Chapter Seventeen
“Why do we watch sports? It’s not so our teams can win all the time.
That would be boring. We watch for the entertainment, for the ups and downs, for the chance to follow along with players we grow to care about.
Maybe this isn’t a year we make the playoffs, or maybe November has just been a bad month.
Either way, this year brought us some great team moments.
(Did you see Calabrese and Mazetti in matching costumes at Tom Crowler’s Halloween party?) And some epic hockey.
(Did you see Calabrese block a shot by bodily throwing himself in front of it in Montreal?) We may not win, but I’ve had a great time watching. What more could I want?”
Top comments:
calabreezy: amen brother
seelionssaylions: healthy perspective about my chosen obsession? No thank you!
(Posted on on 11/17/2025)
For all Chris’s worry the day before, he woke up to winter sunshine, a tousled, sleepy Luca, and a very erect dick.
He breathed a silent sigh of relief. Not wanting sex wasn’t a bad thing; he would get it through his thick skull eventually.
But it had been so nice to want Luca and be wanted in return.
He would enjoy the feeling when his body got on board and find ways to make Luca happy with his hands and mouth and maybe a few toys when it didn’t.
Right now, he was very on board with slick kisses tasting of morning breath, Luca warm from sleep, and his own erection pushing up against Chris’s as he rolled on top of Chris to kiss him more thoroughly.
Chris reached down to wrap his hand around them. He struggled to get both of them in his grip, but Luca leaked enough to make the slide a little slick as he jerked them both together.
“Oh, God,” Luca said, his voice deep and thready. “You—you’re so big against me.”
Compared to Chris’s cock, Luca’s seemed slender and short. It was normal sized as far as cocks went—Chris had done a lot of googling the first time a girl told him he was too big to have penetrative sex—but the contrast made it seem small.
More slick leaked from Luca’s slit.
“You’re into it, aren’t you,” Chris realized. “Do you like how small I make you seem?”
“Shut up,” Luca gritted out.
“Is it a humiliation thing?” Chris asked, slowing the movement of his fist. “Do you want me to make fun of you or something? Because I’m not sure I can—”
“No, you fucking asshole, your ridiculous monster cock turns me on so much I’m about to come all over you after twenty seconds.”
“Hng,” Chris said, his grip tightening without his conscious control. His hips bucked up, and the friction intensified.
Luca paused above him, wide-eyed. “Is that a humiliation thing?”
“…Maybe?”
Chris stroked up the length of their cocks, and they both shuddered.
“Your cock is unbelievable. It pisses me off, you know?”
Chris’s cock throbbed.
Luca’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “You walk around with this as if it’s no big deal. You happen to have the biggest dick outside of the porn industry—do you know what a tease you are? With your cute underwear and your—your blushing?”
“Blushing?” Chris repeated. He had no idea why he hung on every word, but his hand on both their dicks wasn’t making his balls draw up. It was the direct line between Luca’s mouth and the place in the pit of his stomach where pleasure lived.
“As if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“What,” Chris tried, then licked his dry lips and tried again. “What am I doing?”
“Driving me fucking insane.” Luca thrusted down into Chris’s grip.
Chris’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he came in long, hot pulses over his own belly. Above him, Luca grunted and followed suit, as if he’d been forcing himself to wait until Chris got his.
That shouldn’t be so hot.
Luca groaned and collapsed face down on the bed next to him.
After a minute of panting side by side, he lifted his head. “This wasn’t some secret trick to validate your shitty self-esteem, right?”
Chris’s first instinct was to deny it, but he forced himself to consider for a moment. “Actually, I think it’s an ego boost. You like me so much it makes you angry.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
“No, I mean, I love you so much it makes me angry. I wasn’t built to have this much feeling in me.” Luca dropped his head into the pillows with a groan.
Chris stretched his whole body out as far as he could, reveling in the comfortable feeling of satiation.
“Stop looking so smug,” Luca said into the pillows.
“Mm, no. C’mon, we have practice.”
Practice went better than their last few ones had.
Howie still ignored Chris, which stung more and more with each passing day.
Otherwise, they found a better groove. Phil focused on defensive zone drills, saying without saying that the D-core needed to be protecting the net more than they needed to score goals, at least as long as Nilsson started.
The goaltending coach worked with him and the AHL call-up they’d gotten just before the flight out to Montreal, and it must have been invigorating enough for Nilsson to speak up in the locker room and apologize for his performance.
