This story contains male/male consensual relationships of a romantic and sexual nature. If it is illegal for you to read this type of material, please adhere to your laws.
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Part One
The kid was back again. Which pissed Mason off to no end. It didn't make sense, this raging, aching feeling that coursed through him whenever Blake Daniels showed up at the gym. Fuck. Mason was off his game now and wouldn't be able to get any kind of rhythm back. Another day...wasted.
Mason threw down the rope that he'd been using and ran a hand over his sweat- drenched, almost black hair. His blue eyes flashed across the room at Blake and then away. He'd thought when the kid didn't show up four days in a row that maybe his sudden infatuation with becoming a boxer had ended. It usually only took one good punch to knock the wind and ambition out of some of the new guys. Mason had been sincerely hoping that was the case with Blake after Muenie had beaten the shit out of him in the ring the weekend before.
"Pretty boy's back," Mason's father Pellegrino said from the side of the ring, wrapping a towel around his neck and walking in the general direction of where Blake was standing around, watching. Blake greeted his father with a smile and Mason grimaced. It was true that the kid was a pretty boy, a hard, muscular but slender figure. Long arms and thighs like bricks. He was a tough kid, used to the streets. What made him pretty was his skin, alabaster and porcelain, the icy green shade of his eyes, the perfect line of his lips the closely shaved crop of red hair.
That was another thing that Mason didn't quite appreciate. His father's instant and apparently irrevocable admiration for the guy. Blake had done nothing to get in his father's good graces. He hadn't spent hours in the gym trying to live up to being the great Mason Pellegrino Sr.'s only biological son for the last twenty-three years but he still got special treatment.
So, the kid had raw talent. Even a blind man could see that. But he was also extremely rough around the edges and hot-headed to boot. He had no known whereabouts or family to vouch for his background. Mason knew he didn't have to have pedigree to be a boxer, but it would help if somebody from around the neighborhood knew something about him besides the fact that he could take a hit like a man twice his age.
He was eighteen, nineteen at the most, although Mason hadn't gone about verifying his age. He slept in cheap motel rooms and worked under the table at a diner two blocks down the road. Apparently, the faded boxing posters in the top floor windows of the former warehouse where Pellegrino trained his up-and-coming boxers had been a beacon for Blake because one day he had shown up at the gym while Mason was boxing and had come back most days since.
He normally worked the late shift at the diner. So, he spent afternoons and early evenings in the gym, watching the training or talking to Pellegrino. It was only on a whim that he had even stepped in the ring. One of the older guys didn't like the kid for some reason and had coaxed him into getting in the ring with him. They had all been surprised when he took blows to the torso and stomach like a pro.
"You ever box before, pretty boy?" Pellegrino had called up into the ring and Blake had looked over at the father and son standing on the sidelines and shrugged, grinning.
"Nah," he said.
The gleam in his father's eye let Mason know that Blake was on his way to being under training. There was no doubt about it. If the kid showed any consistency, he would be one of Pellegrino's boys.
Normally, it didn't matter to Mason who his father decided to take under his wing. There had been a ton of guys just like Blake every year who came to train under his dad. His father had been a heavyweight champion for several years. His fame had brought the family a lot of money and attention over the years. Starry-eyed wannabe boxers were around every corner and Mason was used to them.
His first boyfriend had turned out to be dating him simply for the potential push it could give his boxing career. You lived and learned.
Admitting to everyone who came into the gym that he had a gay son had never been a hard thing for Pellegrino. Mason had come out to him when he was sixteen and everyone started to notice the fact that there was never a girl in sight, no matter how many of the girls around the neighborhood commented on how cute he was. There were never any dates.
Pellegrino had raised Mason to be honest with himself...and to be honest with him. So, Mason had gone to his dad and leveled with him. The way he felt about girls a lot of the time was kind of the way you felt about a little kitten. They were very cute and mewing and all but his dick just never rose to the occasion. There was no fighting that. They faced it, accepted that it was an unchangeable fact and moved on. Every now and then, Pellegrino might hand Mason a brochure on adoption just to keep the thought in his head. Anita, Pellegrino's wife - Mason's mother - was more than willing to go along with whatever they came up with as long as she got grandchildren out of the bargain. Whenever she nagged Pellegrino, a new adoption brochure would show up in one of Mason's bags.
Mason appreciated the reasons for his parents' behavior. He honestly did. But he couldn't guarantee them that his life was going to end up like some gay fairytopia. He'd tried the whole falling-in-love bit and it hadn't worked out. Hot, gripping sex on the other hand - that always worked out.
He was known for frequenting one particular club late after the gym closed or on a Saturday night. It was the kind of place where you didn't have to abide by conventional rules. If you saw something that you wanted, you went up to it and got it. That was the way he liked it. He rarely fucked the same person twice...and if he did, you could pretty much guarantee that he wasn't going for a third time.
Mason lived and breathed boxing. That was his one true love. He liked it that way. It was safer that way.
Blake never wanted to be a boxer. It wasn't like he walked up into that warehouse the way some of the guys did, with this gnawing need inside to fulfill some destiny in the ring. Guys travelled thousands of miles to get to Pellegrino and to spar a few in the ring in the hopes of catching his eye. It was a rare occasion when they actually caught it.
