Liam just says, “Shut up,” harsh. Gets his shirt over his head before he’s got his mouth back against Mike’s, and Mike has to run his hands over the muscles of his back, memorize them again. It’s been four days. It’s been four fucking days and Mike’s practically drowning in him, the heat he gives off, the flex of muscle under skin.
They shouldn’t be doing this. That’s a fucking obvious statement: the rooms bracketing Mike’s belong to teammates, Liam hasn’t been able to look him in the eye without a betrayed expression for half a week, and Mike’s been alternately kicking and applauding himself for just as long. This is fucking stupid, the whole thing. The way Liam’s straddling Mike’s hips, the way he’s here at all, the way that Mike’s let this get so far, let Liam get under his skin, let him become something routine. Something important.
They shouldn’t be doing this, but Mike doesn’t say a goddamn thing. Not when Liam’s fighting with his belt between their bodies. Not when he’s pressed against Mike, one clean line of skin, fingers digging into Mike’s shoulders, Mike unable to keep from pulling him in close, closer, as close as he can have him, Liam panting hot against Mike’s cheek when Mike gets a hand around them both, burying his face in Mike’s neck when his come splashes hot against their bellies, teeth in Mike’s skin like recrimination.
Mike cleans them both off with his briefs. Liam’s sleepy, sated, as Mike wipes over his stomach, looking at him with an expression that Mike doesn’t want to examine, an expression that Mike can’t stand. He can’t meet Liam’s eye.
Mike takes a shower, quick and blisteringly hot, and when he gets out, Liam’s fallen asleep on his bed, taking up more space than should be physically possible, just like always. He looks so tired. He looks so young.
Mike doesn’t wake him. Sits on the edge of his bed, towel around his waist, hair dripping onto the bedspread. Runs his fingers through Liam’s hair, and Liam stirs, reaching out, blind, until his fingers curl around Mike’s thigh.
Mike closes his eyes. Breathes. He’s going to have to wake the kid up sooner rather than later, send him back to the room he shares with Morris. Figure out what it is, exactly, that he can’t do, that Liam won’t let him do. Like Liam has a fucking say. Like either of them do.
Mike rubs his thumb over the curve of Liam’s cheek. “Liam,” he says, low, and he has to look away when Liam opens his eyes.
Chapter 6
Mike doesn’t know what he was expecting after Liam left that night, but it wasn’t Liam acting like nothing had happened, like they’d never fought at all. He’s right back to his normal self, cheerfully pushing past all of Mike’s boundaries.
Those boundaries apparently include fucking sleep.
Mike wakes up angry.
“It is growing increasingly likely that I’m going to murder you,” Mike says without opening his eyes.
He thinks that’s a fair statement, considering someone — one guess — has currently turned his comfortable, supportive mattress into a fucking bouncy castle.
“Wake up,” Liam says, landing way too close to Mike and knocking Mike in the ribs when he crosses his legs.
It is growing increasingly likely that Mike’s going to murder him. That wasn’t a bluff.
“Wake up,” Liam repeats, nudging Mike’s shoulder. Actually, nudging is too generous a term. He is poking. He is poking Mike’s shoulder like he’s five years old and it’s fucking Christmas morning.
“I hate you,” Mike groans, then feels sorry for himself because neither of them even pretend to believe him at this point.
He opens his eyes. Liam’s wearing his boxers and the shirt Mike was wearing yesterday, half buttoned and slipping down his shoulder. He’s not small, really, not compared to most, but he’s drowning in the thing.
The irritation dries up, gone as fast as it arrived.
“Your alarm goes off in fifteen minutes,” Liam says.
“So why are you waking me up?” Mike asks. It’s rhetorical. He now knows, and he’s in favor of this development. Christ, the kid’s got to be running through a checklist of kinks or something. Mike’s not complaining. He just wishes there’d been less jumping first.
Liam grins at him.
“C’mere you little shit,” Mike says, and drags Liam in by his — fuck, Mike’s — shirt.
“Good morning,” Liam says, smiling against Mike’s mouth.
“Shut up and take those off,” Mike says, tugging at Liam’s boxers. The shirt can stay. Mike is happy to have the shirt stay.
