The showers were open plan—along row of heads mounted on one wall, drain grates set into the floor. Standard setup for any team facility. Guys showered together after practice every day. There was nothing unusual about this.
Except everything about this was unusual.
I set my practice shirt and water bottle on the bench without looking at him, reached into my bag for my towel, and hung it on the nearest hook. I pushed my shorts down and stepped out of them, hung them over the same hook, and walked to the far end of the shower row. I turned the water on and waited for it to warm, both hands braced against the tile wall, head down.
I heard him behind me. The soft sounds of him undressing—the slide of fabric, the quiet of it. Then his footsteps on the tile, and the sound of a shower head three down from mine turning on.
I stepped under the spray and stood there, water hitting the back of my neck and shoulders, eyes closed. The heat felt good in the way that things felt good when your body was wrung out and your brain was still running too hot. I focused on it. Tried to let it be enough.
I lasted maybe thirty seconds before I opened my eyes.
He was watching me. Not even pretending otherwise. Water streamed over his shoulders and down his chest, tracing every line of muscle, following the cut of his abdomen before disappearing lower. He was completely, unselfconsciously naked, watching me with dark, steady eyes, and his cock washard, fully, unmistakably hard, and he made no move to hide it or explain it or offer me any kind of exit from the moment.
I turned to face the wall. Pressed my palms flat against the tile and dropped my head forward under the spray.
The water ran down the back of my neck, my shoulders, my spine. I focused on it. Tried to let it be enough.
Then I heard his shower cut off.
The silence where that sound had been was louder than the running water. Footsteps on wet tile, deliberate and unhurried, moving closer. The air in the room felt different, thicker, warmer, charged with something that the steam alone couldn't account for.
I didn't turn around.
He moved past me, close enough that I registered the displacement of warm air against my skin, and stepped under the shower head directly beside mine. I could feel the heat coming off his body competing with the heat of the water.
I turned my head.
He wasn't looking at me.
He'd angled himself slightly away, facing the wall, head tipped back under the spray, water cascading down the back of his neck and over his shoulders in heavy sheets. His hands moved through his wet hair, slowly, both arms raised, the position pulling the lines of his back taut and exposing every muscle in his shoulders, his lats, the long column of his spine.
And then lower.
The water ran down the small of his back and over the curve of his ass, and there was no clinical framing that made it anything other than what it was. Perfect. High and tight and sculpted by a decade of professional athletics, and the water followed every contour of him with an attention to detail that made my jaw tight.
He shifted his weight, one hand dropping from his hair to brace against the tile in front of him. The movement rolled his hips back slightly, and the line of his body changed, the arch of it deliberate in a way I was absolutely certain he knew.
A low sound escaped my throat that I didn't plan and couldn't take back.
He still didn't look at me. Just reached for the soap from the ledge, worked it between his palms until it lathered, and began washing himself with the same unhurried attention he'd been applying to everything since he walked in here. His hands moved over his chest first, broad strokes, methodical, his palms flattening against his pecs and sliding down over his abdomen with a slowness that had nothing to do with hygiene and everything to do with the fact that he knew I was watching.
He worked the lather over his stomach, his hips, down the outside of his thighs and back up the inside, and my grip tightened on the wall because my hands needed something to do that wasn't reaching for him. The soap ran off him in rivulets, following the same paths the water took, and he was thorough about it, the inside of his elbows, the back of his neck, both arms from shoulder to wrist, with the unhurried patience of a man who had nowhere to be and no intention of rushing anything.
Then he turned.
Not fully, not enough to face me, but enough. A three-quarter angle that put his profile in my direct line of sight. His eyes found mine through the steam and the running water and he held the contact, steady and dark and completely unashamed, while his soaped hands continued moving over his body like the eye contact was just another thing happening at the same time, unremarkable, inevitable.
His hands moved lower.
He washed his cock with the same deliberate attention he'd given everything else, lathering it slowly, stroking from base totip once, twice, three times with a thoroughness that crossed the line between washing and something else so gradually that I couldn't identify the exact moment it changed. A low sound moved through him, barely audible over the water, and his hips tilted forward slightly into the motion.
His eyes didn't leave mine.
I watched his throat work. Watched the flush deepen across his chest. Watched his lips part around a breath he didn't quite manage to keep steady, and my own breathing had long since stopped being anything I could control. My cock was hard against my stomach, insistent and aching, and I made no move to do anything about it because I was incapable of moving, incapable of looking anywhere but at him.
He rinsed off.
One hand braced against the tile, head tilted back, letting the spray clear the soap from his chest, his stomach, his cock. The water cascaded over him and he stood there and let it happen, and when he straightened and looked at me again his expression had shifted into something that made the breath leave my body entirely.
