5. Neutral Zone
NEUTRAL ZONE
The next game was an away game in Atikokan, two hours away, on a Thursday.
The bus was leaving from the arena at four. Caleb got there at three-fifty with his bag and sticks and the particular awkward awareness of someone who didn’t yet know where he was supposed to sit. He stood in the parking lot, watching the others load in, trying to read the situation.
Kowalski and Pete had the back two rows.
This appeared to be an established fact rather than a choice.
Marc and a winger named Dubois sat together mid-bus because they had apparently done so for roughly the last decade.
The others scattered themselves around them.
Bryce occupied the seats just behind the driver with the comfortable ownership of a man who had claimed them once and never been challenged.
“Church,” Bryce said, without looking up from his phone. “Third row. Behind the cooler.”
Caleb put his bag in the third row behind the cooler, which turned out to be directly in front of Pete. Pete handed him a Gatorade over the seat back without being asked, then returned to whatever he was reading.
“Dubois has to sit mid-bus,” Kowalski announced from the back, “because of the thing.”
“There’s no thing,” Dubois said.
“There’s a thing,” Kowalski said. “There has always been a thing. Tell him about the thing.”
“I’m not telling him about the thing.”
Caleb turned to Pete.
“There’s a thing,” Pete said quietly. “You’ll learn about it sooner or later. Or not.”
Connor got on last, the way he usually did.
He paused near the front of the bus and looked through the rows before taking his seat.
His gaze found Caleb briefly, held just long enough to count, and moved on.
He sat two rows ahead across the aisle and opened a folder of what appeared to be game notes.
Caleb opened the Gatorade and settled into his seat as the bus pulled away from the arena.
Veil Lake gave way to highway, and highway gave way to forest. The farther they drove, the more familiar the landscape became.
Rock cuts. Black spruce. Frozen lakes tucked between stands of trees.
The last of the afternoon light slid across the snow and disappeared behind the hills.
For a while the bus was quiet.
Then Kowalski began explaining how the Prospectors had been robbed in a game in 2019 by a referee whose name he still remembered and whose professional qualifications he continued to dispute.
The story immediately attracted opinions.
Marc interrupted to correct details that only made the story less believable.
Dubois disputed dates. Bryce introduced a player nobody else remembered.
Pete lowered his book often enough to supply information that sounded more authoritative than it probably was.
Every few minutes someone somewhere in the back made a referee-whistle sound, which caused Kowalski to stop, swear, and restart from an earlier point in the narrative.
The story expanded with each telling.
Near Atikokan, the referee had progressed from hopelessly incompetent to actively malicious. Bryce had added two witnesses who may never have existed, Marc was arguing points of evidence with courtroom seriousness, and Pete was laughing hard enough to wipe his eyes.
Nobody seemed particularly interested in establishing what had actually happened.
Caleb listened, watched the arguments move around him, and realized that half the conversation depended on history he didn’t have. The stories overlapped. The jokes referred to things nobody explained. Entire topics resumed without preamble, picking up where they had left off.
This was different from practice. Even home games had their own flavour.
This was what the team looked like when they were away from home, away from eyes that knew them.
Caleb knew that feeling all too well. For the first time since arriving in Veil Lake, he wanted to understand all of it so much that the wanting actually surprised him.
The arena in Atikokan was smaller than the one in Veil Lake and smelled more aggressively of hockey, if that was possible.
The locker room had the off-putting feel of a place that was familiar yet foreign: hooks in the wrong places, benches arranged “wrong,” even the bathroom faintly hostile, the toilets carrying the unmistakable sense that they belonged to somebody else.
“Don’t touch the showers until I check them,” Kowalski said, dropping his bag. “Remember the Sudbury trip.”
“Nobody needs to tell me about the Sudbury trip,” Bryce said. “I was there.”
“Exactly,” Kowalski said.
“You know what?” Caleb said. “I don’t need to know.”
Pete regarded Caleb.
“You’ll find out eventually.” He grinned. “Everyone does.”
Connor had gone out to look over the ice, his practiced ritual of studying the surface before a game. He stayed there for a few minutes before coming into the room, after everyone else had started unpacking.
“Good ice,” he said. “Puck’ll be moving tonight. Keep your feet going through the neutral zone.”
A couple of players nodded. Connor caught Caleb’s eye. “Stay wide a little longer. You’ll have room if you don’t cut inside too early.” Caleb nodded.
The game was tense and close throughout all three periods.
Atikokan went up two in the second on a power play and the kind of bad bounce that feels personal when you’re the goalie on the wrong end of it.
Veil Lake spent the next period clawing their way back.
The tying goal came off Kowalski’s stick from a pass Caleb made and immediately regretted, then watched disappear into the net.
The goal tied it with four minutes left. The arena erupted. The Prospectors’ bench responded with enough noise to suggest that they had just won something rather than simply having dragged themselves back to even.
Overtime was four-on-four and lasted the full five minutes. Connor took a puck off the shin and stayed out for his next shift. Bryce earned a penalty that was probably justified. Neither team scored.
The game ended in a draw, and they got back on the bus with a point.
The team filed out through the side door in ones and twos, gear over their shoulders, the post-game noise dispersing into the cold. Caleb took his time changing. He told himself he was waiting for the corridor to clear, which was true enough.
Connor was the last one out of the visiting locker room. He found Caleb still in the hallway, leaning against the cinderblock wall with his bag at his feet. His expression shifted into that assessing look Caleb had come to recognize.
“Bus is loading,” Connor said.
“I know.”
