Chapter 21
B ut then the food was gone, and apparently Levy hadn’t been trying to postpone the hard part, because he set their plates on the coffee table and turned his body towards Kallen on the sofa. He’d needed help to get arranged comfortably with one leg bent and one on the floor, but their dead weight kept him mostly stable and at least he could lean back on the arm of the sofa for extra support. The kitchen stools were obviously out and even the regular chairs made him feel he might lose his balance any moment.
“Hey.” His voice was even, steady and calm. “Look at me.”
It was barely an order at all, but Kallen raised his head. Levy’s brown eyes were clear, his attention completely on Kallen.
He swallowed, throat tight. He was going to ruin this.
He allowed himself a beat, then two, to see the love on his friend’s face. And then he looked away because he didn’t think he could bear to see it disappear.
His jaw clicked audibly as he opened his mouth and closed it again.
“Hey,” Levy said again. “I don’t know what happened exactly. Only... Only that he hurt you,” and there was an edge of anger there, but it was controlled, leashed. Just like he’d promised. “And that isn’t okay. Even if... Even if your contract said it was, it would be bullshit. You know that, right?”
The contract... He hadn’t even thought about it. For the last few days, he’d been doing his very best not to think about what had happened during his heat, and then when he’d lost his streak.
“I don’t think it does,” he said now, understanding landing softly. “Because— Because he didn’t help me. With my heat.”
Levy went very still, like he’d stopped breathing altogether.
Kallen wasn’t brave enough to check, but he managed to get the rest out, “He... He made me...” He lifted his right hand to his mouth, brushing his lips and flinching from his own touch like an idiot. And then shoved right past the embarrassment. “He wouldn’t fuck me.”
“What?” Levy’s voice went high with both surprise and indignation.
“Alexei got to my room first, so we were already on the bed when Mc— The captain and Johnson arrived. He was angry, said I... Like I thought I could sleep with Alexei without his permission, or something.”
Levy didn’t respond and Kallen risked a glance. He was bent forward, fists clenched, eyes scrunched shut and face twisted into silent rage. And then, as if sensing his attention, Levy huffed out a breath and opened his eyes to meet his own, bright with pain and fury both.
He didn’t quite manage to hide the strain in his voice, but he kept his tone level. “What did Johnson and Alexei do?”
“Alexei apologised to the captain. And then...” His throat closed up so fast he raised a hand to it, a silent promise of protection. After a couple of beats of breathing through his nose, he managed a gasp. “He did it.” The words were thin and pathetic, and he wasn’t brave enough to look at Levy to see if he understood. “And then he left. And they helped me,” he told the cushion between them.
Levy was still silent. Kallen tried to focus on his breathing, like he could somehow read him that way since he couldn’t bear to look at him. But the silence stretched for so long that he had enough air to add, “I don’t... I can’t see what else they could have done.”
“What else ?” Levy demanded, raw and not quite holding back. Kallen could feel it all over his skin, the tension spreading all over the room, a cloud that promised a storm. Electric energy that could set the world on fire. Rationally, he knew Levy wouldn’t direct that anger at him, but it still felt so...
The touch on his elbow made him jump, and only then did he realise he was hugging himself. Levy pulled his hand back at once. “Sorry. I’m freaking you out, and I promised I wouldn’t.”
His softness was like a cloak around Kallen’s shoulders. The storm wasn’t gone, but this was protection against it. Levy standing in front him so it wouldn’t touch him.
“Not really,” he said, trying for lightness. “You said you wouldn’t murder him.”
“And I’m very sorry I did,” Levy said and Kallen was pretty sure it was meant to be a joke, but it was so obviously true it fell flat.
And Kallen wasn’t sorry, because it wouldn’t... It wouldn’t fix anything. But it helped to know Levy wanted to, that he would have done it, maybe, in another world with less rules. That he felt—
“What happened in the changing room?” Levy asked, maybe realising there was no point in delaying.
Kallen clenched his eyes shut, nails digging into his arms. It was nearly done, he silently promised himself. “He— He said I had failed the— the team. Because I didn’t... I lost my streak.”
