Chapter 15 #3
He's thicker than Theo. A completely different weight in my hand, and I want a long, quiet hour to learn all the differences, and I'm not getting one. So I stroke him on the same rhythm Theo's using on me, passing the pleasure down the line.
Theo notices the geometry. "Look at us."
"Busy," I manage against Patrick’s mouth.
"He's multitasking, Patrick. On his first day.”
When mercy finally comes, it comes fast.
Theo's fist tightens and speeds up, no warning, and Patrick's mouth drops to my ear, hot breaths landing on my overheated skin, and the last of my self-control doesn’t die quietly. It goes loud.
"Don't stop." My own voice echoes in my brain, as if someone else’s speaking the words, rough and ruined. "Don't— Don't stop."
Theo makes a sound of pure triumph and doesn't stop, but what ends me is Patrick, rasping straight into my ear, "There he is."
I come so hard I forget how to breathe. My hips drive up into Theo's fist, and my own fist loses every rhythm it was keeping as cum stripes hot up my stomach, wave after wave of it, more than I knew I had.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I hear my own voice again, broken open, in a room where both of them can hear it too.
The ceiling comes back into focus slowly.
"Okay," Theo says, shaking out his wrist, buzzing, still hard and gracious in victory. "Okay. Wow. Detailed notes later. Mostly tens—"
I sit up and take his cock in my slick fist mid-sentence. The rest of the review dies in a register I haven't heard from him yet.
He's been on edge all night and it shows. Patrick moves in behind him, knees bracketing his, an arm across his chest, mouth at his neck, holding him upright and open. Theo hangs between us, hips stuttering up into my grip.
I use every single thing I was taught.
The tight top, the slow base, and I watch his stomach the entire time. He lasts longer than I expect, which is still not long at all, and he comes with a shout, spilling across my fist and his own chest. Loud, long, and completely shameless.
He sags back into Patrick's arms, boneless, muttering something that's probably a compliment. Over his shoulder, Patrick watches me.
The only man in the room who hasn't lost a hand of this yet.
"You're behind," I say.
The eyebrow goes up. Theo, mostly unconscious, laughs.
"Maybe you should catch me up, then."
He settles Theo into the pillows beside me and kneels up, and I get my first real look at him like this. Kneeling in the dim light there’s nothing managed about him anymore, his cock flushed dark, angry red, finally, visibly, needing something from me.
It’s the single most intense power trip I’ve ever been on.
I reach out and close my fist around his cock, and his breath goes uneven on the very first stroke.
Then his hand closes over mine.
He’s not taking over. He’s showing me.
Faster than I would have guessed.
Tighter than I would have dared.
A hard twist up at the top that he presses into my grip once, twice, until my hand knows it without him. Then his hand falls away, and it's just mine, working the length of him while he kneels there and lets me learn him.
Theo stirs against my side, drapes himself along my back, and hooks his chin over my shoulder to watch.
"His thighs," he says, sleepy and vicious. "Watch his thighs. They quit pretending before he does."
A new lesson, running the other direction. Each of them has spent tonight handing me the other one, piece by piece, and I don't think either of them planned it. I think it's just what they do.
Patrick's thighs quit pretending.
His control doesn't break. That's not how it works with him.
It comes off in layers. Breath first, then the jaw, then his hips, which start pushing into my fist in small, tight thrusts, like they've been asking all night and only now got a yes.
The twist on my palm over the head of his cock pulls a sound out of him, so I do it again.
And again. I'm greedy for it now, watching the composure come off this man one stroke at a time.
"Wallace." Half warning, half surrender. Wholly new.
I don't stop. His hand grips my shoulder, and he comes over my fist in thick pulses, cum running hot down my knuckles, while his eyes stay locked on mine the whole way through it. The most composed man I know, unwound exactly one full turn.
By me.
Something lands in my chest, and the closest word I have for it is victory.
For a long while, the bedroom just breathes.
Then, in the quiet, my ears finally admit what they've been ignoring for a few minutes now.
The timer, beeping, alone and forgotten.
Patrick’s brain seems to come online at the same time mine does. "The frittata."
"He died doing what he loved," Theo says into my shoulder blade.
Patrick rises, and I follow him with my eyes all the way to where he disappears into the bathroom, then comes back with a warm washcloth. He doesn't hand it to me. He cleans me up himself, slow passes over my stomach, my hand, and my softening cock.
