Chapter 17 Derek
We lost the pre-season game against Buffalo.
It shouldn’t have mattered—pre-season losses didn’t count, they were for working out systems and getting legs under you—but it sat wrong anyway.
We’d been sloppy in our own zone, the power play had looked disjointed, and Morrison had said exactly four words in the locker room after, which was never a good sign.
Some of the guys had gone out for a commiseration drink.
I’d gone with them, nursed a beer, listened to Petrov complain about the officiating with the kind of creative profanity that transcended language barriers.
But everyone had called it early. Road trip fatigue, early flight to Nashville in the morning, the particular exhaustion of a loss that felt preventable.
I should have been watching game tape. I had my laptop open, the file queued up, ready to go through my shifts and catalogue everything I’d done wrong. That was the routine. That was what you did after a loss.
Instead I was staring at a photo of my dog.
Or more accurately, I was staring at Théo’s reflection in the window behind my dog.
It was barely visible—just an outline, the suggestion of a figure, the teal and black of my Frost hat on his head. You had to zoom in to really see it, which I had done. Multiple times. More times than I cared to admit, even to myself.
He looked graceful even standing still. That was the thing that kept catching me.
The particular way he held himself, coiled and ready, like even walking a dog on a Chicago sidewalk required the same controlled precision he brought to the ice.
Like a snake ready to strike, all that power held in check until the moment it wasn’t.
I had moved on from watching his jump compilations.
That had been phase one. The quad axel, the technical breakdowns, the legitimate athletic interest in what a human body could do when pushed to that level. Educational. Appropriate. The kind of thing you could justify as genuine curiosity.
Now I was watching… other things.
Fan edits set to slow music. Compilations of him in sheer competition costumes. Thirst traps. I didn’t need YouTube titles to tell me what they were.
They were everywhere. Clips of Théo landing quads in slow motion, the camera shamelessly tracking the snap of his rotation, the flex in his arms through spins, the clean arch of his back when he hit a position like it was nothing.
Spliced with behind-the-scenes footage from photo shoots—fitted black clothes, bare throat, all lean lines and elegance.
Personal videos he’d posted over the years, casual and unguarded in ways that felt almost intrusive to watch.
I had watched them anyway.
And it wasn’t just curiosity anymore. It wasn’t even really about the videos.
Half the time I wasn’t looking at the screen—I was replaying the real thing.
Théo in person at the rink, blade biting into ice.
That almost smile he didn’t know he wore when something finally clicked.
The way he moved like gravity was optional.
The way my body reacted.
Ever since he’d sent that photo this afternoon, it had gotten worse.
Looks better on me, don’t you think?
Yeah. It did. It looked unfairly better on him—and something dumb and primal flared in my chest at the sight of Théo in my clothes. Like my brain took one look and went: mine. Possessive, caveman nonsense. A reaction I had no business having and even less idea what to do with.
I sat on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, telling myself I was just unwinding after an embarrassing loss. One more clip. One more replay.
Just killing time.
That was the lie I was telling myself, anyway.
The truth was harder to look at. I was faintly obsessed with him.
With the way he bit his lower lip when he was concentrating.
The small satisfied tilt at the corner of his mouth when he landed something clean.
The thundercloud expression when something went wrong.
Full lips, naturally dark, the kind that looked like they’d been designed specifically to cause problems.
The internet agreed with me, apparently. I’d gone deep enough into the compilations to find the ones that focused specifically on his mouth. Slow motion clips of him mid-performance, lips parted, breathing hard.
I set the phone face down on my nightstand and headed for the shower.
It had been a long day—shitty game, knee throbbing, the kind of loss that lived in your chest for hours afterward. I just needed to wash it off. Clear my head. Think about literally anything else.
The water hit the back of my neck and I braced a hand against the tile but the images followed me in. That was the problem with obsession—you couldn’t wash it off.
He’d been rumored to have been involved with Nicolas Fontaine—the nephew of his coach back in Toronto, another figure skater competing at the elite level.
The internet had been intensely interested in them.
Fan accounts dedicated to their alleged relationship.
Photos of them together at competitions, at training, leaving the same apartment building at odd hours.
The speculation was that they’d had a messy breakup and that was why Théo had left Toronto so abruptly.
Nicolas Fontaine looked nothing like me. Lithe, golden blond hair, blue eyes, soft spoken in interviews, delicate in that particular way figure skaters could be. Everything I wasn’t.
I glanced down at myself through the steam. Broader build, the accumulated mass of someone whose sport required taking hits and giving them back. I looked like exactly what I was—a hockey player, built for collision and endurance, not elegance.
My cock didn’t give a shit if I wasn’t his type.
It had decided Théo Beaubien was its type and it was making that opinion very clear right now, thickening against my thigh despite the lukewarm water.
I tried to think about something else. Game tape.
The power play setup. Morrison’s four word post-game speech.
My knee, which was aching slightly, the dull reminder that I was 28 and had been doing this for a long time.
