by R J Scott
Skates laced, I put on my under-armor, pulled the tapes nice and firm, then slipped on my jersey. Normally we’d be in practice jerseys for something like this, but the cameras wanted to see our names and numbers to build brand recognition. When I glanced around the room, at big Stan, at our very tall captain Hurleigh, at the slim but sturdy Ten, I could see we were all different, but maybe there was a theme here. Maybe we were all too similar for non-hockey fans to pick us apart.
I looked up as the door opened and Trent walked in, this time without his orange-clothed grandma at his side. There was no way anyone wouldn’t know who he was. He was in what I guessed was his version of a practice jersey – form-fitting black pants and a dark gray shirt that was snug and had a hint of diamante on the V-neck. His hair was darker today, but his makeup was more flamboyant, his lip gloss scarlet, his eyes darkly lined. Cameras followed him in, and he was smiling at us.
Did anyone else in the room notice that the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes? I tracked my gaze down his body, pausing momentarily at his groin. I pretended I was checking if he wore a cup, but mostly I knew exactly what I was doing. I carried on checking him out completely, from his strong thighs, to the muscles that showed in the pants, right down to his skates.
Not figure skates.
Hockey skates.
“You’re wearing our gear,” I blurted, because fuck if I have any control over my idiot mouth.
The cameraman moved and zoomed in on my face, and I tried my best to look neutral.
Trent glanced at me, then struck a pose in time for the camera to pan to him. “I need to feel what you do if I’m going to do this right,” he answered, and ended with a nod and a seriously fine pout of his soft lips. He had this flamboyant thing down pat.
“Don’t want you falling over,” I said.
Why did I say that? Why didn’t I just accept his answer and move on? Because it was all my fault what happened next.
He extended a hand. “Come with me.”
I didn’t really have a choice, because every eye was on me, and the cameraman had focused right back on my idiot face.
So I took his hand, and he led me out of the locker room and through a small corridor and out to the ice. This was obviously my first time on the ice at this rink, but it didn’t matter – as soon as my blades were on the hard, cold stuff, I was at home. There were the markings of a hockey rink there, but no Plexiglas, just the oval.
And I was still holding his hand, which he was gripping hard. He pushed into a glide, and I followed his action, and soon we were skating smoothly in figure eights on the ice. He was wearing thin gloves, so I couldn’t feel the warmth of his skin directly, but his hold was firm and sure, and he apparently wasn’t scared of me falling on my heavy ass and taking him down with me.
“Don’t even think of lifting me,” I murmured when we were at the apex of the eight furthest from the camera.
He side-eyed me. “Likewise,” he said, and there was a hint of a smile there, and this time it did reach his eyes. “Pick up some speed in the crossovers and then come to a fast stop in the middle.”
“At center ice?” I asked for confirmation.
He nodded and let go of my hand, and I put on the speed that I knew I had, throwing in some accurate crossovers, then scraping the flat part of my blade on the ice and snowing to a dead stop right in the middle of the center ice circle.
I realized the camera had moved to Trent, who was repeating what I’d just done. Fancy footwork into the corner, and then he did this thing with his body – kind of a twist and a jump – and then he landed and snowed to a stop, his blades losing forward momentum literally an inch from mine. He’d just done the same as me, with added dancing, and he hadn’t fallen on his ass without the toe picks he’d have on his usual skates.
“So I’m guessing you won’t be falling over then,” I deadpanned.
He put his hands on his slim hips and looked up at me. “Probably will,” he said, “but I’ll do it with style.”
“No crashing into the boards, then,” I said.
I didn’t want the conversation to end, but by this time the rest of the team had joined me, and Trent slipped from being a cocky know-it-all with a teasing smile into professional mode. He waited until everyone was ranged around him, his only reaction when we all took a knee a slight raise of his eyebrow. I could tell he wanted to say something – likely an off-color comment about men on their knees – but he didn’t. I thought about saying something to get a reaction, but it wasn’t me who said inappropriate shit on this team – that was Adler Lockhart, with his ability to run his mouth without direction.
