Chapter 5 #2
“I don’t think Reynolds needs to hear it to know it,” Ethan pointed out dryly, and knew he’d taken it a step too far when Charlie’s whole face tensed and Avery got that constipated look on his that always told Ethan he’d fucked up.
“Listen, you don’t even know—” Charlie broke off.
“Eth knows enough,” Avery said gently. “Two Frozen Fours. A national championship in his first season. He gets it, enough.”
“Enough,” Charlie muttered, but Avery’s point was made.
Ethan knew he couldn’t apologize to Charlie. He’d scoff and brush it off, and so it wouldn’t stick. But he’d get up earlier tomorrow and make pancakes. Blueberry pancakes, just like Charlie liked and wouldn’t ever admit to.
August
Hank didn’t think it would ever stop being weird, coming back home and staying in his old room. A room he hadn’t lived in for years and years, now. A room frozen in time, when he was barely fifteen, and about to head to the OHL.
He shifted on the twin bed and tried to pretend that the mattress was long enough to contain his six-foot-three frame. He should finally just man up and tell his parents that he’d get an apartment, or at the very least, a new bed the next time he came back to Toronto.
His phone vibrated on the bedside table, on its charger. Hank leaned over and fumbled for it, nearly dropping it on his face three times before he managed to get it unlocked.
He’d gone out with some of his old friends tonight—who he fit with just about as well as he fit into this twin bed—and to make up for the awkwardness in that they all knew everything going on in each other’s lives and also looked at Hank like he was a mixture of alien abductee and celebrity—he’d taken more shots than he normally might.
Had three beers after. Was definitely buzzing.
It was Ethan. Of course.
For a split second, Hank nearly didn’t answer the FaceTime call.
Thought, I’m gonna be smart. I’m gonna be good.
But the problem with taking those shots and drinking those beers was that he absolutely did not want to be good.
He wanted to think and say and do all the things that he usually never let himself.
Ignoring that there was a very good reason he didn’t let himself.
But halfway-to-drunk Hank wasn’t even thinking about all the reasons why he’d normally hold back. Halfway-to-drunk Hank just wanted . . . well, he just wanted.
“Hey,” he answered breathlessly, clicking onto the call.
Ethan was in bed too, and the screen was dark-ish, almost no light at all, but what Hank was seeing was enough. Rumpled curls. Bedroom eyes. All that bare chest and even a hint of abs.
Normally all things that wouldn’t do it for Hank—had never done it for him in the past—but Ethan’s version? Hank already felt winded, like he’d taken a too-long shift or a hard check to the boards.
“Hey back,” Ethan teased in a low voice.
Not that these calls didn’t always feel intimate. They did. But Hank knew he went out of his way to try to make them less. To turn on lights. To not let his mind wander to places he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to go, yet.
But tonight, there was no stopping it.
“You have a good night?” Ethan asked.
Hank realized that he’d just been lying there, phone held in front of him, staring. Wondering what that tanned skin would taste like, if he was insane enough to put his mouth on it.
Something he was most emphatically not doing—in fact, could not do, not while Ethan was in Michigan and Hank was in Toronto—but for once he didn’t stop his mind from wandering, from stumbling right over it.
Good, he decided, it would taste good. Like sunshine.
“Yeah,” Hank said. Still probably a second too delayed. Which, really, that wasn’t his fault. It was all Ethan’s. For having skin that seemed like it might taste as good as it looked.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “A really good night, it seems,” he teased.
“Yeah. Um. Yeah.” Hank grinned, letting himself smile as wide as he wanted. As big as he wanted. “It was, actually. Though it didn’t really start that way. I kinda hated it, at first.”
“Really? I thought these guys were your friends.” Ethan frowned, like he wanted to go knock some sense into them and even that was hot. No. Not even. Actually really, stupendously hot.
“I mean, yeah, they are. They were. When I was like fifteen.”
“Aw, baby Hank,” Ethan said coyly.
“Shut up,” Hank said, but he knew it was painfully obvious how much he didn’t want Ethan to shut up.
That he never wanted Ethan to shut up. “Anyway, it’s just been a long time, and maybe we all played hockey together, at one point, but they’ve all got real jobs now and two of them are married. One of them has a kid—”
“Like we don’t know plenty of guys who got married young and had families. Hockey guys.”
Hank shrugged, because that was true. They did know a lot of guys who’d settled down crazy young.
But they weren’t his stupid friends. Who had rent and responsibilities and a regular nine-to-five job they went to every day.
