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For as long as Kenny has known him, Uncle Don has refused to train him.
It doesn’t matter how much he begged or pleaded or wheedled. Don had been firm from the beginning.
“I don’t want to be liable for injuring a child,” he’d said once.
“Your uncle can take care of the basics – I’ll train you after you have the fundamentals,” he’d said another time.
“I’m too busy to play with children,” he’d said on one particularly grouchy occasion.
After a while, Kenny had sort of given up on it. For now. He has plenty to occupy himself with throughout his teenage years – video games, hockey, learning the basics with his uncle. He never forgets, though, that Don’s never said no, exactly. Just that he didn’t want to train him before he was eighteen.
He thinks he shows remarkable maturity and restraint to wait two entire days after his eighteenth birthday to call Uncle Don.
“I’m eighteen now,” he says into the phone with as much cool assuredness as he can muster, which he thinks is quite a bit, “And I want to train with you.”
There’s a moment of silence over the phone before Don lets out a little huff of air that could be a laugh or a sigh – he can’t quite tell over the phone.
“You are persistent,” Don relents. His voice crackles over the crummy connection, but Kenny can still hear the warmth in his tone when he says, “As soon as I’m in town again, I’ll give you a shot. But you better be ready to work.”
“I will,” Kenny promises. After a moment, he remembers to say, “Thank you, Uncle Don.”
“Of course, son. And happy late birthday,” he adds.
Kenny hangs up and feels happiness warm his chest. Finally, finally Uncle Don will take him seriously. He’ll show him. He’ll prove he’s got what it takes to train with a real impressive wrestler like him – one who really knows people and has been places. A guy who could show him more than just what his uncle can, someone who can really challenge him so he can get better.
He gets his chance a week later – Uncle Don’s travels take him back to Winnipeg, and Kenny barely lets him rest before he’s knocking at his door.
“Geez, kid, you sure are eager,” Don grumbles. He slams the door in his face without another word.
Kenny doesn’t take it to heart, because Don comes out again pretty quickly in his exercise clothes, gesturing for Kenny to start jogging.
“Warm-up on the way to your uncle’s,” he says.
Kenny doesn’t have to be told twice. He stretches a little bit and then starts trotting off towards his uncle’s place. Don follows behind him slightly slower, but he’s never known Don to waste energy when he doesn’t have to. Kenny’s just happy to show off what great shape he’s in – hopefully he can also show Uncle Don all the new moves he’s picked up.
His uncle’s out today, so they have the practice ring to themselves. Don’s quick to stand on the apron and direct Kenny to running the ropes.
“Just running the ropes?” Kenny asks, doing a terrible job of hiding his disappointment.
“I know you’ve been practicing the basics,” Don says. He crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “So? Show me your basics.”
Kenny’s learned enough by now to not question when a trainer asks him to do something he thinks is dumb. He watches enough other guys getting trained that he can recognize that there’s value in the repetition. He just was hoping for something a little more… bombastic.
Obediently, though, he starts running the ropes. Don just watches for a bit until he’s directed to stop. Don steps into the ring with him.
“Okay, we’ll run some drills,” he says.
Kenny perks up at that. Eagerly, he follows Don’s instructions, running whatever drills he wants. It’s enough to just have Don’s full attention. He’s an intense man. Kenny’s always admired that about him. He’s smart, he’s well-spoken, and something about his eyes always seems sharp. He tries to emulate what he can from just watching him, but it’s never quite the same. He just feels young and awkward, fumbling more than coming across as cool and collected.
Maybe it’s just something that will come with age. Don’s got twenty years on him. Maybe in twenty years he’ll be able to arrest a room with his presence like Don does.
“You’re good,” Don says after their last drill.
Kenny glows with the praise. He’s heard he’s a natural talent before, but hearing approval from Uncle Don feels different. He lets it buoy him as Don jerks his head to signal him to get out of the ring. Don leans against the apron while Kenny runs off to get them some water.
“Why didn’t you keep up with hockey?” Don asks. “Why this?”
