Chapter 10 #3
"I want him to—" The rest never arrives, because Patrick moves, and the sentence becomes my name again, louder, and the sound of it hits the base of my spine like something physical.
My orgasm doesn't ask permission.
No edge left to manage, nothing for me to decide.
My balls pull tight and it's already happening, hot cum shooting out, pulse after pulse, more of it than makes sense.
A sound tears out of me from somewhere below the foundations, long and low.
Fully witnessed. My hips ride my fist through every wave while somewhere in Milwaukee Theo hears me and says it for the third time: "Wall". Soft, awed, as if to himself.
"Good," Patrick says, to both of us I’m sure, his voice in shreds. "He heard you."
Then he stops holding back.
The bed hits the wall and keeps hitting it.
Theo's voice climbs past words into pure sound, and I lie in my own aftermath, with my cock still twitching in my sticky fist, oversensitive and unwilling to go still, because going still feels like leaving.
Patrick's breathing shortens, turns jagged.
His control comes down in pieces I can hear.
"Come," he orders.
And Theo does. A raw, cracked-open cry, a string of curses, and something that's just vowels, Patrick's name buried in the wreckage.
And then mine. Patrick follows before Theo's finished, the rhythm seizing, a groan pulled up from the depths of him, and one last Polish word delivered into what sounds like Theo's skin.
Then, nothing but breathing. Three people's worth.
The silence assembles, piece by piece. Sheets settling, one long exhale, a small pained sound from Theo when Patrick moves.
"I'm dead," Theo announces, muffled. "Bury me in this bed."
"Drink first."
"You can't hydrate a corpse, Patrick."
Water pours anyway. A cap twists, negotiations conclude with a swallow and a wordless, satisfied compliance.
"Cool-down," Patrick says, quieter. "Come here.
" The sheets shift twice as bodies rearrange into a configuration I can hear but not see, and my chest does the silly thing again, because I can hear exactly how practiced it is.
How many nights it took to get that smooth.
They're there. Together, warm, in one bed.
I'm here, cooling, in mine, one hand sticky with cum, alone in a darkness that minutes ago felt crowded and now doesn't.
Nobody hangs up.
That's the thing. Nobody hangs up. The line stays open like a door, and I clean my stomach one-handed with yesterday's shirt rather than get up, because getting up means putting distance between me and the phone, and somehow, that seems unacceptable.
Minutes pass. My pulse comes down. In Milwaukee, the breathing multiplies and slows, and I lie there with my eyes closed and let the last honest brain cells on shift name it—I don't want to hang up.
I don't want to be the reason it ends. I have no idea if they're waiting for me to go, and I would rather lie here all night in the not-knowing than find out.
Theo's voice arrives one more time, blurred, mostly asleep, from somewhere very near their phone. "Still there, big red?"
"Yeah."
A rustle. A small satisfied exhale. Then Patrick, farther away, with no performance left anywhere in it. "Good."
The word lands somewhere that doesn't have armor yet.
My throat is too tight for a reply, so I don't make one.
I turn onto my side and pull the blanket over my hips, and the phone stays on the pillow, screen dark, line open.
Through it comes the small architecture of two people falling asleep.
Theo shifting until Patrick makes room, a hand moving once over fabric, breaths negotiating and then agreeing on a pace.
I fall asleep to the sound of two men doing the same.
***
MORNING ARRIVES WITH a dead phone, a stiff neck, and no memory of the line going quiet.
The battery died holding the door open. I plug it in, make eggs, and when the screen revives a half hour later, one message is waiting.
P.G.: Next time, you watch in person.
No question mark. Naturally. Somewhere in the last three weeks Patrick stopped asking me questions entirely, and the infuriating part is, I don’t hate it.
I read it four times. The eggs go cold.
In person. No screen. No speaker. No frame to hide behind. Them, at whatever range they choose, and me, watching, on purpose, where they can watch me back.
Me: Okay.
Deleted. Too available.
Me: Fine.
The lie isn't the reluctance. The lie is the period, pretending anything in me is calm about this.
Practice happens, and I'm technically present for it.
Pucks arrive and are declined. Coach Martin has stopped commenting on my numbers, probably out of superstition, and the team mostly leaves me alone.
Except the blue line, where a certain surveillance program has been running for weeks and just received new funding.
In the locker room afterward, Becker watches me untape my pads for a long moment before delivering the findings. "You keep grinning at the ice like it told you a secret and you're the only one who gets it. It's deeply unsettling. Stop."
"I don't grin."
"You're doing it right now."
I locate my face.
He's right.