Chapter Seventeen #2
“Your mask is baller, dude,” Kilian shouted in response.
“But the Monarchs jersey is unbeatable, sorry.” He’d always thought so, with the big orange-yellow-black-white cell pattern covering the front of the jersey.
It was also a source of constant mockery in the league that the LA guys repped butterflies. He hoped he hadn’t made it worse.
A few more questions about the game followed, as well as one or two about the Sea Lions, which he no commented when they got too personal, and then Kilian was done.
He hit the showers with the last few stragglers. (Matheson, always Matheson. He was shit at changing quickly, getting distracted by whatever was going on around him. Kilian spared a grateful thought that Matheson didn’t live with Damir, or Damir would get impatient and hangry waiting for him.)
Kilian had to stop thinking about Damir—a difficult feat when he was standing by Kilian’s stall, showered and changed with his damp hair dripping onto his collar, glowering at the entire room.
“You,” he growled at Kilian.
“Huh?”
Lissy bounded up to Kilian and threw an arm around his shoulders, heedless of Kilian’s nudity apart from the towel he had wrapped around his waist. It likely meant nothing to Lissy, but Kilian was thankful for his continued lack of boundaries.
He could have done without the meat-tornado he referred to as the helicopter, but in a weird way, being subjected to the psychosexual torture straight guys took for granted in the locker room made Kilian feel as though nothing at all had changed.
“Howie,” Lissy announced seriously. “You are my hero.”
“Again, huh?”
“Big Russian bear! Amazing! Who knew!”
A lot of people, but Kilian let it slide.
“Tonight is the night, Howster.” Lissy gestured expansively.
“The night for…”
“The night we take you out and douse you in champagne to celebrate both your point streak and the endless fodder for ridicule you have gifted us with.”
They were in LA. Might as well. The coaches had announced no curfew for two of the four nights on the trip as a reward for the team’s hot streak (and in all likelihood because they knew it would be an exercise in futility on New Year’s, the final day of the trip).
“Sounds good,” Kilian responded. “You got a place in mind?”
“Have I!” Lissy immediately expounded on the club, a hyper-exclusive three-story location with a rooftop bar and DJs with record-label contracts. Kilian tuned him out to focus on getting dressed.
“When are we leaving?” Damir asked.
Lissy turned to stare at him. “Did I really hear those words from your lips?”
Damir made a face as though he’d sucked a lemon.
“Rocky, I need you to check. Are my ears attached?”
Damir crossed his arms.
“Still there, boss.”
“Did our very own Denny just…volunteer to go out with us?”
“A decision I am regretting more and more with every moment,” Damir assured them all. “If the rookies drink too much again, it is not my responsibility.”
What a liar. He had half an eye on Fulls even as he said it.
“Denny,” Lissy said seriously. “I love you. You are the light of my life and the fire in my—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence. I can change my mind—”
“No, no, everyone hurry! Fulls, Matheson, call an embarrassingly large vehicle. We’re headed downtown.”
The rookies scrambled to obey, and Kilian finished getting dressed.
He smoothed down the lace top, no worse for wear after being folded haphazardly in his locker during the game.
Beside him, Damir eyed the locker room warily, probably in case Lissy decided to orchestrate a flash mob in celebration or something else suitably extra.
“You don’t go out much?” Kilian asked.
Damir grunted.
“It must be shitty to watch everyone get drunk when you don’t drink.”
“You have no idea.”
“You don’t have to come tonight. I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy.”
Damir raised an eyebrow.
Kilian flushed and looked away. Fine, he wasn’t as big as Damir, but he stood half a foot shorter; no one expected him to be.
“I want to,” Damir said, a transparent lie. “It will be fun.”
From the first moment they entered the club, it became evident he was not having fun.
Generic pop music blasted from massive speakers, permeating every secluded corner.
The drinks, even the nonalcoholic ones, cost over ten dollars, and while Kilian didn’t particularly care because he earned enough to pay twelve bucks for a vodka soda with a maraschino cherry on top, Damir got fussy about the value of consumables.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Kilian told him. “We’re here to have fun.” He popped the cherry in his mouth.
“Right, fun.”
Kilian rolled his eyes. Why was he so into this guy again? “It wouldn’t kill you to pretend you enjoy spending time with the team for five minutes.”
He instantly felt guilty when he saw how stricken Damir looked. It reminded him why he liked Damir so much. Under the thin veneer of grumpiness, he was the most caring person Kilian had ever met.
