Thrown Off the Ice

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  Liam may have the innocent, doe-eyed look going on, but he’s got a dirty fucking mind, and he’s always happy to share. He goes nonverbal fast, but before Mike gets him there he’s as mouthy as Mike would have expected, more imaginative than Mike would have ever thought. Mike’s got to wonder at how much porn this kid has watched, because he’s got a list in his head that’s creative as hell, sometimes impractical, always interesting.

  Mike’s leaning towards simplicity tonight; Liam’s on a hair trigger as it is, so creativity would just be wasted. Hell, Liam could probably get off just by rutting against Mike, already breathing fast and uneven, trying to rub himself off against Mike’s stomach. It’s not really what Mike had in mind, though, so he holds Liam down by the hips, ignoring Liam’s frustrated groan when he bypasses his cock completely, preferring the unsteady inhale when Mike gets his tongue in him.

  Mike eats him out until he’s begging for Mike to fuck him, and then — maybe because he’s still a little fucking pissed — he keeps going, until Liam’s fucking his ass back onto Mike’s face, hands fisted in Mike’s hair so he can keep him where he wants him. Mike may actually be strangled by Liam’s thighs tightening around his head every time he does something right, but he’s okay with dying like that, Liam’s breath hitching into sobs while Mike tongues him in short, brutal stabs. Liam ends up on such a hair trigger that all Mike needs is to get a hand on him, head turned to suck a kiss into Liam’s thigh, and Liam’s coming, easy.

  Mike gives him a minute, and Liam’s drowsy and loose when Mike slicks his fingers and opens him up. The kid lets out these hiccuping sounds at first, oversensitive but happy to take it, until he’s nudging back against Mike’s fingers, slowly getting hard again, because he’s a fucking teenager, Mike really needs to remember he’s a fucking teenager, he is fucking a teenager.

  Liam’s completely hard by the time Mike shoves into him, urging Mike on while he’s still spattered with his own come, thighs flush with beard burn, begging like a whore. He’s a fucking picture like that, and Mike isn’t gentle with him at all, just takes what he wants, how he wants it, Liam goading him for harder, faster, please, the whole way through.

  *

  Shit with Liam descends into a routine, if Mike could describe it that way. Mike practices, Mike plays, Mike gives hits and takes them, takes and throws punches, and Mike takes Liam apart on his sheets, presses his mouth against the sounds he makes, lets Liam rearrange him to his preference after, like Mike’s the grumpiest teddy bear a boy could ever need.

  Liam keeps jumping him like the oversexed, obnoxious little brat he is, but now he’ll also fidget his way through a TV show, a movie, only stilling after Mike physically restrains him. He sits on Mike’s counter and backseat cooks, though if he knows how to make anything other than toast Mike would be amazed. When they’re in Edmonton he drinks all of Mike’s beer because he’s too cheap to buy his own, eats everything Mike puts in front of him, uses Mike as a test subject until he’s mostly eradicated his gag reflex, an experiment Mike was glad to participate in.

  Liam does finally leave Mike alone on road trips, for a loose definition of alone. He quits attempting to clumsily seduce him, sneak into his room like a sex-crazed stalker, but he still sits with him at breakfast, hair in his half-closed eyes, the same exact kid who once fell asleep in Mike’s shower, a fact Mike was alerted to by a thud and a yelp. The kid who moans over Mike’s eggs like they’re special and not just scrambled, then pokes at the shit hotel ones disconsolately.

  Liam falls asleep on Mike’s shoulder on a flight home, looking so young, innocent, his eyelashes brushing his cheeks. Mike repeatedly has to save him from getting shit written all over his face, though he shouldn’t even bother, because Liam deserves it: what is he thinking, sleeping around all these assholes? Mike should definitely be included in that number. The kid is ruining his asshole reputation.

  Mike realizes, with dawning horror, that the kid has him wrapped around his finger, and has for awhile. Liam thinks he’s being clever about it, a kid trying on seductive, but Mike can see through every game he plays, every front he puts on. He won’t admit it, though, because the truth — that Mike wants him enough that it doesn’t matter how smooth or not he is — is too fucking embarrassing to bear.

