Chapter Ten #2
Instead of having platonic orgasms at the hands of the man he was in love with, Luca spent the afternoon putting up fake cobwebs and decorative pumpkins all around Jax and Tom’s lovely three-story townhouse, a crime against interior design.
The house had been remodeled at some point in the last few decades.
It had decent insulation and big windows, which made it light and airy, but the old-fashioned wooden floors and staircases shone as beacons of the house’s provenance.
Of course, they wouldn’t for long. The dog would scratch everything up sooner or later based on the way she skittered around, following them everywhere as though a moment alone would kill her.
By five, everything was ready. A barrel had been set up in the garden to bob for apples, a stand stood ready where guests could be blindfolded before their hands were stuck into bowls full of brains and intestines (different types of cold, cooked pasta), and a table held copious amounts of alcohol.
Jax and Chris spent the afternoon making peanut butter cookies in the shape of pumpkins as well as disgustingly sweet coconut balls shaped like eyeballs.
Luca ate three before Chris hid them from him.
Tom had put his foot down and insisted on catering for the remainder of the food, a good call in Luca’s opinion.
Between decorating, baking, and cleanup, this party meant a lot of effort for everyone involved.
Howie might have planned and purchased everything, but the preparation had been a joint project.
This must be why most NHL players hired party planners. Or married them.
With the setup finished, Jax directed them to the guest room to change into their costumes. Howie immediately stripped down and began pulling on bright green tights.
Overalls would have been bad, but Luca also hoped he wouldn’t have to wear tights.
Chris handed over his costume, and Luca didn’t spot any nylon or neon.
“Han Solo?” Luca fingered the leather vest and the gun holster. It was even—though he hardly dared admit it—kind of cool.
Chris shrugged. “I thought it would suit you. You know, he’s pretty grouchy in the movies.”
“So who are you?” Luca imagined him as Leia for a moment, complete in the golden bikini with the buns on either side of his head. It would look ridiculous, but Luca couldn’t stop himself from feeling a frisson of heat at the thought of all that bare skin.
Chris pulled a massive furry onesie out of the bag he’d brought. “Chewbacca, obviously.”
“Aww, you guys match. Cute.” Howie had finished putting on his outfit—a green tunic falling halfway down his thighs, along with a brown belt and satchel.
To the trained eye, the quality of the costume showed in the even seams and the thickness of the fabric, leaving Luca to wonder why someone who cared about his appearance as much as Howie did wore off-the-rack game-day suits.
“Chris chose everything,” Luca said because he didn’t want to be cute or have people knowing how badly he wanted to match Chris at all times.
He instantly felt bad about it. Luca couldn’t see Chris’s crestfallen expression as he navigated his way into the Chewbacca outfit, but he knew it was there, and he had caused it.
Howie, frowning, looked away from the mirror where he’d been placing pointed tips on his ears and shimmery glitter on his arms. “Since when do you call him Chris?”
Since he had his tongue down my throat and his hand on my dick. “You know I think hockey nicknames are stupid. Why does Peter Pan need to be covered in body glitter?”
Looking at Luca as if he was the stupid one in this equation, Howie explained, “Fairy dust. Obviously.”
Chris made a choking noise, and Luca turned to help him get the costume on right. He’d rather ignore Howie anyway, or else he might give his feelings for Chris away. If Luca had to put money on anyone fucking up and outing a teammate to the press, he’d put it on Howie.
The guys with kids arrived first. Ollie Gustafsson’s two sons, dressed as characters Luca vaguely recognized from Fortnite, tore through the house searching for the dog. Once they had found her, they absconded to the garden to play fetch.
“They’re going to get their costumes dirty, and then Hilde will murder me,” Ollie said over an alcohol-free beer with the air of a man prepared for his fate. Hilde was already taking pictures with Nieminen’s girlfriend and therefore apparently unable to watch the kids herself.
Vanderbilt won best costume in a landslide. He showed up as a scarecrow holding his tiny daughter in a fluffy lion onesie. Cheryl, on his arm, wore a checkered blue-and-white dress and had her long blond hair in pigtails.
Based on Chris and Mooney’s reactions, Luca inferred the costumes referenced a movie everyone on this continent had seen.
Howie, who had been very convinced of his own costume, wandered morosely to the drinks table afterward.
“I voted for you,” Luca told him, which made Howie hand him a glass of gin with a bit of alibi tonic and then pour himself another, even more generous glass before clinking them together.