Connor checked the corridor. The equipment manager was gone, and the sound of the idling bus carried faintly through the exterior wall. By the time he faced Caleb again, his guard was up.
“Caleb…”
“Come here.”
It wasn’t a question.
Connor’s eyes went briefly to Caleb’s mouth before his guard returned.
Caleb pushed away from the wall, caught Connor by the jacket, and led him through the side door, their equipment bumping behind them.
Instead of turning toward the bus, he guided him around the corner of the arena and into the narrow space between the outer wall and the dumpster enclosure.
The parking lot lights didn’t quite reach there.
The cold did. Twenty metres away, the bus idled steadily in the darkness.
Connor let himself be led.
Caleb kept moving until Connor’s back touched the wall, then put a hand flat against his chest and felt the quick movement of Connor’s heartbeat beneath his palm.
“Caleb.”
His voice was lower now.
“Yeah,” Caleb said.
And knelt.
He kept his hand firmly on Connor’s chest as he went down, maintaining the contact, as though holding him in place. He heard Connor’s sharp intake of breath, felt his body go very still against the wall. Something crossed Connor’s face, quick and unguarded, before he got hold of it again.
“The bus—” Connor started.
“Will wait,” Caleb said. He looked up. “Unless you want to stop.”
Connor looked down at him. In the dark his face was all shadow and the pale catch of distant light on his jaw, the beard, the dark eyes. His hand came up slowly and rested in Caleb’s hair, not guiding, just resting there because he needed somewhere to put it.
“No,” Connor said quietly. “I don’t want to stop.”
Caleb worked Connor’s jeans open with one steady hand, the cold air biting at his knuckles.
He kept his left palm flat against Connor’s chest the whole time, feeling the tensing of his abs, the way they twitched when Caleb freed him and wrapped his mouth around the head of his cock.
The taste of his skin filled his senses.
No hesitation. No waiting for Connor to show him what came next.
Caleb set the pace himself, and the certainty of it went through him like heat.
He took Connor deep, deliberate, setting a rhythm that left no room for Connor to manage anything.
His hand felt every hitch in Connor’s stomach, every small involuntary flex of muscle under his hand.
Connor’s fingers tightened in his hair, not pulling, just holding on as if Caleb were the only solid thing within reach.
A low sound escaped him, rough, surprised, and Caleb answered it by taking him deeper, tongue working the underside of his shaft, steady and sure.
Connor’s hips twitched once before he caught himself, pressing back harder against the wall.
Caleb could feel the effort it took, the tightening on his tongue, the way the man who always stayed in control was fighting not to thrust, not to make a sound that might carry in the night’s silence.
Caleb moaned around him, the vibration pulling another fractured breath from Connor’s chest. The hand in his hair fisted harder.
Caleb kept going, tasting the first release of precum, relentless in his focus, reading every tremor and pulse.
This was what it felt like to give without being led.
To choose and know exactly what he was doing.
Connor’s breathing grew ragged. His thighs tensed.
The steady pulse under Caleb’s hand stuttered, then accelerated.
Caleb matched its pace. He felt the exact moment Connor’s composure cracked, the low, unguarded growl Connor tried to stifle but couldn’t, raw and broken and perfect, vibrating against Caleb’s palm as he came hard down Caleb’s throat.
Caleb stayed with him through it, hand never leaving Connor, nose pressed firmly into his stomach, until the last shudder passed.
Caleb rose slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Connor remained against the wall, catching his breath. Caleb straightened his own jacket, then Connor’s, leaving it slightly crooked.
“Okay,” Connor said, his voice not entirely even.
“Okay,” Caleb agreed, his voice carrying a satisfaction he did not bother hiding.
They gathered their equipment and returned to the parking lot. The bus was still there, engine running, exhaust rising in the cold. Bryce leaned against it with folded arms. His attention moved from Connor to Caleb, questions staying behind his teeth as he pushed off the bus.
Connor got on behind him without looking back. Caleb followed, found his seat behind the cooler, and accepted the Gatorade Pete passed back without comment. He looked out the window at the Atikokan arena going dark in the cold night.
“One point,” Kowalski said as the bus pulled out of the Atikokan arena parking lot at nine-forty-five. “One beautiful, ugly, hard-won point.”
“You fell on the puck in overtime,” Bryce said.
“I protected the puck,” Kowalski said. “Strategically. With my body. Like a professional.”
“That wasn’t strategy.”
“That was pure strategy. You just can’t always see it.”
Pete handed Caleb something wrapped in tinfoil from the cooler without looking at him. Inside was a sandwich made with decent bread, turkey, cheese, and mustard.
Caleb ate his sandwich and watched the dark highway slide past the window.
Behind him, Kowalski and Bryce were still arguing about overtime.
The discussion had expanded to include several witnesses and at least one event Caleb was reasonably sure had not happened.
Somewhere farther back, somebody started laughing hard enough to make the bus driver glance in the mirror. It was becoming familiar.
The noise rose and fell around him. Equipment shifted in the overhead racks when the bus hit bumps. Somebody opened a can and somebody else immediately asked if they’d brought enough for the whole class. Behind him, the banter continued without showing any sign of approaching a conclusion.
Two rows ahead, Connor sat sideways and watched the road through the windshield. Whenever somebody called his name, he answered without turning, somehow following several conversations at once.
Caleb watched him before looking back out the window.
He’d be going to the cabin soon. Very soon.
He finished the rest of his sandwich, settled deeper into his seat, and closed his eyes while the bus carried them home through the dark.