8. Chapter 8 #2
“He’s at Max’s, of course,” Ethan said and tugged Hank more firmly into the apartment, until the door closed behind him. “It’s just us. We should order something? Are you hungry?”
Hank, who was typically a bottomless pit, thought if he had to put food in his mouth now, he’d probably throw it up. He was churning too much. Too many emotions swirling inside him.
“Not . . . not right now, but if you want . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ethan said, and Hank was surprised by how right it felt when Ethan’s fingers slid down his arm and tangled in his, tugging him into the living room.
He’d been in Barney’s apartment a handful of times over the last two years. A few team events, and when he’d first come up, fresh out of juniors, for the Bandits’ playoff run, Charlie and Max had hosted him for dinner, but it had been in this apartment and not in Max’s a few floors up.
That had been Hank’s first inkling that his new captain and the middle Barnes brother were kind of weird about each other.
Ethan took the couch and pulled Hank down next to him, but didn’t let go of his hand, and Hank liked that, too. Even though it broke him, a little.
“What did Inverness say?” Ethan asked.
That was one of the things Hank always liked about Ethan.
He was direct; no games, unless they were of the fun variety.
When it mattered, when it came down to it, he was honest. Didn’t beat around the bush.
Didn’t let Hank sit there in silence and wallow in all the things he wanted that he wasn’t going to get. At least not yet.
And not yet felt almost worse than not ever.
“The expected bullshit,” Hank said. “Something about leaning on Niko while he’s hot. Putting him on the trade block.”
Ethan nodded. “Charlie thought that Niko might end up trade bait. He’s streaky. Can’t depend on the guy.”
“And they can depend on me?” Hank hated that he’d questioned it out loud the moment the words left his mouth.
It was so shitty, to even contemplate that it might not be true. That Ethan might think it wasn’t true.
Ethan stared at him, like he didn’t know what to even say to that, and God, that was worse. The actual fucking worst.
Hank couldn’t sit here and just look at Ethan anymore, not if there was any fucking chance that actually was real.
He popped up, which meant, of course, that he had to let go of Ethan’s hand.
But moving, beginning to pace back and forth in Charlie Barnes’ living room, did actually help calm some of his blooming anxiety.
“Are you fucking for real?” Ethan retorted, gaze following him. “Sure they can. And I’m sure that Inverness said that, too. I bet Inverness even said that you’d be the next up, when the Bandits need a d-man.”
Hank made a face. He did like Ethan’s honesty, even when it cut right through his own self-doubting bullshit.
“Yeah,” Hank muttered.
“Exactly.”
“Listen, it just wasn’t supposed to be this way. You know it wasn’t. I put in the fucking work—”
“I know you did,” Ethan reassured.
Hank threw up his hands. “Fuck, it just wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to make the roster, and you—and you—and you—” He broke off. They’d never talked about it. Not exactly. Not explicitly.
He’d imagined, in some soft, pastel-colored fairy-tale kind of dream, that he’d do it tonight. Look Ethan in the eye and say, I like guys. I didn’t think I did, but I like you.
But that wasn’t happening. Not anymore.
It could still, someday, but by the time Hank made it back to New York, maybe Ethan would be tired of waiting. Tired of hanging around, hoping for Hank to get his shit together enough that they’d finally be on the same team at the same goddamn time.
He knew it was crappy to even think that of Ethan. He’d not seemed particularly fickle, not in the year they’d been talking. But everyone’s patience ran out, sooner or later.
“Me what?” Ethan said calmly, staring up at Hank like he wasn’t in the middle of a meltdown.
Okay, not a meltdown, maybe, or even a minor one, if you compared it to the kind of fit anyone else might throw, but for Hank, this was majorly losing it.
“You know,” Hank retorted.
Never mind the date getting fucked up, this was definitely not how this whole confession had gone in his head, the hundreds of times he’d envisioned it.
Ethan shot him a look. “Maybe I don’t.”
Hank shot him a look right back. Ran a hand through his hair. “You do.”
“Okay, maybe I do. Maybe I want you to actually say it.” Ethan sounded a little annoyed, which was fair.
This whole situation was incredibly fucking annoying.
“It’s just . . . it was supposed to be me. More than that, even. It was supposed to be us.”
“You’re gonna get there. You’ll tear it up in Syracuse. I know you will, and then you’re gonna be back.” To Hank’s surprise, Ethan’s annoyance faded out of his tone, like he didn’t even mind that Hank had changed the subject.
“Yeah, but. But. I was gonna tear it up here. In New York. With you.”