“I didn’t mean…”
“No, no, you’re right. You should enjoy yourself. Dance.” Damir glanced over at the floor, where Fulls and Matheson had taken up residence. “Or try to.”
Kilian followed his gaze and winced in sympathy. Fulls appeared to have lost all range of motion in his hips while Matheson thrust his about wildly. A year or so ago, Kilian would have been the same, but frequent clubbing and copious amounts of alcohol had taught him how to do better.
He glanced around to suss out his other options. Rocky stood by the bar chatting up a woman, and by chatting up, Kilian meant he was stammering awkwardly and liable to knock over the three beers the bartender had just served him.
Kilian spotted Petterson doing shots with the D-core, but Kilian wasn’t on the D, and he didn’t know any of them well.
None of them had said anything rude or prejudiced to him (yet), but they also hadn’t been as supportive as Lissy and the rookies.
Besides, many of them hailed from Scandinavia, and he knew better than to do shots with the European crowd.
Ketchup and Lissy were nowhere to be found, so Kilian drained his drink, spat out the cherry stem, nodded at Damir, and made for the dance floor.
He wasn’t a huge fan of EDM remixes of songs that had been popular ten years ago, but the crowd seemed to love them.
He nodded his head along to the beat and swayed from side to side, which put him leagues above Fulls and Matheson.
Though it would be cool to actually know how to dance.
Maybe he should take classes.
He snorted at himself. Yeah, right. Between Valeria and the hockey season, he’d be lucky if he managed to go clubbing more than this once.
It was a shame. He’d enjoyed it in San Francisco, once he got past the doors and his own terrible fear of being caught.
Ironic, given the photos of him were taken inside the club.
Not all gay guys cared about protecting people in their community.
Whatever.
Kilian was over it.
Fulls and Matheson welcomed him with open arms or, rather, with trying-too-hard upnods. He made sure to keep distance between their bodies. Even on a crowded dance floor, he didn’t want to give them the wrong impression. Not when things were going so well.
They wasted some time doing dumbass party dances through the boring songs.
Matheson did a hilarious bus driver routine.
Fulls got them another round, all beers.
Kilian shrugged mentally and downed his.
He had no plans to hook up tonight. No one would care if he was bloated.
Besides, it had been ages since he’d drunk, since the trade actually, and—
Oh, fuck no. Kilian was not going to acknowledge that his improved performance on the ice had anything to do with abstaining from alcohol and eating healthy. Damir would never let him live it down.
As if drawn by magnetism, Kilian’s eyes found Damir, easily spotted in a crowd thanks to his height.
He loitered by the bar, still sipping his mineral water with lemon, watching Rocky strike out with a long-suffering look.
The big softie was probably about to go and wingman for Rocky, something he had definitely done before judging by the way Rocky hero-worshiped him.
Kilian forced himself to look away.
A group of girls danced barely a foot away, shuffling closer every time the crowd pushed them. One of them, a brunette with a button nose and an intricate, braided hairstyle, kept eyeing Fulls.
He continued attempting to outdo the bus driver bit with his own much less funny chef-pulling-ingredients-from-a-cupboard bit. Kilian elbowed him.
Fulls cocked his head.
“The girl on your left,” Kilian whispered-roared into his ear.
Fulls’s eyes went wide. “What do I do?”
Wow. Between this and Rocky, it was a wonder the human species continued to procreate. Kilian turned to the girl.
“Hey, my buddy wants to dance with you. You wanna?”
She beamed and stepped right up to Fulls, who managed to open his arms just in time to let her wrap hers around his neck.
At least it didn’t take long for him to seal the deal and move on to making out. He needed technique pointers on that as well. Kilian should not be seeing so much of his tongue from the outside.
Matheson watched on enviously.
“Bet one of her friends would dance with you,” Kilian told him.
“You think?”
“Sure.”
Though kind of scrawny, Matheson wasn’t bad-looking.
Kilian’s body shape had looked similar last year.
He’d begun to fill out, though; the tighter fit of his suit jacket proved it.
And it wasn’t down to Damir feeding him and making it impossible to skip his weight routine since they carpooled, damn it.
There had to be a less infuriating answer.
Matheson glanced at the group of girls. “What about you, bro?”
Kilian clapped him on the shoulder. “Not tonight, dude.”