6
Milo
The coffee station is tucked into an alcove near the loading doors, and I make a beeline for it, because if I have to spend one more second thinking about Spencer in a jockstrap, I am going to spontaneously combust and take the whole warehouse with me.
Not my business.
Not my business.
I chant it to myself the whole walk over. It doesn’t take.
Two guys are already camped out by the carafes, both in the same kind of silk robe Kane had on, cinched loose at the waist. They both look like they got assembled in a lab specifically to ruin my ability to focus.
One’s got dark brown hair, long on top, falling forward when he tips his head, hazel eyes, a nose with a little character to it, and full lips.
The other one’s taller, rangy, dark blond hair pushed back, sharp cheekbones.
Neither of them notices me, so I pour my coffee slowly, milking the process, telling myself that eavesdropping on men in silk robes counts as professional development.
“I’m just saying,” the blond one says, leaning in until his shoulder brushes the other guy’s, “I can’t wait to see you in those red briefs.”
“Travis,” the brown-haired one says, glancing sideways. “Keep your voice down.”
“Why? It’s a compliment, Griffin.” Travis grabs a handful of the single-serve creamers, peels a few open, and pours them in, like a man who’s never once in his life worried about calories. “What’s wrong with me wanting to see my buddy in good-quality apparel?”
“It’s not what it sounds like when you put it like that.
” The brown-haired one—Griffin—has gone red from the collar of his robe all the way up into his hairline, and it is, objectively, a very good color on him.
Not that I’m cataloging that information for any particular reason.
“You say something like that around the wrong person, and it’s on social media by dinner. ”
“It’s already out there,” Travis says, stirring his coffee. “There’s a whole thread. I checked last week. Somebody made a compilation.”
“A compilation?”
“Yeah, like a video of our cute moments together.” Travis shrugs, unbothered, and takes a sip. “They got the offseason practices where we sat next to each other. The golf thing. I think there’s a gif from your sister’s wedding.”
“You were my plus-one because Dana canceled on me three days out!”
“Which nobody knows about, so. People fill in the blanks with whatever’s most interesting. And two guys on rival teams who like each other’s company reads more interesting than the truth.”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about.” Griffin drags a hand down his face. “You go around saying stuff like you can’t wait to see me in red briefs, in a room full of people, and you don’t get why the internet runs with it?”
“I don’t get why it matters if they do.”
“It matters because—” Griffin stops and comes up short.
“Because what?” Travis asks, and his voice has gone quieter.
There’s a pause that goes on a beat too long. Travis watches him over the rim of his coffee cup, and Griffin’s gone very still.
“Whatever,” Griffin says, and looks away first. “I don’t care what everyone thinks. Never have.”
“Good.” Travis says it softly. He’s still looking at Griffin, who picks his coffee back up and doesn’t say anything else.
I finish topping off my coffee, grab a granola bar and a bottle of water, and slip out of the alcove before either of them notices me. I don’t know either of them from anywhere, but I’m walking out weirdly invested. And I suspect the internet might be onto something.
***
I plant myself against the wall with my coffee and try to look like someone who has seen professional athletes half-naked before, which, until today, I had not.
Spencer stands under three separate lights that all seem determined to make sure nobody in a fifty-mile radius misses a single inch of him, one hand loose at his side, the other braced against a stool the photographer keeps repositioning.
He’s wearing electric-blue boxer briefs and has that light sheen going, whatever they put on him before I got in here, catching every place his body decided to be unreasonable about proportion.
“Chin down a touch. There. Hold that.” The photographer says it like she’s talking a horse through a jump, and Spencer holds it, eyes fixed on some point past the camera.
The wall, the light stand, the assistant’s clipboard.
Anywhere that isn’t where I’m standing, which is a relief.
I’m not sure what I would’ve done if he looked at me right now.
“Beautiful. Now weight on the other hip, and give me something with the eyes, not so much soldier, more like you just remembered something good.”
Spencer’s face does the exact look he wore on the drive over. Intense, unsmiling, and wildly out of place on a man in electric-blue underwear. But nobody asked me.
I try to keep my eyes on my coffee. I fail. I look back up almost immediately, because apparently my neck answers to someone other than me now.
They change him into black next, tighter through the leg, sitting lower on his hips, the V of muscle above the waistband sharp and defined.
The photographer wants him seated on an apple box this time, forearms on his knees, and Spencer arranges himself into it with the same grim compliance he brings to everything, doing exactly what’s asked and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Relax the jaw for me.”
He tries. His jaw does not get the message.
I laugh under my breath, and the assistant standing two feet away glances over. I straighten up and look down at my coffee.
Red comes after black, and by then I’ve stopped pretending I’m not staring.
The red’s the worst offender, pulling the whole room’s attention whether it wants to give it or not.
Spencer turns through the poses the photographer calls out, one after another, three-quarter turn, chin up, now down, hand on the hip, now off, and I catalog every single one of them.
He doesn’t look at me once.
