Page 13 of Lord of the Lock

I headed over to the opposite shower-head from Finn and turned it on, yelping out loud as the water came out freezing cold. Finn laughed from the opposite corner, but I didn’t turn to look at him.

“We used to have about a minute of warm water between us,” he said. I dipped my hand under the water and stepped under as it turned warm. “Imagine twenty teenagers cramming themselves into this shower block just to catch the bit of warm water before it was cold enough to make our junk shrivel.”

“I’d rather not,” I shot back. “Never liked PE in school. Too many straight boys thought I was looking at them.” There, I’d said out loud, not in so many words, what had caused this stupid fear of showering in public.

Finn chuckled. “Do you have shampoo over there?”

I shook my head, and a bottle of shampoo slid across the floor and knocked the side of my foot. So he’d been looking over at me.

“I never had that problem,” Finn said. “No-one was accusing me of looking at them.”

“Why, because you weren’t out?”

“Because they were looking at me,” he said.

I picked up the shampoo and squeezed some into my hand before rubbing it through my hair, over my armpits and in other more sensitive areas. The water was lovely to be underneath now it had warmed up, but I was still resolutely staring at the tiled wall. Even if Finn had taken a peek, I was still too scared to look elsewhere. I was more scared of looking at him and seeing his eyes on me, which was completely irrational from the other side of a steamy room when I didn’t even have my glasses on and wouldn’t know at all if he was looking. But still, I faced the wall and washed the shampoo off me.

And then I realised what he’d said. “Wait, they were all looking at you? Awful high opinion of yourself, don’t you think?”

“Believe me, I don’t think I’m a looker,” said Finn. I wanted to laugh at how completely wrong he was. He wasgorgeous. “But on a completely objective level, there was something about me that drew everyone’s eyes.”

“And what was that?” I asked. His eyes? Was he always as built as he was now, something about his height?

I heard Finn’s shower turn off and then his wet footsteps over to the changing area. “I joked about being the Welsh clown of rugby…but you really don’t know the nickname they gave me, do you?”

I turned off my shower and picked up the shampoo. I braced myself to step outside. All I had to do was dry myself enough to get my clothes on, and not look up once until Finn was dressed too. Easy.

“Lord of the Lock, right?” I said, carefully avoiding looking over at Finn as I stepped out into the changing area.

“That was my nickname on the field. In the changing rooms and in the bedroom, people started calling methe Horse,” Finn said casually, like he was reading the weather out.

I reached down for my towel, but without my glasses I managed to knock my forehead on the bench as I did. “Fuck,” I said. I leaned backwards, holding my forehead as stars swam in front of my eyes, and slipped backwards on the tiles, knocking the back of my head on the metal lockers.

“Shit, are you OK?” Finn asked. I was looking down into my own lap and trying to make the black spots in my vision go away.

“Glasses,” I said.

“Here.” They were thrust into my hand and I did my best to wipe the condensation off them and focus on the floor. Well, my fear at being seen naked had been completely and utterly blown up by the fact I was now laying haphazardly across a cold tile floor with the goods completely on show.

“Nathan, are you OK?” Finn asked. “Look me in the eye, and tell me…I don’t know, the current Prime Minister?”

“Who knows,” I quipped. “There have been like four this year.”

“That’s good,” he said, “because I don’t actually know the answer.”

I looked up into Finn’s eyes. He was crouched low to the floor, honey-brown eyes staring with concern into mine. And he was stark-bollock naked.

I knew that because my eyes drifted downward as if of their own accord and honed in on…that.Finn hadn’t been lying when he called himself the Horse. It was hanging below his legs, nestled in a crown of thick, dark pubic hair. He was crouched pretty low on his haunches, and the tip of his cock was almost touching the floor.

“My eyes are up here,” he said. I looked up, mortified, but he laughed and held a hand out. “Believe me, it’s more of a curse than a blessing.”

I took his hand and he pulled me up from the floor. Finn kept one hand on me as he grabbed my towel with the other and laid it out on the bench, then settled me on top of it. He crouched again, but from my higher vantage point it was much easier to focus on just his face.

“Right, how many fingers am I holding up?” he asked.

“Five,” I said.

“Good lad,” he said. “You should be fine.”

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