The Mascot - Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Author’s note: All my characters are consenting adults (18+). All sexual acts depicted are consensual between the adult characters.

Chapter 6 

Nick didn’t wait for a vote.

He was already off the couch, gray shorts shoved down enough that the argument he’d been having with his own body was public. Thick. Veined. Angry in a way that had nothing to do with push-ups. He took one step toward me and the living room did that thing living rooms do when somebody changes the rules without asking the room.

Vincent sat up so fast his glasses slipped.

“No. No, no, no. That’s not how the bracket works.”

Nick stopped like Vincent had put a hand on his chest from eight feet away.

“Say that again.”

“You lost,” Vincent said. His voice went high and then he forced it down, which only made it worse. “MJ won. Prize is one mouth. One finish. You don’t get a participation trophy because you’re hard and loud. You wait for the next game. That’s the rule. That’s the whole point of a constraint.”

MJ was still half-laughing from the floor, wiping his eyes, the champion cooling off in his own skin.

“He’s not wrong, bro. I did the work. You did the commentary.”

“I did sixty-something in the gym this morning,” Nick said. “I carried four XL pizzas up two flights. I stood there and let him put his mouth on me for a dare and I put it away like a person. You did five extra push-ups to be a dick and now you’re the king of the living room. That’s not a bracket. That’s a coup.”

Vincent stood. Mistake. He was still the shortest thing in the apartment and the night had already used him once. He pointed at Nick with the empty shot glass like it was a gavel.

“You agreed. Nate set the rules before the first shot. Nobody films. One skip. Two skips and you drink the bottle. You didn’t skip. You lost a contest you signed up for. Waiting is the dare you don’t like. That doesn’t make it not a dare.”

Nick’s ears went red under the blond beard.

“Don’t lawyer me, nerdy. You’re not Nate!”

“I’m not lawyering,” Vincent said. “I’m keeping the data clean. If you get head because you’re mad, the game is dead. Then it’s just six guys in an apartment doing whatever they want to the mascot, and that’s not a game, that’s gay.”

“Say house pet,” Omar offered from the couch, dry. “You were circling it.”

“I was not circling it.”

“You were circling it,” MJ said. He had his shorts up now, barely. “And Nick’s circling Troy’s mouth. Everybody’s circling. It’s a geometry night.”

Nick pointed at Vincent without looking away from me.

“He opened his mouth. That’s the invitation. You built a religion out of pizza and now you’re the pope of who gets to use it. I asked for a blowjob. I didn’t ask for a constitution.”

Vincent’s ridiculous mustache twitched.

“You asked after the prize was awarded. That’s not asking. That’s stealing.”

Nick moved.

He didn’t hit him. He didn’t have to. One palm on Vincent’s chest, a shove that wasn’t gym-heavy and still put Vincent into the couch hard enough that the frame clicked. Vincent made a sound that was surprise more than pain. The glasses went crooked. A throw pillow bounced off the arm and hit the pizza boxes. The shot glass rolled under the table and kept rolling.

“Hey,” Nate said. First real word since Nick stood. Quiet. The office voice. “That’s enough.”

Nick didn’t look at Nate. He looked at me. At the mess still on my face. At the rope Omar hadn’t untied. At my mouth, which was open because I hadn’t remembered to close it.

“I had him first,” Nick said. Not to me. To the room. To the mute TV. To the idea of fairness that had just left the building. “Those were my balls. That was my ten seconds. You all sat there and timed it and laughed and now the nerd wants me to wait for a sequel like this is fucking Netflix.”

Vincent sat up, glasses in his hand, trying to look like a man who had not just been folded into furniture.

“Next game,” he said, thinner. “Tomorrow. I’ll write it. You’ll have a path. That’s how systems work.”

“I don’t want a path. I want head.” Nick’s voice was louder.

MJ whistled low.

“Say it louder for the neighbors.”

Nick dragged a hand down his face. His cock was still a problem he had stopped pretending wasn’t there. He shoved himself into the shorts like the shorts had done this to him.

“I hate this friend group.”

Then he went down the hall.

