Chapter 29
ROWAN
Rowan woke up with the breeze on his face and an absolutely brutal headache. It took long moments to realize he was living in the aftermath of winning the Stanley fucking Cup.
It took longer to realize he was asleep outside.
The moment he started moving, Theo’s arms came up around him to steady him.
He opened his eyes to find that he was sleeping on Theo’s chest, in Vic’s backyard, on one of the outdoor couches.
Somehow, they ended up with a blanket over them.
He didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was coming up, and there were people still awake around them.
“Why didn’t we sleep in one of our two beds that are literally right here? And warm?” Rowan asked, bringing a hand up to cover his face from the sunrise and the gaze of their teammates.
“You didn’t want to miss a single second,” Theo said, his hand smoothing over the back of Rowan’s head as he shivered.
“Fuck.” He remembered that. He was getting flashes from last night.
Vic invited the whole team over to their place.
Someone had wrangled a lot of food and a lot of alcohol.
Some of their neighbors came over for a bit to touch the Cup.
When Rowan finally blinked open his eyes, Vic was sitting on one of the other plush patio chairs with the Cup settled between his knees, a joint in his hand.
Rowan could go for some of that, too.
“Hey, lovers,” Vic said when Rowan finally woke. The night before was a bit of a blur, but he did have a fuzzy memory of enthusiastically declaring his love for Theo, and planting one on him, square on his lips.
That’s one way to come out.
“How are you still awake, man?” Theo asked him. Rowan yawned again and sat up, and Theo followed suit, arranging Rowan under his arm and pulling the blanket back over them.
Vic shook his head. “I don’t fucking know. I feel like if I don’t go to sleep, this will keep being real. Who knows what’s going to happen if I fall asleep?”
“It’s real,” Theo said, his arm around Rowan’s shoulder, pulling him even closer.
“So when the fuck did this happen?” Vic asked, settling back in his chair, chill as anything. “If I recall, when you showed up here, Foley, Laney here was trying to murder you with his eye lasers.”
Rowan bit his lip.
“I guess it happened in junior,” Theo said.
“And then you obviously catastrophically broke up.”
“Something like that,” Rowan said, tucking his face against Theo’s chest. He was still so fucking ashamed of the way he had acted when they were eighteen.
“So you’re telling me I made you live with your ex-boyfriend, and you said nothing?”
“I think he said a lot, actually,” Rowan said. Theo’s chest shook with a laugh.
“Okay, true,” Vic agreed. “God, I thought you two were just buddies again. The lack of physical boundaries in this sport, I swear.”
Theo laughed. “I guess we started to figure our shit out when Ro got sick.”
“And Theo got concussed.”
“A whole lot more of the fucking season makes sense now,” Vic said. He let out a breath. “I’m going to go check on Jules. She’s sleeping in my room. Can I leave you with this?”
He lifted the Cup up by the bowl, and waddled it the three feet over to Theo and Rowan.
“I’ll take the rest of that too,” Rowan said, making grabby fingers at Vic’s joint.
“Alright, be responsible,” Vic said, taking one more hit before he headed inside.
There wasn’t much left, but they each got a couple hits. Rowan tucked his face against Theo’s chest again, and now that he was a little more awake and settled, he realized how fucking rank he was. They probably both were.
“We need showers, holy fuck.”
“Later,” Theo said, his free hand tracing the upper rim of the Cup. “Gotta bask in this a little.”
“Did you ever think in your wildest dreams we would win this?”
Theo paused, his free hand leaving the Cup to tip Rowan’s face up to his, his fingers firm on his chin. He kissed Rowan with morning breath ranker than his beer-soaked t-shirt.
“I knew as soon as you signed.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Well, obviously, I didn’t know. But I believed.”
“In us?”
“In you. Even when I could barely look at you, I knew we were fucking lucky to have you here. I was jealous, obviously—”
“Of what?”
“Of the fact that I finally carved out my place in this league, and in comes Rowan Foley, and I’m just the other guy again.”
“Teddy—”
“Obviously I’m not mad about it now,” Theo said, nudging the Cup gently with his toe, “but last summer I thought it was just your goal in life to fuck up whatever you possibly could for me.”
“I think it was inevitable that we ended up together,” Rowan said. He had never been a particularly superstitious hockey player, and he didn’t believe in God, but being in pro sports made him believe in…something. The universe wanted him and Theo to be together.
Theo pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Maybe you’re right. You came home to me. And then we won this trophy. Doesn’t feel like an accident.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Rowan felt his phone buzz and pulled it out of his pocket.
His battery was almost dead. It was a video from Vic.
This is from Julia , the caption said. He opened the video and hit play, and he and Theo watched an extremely embarrassing two minutes of Rowan blathering on and on about how much he loved Theo, and how perfect Theo was, and while he agreed with himself, he would never live this down.
He nearly had to shield his eyes from embarrassment when he pulled Theo into a kiss.
“Jesus Christ,” he said under his breath. In the background of the video, he heard Aaron’s voice yell, “Those are my dads!”
Well, at least the kids weren’t weirded out by them.
“You are so cute,” Theo said, stealing one more kiss. “However, my phone is completely dead, and I need to wash beer out of my hair. Call Felix, then come find me, alright?”
