Breaking a heterosexual (chapter 2)

Eric's body ached as if it had been dragged by a strong current. He didn't know why. He didn't know how. He only knew that he had woken up with a dry knot in the back of his neck, a constant tremor in his thighs, completely sweaty, and with an unbearable feeling that something - something big, something physical - was missing and he couldn't name it.

He sat up in bed, breathing deeply.

The room was his.

Everything was where it should be.

His juvenile rowing medal on the wall, his shoes on the floor, the familiar smell of wood and cologne.

"Relax, everything is fine," he told himself.

He had to repeat it. He had to believe it.

What happened last night - whatever it was - had been a bad joke, a hallucination, a reaction to something they had put in his drink... He couldn't have been in a bed with a guy. And what he saw in the video couldn't be real. He was straight. He had a girlfriend. He didn't like men. He was Eric Soler, the club's ladies' man, the one who hooked up effortlessly, the one who didn't look at guys because he didn't have to.

But every time he tried to block it out, a flash crossed behind his eyes. Someone else's skin. A strong cologne smell. A masculine moan too close to his ear.

He went straight to the bathroom and turned on the faucet clumsily. He splashed cold water on his face as if that could erase the memory. Or drown it.

It didn't work.

It only left his skin more awake.

"Train," he murmured. "I need to train."

Training had always been his safe zone. His structure. His identity. If something was wrong in his life, he rowed.

Today he needed all that multiplied by ten.

He got dressed almost without thinking. Compression pants, technical t-shirt, sweatshirt. He noticed a strange tingling sensation when putting on his clothes: as if his skin reacted to the touch of the fabric with too much sensitivity. As if he was... turned on.

He ignored the feeling.

He went to the club.

When he entered the rowing hangar, the smell of humidity, wood, sweat, and magnesium gave him immediate relief. Here, things were simple: strength, technique, discipline. Nothing more. Nothing complicated.

He was stretching when he heard a rhythmic and powerful thud: the unmistakable sound of someone rowing hard on the ergometer. He turned his head.

His teammate was there. Lucas. The best on the team. The strongest. The most admired. 23 years old, four more than Eric. Black, with dark, shiny skin under the industrial lights. Clear eyes, an unlikely blue. Huge shoulders, a back carved as if it had been designed for rowing and nothing else. Square jaw, thick lips. A physical wonder. The club's reference point.

And straight to the core.

"Good morning," said the teammate, without stopping rowing, with a slightly hoarse voice.

Eric swallowed.

"Good morni...