HÅKON

    That night, with bloody knuckles and a bruised jaw, I finally go home and find his Instagram. I'd been putting it off, he hasn't followed me and I haven't either, I figure he wanted me to break and do it so I'm breaking and doing it.

    So, alone at my kitchen table, half in the dark, eating a small bowl of yogurt and granola, soggy, because my jaw hurts, I scroll through his account. The first photo is nothing much, him and Steph this summer somewhere on the coast of Maine, arms around each other's shoulders. Rocket's wearing a deep burgundy shirt with a rather stunning Hawaiian pattern on it, unbuttoned down far enough that I can see the tan on his chest and the little silver chain he keeps around his neck.

    I scroll down past the comments and to the next one, also this summer, him sprawled out on a beach chair, showing off his long legs and a little too much of his chest under an unbuttoned, similarly garish as the previous, Hawaiian shirt. He's pulling down his sunglasses just a little to give the camera a wink.

    I scroll quicker, stopping on the next one of him with a girl up on his shoulders, she's got short brown hair and a devilish grin much similar to his, so similar that I check who's tagged to see if she's related to him.

    She's not, her name is Kelly.

    High school reunion? It's a caption that leaves it up to guessing and I don't really trust myself to guess.

    I scroll, bumping into a post from a rooftop in Boston, a somewhat fancy suit over his shoulders, a sly smile on his lips, nothing else, not even a caption.

    He's good at this, much better than I am.

    The next one is the back of his helmet in TD Garden, still in a Bruins jersey. The next, another hockey one but he's got his helmet off and is hugging Steph from the side.

    I make it to the next one and stop again, pausing over a second girl on his page, clearly in the lowlight of a bar or something similar, his eyes up and on her, photo blurry as everything was moving. She's got her arms slung over his shoulders, he's got his around her waist. I can't tell if she's small or if he's just bigger than I thought he was.

    I decide it's a little of both before reading the caption.

    Next time wear shoes you can dance in, sweetheart.

    Immediately, I open up her account, scrolling past Instagram model photos down to just under a year ago where she's got one post with him, her arms over Rocket's shoulders in a different part of the city, the same suit on him, same dress on her. His hair is a wreck, a curly brown wreck, and hers is golden blonde and still sleek even after what looks like an interesting night.

    His hand is splayed out across her waist, big with long fingers and strong forearms.

    One night adventure.

    I swipe back to his page, mouth on the lip of my glass, scrolling down barely another row of posts until I find a photo of him hauling a girl on his shoulder over the side of a boat into the water, arm around her hips like he's a wrestler.

    I take in the strain up the side of his thigh muscle and his defined shoulders before reading the caption.

Lady overboard

    My finger slips on the buttons and my heart swoops up into my throat as I scramble to unlike the post that's well over a year old.

    I flip my phone upside down and slide it away from me before I can do anything else that I'm going to regret.

***

ROCKET

"What am I supposed to be doing?" I manage, staring Steph down over a cup of coffee at 11 at night, knowing the caffeine will do nothing to me and knowing that I got him a decaf because while I don't process it, he'd regret drinking caffeine tomorrow.

    He sighs, puff of air escaping his chest in the dim kitchen of my apartment, white painted bricks lining the wall behind him, a pile of my sticks leaning in the corner. "I don't know, trying not to get killed, or forced to retire, or forced to do something you don't want to, or anything."

    "So, what, that's it? I'm supposed to wallow in lonely queer pity until I'm 29, then retire and hope some twink is into my thirty-years-a-virgin act?"

    He raises an eyebrow, "you are a twink."

    "I'm six foot fucking three and weigh 200 pounds, Sagamore," I grit. "I'm only a twink because I look like, God, I dunno, a fucking polo pony compared to y'all Clydesdales out on the ice."

    His other eyebrow joins the first, "interesting metaphor."

    "I'm huge, in comparison, every guy I've been into has been smaller than me," I take a sip, black coffee burning my throat. "I just- I'm sick of the sidelines, in hockey and in... all this."

    "Are you horny or existential right now, I can't tell."

    "Both, but when has it stopped me?" I lean back against the cold metal chair. "Other guys in this fucking league have to be gay, right now, probably on our own team, how do they do it? How do they do it and how can I do it?"