Levy’s breath hitched, the room growing warmer at an impossible speed—the storm was close to breaking now. Kallen leaned forward, grabbing the back of the sofa for balance and blindly grasped for one of his friend’s hands, squeezing hard when he found it. He opened his mouth but all that came out was a thin, shrill sound, pain in its purest form.
And then Levy was crawling closer, putting his free arm around Kallen’s neck and dragging him into an awkward half hug. Kallen collapsed into it, wanting nothing more than to hide in his arms.
“He did it again,” he admitted. He was crying, but that felt incidental as the words tumbled out. “He— I was sitting down and he—” He didn’t manage to finish the sentence, but the arms around him were already tightening and Levy murmuring next to his ear, vicious to the point of murder, “That fucking cunt. ”
And it felt good to hear, to have someone else confirm what he’d known, deep in his gut. But it wasn’t enough, he hadn’t given it his all.
“I think... Maslow’s right. I’m afraid.”
Levy leaned back far enough to look him in the face, his own twisted out of shape by agony and fury. “Fucking hell! Of course you are! He—" Levy turned his face away, throat working hard, but then he met Kallen’s eyes once more. “He raped you, Kallen.”
It was just words, but he jerked so hard he fell off the sofa, dragging Levy down with him in his hopeless tumble. With the dead weight of his legs, he had no hope of much except protecting his head. Levy curled up around him instead of letting go, wrapping his own body over Kallen’s as a shield.
And then, like the hero he was, he groaned from where he ended up squished against the coffee table. “Ouch.”
“You okay?” Turning his head wasn’t the best decision he'd ever made, sending a twinge of pain up his neck.
Levy groaned, shifting to try and get them both upright. “Been better,” he admitted. “Sorry.”
Kallen reached for the arm of the sofa, pulling as he pushed. “It’s fine, just... help me up?”
IF HE’D BEEN HOPING for a miracle, he’d have been very disappointed the next morning when he woke up exactly as paralysed as he’d been when he’d gone to sleep.
But he’d already known he hadn’t done enough. He couldn’t even see enough from where he was stuck. Levy had asked for his permission to talk to Management, and Kallen had shrugged his agreement. He couldn’t have done it himself, looked any of them in the face in his current state and asked for something.
Especially protection.
Especially when Maslow would have already told them his diagnosis: that Kallen was doing this to himself by being a coward.
It wasn’t even untrue. He was afraid.
Whatever his captain had done to him, it was up to Kallen to get over it and get back on the ice.
He’d done it before, pushed until his body had got on with the program.
But he couldn’t do it now. No matter how much he tried, his legs were bent on ignoring him.
And that’s why there was now a nurse offering him a hand to shake.
“Brad Lersky.”
They’d given him a key since Levy had had to leave for the game. Was it better to be missing it altogether than to be there as a deadweight to his team? he wondered.
Brad was maybe a little older than him, an omega big enough to do what he needed to help; namely cart Kallen around the flat. He was so blond his skin was nearly translucent, veins showing clearly on his wrist, but he shook with easy strength. And there was nothing delicate about his question, “Not been long, has it?”
Kallen frowned at him. “You don’t have my file?”
“Sure,” Brad said. “But that’s a piece of paper.”
“It’s been three days, so no, I’m not over it,” he said with too much anger behind it. He regretted it instantly. “Sorry.”
“That’s alright,” Brad replied without losing his easy smile. “I figured, and angry is better than depressed.”
Kallen snorted. He supposed it was, at that. Though he was headed right down that hole and he knew it. After so many years of making hockey the centre of his life, not playing was already bad enough, but this wasn’t like a holiday with his family, or an injury with a timeframe he count on, with a diet to follow and a PT coming right up to get himself back in shape.
And he had barely anything else to do.
Except maybe call his mother and tell her what had happened to him.
He couldn’t imagine anything worse. If his dad found out he couldn’t play— He shoved the thought away. That was beyond his control, but this wasn’t.
“I want to do exercises,” he told Brad, hoping for firm. After all, the guy was technically his employee, wasn’t he?
