Chapter 18
He said let me finish these notes, and I sat back in my chair and waited, which I did not do, normally.
Waiting was not a skill I had, but I sat in Nathan Cross's office while he finished his notes with the fountain pen.
I watched the clock on the wall and felt something that was either anticipation or a mild cardiac event.
Both?
Five minutes. Felt like twenty. Then he closed the notebook. Capped the pen. Put his jacket on the hook behind the door in the way he put things places, with intention.
Then he looked at me.
"Okay," he said.
We walked through the dark facility without discussing it, the emergency lighting doing its amber thing, our footsteps the only sound.
The locker room at this hour was a different place, all the usual noise and gear and bodies gone, just the space itself, which was larger and quieter than it ever felt during the day.
I pushed the locker room door open.
We stood in it for a second.
I had been in this locker room approximately four hundred times. I had never once stood in it with Nathan Cross and thought about what came next.
"So," I said.
"Yes," Nathan said.
"We're doing this?"
He looked at me with the expression he used when I was stating something obvious. "You invited me."
"I know I invited you. I'm just—" I moved my hand. "Processing."
"You can process later."
"Nathan."
"Wesley." He said it with the patience of a man who had made a decision and was waiting for me to catch up to it. "You've been in this locker room before."
"Not with you."
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. "No," he said. "Not with me."
I looked at him for a second. Nathan Cross, in my locker room, with his jacket still on and his collar still straight and that expression that was not quite a smile.
I started taking off my gear.
His eyes moved. Just briefly, just once, down and back up, the kind of thing you'd miss if you weren't paying attention.
I was paying attention.
"There's a process," I said, because apparently I was narrating this. "To the gear. It goes in a certain order."
"I'm aware of how your equipment works," Nathan said.
“Are you?”
Nathan held my gaze for exactly one second. “The gear,” he said. “I meant the gear.”
“Sure.” I dropped the shirt. "Obviously. And for the record," I added, because apparently self-preservation had left the building, "you are not actually aware of how my equipment works."
Nathan went very still.
"Wesley."
"You've never seen it," I said. "Not in full operational mode. So any conclusions you're drawing right now are premature."
His jaw tightened.
"I was referring to the protective gear."
"Whatever you say," I said.
His shirt came off next.
Fuck, he was hot.
"You're staring," Nathan said.
"I'm not staring. Okay, yeah, I am. I've seen you without a shirt," I said. "I've seen you working out. This is—"
"Different," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
The locker room was very quiet.
"Shower," he said.
"Shower," I agreed.
We were not calm about it. That's the thing I want to be clear about. We were both trying to be calm about it and neither of us were calm about it.
The water came on.
The team shower's ridiculous multi-head setup hit us from three directions at once, which—I started laughing, I couldn't help it, because it was a lot of water, it was genuinely a comical amount of water.
Nathan looked at the shower heads like he was doing an assessment and finding the results unsatisfactory.
"The pressure," he started.
"Don't," I said. "Don't file the report right now."
"I wasn't going to—"
"Nathan."
He looked at me. Water dripping from his hair. Pale skin, the shower steam, those blue eyes. Every thought I'd had about him in the last two years arriving at once.
"Hi," I said. Slightly stupidly.
Something happened on his face that I had never seen before. Full and unguarded, there and then gone.
"Hello," he said.
The water beat down hot and steady, the team shower’s ridiculous multi-head setup spraying us from three directions at once like it couldn’t decide which part of us needed attention most.
Steam fogged the tiles, turning the empty locker room into something private and slightly absurd after hours.
Nathan stood under the main spray, black hair plastered dark against his forehead, blue eyes locked on mine with that quiet, deliberate focus that always managed to knock the breath out of me.
I didn’t wait. I never did.
My hand found his dick first—already half-hard from the heat and the way we’d been looking at each other while we stripped—and I wrapped my fingers around him, stroking once, firm and fast.
He made that low sound in his throat, the one that still surprised me every time, and his own hand closed around mine, guiding me for a second before sliding down to grip me in return.
We were pressed close enough that our cocks rubbed together between our bodies, slick from water and the first leaks of precum, and the friction felt electric.
“Fuck, Nathan,” I breathed, hips already rocking into his fist.
Everything about this was urgent and present—the slap of wet skin, the ridiculous hiss of too many shower heads, the way we both laughed under our breath when my elbow knocked the temperature dial and the spray went from hot to scalding for half a second.
We weren’t being careful. This was the facility shower, after hours, a little chaotic and a lot happy, and it fit us right now.
Nathan’s grip tightened, thumb sweeping over the head of my cock in a slow, deliberate circle that made my knees want to buckle. He was thorough, even here, even when the setting screamed hurry.
His free hand braced on the wet tile beside my head, caging me in without actually pinning me, and he watched—blue eyes steady, water dripping from his lashes—as he worked me with long, measured strokes.
Not rushed like mine. Not frantic. Just… complete. Like he’d decided this was worth his full attention, and once Nathan Cross decided something, he did it right.
I tried to keep up, stroking him faster, twisting my wrist, but the way he was looking at me made it hard to stay in my own skin.
No ice, no professional mask, no corridor distance.
Just him, paying attention to every twitch of my hips, every shaky exhale, like I was the only thing in the room that mattered.
My rhythm faltered. I pressed my forehead to his collarbone, water streaming between us, and the words slipped out before I could shove them back down.
“Nathan…”
He went still.
Everything stopped except the water—the steady hiss of the showers, the drip from the tiles. His hand froze around my cock.
Like he was deciding something.
His chest didn’t move. Those blue eyes searched my face like he was reading something written there, something I hadn’t meant to hand over so nakedly. For one heartbeat, two, the chaos quieted and it was just that: me saying his name like it meant everything, and him hearing it.
