Brian made no secret of being bi. As a sport, roller derby—both men’s and women’s—had a proud tradition of being unusually queer-friendly. There were plenty of straight skaters, but there were just enough non-straight skaters to make it so you couldn’t really play if you were an asshole. Or at least, you had to be an asshole quietly.
Thankfully, the congratulating stopped when Coach Williams called them onto the track for the first drill. They only got a full team at practice the week before a game—and games were only once a month during the season, normally. Sometimes schedules changed. In any case, Noah had almost forgotten what a full track looked like.
Derby was still a casual sport. There were fourteen people allowed on the team’s permanent roster, and only five per team on the track at a time. That meant that if people couldn’t show up, they didn’t. Everyone who did got a cut of the ticket sales, but some weeks that wasn’t enough to buy a cup of coffee after the bout after all the other expenses came out.
That happened less often now. The Murderland Rollers were making a name for themselves as fun to watch, and that meant people showed up. Last year, they’d all made back the cost of registration and their per-game dues. This year, if the trend continued, it would buy them all a few beers a week. It wasn’t a whole lot of money, but it was a nice bonus.
“Okay boys,” Coach Williams started. “We’ve only got three games left this season. You should all be proud of your performance so far. That said, I’m watching you today, and how you do in training will directly impact the amount of track time you get. Show me you’re good, and I’ll put you on. Show me you don’t care, and you’ll spend the whole bout on your ass.”
Noah believed her. She was a very fair coach, and encouraging, but she didn’t believe in free rides. If you put in the work, you reaped the rewards. Anything else, and you got kicked back down to fresh meat.
“If we keep this up, we’re gonna qualify for the nationals, and I want to see that,” she continued. “So get out there and give it your best. I wanna see you all in a pace line.”
It was a standard warm-up—each skater lapping the track behind the first one, about arm’s length from each other—and one Noah could do with his eyes closed. He stuck close to Jace, following him without thinking too hard about it. They’d always been inseparable like this, so people would expect them to continue to be that way.
Maybe it wasn’t so weird that no one was surprised at their sudden marriage. People had secret relationships all the time, especially gay ones. Jace would have had reasons to hide his sexuality, the potential that it would cause trouble for him at work, or even with his family. He’d promised Noah it wouldn’t, and Noah took him at his word.
As far as Noah was concerned, Jace was too good at his job for anyone to give a damn who he was dating. Or married to, in this case.
His family, Noah knew nothing about. Jace occasionally mentioned a mom, dad, and sister, but only in passing. Noah figured that if Jace wanted to talk about them, he would, and there was no point in pushing the subject.
The pace line turned into laps, which was Noah’s favorite part of training. He liked not thinking about anything but picking up speed around the track. That was what made him a good jammer. That, and his ability to not worry about taking a hit or being blocked. He was good on skates, a childhood full of ice skating making it almost second nature to him.
Jace had only started learning when he’d shown up for his initiation session, on the same day as Noah. That made him better, in a lot of ways. Noah had a lifetime of practice, but Jace had never been skating before in his life.
Laps turned into cannonballing practice, which was something they’d realized they needed to work on last season. On a women’s team, it was an easier maneuver. On a men’s team, it took a little more effort to get used to being pushed around and just letting it happen. Men weren’t as good at that kind of cooperation.
Noah managed to shove Diego into one of the newer guys, who in turn found themselves being thrown into Brian. While he wasn’t paying attention, Rafe skated up beside him and launched him toward Jace.
Normally, Noah was good at this, but Rafe had caught him with one leg slightly raised and pushed a little too hard, leaving Noah flailing to keep his balance and going too fast. He smacked into Jace’s side and they both toppled over, a ball of flailing limbs.
Every possible thing that could have gone wrong with the move had, and Noah was afraid to stand up. He might have spent a minute or two on the ground in the middle of the track if he hadn’t heard Jace hiss and swear as he rolled onto his front.
His lower lip was bleeding, a droplet of blood already running down his chin. Noah winced to see it, angry at himself for not being able to control his movement better.
Coach Williams blew her whistle, and play stopped. Everyone went down on one knee.
Noah stood, offering Jace his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Jace murmured, wincing.
Rules-wise, it was Noah’s fault. Even though there was nothing he could have done to prevent it, he still felt guilty.
“You two okay?” Coach Williams asked.
“I’ll help him clean up,” Noah said, heaving Jace to his feet and leading him off the track.
He sat Jace down on the bench and went for the first aid kit, removing his mouth guard so he could talk without chewing his words.
“I might need some instructions here,” he joked.
Jace laughed, and then winced again. Noah tore the alcohol wipe he’d gotten out of the kit open and dabbed it on Jace’s lip, cleaning the blood away as gently as he could.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Noah said. “Lips bleed a lot.”
“I know,” Jace said. Of course he knew. Noah was just trying to soothe him, though explaining basic medical concepts was probably not the way to do it.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I should have been able to catch myself. Rafe just caught me totally off-guard.”
“And I shoulda fallen better.” Jace spat out his mouth guard once Noah moved his hand away. It had protected his top lip, but they did nothing for the bottom. “I’ll be okay once the bleeding stops.”
