Game of Hearts

by Jerry Cole

  It would mean that they could be together without it seeming like Bjorn wasn’t there on merit. He would talk to Mickey about it once Mickey stopped playing, once he came out of the glass enclosure.

  The arena was, of course, packed. Bjorn had gone downstairs to his room in the morning, to brush his teeth and to get his bearings. He couldn’t really be around Mickey anymore, because every time he saw Mickey, he wanted to jump him again. He wanted a continuation of the night before, but he also wanted to respect Mickey’s wishes. So he’d made an excuse after kissing him good morning and dashed downstairs.

  There was also the fact that his teammates were probably worried about him. Bjorn knew that they didn’t really care where he went, but he did normally text them when he wasn’t going to be spending the night around them. When he got into his room, as Pink was getting ready for the day, all he did was raise his eyebrows at him.

  “Mickey,” Bjorn had replied and then he had smiled at him. Pink had cocked his head, as though he hadn’t heard him right, and then he had smiled back at him.

  “You know, Al, I’m glad that you’re happy,” he had finally said. “I really am. I’m sorry that I didn’t seem to be on board with it in the first place; I think it took a little while for me to get my head around it. But I am glad you’re happy, really, genuinely.”

  Bjorn hadn’t wanted to tell him that he wasn’t sure if he was happy, especially when he was being so supportive, but it wasn’t that he wasn’t happy either. He didn’t want to go into how complicated his feelings were with Pink, though. Or at least not right then. Not before he had answers. All he had was a giddy desire to make sure that things would end up the way he wanted them to. He would do anything to have that happen.

  He was pleased that Pink seemed to suddenly be on board with what Bjorn wanted. He would still need to talk to Carpenter and to Carl, but he had been winning so much that he didn’t think they would be opposed to what he wanted in the first place. Since they were depending on him to win. And they were, which meant that they were also depending on Mickey to win. Yes, Bjorn had started to see Mickey more as a human being, but he definitely still saw him as an inspiration.

  He was thinking about Mickey then, when they announced his team, and then when they announced him. The seats that AlphaChew had at the arena weren’t exactly VIP seats, though they were definitely better than the seats for the public. He knew that Mickey could see him from stage, but that didn’t matter, because as soon as Atlanta was announced everyone got to their feet, and Bjorn wasn’t able to see anything.

  He had been able to forget about how popular Mickey was when they were together, but as he was faced with it in the arena, he knew that he couldn’t turn away from it any longer. He hadn’t wanted to face it so soon, but the message was abundantly clear: Bjorn wasn’t nearly as important as Mickey was, at least not yet, and would probably never be.

  Being his boyfriend was sure to make things even worse, at least when it came to Bjorn’s own popularity.

  He definitely had to win. He had to go up against Mickey’s team, and he had to win.

  He needed to talk to him first, just so that Mickey knew what his plans were. So that Mickey knew that he intended to end up with him when all of this was over.

  ***

  Of course, Mickey’s team sailed through the games. Their opponents dropped like flies, and although a few teams put up a good fight, the majority of them didn’t really even seem to touch them. By the time the day was over, Mickey’s team had been decisively victorious. Once again, they were the standard to follow. Once again, Mickey had been the main reason that they had won. Mickey was incredible, and Bjorn didn’t think that he had ever cheered so hard in his life. When the games were over, his voice was gone and his fingers were wet from sticking them in his mouth and whistling so loud. Even his teammates had looked at him like he was crazy, even though they were also doing their fair share of cheering. They didn’t understand that this was exactly what Bjorn needed Mickey to do to make sure that the plan worked, to make sure that they could finally be together without worrying about anything else.

  When they were done, when they had walked out of the glass enclosure and were on stage taking a bow, Bjorn thought that Mickey was looking for him with his gaze. He wasn’t sure, because he couldn’t see that well and there was a tall man in front of him. The idea that Mickey might have been thinking about him was enough to make him incredibly happy, though. Mickey could have been thinking about anything after a victory, including how much money he was on the way to winning. If Mickey was thinking about him, then that meant he cared a lot.

