"You're telling me you never -- really?"

"I'm not really athletic."

"Not soccer? Lacrosse? Field hockey? Tennis? No team sports, you weren't in a frat--" His incredulity is explosive, and in such close proximity Caleb can feel him quaking with almost-laughter. Nathan's hand is pumping up and down at an ambitious pace and it's impossible to pretend it's his own grip on his dick because he's not yanking for dear life or in front of a computer screen. It feels so good it almost hurts, if they go for much longer it will hurt, and the merciless sensation of somebody else thumbing at the head of his dick makes him see spots of color on the colorless walls of the shower. His own hands find a more tentative handle, slick and soapy and scared to touch.

Nathan must know the answer to all these things. Caleb doesn't say, I spent my teenage years either in the hospital or on my way to the hospital, I barely had time to jerk myself off, let alone anybody else. Not least of all because the last part would be a lie -- he'd had plenty of time for that -- and his employer would know it. Caleb does say, "I wasn't really a team player. Before Bluebook."

"Don't be shy. Get on my level, dude."

Nathan shifts, settling back against the shower wall; this takes his broad body out of the direct flow of water but it's still flecked by spray, little beads of moisture catching in his beard. His strokes get a little lazier, lingering more on the return while his free hand works at his own balls. He's looking at himself now, not at Caleb's ludicrously undefined abs and goose-pimpled chest; he's looking to see how he'll respond and adapt to critique. Maybe this part is the test.

There's a camera in here too, just like there's cameras in every room in the compound, and you just bet that Nathan will rewind that footage later to critique him on points of form. He's trapped in this shower with a crazy person who almost certainly has sex with robots. Their feet are touching in a centimeter or so of cedar-scented soapy water and Caleb doesn't know the etiquette of whose arms go where, or who stands over the drain, or when they're supposed to stop.

Caleb adjusts his grip to begin in earnest.