    "Out of sight," Steph sighs. "Listen, Rocket, I'm sorry, okay? I wish, I wish you could do everything like the rest of us do, live like you want to without a second fucking thought, but you've heard all of it, you were with me in Boston when, when, fuck, Branson rattled off how he beat up a guy in a bar for glancing at his ass while wearing a pride pin and you were with me when the fucking coaches on the Firebirds called Jason a- a you know and you- I'm sorry, God, I just, I can't think of a way for you to do this."

    It strikes an icicle through my heart, a skate blade of fury. "I hate it, Steph."

    "I know."

    I need to lighten it up, I need to build up something else, add something else, I don't want to wallow in this, I can't wallow in this, "and I want to fuck someone so badly."

    Steph lets out a soft snort.

    "C'mon, you know how it is, I've been around you when you're horny, it's like that but worse because I don't know and I want to." I pick a joke at him but he's still got a trace of pity in his eyes.

    "Wet," he shrugs. "Warm, a little tight. Those three things."

    "Not fuck something, fuck someone." I let out a soft laugh. "Like, fuck someone, fuck them, yeah, but like, collarbones and thighs and I want abs and the crook of an elbow, all that shit."

    Steph, like the grandfather he is at heart, chuckles, "yeah, that's, that's my favorite part, I assume it's everyone's. But for me it's more like, necks and sternum and long hair knotted in my fingers and all that."

    "Shut up, I know you're a tits guy."

    "No need to get vulgar."

    "I'm talking about sex, Stephan, not church," I look up at him from where my forehead was on the table. "And you're blushing. You're so into boobs."

    He sticks out his tongue at me, "hey, I like ass too, you can't just pass that part up, I'm a well rounded sex-haver."

    I flip him off, "you're a tits guy."

    "I never said that was wrong, I just said you're ignoring a very vital part of my sexual interest."

    "Straight men scare me," I groan. "At least I can pick out and appreciate other parts of women than boobs and ass."

    Steph smacks a hand over his chest, feigning offense, "the question is ass or tits, nobody is actually exclusively into those, if I had to pick anything it would be, like, thighs, or stomach, or wrists, or the spot between a shoulder and neck, it's not an exclusive, it's just a highlight. You have not had the luck in your life to wrap your hand around an ass cheek or a boob, it's phenomenal but I'm not only into that."

    I stick my tongue out at him, "still."

    "Still what? What's the question for guys? Is there a question for guys?"

    I put my tongue into my cheek, thinking. "Ass or... shoulders, probably."

"So?"

"What? Ass or shoulders?" I shrug. "Bro, both."

"Exactly," he takes a sip of his coffee. "So do you need to get laid or do you need therapy?"

    I roll my eyes at him, "laid now, therapy later."

    "I can't do much about the first one, but I will tell you that maybe a one night stand is a shitty idea considering one person you don't trust could end your career with a statement. So, there's that. I'm sorry."

    "It's fine. I'll just-" I wave at my hip area. "Fix the horny by myself. I'm just mad and gay about it."

    Steph nods but stays quiet for a few moments, "what do you want, when you do find, you know, him. What do you think you want for that?"

    I purse my lips, "I've always thought, maybe," Steph and I are friends like girls are friends, so this type of topic isn't uncharted, but isn't comfortable either. "That I was more of a lover than someone who gets loved, you know? Like I trust myself more to give than to take. I want a guy who needs to be coaxed down, someone wound up, stressed. Something to combat how washy I am with everything, someone with a schedule, someone with a regimen. Someone with, like, adult qualities that can keep track of me. Someone I can take apart bit by bit."

    He's frowning, "I've never thought of someone for you like that, but, I like it. Better than what I was thinking."

    "What were you thinking?"

    "Bounce off the walls #2, except, you'd get-"

    "Overwhelmed," I finish. He nods.