“No way.” Chris sprang up to pat him on his back. “The goalie does not apologize. It’s our job to protect you better.”
The rest of the defense muttered their agreement, and a few forwards agreed.
It didn’t change Nilsson’s save rate—hovering barely above 0.800—but it did make the team feel more like a team.
They had a team lunch after practice, huge plates of noodles and proteins of choice in a pasta bar Jax had found on Yelp.
Chris tried to grab a seat next to Howie to enable a conversation, but Howie slid between Fedorov and Nieminen before he could.
Instead, Chris sat with Luca, which he preferred anyway.
If Howie didn’t want to forgive him, he’d rather be with the person who made him happiest.
“I love tagliatelle,” he said as he dug into his meal. “They taste so authentic.”
Luca, who had a bowl piled high with macaroni, the most American pasta, scoffed. “You could have had better ones with your parents in Montreal.”
“I was in the mood for pizza.”
“Your parents might not be real Italians, but they have good taste in restaurants. The tagliatelle there were fresh. These are store-bought.”
“You went out with Breezy’s parents in Montreal?” Mooney asked Luca.
Luca paused and licked his lips. “Yes.”
Once again, Chris realized he’d been incredibly blind. Platonic roommates did not follow the motion of their friends’ tongues with such interest.
Mooney’s brow furrowed. “And…after?”
“He took me to the botanical gardens,” Chris said. “It was great. I’d never been, and they had these massive light sculptures.”
“Right,” Mooney said, drawing out the vowel. “You two have been hanging out a lot on the road.”
“Sorry.” Chris tried to mean it, but he didn’t feel bad at all. He liked having Luca all to himself. “I keep stealing your road roomie. But he was my roomie first! Anyway, we made a pact.”
“A pact.”
“To do something together in all the cities we travel to.”
“Okay.” Mooney looked down at his plate. “Botanical gardens, huh? So y’all went out for dinner, looked at some plants, and then…”
Chris hid his flush in a big bite of pasta.
“Went back to the hotel.” Luca’s eyes remained fixed on his macaroni. Had he gotten them specifically to be annoyed about them? “Or we would have missed curfew.”
“Oh.” Mooney looked between them, his eyes narrowing. “Oh.”
Luca turned to Chris. “I cannot understand why you think the tagliatelle taste different than any other noodle here. It’s all the same ingredients.”
“The shape makes them taste more authentic.”
“Authentic Italian food is a lie.” Luca speared another forkful with enough force to demonstrate how personally he took its lack of authenticity.
Something about the food here had made him really grumpy.
Chris had no clue what, but Luca wasn’t angry at him, so he would let Luca rant.
“Tomatoes are from America, and every culture in the world invented flatbread with things on it.”
“Huh.” Mooney’s mouth was full of portobello mushroom, chicken, and farfalle, but he talked anyway. “I never thought of the tomato thing. Does that make Italian food technically Mexican?”
“Colombo landed in the Bahamas.”
“Columbo? The dude with the mustache?”
Luca rolled his eyes. “No, Colombo—Cristoforo Colombo. He was an Italian, he has an Italian name, you are all idiots.”
Chris returned to his tagliatelle with a satisfied sigh. He’d missed grumpy Luca. Much as he loved romantic, soft, kind Luca, who showed up when they were alone, he’d fallen for the feral alley cat.
They napped together before the game, which ended up less of a nap and more of an extended make-out session.
Chris owed Mooney an apology for judging him about getting lost in a new relationship, as well as for stealing his roommate.
He’d had no idea how exciting it would feel to be alone with Luca.
They were the same people, and they did mostly the same things, so it was silly to look forward to alone time so much.
Then again, he’d spent all season being excited to hang out with Luca alone, so maybe he was just an idiot.
Either way, having Luca in his bed, even if they didn’t sleep, beat a solo nap before a game by a mile.
But they had hockey to play, so they forced themselves out of bed and onto the bus.
It was Ottawa’s Pride Night, which Chris had forgotten.
An equipment manager stopped by to offer the Sea Lions rainbow tape for warm-ups, since the NHL had come around on the concept again.
So many members of the team used it, too, including Hayes and, after Hayes had elbowed him into accepting it, Vanderbilt.
Chris let himself consider for the first time that he was part of this.
They were doing this special performance because of pride—pride in who Chris was. He sat up a little straighter.