Chapter Seventeen
Olivia Starling [off-screen]: Kilian Howard is watching this game from the players’ lounge.
Ben: …Was that a question?
Olivia Starling: Why?
Ben: Nothing in particular. Sometimes a player needs to sit a game out. Keeps them focused.
Olivia Starling: So the healthy scratch isn’t a punishment?
Kayleigh: Okay, that’s all we have time for!
Top comments:
clions2010: If it gave the team any cap space at all, I’d say they should trade Howie. As is, maybe being scratched will light a fire under his ass.
sealionsfan8216: @clions2010—Howie needs to find his stride! A good team gives its players a chance to develop.
Jefferson Howard: Starling is a miserable excuse for a reporter. Always with the personal questions. They’re there to play hockey, not chit-chat.
(From Ben Morris pregame interview, Calgary @ San Francisco, posted to YouTube on 02/06/2025)
Phil had always liked sharing his bed. He ran cold, so having another warm body next to him was a creature comfort he appreciated. Having Ben naked on top of the sheets, looking up at him in happy expectancy, was even better.
He tossed the lube from his nightstand onto the sheets. He’d gotten it on January first, after he woke up next to Ben for the first time, in the hope Ben would trust in Phil’s proposal and his honesty. And he had been right to hope.
“Turn over?” Phil asked.
Ben got onto his hands and knees. “What’s your game plan here?”
Phil pumped out a generous amount into his hand and slicked up his cock. The sight of Ben’s ass provided Phil with more than enough to get him interested, and the thought of what he was about to do got him completely hard in no time at all.
He knelt up behind Ben, thankful his bad knee could handle the plush cushion of the mattress, at least for a little while. He slid his cock in between the round globes of Ben’s perfect ass, plastering his front to Ben’s back.
“This okay?” Phil asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said.
Phil kissed his shoulder, smiling at the tickle of Ben’s hair against his neck. He reached for the lube bottle, got out another pump of slick, and wrapped a hand around Ben’s cock.
“Oh, that’s good,” Ben said.
It was. Ben’s body flushed hot under Phil, and the give of his supple ass cheeks sent Phil’s blood rushing south so fast he got dizzy.
“Your ass is perfect,” he told Ben, bucking his hips to drag his cock through the slick, hot passage he’d created.
Ben laughed.
“Seriously, perfect.” Phil began moving in a rhythm.
“I love how you just let me grab it. It’s so soft and round and…
” He trailed off with a grunt as a spurt of precome shot out of his dick into the crease of Ben’s ass.
He had to pull away to look, and the sight of it dripping down the globes was too much for him to stay at all reasonable.
With a little more lube, he sank into the warm crease again and redoubled his efforts with Ben’s cock.
“This is really enough for you?” Ben gasped out, gratifyingly breathless.
“I want to live here,” Phil told him. He had enough higher brain power not to mention how the excess flesh jiggled or the pucker of the skin where it met Ben’s thighs. People didn’t want to hear that kind of thing, but oh, God, did Phil like seeing it.
He closed his fist tighter around Ben’s cock, and Ben groaned, bucking forward into his grip and then backward against Phil’s cock.
“More, Phil, I’m almost—”
Phil stroked him faster, tighter. With his free hand he pinched Ben’s ass, and Ben gave it up with a long, drawn-out sigh.
He spurted over the bedsheets and shook under Phil’s touch, and Phil had to; he needed— He reared back, holding Ben’s ass in both hands, tightening the channel he was fucking into.
The sight of his cock pushing through that tight passage, the purple, dripping head emerging at the top on every pass, was so erotic he thought he might pass out.
Ben looked over his shoulder, cheeks pink and eyes half-lidded. “You gonna come all over me? Mark me up?”
The thought of his come all over Ben’s skin, claiming him in such a primal way, undid him. Phil fucked forward one more time and grunted as his balls slapped against Ben’s skin, contracted, and the first pulse shot out over the top of Ben’s ass.
The sight made him shudder, and the next pulse was more intense.
It turned him inside out, as though the simple, easy act of rubbing off against Ben’s ass destroyed every sense he possessed, making him want nothing but the sight, sound, smell, feel of it.
He had barely finished coming all over the swell of Ben’s cheeks when he ducked to press his mouth to the mess he’d made so he could taste it as well.
