Chapter Seventeen #3
It would be a bad idea to hook up in front of the team.
So far, they’d been chill with him being gay, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that could change any second.
Being queer allowed him to give them funny search terms for porn sites and quippy one-liners about how repulsive they all were.
If they knew how he acted with guys, submissive and slutty, or pieced together how similar in build to hockey players the guys he hooked up with were, he doubted it would stay as chill as it had been so far. It would be too real.
Adding to which, he had yet to find a guy who could live up to Damir, and settling for less when Damir was right there…no, not yet.
He pushed Matheson none too gently toward the girls and watched as he sidled in awkwardly next to a dark-haired girl way out of his league. Hopefully she was into athletes.
Kilian saluted him behind the girl’s back and made his way over to the bar.
He had finally gotten the bartender’s attention, intending on getting a water or some soda to hydrate, when Damir said, “Are you sure you should keep going?” His voice rolled across Kilian’s ear, low and perfect, and Kilian wanted him so badly, but not like this.
Not with Damir acting as though he was Kilian’s keeper, not with Kilian always feeling inferior.
He rounded on Damir, fully prepared to inform him that he’d had only two drinks and could do what he wanted anyway, thanks ever so, when Ketchup and Lissy appeared out of nowhere.
“Howie!” Ketchup threw his arm around Kilian’s neck. “There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“Alas,” Lissy chimed in, “this establishment frowns on champagne showers. But, if you are willing to accompany us to the gentlemen’s boudoir, you can—”
“No,” Damir said harshly.
Kilian whirled on him. “Enough! I know you think I’m incompetent, but I don’t need you telling me what to do!”
Damir’s eyebrows drew down. “So you want to go snort coke in the bathroom? Great decision, Kilian.”
Kilian blinked. Snort what in the where now?
He thought they’d sweet-talked a bartender into giving them a champagne bottle so long as they didn’t open it on the floor.
Of course, the real answer was something much more adult and illicit, and embarrassment at being too na?ve to even think of it stoked Kilian’s anger further.
“No, I don’t, but I don’t need you treating me like I’m some fragile flower, okay? I can say no myself.”
“Harsh, dude,” Ketchup said.
“Sorry.” Kilian shrugged apologetically. “I really don’t want another scandal right now, you know?”
“I get it. But everyone does it sometimes.”
“They do not,” Damir protested. “Some teams are leading in the league because they put stock in training and practice, not in partying.”
Lissy patted him on the top of the head, a feat for which he had to stand on his tiptoes. “That’s what we have you for, buzzkill.”
“I don’t need to listen to this.” Damir turned on his heel and stalked off, the crowd parting easily before him.
Kilian watched him go, aching to put it right, to let Damir baby him just a little longer. He knew it wasn’t good for him, but he wanted it so badly.
Ketchup clapped his shoulder. “Seriously, bro, Denny’s messed up over something with his agent, remember? He said so the other day. What if he’s getting traded?”
Traded? He’d have told Kilian, surely.
Unless he was so sick of Kilian’s shit he wanted out.
“God forbid, we’d never win another game. But now he’s gone, are you sure you don’t want a bump?” Lissy patted his breast pocket. His shirt was unbuttoned so far down that his suit jacket hid the pocket entirely. His bare, hairy chest glistened with sweat. Kilian wondered if he was already high.
He liked Lissy, especially the gregarious, if over the top, energy he brought to the locker room. It kept things light. But Damir was the one who held the team together in all the ways that mattered.
Kilian didn’t want him to shoulder the responsibility alone. Not anymore.
After a year and change of believing he was a burden to the Sea Lions, discovering that his contributions were valuable in a different context—that he could help his new team succeed—was addictive.
He wanted Damir to know he had an equal partner in Kilian.
If it couldn’t be in bed, at least it would be on the ice.
Damir wasn’t trying to be a killjoy when he reminded his teammates of the schedule or that it was their responsibility not to be drunk assholes all the time.
He did it because he genuinely believed in the team’s success and didn’t know how else to convey his worries about everyone’s health and the team’s standing.
It wasn’t his fault he was surrounded by people he couldn’t be himself around.
No matter how many hockey players came out, none of them were Russian or Muslim.
And Kilian had thrown it all in his face over what?
Feeling a little babied? Compared to what Damir must be going through—watching the team he played for, won for, treat Kilian so well after coming out when he’d been there all along and never had the opportunity to get their support—it had to sting.
Hopefully not enough to ask for a trade.
