hephaestion2014's blog

"An husband should not be inquisitive / Of Godde's privity, nor of his wife." — Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale ​

The deadbolt clicked. The fire door of the gym swung shut. It was past midnight on a Tuesday, the hour when the gym was usually devoid of other people. ​John was halfway to the heavy bag when he heard it—not the whish of jump ropes or the clang of dumbbells, but a sharp expulsion of air. 

John kept his footsteps quiet. He squinted into the shadows near the back where a low brick partition blocked the view of the floor mats, creeping closer. John leaned his shoulder against the brick, peering around the corner, the heavy three-strap leather cuff on his wrist a dark blur. ​

The fluorescent strip directly above the mat flickered. ​The canvas in the centre was darkened in the middle from years of sweat and disinfectant, the white tape at the edge curling. Miller was on all fours in that sweat spot, back rounded, breath coming in gasps. ​ Sweat slicked his face. Soft ash-blonde hair clung damply to his pale forehead. His hands clamped over his stomach as if trying to hold his ribs together. ​

Standing directly over him was Archer. ​Archer had his sleeves rolled tight past his elbows, revealing forearms mapped with faded ink. Black canvas elbow pads were strapped securely to his arms, and open-thumbed leather MMA mitts covered his hands. He shook out his right hand, the leather mitt hitting his thigh. The light overhead caught the silver threading at his temples, stark against closely cropped dark hair.

 ​"Again," Archer ordered.

 ​With eyes screwed shut, Miller shook his head. "Sir, give it a minute—my air's still gone, sir."

 ​"I didn't ask about your air, Miller. Again," Archer said flatly. ​He reached down, grabbing a fistful of Miller's sweatshirt and hauling him upright onto his knees. 

A thick silver chain with a heavy gold padlock caught the light against Miller's chest as he fought for air. 

"Hands down by your sides." ​

Miller swallowed hard, throat bobbing, and forced his shaking arms down to his flanks, bracing with resignation. 

Stepping in close, Archer pivoted cleanly on his back foot, driving a textbook straight punch right into the centre of Miller's gut.

 ​A choking wheeze tore out of Miller's throat. His eyes bulged as he folded forward, forehead nearly touching the mat before Archer caught him by the back of the neck and wrenched him upright again.

 ​"Don't quit on me," Archer said. "You're bracing the second I move. Again." ​

Miller braced once more. ​

John stayed hidden in the shadows. His eyes tracked the sweat down Archer’s shoulders, watching the way muscles bunched and released with every strike. 

It went on for two minutes—Miller's desperate gasps, Archer maintaining absolute control. Finally, Archer let Miller collapse forward onto his hands and knees to dry retch. ​

Archer stepped back. He unstrapped the left MMA mitt with his teeth and let it drop to the mat. 

Miller crawled slowly toward his gym bag by the bench which had fallen open - a cracked shaker with grey water in it, a single blood-spotted mouthguard, a couple of Gold Bar biscuit wrappers, and a towel that had gone stiff.

 ​The gym was dead silent. Archer reached down to unbuckle his second mitt.

 ​"Good boy, Miller," Archer said, dropping into a flat, satisfied register. "I'll get you some ice for that." ​

John stayed hidden. ​

    Two weeks later, the wood of the locker room bench groaned under Archer's weight, the varnish worn away in two butt-shaped pale patches where a thousand men had sat. He checked WhatsApp to see if Miller had responded. No. He had been quiet since last week. Archer worried that perhaps it had been too much. ​

The main gym floor stretched out into the hazy fluorescence of a Thursday evening. By the stretching rack, John leaned against the bars, his forearms crossed over the chest of a faded red and black flannel shirt. 

Across from him stood Miller, looking entirely too comfortable, nodding eagerly at whatever John was leaning in to say as John gave his shoulder a pat. ​

Miller laughed. 

It made the hair on the back of Archer’s neck prickle. ​It was the way Miller looked up at John. No dread, no cowering against the canvas, just a gloss of devotion. Conspiratorial.

     ​When John’s Ford Focus crunched out of the gravel car park twenty minutes later, Archer’s estate car was fifty yards back. 

Archer kept a three-car buffer, his tyres humming against the wet concrete and potholes as the streetlights thinned out into the country.

 ​They wound deeper into the ancient forest of Savernake, the towering trees swallowing the sweep of the Ford’s tail-lights.

