Chapter 3 #2
“I shouldn’t.”
Evan’s fingers dug harder into Finn’s hips.
“But you do.”
Evan kissed him instead of answering, and Finn took that for what it was.
Finn got Evan’s shirt untucked and ran his palms over the bare skin of Evan’s stomach.
Warm. The muscles tensed under his touch, then released, and Finn felt the release like a lock turning.
He traced the trail of hair below Evan’s navel, followed it down with his fingertips, worked Evan’s belt undone with hands that were steadier than they had any right to be.
The button of his slacks. The zipper. Finn tugged everything down just enough and wrapped his hand around him, and the sound Evan made at the contact ricocheted through every nerve Finn had.
Evan was hard and already leaking, and Finn held him there for a moment, just his hand, just the heat and weight of him, because he wanted to remember this.
The exact second before. The way Evan’s stomach caved in on a breath and his head dropped back and his fingers curled into Finn’s shoulder like he was the only solid thing in the room.
Finn looked up at him once, holding his gaze, and dropped to his knees.
“Finn—”
“Shh.” Finn wrapped his hand around the base and leaned in close. Evan shuddered from his shoulders all the way down his spine, his head tipping back into the wall. “Let me.”
Finn took him into his mouth.
The sound Evan made was half curse, half Finn’s name, cracked down the middle, and it hit Finn behind the navel and lodged there.
Evan shook above him, one hand braced on the wall, the other fisting in Finn’s hair.
Finn groaned around him, the vibration running through them both, and he hadn’t planned on that.
Hadn’t planned on how it felt to be on his knees for someone he’d spent years wanting, the industrial carpet rough against his shins, and everything narrowed to the taste of Evan’s skin and the weight of him on Finn’s tongue and Evan’s grip in his hair shaking.
Finn had been on his knees before. In dorm rooms, in apartments, once in a car with the seat pushed back and the steering wheel digging into his shoulder blade.
He knew what he was doing. But those had been bodies and heat and the uncomplicated mechanics of getting someone off, and this was Evan with his spine pressed against the wall and his thigh trembling under Finn’s palm and a groan caught in his throat that he clearly hadn’t meant to let out.
Finn could feel the restraint in him, the years of it, and every time Evan’s hips stuttered forward and then caught, Finn wanted to drag him past it.
Finn rewarded the fist in his hair by taking more, setting a rhythm, eyes up.
He learned the map of Evan’s responses as he went: the hitch in his breathing when Finn flattened his tongue on the upstroke, the way his thigh locked when Finn took him deeper, the exhale that punched out of him when Finn pulled back and let the cool air hit where his lips had been.
The flush on Evan’s neck had spread to his chest. His collarbones were visible where Finn had dragged the shirt open, and the tendons in his forearm stood out where his palm braced the plaster.
He looked like a man coming apart at the seams while trying very hard to hold the stitching together.
Finn hollowed his cheeks and took him to the back of his throat, and Evan’s entire body bowed forward over him, one hand leaving the wall to cup the back of Finn’s head like something precious, like something he couldn’t believe he was being allowed to touch.
The gentleness of it made Finn’s eyes sting.
He swallowed around him and Evan swore, breathless, and the gentleness turned into a fist and Finn liked that better.
Liked the honesty of it. Liked that Evan couldn’t hold the careful version of himself together with Finn’s mouth on him.
“Fuck. Finn.” Evan’s hips jerked forward, then caught.
White-knuckling it. Finn reached up, grabbed Evan’s hip, and pulled him forward.
Permission. Evan groaned and started thrusting, and Finn relaxed his jaw and let him, tasting salt, Evan’s thighs trembling on either side of him.
The fist in his hair tightened past comfort and into something that made Finn’s own cock ache behind his zipper.
He palmed himself through his jeans without thinking about it, just pressure, just enough to keep from losing his mind, and Evan looked down and saw it and made a noise that Finn was going to hear in his sleep for the next month.
