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Jesus, he hoped this wasn’t some kind of horrifying romcom setup gone wrong. Nico’s dick would shrivel up and fall off if he found out the GM traded a right-handed defenseman to get him laid. Nico also had a right hand. It operated fine. At least now that the bone had healed.
Somehow he’d managed to get so touch-starved, just standing there among his teammates, that the sight of a good-looking player offering platonic physical comfort made him want bad enough for his brain to mix the signals.
“Ryan! You look good in orange.” Maybe Rees had bad eyesight? It could explain the moustache. “Thanks. Uh, you wanted to see me?” They were standing in a small players’ lounge a few hallways down from the locker room—Ryan in full gear, Rees in a suit with an orange tie. It didn’t look good on him either.
“Oh my God,” Grange stage-whispered. “Kitty is picking up?” Ryan raised his eyebrows. “Not his thing?” “To be honest,” Greenie said, leaning across the table, “we weren’t sure he knew how.” “We thought maybe he was scaring off the ladies, but any attempts to ask him about his dating life result in several minutes of him pretending not to speak English.”
Ryan did not know. He wished he didn’t know that Nico did. “You’re one of a kind, Nico Kirschbaum,” he said. And then he beat a retreat to get the rest of his things from the hated apartment, which had neither peace and quiet nor live soft-core mechanic porn.
“We’re going out to dinner,” Misha insisted as he all but dragged him from the locker room by the neck. Yorkie nudged Ryan along in similar fashion. “Are we defecting?” Ryan asked Nico. Both Yorkie and Misha had played here before. Nico looked both ways for journalists. “Do you think Quebec would have us?”
“Kitty! You made it.” Baltierra grinned widely and took in Nico and Ryan, then fixed his gaze on Nico. “And you brought me a baby queer!” There were many things Nico could have said. What came out of his mouth was “I’m twenty-one.” Next to him, Ryan disguised a laugh as a cough, badly. “And a prepubescent queer!” Baltierra added. Ryan squawked. Nico snorted.
“I hope these two idiots are taking care of you. And if you ever need advice from a hockey guncle, you just call.” Baltierra wanted Nico to call up his childhood hero if he ever needed advice on… love? Sex? Hockey? It didn’t really matter which, probably, since the thought of telling Gabriel Martin any of his problems made Nico want to curl up and die. Martin shook his head. “I can’t believe you think you’re one to go to for advice, Mr. Didn’t Know I Was Bi Until I Was Twenty-Two.” “Gabriel Martin,” Baltierra said with dramatic outrage worthy of any queen, “you did not just cast stones about
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It was a few moments before Ryan’s brain rebooted enough to make words. “Hey, Nicky?” “Guh,” Nico said. Ryan wasn’t sure if he meant yes or no. Ryan patted the easiest part of Nico to reach. It turned out to be the middle of his chest. “Good game.” Twelve seconds later, Nico hit him with a pillow.
They filled the trunk, and Ryan opened the passenger door for Ira while Rudy got rid of the luggage cart. Thankfully, she accepted the invitation. Ryan was faking confidence, but he did not want to get stuck sitting next to Nico’s dad. If he took a little pleasure in a large, tall man who bullied his son having to sit in the back seat where there was less leg room, neither Nico nor his dad had to know about it. Finally Rudy slid—or more like folded—into the seat behind his wife, and they were off.
Do you want me to grab you a fork?” Nico debated for a second before shrugging mentally and picking up the chopsticks. Ryan might have a point about the relative hygiene of NHL players, but Nico had Ryan’s dick in his mouth on a regular basis. Sharing chopsticks seemed like a strange place to draw the line.
“Good, because I’m going to need food in my belly before I start putting alcohol in it.” Nico’s mother laughed and said something in Russian. Then she poured a bunch of rum over the wine pot and lit it on fire. Nico’s mom was metal as fuck.
Ryan groaned and leaned their heads together. “Let’s not push our luck. I saw the way your dad looked at me when he saw those coveralls.” Nico sighed. He probably had a point. “Okay. Rain date?” Ryan snorted softly. “Rain check,” he corrected. “And you better believe I’m cashing it.”
But now, after a surprisingly pleasant holiday, after watching Nico smile fondly with his whole body as his mother dabbed her eyes at his gift, he learned what it would be like to have Nico love him. It was particularly cruel to realize how badly Ryan wanted that just as he began to understand that having it, then losing it, would destroy him.
“Of course not,” he said, voice loaded with sarcasm. “You probably think it’s true love forever.” The thundercloud turned to rain—quiet, soft, heartbreaking. “It could be.” No, no, no. Ryan had known it would end, but he didn’t want it to end like this. He was the only one who was supposed to get hurt. “Don’t.” He hated to beg, but he didn’t have a choice. “Don’t what?” Nico argued. He took a step closer, touched Ryan’s elbow again. Ryan’s heart tripped in his chest. “Don’t tell you I love you?”