    "You'd get overwhelmed, so I ruled it out, and then I thought maybe someone smart, but then you'd get insecure and feel talked down to if they're the type of smart I was thinking of, and then I thought maybe someone younger than you by a little who would be a little more impressionable, who you could teach to love you the way you want, and then I reconsidered because I don't think you'd like taking care of a baby gay, you've already done it once with yourself, and then I shot older in my ideas and I think you'd hate being treated like you don't know what you're doing. So, yeah, wound up like a spring is probably the best I've heard yet."

    I sigh, setting my chin on the table, "every time I imagine it, he's my height or a little scooch taller, big enough that he can handle me. He's blond, maybe, but there's color in him, somewhere. He likes his coffee with too much sugar but everyone always assumes he wants it black, and he just knows. Knows when I can't handle something, knows when I want to leave, knows when I'm tired, when I'm hungry, when I've said too much, knows where I want to be kissed and how, knows when touching me is too much and not enough, when everything. Like a friggin' psychic or something."

    "Well, if I run into a twenty-three to twenty-five-year-old gay psychic around six foot three with chronic anxiety, I'll give him your number," Steph reaches over and lovingly smacks the side of my head. "You're such a romantic."

    "I'm gay," I raise an eyebrow at him. "Being a romantic came with my attraction to men. It was a one-two deal. Like a set of punches."

    "You're horny. That'll make you think of romance."

    "I was a romantic before I could get horny. Now I'm both."

    "How's it going with the cute guy you told me about from the coffee shop?"

    I roll my eyes, "I'm a hockey player. He doesn't have an ounce of clue that I'd be willing to go out with him, plus, he's just not all that exciting, like yeah he's cute but I'm not... excited."

    "You gotta stay away from the romance books, some of the best stuff starts out pretty eh."

"I'm so, just-" my phone buzzes on the table and I pick it up, a notification immediately under my mom's text catching my attention.

    Yeti liked a photo of mine on Instagram.

    From the summer before this one. Ten minutes ago.

    I bite back a smile, wondering why on Earth he was stalking my account.

    I follow him back, opening his account and immediately being somewhat disappointed and somewhat impressed at the same time.

    He's got on-ice photos, a few summer workout photos, (one specific one that catches my attention, his shirt is off, pushing one of those annoying weight sled things, like I said, ass) a few pictures with someone who I immediately pin as a girlfriend, considering that her skin tone is not similar to his, still pale and Swedish, just a few shades darker, and that she's hugging him in most of the photos, but when I check the account, her name is Isa Rex and she's engaged to a gorgeous tall man with fluffy brown hair and a blinding grin.

    Steph is watching me with a peculiar look on his face, "what is going on over there and why are you smiling like that?"

    "Yeti just liked a photo of mine from the summer before this one, like, a year ago, more than."

    His eyebrows shoot up, "oh?"

    "Yeah, okay, plan of attack, do I send him a DM or like one of his photos back?"

    "Like one back, play with him a little, that's joking, the DM could come off as forward."

    I roll my eyes back at him, finding one from a summer ago, a photo of the back of his head, not really, but mostly, and shoulders, (again, shoulders) and a lake or something, but mostly his white white white hair. Okay he's not really the focus of the photo, it's the sunset, but I'm obsessed with his hair.

    I like it, easy as that.

    I set my phone down and look up at Steph, "now, I understand that liking teammates is a chronically bad thing and that it is incredibly bad for me, but if that man offered I'd bite."

    "Don't lie to yourself," he takes a sip of coffee. "You'd lick. Like he's some big huge Swedish sex popsicle and you're a little kid at a fair."

***

HÅKON

    I get the notification while washing my dish, Rocket liked an old post of mine in return.

    I don't know what to do, how to read it, how to handle it.

    I don't know what to do so I set my phone up on the fridge, spin on my heel, and go get ready for bed, trying to burn the image of his bare stomach out of my head.

It's making me feel sick. The rush of electricity down my spine reminding me that I'm attracted to him, like some sort of fucking pervert, makes me uncomfortable, makes me want to squirm and bury my head under a snowbank and beg for it to go away, for him to go away, for... for my fucking interests to go away.

***

i wanna know what it's like just to feel alright

i put my hand on my heart to show you I can't lie

thin - DBMK

***

the way I didn't want to add chapters to this but I'm adding chapters to it...

anyway august 8th will be a happy 1 year anniversary of STTM

-rabid