Chapter Twenty-Seven
Elliot
Elliot spent the week at Dustin’s, eavesdropping on phone calls with doctors and getting to know Jordan.
He was pretty sure Jordan suspected something was going on between him and Dustin.
Nothing was going on: Elliot stayed in the spare room all week.
Partly out of respect for Jordan. Partly because he didn’t know where he and Dustin stood now.
He thought about what Dustin had said, and they talked about Sal. He cried and Dustin held him and it wasn’t embarrassing. He wasn’t sure what to do with all the new feelings, but maybe that was the point? That there wasn’t any rulebook for that. He just had to…feel them. Which sucked.
He borrowed Dustin’s laptop and did some research and took down some numbers for professionals to talk to. He didn’t call any of them. But he figured he would eventually.
Dustin was physically much better by the end of the week. But Elliot knew it wasn’t his physical health anyone was worried about.
He overheard Jordan say the word ‘retire’ in a conversation, which shook him to the core.
He was making dinner and they were talking in the bedroom. Elliot put on his headphones and pretended he hadn’t heard it.
But the fact that Dustin had even engaged with that conversation left him reeling.
Who was the Great Bendito if he wasn’t playing hockey? And who was Elliot Rodriguez if he wasn’t whooping the Great Bendito’s ass?
On his sixth night there, he went into Dustin’s room and got into bed behind him and put his arms around him without a word.
They didn’t do anything. They just fell asleep like that.
When they woke up in the morning, they showered separately and made coffee and sat on the couch, clean and damp-haired, with Elliot bare-chested in a pair of Dustin’s sweats and his head in Dustin’s lap.
Dustin sipped his coffee, coiling one finger in Elliot’s hair.
“This is weird,” said Dustin. “Right?”
“What?”
“…Us?” He looked down at Elliot.
“Is there an us?”
“I guess that’s up to you at this point. Doesn’t seem like I should have the right to make any more grownup decisions for myself, after Vancouver.”
He was obviously trying to make a joke, but Elliot didn’t think it was funny at all.
He shook his head. “That’s a cop out. Don’t be a pussy.
You have to make decisions: you are a grownup.
” Dustin stared down at him in surprise, and Elliot just stared back.
“You’re the grownup,” he said. It came out hurt; he didn’t care.
He hoped Dustin knew how much it hurt to be let down by a guy you thought was older and wiser and smarter than you. “I’m just a kid, remember?”
Dustin absorbed this. Then slowly, he said, “I don’t think you’re a kid. I think you’re a much better man than me, to be honest.” He sighed. “But I guess I have plenty of time to improve.”
“Yeah. Plenty. Because you’re a grownup but you’re not old. Right? Because all the stuff about you being an old man – that’s a cop out, too. You’re twenty-nine. You don’t have to go into roofing and disappear and act like this is the end of your life. You’re not done.”
That all came out much faster and angrier than he’d meant it to, and he shut his mouth and looked at the ceiling again. Dustin continued to stare at him a moment, looking astonished, then blinked and went back to stroking his hair. “How did I find you?” he said.
That landed hard in the middle of Elliot’s chest, and he looked away and pretended it didn’t. “The league sat us next to each other at a charity event.”
“Mm…” Dustin tilted his head. He sipped his coffee, then leaned over Elliot to put the mug on the table. “Maybe. Whatever it was, it’s weird as hell. I’m not even gay.”
Elliot scoffed. “My cock would beg to differ.”
“You know what I mean.” Dustin watched his thumb as it smoothed Elliot’s eyebrow. “I never thought about another guy in my life.”
“Really?”
Dustin shook his head, and Elliot linked his fingers on his chest and frowned at the ceiling. He never knew that.
Dustin looked down at him. “Did you?”
“Think about other guys?” Elliot shifted, embarrassed. “I tried not to.”
“Did that work?”
“Not really.”
Dustin studied him. “When did you know? Like, when did that start happening, do you remember?”
Elliot’s face went immediately red. He did remember.
He remembered exactly: it was right after the Stanley Cup six years ago, when Dustin put that shirtless locker room photo with the trophy on his Instagram.
That was the first time he’d ever looked at a guy and realized it wasn’t the same way he looked at girls.
He wasn’t sure he had the bolas to tell Dustin how profoundly influential his thirst trap had been, so instead he said, “Did you ever see that movie with the gay cowboys?”
Dustin laughed. “Brokeback Mountain?”
“Yeah. That was a – uh…formative experience.”
Smiling, he slid his fingers into Elliot’s hair. “Tell me about it.”
Elliot’s face went, probably, purple with embarrassment. “Like, a play by play? No way.”