“Great, that’s a wrap on this set, thank you,” the photographer finally calls, and Spencer peels off toward the dressing room like he’s been sprung from something, robe grabbed off the rack on his way past without breaking stride.
I let out a breath, thinking I survived this unscathed. That’s when the set assistant with the headset finds me.
“Hey, you’re with Rhodes, right?” She’s talking fast, the way people talk when they’re three tasks behind.
“I need a favor. Huge favor. We’ve got one more set, and he needs a fresh coat before we shoot it.
But Danae just got pulled to handle a wardrobe malfunction on set two, and I’ve got a lighting thing I have to deal with, and there is genuinely nobody else. ”
“A fresh coat of what?” I ask, even though I’ve already got a bad feeling about where this is going.
“Body oil. It’s easy, you rub it in, that’s it. Just don’t overdo it.” She’s already pressing a bottle into my hands before I’ve said anything close to yes, the dark plastic warm from wherever it’s been sitting. “You’re a savior. Seriously. Just get him touched up before the last shot.”
And then she’s gone, and I’m left standing by the craft table holding a bottle of body oil like it’s a live grenade.
I stare at the label for a solid minute. And then I put on the smile, the one that says everything’s fine, nothing to see here, and start walking toward the dressing room before I lose my nerve.
The door’s cracked when I get there. Spencer’s back in his robe, cinched tight around him, and he looks up when I push the door open.
“They’re almost done,” he says. “Last set. You can wait outside if you want.”
“So, funny story.” I hold the bottle up. “Apparently I’ve been drafted. They told me you need a fresh coat of oil, and everyone who normally does this got sucked into something else.”
His eyes go from the bottle to me, and something crosses his face before he shutters it. “No.”
“No?”
“You don’t have to do that.” He’s already reaching for the door, like he’s going to march out into the hallway and fix this. “That’s not in your job description. I’ll talk to the set manager, this is… unacceptable. This isn’t something you should be asked to do.”
“It’s fine, Spencer.”
“It’s not fine.”
“It’s just body oil,” I say, even though I know it’s not. “Let’s get it over with so we can go home, okay? I don’t want to be the reason we’re here till midnight.”
He looks at me for a long second, weighing it.
I smile at him, ignoring my pulse. “Take off the robe, boss.”
He huffs but reaches for the knot at his waist.
The robe slides off his shoulders and pools at his feet, and I forget, briefly, how to operate my own face.
He’s in a jockstrap. Deep green, cut low and snug, and it does not leave a single thing to the imagination, not the shape of him, not the size of him.
I register two facts in the same half second: that my boss is impressive everywhere, and that I am not sure I am equipped to survive the next ten minutes of my life.
Spencer reads whatever’s happening on my face, because of course he does. The man reads a whole football field for a living. His hand comes out toward me. “Give it here. I’ll do it myself.”
Something in me straightens up at that, stubborn and reckless. “You can’t reach your own back or your shoulders properly. I’ve got this.”
“Milo.”
“I’ve got this,” I say again, firmer, and he studies me another second before he sighs, the sound of a man deciding a fight isn’t worth having. He turns to face the mirror, planting both hands flat on the little dresser.
Which puts me directly behind the best view I have had of another human body in my entire twenty-two years of life.
His back, wide and cut with muscle all the way down to a waist that tapers before it flares at his hips.
Thighs that regular pants were not designed to contain.
And the jockstrap leaves the rest of him bare, round and tight and completely, unfairly perfect.
I swallow audibly. “Right. Okay. Let’s do this.”
I pour the oil into my palm and start with his shoulders, working it into the skin. It’s spreading easily and going glossy the second it touches him. He’s tight everywhere, muscles locked up under my hands like he’s bracing for a hit.
“Relax,” I say, low. “I’m not gonna bite you.”
He exhales, and some of the tension bleeds out.
I finish his back, working down either side of his spine, and when I’ve covered everything I can standing up, I drop to my knees behind him.
My breath lands right against the back of his thigh before I mean it to, and I feel him go rigid, hear the sharp pull of air through his nose, and watch goosebumps rise across his skin, thigh to ass.
I get more confident with my movements, starting at his calves, working the oil in circles, up over the curve of muscle there, and then higher, over the back of one knee, up the long line of his thigh.
I do the first leg all the way, then move to the second, and by the time I’m done, both his legs are shining, and my hands are not quite steady anymore.
Then there’s nowhere left to go but up, and I move to his ass.
Spencer gasps when I get both hands on one cheek, working the oil in. It’s not subtle, slipping out of him before he can stop it. I try to keep it impersonal. Hands and oil and skin, nothing more.
But he makes that sound again when I move to the other side, quieter, bitten back, and it undoes whatever thread I was hanging on to. My hands slow down. The circles become a caress, and I know exactly what I’m doing even as I tell myself I don’t.
I’m hard. I’ve been hard for several minutes now, tenting the front of my pants past any hope of hiding it. And I know, with total clarity, that the second he turns around he’s going to see it.
I finish the last of it, smoothing my palms over him one more time, and then I rise to my feet behind him.
“Turn around,” I say, my voice coming out wrecked.