  Liam’s eighteen. Mike remembers eighteen, how intense everything was and how quickly that intensity faded. He knows that Liam’s going to get his fill and then jump right into another adventure with equal enthusiasm, sans gag reflex. And that’s okay. Mike’s okay with that, he understands it, except with Liam asleep on his shoulder on the way back from Pittsburgh, mouth slightly ajar, bottom lip pink and plush and always too inviting, Mike realizes for the first time that when Liam trots off for his next adventure, Mike will regret his leaving.

  Chapter 5

  Mike has made his peace with the fact that this thing he has with Liam, whatever the fuck it is, will be temporary. And that’s fine. That’s understandable.

  Liam is eighteen, stretching his little rookie wings, and Mike is thirty, on the wrong end of his career, starting to look retirement right in the eye. He’s too old for the shit they’ve got going, but he’s gotten in too deep to cut himself free, and he’s made his peace with that too. Well, minus some wailing and gnashing his teeth whenever he remembers that during his own rookie year, Liam was in the first fucking grade.

  He doesn’t like the fact that what they have is going to be temporary, but it’s fine. He doesn’t like that he doesn’t like that fact, for god’s sake. Why should he even mind? The kid’s a fucking menace. He’s probably taking years off Mike’s life, piling on stress that even the game can’t. But then, he’s the stressor and the cure: whenever Mike wants to strangle Liam or maybe himself, he finds the best relief tends to be getting balls deep into him. Liam’s surprisingly flexible. It’s a godsend.

  The point is, he’s ready, he’s prepared, he is a zen fucking master, right up until it’s no longer a hypothetical.

  It happens because Liam’s mad at him. Mike has no idea why Liam’s mad at him, but his anger is pretty much impossible to miss, since Liam’s idea of subtlety is about on par with a puck to the face. Mike doesn’t particularly care that Liam’s mad at him right now, because Mike just came out on the wrong side of a fight with Morris, who apparently did not enjoy Mike mashing up his face during their last meeting.

  Mike has a hastily stitched up cut under his eye and some trouble with his depth perception; got clucked at by the team doctor even after he was declared concussion free. Liam being pissed at him for who the fuck knows what is not even on his list of the shittiest things about this day.

  He’s not on painkillers, because their doctor is a fucking sadist who gave him a couple of anti-inflammatories and a look that clearly said that Mike could buck the fuck up. But that’s fair, he supposes. It’s all superficial damage, and at least he knows the throb behind his eye isn’t a symptom of anything worse. Still, when the team goes out after the game he follows along, because if he can’t kill the pain with pharmaceuticals, he’ll do it the old fashioned way. Better men than him have dulled their pain with booze.

  The second they get to the bar Liam peels off to commune with the other rookies and be mad at Mike for whatever the fuck. It’s sort of a relief, honestly, because Mike’s tired, tired and sore and annoyed that he got put on his ass. Getting to sit quietly with a beer is probably the first good thing to happen to him today.

  Mike drinks his first beer mostly in peace, peace being the old guard sitting around and bitching about Calgary beating them yet again while the young, single, newly elite go looking for some of the ladies of Edmonton who aren’t over them yet. He gets halfway through his second beer before he finally looks around to make sure Liam isn’t getting himself into trouble, because he’s been suspiciously quiet. Usually he can hear that cackle of his from all the way across a room, but he doesn’t think he’s heard it once.

  Liam’s easy to spot, leaning against the bar, hip cocked in
the jailbait hustler pose he seems to think is irresistible. Mike’s found the pose too hilarious to dissuade him from that assumption, but apparently Mike’s opinion isn’t shared by the guy talking to Liam.

  The fucker’s standing too far into Liam’s space, crowding him against the bar. He’s no more than 6’0”, and probably narrower than Liam, but he’s still tall enough that Liam has to look up at him, flashing that grin of his that’s actually irresistible, not that Mike would ever tell him that, give him that kind of ammunition.

  And Mike was prepared for this, he was, but it was one thing to know it was going to happen eventually and another thing entirely to watch it unfold; the way Liam’s entire body seems to lean into the guy, the way their hands are almost overlapping on the bar, the way that Liam bites his lip.

