Page 6 of Locked & Loaded

I wipe my face with the hem of my shirt, suddenly aware of how much I’m sweating, and the irritation comes rushing back in full force. Not just at my own body turning traitor or the heat or the lack of sleep, but at Rodriguez himself and his loud fucking fidgeting.

“Can you please stop fussing?” I say, the words sharper than I mean them to be. “It’s hot in here, and you’re making it impossible to breathe.”

Rodriguez turns to look at me, and his expression is back to the same one he’s been wearing since he got here: unamused, unimpressed, like I’m an interruption he’s decided not to engage with. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t roll his eyes, doesn’t sigh, doesn’t tell me to fuck off. Just looks at me with that flat, infuriating stare and goes back to patting his jacket.

That kind of pissed-off silence is worse than if he’d snapped at me. At least anger would be a reaction. But Rodriguez is being Rodriguez, and it makes me want to throw something.

“Are you looking for your cigarettes?” I ask, because it’s obvious and because I need to fill the silence before it swallows me whole.

He stops patting and looks at me again. “Yes. Do you know where they are?”

“Nope.”

The flicker of interest disappears, and he goes back to searching.

I lie back down and stare at the ceiling, listening, for what must be five minutes, to the rustle of fabric and the soft, frustrated sounds he makes when he still doesn’t find his fucking cigarettes. A few minutes ago, I would’ve enjoyed hearing Rodriguez this close to losing his shit. But after what my brain just did to me, all it does is feel weird and piss me off even more.

Jesus.

“Can you just stop?” I finally snap, sitting up on the bunk.

Rodriguez looks up from his rummaging, his expression closer to pissed than anything I’ve ever seen on his face.

“Just go to sleep,” he says, like the whole sentence is a more polite version of shut the fuck up.

“I can’t,” I say. “You’re making it impossible. You’ve been digging through your shit for twenty minutes like a fucking mouse.”

Rodriguez sets his jaw and turns back to the search with even more focus, as if my complaint has somehow made him more committed to finding the cigarettes. His fingers go through the same jacket pockets again, checking places he’s already checked in case this time they decide to magically produce a pack.

I watch him, and part of me wants to say nothing else. Let him waste his night turning his things inside out. But the heat has shoved my patience past its limit, and watching him sweat through this pointless little ritual feels like sandpaper against my nerves.

“Why are you even smoking again?” I ask, sitting up straighter. “You quit, right? So fucking stop.”

The words come out harsher than I intend, but I don’t care at this point. If I’m going to spend the night in this hellbox with him, I might as well make it interesting.

Rodriguez freezes. His eyes lift to mine, dark and unreadable. For a second, he looks like he’s deciding whether this is finally worth telling me to fuck off. Then his jaw tightens, and he says, “I’m trying to.”

“Well, you’re clearly not succeeding,” I say with a snort, because I’ve already pushed this far, and backing off now would feel like admitting I was wrong. Which I’m not. “You checked your fucking pockets twice already. You probably dropped the pack somewhere outside.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, then maybe someone stole it from you.”

He gives me another long, silent look. “Did you?”

“Maybe,” I say, just to see if I can finally piss him off properly.

Rodriguez doesn’t believe me. He only lets out a breath through his nose, looking more tired than anything now. Annoyingly, I still take it as a victory. It’s a tiny crack in the composure he’s been wearing like armor since the day he walked into our locker room, and apparently I’m desperate enough to count it.

“What do you want from me?” he asks after a moment, his voice almost resigned.

The question hits harder than it should, mostly because it doesn’t sound like one of his usual shutdowns. It sounds defensive. Tired. Too blunt to hide behind. There’s none of that controlled distance he usually keeps between us.

I stare at him, the question hanging in the hot air.

The honest answer is complicated enough that I don’t have a version of it I’m willing to say out loud. At least not right now. I want him to talk to me on the ice instead of leaving me to guess. I want him to admit tonight was as much his fault as mine. I want him to stop being so fucking impossible to read that I spend entire games trying to get his attention instead of stopping pucks.

But all of that will sound small and petty after I’ve just spent the last couple of minutes needling him like an asshole. Probably not the ideal time to start an honest conversation.