Page 29 of Two for Roughing

Damir braved a glance over his shoulder to glare. Thankfully, Lissy had stopped his gyrating, meaning his cock now rested against his thighs where it belonged. “I apologize for not remembering which strange American children’s film is which.”

“I think Peter Pan is British,” Henderson mused.

Damir shot him a betrayed look. If there was one person who could be relied upon to be seminormal in the locker room, it was Henderson.

“Nah, man.” Ketchup shook his head. “Disney made the movie which makes it American.”

In the ensuing debate about whether the book or the movie ought to count in determining the nationality of children’s media, Damir finished his shower in relative peace and got dressed while considering what he could do to improve the special teams. He didn’t mind double-shifting during the power play, milking every last chance the team got to score—even if he had to skate at full speed for two minutes at a time and then dunk himself into a full-body ice bath after every game.

The problem lay in the penalty kill. The whole league knew the Firecrackers’ PK was for shit. No one in particular could be blamed for the lapses; the problems didn’t arise from the presence of bad players, rather from the absence of exceptional ones. They lacked the kind of stand-out offensive D-man the Sea Lions had in Luca Mazetti, which would be all right if the team didn’t also lack a star two-way forward like the Sea Lions’ Jax Grant.

Damir knew what his skills were, and unfortunately, they did not include defensive play.

He was still mulling it over as he waited for Ketchup to finish gabbing with Lissy, both in the nude, and it occupied him on the car ride home as well.

“I know I’m not getting you out of this funk if the helicopter couldn’t,” Ketchup said when they entered the apartment. His brow was wrinkled as if this were a serious concern.

“The helicopter is horrifying,” Damir said, not for the first time, “and if I were in a funk, which I’m not, it would make me feel worse.”

“The helicopter is hilarious, but we can agree to disagree. You wanna watch the Sea Lions in Montreal and see if they keep getting trounced?”

Damir considered. It wouldn’t improve their own standing, but it would be nice to see Howard.

Ugh.

Nice to see Howard—as if they were friendly acquaintances and not fuckbuddies. Were they fuckbuddies? Were they buddies? Probably not. They’d met all of three times outside of work, and two of those times had been spent having fairly kinky sex.

With a frisson in his stomach, something like guilt and something like longing, Damir thought of that night in San Francisco. Since he’d already arranged his curfew exemption, it had been a no-brainer to stay over. Howard had put on a brave face, but even after a scalding hot shower, the slight shaking of his body persisted, though he’d tried to hide it. Damir had wrapped him up in fresh blankets and fed him a meager feast of grapes and a cut-up protein bar. (The contents of his fridge were a tragedy.) Then he had held Howard in his arms for a good hour while they talked about the game and their teams, and Howard asked a surprising number of questions about growing up in Russia.

Howard had fallen into a deep sleep, and Damir had slid out of bed silently to turn out all the lights and make sure the door was locked. Satisfied he’d taken care of Howard to the best of his abilities, he slipped back between the sheets and slept soundly for eight full hours. The hum of contentment, both from the intense encounter and from having cared for someone who needed him, stayed under Damir’s skin right up until the disaster of a practice today.

“We can watch the game,” he muttered. Maybe he would regain some of the lassitude brought on by Howard if he saw him, even if merely as a tiny moving dot on the TV screen.

“Sweet.” Ketchup threw himself onto the couch, swinging his socked feet up onto the coffee table.

Damir shoved his feet off and got the coasters out from their drawer so Ketchup wouldn’t put his water bottle right on top of the dark-stained oak. Having no eye for interior design didn’t count as an excuse to ruin Damir’s carefully chosen furniture.

The game in Montreal was a matinee, so they’d already missed the first period. The second opened with the Sea Lions down by two.

“You broke their spirits,” Ketchup said. “Hey, we got any popcorn?”

“Have you ever heard of a diet plan?”

“Nope.”

On screen, Howard turned elegantly on his left skate. His mouthguard dangled out of the side of his mouth because he was constitutionally incapable of using the thing for its intended purpose, preferring to yap or chew on it. He skated backward a stretch before absolutely whiffing a pass from his winger. Damir winced in sympathy. He watched Howard exchange a few terse words with the Sea Lions’ coach and then throw his stick. When he was relegated the bench for the next few shifts, Damir pulled out his phone to commiserate.

ddenisov88: sorry your game is going shit. nice skating though

The game did not improve for the Sea Lions from there on out. They made it to overtime and then to the shootout due to a series of baffling reffing choices (an unfortunate constant in the NHL) and Chris Calabrese making a save that would be on every highlight reel if they won the game.

Ketchup shook his head as he watched Howard blow his chance in the shootout. “Sucks. Howie was so good when we were kids, too, but I guess being coached by his dad made all the difference back then.”

“You think?” Damir wasn’t much of an analyst. In video review, the coaches kept telling him things he should have spotted himself but never in a million years could. He wouldn’t have pegged Howard as a draft bust, inasmuch as the term applied to lower first-round picks, but he’d been wrong before.

Ketchup shrugged. “I don’t know. Last season, the Sea Lions kept switching the lines up because of all that conspiracy shit, and I thought his game blew because of all the changes. It’s not his fault the coaches were messing with them, right?”

“Wasn’t it only the defensive coach?”