18. Adrian
Nicky was still asleep.
He slept like he did everything else—neatly contained, curled on his side facing the wall with the covers pulled up to his shoulder and one hand tucked under his pillow. Even unconscious, the man was composed. It was almost impressive. If it wasn’t so annoying.
I swung my legs off the bed and stood in the grey pre-dawn of the room, rolling my neck until something cracked. My suitcase was still open on the floor, contents overflowing. On top of the pile sat a henley and joggers—folded with precise creases. I pulled them on quietly.
I grabbed my vape off the nightstand and slid the balcony door open as gently as I could manage. Nico didn't stir but he was good at faking it. The man had turned pretending to be asleep into a competitive sport last night.
Québec in November was sharp and cold and still mostly dark, the sky just beginning to go pale at the edges. I leaned against the railing and took a long drag and let the nicotine settle into my bloodstream.
In the harsh light of morning, I was a little embarrassed by my behaviour.
I would never speak of last night. Not even to Bash, king of bad decisions.
I'd been lying in the dark, curious and horny and bored—a combination that had never once in my life led to good decisions—and I'd heard him breathing in that careful, measured way that totally gave away that he was faking sleep to avoid me.
And it bugged me.
So I'd called his bluff.
Because I wanted to see what would happen. What the golden prince would do when someone pushed at the edges of his composure in the dark where no one was watching and no one was keeping score.
It was shitty and immature. I knew that.
It was the kind of thing that made me exactly the person the federation had always been slightly uncomfortable with—impulsive, boundary testing, more interested in the reaction than whether the experiment was advisable.
But then.
That whimper.
I exhaled and watched the vapour disappear.
I had expected him to roll over and tell me to fuck off. Expected the clipped sentences, the careful control, the jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. The contained, professional irritation I was becoming dangerously addicted to pulling out of him.
I had not expected the sheets on his side to shift.
Had not expected the silence between us to change texture—from one person’s breathing to two, falling into a rhythm that was undeniable even with my eyes closed.
Had not expected him to match me, stroke for stroke, in the dark, three feet away, pretending we weren’t doing exactly what we were doing.
And I had definitely not expected the sound he made at the end.
Small. Involuntary. Swallowed almost immediately, like he’d tried to catch it and missed.
Like his body had betrayed him in the one moment he couldn’t afford it.
I’d said sweet dreams because I was an asshole. And because I wanted him to know I knew.
Now I was standing on a balcony in Québec trying to pretend that sound wasn't on a loop in my head and that I didn't want to hear it again, closer, louder, with my name attached to it.
That was the problem. We were in the middle of an Olympic cycle, both competing for limited spots on the Canadian team.
I could practically hear Cam's voice in my head—steady, reasonable, the big brother tone he pulled out when I was about to do something spectacularly stupid.
Don't torpedo your Olympic dreams because you can't keep your head on straight.
Or your dick in your pants.
Sound advice. I was definitely going to ignore it.
Because I've never been good at leaving things alone. I see a locked door, I want to pick it. I see composure, I want to crack it. I see Nico Fontaine pretending he's unaffected and I want to be the thing that affects him.
Character flaw. Fully aware.
I took another drag and leaned my forearms on the railing and watched Québec wake up below me. Early joggers. A delivery truck. The world going about its business, completely unaware that Nicky had touched himself to the sound of me in a hotel room twelve floors above them.
I smiled around the vape.
Today was going to be interesting.
It was an exhibition day which, in my opinion, was far superior to competition day.
Competition was fine. A necessary evil. I understood the game: technical scores, component marks, judges pretending they weren’t influenced by reputation, federation politics, the weird little math problem that decided whether you were a genius or a disappointment on any given day.
I played it because I had to.
But exhibitions were my thing.
No scores. No protocols. No sitting in the kiss and cry pretending that a 0.
3 deduction on a step sequence didn't make you want to break something.
Just you and the ice and whatever you wanted to do with it, and an audience that was there because they wanted to watch you skate, not because they were evaluating you against a rubric.
I was known for a certain kind of skating.
The press had their words for it: raw power, swagger, athletic dynamism.
My jumps were big and fast and slightly reckless in a way that made traditionalists uncomfortable.
My step sequences were aggressive where other skaters were lyrical.
I used music like a battle song rather than a backdrop.
And the costumes I wore—the sheer shirts, the visible ink, the general aesthetic of a man who had shown up to a black tie event in a leather jacket—were as much a part of the performance as anything technical.
The judges tolerated it because they couldn't argue with the difficulty. The audience loved it because it was different. I loved it because it was mine.
At an exhibition, I didn't have to calibrate any of it.
Didn't have to think about whether a costume choice would cost me a component mark or whether a choreo sequence was too aggressive for a particular judging panel.
I could do whatever the fuck I wanted and doing whatever the fuck I wanted was my favourite thing on earth.
I knew exactly the program I wanted to perform today. The song that would play. The costume I would wear. Something loud. Something unapologetic. Something that would make Nicky watch me like I watched him.
I finished my vape, watched the last curl of vapour disappear, and pushed off the railing.
Inside, the room was already empty. The bathroom door was shut. The shower was running. Steam curled out from the gap at the bottom, and I could practically see him in there, standing under water hot enough to boil shame out of his skin, pretending he wasn’t avoiding me.
Fine.
He could hide this morning but he couldn’t hide forever. Getting inside that beautiful head of his was becoming my favourite hobby.
◆◆◆
The arena was smaller than I was used to—maybe four thousand seats, intimate enough that you could hear individual voices from the ice if the crowd got quiet. For an exhibition, it was perfect. Close, warm, the kind of space that made everything feel like a conversation rather than a performance.
I watched the warm up group before mine from the tunnel and did what I always did before I skated—rolled my neck, bounced on my toe picks, and ran through my choreography in my head.
I’d brought a few costumes with me but I chose my favourite.
A fitted black top with strategically placed mesh panels and sheer sleeves that hooked around my middle fingers.
Every tattoo was visible. The fabric of my black trousers caught the light like liquid.
My hair was freshly coloured, the pale pink bright and intentional under the arena lights.
Every piercing sparkled. Rings on every finger because I liked the weight of them—and because they flashed when I moved.
My exhibition look was, essentially, exhibitionist. A little reckless. A little decadent. Very much designed to make people stare.
I could already feel the eyes from the officials’ section. Not scoring today but the unspoken disapproval radiated from their stiff postures and downturned lips. I’d been feeling it since I was seventeen, when I’d arrived at my first senior event with blue hair and a stud in my nose.
The sport had a specific face it wanted to present. Mine was not it.
They could deal with it.
Across the boards, Renaud pinched the bridge of his nose in a gesture I was becoming intimately familiar with. He didn’t say anything. He was already learning that there was no reining in Adrian Zhao. You just threw a lasso and held on for dear life.
“That is some costume,” he said flatly.
“Custom made. You like it?”
“I think it will give the CBC commentators something to talk about.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He exhaled through his teeth—the particular sound of a man who had chosen this and was reminding himself of that fact—and gestured toward the ice. “Warm up. And try not to cause an international incident before you skate.”
“No promises.”