Kilian extricated himself from Ketchup’s arm, still slung over his shoulders, and did his best to smile at Lissy. “Sorry, man, not today. I’m gonna…”
He jerked his thumb in the direction Damir had left and followed him in long strides.
People didn’t part for him the way they did for Damir.
Kilian didn’t have the same fuck-off energy, but it was easy enough to track Damir’s progress out the side door and into the unseasonably warm Los Angeles night.
At least Chicago had seasons.
“I’m sorry,” Kilian blurted the second he was outside. “I don’t want you to get traded.”
Damir flinched and turned. “What are you sorry for? I’m sorry. And of course I’m not getting traded. As far as I know anyway.”
“Wait, what are you sorry for?”
“For speaking for you. I know I’m not…who you want doing that.”
Kilian blinked. “I mean, I don’t want anyone speaking for me.”
Huffing a frustrated sigh, Damir kicked at the brick wall of the building. “No, I mean, I know I’ve done a shit job taking care of you in the past and don’t deserve—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Kilian held up his hands. “What the fuck? No? You’ve always taken care of me perfectly. I don’t want you to have to.”
The look Damir leveled at him could only have been described as anguished. “Kilian. Your first time? What you said on the plane? I know you were talking about me. And I treated you like shit.”
“I was being a little shit, and no, you didn’t. Anyway, it’s ancient history. You know you’ve had all my first times.”
“What?”
Did Damir not know this? Had he somehow missed Kilian’s utter lack of experience?
“Yeah? I mean, obviously I didn’t know shit when I showed up at your hotel room last year, and afterward, it was all hookups in club bathrooms or whatever.
” To avoid totally humiliating himself, Kilian elected not to admit that, during those encounters, he’d always been so desperate to get fucked that he hadn’t pushed to include other acts.
“You have to have noticed how bad I am at giving blow jobs.”
Damir rubbed at the back of his neck. “I, um…I…did not. But then why… I mean, you don’t want me.”
Kilian had to laugh. “I think it’s been more than obvious that I really, really do, dude.”
“Don’t call me dude.”
Kilian paused, taken aback. He’d heard Damir sound grumpy, even annoyed, but never hurt. “Damir, why do you think I don’t want you?”
“You said we had to stop once we were teammates.”
“Well, yeah, I thought you’d want some boundaries?” It was the smart, adult thing to do, and he’d figured Damir would be pleased he didn’t have to make all the hard decisions. “Anyway, I immediately fucked up with the phone sex, and over break, we…you know.”
“But your teammates—your captain—were doing the same thing in San Francisco, so clearly, you don’t want to be with me.”
Kilian blinked. “Uh, well, Jax and Tom are living together. It’s different.”
Damir raised his thick, dark eyebrows. “Are we not living together?”
“Point.” Kilian bit his lip. “But we’ve been pretty casual. To be honest, I already liked you a lot before I came here, and all the cooking for me and everything we did over the break didn’t help me get over it. You don’t want me falling for you or anything.” He forced a nervous laugh.
A frown line drew tight between Damir’s eyebrows. “I don’t want you— Of course I want you to fall for me!”
Kilian’s mouth dropped open.
“You think I spent hours making chebureki from scratch for Ketchup when he moved in? You think I went and groveled to the best figure skater in Chicago because Fuller needs to work on his edges?”
“Okay, but he so does,” Kilian interjected.
“Not the point,” Damir bit out. “I do things for you because I like you, and I want you to stick around. And I know I shouldn’t tell you to stop drinking or have less fun, but I just…worry.”
“Oh.” Kilian licked his lips. “Wait, okay, to be crystal clear, you want to do things for me in a boyfriend way and not in a ‘this annoying rookie can’t handle life by himself’ way?”
“You can handle life fine.” Damir pursed his lips, just a little prissy, just the way Kilian loved him. “I don’t want you to have to do it by yourself.”
Kilian launched himself at Damir, forgetting he wasn’t that much shorter and lighter. Damir hit the brick wall with an “Oof,” which Kilian immediately muffled with his mouth on Damir’s.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, when Kilian’s neck burned red and raw from Damir’s unshaved upper lip, and Damir’s shirt was rucked up where Kilian’s hands traced all over the soft skin of his lower belly, Damir pulled away.
“I really am sorry about how I treated you our first time,” he said.
“Did you miss the part where you made me come untouched?” Kilian asked. “I wasn’t lying when I said it was perfect for me.”