  Then there’s the fact that half the roster is scattered throughout the bar, that Rogers is sitting to Mike’s left. It’s not any of Mike’s business if Liam’s behaving like a fucking moron — it’s never been his business, so long as Liam doesn’t try to involve him in the idiocy — but he can’t believe that Liam is being this obvious, this stupid.

  Mike finishes his drink in a few long swallows, keeping an eye on Rogers to see if he notices his brat’s trying to pick up a douchebag — he doesn’t seem to — and then heads to the far end of the bar, the one that doesn’t have Liam practically spreading his legs at someone else in invitation. He gets a shot to burn, a beer to chase. Keeps his eyes on the beer and off of Liam, hoping everyone else is doing the same.

  When he heads back to the table, he can’t keep himself from glancing over again, and Liam catches him looking. He smiles then, slow and wide, triumphant, and Mike sees fucking red. It’s one thing if Liam wants to move the fuck on — hell, Mike would move the fuck on if he wasn’t such a fucking idiot over the kid — but Liam’s brash and thoughtless, not mean. Not usually, at least.

  The guys at the table seem to brush off Mike’s bad mood as the product of losing, a messed up face, a bad fight. They quit trying to involve him in the conversation, leave him alone with his drink and his bared teeth, and when he heads out, nobody’s in any hurry to stop him. At home, Mike pops a couple aspirin for the throb behind his eye, rubs his thumb over his split knuckles, already itching for another fight.

  He’s mostly killed a beer and is trying and failing to convince his body that sleep is a better option than fighting or fucking when there’s a knock on the door. He doesn’t know who he’s expecting to be on his porch, but it isn’t Liam, who looks determined, hard. He’s got his hands in his jeans and the proper coat that Mike caved and got him thrown over his shoulder despite the cold, because fuck acting like a reasonable person, Liam Fitzgerald isn’t interested in any of that shit.

  “The fuck you want, Fitzgerald?” Mike snaps, and realizes the anger in him isn’t simmering so much as it’s boiling, flaring up in response to Liam’s presence.

  “You left,” Liam says.

  “You seemed to have found decent entertainment,” Mike says.

  Liam frowns. “You weren’t supposed to leave.”

  Mike doesn’t understand right up until he does, and he has to turn away because he honestly doesn’t think he can look at Liam right now. His head is throbbing, and his knuckles are throbbing, and right now all he wants is to make Liam feel the same or even worse, so he should probably close the door, calm himself down, and talk to Liam like a fucking adult in the morning. He is one, after all, and Liam is too, even if it usually seems to be in name only.

  “So what,” Mike says, focusing on the closet opposite just to look at something that isn’t Liam. “What were you trying to do, Fitzgerald? You trying to hurt my feelings, that it? Trying to piss me off? Get me jealous? The fuck was your brilliant idea?”

  “Mike,” Liam snaps, and Mike looks at him. He looks pissed, which is pretty fucking rich.

  “Go home, Fitzgerald,” Mike says, and goes to close the door. Liam jams his foot in it, and Mike’s half tempted to just keep closing it, but he stops.

  “You really want to do this right now?” Mike asks.

  Liam crosses his arms, and Mike turns around, walks away. Goes to grab himself another beer, because he’s going to fucking need it.

  Liam follows him in, boxes him in the kitchen, like he could ever stop Mike from leaving if Mike didn’t want to be stopped. Mike leans against the counter, twists off the cap of his beer, takes a draft of it. Tries his best to be silent, still, to push down the tangled mess of himself, somehow contain it.

  “You don’t pay attention to me,” Liam says, petulantly directing the words to the floor. A brat. A spoiled fucking brat.

  “I don’t pay attention to you,” Mike repeats flatly, and when Liam looks up, jaw set, “If you want someone to fall at your fucking feet, go find a puck slut.”

  “I don’t want—” Liam starts, then sighs, loud and theatrical, like the fucking teenager he is. “I want you to pay attention to me.”

  “You’re always fucking here,” Mike shouts. “I can’t get rid of you. What more do you want from me? You want to hold hands, Fitzgerald? You want a fucking boyfriend?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Liam shouts back.

  Mike drops his beer against the counter, lucky the bottle doesn’t shatter. He gets Liam’s chin between his fingers, makes sure Liam’s looking him straight in the eye. “I am not your boyfriend, brat,” he says, slow, so that Liam can’t pretend not to understand him. “I am never going to be your boyfriend. If you want one, go find some naive idiot who’ll take you.”

