Page 65 of Men in Shorts

He reached the clear glass door of the dry sauna. Peering through, Fergus saw four middle-aged men lounging on the wooden benches within, all with their towels still tied. Apart from one guy’s hand wrapped another’s thigh, the scene looked more fraternal than porny.

Fergus returned the gents’ friendly waves, then moved on to descend the steel stairway, breathing easier now. This place wasn’t the seamy hellhole he’d imagined it to be.

Halfway down the stairs, his mind changed back again. The lights on the lower level were dimmer and redder, and the tranquilizing chillout music had switched to a throbbing dubstep that shook Fergus’s bones. As he stepped into a foyer that branched into two corridors, he realized this level evensmelleddifferent—of earth and sweat and…

Sex.

“Can I help you?” asked a deep voice.

In a shadowy alcove to Fergus’s right, another young man in a Club 212 polo shirt sat on a stool before a small podium, looking like a restaurant maître d’. Unlike the harmlessly cute front-desk clerk, this guy was beefy as a Highland bull, his frame filling the alcove and his hand dwarfing the pen he held poised above a clipboard.

“We’ve got an opening for a sugar scrub in five minutes.” The man gestured to the door behind him markedMassage Suite. “Only thirty quid on a Tuesday.”

“No…thank you.” Fergus considered asking the giant if he’d seen John, but that would be cheating.

“Steam sauna’s through there.” The man extended one sausage-thick finger toward the hallway to Fergus’s left.

Ah. That seemed a likely place to find John, given his love of hot water.

Fergus thanked the attendant, then hurried down the hall. Like the dry sauna upstairs, the steam room had a glass door, but a thick fog cloaked the interior. Swallowing his nerves, Fergus opened the door and entered.

When the steam parted, he stopped short.What the?—

Intellectually, he knew that this…creature consisted of more than one body. Its shifting limbs varied in length and skin tone. The sounds from its throats varied in pitch and volume. The hair on its eight (nine?) heads varied in color, length, and location.

But at first glance it seemed all one continuous form, writhing upon splayed white towels like a dying deer in a snowbank.

“Don’t just stand there, ya big ginger beauty,” slurred a voice to his left. “Come and join us.”

Fergus turned but avoided eye contact with the thin, dark-haired young man whose nipples were providing a feast for a middle-aged chubby guy—a guy whose hand was wrapped around the lad’s cock, pumping it with a graceless fury.

“Sorry,” Fergus said, trying not to look at…well, anything. “I’m searching for someone.”

The nipple sucker chuckled. “We’re all searching for someone, mate,” he said without looking up. Then he gave a long, low moan, due to the fact his arse was being filled, slow and deep from behind, by a hulking blond with a serpent tattoo coiled around his arm.

“We allaresomeone,” the snake man said. He extended one hand toward Fergus, waist-high. His fingers curled, his offer obvious.

Fergus’s prick responded—just a brief, I’m-awake-and-need-attention twitch, but a clear signal toGET OUT NOW.

Heart in his mouth, Fergus scanned the ceramic-tile room. Most faces were turned away—occupied with kissing, licking, or sucking—but he saw enough to know none belonged to John.

The mist swirled as the door behind him swung open. “Still looking for your man?”

Fergus turned to see the leonine ginger from the shower room, his hair now hanging in loose, damp waves. “I am.”

“Perhaps he doesnae want to be found.”

“He does. It’s a game.”

Laughter rippled behind him. “We like games,” someone said, his hoarse voice rising above the sex noises. “Right, Neil?”

“Oh yeah,” said the ginger. He eyed Fergus up and down, still blocking the exit. “And this yin looks a win-win.”

More laughter. Fergus’s ears began to burn.

He was used to having the piss taken out of him on the football pitch. Compared to anti-gay slurs from opponents and their fans, this jeering and leering was a just bit of banter.

So why was his heart pounding a million miles an hour? Was it the heat of the steam? Or was it fear that John had already been in this room and liked what he’d seen?

---