Then he wasn’t still anymore.
Nathan’s mouth found mine in a kiss that was deep and unhurried, tongue sliding against mine while his hand started moving again—slower now, tighter, thumb pressing just right on every upstroke.
He crowded me back against the cool tile, water pounding over his shoulders as he lined us up perfectly, cocks sliding together in the tight channel of his fist and mine.
I groaned into his mouth, chasing the friction, but he kept the pace deliberate, drawing it out until I was trembling, until every nerve felt lit up and raw.
He broke the kiss only to rest his forehead against mine, breathing hard, black hair dripping onto my face.
“Look at me,” he said, voice low and rough, no ice left in it at all.
I did. Brown eyes meeting blue, no jokes, no flash, just the two of us stripped bare in every way that counted.
His strokes sped up then, matching the urgency I’d started with but still carrying that thoroughness that undid me. We rutted into each other’s hands, slick and hot and messy, cocks rubbing together with every thrust.
My free hand clutched at his hip, nails digging in, and I felt him shudder when I twisted my grip just right. The sounds we made echoed off the tiles—my desperate gasps, his low groans, the wet slap of skin and water.
I came first, sudden and sharp, spilling over his fist and across both our stomachs with a broken “Nathan—” that tore out of me again.
He followed seconds later, burying his face in my neck as he pulsed hot between us, his whole body tensing then going loose against mine.
We stayed like that, breathing hard under the spray, water washing everything clean.
My legs felt shaky; his arm had slipped around my waist at some point, holding me steady without making a big deal of it.
The shower kept running, ridiculous and loud and perfect for the moment—happy, present, not careful, not slow like vacation would be. Just us.
Nathan pressed a lazy kiss to my temple, thumb stroking a slow circle over my hip.
Eventually the water started going cold.
Nathan reached past me and turned it off.
The silence was sudden and complete. He handed me a towel, from where, I didn't ask.
He was the kind of person who thought of towels in advance.
We dried off in the quiet of the empty facility.
The emergency lighting came back into focus, the real world reassembling itself around us.
I didn't rush it.
Neither did he.
We moved back into the changing area without discussing it.
I pulled on my clothes. Nathan was already mostly dressed, doing the shirt buttons with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything, and I leaned against the tile wall and watched him do it openly, which was something I was doing now apparently, watching Nathan Cross button his shirt in a changing room like it was a thing I was allowed to do, and he looked up and caught me and didn't say anything.
Which was its own kind of thing.
"These showers," he said, looking around at the institutional tile and the industrial fixtures and the general aggressive functionality of the space, "are inadequate."
I laughed.
Not a small laugh. The real one, and it bounced off the tile and came back at us from four directions.
"You're going to put that in a report somewhere, aren't you?" I asked. "Line item. Shower upgrade. Bullet point three."
"The water pressure alone—"
"Nathan."
He stopped and looked at me.
"You're critiquing the showers," I said.
A pause. "The temperature regulation is also inconsistent."
"Oh my god."
"I'm just observing."
"You're filing a complaint about the facility showers immediately after—" I stopped. Gestured at the general space between us. "This."
"The two things aren't mutually exclusive," Nathan said, and went back to his shirt, and I stood against the tile wall and felt something in my chest that was warm and slightly overwhelming and that I was going to need significantly more time to look at directly.
He was fixing his collar.
He was standing in a facility shower room fixing his collar after—after everything, after the office and the table and I'm working on it and the yes, after all of it—and it was the most Nathan Cross thing I had ever witnessed in months of witnessing Cross things, and I wanted to kiss him again.
I also just wanted to stay here, in this moment, with the bad water pressure and the inconsistent temperature and Nathan Cross critiquing the infrastructure.
I wanted to stay here for a while.
"The restaurant," Nathan said, without looking up from his collar. "Where you got the food tonight."
"What about it?"
"It was good." He adjusted his clothing that didn’t seem to need adjusting. "Do you have practice tomorrow afternoon?"
"Morning," I said. "Why?"
Nathan watched me for a moment. "We could go," he said. "After practice. To a restaurant."
We could go. After practice. To a restaurant.
Nathan Cross. Nathan Cross had just asked me to dinner.
We could go.
Together. To a restaurant. Like people who did that.
"Yeah," I said. My voice was admirably normal. "Hell yeah. I'm in. I’ll pick a place."
Something settled in his expression. Small. Satisfied in the way Nathan got satisfied, which was quiet and contained and easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.
I was paying attention.
"Good," he said.
He moved toward the door, and I fell into step beside him.
The parking lot was cold and quiet, both our cars the only ones left. We stood there for a second in the way you stood when you weren't ready to stop being in the same place as someone but didn't have a reason to keep them there.
"Drive carefully," Nathan said.
"I always drive carefully."
He gave me a look.
"I drive fine," I said.
A pause. Nathan looked at the parking lot, at the dark facility behind us, at some middle distance that held something he was deciding whether to say.
"Your approach,” he said, “to things that should be done carefully is. . .” He stopped. Started again, and I could tell he was trying to more precise. “You don’t do careful. It’s not fine. As an approach.”
He paused again.
“Most of the time.”
“And yet,” I said.
“And yet.”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. But close.
He walked to his car.
I stood in the parking lot and watched him pull out and then stood there a moment longer in the cold, hands in my pockets, the facility dark behind me.
Tomorrow morning practice. Tomorrow afternoon a restaurant with Nathan Cross who had said we could go like it was a simple thing, like it was just a fact he was reporting.
We could go.
I got in my car.
I drove home not thinking about the game this week or Knox or Dylan or the reporters or any of it. Just the parking lot and the corner-of-the-mouth thing and we could go sitting in my chest like something that had found the right place to be.
For the first time in a long time I went home without performing anything for anyone.
It felt strange.
It felt good.