The bedroom door slammed hard enough that a picture frame in the hallway ticked against the wall and went still. For a second the only sound was the fridge and Vincent breathing through his nose like he’d been sprinting.

MJ stared at the hall.

“He’s gonna be a nightmare at practice tomorrow.”

“He’s a nightmare at practice anyway,” Omar said. “Now he’s a nightmare with a thesis and blue balls.”

Vincent put his glasses back on. His hands weren’t steady.

“He shoved me.”

“He shoved you soft,” Omar said. “If he’d shoved you hard you’d be in the wall. File that as affection if it helps you sleep.”

“It does not help me sleep.”

Omar laughed. Not the polite almost-smile. A real one. Head back. Green eyes wet again, this time from the show instead of the nose thing.

“You put a mascot in a house with five straight boys and a bottle,” he said. “Of course the house is going to break. That’s not a glitch, Vin. That’s the product. You built a vending machine and got mad it took nickels.”

Nate was already moving. He crouched in front of me without asking the room and worked Omar’s knots with the same hands he used on binders. The rope came off in three tugs. Blood returned to my fingers in a rush that hurt. My shoulders screamed. I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t know what the sentence was. I was tied because I wanted to. Everything I did tonight was because I wanted it.

Nate stood, looked at my face the way you look at a spill you are not going to pretend isn’t there, and tipped his head toward the door.

“Get a hoodie. We’re going out.”

“Where?”

“Not a dare. A drink. You need fresh air.”

Vincent blinked.

“You’re leaving? We should debrief. We should set a cooling-off protocol—”

“Vin,” Nate said. “If you say protocol I will put you back in the couch myself. The game is over.”

Omar lifted the amber bottle in a mock toast as I stood. My knees had opinions. The carpet had a wet mark I was not going to think about.

“Don’t let lawyer boy talk you into a plea deal.”

“I’m not talking him into anything,” Nate said. “I’m getting him off the crime scene.”

MJ called after us, softer than the night had earned.

“Troy. You good?”

I was more than good, I was in gay heaven and horny, my mind still processing. I gave him the official shrug anyway. The one that used to fit. He nodded like that was an answer and looked at the hallway again, at Nick’s door, like the champion had just realized the medal came with a roommate who slammed things.

The street was colder than the apartment. Late enough that the block had given up. A dog barked two buildings over and then thought better of it. Nate walked like he walked to the firm — long, quiet, not waiting and not leaving me behind. I had the hoodie up. It hid the rope marks. It did not hide the way I walked, like my jaw still remembered the shape of a prize.

“You want to talk here or in a booth?” he asked me.

“Booth. If you start this on the sidewalk I’m going back and sleeping on the pizza.”

“Fair.”

We passed the gym Nick lived in more than he lived in the apartment. The windows were dark. I looked anyway. Nate saw me look and didn’t comment, which was worse than commenting.

The bar was the kind of place law students used when they didn’t want to see anyone from the firm. Dim. Sticky. A TV on a soccer match nobody in the building cared about. The bartender knew Nate’s face well enough not to ask questions. Two whiskeys. Booth in the back. He set my glass down and didn’t start with a joke. That was how you knew it was going to be worse than the living room.

I had washed my face in the hall bathroom before we left. Not well. I could still feel it. A tightness at the corner of my mouth. A salt ghost under my nose. If Nate could see it in this light, he was choosing not to name the texture.

“You didn’t have to hide it,” he said.

I wrapped both hands around the glass.

“Hide what?”

“Don’t.” He turned the ring on his finger once. “I’ve thought you were gay since sophomore year. I didn’t say it because it wasn’t my announcement. And because you were funny about it. The bit. The timelines. The way you looked at Nick when you thought nobody was doing inventory. The way you looked at all of us, if I’m being precise, which I am trying to be.”

The whiskey burned less than Omar’s bottle and more than I wanted.

“If you knew, you could’ve said.”

“And do what. Out you over pizza. That’s not a favor. That’s a scene.” Nate’s mouth ticked. Almost the almost-smile. “I waited. You picked dare instead of truth tonight. That’s you saying it. Just not with the word. The word was going to come out of Vin’s mouth eventually. I figured you’d rather it come out of yours.”