Anyway, my knee hurt.
“We’re going back to basics,” Trent announced. “I want film of all of you doing drills. Balance, glides, jumps, lunges, strides, crossovers, so I can do some prep work on where you need help.”
I saw a couple of the players exchange pointed looks. I had this insane urge to poke them to listen to what he was saying, but I held myself back. One quelling look from the captain, and they stopped with the rolled eyes, but I felt the uneasy shit in Trent’s audience. I guess none of us had expected we’d be faced with going back to peewee.
“Who wants to go first?”
Ten put up his hand, and dropped it immediately when his teammates, me included, shouted out things like “Suck-up!” and “We’re not in school!” I’d known it would be Ten who went first; the man was so damn eager to learn and improve all the time.
And he needs to improve. He’s only here because of his name. He’s not a fucking superstar.
I blinked away my thoughts and skated to the goal to join the line. I wasn’t at the front, I wasn’t at the back; I was comfortably in the middle, right behind Stan. Being a goalie, Stan wasn’t the greatest skater, but he could still move, and damn if we hadn’t caught him doing a cartwheel in the corridor before one of the playoff games. He was certainly agile.
Ten did all he was asked, pushing off, skating the figure eight, with deliberation at first, and then with raw speed. He glided, jumped, and did everything that was asked of him. He skated to a stop at the back of the queue like a kid who’d just done a water slide and was eager to go again. Freaking Boy Scout.
When it came to Stan’s turn, he was a lot less graceful than Ten, but boy was he strong, an enormous presence on the ice. Only he didn’t stop quite as well as he should have, and I saw the inevitable even as it was happening.
Contact between him and Trent, the smaller man flailing a little before Stan caught him and bodily lifted him off the ground like Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.
Stan looked hopelessly apologetic and Trent, small in his huge arms, looked a bit panicked before he replaced the shock with a fake laugh.
“We’ll make a figure skater of you yet,” Trent said for the cameras; a perfect soundbite.
Stan set him down, and he was grinning. “I help,” he announced, and nodded like that was vitally important. Show-off.
I was up next, following exactly what everyone else had done, with my usual flair on the crossovers, confidence in the small jumps, building up speed and stopping dead one inch from Trent’s skates. He didn’t flinch, and I didn’t apologize, and something passed between us. A flare of something – attraction, defiance, arousal? Fuck knew what it was, but this man was getting under my skin, and I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips.
I should pick him up like Stan had. I could do that; he’s light as air, and I probably bench-pressed his weight. And he’d look all kinds of pretty in my arms.
And in my bed, sprawled on the covers waiting for me to—
“Earth to Dieter… Move out the way, dude, it’s my turn.” Arvy was shoving at me, but I was staring, my fingers itching with the need to pick Trent up.
Then the shoving broke through the weirdness, and I joined the line at the back, waiting for my next turn.
Every so often, Trent looked over at me; sly, careful looks when he had his back to the camera. But I could
see him, and I didn’t look away.
He knew I wanted to pick him up. He had to know I wanted him in bed, his makeup smudged, his gloss smeared on my cock.
The session finished, and I wasn’t winded or aching from too much work. I was just warmed up, and despite my aching knee I felt like we’d just done a leisurely family skate instead of a workout. The camera was in the room with us again, and part of me hoped that Trent was going to be sharing our space. No such luck – today was all about one-on-one talks to camera with the skaters about what they wanted from the training, and no sign of Trent at all.
I massaged my knee as I talked.
“I want to work on my speed,” I announced. “I’ve seen other skaters work with guys like Trent, and I’ve seen how the way they hold themselves adds to their speed.”
Not soon enough, they moved on to Stan, who tried to convey his enthusiasm and ended up relying on a thumbs-up. At least he couldn’t butcher that one.