Noah offered him a cotton pad, which he took and held against his still-bleeding lip. It would stop in a few minutes, and he’d be fine, but Noah hated to see anyone getting hurt. It was in the nature of the game, and he’d gotten used to it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“You can go back,” Jace said. “No point in both of us sitting out.”
“I hit my knee pretty hard on the way down,” Noah lied. Despite his lack of control in hitting Jace, he’d fallen fairly well. He didn’t want to leave Jace’s side so soon, though.
“That wasn’t even a good lie,” Jace said. “But I appreciate it.”
Noah huffed. “You know me too well. We’re married now. I can’t just leave you while you’re in pain.”
“Does that mean you’re gonna kiss it better?” Jace asked.
Noah swallowed, his heart thudding in his chest. He was sure Jace was joking, but to Noah’s ears, there was a note of hopefulness in his tone. “Is this another game of gay chicken? Because again: already gay, can’t lose.”
“And yet, you’re not leaning in,” Jace mumbled past the cotton pad.
“For the same reason I don’t show up to the junior bouts. There’s no contest, and I try not to punch below my weight.” Noah smirked. Jace was joking. He had to be.
“That’s why I married you. You don’t go out of your way to beat up kids,” Jace said, dabbing at his lip a few times.
“We should start sharing a bed, just so I can exile you to the couch,” Noah responded. Jace couldn’t have been hurt too badly if he was giving Noah hell a handful of seconds later. That was good, though. The jokes meant that Jace wasn’t mad at him.
“Trust me, if we were sharing a bed, you wouldn’t.”
Noah laughed. “Who says you’re even my type?”
> Jace was exactly Noah’s type, but he didn’t have to know that. They didn’t talk about dating—at first, because Noah wasn’t sure how comfortable Jace would be hearing about his boy troubles, and then because he’d solved his boy troubles by dumping the boy. So Jace had no idea that if someone described his last boyfriend in broad detail, they would have basically been describing Jace.
Noah intended to keep it that way, since he would never have lived it down.
“I’m everyone’s type,” Jace said, standing up. “Race you back to the track.”
He took off before Noah could even agree to the race, but Noah still intended to beat him. Jace was huge, and he knew how to skate defensively, but Noah was fast. He flew past Jace a moment later, rolling into the current training drill as though he’d always been there, and turned to stick his tongue out at Jace.
Jace chased after him, laughing the whole time.
Chapter Eight
Every time Jace touched his sore lip at work, he had a flash of trying to goad Noah into kissing him. It had been a joke, but the moment was sticking with him, anyway. Perhaps because it had been in poor taste. Wanting to kiss other men wasn’t a joke to Noah, it was a part of who he was.
He probably didn’t want to kiss Jace specifically, but that didn’t make any difference. Jace needed to stop teasing him like that.
He’d imagined that he’d come out the other side of marrying a guy unscathed, his personal image of his masculinity and sexuality perfectly intact, but he was obviously feeling a little insecure.
That was his problem, not Noah’s. It wasn’t fair to take it out on him. And it was stupid to feel even a little threatened. Nothing about him had changed. Even if it had—even if being married to a guy automatically made him gay or bi—those weren’t bad things to be, and it was a stupid thing to worry about.
Jace had thought he was more enlightened than that, but he kept dwelling on it all the same. What if Noah had kissed him? How would he have reacted then?
“You get in a fight or something?”
Jace crashed out of his thoughts and into the present, looking up to see who was talking to him. His eyes fell on Hannah, who’d been on the ward for a few days now. She was eight years old, and coping way better than he would have with a broken arm and leg, as well as a few internal injuries from a fall off the roof of her house.
“Fell over on my skates, got into an argument with the floor. The floor won.” He smiled, ignoring the twinge in his lip.
“Why were you on skates?” she asked, clearly trying to start a conversation. Kids did that, when they were lonely. Half his job was trying to stop them from being traumatized by hospitals forever.
“I was at roller derby training,” he explained.
“What’s roller derby?”
Jace glanced at the time. He was ahead of himself, so he had a few minutes to talk. Especially if he went about doing his checks on Hannah while he did so.
“It’s a sport you play on roller skates. It’s kinda like… actually, I’m not sure what it’s like. You skate around a track and try to stop the other team’s jammer from scoring points while trying to help your own jammer out. They get a point for every person they pass during a jam, which is when all the action happens. It’s… cooler to play than it is to explain. Anyway, you fall over a lot playing it. One of the other players crashed into me last night, and we both fell over.”
“On purpose?” Hannah asked.
“No, not on purpose.” Jace smiled wryly. Noah had apologized at least once an hour when they were home, and several times yesterday when he’d caught Jace wincing. He clearly felt bad about it.
They’d knocked each other over on purpose plenty of times, but only when that was what they were supposed to be doing for a drill. Normally, Noah didn’t have accidents. His control on skates was legendary. He probably felt as embarrassed as he did guilty.
Jace didn’t really care. He knew Noah hadn’t intended to hurt him, and he’d been hurt a lot worse on the track and off. A tiny cut that would heal in a few days barely registered on his pain radar, and he wished Noah could see that. He didn’t want Noah to be miserable about an accident. Or anything, if possible.
