Jon
There is something gross about men with ponytails, but there is something flat out weird about men pulling their hair up into a bun. Especially when you’ve seen them wear a double-breasted suit every day for the past fifteen years.
Patrick’s hair was pulled up, his facial hair grown out, and he looked like he should be standing in a subway station with an acoustic guitar. Lydia liked it, she jokingly called him caveman and played with his hair at every opportunity, but I personally found it a bit of a turnoff. I did like the muscle he had gained recently, and I was willing to overlook the ugly ass hippie hair in favor for his new, bulkier physique. He looked like he could pin me with little effort now, and this time he wouldn’t have to put his knee between my shoulder blades to do it.
I was admiring his body when Charles jostled me, pulling me out of my imagination and back into the game. I blocked him and gestured to Ike, trying to pass me the ball. Our shoes squeaked across the gymnasium floor, combined with the four of us shouting and the ball echoing with each pass, I was starting to feel myself get absorbed into the game.
Ike and I were skins, Charles and Pat were shirts. Pat and I weren’t allowed to be on the same team after we kicked their asses one too many times, but that didn’t stop us from helping each other out on the court every now and then.
Patrick shouldered me hard and I stumbled back, suddenly realizing that I was zoning out again.
“You alright?” he asked, frowning. “Come on, pull your head out of your ass.”
“Can you two stop flirting with each other in the middle of a match?” Charles cut in. “I only get so many hours away from the house, you know.”
“Ah, fuck off, Charles.” Ike huffed and took the ball. “Not everyone hates their family.”
“Yeah?” he asked as he jabbed his finger into Ike’s chest. “Come back and tell me that when you have a set of angry triplets in your house.”
I laughed and ran a hand through my hair while Patrick went to get our water bottles. “Chels brought the grandkids?”
“She did, and I love her to death but Christ, they grow up and you forget how awful having a toddler is. I haven’t slept through the night in over a week.”
I caught Pat’s eye across the room and noticed the slight paleness of his complexion and glazed look in his eyes. Maritza had been a terror. I told him that and I knew he was already incredibly nervous, but it was somewhat funny to watch him visibly panic. He and Lydia were going to be parents for the first time, they had no idea what to expect, and while Lydia had nothing but excitement for the road ahead, Patrick was a ball of nervous energy. I had to needle him a little bit.
“I remember when Mari was like that,” I said with a loud enough laugh to make sure he heard me. “A nightmare. She went through this phase where all she would do was stand there and scream for hours.”
“Stop,” Patrick pleaded hoarsely. “Jesus Christ, all I want to do is play a game, not think about the nightmare waiting for me in the next five months.”
Charles grinned and a clapped a hand on Pat’s shoulder. “Don’t look so defeated, they have another eighteen years to really wear you down.”
Ike and I laughed. We all stood in the center of the room, just cooling down while the ball laid at my feet, forgotten for the moment.
“How’s Lydia taking all of it?” Ike asked suddenly. “Elle wants a reminder of why we aren’t having any.”
“Yeah, she says that now, give it a few years…” Charles complained under his breath.
Patrick shook his head. “Other than the bump, you wouldn’t know she was pregnant. No morning sickness, no mood swings—”
“Other than the normal ones,” I interrupted.
“Those ones came with her when we got her, they don’t count. But she’s surprisingly cavalier about the whole thing.”
“Wait until the birthing classes start, that’s when she’ll begin nesting or whatever the hell they call it. And then when you go to take her to the hospital she’ll have a meltdown about the birth-plan. Oh yeah, and the puking. Jenny spent most of her time crying and the rest puking, she almost puked on Chelsea.”
Charles wife Jenny was a woman that just wanted to be a mother, that was all she wanted and she was great at her job, but as much as I wanted more than just Maritza when Chrissy and I had been starting our family, I couldn’t have imagined have a double-digit amount of kids the way they did. Eleven kids in total, including two sets of twins. Now he was eight grandkids deep, including his middle daughter Chelsea’s triplets. I prayed Lydia wouldn’t want anything close to that, I just didn’t think I had that in me anymore. Pat on the other hand…
“We won’t have to worry about her puking all over a hospital,” he replied dryly. “She’s already told us that she wants to do a homebirth.”
You could have heard a pin drop in that gym, and I had to fight the urge to laugh at their looks of horror.
“You’re joking,” Ike pressed. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“Where would she do it?” Charles interjected. “Don’t tell me she wants to do a pool, Jen thought she wanted to do that too until common sense kicked in.”
I held up my hand to stop them from asking more questions and to stop myself from launching into a tirade about it being Lydia’s choice. “She wants to do it in a bed at home, it’s not that outlandish.”
“Why?” they demanded at the same time.
“It makes her feel better about us both being there with her,” Patrick answered. “If it makes her happy, then I think it’s the least we could do.”
Lydia had been headstrong from the beginning about a homebirth. She wanted privacy, she wanted to be somewhere familiar, and she wanted to avoid any interaction with a hospital. Dr. Auyeung was happy to help her out, but that didn’t mean Pat and I weren’t worried about it. Especially when she had given us the ultimatum – we either find a place that we can all move into by the time she was six months along or we choose which apartment to move into fulltime. I didn’t blame her for wanting a consistent place to call home, but it was a stressful to try and appease an expectant mother with the anxiety levels of a cat surrounded by wolves.