I excused myself and, back in my street clothes, I left the locker room. I wasn’t looking for Trent. I didn’t want to see Trent. I had nothing to say to him. Or at least that was what I told myself.
I found him, though. In an office at the end of a long corridor, after following signs for the manager. I knocked on the open door, and he looked up in surprise. His makeup was still flawless, but he’d changed into this loose, flowing T-shirt that did nothing to hide the slim, toned man beneath.
He was wide-eyed for a second, then he relaxed back in his chair.
“Can I help?” he asked. “Is there something you need?”
You, I thought to myself, but didn’t say that out loud.
“Do you do private lessons?” I asked, in a panicked moment of what-the-fuck-do-I-say.
He stood up from the desk, came around to the front, and sat on the edge of it.
“I have a contract. I’m not allowed to privately train anyone on the show.”
Damn. That had been my way of getting some alone time with the sexy Trent. I moved closer to his desk, picking up a photo of him from the Sochi games.
“Silver,” I summarized, and placed the picture back on the desk.
“You’ve never been called to play for…Germany, is it?”
“I can’t imagine that happening,” I said, with a huge dose of self-deprecation. I was dual nationality, German/Canadian, with a heavy bias on the Canadian. Still, it was Germany I would want to play for.
Come to think of it, the German national team would be my most likely option; Canada was kind of full.
“So,” Trent started. I expected him to add something like “This is awkward”, or something else that would fill the conversational emptiness. Then he went and shocked the hell out of me. “I was staring at you, and I want to feel like I can trust you enough that I could kiss you, but I don’t. Sorry.”
I blinked at him, lost for words. “What?”
He tilted his head and looked at me thoughtfully. “You’re gay, right? Or bi? Or was I wrong?” He tensed a little, like he was expecting me to beat him up for the question.
“Bi,” I answered, and I was staring back.
“I knew you were – I can tell when a man is assessing the size of my dick.”
“Your ass,” I corrected. “I was judging your ass.”
Trent patted himself on the rear. “It’s a good ass,” he commented, like this was an everyday conversation.
“You have a high opinion of yourself,” I said, not nastily, more to tease.
Sadness flittered across his face. “Someone has to have,” he said.
We were at an impasse. I didn’t know what to say, and he looked like he was a million miles away, lost in thoughts I had no access to.
Which was why, when he reached up and carded his fingers into my hair, went on tiptoes and kissed me gently on the lips, I went into a weird shock. I didn’t move back in horror; equally I didn’t deepen the kiss, and we parted with Trent looking up at me thoughtfully.
“So, we did that,” he murmured.
“We did,” was all I could think to say.
“It’s done. It was okay. Nothing with sparks or anything.”
He sounded like he was marking the kiss out of ten, or six, or however ice skating scoring worked. Full marks for confidence, only half for the kiss.
In a strong, determined move, I pulled him close and kissed him for real. Lips, tongues, and an inability to breathe. When we parted he was wide-eyed, his lip gloss smeared and his hands loose at his sides.
“That…” he began, but stopped.
I wiped away the stickiness of gloss from my lips and stepped back. Then my own kind of confidence came to the fore.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was good.”
And then I turned and left before someone walked in on us and saw me fucking Trent over the desk.
Because shit, that had been one hell of an explosive kiss.
Five
Trent
Four days later, and that kiss was still haunting me. It had been a stupid thing to do. I’d known that when I’d reached for Dieter and initiated things, yet it had felt so right at the time. Right but stupid. That could be the title of my autobiography. Right but Stupid: The Trent Hanson Story – available where books about misguided fucktards are sold.”
The sigh that left me was legendary. I ended the tape of Tennant Rowe’s skating talents. I’d been there in the manager’s office of my rink for over an hour trying to concentrate and pick out where I thought the Railers needed work. Or perhaps I should say what I could add to their skating skills. I’d hidden myself away in this little stuffy cubicle to get some time away from the cameras. My gods, but I was tired of them already. It seemed as if I couldn’t take a piss without someone with a camera or a makeup tote appearing at my side.