Dustin nodded, watching his fingers. His face was so kind, it kind of did make Elliot want to tell him. Even after he’d screwed up so badly, he was still the only person in the world Elliot would ever feel safe sharing that with.
“Did you ever see it?” Elliot asked. “That movie.”
Dustin’s brow knit. “Brokeback Mountain? If I recall…they fuck in a tent?”
He smiled. “Mhm.”
Dustin trailed the backs of his fingers down the side of his face. “That was it? Cowboys made you gay?”
A shiver went down the back of his neck. Because…no, they didn’t.
You did.
Ay fuck, was he gonna tell him about the Instagram picture? Oh God, he was. Madre de Dios, he was about to tell him about the picture.
He swallowed. “Well, that was…part of it.”
Dustin trailed his fingertip onto his bare chest. “What else?”
“There was a picture,” he said. Dustin’s finger continued onto his stomach, and heat throbbed deep inside Elliot as it landed at his waistband.
“Of what?”
“You.”
Dustin’s eyebrows jumped. He stared at Elliot a moment, and continued trailing his finger. “What picture?”
Elliot’s cock stirred. “The one on your Instagram: in the locker room with the Stanley Cup.”
A flicker of a smile. “What did you like about it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Dustin nodded, smiling. “Okay.”
He trailed circles around Elliot’s belly button, watching the effect this was having on the bulge in Elliot’s sweatpants. When he rubbed the bulge with his palm, Elliot’s hips arched, his eyes fluttering closed. Dustin’s other hand tightened in his hair.
“Fuck,” he murmured. “That got you.”
He wrapped his hand around Elliot and stroked him through the fabric, and Elliot’s back arched further, his mouth falling open, Dustin tipping his head back by the hair now.
It was weeks since Dustin touched him like that – it felt like years.
When he slid his hand inside and pulled out Elliot’s erection, Elliot moaned and tried to look down, but Dustin’s fingers tightened in his hair to keep him still. He began to stroke him.
Elliot was overwhelmed. He felt totally exposed: lying half-naked in his lap with Dustin holding him down by the hair. Telling him about the picture. It should have been terrifying.
It was intoxicating.
When he opened his eyes, Dustin’s gaze was locked on his face. He let go of Elliot’s hair and reached into his boxers, and started to work himself at the same rhythm.
“Can I suck your cock?” he asked, his voice low and tight.
Elliot nodded, and Dustin rolled onto all fours with his hands either side of Elliot’s hips and his knees bracketing his face, taking Elliot in his mouth.
Elliot stared at the thing that was sticking out of Dustin’s waistband inches above his nose.
He’d been thinking about it for weeks. He took it in his hand and sucked the tip into his mouth.
Dustin’s mouth popped off as he looked under his arm at Elliot. “Jesus.”
Elliot lifted his head to take more, and Dustin groaned and seemed to forget what he was doing.
Elliot sucked him down as far as he could, feeling filthy and desperate.
Dustin put his mouth back on him as he began to thrust his hips against Elliot’s mouth, and Elliot stopped working and just let him do it.
Dustin Bennet was fucking his mouth.
Holy shit it was hot. He felt like he was completely at Dustin’s mercy, and he’d never wanted anything more.
He liked that feeling. He remembered what it felt like before he broke down in the bed that night, when it was Dustin’s fingers inside him and he felt more terrified and alive than he ever had in his life.
He tapped Dustin’s thigh and when Dustin looked down at him he said, “Will you – um…do you remember last time…” And then he blushed furiously and couldn’t finish the sentence.
Dustin’s mouth quirked. Like he knew exactly what Elliot was trying to say. He kissed the tip of his dick. “Will I what?”
“Fuck.” Elliot squirmed. “You know.”
“Mm mm.” Dustin kissed it again. “You have to say it.”
“Oh my God, fine.” Elliot huffed and glared at the ceiling. “Please, Dustin Bennet, greatest hockey player of all time, will you put your finger in my asshole.”
Dustin choked on a laugh like he hadn’t been expecting something quite so direct, then stuck his finger in his mouth and pulled it out gleaming.
He wrapped his mouth around Elliot’s cock and took him all the way down as he slid the finger in, and Elliot’s mouth fell open, his hands wrapping around Dustin’s thighs as he bowed off the couch.
Dustin made a low noise and started to work him like he had that night.
Better than that night. His fingers hit something that made sparks shoot up Elliot’s spine, and Elliot made a noise he didn’t know a human was even capable of making.
“Ah,” said Dustin. “Found it.”
“Fuck. What? Do it again.”
Dustin did it again. A jolt of pleasure shot through Elliot, and when he felt Dustin’s mouth around his cock as well he bit his lips together to keep the weird inhuman sound inside where it probably belonged.