6. Ben
BEN
“Hi,” Grayson says. “This is weird. Did you mean to call me?”
He’s right. My brother and I don’t call each other. Three weeks after Miami trades me to Seattle, I apparently decided to start.
I’m in the hallway outside the visitors’ locker room in Arizona, the only place in the arena where nobody is yelling, sharpening skates, or playing music through a speaker that should’ve been confiscated by airport security. “Yes.”
“Okay.” There’s a scrape, then a thud. “Hang on. I was trying to get a glass off the top shelf.”
“Put the phone down.” I can picture him halfway onto the counter with one hand occupied, which means telling him not to climb will only make him do it faster.
“I have it. And I didn’t drop the glass.” Another scrape comes through the phone, followed by the sound of a cabinet shutting. Korolev’s house has stools. I’ve seen them. Grayson would rather climb onto a counter one-handed than move one six feet. “I’m alive. How’s Seattle?”
“I’m in Arizona.” I lean against the concrete wall. The vibration of the locker-room music reaches me through it, all bass and no song.
“That’s not what I asked.”
He knows where I am. Calling him was probably a mistake. “It’s fine.”
“Right. So terrible. I saw something calling you Saint Pope.”
I close my eyes. “Since when do you pay attention to hockey memes?”
“I know, right? It’s the worst! Vasya sent it to me.
” Of course he did. Korolev retired and somehow started paying attention to more hockey coverage than he did when he played.
“It wasn’t a meme, exactly. It was more like a report.
Or an article. I didn’t read it. The picture had a halo drawn over your head. ”
“Excellent reporting.” A story about me came out this morning, but I only read far enough to see veteran influence before closing it. I don’t need to ask which picture they used.
“You looked really unhappy about the halo.”
“I was probably unhappy about something else.” The door at the end of the hall opens. One of Arizona’s equipment staff comes through pushing a laundry cart, and I step out of his way.
“You’ve got a list?”
I wait until the cart rattles past. “We aren’t winning enough.”
“You won the other night.”
“We need to do it more than once.” One win didn’t stop us from going right back to missing passes and giving away the middle at the next practice.
Grayson makes a doubtful noise. “I don’t think that’s how one works.”
I’ve already said more than I meant to. “How’s Korolev?”
“Vasya’s good.” His voice changes when he says the name. It always does, even if he’s only answering a question about whether Korolev remembered to buy milk. “We went to the cat shelter yesterday. We might get a cat.”
I straighten away from the wall. “Does Korolev know about this?”
“It was his idea.”
That stops me. “Korolev wants a cat.”
“He sent me the shelter link and said the house is too quiet when I’m at work. Which is rude, because he’s the one who retired and made it quiet. Anyway, there was this orange one who bit him.”
“So that’s the one you’re getting,” I say. Korolev would take the bite as evidence of sound judgment.
“Obviously. Vasya says we have to think about it. He’s been thinking about it by looking at the cat’s picture every twenty minutes.”
I smile before I can stop myself. A few months ago, almost every conversation Grayson and I had ended with one of us pissed off.
Usually him. Sometimes both of us. Now he calls Korolev Vasya as if nobody ever called him anything else, and I’m the person who hears about their possible cat before our mother does.
I didn’t know what to do with the two of them at first. Korolev was my teammate and friend. Grayson was my baby brother, even if he was twenty and had made it clear what I could do with that opinion. Korolev is closer to my age than his. It felt strange.
They’re happy. I can hear it every time Grayson says Vasya. I don’t worry about them much anymore.
“How’s Arizona?” Grayson asks, moving on before I can ask when they plan to decide.
“Hot.” Sweat is already drying under the collar of my shirt from walking across the parking lot.
“At least that means it’s warm.”
“The one good thing about Seattle is that the temperature isn’t identical to the one in Satan’s buttcrack.”
After a pause, Grayson says, “That doesn’t sound very Saint Pope.”
“Tell Korolev he can send that to whoever drew the halo.”
Grayson laughs. It’s too loud through the speaker, and I move the phone away from my ear until he stops. “I have to go. We’re on in an hour.”
“Okay. Try winning again. It seemed popular.”