None of it worked.
I kept thinking about Théo’s mouth.
Fuck it.
I wrapped my hand around my growing erection and the relief was immediate. I leaned my forehead against the cool tile and let the fantasy unspool.
That perfect mouth. On my lips. On my skin. On my cock. That sharp tongue, that controlled precision applied somewhere other than the ice. The thought alone was enough to make everything else irrelevant—the game, the loss, the fact that I was supposed to have my shit together.
I gripped myself harder and my cock responded eagerly, leaking at the tip despite the water sluicing over me.
The contrast of him—that sweetness, the almost angelic quality to his face paired with all that controlled sharpness—would he look at me with those dark eyes, wide and focused, while he took me into his mouth?
I groaned, the sound swallowed by the shower’s spray. Those dark red lips stretched wide to fit me. I would start off gentle but sometimes my dick had a mind of its own. Maybe he would want me to fuck his mouth roughly. Maybe he’d look up at me with those eyes and dare me to.
I squeezed the crown, trying to stave off the orgasm already building at the base of my spine.
Would he let me? The question surfaced unbidden and somehow that uncertainty made it hotter.
Théo Beaubien, who commanded every inch of ice he touched, who moved like gravity was optional—would he surrender that control to me?
Or would he fight for it, turn it into something competitive, something we’d both win?
I stroked myself slower, deliberately drawing it out, the water running down my back.
Those fucking eyes. I’d watched him from the back row enough times to have them memorized—the way they tracked his own reflection in the glass, critical and assessing. What would it take to make them soften for me?
My hand found a rhythm that matched my breathing, rough and uneven. I thought about his hands—those elegant, deceptively strong hands that could hold a spin position until physics gave up arguing. Wrapped around me. Guiding me. Taking.
“Fuck,” I breathed, my head falling back into the spray.
He was seven years younger than me. Barely 21. And my teammate’s younger brother.
None of it mattered when I pictured him on his knees, looking up at me with that quiet intensity, that same focus he brought to a quad axel. Like I was a jump he intended to land perfectly.
I came harder than I had in months, spilling over my fist while the water washed the evidence away. My legs nearly buckled and I had to catch myself against the tile with both hands.
The shower ran cold before I moved.
◆◆◆
When I returned home two days later, it was to a sleeping Théo, Aspen curled at his feet. We’d taken a red eye from Nashville and flying home straight after a game was a different kind of exhausting. At least, we had won tonight.
The apartment was dark when I let myself in, just the glow of the city through the windows and the soft hum of the refrigerator. I set my bag down as quietly as I could, wincing when the zipper scraped against the hardwood.
Aspen lifted his head from his position at the foot of the couch, ears pricked. But he must not have felt threatened because he only watched me for a moment before settling back down, his tail giving a single lazy thump against the cushion. Good boy. Don’t wake him.
Théo was stretched out on the couch, one arm tucked under a pillow, the other hanging off the edge. He was wearing a faded gray henley with fraying cuffs and had the throw blanket thrown across his middle. His feet were bare, pale against Aspen’s merle fur.
I stood there like an idiot, just watching him breathe.
His face was different like this. Soft in a way I’d never seen when he was awake, all that watchful edge smoothed away. The furrow that usually lived between his brows was gone. His lips were slightly parted, his breathing deep and even. He looked young. He looked peaceful.
He looked like someone who wasn’t carrying the weight of something I couldn’t name.
I wanted to stare. I wanted to memorize him like this—unguarded, unaware of being studied.
But I also wanted him to sleep. He worked harder than anyone I knew and I played professional hockey for a living.
The hours he kept, the relentless discipline, the way he pushed his body past what seemed reasonable or safe—it was almost pathological.
And for what? He wasn’t competing anymore. He wasn’t training for anything specific, as far as I could tell. He was doing all this for... fun? I couldn’t even tell if he was enjoying himself. It seemed almost the opposite. Like punishment. Like penance for something I didn’t understand.
I couldn’t figure him out.
I made myself move, finally. Crept past the couch and down the hall to my bedroom. Changed out of my travel clothes. Brushed my teeth. Lay in bed staring at the ceiling, hyperaware that Théo Beaubien was asleep 20 feet away on my couch.
Sleep came eventually, though I couldn’t tell you when.
When I woke up the next morning, sunlight streaming through the blinds I’d forgotten to close, he was already gone.
The couch had been straightened, the throw blanket folded neatly over the arm.
Aspen was sitting by his food bowl, looking at me with the particular expression of a dog who was starving.
A Post-it note was stuck to the coffee maker in neat, precise handwriting: Already took Aspen out for his morning walk and fed him. Don’t let him trick you.
My eyes scanned it three times, studying his handwriting.
Then I grabbed Aspen’s leash and went out anyway.
The apartment smelled like him—something clean and faintly evergreen, like fresh ice and winter air. It had gotten into everything. The couch cushions. The throw blanket. My hat, which he’d left hanging on the hook next to the door.
I needed fresh air.