In a manful demonstration of character growth, Luca didn’t tell him he had no idea who the Vanderbilts were supposed to be and had voted for Howie by default.
Instead, he accepted the drink and the toast. This turned out to be Luca’s first tactical error of the evening.
As time wore on, sitters arrived to pick up children and infants.
Baby Lily held out a long time, dozing first on Vanderbilt’s shoulder and then, when his arm fell asleep, on Dmitriyev’s.
Around nine, Cheryl conscripted the goalie to help her put the baby to bed in the travel crib she’d brought, at which point Vanderbilt went for the liquor and everything escalated.
Luca started to have an inkling of how the night would end when Tom, dressed as a very beleaguered Winter Soldier to Jax’s Captain America, drank a Jello shot. As he swallowed, he made a face that Luca could empathize with and then returned to the den, where he resumed hiding with Phil and Ben.
Howie, who passed soused around 8:00 p.m. and headed for sloshed before midnight, spilled his drink all over Chris’s costume.
The gin-soaked fake fur smelled awful, and since Chris had decided his major function at the party was to give everyone as many hugs as possible, he had to change.
But he couldn’t get out of the costume by himself, so Luca accompanied him to the guest room to help.
There, Luca realized he’d made his second tactical error. The guest room shared a vent with the bathroom beside it, and the sounds of Dmitriyev and Cheryl Vanderbilt having rushed, passionate sex were unmistakable.
Chris made a face. “I hoped they would stop when the baby got here,” he muttered.
“You knew about this?”
“Doesn’t everybody? They’re not, like, subtle.”
Luca never would have guessed. “Does Vanderbilt know?”
Chris shrugged.
Keeping his voice low in case the lovers could hear them as well, Luca asked, “Is Lily his?”
Chris shrugged again. “I don’t want to know. Help me with this?”
In his third and worst tactical error, Luca unzipped the Chewbacca suit.
Underneath it, Chris was shirtless.
The combination of alcohol, a soundtrack of overdone, porn-adjacent sex noises, and the bare planes of Chris’s muscular back seduced Luca into trailing his fingers all over the available skin, stroking and touching everything he could reach.
Chris inhaled sharply.
For a beautiful moment, Luca thought he enjoyed the touch.
“That tickles.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Luca pulled his hands away as if Chris’s skin was burning hot. It might as well have been, for him.
“’S okay.” Chris stripped out of the suit, leaving only his light blue boxer briefs with red, green, and yellow bunches of balloons.
In profile, Luca could see the swell of the pouch where the cock he could not stop thinking about rested.
It was no bigger or firmer than usual. Luca’s presence, his touch, had no effect on it.
He had promised Chris he would be all right with whatever Chris was comfortable with. He couldn’t make himself more of a liar than he already was.
Luca stepped away and clasped his hands behind his back.
Chris wriggled out of the Chewbacca suit and looked around for his clothes. His underwear clung to the curves of his glutes and stretched tight on the muscular lines of his thighs.
Luca made an involuntary sound of longing.
“Huh?” Chris turned to look at him, T-shirt in hand.
“Nothing. I, um.” Luca tore his eyes away from the sight of a mostly naked Chris. It was a wrench, but he could be strong.
Chris stepped closer, no more dressed than he had been a minute ago. “Are you okay?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You don’t look okay. You’re all flushed. Are you drunk?”
“No!” Luca considered. “Well, maybe a little. But no, it is…ugh, it is embarrassing.”
“Luca. It’s me. I’m such an embarrassment I’m making you help me suck less at sex.”
Luca snorted. “You do not suck at sex.”
As if on cue, Dmitriyev’s loud groan sounded from next door. He had clearly arrived in a place Cheryl had not yet seen on the horizon.
“They suck at sex. Everyone who made you feel as though you were…you were lacking for not being interested the way they wanted you to be sucked at sex. You’re perfect, and I’m so attracted to you it’s making me stupid.
” Luca clamped his jaw shut at the end of his outburst, praying Dmitriyev had not heard or at least not understood any of that.
He should have known he would be unable to keep his feelings from Chris forever, but bursting out with them after one single hookup and a boozy Halloween party was a new low, even for him.
He closed his eyes, waiting for Chris to remind him he was straight and only interested in sex with Luca for educational purposes.
Chris’s warm bare arms wrapped around him, and Chris’s mouth pressed a hot, wet kiss to his shoulder.