Kenny glances over at him. Don looks a little flushed and sweaty, but somehow still rather composed. Kenny feels even younger and more awkward in comparison, his curls fluffing up unflatteringly from the moisture of his sweat and all the exercise. He forces himself not to run his hand through them – it’ll just make it worse, but the impulse is there. He fiddles with his bottle of water instead.
“I dunno,” he hedges, “I just want to do this.”
Don gives him a skeptical look. Kenny struggles to come up with an answer he’d like.
“I think I could be good at hockey,” he says. He shrugs. “I could be good, you know? But wrestling… I dunno, Uncle Don, I think I could be great.”
Don gives him another long look before he scoffs quietly. He turns away, unsuccessfully hiding a smile behind his water bottle. “Great, huh?”
Kenny lifts his chin a little, ready to defend himself, but Don surprises him by slapping him on the arm.
“I think you’re right,” he says. He squeezes lightly and lets go. “I think you just might. Let’s get back in there.”
Kenny beams and hops back into the ring. Don follows him more sedately.
“Alright, let’s reiterate the basics,” Don tells him. He holds his hands out. “Lock up. We’ll do some mat-based grappling.”
Kenny doesn’t have to be told twice. He locks up immediately, eager to absorb anything that Don can teach him. He respects Don. Hell, he likes him, too. He wants him to be impressed with him, and while Don does give him short, pointed corrections as they run through some grappling, he doesn’t dish out that much negative feedback. If anything, Kenny would take the little smile on his face as praise for his skills.
It makes him feel warm. Having someone as well-spoken and well-traveled as Don admiring his skills sends a little flutter of excitement in his chest. He’s distracted enough thinking about it that Don’s sudden leg sweep catches him completely by surprise, and he goes down hard.
Before he can bounce back, embarrassed, Don throws himself on top of him.
“You’re distracted,” he scolds.
Kenny tries to twist out, but Don grabs his leg like he’s going for a pin and presses down. It lifts his knee up painfully high toward his shoulders. He feels the stretch in his groin and thigh.
“Sorry,” Kenny gasps out. He shuffles his shoulder a little, trying to edge away. “Uncle Don?”
“Is this how flexible you are?”
Kenny freezes. Don sounds disappointed. He stays between Kenny’s legs, leaning over him extremely close and awkwardly. Kenny’s still learning to get used to how intimate a lot of wrestling pins and holds feel. Most of the time, it’s fine, but right now…
Something about the energy of the room feels strange.
“You need to keep working on this,” Don tells him.
Kenny jerks a little in his grip as he pushes down more, making the tendons and muscle in his legs scream in protest. He moves his grip down from Kenny’s knee, down along his inner thigh, digging his fingers in. Kenny makes a small noise despite himself – pain, confusion, embarrassment, he’s not sure what it means. Don gives him another look.
“Pretend we’re going for a pin here,” he tells him.
That’s all the warning Kenny gets before Don’s other hand hooks under his knee and lifts his other leg up. Kenny stays with his hands pressed flat, bracing himself as both of his knees are forced up closer to his chest. Don’s eyes continue to pierce into his own. He looks intense, and Kenny can’t read exactly what he’s thinking at all.
Don braces himself up on his knees and pushes down. Kenny lets out another small sound as his knees are forced to his shoulders, stretching his legs past the point he’s comfortable with.
He’s also mortified to realize this position means his crotch and Don’s crotch are pressing together.
He tries to focus on the painful stretch more than that, because he might have a little more self-control than he did when he was fifteen or so, but he’s still a young man, and he’s going to die of shame if he pops a boner in the middle of training and Don feels it on his own dick.
He’d never live that down.
“A little better,” Don muses. He pushes down more, testing how much further he can shove Kenny’s legs down before they bounce back. “You really need to do more with deep stretches.”
“Y-Yeah, Uncle Don,” Kenny says.
Don meets his eyes again, and it feels like he can read Kenny’s thoughts. He smirks.
“I know it’s a little awkward,” he says. He presses down again, pushing himself closer to Kenny’s face. When he speaks again, it’s a whisper, like he’s imparting some secret, “In Japan, they’d call this a mating press.”