Evan was close. Finn could feel it in his faltering rhythm, his breathing going to pieces above him. Finn pulled back enough to swirl his tongue, and every muscle in Evan’s body locked at once.
Footsteps in the hallway.
Finn was on his feet before he could think, dragging the back of his hand across his lips, spinning to face the projection screen.
Behind him, the rasp of fabric, a zipper, a belt buckle, the sound of a man putting himself back together in the space of three heartbeats.
Finn gripped the back of the chair in front of him, knuckles white, lungs too loud in the room.
The door opened.
“Evan?” Coach Tremblay’s voice. “You in here?”
“Yeah.” Almost level. “Just checking the projector. Holloway was reviewing tape.”
Finn kept his eyes on the footage. The same cycling play. His heart slammed against his ribs, his lips swollen, the taste of Evan on his tongue.
“Little late for that.” A step into the room. “Everything okay?”
“Fine. Just finishing up.” Evan’s voice had gone perfectly even, the professional register snapping back between one breath and the next. “I’ll walk out with you.”
A pause. The back of Finn’s neck prickled. He kept himself measured, his shoulders relaxed, his fists loose at his sides even though the tendons in his forearms were pulled wire-tight.
“Holloway.”
Finn could track Coach Tremblay’s attention the way he tracked a defenseman on the ice: where the weight shifted, where the focus landed, the half-second delay before the next play.
Right now that attention was bouncing between Finn and the room and Evan and back, and Finn stood perfectly, absolutely, bone-deep motionless and waited for it to pass.
“Don’t stay too late.”
“Yes, sir.” Even. Measured. More than Finn had expected from himself.
Behind him: fabric rustling, a tie being straightened, the small tug of someone putting armor back on. Then Evan’s voice, lower than it needed to be.
“I should go.”
Evan went. Finn listened to both sets of footsteps fade down the hallway, his father’s stride even, Evan’s a half-beat behind. The building went still around him.
The projector hummed. The St. Cloud penalty kill was cycling on the screen, the same play Finn had been not-watching for over an hour, and it occurred to him that he had no idea what the score of that game had been.
Finn was aching behind his zipper and his heart was hammering and his lips tasted like Evan, salt and skin.
He pressed the heel of his hand against himself once, breathed through it, and let it go.
The carpet had left raw spots on his knees.
He could feel them through his jeans, and he pressed his thumb into one and held it because the sting kept his brain from replaying the sound Evan had made when Finn pulled him forward by the hip.
That sound, wrecked and real, was nothing like the voice that had snapped back into place thirty seconds later when Coach Tremblay walked in.
That was the part Finn was going to think about.
Not Evan kissing him. Not Evan’s body responding to every touch like it had been starving for years and forgot how to pretend otherwise.
The part that mattered was how fast the mask went back on.
How seamlessly Evan had become the director of hockey operations in the time it took to zip his pants and straighten his collar.
Holloway was reviewing tape. Like Finn was a line item on a facilities checklist.
Finn sat down and let his head drop back against the headrest and stared at the ceiling tiles, the fluorescent panel above him unlit, the only light the blue-white glow from the screen. His breathing slowed. His heart didn’t.
Finn wasn’t angry. He understood the reflex, understood it better than Evan probably thought he did, because Finn had spent years watching people recalibrate around his sexuality, and he knew what it looked like when someone shoved part of themselves into a drawer because the room wasn’t safe.
He understood it. But understanding didn’t make it hurt less, the speed of that transformation, the completeness of it.
Finn pulled out his phone and typed: That was a beginning. You know it was.
He sat with it for a second, rereading, thumb over the send button.
Then he hit it, because Finn Holloway did not lose, and because Evan Tremblay needed to know that the man who’d been on his knees ten minutes ago was the same man who was going to keep showing up, keep pushing, keep being impossible until Evan stopped running long enough to realize he didn’t want to run anymore.
Finn picked up his bag, killed the projector, and walked out into the hallway where Evan Tremblay had straightened his tie and pretended nothing had happened.