“RYAN.” Ryan groaned and rolled over. His head felt like an elephant was sitting on it. “It can’t be morning.” He buried his face in a semi familiar pillow. This was why he didn’t take ZzzQuil on a regular basis. He should’ve packed his stupid white noise machine. “Yeah, well, it is.” Yorkie sounded wrong. “Sorry, but you have to get up. Now.” Bleary, Ryan sat up, and a strange, uneasy undercurrent ran through him as he met Yorkie’s gaze. “What’s wrong?” Yorkie ran a hand through his hair. “They traded Nico.”
Once, when Nico had been cutting veggies to go with the dinner Ryan was cooking, he sliced open his thumb. Ryan had bought a set of expensive kitchen knives, and they were so sharp Nico didn’t feel a thing. He didn’t realize what happened until he started bleeding all over the carrot sticks. This was like that, Nico thought. He’d been gutted, but the knife was so sharp he didn’t feel it yet.
“Can’t be punching now anyway,” Kitty went on, lamenting to the table top. They should probably get some food into him before the painkiller overload made him sick. “I’m have to set good example.” Ryan glanced at Yorkie, who shook his head. Obviously he wasn’t following Kitty’s words either. “For the rookies?” “For baby,” Kitty said, as though Yorkie was very stupid. The words didn’t make sense until he dropped the attitude and said, “Me and Katja, we are little bit surprised, but of course happy too.” Yorkie was staring at him like he’d seen a ghost. Ryan still wasn’t sure he understood what
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He went back to his room to find something to change into. “Nico, wait—” And stopped in the doorway. The bed had been slept in, the covers still a nest the way Ryan tended to leave them. His phone charger was plugged into the lamp on Nico’s bedside table, the white noise machine next to it. The stitches ripped. If Ryan missed him so much he was sleeping in his bed, why had he pushed Nico away in the first place? Why didn’t he come home when Nico got traded? Why hadn’t he let Nico know how he felt before that horrible day at the arena?
Ryan squirmed. “Nico—” Nico laced their fingers together. “You are smart, and you are kind, and you are”—his voice got a little rough, because now that his nerves had passed, his body remembered what it was like being in close proximity to Ryan, and it had certain expectations—“sexy. You love your family, you like dirty goals and old movies. You’re a great cook and a terrible sleeper and you hate to drive.” Ryan swallowed visibly. “And I like you a lot,” Nico finished, suddenly self-conscious. His ears went hot, and he tried to pull his hand back, but Ryan didn’t let him go.
He’d treated Nico like he was a stupid kid for having real feelings and daring to tell Ryan about them—for daring to make logical and correct assumptions about Ryan’s. Ryan knew intimately what that felt like, how much that hurt. And Nico still wanted him. Ryan had acknowledged that under his paper-thin hockey player exterior, he was an unfortunate mix of insecurity and sarcasm, and Nico didn’t care. Ryan had hurt him and he knew Ryan was a disaster and he wanted him anyway.
“You are a constant trial to my patience,” he said, but Nico was pretty sure he wasn’t complaining. “I told you, I’m trying to do this right.” “By whose rules? I didn’t get a copy of the pro hockey player gay-dating handbook at rookie orientation.”
Through dumb luck or divine intervention, Ryan found his way back to the hotel, got his door open, and passed out facedown on the bed. Through his own stupidity, he woke up with a mouth that tasted like the inside of a Czech sewer and a stomach that felt like he’d been drinking straight out of the Vltava River.
He carefully lifted his head from his pillow, realized he’d gone to sleep marinating in alcohol-soaked clothes, and carefully lay back down again to wriggle out of them. Then, gingerly, he grabbed a bottle of water from the hotel mini fridge and dragged himself into the bathroom, where he sat on the shower floor under a lukewarm spray with the lights off until he didn’t want to die anymore.
“Hey, Ryan?” “Yeah?” “What’s door number two?” “That’s the one where we do long-distance for nine months of the year and suffer through phone sex.” “Suffer, huh?” “Well, maybe enjoy phone sex and suffer the lack of snuggling.”
This was some grand-cinematic-moment shit. All that was missing was the rising music. Ryan’s heart stuttered and his cheeks flushed, and for the first time in his adult life, the words were bursting on his tongue and he didn’t want to hold them back. “I love you.” The elevator doors dinged open. Nico backed out of them, grinning. “I know.”
“You’ve been holding out on me, Kirschbaum.” “Why?” Nico smirked. “You into this?” “Let me think—am I into being held in your arms while you competently manhandle me around the room to a set rhythm? Hmmm.”
“Holy shit.” “Hm?” Nico turned away from his view of the dance floor and focused on Ryan. “The Orcas”—Nico’s gaze sharpened—“they made an offer. A good one.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. Fuck, Nico, next year, it’s you and me, babe. We’re playing together, on the same team.” Nico kissed him hard and pressed their foreheads together. “No matter what the sweaters say, you and me? We’re always on the same team.”