Chapter 5
Batboy was the title. Handing out bats was the job description. Neither one came close to what I actually spent my innings doing.
By the third, I had cataloged the way Evan set his feet differently against a lefty, the small restless bounce he did on his toes in the gaps between pitches. When he reached down to adjust his cup—one blunt, unhurried tug—my throat closed up completely.
The fourth inning brought a foul ball screaming down the first base line. Evan was already moving before the crack of the bat finished echoing, his body launching off the warning track in a full extension dive that turned him into a six-foot-three missile of muscle and reflex.
Then gravity remembered its job.
He stuck the landing, but momentum yanked him forward, folding him at the waist until his torso was nearly parallel to the ground. His right arm shot up, ball secure in the leather, and the crowd roared its approval.
But that wasn’t what I was looking at.
The fifty-five-inch Jumbotron caught the angle from behind. Evan bent over, white pants stretched vacuum-tight across his ass, every muscle in his glutes and hamstrings carved in relief by the stadium lights.
And then the camera zoomed in.
His cup had shifted. Or rather, his balls had escaped it entirely—the impact of the landing must have popped them free.
They hung heavy and obscene against the sheer white fabric, pressed outward by the force of his bent posture, each one clearly defined by the stretch of the material.
The left hung noticeably lower than the right, and the center seam of his pants bisected them into two distinct shapes.
They were enormous. Genuinely, absurdly large.
My cock went from zero to diamond-hard in the span of a heartbeat.
I sat down. Hard. The metal bench rang out under my ass, and I barely registered the sting because every ounce of blood in my body had migrated to my crotch. I shoved my elbows onto my knees and dropped my head, staring at the concrete between my cleats.
The dugout erupted.
“Holy shit, Brock!” Reed was half-standing, both hands on the railing, cackling. “Dude’s smuggling grapefruits!”
“Those aren’t regulation!” Caldwell shouted, slapping the bench. “Somebody call the ump!”
One of the freshmen doubled over, wheezing. “Bro, his nuts have their own zip code.”
Williams cupped his hands around his mouth. “THAT’S why he hits dingers! Counterweight!”
My hands were shaking. My dick was so hard it physically hurt, trapped sideways in my compression shorts.
Then my father’s voice cut through the chaos, directed at Petrie beside him. “We need to order him an extra-large. That cup’s been too small all season—I should’ve caught it sooner.”
Petrie scribbled something on his clipboard. “I’ll call the supplier tonight.”
My father said it the way he’d say we need more batting tape or the infield needs raking. Equipment maintenance. A logistical footnote. Meanwhile, I was six feet away having a stroke over the same anatomical real estate, and the cognitive dissonance nearly split me in two.
On the field, Evan straightened up slowly, rolling his shoulders back. The camera was still on him, broadcasting his smirk to fifteen thousand people. He turned toward the Jumbotron, locked eyes with the lens, and winked.
The stadium lost its collective mind—screaming, whistling, stomping feet that shook the bleachers. Women in the front rows fanned themselves. A group of guys in the student section started a chant I couldn’t make out over the blood roaring in my ears.
He tossed the ball casually to the second baseman and jogged back to his position, unbothered, unhurried. As if he hadn’t put his entire reproductive system on display for a live audience. Evan Brock did not experience shame the way mortal men did.
I pressed my forehead against my clasped hands and breathed through my mouth. In. Out. In. Out. Think about cold showers. Think about Dad in a jockstrap. Think about the time I stepped on a slug barefoot when I was nine.
Nothing worked. I could still see it when I closed my eyes. I’d see it when I was eighty and dying in a hospital bed. It would be the last thing my brain projected before the lights went out.
“Tommy.” My father’s voice was close. Too close. “You alright?”
I didn’t look up. “Leg cramp,” I said, and my voice came out strangled enough to sell it.
A pause. “Drink some water. And straighten up—you look like you’re praying.”
I am, I thought. I’m praying for death.
He moved away, his attention back on the game. The inning continued around me. Guys rotated in and out of the dugout. Bats clinked. Someone asked me for a fresh towel.
I handed it over without looking up, my elbows still glued to my knees, and silently begged my body to cooperate for five more minutes. Then I could escape to the equipment room and have my nervous breakdown in peace.