  Liam wrenches his face away, and Mike lets him go, waits until he hears his front door slamming before he picks his beer up again and drains it. Fights the urge to throw it against the fucking wall. It’s for the best that Liam’s out of range.

  *

  Liam won’t look him in the eye during practice the next day, and Mike tells himself that’s easier. Easier to let it die on his own terms, easier to end it before he gets in any deeper. He’s already in too deep as it is.

  Mike goes home, finishes the rest of his stock of beer, flips through channels, half expecting a knock on the door, a ring of the bell. Liam’s never able to leave well enough alone. Except maybe Mike actually got through his idiot head this time. Maybe this time he actually said something that stuck.

  Shame it wasn’t something he meant. Seems like Liam chose a bad time to start listening.

  Liam still isn’t looking at him when they fly out to Winnipeg. He takes a seat beside Morris, sticks close to him once they’re off the plane. Rogers gives Mike a few confused looks that Mike resolutely ignores, but no one else seems to notice anything’s amiss. Mike should be more grateful for that than he is.

  They play a good game. Mike squares off against Sidorchuk in the second, gets a few nice jabs in, takes one shot that splits his cheek wide open again. He spends his time in the penalty box with a towel pressed to his face while Liam zips onto the ice, assists on a pretty little goal Jacobi manages to sneak in through the five hole.

  The majority of the guys go out after the game, proud to have gotten past Winnipeg for the first time this season. Liam ended up with two points, his first game-winning goal, was the hero of the night. Manitoba’s one of the few places he can legally drink, and Mike doesn’t want to piss on Liam’s celebration, so he goes straight back to the hotel, turns on some mindless comedy, takes a couple of the painkillers he managed to scowl out of the Jets’ doctor. Fingers the cut that skirts his eye and considers himself lucky.

  Mike’s down to his briefs and slightly hazy pain when he gets a knock on the door. It’s not even midnight, too early for anyone to be back but the fathers catching up on sleep. And Mike, apparently.

  And Liam, arms crossed, face bleary red, standing in his doorway.

  “How much have you had to drink?” Mike asks. Jesus, they’ve only been gone maybe an hour.

  “No,” Liam says.

  “No?” Mike asks.

  “No,” Liam repeats.
“No, you don’t get to do this.”

  Mike stands back, gestures Liam inside. Most of the guys may be out, but Mike’s sure as shit not going to go toe to toe with the kid in the middle of the hallway.

  Liam comes in, fidgets while Mike sits back down on the bed, flicking the TV off. “Well?” Mike asks.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Liam says.

  Mike has no idea what he’s doing. Fuck, he wishes he did.

  “It’s not going to work,” Liam says. “I won’t let you.”

  “Let me what?” Mike asks, genuinely lost.

  Liam lets out a frustrated huff of air and comes to stand in front of Mike. He’s flushed, maybe drinks, maybe not, hair wavy, which means he didn’t dry it properly again. He probably ran around Winnipeg without a coat, hair still wet. Kid has a fucking death wish. Mike wants him so much it hurts a little, but then, he always does, so it’s an ache he’s learned to live with.

  Liam reaches out, and Mike doesn’t flinch, not even when Liam’s fingers brush the cut under his eye.

  “Does it hurt?” Liam asks.

  Mike shrugs.

  “Mike,” Liam says, frustrated, like he’s waiting for something. Mike doesn’t know what that something is. Doesn’t know if he wants to provide it. If he even can.

  “The fuck do you want from me, Liam?” Mike asks, and he doesn’t think it was meant to come out plaintive. In fact, he’s almost certain it wasn’t.

  Liam doesn’t answer, just leans down and kisses him, and Mike kisses him back, reflex. He’s grown so used to the feel of Liam’s mouth that he felt genuinely at sea without it, because he’s fucked, he’s so fucked here, strands of Liam’s hair between his fingers and Liam getting a knee between his thighs. Liam pushing and Mike going because this is where he wants to be.

  Liam pulls back, and Mike says, “Liam.” He isn’t sure what he wants to say, what he should say. He’s fucking positive that they aren’t the same thing.