had gone well for us across the board.

These days the Expo didn't mean as much as it used to. Really, it was a throwback to a bygone era of collegiate athletics, to a time before everything had gotten so, well, professional. Wrestling, at least here in the Midwest, had been king, bigger than football, in its day, and it remained a cornerstone of high school sport across the region.

Originally, the Expo had been a mechanism to bring talented high school wrestlers to a Division I campus to meet coaches get a chance to compete against other regional talent. Over the years, though, beyond a recruiting tool, it had evolved into something of a pageant - an opportunity for each program to take the temperature of each other's rosters, see what we'd be up against during the regular season. I had been thrilled to see that my guys, most of whom I'd developed since they were in high school, had dominated in just about every weight class. The other coaches had been uniformly congratulatory to me and expressed a lot of admiration about my program. I'd done a lot of work to diversify my program, developing talent from outside the normal demographics that feed wrestling programs, and it felt great to finally be getting recognition for that hard work. I'd even been courted by a few athletic directors from other schools, dropping heavy hints that they'd be open to discussing bringing me to their campuses. And I'd had a veritable line out my door of the best of the high school talent, wanting in.

I should have been over the moon. But I wasn't. Because of Gabe.

Gabe had mopped the floor with the first of his expo opponents. A true beast of a guy from Minnesota, almost a head taller than Gabe, and somehow thicker. It was someone we'd met a time or two before, and someone who'd always given Gabe a run for his money, but this time, it was over almost before they started. Gabe had him down and splayed out in less than a second, and after that, the guy was spooked, and made a series of stupid mistakes. After each period, I could see Gabe relaxing into his body and his confidence, and I had the familiar feeling with Gabe, like watching a big cat stalk its prey. Flashing in Gabe's eyes, and growing panic in his opponent's.

It was like that for the next two as well. Almost all the guys in his weight class across the division had seen Gabe wrestle in previous years. They saw that he was in the zone, and they were nervous.

"Don't get cocky," I'd whispered into Gabe's ear at the change-up before his fourth and final match. "I don't know anything about this next guy."

It was true. The next guy was a walk-on, new this year at Ohio State. He was older. Apparently he'd been in the navy for a few years after high school. The coach at Ohio State had been uncharacteristically tight-lipped when I'd asked about the late-breaking addition to the heavyweight Expo lineup.

The guy was tall and lanky to Gabe's more square and stocky frame. I can usually tell a lot about a wrestler by the way he walks onto the mat, but watching this guy move sent a prickle of anxiety up my spine. I couldn't get a read on him. There was an absence in his eyes and a coolness to his demeanor that defied analysis.

The ref blew the starting whistle and the guy kept his eyes locked on Gabe's as the two men circled each other. He didn't move like any wrestler I'd seen before, he moved more like a boxer. I could tell that Gabe was wary, he had a way of settling his weight into the big muscles of his legs when he didn't have an immediate read on an opponent, his way of readying himself for any avenue of attack that presented itself.

When the guy made his move it was literally out of nowhere. I didn't see it coming and Gabe certainly didn't. He struck with a reptilian quickness and had Gabe's legs out from under him in an blurred instant, and then Gabe was on his back and pinned, his own weight serving to knock the wind out of his chest. There were two infinite and excruciating seconds when the whole arena realized that Gabe had been pinned. Then, time started again, and the navy guy was up on his feet again, leaving Gabe heaving for breath on the mat.

I didn't get to Gabe in the immediate aftermath, I had to hustle over to another series of matches at the other end of the field house. By the time I got to him, one of my ACs, DeMarcus, had his arm around Gabe, talking quietly into his ear. As I approached I saw that Gabe's head was down and his shoulders were sunk. And when we made eye contact, I could tell he was in a pit deeper than I'd ever seen him in. I knew exactly what was going through his mind. This was supposed to be his season. And now... this OSU wrestler was like a heavy blanket of wet anxiety draped over the both of us.

The intervening week between the Expo and the picnic had been intense. Gabe had hit the gym harder than ever, training like a fiend, but we both knew that his head wasn't on right. He was goofy. He wasn't saying it and I wasn't saying it, but he was off his game and we didn't have a lot of time to fix it. And the last time we tried to fix it... no. I had put that out of my head. Over and done with. For good.

The day before the picnic - Friday - Gabe had lingered after practice, sitting on a weight bench and texting on his phone while the rest of the guys hit the showers. The air conditioning in the wrestling unit was on the fritz, and even though we had brought in big industrial fans everyone was sweating like crazy, especially the bigger guys.

I was chatting with DeMarcus and Henry, my other AC, by the offices across the unit from the lockers. My eyes kept tracking over to Gabe, bent over his phone. He'd pulled his arms out of his singlet to cool off, and the muscled expanse of his back was turned toward me. I watched him stand up and head to the row of lockers. I expected him to strip and head to the showers, but he stretched his arms and bent to stretch his quads and glutes before straightening up again and resuming whatever it was he was doing on his phone. His training singlet clung to his body like a second skin, deforming over the contours of his thighs and buttocks, the heft of the bulge at his crotch.

He glanced over at the three of us coaches, and me and it occurred to me that he was waiting for our conversation to end. Waiting to talk to me. I had been avoiding being alone with him since the Expo. Since his loss, his eyes had been radiating that dark energy, he'd been holding my gaze in that unnerving way, the way he had last year, before... it had happened.