On the field, Evan crouched back into his ready position, and even from the dugout, even at this distance, I could see the outline of him through those ruined pants. Thick and heavy and impossible to ignore.
I was going to die on this bench. They’d find my body here after the game, petrified in the fetal position, cause of death listed as acute sexual frustration complicated by parental proximity.
Reed leaned over from two seats down. “Yo, Tommy—you see that catch? Dude’s nuts are literally famous now.”
“Saw it,” I managed. “Great catch.”
“Great balls,” Reed corrected, grinning like an idiot. “Hashtag BrocksBalls is already trending.”
I wanted to crawl under the bench and never emerge.
Instead, I sat there, hard as concrete, and waited for the inning to end.
Reed had his jersey off before the door to the locker room closed, swinging it overhead in a victory lap that sent sweat droplets flying. Williams and Caldwell chest-bumped each other. Three freshmen started a towel-snapping war near the showers, their whoops bouncing around the room.
And then there was Evan.
He emerged from the crowd shirtless. Sweat glazed his chest and pooled in the hollow of his throat.
Our shortstop grabbed Evan’s ass with both hands.
Evan put him in a headlock and ground his knuckles into the kid’s scalp.
He only released him so he could cup his package through those obscene white pants and thrust his hips at the circle of guys surrounding him.
“Who’s your daddy?” Evan roared.
The room roared back, “You are!”
I stood in the corner of the room, watching the homoeroticism for what it was—a gay boy’s wet dream.
The shower room beckoned the team one by one. Steam billowed from the open doorway. I could hear the spray hitting tile, the slap of bare feet, the echo of Reed’s voice saying something that made everyone howl.
I never went in there.
It wasn’t a matter of shyness. It was self-preservation.
I’d caught enough glimpses through the doorway over the years to know what waited inside—Reed’s bare ass jiggling with every step he took.
Williams helicoptering his dick at anyone who made eye contact with him.
Max slapping everyone’s ass with a cupped palm, the crack of skin on wet skin ringing out every thirty seconds.
And now Evan would be in there. Naked. Those enormous, heavy, impossible balls hanging free. Swinging when he moved. Resting against his inner thigh when he stood still. Wet and slick under the shower spray.
I wasn’t going in there, even if someone held a gun to my head. Some things, once seen, could never be unseen, and I was already drowning in material I couldn’t handle.
The laundry was my excuse and my salvation. Twenty-two uniforms, compression shirts, socks, sliding shorts, jockstraps—all of it needed to go into the industrial washer before we loaded the bus. It was mindless grunt work that gave me a reason to be somewhere else.
I gathered the mesh bags from the hamper by the door, hoisted them over my shoulder, and slipped out while the team was still whooping under the spray.
The equipment room was down the hall, past the visiting coaches’ office and a storage closet with a busted lock. The washer and dryer were ancient, bolted to the concrete floor, loud enough to drown out a conversation. The room smelled of detergent and rubber.
I dumped the first bag onto the sorting table and started separating whites from darks. Jersey after jersey. Number 12—Reed. Number 7—Williams. Number 31—Caldwell.
Number 24.
brOCK stitched across the shoulders in navy thread.
My hands acted of their own accord, pressing the fabric against my nose and mouth. The smell hit me—the deep, animal musk of Evan’s sweat soaked into polyester. My eyes rolled back. My cock throbbed.
I ripped it away and shoved it into the washer with the rest, slamming the lid with a resounding bang. I cranked the dial, and the machine shuddered to life, vibrating through the concrete and up through my shoes into the bones of my feet.
The team was in the showers. My father was in the coaches’ office reviewing film, and wouldn’t come to help me carry the clean laundry to the bus for at least another forty minutes. The door was shut. The washer was loud. And I was alone.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I shoved my uniform pants and compression shorts down to my thighs. My cock sprang free, flushed dark and leaking from the tip. The cool air of the equipment room hit my shaft, and I hissed through my teeth.
I wrapped my hand around myself and squeezed.
The image was already there, waiting. It had been building since the fourth inning, refining itself with every passing minute until it played behind my eyelids in high definition.
An empty baseball field at night. The stadium lights were left on, casting everything in a flat white glow.
Evan was on the pitcher’s mound, bent at the waist. Those white pants pulled down to his knees. The elastic bands of his jockstrap framing his ass, the pouch hanging heavy between his thighs. I was on my knees behind him.