18. Maddox #2
Small desk. Two chairs. A window with the blinds half down. One framed print of a jersey from 1987. The overhead is off. Just the security nightlight above the door, a thin blue-white that makes Theo's skin look like a dream I haven't had yet.
“Mad Dog,” he says. Quiet. Already breathing wrong.
There it is. The name I trained him to use. He's using it now without being told and my gear shorts get tight in a way that has not been tight since puberty.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
He comes.
I take his face in both hands. I kiss him like we won. I kiss him like I've been wanting to kiss him since the puck crossed the line. I kiss him until his mouth opens and his hands are in my quarter-zip and his hips press mine and the cup is not doing its job in any direction.
“You were beautiful tonight,” I say into his mouth.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The face-off. The pass. That's on a highlight reel forever. That's yours.”
His forehead tips against mine.
“Yours.”
“Ours.”
I hold his jaw tighter.
“Ours.”
I turn him. Hand on the back of his neck. Walk him to the desk. Bend him forward over it. He goes. No resistance, just a soft sound in his throat like his body was waiting to be bent.
“Here?” he says.
“Here. I can't wait. I've been hard for you since the face-off.”
He drops his forehead to the desk.
“Oh my god.”
“You want it?”
“Yes.”
My hand fists in the hair at the back of his neck.
“Say it.”
“Yes, please, Mad Dog, please.”
I lean down over him. My mouth at his ear.
“Good boy.”
I peel his shorts down to mid-thigh. I peel mine after. Grab a condom out of the pocket of the quarter-zip that former-me always had on hand.
“Lube,” I say. “Sorry. This is going to be fast.”
“Spit.”
Jesus.
I spit into my palm. I work him with two fingers. Quick, not cruel, just enough to open. He's been open for me for more than a week now. His body knows me. His body opens under my hand before his brain has caught up with the ask.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay, now, now.”
I push in.
He bites his own forearm to keep quiet. His other hand grips the edge of the desk until his knuckles go white.
I bend over him. Mouth on the back of his neck.
My cage is gone, my helmet is gone, but my chest plate is still on under the quarter-zip and it presses into his back with every thrust. He loves it, I can feel it, the weight of me in gear is doing something to him that can't be done any other way.
“Mad Dog…”
I kiss the back of his neck.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Fast.”
“I know.”
I go fast. I won a game with him ten minutes ago and my blood is still full of adrenaline and his coach just told me I don't get to have him and I'm going to have him anyway.
The desk creaks. Theo's forehead drops to the wood.
He's making small sounds into his own arm.
His skates are gone but he's still in stockinged feet on the industrial carpet and his base-layer top is rucked up to his shoulder blades and my gloved hand, because I still have one damn hockey glove on—I didn't even notice—slides up his spine and leaves a smear of ice dust on his skin.
I peel the glove off with my teeth and drop it.
I put my bare hand where the glove was. Warm skin.
Sweat. The divot at the small of his back I have kissed in a bed multiple times now. Different room. Same body.
“You close?”
“Yeah.”
“Touch yourself.”
He gets a hand under himself. The angle's terrible and he doesn't care. I watch his knuckles move. I reach down and help, my hand over his, and his back arches up off the desk and he says my name, my real name, Maddox, into the wood like he can't help it.
“Come for me, sweetheart. Now. Right now.”
He does.
I follow him over. Two strokes, three. My face pressed between his shoulder blades. My teeth on the cotton of his base layer, biting down on nothing because I can't bite him where someone will see it.
The desk creaks one last time. Settles.
We breathe.
The door handle rattles.
Both of us freeze.
The thumb-turn is on the inside. It's locked. It's—
A fist hits the door. Three hard knocks.
“Theo.”
Paul's voice. Paul on the other side of the door.
Theo goes rigid under me. Every muscle. His breath stops.
I pull out. Fast. I get the rubber off, tie it, shove it in my pocket, yank my shorts up. I yank Theo's up over his hips and the top of his base layer down. I turn him around. His face is white. His mouth is open. His pupils are the size of pennies.
“Open this door. I saw you come in here.”
I put my hand on Theo's jaw. Make him look at me.
“Hey. Breathe.”
“He—”
“Breathe. Look at me. Breathe.”
He breathes. One in. One out.
“Theo. Open the door. Now.”
I don't think. I step in front of Theo. I put him behind me. I reach around and turn the thumb-turn.
The door flies open.
Paul is in the doorway.
He looks at me. Then past me. Then at the desk. Then at Theo's hair, which is wrecked. Then at my mouth, which is swollen. Then at the foil wrapper that I forgot to pick up from the floor.
His face doesn't change at first. It goes through a sequence I can see in real time. Confusion, calculation, then the arrival. When the arrival lands, it lands in his jaw. His jaw goes tight enough that I hear a tooth grind.
“Theo,” he says. Soft. Which is worse.
Theo makes a sound behind me. Not a word. A sound.
“Come out from behind him.”
I don't move.
“Move, Creed.”
I don't move.
Paul looks at me. Really looks. I haven't seen Paul's eyes this close before. They're the same color as Theo's and nothing like Theo's.
“Get away from my son,” he says.
“No, Coach.”
Behind me, Theo's hand finds the small of my back. Five fingers. A press. A grip. He's not telling me to move. He's telling me he's here.
I plant my feet a half-step wider.
The door is open behind Paul. Anyone in the corridor can see. Anyone could be in the corridor. I register that. I file it. I don't move.
Paul's shoulders rise. His fists close. His weight shifts forward onto the balls of his feet.
I've seen this stance before. Every coach who ever swung on me stood exactly like this half a second before the swing.
I keep my own hands open at my sides. I don't raise them.
I don't need to. If he comes at me, I will turn and I will absorb—because the one thing I will not do in front of Theo is throw first.
The fluorescent hum in the corridor is the loudest thing in the world. Theo's breathing behind me is the second loudest. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughs about the win. They don't know. Nobody knows yet except the three of us in this room.
And then Paul takes a step into the room and the door swings shut behind him on its own weight, and the click of the latch is the last quiet sound I am going to hear tonight.