Chapter Fifteen #2
He took a breath and pushed to his feet.
The material of the panties scratched against his skin, reminding him they were there.
His dick plumped up against the restriction, remembering the hungry way Damir had eyed him.
Kilian hoped dinner would need a while to cook unattended, and they could revisit the subject of spanking.
Time marched on relentlessly; they only had one day left of Christmas break.
Would Damir be open to expanding sex during hockey breaks to the All-Star week in February as well? Kilian might break his own heart by doing it, sure, but he was twenty. He was supposed to make stupid choices and get his heart broken.
Delicious smells wafted through the apartment, the rich scent of onions fried in butter. Kilian’s stomach growled. It had been a long time since bannock for breakfast. He really needed to find a way to thank Damir for all the home-cooked meals. Maybe Damir would accept blow jobs. Or…
Kilian headed back to his room and rifled through one of the half-empty boxes.
At the bottom he found his shiny, untouched toolbox, his first purchase after moving into his own place in San Francisco.
He’d never used it, too busy with everything else.
“Chicago Kilian” wouldn’t accept a tricky door for a full year when he could fix it.
Chicago Kilian would do better. He pulled out the star-tip hex key set and stuffed it into the pocket of his sweatpants before heading toward the kitchen.
On his way, he opened Instagram and typed Jax’s account into the search bar, ignoring all the messages in his inbox.
When he saw what Jax had done, Kilian burst out laughing. “Oh shit. He’s going to get in so much trouble.”
Damir, standing at the stove with an apron over his bare chest, turned just far enough that his raised eyebrow became visible.
Kilian showed him the picture Jax had posted to Instagram of himself kissing Tom’s cheek, with the dog in a rare moment of stillness at their feet. The caption read, “Can confirm the Sea Lions are gay af. If you’re looking for the team that trades players for being lgbtqia+, it’s the Magpies.”
Damir’s eyes went wide. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, him and Tom have been dating for, like, a year.”
“Hm.”
What a typical Damir sound. A cut-off grunt with no further elaboration on his thoughts and feelings even though they both knew Damir had massive amounts of both. He turned back to the stove, hiding whatever facial expression he was making.
“What?” Kilian asked. He felt along the side of the dishwasher, looking for what had to be… There it was, a loose screw dangling between the cover and the machine. He pulled it out carefully before finding its counterpart on the other side so he knew what height to look for the hole.
“Nothing.”
How was Damir such a terrible liar? Did people fall for his “I have no emotions” schtick?
“Daaaamir,” Kilian prodded. He got to his knees beside the dishwasher and began screwing the cover back into place. He nearly missed Damir’s headshake in response, but looked up just in time. “I’m going to start guessing.”
Damir grunted again.
“It bothers you that more people are coming out, and you can’t,” Kilian tried. It would bother him. He finished with the screw and tested the cover. Much better.
Damir shrugged. “I don’t care what other people do. Thank you for that. I didn’t know what tool to use.”
“Star tip.” Kilian showed him the hex key before sliding it back into its proper hole in the set. “Even designer kitchens like to fuck with you by throwing in a weird type of screw every now and again.”
“I didn’t think you’d be…handy.”
“Grew up on a farm, remember? My parents were into DIY everything. You’re changing the subject. Are you worried people might guess about you if you spend too much time with me?”
“No, that’s what you’re worried I’m worried about.”
Kilian got to his feet, trying to parse the sentence. “What I’m…whatever. Um, you were secretly in love with Tom, and now Jax has stolen him away from you.”
A laugh burst out of Damir. “Tom Crowler? Fuck no. I mean, knowing he’s been closeted for a million years explains a lot about him, but no.”
“So what is it?” Kilian poked at Damir’s side.
Damir sighed deeply, laid down the spatula he was using to mix whatever was in the pan that smelled ungodly delicious, then turned the stove down. “If you don’t want to keep having phone sex, you need to tell me.”
“What?” Kilian had never understood the phrase “having the rug pulled out from under his feet” as well as he did at that moment because now it felt as though he’d entered unsteady ground without noticing. Hadn’t they just agreed to keep going? “I thought you wanted to.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Damir said with an impatient gesture. “You—”
Whatever he planned on saying was interrupted by the doorbell ringing.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Kilian asked. “Are any of the other guys around for Christmas?”
“Probably,” Damir said, drying his hands on a towel and then heading for the hall. “But Lissy said he wasn’t doing a team Christmas because Rocky threw up in his hot tub last year.”