 ​John pulled off onto an overgrown track, the chassis scraping loudly against a ridge of dry mud before cutting the engine. 

Miller's Volvo was already parked up. ​

Archer killed his lights a hundred yards back, cutting the ignition. He waited, watching till the Ford Focus taillights blinked out. Then he pushed his door open. ​

The canopy overhead choked out the moonlight. Archer moved through the damp brush with tight precision—no stumbling, no noise. He approached like a man inspecting a perimeter, every step deliberate. ​

He found them thirty yards off the track, half-screened by birches.

 ​Miller was pinned against the bark of a massive oak. His wrists were lashed tight behind him with fraying hessian rope. A t-shirt as a make do blindfold was knotted across his eyes. His skin goose-pimpled against leaf-mold, the ash-blonde hair matted with drizzle. He stood trembling in thin white briefs, his jeans pooled around his ankles in the mud, an empty silver chain biting against his collarbone. ​

John stood over him, heavy and unbothered, his cuff scuffing against the bark. He slumped into the space, taking it over. Exposed to the wind, his untamed dark brown hair tangled with bits of leaves.

 ​"You're mine now," John stated. ​He shifted his weight lazily, his shoulder brushing the tree trunk as he hauled back his knuckles into Miller’s gut. 

Miller’s head snapped back against the oak. His torso seized, breath knocked out as his knees buckled in the mud. He hung suspended by the ropes binding his wrists, his blindfolded face twisted in agony, the briefs straining as his lungs screamed for air.

 ​"That was just foreplay," John mocked. 

Before Miller could drag breath back down into his diaphragm, John stepped in again with a second blunt jab into the stomach. ​

Thirty feet back in the gloom, Archer stood motionless. ​

His fingers curled tight into a fist against his thigh. He watched John’s hips press in close, his jaw locking hard as he catalogued every breath and every creak of the bark. The fury of a man watching a stray mutt piss on his leg.

Again and again. ​

Archer stepped out from the shadows, his boots crunching on a twig. ​

The snap echoed like a pistol shot. ​

Miller's blindfold slipped. His eyes flew open, wide and white with panic. ​

John froze, his weight shifting back onto one heel as he exposed his chest, tilting his chin. ​

There was no surprise in John's face. Just a slow, deliberate smirk. 

"Lost your way, Archer?" John's voice was faux-friendly, though his fists clenched at his sides.

 ​Archer closed the distance, his pace clipped and rigid. He ignored Miller entirely, his eyes locking onto John with flat contempt. 

"Just checking who had been scuffing up my gear," Archer said. "I didn't realise you were reduced to picking through my castoffs, John." ​

John straightened up slowly, rolling his shoulders beneath the flannel shirt. His gaze drifted down Archer's frame before snapping back to his eyes. 

"Didn't look like he belonged to anyone who knew what to do with him," John said as he untied Miller's hands. "He was crying out for a proper master. Thought I'd show him how it's actually done."

 ​Miller let out a breath, scrambling up from the base of the tree and skirting past them, half-running back toward the track as his boots splashed through puddles. ​

Neither man watched him go. 

Their eyes locked across the gap of mud. ​John didn't blink. He kept his breathing steady, his hands loose at his sides, leaving the door wide open.

 ​"You've been circling me for a fortnight like a starving dog," Archer spat, his face inches from John's. His knuckles twitched against his thighs. "If you wanted a lesson, you should have just asked at the gym. After hours." ​

A dark grin flashed across John's face. He let out a scoff, leaning his weight forward. He shoved Archer in the chest—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to cross the line. 

"A lesson? From you?" He tapped his own sternum twice with two fingers. "Let's go." ​

John hauled his fist back, muscles tensing to drive the punch home right there in the dirt. ​

Archer didn't flinch. He caught John’s wrist mid-air with a vice-grip, his eyes flat and lethal.

 ​"Not here," Archer hissed. "Not in the mud where some copper or dog-walker can stop us."

 ​John let out a sharp breath, his fist still locked in Archer's grip, a dark challenge flickering in his eyes.

"Then where?" ​

"The Travelodge on the services," Archer said, grip tightening until tendons in his forearm stood out like steel. "Behind a locked door where nobody can interrupt us." ​

John stared at him for a beat, a smirk returning to his mouth as he yanked his wrist free. He didn't answer with words; he just turned his back, stepping back toward the track.

 ​Standing in the dark, Archer watched the silhouette of John’s back vanish into the tree line, and followed right behind him. ​