“You liked that, huh?” Ben asked when they had managed to clean up and change the top sheet.
“Mm-hm,” Phil said sleepily. “It was perfect. Better than anal for me, actually.”
“Why?”
Phil opened an eye. He was too tired for a long conversation about this, but he also didn’t want Ben thinking he held on to some weird “it’s not gay if we don’t do it up the butt” thing.
“Anal’s a lot of work. I tried it once, with a girlfriend, and it was all clean-up and prep.
Felt nice, but too much effort, ‘specially if you don’t even enjoy it.
” A thought struck him, and he added, “You can try fucking me sometime if it’s important to you.
Long as I don’t have to do all the work. ”
Ben laughed and kissed his shoulder before snuggling close in what Phil already recognized as his getting-comfy-for-sleep move. “You really aren’t a complicated guy, huh?”
“Nope,” Phil managed right before he drifted off.
He tried to remember as much the next morning. He wasn’t complicated, and he didn’t like to make things complicated.
He drank his coffee, and then he called Elijah.
They caught up about Elijah’s job first. He liked it so far, got along with his colleagues and students, and had been on some nice hikes in the area.
Then, they talked about their parents. Dad had sent pictures of the new model trains they’d gifted him for Christmas to the family group chat, cementing his old white man status.
“I’m running out of ways to respond,” Elijah complained. “You’ve gotta pull your weight, man.”
“Sorry,” Phil said. “I’ve been busy.”
“With what? You’re on IR, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, uh. So. I’m getting married. Again.”
During the suspiciously long pause that followed, Phil inspected his fingernails and tried not to hyperventilate.
“Congratulations,” Elijah said finally. “What’s her name?”
“His name is Ben.”
The pause was even longer this time. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Phil fiddled with the empty coffee cup in front of him. “So, it’s new, obviously. We wouldn’t be rushing to the altar or anything, but there’s a dicey custody situation with his nephew, and CPS liked the idea of them having a stable home here with me, so…”
“So you proposed to some guy to help him out?”
Phil winced. “Kind of didn’t propose, kind of went ahead and told CPS we were getting married to get them off our backs before I’d so much as talked to him.
It’s okay though. He proposed to me yesterday.
” The memory made him smile. Secretive, aggressively self-sufficient Ben, putting it all out there for Phil…
Yeah, he allowed himself to feel smug that he’d drawn that out of his fiancé.
“But are you even…do you even…” Elijah left the question unfinished.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely in love with him. Kid’s pretty great too.”
“Okay, then congratulations again. Can’t say I’m not surprised, but I’m happy for you. When’s the big day?”
“We’re heading down to the courthouse next week. Get it done, have a nice meal to celebrate, that’s all. No invites, no fuss. I just wanted to let you know before I did it.”
Elijah chuckled, a deep, rich sound. “Okay, now I’m liking this. Sounds much more your style than the whole shebang you did with Camille.”
Phil remembered the months of preparation, Camille’s Instagram reels dedicated to dress shopping, all the little details he was expected to care about, from the brand of gin in their signature cocktail to the number of ferns in the table decorations.
“Are you telling Mom and Dad?”
“I have to, don’t I?” Phil asked. “Do you think they’ll be…okay about it?”
“I think Mom will get really concerned that she didn’t act supportive enough when we were kids, and that’s why you never told her. So she’ll double down and be obnoxiously supportive now. Expect her to get into lots of discussions with all their friends and neighbors and tell you all about it.”
Phil could work with obnoxious. It was lightyears better than what Ben and Charlie had to deal with.
He still wrote his parents an email instead of braving the phone.
The three times his mom tried calling in response, he pretended to be busy.
Eventually, she emailed back to congratulate him and ask if she had a grandchild now.
He felt comfortable not answering until he found a good time to ask Charlie how he felt about grandparents.
Time would calm his mom’s first wave of anxious overthinking and coax an actual response from his dad.
By then, Ben and Charlie might be ready to interact with the family they were marrying into.
Besides, Phil really was busy. He had to pick up the coaching slack for the practice and the two games remaining before the All-Star Break.
Ben skipped the practice to go to the police station and returned wound tight as a taped-up stick.
They’d told him to wait it out and not draw attention to himself while they investigated the claims, which meant he continued to be trapped in the same limbo he’d been in all year.
Only now, it was worse because he had to pretend to actually be part of the betting ring.