  That he cared as much as Bjorn cared.

  He smiled. He really, really needed to talk to him.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was a weird tradition and Mickey wasn’t sure who had started it, but after the team got to semifinals, everyone went to a spa together for a couple of hours. It had only started after they had earned a lot of money, because they wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise. It was a way to make sure that their bodies were well rested after being in awkward chairs that they weren’t used to, but it was also a way to rest their eyes. All of the boys seemed to appreciate it, anyway. They really liked being recharged the next day, especially because they knew that there were parties and interviews to attend, and they needed to be able to kick ass.

  Their manager had always insisted that self-care was the most important thing, and their manager had rarely been wrong. He probably didn’t mean something as extreme as a spa day, but he didn’t dictate what they did with their money. Their manager understood that they needed it.

  In truth, after doing the press round, he didn’t want to go anywhere with his team. He wanted to go out and talk to Bjorn. He wanted to hug him and celebrate with him, to hang out. Of course, he couldn’t do that, least of all because he had been swarmed with reporters and fans. He couldn’t exactly go to Bjorn in the first place, because that would have outed Bjorn. As much as Mickey wanted to hold him, he wasn’t going to out him before he was ready.

  He was sitting on one of those massage chairs with a towel wrapped around his legs. The smell of incense was subtle, not at all overwhelming, and Mickey hated it. The masseuse was going to come out any minute now, but for the time being, he was more focused on the steady tapping of Syn’s fingers on the edge of his chair.

  “Hey,” Syn finally said. “You okay? You don’t seem to be in a very good mood. You know, considering.”

  “No, I’m—I’m fine,” Mickey replied. He wondered how honest he was being and if he needed to be more upfront about his feelings. He understood why Syn had been so protective of him; it made sense that his best friend wouldn’t think that the man who upset him would be good for him. “I’m glad we won. Really.”

  “Aye, I can tell by how excited you are,” Syn said. He turned to look at him. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to be weird and keep it to yourself?”

  “No, I’ll tell you,” Mickey said, taking a deep breath. “It’s just weird because, ugh, I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t know why I feel like this. All I know is that I do and it’s a bit, I don’t know, it’s a bit much.”

  “You don’t want to feel like what? Is this about Bjorn? I told that dick to—”

  “Stay away from me? Yeah, he heard you loud and clear,” Mickey replied, smiling. “We just ran into each other at the gym, where you had chased him off to. It was a little awkward at first and then, well, it wasn’t awkward anymore.”

  Syn looked at him, his eyes widening. “You hooked up?”

  “Yeah,” Mickey replied, licking his lips. Just the thought of hooking up with Bjorn again was enough to make him weak at the knees. “We didn’t just hook up, we talked. He spent the night with me.”

  “Oh, no,” Syn said. “You talked? That doesn’t sound like a good thing, not when it comes to you.”

  “Right? I didn’t think so either, but he’s so beautiful, like,�
�� Mickey took a deep breath before he continued talking. “He’s so soft and so beautiful and talking to him makes me so happy. Not even being with him, just talking to him. Even the way his voice sounds, I think I could hear him talk forever and I would never get sick of it.”

  “Aww,” Syn replied, no mockery in his voice. “That’s pretty adorable.”

  Mickey smacked him playfully on the arm. “I’m serious, Syn. I’m very serious about him, I’m very serious about this, and that scares me. It scares the shit out of me, really. I don’t want to be as serious about this as I am, but I don’t think I could be more serious about it.”

  “Why does it scare you?”

  “Really? You want me to list the reasons? Fuck,” Mickey replied. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying hard not to think about it.”

  Syn nodded, then he took a deep breath. He put a reassuring hand on Mickey’s shoulder before he continued speaking. “You know, this may actually make you feel better. If you know everything that you’re up against, then maybe you’ll realize it wasn’t that big a deal after all.”

  “Maybe,” Mickey said. “Well, okay, but I have a feeling this is just going to make me feel worse.”