Blake appreciated that. He understood the significance of the fact that he was one of the few that Pellegrino wanted to train. And he was flattered...and a little excited about it. God knew his life hadn't amounted to shit and he needed some type of direction to go in.
But Blake wasn't there for the boxing. On a whim, he'd gone into the gym, having seen the faded posters in the upstairs windows and heard a thing or two from the guys who came down to the diner. But when he'd got there...God. Mason Pellegrino, Jr. in sweat pants and nothing else. Blake's heart had stopped.
Mason was beautiful....dark, brooding and bitter. He was a god in the gym, it was apparent to everyone that his destiny was to live the life his father had...and maybe even go beyond what his father had done. No one could beat him...and everyone had tried. There was a constant buzz around him...and it wasn't because he was his father's son. Mason trained harder and stayed longer than any other person in that gym. He bled boxing, it sweated out of him in buckets.
Blake hadn't needed all of that information to know that he had met the man of his dreams. He had taken one look...and he knew. He was in love with a boxer from New Jersey. A guy whose nose had been flattened for his efforts in the ring, a guy that everyone in the industry was watching, a guy that wouldn't even look his way.
A lot of things had gone wrong in Blake's life. He'd lived with an abusive father and a weak mother for fifteen years of his life until his dad caught him with another guy. Then, the abuse had increased, the drunken rages had gone up a notch and Blake decided to get the hell out of there. He doubted that he was ever even reported missing. He'd left his hometown in Michigan, knowing that someone would eventually pick him up there and force him back to his mom and dad, so he'd done some traveling. He'd been to Seattle, California, Florida, New York...and eventually New Jersey. There had been a lot of small towns, a lot of other street kids and a lot of drugs along the way, but he'd left all that behind.
New Jersey was supposed to be a new start for him. He'd met a guy in the city who had told him about this town...that he owned a motel there and that he'd put him up for fifty bucks a week no strings attached. Blake was twenty years old and five years on the streets was normally enough to kill someone, but he was made of tougher stuff than most people. But he was tired of scrounging, tired of being betrayed, tired of fighting for every little fucking thing he had in life. And he'd been in some fucked up situations, so he wasn't afraid of what the guy could do to him. After awhile, you just couldn't be afraid anymore. That was one of the things that had helped him in the boxing ring.
The guy in Jersey had turned out to be legit. Blake got a job at a diner across the street from the motel, flipping burgers, taking out trash, cleaning out bathrooms. Whatever it took and he got paid under the table, free food and got to split tips. It was enough to keep him from going hungry, keep a roof over his head and a shirt on his back, so he didn't really care that he wasn't living in the lap of luxury. He didn't have to sell his ass. That was what mattered.
Blake had never been the kind of person who threw a pity party for himself. There had been street counselors, telling him how fucked up it was that his parents hadn't provided him with a stable home life. They wanted him to commiserate over how sad he was, how fucked up he was because of it, but Blake didn't really care. Yeah, he wished that his dad hadn't hit him, but there were worst situations to be in. Blake had seen some kids with a lot more trouble than he ever had to endure at the hand of their parents. He had nothing to complain about. And he'd tried the drugs, but he'd never gotten hooked. He knew kids who lived for the next fix, trying to blot out whatever pain they were going through. Blake had always been able to keep his head in any situation...while others didn't. For that he had always been grateful.
Then, came Mason. Blake had never ever been miserable in his life until now. He had never wanted something so much before...he'd never ached to be loved before. He almost wished that he had never set foot in the gym. But his heart rebelled at that thought. He would do anything...he'd gotten his head bashed in four nights before just for the hope of a little of Mason's respect. It ate away at him inside. He ached...for the first time in his life.
"Hey, pretty boy," Pellegrino called out to him and put an arm around his shoulder. "Nice fight the other night." Blake grinned. He liked the old man.
"Well, I ain't gonna say it was nice," Blake said, rubbing his head a little. Pellegrino laughed.
"That's what boxing's about," he said. "You take a few hits, you give a few. Where ya been for four days?"
Blake let Pellegrino lead him to a private corner of the gym.
"I worked double shifts at the diner," Blake told him. "Somebody quit and I gotta do that whenever they ask 'cause they'll fire me in a second, you know? I can't lose what I got."
Pellegrino knew all about Blake's living situation. Blake had sat down and fessed up about his past to Pellegrino late in the gym one night. Pellegrino had given him his word that he would keep it between the two of them and Blake trusted him.
"I want you to quit that place," Pellegrino told him and Blake stared.
"I can't just quit, Mr. Pellegrino," Blake said. "I need that money to live on."
Pellegrino looked him in the eye.
"I want you to train for me," he told him. "I want you to do it with your whole heart. And I know you can't do it the way things are now. So, I want you to quit them."
"What am I gonna do for money, you said you don't pay people that you train," Blake reminded him.
"I don't," Pellegrino said. "You can come and stay with us on Sycamore. You'll eat and sleep and train. And you'll take care of the gym for me, the towels, cleaning, everything."
Blake stared at him.
"You for real?" he asked.
Pellegrino nodded.
"For how long?" Blake asked.
"Until you get a contract."
Blake knew what getting a contract meant. It meant getting a significant purse, more than he could make at the diner in months. Pellegrino was offering him a real life. He would be living under the same roof as Mason. Blake nodded.
To be continued.....
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