Chapter Six #4
Damir laughed. “Yes, for example. But also normal hockey things. Injuries are down to chance and luck. I can only take so many precautions. I don’t decide who plays on my line; I don’t decide who the team trades; I don’t even decide if they trade me.
There are so many things I can’t change, and sometimes, being in control of someone else sexually helps me feel grounded. ”
“Oh. That…makes sense.”
Damir set aside the scissors and dumped the green beans in a sieve for rinsing. “Awaken any realizations in you?”
“Nothing deep. I think I’m the other way around.
It’s exhausting, trying to play my best and coming up short over and over.
And everyone on my team keeps going on about how young I am and how I’ll get it when I’m older or whatever, and I hate it so much.
But sometimes it is nice when someone else makes all the decisions. ”
“Your team is full of assholes,” Damir grumbled.
He’d never liked Crowler. He spent every All-Star Game Damir had gone to hiding in some corner, acting as if he was too good for the rest of them.
Which would be fine except Damir wanted to do the same thing but forced himself not to at big public occasions like the ASG.
Hearing that Crowler kept his own teammates at arm’s length as well…
Damir wasn’t surprised, but he did hate to think of Kilian being looked down on for something he couldn’t help, let alone something as inconsequential as his age.
He would get older. Until then, he ought to be allowed to enjoy being young.
Kilian shook his head. “They mean well. I guess they’re just not who I thought they would be. It’s not their fault I had different expectations.”
Damir hummed. He couldn’t keep on cooking without making more noise than he should on a video call, and he didn’t want to hang up yet.
Maybe he should have let Kilian come; maybe then the call would have petered out naturally.
But he enjoyed the thought of Kilian being desperate for him for longer than this one conversation.
He busied himself wiping down the counters and the fronts of the cabinets. Dust always settled there in a near-invisible fuzz he could never quite get rid of. He scrubbed a bit too hard at the dishwasher front, and it shifted under his hands.
Next time he planned a kitchen, Damir was getting dark-colored cabinets.
“Hey, can I ask a dumb question?”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
Kilian scowled. “Ha, ha. What’s it like being Muslim in the league?”
Damir blinked. “I mean, you know about…”
“I don’t mean the fans or the backlash or whatever. I mean how do you pray enough on game days? What do you do during Ramadan? How do you resist all the alcohol? There’s so much alcohol on offer. And you’re Russian.”
Barking out a laugh, Damir held up the hand with the damp rag in it. “One thing at a time. You do know Russia is a big place, right?”
“Yeah. But the guys on my team are… I mean, Dmitriyev brings a bottle of vodka on road trips.”
Damir no longer regretted being partially responsible for Dmitriyev’s injury. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I thought so too. But it’s good stuff. Doesn’t burn going down.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“So you’ve never drunk?”
“I tried, once, when I was fifteen,” Damir admitted. “Remember how I don’t like losing control?”
“Oh, right. But the other stuff?”
Sighing, Damir levered himself onto one of the barstools and picked up the phone so he could look at Kilian more closely. “It’s complicated.”
“I’m not as dumb as I look.”
Damir ran a hand through his hair. He wasn’t even going to dignify Kilian’s latest self-deprecation with a response.
Half of Damir’s teammates had never heard of Ramadan; Kilian was very far from dumb, at least within the admittedly poor comparison of other hockey players.
“I never talk about this. It makes me feel very self-conscious.”
“If it helps, I have literally begged for your cock on multiple occasions.”
“It does help. I know hockey players aren’t as famous as other athletes, but being a visible Muslim in a non-Muslim place is always a tightrope walk.
I’m not actually very observant. I don’t pray five times a day.
I only fast for Ramadan when it falls in the off-season.
And I disagree with a lot of other Muslims about a lot of things, especially when it comes to LGBTQ rights. ”
“But you said…”
“I’m a decently well-known Muslim in America, and that means I have a responsibility to others,” Damir explained. “I don’t talk about my own issues with faith because there are kids who look up to me as a role model, and I don’t talk about my sexuality because I don’t want to lose their support.”
Understanding dawned on Kilian’s face. “I get it. But…”
“But?”
“But what if there are other queer Muslims out there? Don’t they deserve a role model too?”
Damir swallowed heavily. “Can we go back to the part where you were begging me to come? I knew all the answers to your questions then.”
Kilian laughed. “So how’s being Muslim in Russia, then? It’s not a majority religion there either, is it?”
He ought to finish cooking, but no one ever asked Damir about these things. By the time he finally got around to making the green beans, the rest of the food had gone cold.