“I’ll mention it to the team.” I check the time and push away from the wall. Grayson is still talking about how the cat only bit Korolev a little when I cut in. “Don’t let him eat anything important.”
“We don’t have him yet.”
“You called it him.” Grayson hangs up on me.
I go into the locker room feeling more like myself than I have all week. It lasts until Fraser pulls his shirt over his head across the room.
I look down at my skates. I’ve woken up hard four more times since the dream on the plane. Four. I’m counting because numbers are facts, and facts are easier to deal with than Fraser naked in my head.
The second dream had his mouth on my neck. In the third, he was on his knees between my legs, looking up while he opened my pants. Two nights ago, I dreamed his tattooed hand was wrapped around my cock and woke with my own fist tight around myself through my underwear.
Last night, I had him facedown beneath me. The ink over his shoulder moved every time I drove into him. He kept pushing back for more, swearing into the pillow, and I had one hand on his hip and the other around his cock.
I woke before I came. My erection didn’t go down until after a cold shower and fifteen minutes of game video.
It’s not helping that I see him almost every day.
My brain has picked a convenient body and keeps using it.
Fraser talks about sex the way other people talk about lunch, touches whoever is closest to him, and wears his shirts open far enough for the ink on his neck to show.
He put his fingers on my tie at the poker night and made this into a subject. The dreams are an extension of that.
Stress has to go somewhere. Across the room, Fraser shoves an arm into his base layer. The fabric pulls over his back, then his shoulders. His tattoos disappear last.
I tighten a skate I’ve already tightened.
We play well enough to still be tied when the third-period clock runs out.
It’s not clean hockey. Arizona clogs the middle, hooks without getting called, and turns every fight for the puck against the boards into three men trying to occupy the same square foot of ice.
Fraser takes an elbow to the mouth halfway through the second and comes back to the bench grinning with blood on his teeth.
“Still pretty,” he says when I look at him. He presses a towel to his lower lip and grins around it.
The cut isn’t deep enough to need stitches, which is all I was checking. “Do you need a trainer?”
“You offering, Saint Pope?” He spits red into the towel, and I look back at the ice.
Nobody scores in overtime. The shootout goes four rounds. Caleb gets one. Arizona answers. Fraser rings his attempt off the post and comes back swearing at the puck like it made the decision personally.
Bobby goes last. He comes in wide, changes pace twice, and pulls the puck across the crease after the goalie commits. It slides inside the post.
We win.
Everyone pours over the boards. Bobby disappears under gloves and helmets near the net, yelling loud enough for me to hear him through the crowd. Fraser hits my side on the way past and hooks an arm around my shoulders, dragging me with him.
“Try looking happy,” he says against my helmet.
His arm is still tight around my shoulders when I say, “We shouldn’t have needed a shootout.”
“There he is.” His hand squeezes the back of my neck once before he lets go. The contact lasts less than a second. I feel it all the way down.
The interview after is exactly what I expect. We stayed patient. Bobby made a great move. Two points matter. We have to be ready for the next one.
The reporter asks if the team is finally responding to the leadership I brought from Miami. I tell him Caleb leads this team and everybody in the room has been working. He asks whether tonight proves Seattle’s season has turned around. I tell him it proves we won tonight.
Then I see Fraser heading down the hall toward the locker room.
His helmet is in one hand. Sweat has soaked the collar of his base layer and darkened the material between his shoulder blades.
The tattoo on his neck vanishes under the shirt, then appears again when he rolls one shoulder.
I know where the line goes now. My dreams have invented the rest of it so often that some part of me expects the ink to keep running under his clothes exactly as I’ve seen it.
I wonder whether it does.
I look back at the reporter. “Anything else?”
By the time we reach the hotel, the win has made everybody loud. Bobby is reenacting his shootout move in the lobby without a stick or puck. Caleb tells him to stop before he takes out a lamp. Half the team heads toward the bar. The other half crowds into the elevators with plans to change first.
I wait for the next one. Fraser waits too.
The doors open. We step inside, and the rest of the team disappears behind us in a crush of voices and bad decisions. Fraser presses his floor. I press mine. They’re the same.