There’s something particularly satisfying about sucking someone off when they’re wearing nothing but a shirt they stole from your bedroom floor, the muscles of Liam’s stomach jumping under Mike’s hand, the brush of fabric warm against his knuckles. He takes it slow, easy, Liam’s leg hitched over his shoulder and Liam trying and failing to muffle himself behind the shield of his hand, like it’s too early for moaning. It is never too early for moaning. Mike would live and die by that credo.
When Liam’s blissful and post-orgasmic, Mike crawls up the bed, straddles Liam’s sides. Liam watches him jerk off, half-lidded, tonguing his bottom lip, so fucking slutty, and Mike comes half on the collar of his shirt, half across Liam’s throat, his chin, the plush of his lips. Liam idly licks at his mouth.
“We have time for a shower?” he asks.
“I fucking hope so,” Mike says. He thinks he got come in Liam’s hair.
*
They arrive to practice on time. That sounds like an achievement, but it isn’t. Liam’s in yesterday’s clothes, and he gets chirped pretty hard, while Rogers tries to give Mike a questioning look, and Mike tries equally hard to avoid Rogers’ eyes.
Rogers has been taking Mike aside lately, asking about Liam. At one point he asked Mike very seriously if he knew that Liam was using him as an excuse to hide something from Rogers, that Liam was saying he played video games with Mike when he was clearly doing something else. Mike laughed it off, assured Rogers that he wasn’t aware of any video game dates with the kid, that he’d try to keep an eye on him, and then got the fuck out of that conversation as quickly as he possibly could.
Driving Liam into practice in yesterday’s clothes is not a good way to follow up on that conversation, and if Mike pretends that Rogers didn’t notice Liam walking in a microsecond after Mike — subtlety has still never met Liam Fitzgerald — well, then he’s just lying to himself, and he tries to avoid doing that.
It’s a light practice, a lead in to game day tomorrow. Mike buys groceries on his way home, sneaks a pint of Ben & Jerry's into his basket, texts Liam to tell him to actually show his sorry ass face around Casa Rogers before they get Child Services called on them, and then eats his despair in the form of a pint of Chunky Monkey while watching home renovation shows.
It isn’t his finest moment, but sadly it doesn’t even crack the top ten of the most pathetic things he’s done lately. They all involve Liam.
*
Maybe all of Mike’s most pathetic moments of late are Liam related, but he’s got to say that Liam’s got a beautifully dirty mind that Mike can’t get enough of. He’s fucking a prodigy there, and Mike regrets nothing the second he’s got him pinned, Liam spewing filth in his ear.
The rest of the time he is extremely judgmental of his own life and his choices.
Mike comes home to a package in his mailbox addressed to one Liam Fitzgerald.
“The fuck?” Mike asks him when he swings by later, brandishing the box at him.
“Roge is nosy,” Liam says. “I didn’t want to mentally scar him.”
“Christ, what’s in the box?” Mike asks.
“Don’t worry, you won’t mind it,” Liam says, then snatches the box out of his hand and walks right inside, like it’s his own fucking place.
Liam apparently ordered the most vanilla of vanilla shit from a sex store. It’s like the starter kit of bondage for people freaked out by bondage. Even Rogers couldn’t be mentally scarred by this shit. Blindfold, pair of handcuffs �
� not the cheap kind you can take off yourself, but not padded either, and Liam’s insane if he thinks Mike’s going to put them on him and let him fuck up his wrists. Well, unless Liam could stay still enough not to fuck up his wrists, but that’s not a particularly likely scenario.
“I’m starting small,” Liam says defensively when Mike is apparently unable to hide his amusement. “Don’t want to scare you off.”
“Because I scare easy,” Mike says.
“You would if I asked if I could put the blindfold on you,” Liam says, sweet.
Mike doesn’t say anything, but Liam immediately adds, “Don’t worry, you’re putting it on me.”
“Am I?” Mike asks.
“Uh huh,” Liam says.
Mike’s not opposed to the idea. He could offer a token resistance, deflate Liam’s cocky assurance that Mike’s going to go along with whatever plan he cooks up, but, honestly, he doesn’t feel like it. Maybe next time.