Ethan’s face softened. “I know. I wanted it too, so bad, you don’t even know—”
But Hank knew. He fucking knew. “Fuck, and not just that, I thought, this is the beginning of this . . . whatever this thing is between us.”
Ethan’s eyes found Hank’s, almost like they’d been magnetized. They were so fucking blue, Hank felt like he was drowning in them.
“Whatever this thing is between us?” Ethan asked softly.
“I was going to be smart. I was smart. I waited. I took my time. I focused on hockey. You focused on hockey, but God, I wasn’t smart at all, was I?
” The realization hit Hank like a fucking freight train, hard and inevitable.
“I wasn’t. I wanted to do this, but I didn’t.
And I should have done it, every single day. ”
Ethan tipped his head up, almost like he already knew, and maybe he did.
Maybe that was inevitable, too.
“Done what?” Ethan asked.
Hank stopped right in front of him, leaned down, and right before he covered Ethan’s mouth with his own, said, “This.”
It wasn’t a perfect pastel fairy tale, that was for fucking sure, but it wasn’t nothing, either. Not when Ethan gasped a little against his lips.
It wasn’t easy, but Hank tried to give them both a second to acclimate to the idea.
Not that he really needed it—he’d been wanting to kiss Ethan long before he’d actually come to terms with it—but he could give Ethan that.
But Ethan wrapped a warm hand around Hank’s neck and dragged him in closer, mouth opening under Hank’s, and it was Hank’s turn to gasp.
He’d worried, more than once, if it wouldn’t be as good as he’d imagined.
But reality blew every fantasy right out of the water.
Ethan’s mouth was soft and earnest, and so, so eager.
It wasn’t quite like kissing a girl—Ethan’s mouth was rough around the edges with his baby version of stubble—but even if it wasn’t the same, that didn’t make it bad.
He liked it. Liked that holding back wasn’t even on his radar.
Hank could lean in and nip and nibble at Ethan’s lips.
Groaned in the back of his throat as Ethan’s mouth opened against his and the kiss deepened.
It felt so good Hank knew just how easily he could get carried away. Pin Ethan to this couch in his brother’s apartment and let the heat flaring between them take over.
But he shouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Still, pulling back was harder than Hank imagined. Not even because Ethan had one hand wrapped around his neck, and now the other curling possessively around his waist. Not even because Ethan was making these delectably desperate noises in the back of his throat.
It would be so fucking easy to chase after the next one. And the next. And the next, after that. The most slippery slope in the entire world, and Hank wanted to let gravity take him right down it, take the decisions and the power right out of his hands.
It was that thought, ironically, that gave Hank the final push to pull back.
Ethan’s eyes fluttered open, dazed and hot against Hank’s face. The clear blue of them almost swallowed entirely by pupil.
He flicked out his pink tongue, licking his bottom lip, like he wanted to keep tasting Hank there.
Shit.
Ethan didn’t let go of him either, and Hank found himself leaning farther in, knees bumping onto the edge of the couch before they found purchase there.
It was weird, kind of, to be in Ethan’s lap, when he was the bigger of them.
But Ethan stroked a hand up and down his back, reassuring and warm, and what they should or shouldn’t be doing fluttered away, a thought too fleeting to catch.
Ethan’s voice was low and deliciously rough when he finally spoke. “Were you going to do that tonight?”
There’d been a part of Hank that kept resisting the idea that their dinner tonight was supposed to be a date. That at the end of the night, he would walk Ethan to his door and then press him against it, just like he was pressing Ethan into the couch cushions now.
But the feel of Ethan’s mouth on his mouth had blown away the last of the lies he’d been telling himself.
“Yeah,” Hank said and couldn’t help himself. He leaned in and kissed Ethan again. Gentle but insistent.
Ethan’s head hit the back of the couch, but that hand on Hank’s neck pulled him right along with him, and for the first time, he felt the hard ridge of Ethan’s cock, clearly just as into this as Hank’s.
Nothing about that freaked him out. Instead, the very undeniable fact of it made Hank kiss him again. And again. One sliding into the next. Not thinking, just feeling.
Ethan panted into his mouth, Hank’s hands burying into his curls, and sure enough, they were as soft as he’d imagined. He was obsessed with how pliant Ethan went, hot and soft under him, and Hank’s eagerness flared deep and real. Irrefutable.
Under him, Ethan arched, and pleasure spiked. It wasn’t fancy or sophisticated or like anything he’d let himself picture in that hazy fairy-tale future, whenever he’d allowed the thoughts of sex with Ethan to crowd in.