Kilian wrinkled his nose. That sounded less wholesome than ordering Chinese food at Phil’s house and drinking Jax’s homemade eggnog. It also sounded more fun.
He followed Damir to the door, curious to see whether there’d be any holiday hijinks, and a bit morbidly interested to find out whether he would still be invited to team events now that he’d admitted the truth about himself publicly.
But when Damir pulled the door open, it wasn’t Lissy with a bottle of liquor or the rookies with puppy-dog eyes and fake IDs.
“What are you doing here?” Kilian asked, his voice so far away from his brain it might as well have belonged to someone else.
“You haven’t returned our calls in a month,” his mom said. “When you didn’t show up at the airport in Vancouver when you said you would, we got on the next plane we could find.”
“I never rebooked after the trade,” Kilian admitted. “My flight info was for a plane out of San Francisco.”
“You should have told us. We’d have booked you a new flight.” Kilian’s dad stood an inch or so shorter than him. His copper hair had begun graying at the temples sometime in the last few years, and he had new frown lines on his forehead. He was still chronically unable to mind his own business.
“I can book my own flights.”
“Obviously not, or you would have.”
“Boys,” Kilian’s mother said sharply.
“Why don’t you come in,” Damir suggested and stepped aside from the door.
Kilian couldn’t inflict his parents on Damir after everything Damir had done for him. It would violate some sort of fuckbuddy code. “It’s okay,” he said. “I can get my stuff. We can find a hotel, or—”
“No, it’s a holiday, and your parents came all this way. Dinner should be enough for four anyway.”
Kilian thought longingly of the delicious smells emanating from the stove, fried onions and spices and garlic doused in crushed tomatoes. “Are you sure?”
Damir gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Positive. I’m going to go…” He gave Kilian a meaningful look.
“Sure, yeah, thanks.” Kilian hoped Damir meant “hide the lube we left in the living room” and “put on a shirt.”
Kilian’s parents came in, and he closed the door behind them.
His mom wore a purple winter coat that should have clashed awfully with her hair—a few shades lighter than Kilian and his dad’s—but somehow accentuated it instead.
He got the curls and the sense of style from her.
She hung up the coat in the entryway and slipped off her shoes.
Divested of her winter things, she turned to him. “Baby,” she said, and then her arms wrapped around his middle, and her face pressed to his shoulder.
Kilian closed his eyes and hugged her in return. The bridge of his nose burned, and his throat ached with unshed tears. “Hi, Mom.”
“Are you okay?” she asked right beside his ear. “Has anyone been harassing you? Have the other players been nice?”
He laughed wetly. He had no idea how to begin explaining to her that in a list of NHL player qualities, “nice” would not make the top fifty. “I’m fine,” he told her, and was surprised to find it was true.
“Have you talked to your coach?” Dad asked, halfway out of his jacket. “It’s his job to keep the players in line, and you’ve been solid on the PP. I bet he’d listen to you…”
Kilian let the familiar words wash over him as he led them both to the living room. “Can I get you anything to drink?” He was supposed to ask that when guests were over, right? When did his parents start counting as guests?
“Some water would be great actually,” Mom said. “Or tea? Do you have tea?”
Kilian didn’t, but he knew who did. “Damir’s got some. It’s probably going to be Russian though.”
“Anything herbal will do.”
“Herbal,” Kilian repeated so he would remember. “Dad?”
“Diet soda?”
Kilian laughed. “Sorry, no, too much sugar for the meal plan. We’ve probably got some sugar-free somewhere?”
“It’s diet. There’s less sugar,” his dad protested but waved off Kilian’s attempt at a response. “Whatever. Anything’s fine as long as it’s not orange-flavored.”
Kilian left them getting settled on the couch, extremely thankful Damir had indeed cleared up the lube. In the kitchen, Damir stood at the stove again, putting a pot of wild rice on to boil. He had four steaks sitting on a board on the countertop, waiting.
“Why do you have four steaks?”
Damir shrugged. “I always keep some extra around. Meat freezes well.”
Kilian tried to keep the smile from his face, but some things were simply impossible.
Damir ignored him.
Kilian had never particularly enjoyed not being noticed, being a youngest child, so he sidled up closer to Damir. “Nice shirt.”
The deep plum color made Damir’s skin shine rich and golden. It was also a collared, button-up shirt, paired with charcoal-gray slacks.
“Who are you trying to impress?”
“Your parents,” Damir said in a low, hurried voice. “Obviously.”
Kilian laughed.
“Don’t laugh. Your father looked like he hated me.”