"Boss?" Henry said, tentatively. I'd lost the thread of our conversation.

"Yeah," I said, coming back into the moment. "Sounds good. Go ahead and call Tim. Tell him yes, time is tight, but we can make it work."

"Sure thing, boss." Henry said.

Henry and DeMarcus shared a look. They had seen me looking at Gabe. They knew that his loss at the Expo had gotten under his skin. Everyone on the team knew it. They hustled off to the office.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to center myself, then walked as purposefully as I could over to Gabe, making a show of checking my watch on my way over, not making eye contact with him. I was his coach, and I had been avoiding him, which was not the right thing to do. He needed me as a coach. Nothing more.

"Gabe," I said. Flat, neutral. Like I was calling on him in class.

"Coach," Gabe said, and in his voice was all of the darkness and the pathos that had been there that day last year. The baritone of his voice and the proximity of his body. I registered his smell. Involuntarily, I inhaled a rapid breath and felt my heart rate skyrocket as I looked into his eyes. My facade cracked, and I saw him register the crack. He took a step toward me.

I exhaled, tried to regain my composure. I didn't move back, though, my feet were rooted firmly in place even though he was just inches from me.

"What is it?" My voice sounded thin. Weak.

He held my gaze for a moment, then looked down at his feet. He ran a hand over his chest and belly. His body hair was curled with sweat. There was the fat print of his dick through sweat-soaked lycra.

"I need you to knock it out of me, coach," Gabe said in a low voice. "Again... like last time."

I swallowed and cleared my throat. My vision had narrowed and my head was hot. A couple of the guys were out of the shower and banging their lockers as they dressed. Their presence brought me back into myself, at least enough to speak.

"Gabe," I said, and my voice was stronger now, but still low, just above a whisper. "That can't happen again." I shook my head slowly as I spoke.

Gabe was still looking down at his body. He pulled at his crotch and adjusted himself. The thick cylinder of his soft penis bulged against his thumb and wrist. He nodded slowly, not looking at me.

"Understand?" I said.

He looked up at me, set his jaw, and nodded again. There was a deep pain in his eyes.

"Yeah, coach," he said.

"Good," I said, stepping away from him. Turning my back to him. "I'll see you at the picnic, then."

~

The picnic wrapped up just as the sun went down. I'd had to leave the yard to take a call upstairs in the study. My recruiter was in Los Angeles on a scouting trip. The call had gone long. When I hung up, I went to the window and looked down at the yard. I saw that most of the guys had left. I did a quick scan for Gabe and didn't see him. I felt a small relief that we hadn't had another face-to-face at the picnic. There were just a few stragglers left standing around the fire pit with the ACs, who were going to stay and help clean up.

I exited the study and made my way down the narrow hallway to the stairs that twisted down the back of the house, 'originally the servant's staircase', the athletic director had told me when she'd shown me around. I didn't notice the figure standing at the foot of the stairs until he spoke.

"Coach."

Surprised, I stumbled, and lost my balance on the last few stairs. Strong arms reached out and caught me before I fell.

"Shit," I said, straightening. I looked at him. "Gabe," I said.

My heart palpitated. He had me by the upper arms, and an inch from his skin, I inhaled the smell of him, his sweat and skin, felt the heat of his body.

Gabe didn't answer. A shaft of bright light from the kitchen cut into the dim stairwell, across his face, flashing in his eyes. His grip on my arms tightened.

I tried to take a step back, away from him.

But he twisted and pushed me back, hard, against the wall. The thud of our combined weight sent a shudder through the old wood of the house.

He pressed his hips against mine. His hand went to the hair at the back of my head and he pressed the rough stubble of his cheek against my neck. I felt the hotness of his breath and the hard knob of his erection against my belly.

"Coach, I need it," he said - a rough whisper, a rush of air into my ear. He pushed himself harder into me and I felt the raw power of his body, his muscles, under the soft layer of fat that still covered most of him.

I shuddered and couldn't speak. My erection was at full-bore and my asshole twitched and spasmed as my senses were inundated with him. His touch, his voice, his mass, his smell, up against me.

I heard a door slam and Henry's laugh, heavy footfalls in the kitchen.

"Gabe, not here," I managed to whisper, "Tonight. Here. Come late."

I don't know where the words were coming from. Some place inside me that I didn't control.

I felt him inhale deeply and then he released me, disappeared down the hallway, past the kitchen and toward the front door of the house.

Quickly, I wiped my face with my hand. Sweat. My hands were trembling. I shook my head and coughed, tucked my hard penis up into my waistband of my shorts before I walked into the kitchen.

DeMarcus and Henry were talking and spooning leftovers into large plastic containers on the kitchen island.

"The guys all leave?" I asked, and my voice was overly loud, too jovial.

I saw the two of them glance at each other for a second and then DeMarcus said, "Yeah, boss."

Had they seen something? Heard something? My head was ringing and my eyes felt hot.

"I'll go grab some... um, some more..." I said, and then I walked outside. The screen door slammed behind me. I grabbed a bottle of water floating in a tub of melted ice and downed the whole thing in one go, watching the last glow of the sun disappear from the western sky.

"Fuck," I said, under my breath. "Fucking hell."