“It came out of my mouth in a different way.”

“I’m aware.”

I stared at the TV. Some guy in blue missed a header. The bar had six other people in it and none of them were looking at us. I still felt looked at.

“So now what,” I said. “You brought me here to tell me I’m obvious.”

“I brought you here because Nick just put Vincent through the furniture and the apartment is going to wake up tomorrow like nothing happened, and it happened.” He leaned back. Sleeves still rolled. Hairy forearms on the table. Office posture in a booth that smelled like old limes. “I want to know how you plan to live there.”

“I live there. That’s the plan.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He let the quiet sit until I had to look at him. Nate at twenty-three did not rush a silence. That was the internship talking. That was also just him.

“Do you want to be Troy,” he said. “The guy who knows which Batman is canon and hates mock trial and eats pizza with his hands and makes the room easier. Or do you want to be the mascot. The thing they use and haze. The mouth they pass around when Vin builds a bracket and MJ wins a contest and Nick loses his mind in the hallway.”

The word thing landed cleaner than it should have. Not cruel. Precise. Lawyer precise.

“That’s a hell of a binary.”

“It’s the one the house is about to use whether you pick it or not.” He turned the glass. Ice moved. “Nick doesn’t have a next-game setting. You saw it. He doesn’t wait for systems. MJ just found out a throat feels different than whatever he’s been doing with girls who have the option to leave, and he’s going to pretend it doesn’t matter until it does. Vincent will write a syllabus because that’s how he metabolizes shame. Omar will watch and tie knots and keep a girl in his phone like a bookmark. I’m asking you before they decide for you. Because they will decide. Tonight proved it.”

I drank. The official funny friend tried to arrive. He didn’t make the booth. He was still on the carpet with his wrists behind his back.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s an answer. It’s not a good one.”

“It’s the true one.”

Nate nodded once, like he’d expected that and filed it under uncooperative witness, still useful.

“Do you have a favorite?”

The question was smaller than the last one and heavier. I felt it in my throat, still raw, still shaped like MJ. I felt it lower, in the place the night had not touched because nobody had asked to. I thought about Nick in the doorway with the pizzas. I thought about Nate in the shower at the office gym, a mouth with no gender. I thought about Omar’s chest almost on my ear when he tied the knot and asked if it was too tight. I thought about MJ saying breathe like a coach. I thought about Vincent coming on my face like a science fair.

“Yes,” I said.

He waited.

I didn’t give him the name.

Nate’s jaw ticked. The same tick from the first truth. He covered it by drinking. Not well. The irritation sat in the way he set the glass down too carefully, like the table had offended him by existing.

“Okay.”

“Nate.”

“I’m not owed a name.” He said it like a man reminding himself of a rule he had written and did not like. “I’m asking because the house is going to turn into a scoreboard and I would rather know if you’re actually choosing or if you’re just the one who doesn’t skip. There’s a difference. One is you. The other is the game wearing you.”

“I choose,” I said. “I’m not telling you who.”

The almost-smile was gone. What replaced it was the firm. Contained. Slightly pissed and performing not-pissed so well that only somebody who’d watched him for three years would catch the performance.

“It’s MJ,” he said. “That’s the easy math. Size. The prize. You looked at him like you’d won the lottery with your hands tied. People don’t make that face for a dare.”

“Nate—”

“Or it’s Nick.” He said Nick’s name flatter. Like the name had weight he didn’t want to lift in public. “American Boy next door. Blonde. The beard. The cut-off. The way you’ve been measuring the distance between your knee and his since we got that couch. You put your mouth on him first. People remember first. He remembers first. That’s why the door came off the hinges.”

He was fishing. He was good at it. I kept my face in the glass. The whiskey was almost gone. I wanted another and I also wanted to walk into traffic, which was a dramatic way of saying I wanted to not answer.

“Could be neither,” I said.

“Could be.” He didn’t believe me. “Could be you want the whole roster and you’re calling that a favorite so I’ll stop talking. That’s a valid strategy. It’s also going to get you eaten alive by a push-up contest every other night.”

