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Jake hasn’t been doing this as long as Ryan. Sometimes Ryan forgets how quickly Jake came to MMA, how good he got in a short period of time. He’s half-assed on his stretches because he doesn’t know yet how his body will turn against him, he pushes too hard because he’s never felt his shoulder screaming at him through a fog of pain pills. So much muscle, so much strength, he doesn’t realize how his knees can’t just support it without his help.
Ryan knows today is the day Jake starts to feel it. Jake is flagging, his muscles are tired, stretched thin, the buildup of lactic acid in them slows him down. The sheer pounds of pressure Ryan delivers with every strike aren’t being returned.
“Hey, c’mon, stop.” Ryan aborts the punch Jake’s about to throw by grabbing his wrist and twisting him to a standstill.
Jake breathes heavily and slowly relaxes. The muscles under the skin of his shoulders are jumping violently. Ryan sighs.
“Your body is worth more than a Tesla Roadster,” he says to Jake’s neck. “You’ve gotta treat it like such.”
Jake doesn’t understand. “Jean Rocqua’s got me running seven miles a day and you aren’t letting me eat saturated fat anymore!”
Ryan laughs. “That’s just being healthy.” He reaches up and closes his fingers tight around a knot of muscles in Jake’s shoulder. Jake twists and curses under Ryan’s grip, trying to shrug it off. Ryan slowly eases back the pressure. He leans in, nose brushing the velvety skin over Jake’s trapezius muscles, and whispers, “You might live to be a hundred and five doing what you’re doing, but you’ll be cursing the last 70 years of it.”
Jake rolls his shoulders, a flush developing over his skin. Ryan used to think it was embarrassment spreading, pouring out his capillaries, but now he knows it’s Jake’s reaction to Ryan’s physical contact.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” Jake says, plaintively.
Ryan smacks the outside of his thigh and grins. “Come on, you baby, I’ll give you a massage.”
Ryan’s father is home, and he knows that Jake never ceases to be amazed at how much Ryan can get away with touching Jake before his dad will start to shoot them concerned glances, but even Ryan knows when not to push it. He leads the way to his room and then checks twice that the door is locked.
He shoves Jake at the bed. There’s a tin of muscle balm in his closet. Baja bought it for him at Whole Foods, and though he hates the way it smells as well at its provenance, he can readily admit it works.
Jake wriggles when Ryan settles his weight back against Jake’s ass.
He dips his fingers into the orange goo and then smacks them down against Jake’s skin. “I’m not going to sodomize you.”
Jake snorts. “It seems like the natural progression of things, you know? Assault and then rape.”
Ryan bends his head and licks a stripe up Jake’s spine and then sinks his teeth into the muscle at the base of Jake’s skull. Jake jerks underneath him, a cry torn from his chest. Ryan looks down at him darkly although Jake can’t see. “Don’t joke.”
He massages the balm into Jake’s skin, pressing deep with his fingertips, working the muscle so that it releases from its clenched hold. Jake sighs, his face pressed deep into Ryan’s pillow. He looks comfortable, at ease. Jake worries about too much and simultaneously not enough. Ryan always wants to tell him things will be all right, but he doesn’t know that that's true.
“Most people carry their tension here,” he says, digging his palms down into Jake’s trapezius. “But you also have it here in your lats,” he skims gentle hands down until he’s pressing into superficial muscles in the small of Ryan’s back. “And here,” he runs his hands back up again to Jake’s neck, “in your sternocleidomastoid.”
Jake moans, fingers flexing in the bedding. Ryan feels it go through Jake's body underneath his palms and in the thighs he has clenched around Jake’s hips. “How do you know this shit?” Jake asks, lifting his head slightly.
Ryan snorts, thumbs working deep into the muscles in Jake’s neck, pushing him back down into the pillow. “Bitch, I’m a genius.”
Jake trembles underneath him with laughter. “Yeah, all right.”
Ryan smiles. Jake’s tan is getting darker. He needs better sunscreen. Charlie should learn him one. He remembers when they went out on the Lake and Ryan got Jake’s fingers branded into his skin from Jake’s half-assed job of putting sunscreen on his back.
“I bet you store all your tension in your forehead,” Jake tells him.
Ryan leans hard into the knots tangled up in Jake’s back. Jake’s hips rock underneath him. “What makes you say that?”
His voice is strained, like it’s being pressed out of him from the strength of Ryan’s hands. “When you’re upset, you always smile, but your forehead gives you away.”
Ryan sits back on Jake’s buttocks, tries to ignore the warm feeling he always gets when he realizes how much Jake knows him. Nobody knows him, but Jake does his best. He rolls off of Jake and lies flat on his back, rubbing his palms against the sheets.
Jake turns over to follow suit. “I love your bed,” he says and yawns, face dangerously close to Ryan’s.
Ryan jumps the gap and presses his mouth to Jake’s. “Well you should. It’s 700 thread count of Egyptian cotton and a pillow top mattress.”
Jake shakes his head, eyes opening and shutting rapidly like he’s fighting sleep. “It smells like you.”
Ryan thinks he should want to retch, he thinks he should be coming out in hives, but instead he finds himself staying still, watching Jake fall asleep under his sheets.