The nearly invisible eyebrows rose at his words. “Sure, man. Let’s get the shower out of the way first, though. I’m gonna go grab the chair.”
The chair was, of course, a wheelchair, and Kallen’s stomach fell off a cliff at the sight of it.
Brad just stood there, waiting, and his patience was more than Kallen could bear. He had to do this, so he would, but he didn’t need to linger on it. “How?” he asked, too curt, but Brad just brought the chair over to the bed and kicked the brakes on. “Let’s get your legs over to the side and then I’ll help you twist into it.”
Even though he’d spoken in the plural, all Kallen could contribute was to keep his hands behind himself so he didn’t flop right onto his back. It was hard because he wanted to flop, but years of working through pain and exhaustion kicked in and he kept his abs clenched tight as Brad took him by the back of the thighs and got his legs over the edge of the mattress.
There were some upsides to Brad. For one, the chair meant no one was carrying him like a child, and for another, he didn’t hover once he sat Kallen down on the toilet seat.
“You want some privacy?” he checked, eyes on the bathtub.
“Nah.” Kallen was done peeing and what he wanted was to be done with this and get to stretching. He didn’t think his legs would wake up just because of that, but it was what he could do right now. Unused muscles would quickly atrophy and he couldn’t afford any more setbacks.
Brad had also brought along a seat for the shower, which meant he didn’t have to get in with Kallen and get soaked through. It was a relief and at the same time, part of Kallen was fucking disappointed it meant Levy wouldn’t be doing it anymore.
And if that wasn’t pathetic enough, Brad turned the shower off to soap up his legs for him where Kallen couldn’t reach without losing his precarious balance. He’d talked Kallen through the process at first, but he’d gone silent when he hadn’t responded.
That seemed alright, someone who took his cues from him.
“Can you get my clothes from the bedroom?”
Brad stopped being so accommodating. “Nope. It’s not safe, so we’re not doing it.”
Kallen gave in, letting him push the chair back to the bedroom to get dressed.
He should move back to his own room, let Levy have his privacy again. It wasn’t like there was any point in them sleeping together anymore. An image of what it would be like to fuck him as he lay down like a limp noodle flashed through his mind, accompanied with a twist of nausea that threatened to turn into tears.
“Come on,” he told Brad. “Let’s do the stretching.”
After three days of not moving them, his legs ached by the time Brad finished the first round. But soreness was reassuring, familiar, safe.
“Again,” Kallen said when the pause went on too long.
“Water,” Brad countered, and placed down his left leg to go and get it for him.
THE DAYS STRETCHED ahead like an endless road—endless because he wasn’t moving. And he didn’t know if he ever would again.
The White Cats had won their last game, which he’d only found out when he’d demanded Levy tell him.
“What?” he’d asked. “You think I can’t even hear about hockey now?”
“Kallen...” Levy had looked so fucking sad, it’d been all Kallen could do not to punch him. Except of course it wasn’t, because he couldn’t have reached him.
He let himself fall back on the sofa where Brad had left him propped instead, covering his eyes and his face and squashing the unbearable rage inside. It wasn’t Levy’s fault Kallen's life was fucked. In fact, Levy was the only one even trying to do anything about it. He’d gone and fetched Kallen’s contract from the Johnsons’ and he was reviewing it with a highlighter. Kallen hadn’t even read the whole thing, relying on a family friend who was a lawyer to review it and tell him it was fair.
“Cat... Catherine wants to talk to you,” Levy said after a moment.
And that could only be about one thing; she’d want to know what had happened.
“Cat?” he asked, moving his arm out of the way to look at Levy. “Just Cat? No one—” He cut himself off.
“I know it’s fucked up,” his friend said at once. “I have spoken with Coach and I have asked for a meeting with the owners, but for now, he wants you to talk to Cat.”
Kallen let his gaze lose its focus. The ceiling’s imperfections disappearing in front of his eyes, a bit like he wanted to. “Okay.”
“I’ll text her, set up a time.”
Kallen waved his acceptance. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do.