Kenny’s face flames. “That’s not – That’s not in wrestling, right?”
Don’s smirk widens. “No, not in wrestling.”
Don lets him go abruptly. Kenny lets his legs drop back down, wincing at the residual strain in his pelvic joints and groin. Before he can move away, Don’s hands are back on him, massaging at the muscle in his inner thigh.
“Sorry,” Don says. He actually sounds contrite, though there’s a sardonic edge to his tone and a little smirk in the corner of his lip that makes it sound more insincere than Kenny would like. “I may have gone a little overboard.”
“It’s… It’s alright,” Kenny says. He still feels a little out of sorts. He’s never really felt this vulnerable in the ring before, but there’s something about lying flat on his back passively while Don manipulates his limbs that makes him feel even more young and confused. He swallows, hoping his blush is going down when he says, “I want to learn from you.”
“I know you do,” Don consoles.
His hands are creeping down Kenny’s leg. He tries to manfully ignore it – this is just normal sports injury prevention, right? – but he squeaks again when Don’s massaging slides deep down into his groin, nearly touching his balls.
“U-Uncle Don?”
“Are you ready to try again? Another deep stretch?” Don asks, ignoring his timid question.
Kenny kind of doesn’t want to get pressed down like that again, but he’s begged and begged for this for years now. He finally has Don’s attention and is finally getting one on one training with him. He can’t screw it up by being shy about his body.
“I’m ready,” he says.
He’s not.
Don nods and hooks his legs up again and presses them down. Kenny can’t even be bothered to worry about the pain of stretching – he’s more concerned with how Don’s groin is pressing to his again. He’s mortified to realize that he’s starting to feel that tell-tale flutter in his lower belly.
Fuck.
Think about grandma. Think about, uh, something not sexy. A shark or something. He doesn’t know! Anything other than how Don is pressing him down again, holding him immobile and staring into his wide eyes again. He can feel his breath ghosting over his face – it smells like he chewed mints recently. He sits up more so he can press Kenny down even further.
Fuck, it’s not working. He can tell by the twitch of Don’s eyebrow and the way his eyes flick down briefly that he can feel how Kenny’s stupid dick is reacting.
Someone just kill him now.
Don keeps him pressed for another torturous minute before he relents and sits back so Kenny’s legs can come back down. Kenny gives in to his shame and covers his face with his hands.
“Kenny?”
Kenny shakes his head and keeps his face covered. Fuck, he doesn’t know how to uncover his face and look at him. Maybe if he just stays here on the mat forever Don will get bored and walk away and never speak to him again.
“Oh, son,” Don says.
Somehow, that’s worse. He sounds so caring and fatherly, and Kenny’s a freak for getting even harder being called “son” by Uncle Don.
Please someone just shoot him.
“You know, it’s a common thing that happens. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”
Kenny groans and shakes his head again. Now he wants to talk about Kenny’s boner. The last thing Kenny wants to do is acknowledge the boner in the room. He’d rather just die.
“Kenny, uncover your face.”
Kenny reluctantly, slowly lowers his hands. His face feels like it’s burning off from shame. It’s done nothing to make his dick go soft – no, the damned thing is still hard as a rock. Right in front of Don.
Don smiles and leans over him again – not lifting his legs up this time, just leaning over him in between Kenny’s splayed thighs. He smooths his hand down some of Kenny’s wild curls.
“There we go,” he says softly.
Kenny feels even more confused and upset now. Don doesn’t look embarrassed at all by this. The least he could do is look a little embarrassed, too. If anything, he just looks fond.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” he says again. He strokes Kenny’s hair and leans against him to press a kiss to his forehead. “Trust me, it happens all the time. Nobody even blinks an eye.”
Kenny feels himself relaxing for all of a moment before he jumps again, squeaking out, “Uncle Don?!”
Don shushes him and kisses his forehead again. “It’s alright. It’ll go away faster if we just take care of it, right?”
It would be comforting if Don didn’t have Kenny’s crotch cupped in his hand. Kenny hesitantly moves to sit up a little.