“Is that what you want me to say, that I want all of you?”

Nate looked at me for a long second. Brown hair. Intellectual mustache. The tallest one. The one who had come on my face and then made a house rule and then taken me to a bar like the house rule needed an addendum written in person.

“What I want,” he said, “is to not watch you get turned into a chore the house resents and a prize the house fights over. Those are two different disasters. Pick the version you can sleep with. I’m not asking you to pick me. I’m asking you to pick a sentence you can repeat when Nick opens that door tomorrow and Vin has a clipboard.”

“I can sleep with both versions.”

His ring went still.

“That’s not the question I asked.”

It was, a little. He knew it. I let it hang. He looked at the soccer game like it had become interesting. Blue missed another header. The bartender dropped a glass in the well and didn’t apologize to anyone.

“Monday you have mock.” he said, switching tracks the way he switched when a witness got close to something he wasn’t ready to enter into evidence. “Don’t stay up until four. Don’t go back in there and kneel because the door’s open and Nick’s in a mood. Wash your face properly. The hoodie isn’t doing what you think it’s doing. I can still—” He stopped. Restarted. “Just wash your face.”

“You’re a lot of care for a guy who used my mouth as a dare.”

“I used a dare the room already built.” He stood, dropped cash on the table, didn’t wait for change. “I’m also the one who asked if you wanted to leave the carpet. Both things can be true. Ask Nick. He’s an expert at both things being true. He invented it tonight and then slammed a door on it.”

On the walk back he didn’t talk. I didn’t either. The gym was still dark. The apartment windows were still throwing TV-blue at the street. I thought about saying the name. I didn’t. The name felt like handing Nate a weapon he would not use and would also not forget.

The apartment was the same crime scene with the lights lower. Vincent’s laptop slept on the floor, a charging cable like a tail. Omar’s amber bottle had an inch left. MJ’s door was shut. Nick’s was shut. A strip of light under it. No sound. No music. Just the fridge and the mute sports channel still running for an empty couch.

Nate paused in the hall.

“Water,” he said. “Then bed.”

“Yes, sir.”

He almost smiled. Almost. Then he went to his room and closed the door like a man closing a file he was going to reopen at 7 a.m. whether he wanted to or not.

I stood in the bathroom with the light too bright and the mirror too honest. I washed my face again. The cloth came away gray-white in places I had missed at the bar. Dried. Tight on my skin along the upper lip, at the corner of my mouth, a faint track under one nostril I had pretended was gone. I had walked three blocks like that. I had sat across from Nate like that. I had said yes to a favorite and given him nothing he could use except the fact of the yes, which was already too much.

The hoodie came off. The rope marks were pink on my wrists. I pressed a thumb into one and felt stupid for needing proof it had happened.

I didn’t know how to walk into the kitchen tomorrow.

Nick would be there with the cut-off and the blond beard and the slam still in the hinges. He would look at my mouth and remember he didn’t get it. He would call it biology again or he would not talk at all, and I didn’t know which one would be worse. Vincent would have a new constraint written in the Notes app. MJ would call me mascot like a nickname he’d earned with sixty-eight plus five. Omar would watch from the counter with coffee and a girl in his pocket. Nate would drink his coffee black and not ask the name again in front of them, which was its own kind of asking.

I lay down in my t-shirt. Wrists sore. Throat sore. The smell of the living room still in my hair — sweat, pizza, the ghost of Nick from two hours earlier when ten seconds had stopped being ten seconds, the sharper ghost of MJ when the prize had nowhere to go but out.

I stared at the ceiling and tried to decide if I was Troy.

The mascot was easier. The mascot had a job. The mascot opened his mouth when the bracket said so and didn’t have to pick a favorite in a booth.

Troy had a name he would not say, a door he had walked through on his knees, dried cum he could still feel when he turned his face on the pillow, and a morning coming whether he picked a version or not.

Nick’s light went off down the hall. The click was small. It sounded like a man giving up on being awake without giving up on being angry.

I didn’t sleep so much as wait.

Tomorrow was close enough to make me nervous.