I lie there and let him.
Two months ago, letting a man do this would have required sedation.
Theo stays draped where he is, mouth pressed to my shoulder. Not kissing. Just there.
"That was—" I start, quit, and start over, and it’s only because of my current, temporary state of pure post-orgasmic bliss that I allow myself to admit what’s in my mind. "I want the rest. Eventually. All of it."
Theo's head comes up off my shoulder. Patrick doesn't even pause the washcloth. "We have time," he says.
The words land somewhere in the middle of my chest and stay there.
***
THE FRITTATA IS a black disc.
Patrick extracts it at arm's length and sets it on the stove top. We make toast instead and eat at midnight, around Patrick’s kitchen island. I’m wearing my jeans while Theo sits cross-legged on the counter, wearing my flannel and nothing else.
He didn't ask. It was on the bedroom floor, and then it was on him, sleeves swallowing his hands.
Finally, we end up on the couch. More accurately, Theo ends up on the couch and pulls the two of us down with him, arranging us until he's satisfied: Patrick in the corner, me in the middle, Theo draped across both our laps.
His comfort show comes on at a volume nobody's listening at, and his fingers find my hair, combing through it, and my head goes heavy and lets it happen.
The fingers stop. "Nooooo," Theo says.
I straighten up and blink. "What?"
He sits up. Both hands come to my scalp, and he parts my hair, inspecting. "It's going away."
"What—"
"The roots. Look at the— Well, you can't look, but there are roots. It's going blond under there. It's leaving quietly, like a coward, in the night."
I chuckle. "That's how hair works."
"Unacceptable. I met this hair before I met you.
" Under all the theater, there's sincerity in his voice.
"The big red one. That's who walked into—" He catches himself, glances at Patrick, then steers around the thing we don't talk about out loud.
"That's who I met. And it's checking out of the league like a rental. "
"It was a bet punishment," I say. "It's temporary."
The sound he makes is wounded and French.
"Temporary." He lies back down across us, one flannel sleeve flopped over his eyes.
"Everything good in this league is temporary.
You know what this is? This is what's wrong with modern hockey.
No loyalty. A color gives you the time of your life, and the minute the roots show up, everyone starts saying temporary, like commitment is… "
He falls asleep.
Mid-sentence, mid-grievance, one arm still raised for the gesture. The arm settles slowly down to his chest, his breathing goes long and even, and his weight across my lap turns into dead weight, the full, trusting heaviness of a man who is completely gone.
"Is this…normal?" I ask, quietly, trying not to move.
"Most nights." Patrick's volume matches mine. "You get used to thoughts unfinished."
Under Theo's weight, with the show mumbling to itself, we talk the way you talk when moving isn't an option—sideways, about nothing.
His new pads first, which he hates. Then I give him my speech about factory straps. He takes it with one slow nod.
"My father calls after every game," he says at one point, in regards to nothing. "Every game, my whole career. Doesn't matter the score."
"What does he say when you lose?"
"Same thing he says when I win. 'You dropped your elbow in the second.'"
I huff a laugh into the quiet. "My mother watches from her kitchen. Then she texts me a critique of exactly one save, and then my cholesterol, in that order."
"One save?"
"She picks the worst one. She's never wrong, either. It's upsetting."
Neither of us explains why we're trading this, and nobody checks the time until the time is embarrassing.
When I finally move, Theo reflows around a cushion without waking up, one hand closing on the flannel he's apparently keeping.
I stand over the two of them for a second longer than the exit requires and just look.
Patrick walks me to the door. After I shrug on my jacket, he hands me my binder with a completely straight face, which I receive with one.
The hallway light is too bright after the cozy glow on Patrick’s apartment. I turn in the doorway to say goodnight, and the urge shows up out of nowhere, fully formed, and completely idiotic.
Kiss him goodnight.
My weight has already started forward before I catch it, half a second before it goes public, and I turn the lean into a nod.
"Goodnight," I say.
"Goodnight, Wallace." If he clocked it, he lets me keep my peace.
The interstate south is empty, time passing in a blur of mile markers, dark farmland, and a windshield with a very large man reflected in it who won't stop smiling. I turn the radio on. I turn it off. I turn it on again. The smile stays.
Somewhere around the state line, I quit pretending I don't know why.