That morning had been a particularly bad one. I’d woken up as hard as a locust fence post and beaten off to a sultry fantasy that had involved my dick in Dieter Lehmann’s ass. Knowing that the man was under my skin so deeply irked and titillated me. Maybe my irritation with myself for letting an ape like that into my fantasies was what had made the orgasm so intense. Yes. That was what we were going to say it had been.
Then the call from Mom at “really, mother” o’clock informing me that my stepfather, aka Voldemort, had called and begged her to go visit him and talk. The fact that she had to call me and see what I thought about the idea had lit me up like a Fourth of July firecracker. I hadn’t yelled at her, of course, I’d merely tried my best to talk her out of going to see him. After the call had ended with her still fluctuating between saying no and saying yes, I’d ripped into my poor house like a dervish. I’d tossed my sewing room. Tossed it. Now I’d have to go home with a stupid camera crammed up my ass and set the area where I created my costumes to rights.
“Why are people such twats?” I asked the office. The AC hummed in reply.
I moved to the next video and groaned. Dieter was on my screen now. His power on those skates was undeniable, but he also could use some refinement. And my hands on his thighs…parting them so I could wiggle between them and take what I was sure was a fat, long cock into my mouth and suck him so hard and so well he passed out from the pleasure.
Voices slipped into the porn reel in my mind. I jerked my hand from my crotch, aghast at being so weak-willed, and cocked my head slightly. Was someone singing “Fox on the Run” while someone else hissed at them to stop? No one was supposed to be there for another thirty minutes.
I pushed myself from the hard chair I’d been moping and daydreaming in and peeked around the door of my rink manager’s office. There in the corridor, alone, were Layton Foxx and Adler Lockhart.
Adler was the singer, if that was what you wanted to call the caterwauling. Layton was waving a hand at the hockey player as if trying to quiet the man. Then Lockhart leaned into Foxx, pressing him gently against the wall and kissing him as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
Well, now. Looked like Tennant, Jared and Dieter weren’t the o
nly ones on the team who were marching under the rainbow flag.
I leaned on the doorframe and watched the passionate moment. When they broke apart, Foxx caressed Lockhart’s face so lovingly it made me ache. Being a sour little queen, I cleared my throat. Adler leaped back as if he’d just painfully discovered a hornet in his cup. Foxx spun to look at me. I wiggled a couple of fingers at the lovers.
“You may wish to have your assignations in a more private place. May I suggest this office?” I waved a gloved hand at the room behind me.
“Look, it wasn’t what you think it was,” Adler stammered.
I cocked a slim eyebrow.
“Okay, it was what you thought it was, but please don’t out us.”
“Oh my gods. Do I look like the type of man who would out other men? Please.” I walked down to where they stood like a pair of petrified trees. “Just be careful if you’re hiding this relationship. I mean it about the cameras. They followed me home and taped me sitting on the couch watching TV. They even asked if they could film me talking to my mother about the scandal. Maybe she’s smart to keep her distance from this whole fiasco.”
“Christ,” Foxx murmured.
I nodded.
“Thank you for being so…”
“Gay and understanding? My pleasure. Now go off and be happy lovers somewhere else. The kids will be arriving shortly, and so will the damn cameras.”
Adler slapped my shoulder so hard I winced. “You’re a good guy even if you do wear lipstick the same color as my mom.”
Layton groaned and took his affable kissing-mate off by the hand, the social media man’s mouth going a mile a minute.
How wonderful it would be to have someone to scold about silly little social gaffes. I slipped back into that tiny office, closed the door, and spent the next forty minutes watching Dieter on ice. By the time the children were ready for me, I was a hot mess, but I put on my makeup and my performing smile and I sashayed out onto the ice like the fucking star I was. My skaters – the kids ranging in ages from six to sixteen – all applauded and gathered around me.