“Don, wait – “
“Sorry,” Don says, taking his hand away and sitting back on his heels. He looks contrite. “I just thought I would help out. You can do it yourself, of course.”
Kenny’s head is spinning. “Do – what?”
“Now don’t play dumb, son,” Don says sternly. He nods down to Kenny’s dick tenting the front of his shorts between them. “You want to keep training, right?”
“Right,” Kenny says automatically.
“And training like that won’t be any fun,” Don continues. He makes a “go on” gesture. “Therefore, if you just take care of it quickly, we can get back to training.”
It almost makes sense, but Kenny still feels completely frazzled. “I don’t know…”
“Well, if you won’t do something about it, I suppose we end our training here today. I don’t want to wait around,” Don says, starting to stand up.
Panic freezes Kenny’s heart. He starts sitting up, reaching out frantically. “Wait – no, I don’t want to end our training today.”
Don pauses standing and slowly sinks back down to his knees. “Alright, then. Now, do you want me to help you, or do you want to take care of it yourself?”
He’s making him choose? Kenny gapes at him a moment before he stumbles out, “Um, I guess I can go… go take care of it.”
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Don says reasonably. He gestures around the empty practice area. “Nobody’s watching.”
You’re watching, Kenny almost says, but Don looks so unbothered by the idea of watching him jack off that it’s making him doubt himself. He said this happened a lot, right? Maybe this is… normal? Some weird wrestling culture thing his uncle didn’t want him to know about yet?
Hesitantly, glancing again at Don, Kenny sits up properly and then pulls his shorts down before he can talk himself out of it. He feels hideously embarrassed with his dick springing out of his briefs and Don sitting right in front of him, looking directly at him with not even an ounce of shame. Kenny bites his lip and wraps his hand around himself.
He’s never done this with anyone watching before. He’s not really thought about how stupid it looks, or how loud it could be, but there’s silence between them. All he can hear is his own loud breathing and Don’s calmer, slower breaths broken up by the sound of skin on skin that seems deafening in the quiet.
“You seem nervous,” Don observes.
Kenny bites down on his lip harder before letting it go. “I, uh, I am.”
“Have you never done this with a partner before?”
Kenny feels even more ashamed to admit, “No. No I haven’t.”
Don’s expression softens even more. “Oh, sweet boy. Will you let me help you?”
Kenny’s really unsure, but he’s in it this far. Hesitantly, he nods. He feels like he’s watching in slow motion as Don shuffles forward and then reaches to replace Kenny’s hand with his own. Kenny gasps aloud at the feeling of someone else touching his dick.
“You really haven’t done this, hm?” Don says.
Kenny ducks his head in shame, lifting it again immediately to gasp, “Uncle Don!” when Don gives him a firm stroke. He can only stare down helplessly, watching Don as he starts to stroke him off.
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Don soothes him, sounding way, way too calm about everything. His voice is almost hypnotic in how unaffected he seems. Kenny latches onto the sound of it, looking up from his own dick to meet Don’s eyes. Don smiles. “That’s right. Relax. It’s completely natural. I don’t mind taking care of you at all.”
“D-Don,” Kenny says uncertainly.
“You can keep calling me uncle,” Don says, “I don’t mind.”
Kenny’s not sure – he’s certainly never thought about his real uncle like this, so maybe calling Don uncle while he’s jerking him off is weird. Don keeps talking, though.
“I think of you as a son,” Don says. He leans in closer, and every part of Kenny he touches feels like it’s on fire. His soothing voice continues, “I love you, Kenny. I just want to take care of you. I’m glad you love me, too. It makes me very happy when you call me Uncle Don, son. Hell, it would make me even happier if you called me Dad. Daddy, even, if you like.”
Kenny keens out a quiet sound as his hips jerk forward of their own accord. Don shushes him.
“It’s okay. Let Daddy take care of you.”
That’s – That’s like a porn thing. He’s pretty sure. He doesn’t know why Don calling himself Daddy actually makes him feel kind of insanely turned on. He’s got drool pooling in the bottom of his mouth, and he swallows with difficulty. It’s so hard to think – he’s never been touched like this by anyone, and Don’s so confident. It’s not like his own kind of quick and dirty jerking off, usually rushed in the shower or trying to be quiet in his bedroom so his parents don’t hear.