“You know we’re allowed to celebrate wins,” he says. He’s taken off his tie and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. The edge of the tattoo curls out beside the hollow of his throat.
“I celebrated. On the ice.” I keep my attention on the changing floor numbers.
“I was there. You looked like Bobby had scored against us.”
“I congratulated him.” I also let fourteen men hit me against the boards, but Fraser would probably decide that lacked enthusiasm too.
“Did you file the paperwork?” His gaze slides over me, looking for something else to use.
I glance at him. He’s leaning against the mirrored wall with his jacket hanging from two fingers. His hair is still damp from the shower. The shirt fits closely across his chest and pulls a little at his upper arms.
“You seem invested in how I celebrate,” I say. He’s been needling me since his shoulder hit mine in the lobby. He could’ve taken the crowded elevator with Bobby. He waited for this one instead.
His mouth lifts. “Maybe I’m trying to figure out what gets Saint Pope excited.”
The elevator starts up. I face the doors. “Winning.”
“We did that. Didn’t seem to work.”
“It worked fine.” The number for the fourth floor lights, then the fifth. Fraser keeps watching me instead of the doors.
“Do you ever let anybody see you enjoy anything?” he asks.
“I don’t need an audience, Fraser.” I turn to make him stop staring and find his gaze fixed on my mouth. Heat pulls tight low in my stomach. He’s looking for a reaction. He always is. “What?”
“Nothing.” He pushes off the wall. “You’re bitchy again.”
“You bring it out in me.” It should make him laugh. Instead, his eyes drop briefly down my body.
“I bring something out in you.” He stops in the middle of the elevator. There’s plenty of room to move around him, but I don’t. Moving would make this into something when it isn’t.
Fraser comes another step closer.
“Are you planning to start another fight?” I ask. It would be easier if he were. I know what to do when Fraser is pissed off.
“Is that what you think we’re doing?” He comes close enough that I have to tip my head down to hold his gaze.
“Usually.” My voice doesn’t sound as steady as it did a second ago.
His smile changes. It gets slower. “You always look at my neck when you lie.”
“I don’t.” The lie is automatic and not very good.
“You’re doing it now.”
I am. The black lines disappear into the open collar of his shirt. Up close, I can see the damp shine of his skin above it and the jump of his pulse under the ink. I want to put my thumb there. I want to drag the shirt open and find out how far the tattoo goes.
I want to put my mouth on it.
Fraser hooks one finger into his collar and pulls it aside. Another inch of ink appears over his collarbone.
“Better?” he asks. My cock starts to fill.
I should step back. I stay where I am while he moves into my space, close enough that the front of his shirt brushes my jacket. His body is hot from the shower. He smells clean, with something darker underneath that belongs to his skin.
“You stare at everybody this much?” he asks.
“I’m not staring.” It’s getting harder to form the words with him this close.
“No?” He doesn’t give me any room back.
His finger is still caught in his collar.
My eyes follow it. Ink winds over the bone and disappears beneath white fabric.
I’ve seen him shirtless dozens of times, so none of this information is new.
The shirt clings to the chest I’ve crashed into after goals.
I’ve watched his thighs drive through turns at practice.
None of that explains why I know his mouth is softer than the rest of his face, or that his bottom lip goes red when he bites it.
It’s red now.
I lick my lips.
Fraser goes completely still.
“Holy shit,” he says, and closes the last few inches between us.
“What?” My voice comes out rough.
My back hits the wall. Fraser doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t have to. His chest is almost against mine, his thigh close enough that one small movement would put it between my legs, and my cock goes hard so fast it hurts.
He looks down. The front of my pants is doing nothing to hide it.
I can’t explain this. There isn’t enough air in the elevator to build one of the explanations I’ve been using, and Fraser’s mouth is inches from mine.
He leans closer. For one second I think he’s going to kiss me. My lips part.
His mouth passes mine and comes to my ear instead. His breath is hot against the skin below it.
“Eleven twenty-seven,” he whispers. “Knock if you want to find out everywhere I’m inked.”
The elevator stops and the doors slide open. Fraser steps out.