Adrian #2
They sat with their mugs. Adrian on the worktable stool, Milo on the wooden chair near the south wall, the one with the paint on the seat that he’d chosen before and chose again now, like the studio was starting to have a geography that included him.
Adrian talked about a chapter on blue pigment he’d been reading, how blue light scattered differently than warm light, his free hand drawing the light-scatter pattern in the air between them.
Milo asked one question about undertones, whether a warm ground changed how the blue read, and got a longer answer than he’d expected, and Adrian watched him follow the answer the way Milo followed everything, with his full attention or none of it.
But Milo was somewhere else tonight. Adrian could see it.
The tea held in both hands but the thumbs not moving, the body present and the mind running a loop somewhere Adrian couldn’t follow.
He’d seen this before in the bar, the nights Milo came in after a loss and the jaw was set so tight the muscle was visible from across the room.
This was different. This wasn’t a loss. This was a win, and something about the win was eating him.
“You played Chicago tonight,” Adrian said.
Milo’s thumbs stopped on the mug.
“The Fury,” Adrian said. He kept his voice even. “Kiernan and Lindqvist are on that team.”
Milo looked at him. The jaw did its thing. “Yeah.”
“Was it strange. Playing against them.”
The pause was long enough for the radiator to cycle. Milo looked at his tea. He looked at the painting on the east wall. He looked at his hands wrapped around the mug.
“They did this thing during warmups,” Milo said.
His voice was flat, the register he used when he was trying to keep something level.
“Lindqvist tapped Kiernan’s shin pad. Just once.
Everybody saw it. The cameras, the other bench, twenty thousand people.
Nobody cared.” He drank his tea. “I scored on a breakaway in the third because I hit a guy so hard he lost the puck. I didn’t know I was going to hit him that hard until I was already doing it. ”
Adrian sat with that.
“Nobody cared,” Milo said again. Quiet. Not to Adrian. To the room.
Adrian set his mug on the worktable and didn’t say anything because the thing Milo was saying didn’t need an answer. It needed a witness. So Adrian witnessed it, the way he witnessed everything Milo gave him, by being present and not filling the silence with something easier.
Milo reached for Adrian’s wrist.
His hand was already there when the decision would have been made. The wrist, the paint on the inside of it, the pulse underneath. Adrian’s hands stopped.
Milo pulled. Adrian’s weight shifted on the stool, and then Milo’s grip tightened and Adrian came off the stool and they were standing in the middle of the studio with the painting in the dark behind them and Adrian’s glasses fogging at the lower edges from Milo’s breath.
He kissed him with the game in his body.
Adrian could feel it, the muscles carrying the ache of ice time, the bruise on his ribs when Adrian’s hand found it and Milo flinched and pressed closer instead of pulling back.
Something was different tonight. The kiss was harder, less careful, and when Adrian’s hand went to the back of his neck, the same spot where his teammate had grabbed him an hour ago, Milo made a sound against Adrian’s mouth that came from somewhere deeper than the previous sounds had come from.
Adrian’s hands moved. Milo’s shirt up and over, the cold studio air on his chest. Then Adrian’s shirt off, and Milo’s hands on his shoulders, pulling, his fingers digging in.
They made it to the bed, which was warm from where Adrian had been lying in it reading, and the sheets held the dent of his body and Milo pressed him into it.
Milo above him. Adrian reached for his own glasses and Milo’s hand intercepted his and Adrian took them off himself, set them on the shelf, his fingers shaking, the frames clicking against the wood twice before they settled. His face without the glasses. Milo looking down at him.
They moved together. Adrian’s hip shifting, Milo’s knee finding the space between his thighs, the angle adjusting until it resolved and Adrian’s breath caught and Milo pressed forward into the catch of it.
Adrian’s fingers dug into Milo’s hips. He made a sound against Milo’s jaw, low, and felt Milo shift his weight to hear it again.
He did it again. Milo kept the angle and kept the pressure and Adrian arched under him.
This was not the studio sex. The studio had been Milo letting Adrian lead, Milo receiving, Milo’s body opening in careful increments.
This was Milo taking. His mouth on Adrian’s throat with the scrape of his jaw, his hips grinding down, his hands pinning Adrian’s wrists to the mattress with a grip that had nothing careful in it.
Adrian felt the game in his body, the residual violence of three periods converted into something else, and he said “harder” and Milo gave him harder and Adrian’s back bowed off the sheets.
Milo’s hand between them, wrapping around both of them together, and Adrian groaned and his hand came to the back of Milo’s neck and held.
The friction of Milo’s hand and their cocks together and Milo’s breath ragged in his ear and Adrian’s free hand gripping the headboard because his body needed something to push against. Milo’s forehead dropped to the side of Adrian’s neck and his hand moved faster and Adrian said his name once, said it clearly, said it so Milo would know who was saying it and where and why.
Milo came first, his hips jerking, cum hot between them, his breath breaking against Adrian’s collarbone. Adrian followed seconds later with Milo’s hand tightening through it and his own fingers digging into the back of Milo’s neck and the sound he made going into the studio’s warm air and staying.
After. The studio warm around them. Breathing slowing. The radiator ticking.
Adrian’s hand on Milo’s chest. Paint-stained fingers over his heartbeat.
Milo didn’t move it.
He’d driven here after a game and told no one where he was going.
Adrian knew what that cost. He knew what the locker room looked like and what the parking structure smelled like and what it took for a man who ran the math in every room he entered to get in his car and drive to Corktown and say it’s me into an intercom at eleven-fifteen on a game night.
He knew, because he’d been on the other side of it before, and the last time it had cost him three years.
But Milo was here. Milo kept coming here. And Adrian’s hand was on his chest and the painting was on the wall and the kettle was cooling on the two-burner and the jacket was on the third hook and Milo’s heartbeat was under Adrian’s fingers, steady and present.
He was going to get hurt. He knew that. He’d known it since the first night Milo sat on the third stool and didn’t speak and Adrian poured the bourbon and didn’t ask.
He’d known it and he’d poured the bourbon anyway and he’d painted the face anyway and he’d opened the door tonight anyway because Adrian Cross was a man who knew better and did it anyway, and that was either the bravest or the stupidest thing about him, and Nina would tell him it was both.
Milo’s heartbeat under his fingers. The radiator ticking. The city quiet outside.
He closed his eyes and let himself have it.