“You can be loud, it’s okay. We’re alone.”
Kenny makes a sound that’s almost like an animal whine. “D-Don…”
“Uncle Don,” Don reminds him.
Kenny feels like he’s seconds from exploding. He’s so – he’s so confused, his head is spinning. He can’t think beyond the feeling of Don’s confident hand stroking him off, the feeling of another human touching him somewhere he’s only touched himself. He groans out another sound before he manages to choke out, “Daddy – “
Fuck, that’s it for him. Don’s smooth rhythm falters slightly as soon as he hears him gasp out the Daddy, but Kenny barely notices because his belly is flexing uncontrollably as his dick jerks in Don’s hand. He’s coming in spurts, almost sobbing as his orgasm comes over him so strong he swears he can hear the blood rushing in his ears.
Don soothes him through it, keeping up a quiet babble of praise that Kenny can barely hear.
Finally, finally Kenny feels like he comes down from the high. He’s drenched in sweat, still almost naked on the mat. Don’s looking at him with that same fondness from before.
“Feel better, son?” he asks.
Kenny can only nod. Does he? He should feel mortified, he thinks, but they’ve long since gone past the point of a normal interaction. He feels like he’s just rolling with the punches now.
“Get dressed,” Don tells him.
Kenny pulls his shorts back up and sits back on his hands. He watches with interest as Don rolls out of the ring to scrub his hands off on a towel and grab their water. He climbs back in and hands the bottle to Kenny.
“Here. Drink. We can take five, and then we’re back to training.”
Oh, right. Training. This was all about training. Kenny wordlessly takes the water and drinks, still feeling dazed.
“I’m proud of you,” Don tells him, still standing over him. He smiles widely, and Kenny’s struck again by how fond he looks and how much he does look like a proud father. “You were very mature to accept my help without making a big fuss out of it. I couldn’t be prouder.”
Kenny feels a hesitant smile come over his own face. It was a little weird – now that it’s over, he’s a little unsure about what just happened, but Don’s looking at him like he did something remarkable. He likes the way the praise feels. He wants Don to be proud of him more than anything, and if this was how he did it… well, it wasn’t bad. Don’s not acting like it’s weird, and it’s not like it hurt. Far from it. Maybe he is being immature to feel weird about it at all.
“Let’s not mention this to your uncle, though,” Don adds.
He doesn’t sound worried or anything, but Kenny still peers up at him with a squint. Don smiles and shrugs.
“He’d probably be mad we made a mess on his mat,” Don says. He gestures at the couple of spots Kenny hadn’t noticed, chuckling when Kenny swears quietly. “We’ll just pretend we don’t know who did that, hm? And maybe don’t do stuff like that with the other guys he’s training. It’s more of a mentor-mentee thing... And of course, it would be wildly inappropriate with your biological uncle.”
Kenny nods hesitantly. It makes sense… he guesses. He’s still really confused about all the uncle and daddy stuff, and the longer he thinks about it the more unsure he feels. Don must sense that, because he offers him a hand up.
“Do you want to get back to it? I have a move I want to show you that I saw in ECW. I think you can do it, but you’ve got to be careful.”
Kenny takes his hand and lets him haul him up. He feels a little skittish and shaky, still. Don’s breezing on, already moving to the next task on their agenda. Kenny wavers, wondering if this is really it? They really just did that and they’re moving on?
“Kenny? Are you paying attention?”
Kenny blinks and nods, turning his attention back to Don. He’s not being weird about it at all. Is Kenny the one being weird? Don was praising him for being mature about this. He shouldn’t drag this on. The mature thing would be to be just as businesslike as Don, right?
“Come on, Kenny, like this.”
Kenny shakes his head decisively and focuses back on what’s important: training. He’s got a limited time with Don before he goes back on the road and he needs to make the most of it. Uncle Don can teach him so much.
Kenny follows Don’s lead, leaning into his hand on his shoulder.
It’s fine. It’s normal. It’s just training.
He can be mature about it.