“I want you naked in my bed in two minutes,” Mike says, and Liam’s down the hall before he can finish. Mike bites back a laugh, goes to the kitchen, drinks a glass of water. He’s sure Liam strips in record time, especially because Liam glares at him when he comes in five minutes later.
“I could have taken three minutes and you wouldn’t know,” Liam says.
“You probably took twenty seconds,” Mike says.
Liam scowls deeper.
“Patience is a virtue,” Mike says.
“Not one of mine,” Liam retorts.
Mike snorts. “Fair enough,” he says.
Liam lobs the handcuffs at him. Mike catches them, puts them on the bedside table. “Blindfold?” he asks, and Liam hands it over.
“Tuck your head forward,” Mike says, and Liam does, eyes fluttering shut before Mike does anything. Mike brushes his hair back from his face so it doesn’t get caught in the blindfold, slips it over his eyes.
“Good?” he asks.
“Good,” Liam agrees. “Can’t see anything.”
“I’m not using the handcuffs on you,” Mike says, and before Liam can argue, “You walk around with bruises you can’t hide because you can’t keep still for a fucking minute, what do you think is going to happen?”
“Fine,” Liam says. “Can we use your ties or something?”
“I like my ties,” Mike says.
Liam frowns. “They only deliver in five business days,” he whines.
“Honestly,” Mike says, presses his thumb against Liam’s mouth where it’s curling down into a pout. “You move an inch, I’ll stop, and the only way you’ll be getting off is with your own hand,” Mike says, then, “If I let you, that is.”
Liam inhales, sharp.
“Think you can hold still without something holding you down?” Mike asks, and Liam’s nodding before Mike can finish the question.
“Already fucking up,” Mike says. “Arms over your head.”
“Am I allowed—” Liam asks, uncertain.
“You can move where I tell you to,” Mike says.
“Okay,” Liam says, voice already hoarse, and honestly, who needs handcuffs? Mike doesn’t have a lot of faith in Liam’s ability to stay still, even with the threat of punishment, but he isn’t going to mind watching him try.
“Think you could keep quiet?” Mike asks.
“Probably not,” Liam says, wry, and Mike laughs.
“Another time,” Mike says. That one would need outside intervention, probably. Mike bets he’d be noisy through a fucking gag.
With Liam blind, immobile, even by his own volition, Mike can take the time he wants with him, the time that Liam never lets him take, and Liam can’t do shit about it, though he tries, urging Mike on whenever he stops to linger. Mike ignores him, fascinated by the way Liam’s muscles jump whenever Mike moves on, unable to predict where Mike will touch him.
Liam seems so much more sensitive right now, and that’s saying something, considering how sensitive he usually is. He reacts to every touch like it’s a straight line to his cock, Mike’s mouth on his throat, nail digging into his nipple, gone tight and hard, and as red wet as his lips after some attention from Mike’ mouth.
Liam goes nonverbal fast, quits trying to force Mike along to where he wants him. Mike likes to think it’s because he wants him everywhere, as much as Mike wants to be everywhere, kissing his slack mouth, scraping his teeth over Liam’s collarbone and the jut of his ribs, Liam jumping a little when Mike bites down on his hip, not hard enough to leave a mark, just hard enough to ratchet things higher, not that Liam needs that, judging by the way he’s dripping all over himself, so hard it looks painful.
Liam’s shaking all over when Mike finally takes him in his mouth, and if Mike didn’t have a restraining hand on Liam’s hip, he’s pretty sure he would have just gotten a throatful of cock.
Mike pulls back, and Liam’s response is a wordless whine.
“Easy,” Mike says. “Not supposed to move, remember?”
“Fucking easy for you to say,” Liam says shakily. “I’m fucking dying here.”
“You’re being dramatic,” Mike says.
“Mike,” Liam says, his name a plea, and Mike takes pity on him. It’s one thing to tease, but the kid’s a tripwire right now, strung through with so much tension that if Mike holds out on him any longer he might just burst into tears.
Mike pushes down the ugly part of him that wants exactly that, and gets him off. He ignores the hand that blindly lands in his hair, squeezes tight, because stopping right now, even if it’s because Liam broke the rules, well, it seems cruel.