“Is it fun?” Hannah prodded, dragging Jace back to the present again.
“Well, I do it every week, so I think it’s pretty fun. Do you skate?”
Hannah nodded. “Sometimes. When I don’t have homework.”
Jace didn’t remember ever having homework at eight years old, but times changed.
“Well, maybe when you’re back on your feet, you can ask your mom to let you join the junior team. I think you’d fit right in. You’re a tough kid,” Jace said. He was complaining about a little cut on his lip, while Hannah had just been in surgery to have pins put in her arm and leg, and she hadn’t even cried. She was definitely cut out for derby.
“You think?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah, I think. I’ve never broken anything, so you’re tougher than I am.” He grinned at her. “The derby girls are way tougher than the boys, anyway.”
“Yeah?” She seemed excited now. Jace was glad he could give her that.
“Absolutely. Girls have been doing it longer, too. You could be part of a proud tradition. But you have to promise to get better first.”
She wasn’t really in any danger of not getting better, but physical therapy could be hard on kids, and sometimes they stopped going before they were done, convincing their parents not to take them anymore. Any incentive Jace could offer would help with that.
At least, that was his reasoning. He hated seeing kids hurt, but he liked being there for them when they were. His mom said healing was in his blood. A lot of his family were in medicine one way or another.
“I promise,” she said. “You have to go now, huh?”
“I do,” Jace agreed. “But I’ll be back in a few hours. You need anything before I go?”
She shook her head, gesturing to the book she was holding in her uninjured hand. Jace didn’t recognize it, but he hadn’t been in elementary school in a long time. He’d never really had time to catch up on what was popular with the under-ten crowd right now. Or the over-ten crowd. He didn’t really have a lot of spare time in general, which was why he fought hard to keep his derby time for himself. Working double shifts when he was asked, trading favors, anything to keep practice and game times free.
It wasn’t as though he wanted to go pro, or even thought that was an option. It was just that derby was his thing, outside of work, and he wanted to be able to keep doing it. He was really glad Noah had stayed after all, or it wouldn’t have been the same.
“That’s my girl.” Jace beamed at her. “You just call if you do, okay?”
Hannah nodded, and waved at Jace as he walked off. Kids like Hannah—the ones who’d walk away from their stay just fine—were much easier to cope with than the ones that wouldn’t. He hoped she did take up derby, because it was a much better hobby than playing on the roof.
As soon as the distraction of talking to Hannah about roller derby was over, Jace’s mind went straight back to Noah. He felt ridiculous for behaving as though he’d actually just gotten married, and not done a friend a favor. He figured that it was just because he was seeing ten times as much of Noah now.
It turned out Noah was not a morning person, which Jace probably could have guessed. Mornings didn’t start for Noah until his second cup of coffee, and there was no point trying to speak to him before then. Jace had watched him swallow down a whole cup without taking a breath more than once.
His fledgling business seemed to be going well, despite his morning problem. He was starting to talk about maybe not needing to find a job, but he still told Jace about one or two he’d applied for every day. It was nice. Domestic, even.
Jace was starting to think that once he got married for real, he’d settle into it quickly. When you had someone you liked sharing your space, company was awesome. All he needed now was someone he liked who he could also h
ave sex with.
Well, he didn’t strictly need sex, but it was a nice extra. For now, Noah’s presence was improving his life in ways he hadn’t predicted, and that was more than he’d hoped for. He could live with a little celibacy in exchange for that.
Chapter Nine
Noah walked into the kitchen at a little after 2am to find that Jace was already there, sipping a glass of ice water. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d texted Jace through bouts of pre-game insomnia before, and always gotten a response. Not being able to sleep before a game was, as far as Noah could tell, common to most derby players. It didn’t help that the bout was in the afternoon, so they had to spend the whole morning worrying about it, too.
“Hey,” he said softly, going to the fridge for the water jug.
“Hey,” Jace turned his glass around, playing with the condensation on the outside. The kitchen was dimly lit, with just a lamp in the living area on the other side of the counter giving them light, but Noah could see dark circles under Jace’s eyes.
He’d been quiet when he came home, but Noah had been caught up in his own work and not really registered it until now.
“Are you okay?” Noah poured his own glass of water and then returned the jug to the fridge.
“I…” Jace paused, and swallowed. “We almost lost a kid today. And I know we didn’t and everything’s fine, but it’s not always fine. And one day it’s going to be everyone I love, and I can’t stop it. I know it’s stupid, but...”
Noah stopped dead in his tracks, his heart sinking down to his stomach. He’d known, logically, that Jace’s job required him to face his own mortality on a fairly regular basis. But he always saw Jace at his cheerful best, smile in place and almost irritatingly upbeat. He’d never seen him like this before.
“It’s not stupid,” Noah said, though it didn’t seem like enough. He didn’t think there were enough words in the whole world to respond to that. He didn’t like the reminder, either. Jace had been forced to face it head-on.
Jace nodded, but Noah could see tears welling up in his eyes.
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