And then there was Hank, still trying to make it full-time on an NHL roster. Still trying to make it, period.
“It’s just weird that it was weird,” Hank said. “I don’t really feel like I fit in here, not anymore.”
“In your bed?” Ethan asked archly, staring into the screen.
Hank felt his heart hiccup. Ethan wasn’t offering to be in his bed. Though he wasn’t sure he wasn’t either. He’d only remembered that a few weeks ago, Hank had been complaining about how the bed was too small for him, now.
“Yeah, sure,” Hank said.
Ethan looked like he wanted to call him on it, but he didn’t, which was the most important thing.
“We had a pretty chill day out on the lake.”
“Oh, you mean like every day,” Hank teased, swallowing back the uncertainty and the way his skin didn’t feel quite like his own, not anymore. At least since he’d been back home.
“Not every day. Sometimes we go golfing. Sometimes I go help my mom, or go see Livvy.”
“Oh, sorry,” Hank joked. “Was it not a golfing day?”
“You know, you should come out to Michigan next year,” Ethan said.
He’d made the invitation casual, but Hank wasn’t nearly drunk enough to miss the eagerness written on every line of his face.
“Just to Michigan? The state in general?” It was easier to deflect than to take Ethan’s invite seriously. Than to think about how good it would be.
Ethan right there. Ethan close enough to touch, if only Hank could find the courage, buried deep inside him.
“Come on,” Ethan scoffed. “You know what I mean.”
Hank swallowed hard. He was too close to honesty for this conversation, but the problem with riding that line, those shots and the three beers bubbling away in his system, was that he didn’t want to swerve away from it, either.
“Maybe you should wait until we’re in the same zip code for more than a few days. You might hate me, then.” He framed it like a joke, like that wouldn’t fuck him up.
But if that happened, it would totally fuck him up.
Usually he could convince himself it was because Ethan was his friend. But tonight, it was hard to deny it was because Ethan was more. Or at least because Hank wanted to know what more meant, so badly sometimes it felt like he might choke on it.
Ethan shot him a look full of reprimand, which wasn’t hot. Not at all.
Hank forced his body not to squirm on his too-small bed about it.
“You know that’s not true,” Ethan said.
The not-squirming thing got harder. Because Ethan hadn’t just denied it; he’d correctly pointed out that Hank didn’t even believe it. It was awesome and almost devastating to be seen like this.
Like Ethan could see right through him.
Every single thing he kept trying not to think about.
“Probably not,” Hank agreed. That was as far as he felt comfortable going.
“In less than a month, we’re all gonna be back in New York, and then you’ll see,” Ethan said, like it was already decided. Like whatever he wanted from Hank, Hank would hand over gratefully.
And maybe he would. Sometimes Hank got really tired of pretending that he didn’t want it, too.
But this was his fucking chance, too, his opportunity to finally make good on all his promise, on all those expectations—his and everyone else’s—and on the pact he’d made with himself at the end of last season that he’d be back and he’d be better and he’d be on the roster to start the season this time.
“Oh, will I?” Hank teased.
Ethan made a disgruntled face, scrunching up his handsome features, which was freaking adorable. Even harder to resist, maybe, than everything else.
“You will,” Ethan insisted. “It’s gonna be so good, all season, and then after, you’ll come to Michigan.”
“You planning my itinerary already?” Hank kinda hoped he was.
“Fuck yes I am,” Ethan said. He shifted in his bed, the camera dipping even lower, and ugh, Hank couldn’t stop his own gaze from drifting to the newly exposed skin. All that tan, muscled skin. The sparse trail of golden-brown hair leading down to—
“Dude,” Ethan said, sounding delighted. “My eyes are up here.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
He’d been caught—probably not even for the first time, but Ethan had apparently decided to call him on it now. Or maybe the booze had made him so obvious that Ethan decided there was no point in plausible deniability.
“Stop freaking out,” Ethan said, laughing in a low, amused voice. “I’m flattered.”
Hank swallowed hard, sure he was bright fucking red, and no amount of dim light in his room was going to hide it. “Well, you know, um . . .”
“Oh, I know,” Ethan said, still chuckling.
Hank forced himself to act like this wasn’t a catastrophe, like it was just an everyday occurrence, to get called out by your friend for checking him out. “Maybe I’m just making sure that your bulk-up is going good.”
“Don’t worry, yours is going good too,” Ethan said knowingly, his own eyes drifting down Hank’s chest, and not even bothering to try to hide it anymore.
Ugh.