Theo’s warm brown eyes were soft and kind as he got up from the couch and stretched, wincing about his shoulder.
They would need to get a lot of healing done this summer.
He was still close enough for Rowan to press a kiss to his stomach, and he got the most adoring look he’d ever gotten from anyone in return.
He had a million notifications on his phone, but he found Felix’s thread fairly quickly. All of his texts were in caps lock, all to the tune of, “HOLY FUCK I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT.” He smiled and hit the call button by his contact.
“Is a Stanley Cup Champion finding time in his busy drinking schedule to call me?”
Felix’s voice made Rowan’s heart immediately sink. As happy as he was, he had spent years dreaming of sharing this moment with Felix.
“Sometimes I really hate hockey,” he said, feeling that unhappiness spike inside of him. “I’m sorry.”
“Rowan fucking Foley, don’t you dare apologize to me. I’d rather one of us have a Cup than both of us be back in Texas.”
“I wish I could share this with you, too. I wish you were here, too.”
“I know, babe. But you were meant to win it with Theo. We both know that.”
“It felt like my heart was going to rip out of my chest when I passed him the Cup last night. I didn’t know I could feel that much of anything at once. But Theo and the Cup? God.”
“You two sure were giving each other eyes the entire post-game. I saw a clip of him laying one on you.”
“What?” Rowan didn’t think the video from their private celebration would have leaked, but who knew? Anyone could have recorded them.
“In the locker room. I mean, kisses were flying pretty freely between all the guys. But he planted a wet one on your cheek.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“What did you think I meant?”
“Well, first of all, I came out to the team last night in the most embarrassing way, but also there is…a lot about last night I don’t remember.”
“Say more.”
“I’ll just send you the extremely embarrassing video,” Rowan said, resigned. He knew Felix would get it out of him eventually, and just relenting now meant he didn’t have to describe it. “My phone is dying, by the way.”
“Alright, babe. I’m so proud of you. I love you. Invite me to your Cup day.”
“Obviously.”
“Tell Theo congrats too, alright?”
They ended their call and Rowan shot off that stupid fucking video in the split second before his phone died.
He slipped it into the pocket of his shorts and picked up the Cup, heading in the back door to a party that was still alive and well in the kitchen and living room.
He set the Cup down in front of Mateo, who immediately poured a beer in it.
Behind him, Rowan noticed that one of the keepers of the Cup had followed him inside, keeping an eye on the trophy at all times. What a job.
He slapped backs, told people to find a moment to sleep, and headed upstairs. Catcalls followed. Theo had just gone upstairs. They weren’t being subtle. It was kind of nice that they didn’t have to be anymore. At least not with the team.
Theo’s bedroom door was closed, but when Rowan let himself in, locking the door behind him, he found the bathroom door cracked, and the shower running. Rowan stripped out of his clothes and put them in a pile he might burn later, then headed in to find Theo waiting for him, wet and gorgeous.
“Felix says congrats.”
Theo smiled and took Rowan’s hand as he stepped into the shower.
“I think we probably need two showers,” Theo said.
He looked like he had already soaped up, his pale skin pink and scrubbed raw, and Rowan let his eyes fall closed as Theo pulled him close to his chest, and began running a soapy loofah over his shoulders, his back, down to his ass.
He brought his arms up around Theo’s neck and let Theo wash him, his gentle touches making his body react in a predictable way.
“Mmm,” he said as one of Theo’s soapy fingers trailed down between his cheeks to press ever so lightly against his hole. His hips jerked as his growing erection looked for friction.
“Have you ever gotten a handy from a Stanley Cup Champion?” Theo asked, his fingers wrapping around Rowan’s length. Rowan gasped against his neck and bucked into Theo’s grip.
“N-no,” Rowan stuttered. What he wanted was for Theo to take him apart for the next several hours, but he knew they were both too tired for that.
“Well, then, let me show you what I’ve got.”
Rowan let himself make just enough noise for Theo to hear him and no one else as he stroked him firmly, rolling his palm over the head of Rowan’s dick every few strokes.
Rowan didn’t want it to end, but he was already feeling shaky on his feet.
He’d made it through more hockey games than he thought possible with his ankle sprain.
He wanted to curl up with Theo in a real bed and sleep for a week, so when Theo’s movements sped up, he didn’t try to focus on lasting longer.
Rowan just let himself relax and let the orgasm roll through him, as his come landed on Theo’s thigh and got washed away almost immediately.
Theo pulled him into a kiss as he wrapped Rowan’s hand around his own erection, and closed his own fist over Rowan’s skin, using Rowan’s hand to jerk himself off tight and fast. He was just as impatient as Rowan had been, so Rowan just focused on kissing him as wet and slutty as he knew how to until Theo grunted, and several fucks left his mouth.
Rowan got one more kiss, then the quickest shampoo known to man since they had forgotten before they turned their focus to sex.
Slipping under the sheets after a shower, feeling clean and warm and loved, knowing the Stanley Cup that they won together was in the same house as them, felt better than anything Rowan could have ever imagined.
Did the Cup make not having Theo in his life for eight years worth it?
No. He’d trade the trophy for all that lost time in a heartbeat, and he fell asleep knowing that was the truth.
It was still pretty nice, though.