And God bless him, Patrick, the poor man was practically crawling on his belly for Lydia at this point.
I pretended not to notice that their weekend in the Hamptons had them acting like honeymooners, but it was hard to deny that Pat clearly had opened up to her more and their relationship was in much better standing. They needed that time. As much as I wanted to pretend that things were hunky-dory, we all had to admit that this three-way-relationship was going to take more effort than we initially invested. But now was not the time for that, I was here to kick some ass on the court, not listen to birth plans.
“Alright, we’re not here to talk about your undying love for my secretary. Let’s finish this game.”
The guys agreed and I grabbed the ball off the floor, almost instantly we were all absorbed back into the match. Patrick swerved around Ike, coming straight for me while Charles blocked my path. I shoved past him and ducked under his arm to beeline down the court with them hot on my heels.
These times when we could escape for a few hours, unwind, and just enjoy some time away was what was saving our sanity. Plus, what better way to work out our competitiveness?
When we were finally done for the day we were drenched in sweat and all I could think about was taking a nap. Lydia should be home now, maybe she’ll want to lay down. I wasn’t a napping kind of person but lately, seeing her curled up on the nearest available soft surface had made me revaluate my stance. A nap with her wrapped around me would be nice, with both of them it would be better…
I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and followed Patrick into the changing room. The spice mixture of different aftershaves and colognes drowned out the scent of lemon cleaner. Men filled the entry space, relaxing on the couches, watching TV, and making small talk. Further back was the locker room that branched off to the left for showers and to the right for the sauna.
“Are you coming with us?” Ike asked, holding up his towel and nodding to the sauna.
“No, I just want a hot shower, but we’ll wait for you.”
They nodded, leaving me and Pat there to strip and head to the showers alone. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye as I shut the locker. He smirked and turned away.
“Don’t act like a perv in a locker room,” he teased. “That’s how you wake up stoned and naked in some creep’s pool house.”
“I prefer coke to weed, you generally wake up in better places if you go for the more expensive stuff.”
He laughed and shoved me towards the showers but didn’t say anything else.
There was no one else back here with us, I made sure to peek around the corner to see if the other stalls were open before pulling Pat into the one at the end. It was one thing to fool around under a table, it was another to do that in a space filled with people that regularly used the onsite gun range and often had a concealed carry license. I wasn’t keen to get caught here, but that didn’t kill the urge to push the limits.
I turned the water on and made sure the door was locked before turning back to the younger man who was rinsing out his hair.
“You looked nervous out there,” I said quietly. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head and reached for the bottle of shampoo. “Nothing, it just feels weird to talk to people who know and others who don’t. Having to go back and forth is tiring at times.”
“Charles and Ike are good to talk to, I’ve told you that before. You can trust them.”
He let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s not about trusting them, it’s about being able to tell them but feeling like I can’t tell my own mother. Both of them.”
“Did you tell Celestyn?” I asked, striving for a gentle tone.
Patrick didn’t say anything, but I saw the tension in his shoulders. Celestyn, his grandmother, knew about our relationship dynamics. She was elderly and extremely religious, but she had accepted Patrick blindly. I didn’t want to see him waste that relationship.
“Pat,” I pressed. “You have to talk to her at some point.”
“Not yet,” he replied in a strained voice. “I just… Talking to her makes it feel so real, that he’s really gone, and I feel like I’m betraying A.J. and his sisters…”
I reached for his shoulders and massaged slowly, evenly across the tired muscle. He came here when he needed an outlet, and it was showing with the muscle corded up and down his back. His lean figure built on cardio and light weightlifting was fading into someone who regularly pushed himself to the limits. It was like he was trying to reinvent himself.
“Call her,” I urged. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“Honestly, I don’t really want to talk about it while you’re trying to work me up.”
I smirked to myself and leaned in to kiss the back of his neck. “I’m trying to help you relax. That thing that I’ve never seen you do before.”
“You relax enough for the both of us.”
He wasn’t wrong, I did like relaxing. Pat always went above and beyond, he hadn’t used a sick day in years, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be good for him to do it. I wanted to remind him that the world didn’t need to be figured out right this second and that he could take some time off from trying to be superman once in a while.
But I knew I needed to try another tactic to get him to do it. “I haven’t been alone with you since before you went to the Hamptons,” I whispered huskily. “I want to show you that I missed you.”
Patrick let out a breathy laugh and took my hand, sliding it down his body to his hardening cock. “Like you showed Dia?”
I grinned to myself and brushed his hair back to get better access to his neck. “I can’t promise to call you a slut, but whatever works for you I guess.”
He laughed again, louder this time, and turned around. He shoved me hard, I stumbled on the slick floor and went down on one knee. Pat was grinning as he pushed me down completely until I was kneeling in front of him. The tile hurt my knees, but it was quickly forgotten when his fingers knotted in my hair and he pressed his cock against my lips. He was getting better at this, at figuring out what kind of a Dom he wanted to be without my having to lead him.
I would help get him into a better headspace for tonight, one where he would find it easier to throw Lydia across the table afterward. Even if he didn’t need my guidance anymore, I could still lend a hand, or a mouth. Plus, I couldn’t just let him forget about me while he was gone. It wasn’t just Lydia that needed alone time.