After, Liam’s a fucked out mess on Mike’s bed, barely even verbal as he clings to Mike, touching him everywhere like he needs to get his fill. Mike’s never seen him look so pretty as he does right then, colored up and bleary eyed and clingy, like even all that wasn’t enough for him, like he needs more.
Mike takes his time with him here, too, knows Liam needs it right now. He strokes a hand down Liam’s back, follows the notches of his spine, until Liam starts to settle by degrees, relax into something closer to satiety than desperation.
Chapter 7
The North Stars come into town, and that morning Mike works out longer than he needs to or is technically supposed to, because he hates those guys and he’s trying to cut down, just a little, on the fighting, wants to get the aggression out before the game. He’s old. His hands are sore. He’ll knock people into the boards all the livelong day if that means he can let his knuckles heal up. Just for a bit. A single day. One day of pain-free knuckles. He’ll be so good.
Mike forgot that the hockey gods are vindictive bastards and that trying to bargain with them leads to pain.
He shouldn’t have.
The first period’s fine. A goal apiece, a couple knocks thrown and taken, fairly even puck possession. Everyone’s playing nice and polite, like it’s fucking no-hit peewee. It gets everyone a little too relaxed, a little too content.
Liam gets taken down early in the second.
Mike doesn’t see it, head turned to talk to Greiss, but he catches on pretty fucking fast. First there’s the indignant roar from the bench, then a sickly silence radiating from both benches and the crowd. When Mike leans forward on the bench he catches his first look, Liam on his elbows on the ice, blood dripping from his face. It’s an excruciatingly long minute before Liam manages to get up with the assistance of Jacobi, taking the towel offered him before getting gently pushed towards the locker room.
They replay what happened while they break to clean the blood off the ice, Liam taking a high shoulder clip from Sam Davidson that sends him face first into the glass. When they slow it down you can see his nose break on impact. They show it again and again, like they’re fucking reveling in it. The whole arena’s quiet as Davidson’s escorted to the box with a fucking minor for boarding.
It’s a fair call, probably. Davidson’s a sniper, not a brute, and that hit would have been considerably less disastrous on someone who wasn’t the size of a mu
nchkin. Except Liam isn’t back on the bench at the halfway point of the second, and Mike feels himself getting tighter and tenser as each minute ticks down.
He ends up on the ice with Davidson, which is a mistake. Mike isn’t exactly meant to share the ice with the talent — any smart coach keeps his first liners as far as fucking possible from the goon squad — but on a fucked up shift change Mike manages to barrel right into him.
Davidson’s big, almost as tall as Mike, but he’s a gawky big, the kind that’s all limbs. He’s barely older than Liam is. Hell, he’s still got fucking acne. Skates fast, shoots pretty, probably couldn’t throw a punch to save his life. Clearly has no problem with a high shoulder check, though, he fucking nailed that one.
“You only hit people from behind?” Mike asks. “Too much of a fucking coward to actually drop your gloves?”
If Davidson was smart, he’d back the fuck off, leave this shit to his own goons, but he’s young and brash and probably thinks he’s invincible, and he doesn’t skate off, instead turns to face Mike head on.
This kid is no fighter. He barely gets his gloves off, his hands up, before Mike’s knuckles meet his face. The first punch glances off his cheekbone, the second a more satisfying blow to the mouth. The shot Davidson sends back his way is nothing, easy to deflect, and Mike just makes sure he has a good grip on his jersey, can hold him tight, close, and mess up his snotty first line face.
Davidson goes down easy — too easy, he’s a fucking pansy — and Mike follows him down, hits him until feels something under his knuckles give. By the time they haul Mike off of him, he’s got Davidson’s blood speckling his jersey, blood all over his hands, none of it his. The kid goes to his locker room with assistance, red all down his front, face a mess, and Mike gets escorted right out the door, ref telling him to consider himself officially kicked out of the game while the building loudly clamors for something. Probably more blood. They never seem to get enough of it.
Mike goes and sits in the locker room, puts his face in his hands.
Thrown Off the Ice Page 6