  “Well, you won’t know until you try, right?”

  “Right,” Mickey replied, sighing. “Okay, so the first thing is that he’s straight. Or at least he considers himself straight, which is obviously an issue. If I wanted to be with him, and I do, I would have to get used to the idea that he used to identify as straight before I came into the picture. And then I worry that being the first guy he’s with makes me some sort of fetish or something?”

  “Would you not like being someone’s fetish?”

  Mickey thought about it. “You know, in general, I don’t think I’d mind. But when it comes to Bjorn, I definitely don’t want to be his fetish. Or at least not just his fetish.”

  “So you want to be more than just someone that he has sex with,” Syn said.

  “Right, exactly. I want to be someone that he likes. Someone that he wants to introduce to his parents and stuff, you know? But I don’t know if I can have that, and I’m wondering if it may not be too much to ask.”

  “I don’t think it’s too much to ask to want the person you’re dating to introduce you to their parents,” Syn replied quietly. “Though honestly, the mind boggles. Why in the world you’d want that it’s an entirely different thing.”

  “Well, I’d want to meet my partner’s parents,” Mickey said, laughing. “Though that is a fair and well-made point. But putting aside the straight or gay thing, which let’s be honest, is a huge deal—what about logistics?”

  Syn cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “Say we start dating, right? And then we get along and things are going well,” Mickey said. “But then what’s going to happen? I’m not going to stop living in London, and he’s not going to stop living wherever it is that he lives. See, I don’t even know this about him. Where does he even live? He said he was from Louisiana.”

  “With a name like Bjorn?”

  “His father is Swedish,” Mickey replied. He remembered that he had been curious about that when Bjorn looked so very American. Did that mean he wouldn’t be open to moving abroad? Mickey knew that he shouldn’t be thinking about that yet, when they hadn’t even decided what they were going to call each other, whether they were going to be each other’s boyfriends. Working out the logistics of their relationship wasn’t for until much later, but it was already burrowing into his mind. He couldn’t help but worry about it.

  He couldn’t help but worry about everything that had to do with Bjorn.

  “Well,” Syn started, looking at his fingernails. “You know that long distance relationships suck. On the other hand, you guys would definitely be the power couple of e-sports. Or, at least, the power couple of World of Heroes, which is basically the same thing.”

  “De-facto power couple,” Mickey replied with a smile. “I have to admit, that actually sounds pretty good.”

  “Well, yeah,” Syn said. “If it wasn’t so complicated.”

  “Right,” Mickey replied. “If it wasn’t so complicated.”

  He wondered if he minded that it was that complicated. He was going to ask Syn about it when the masseuse finally came back into the room, and their conversation came to a halt.

  Chapter Thirty

  Bjorn wanted to run into Mickey in the most natural way possible. He realized that he still didn’t have his phone number, which drove him crazy. If he were Mickey’s boyfriend, he would be able to reach him whenever he needed to.

  Pink must have noticed how in-the-clouds his head was, because he nudged him softly on the shoulder when they were in their room at night. Bjorn really wanted to go up to Mickey’s suite, but he had promised himself that he wouldn’t, not until there was something certain he could say about their relationship. He wanted to talk about his plan with Mickey, but he didn’t want to do it somewhere where it would lead to sex, and he knew that was exactly what was going to happen if he went up there. There was no way he would be able to control himself if they were alone; he could barely do so when there were people around. That was something that their history showed very clearly, in any case. He didn’t want that to happen. Well, no, that wasn’t right. He absolutely wanted that to happen.

  He just didn’t want it to happen before everything else was settled on.

  “So,” Pink said. “Are you going to finally tell me what the fuck’s been going on with you?”

  Bjorn sighed. They didn’t have to be anywhere for a couple of hours, and Bjorn knew that a talk with one of his teammates was coming.

  “Yeah,” Bjorn replied, throwing himself back on the thin mattress that he had called his bed for the last week. Had it only been a week? He could hardly believe that was the case. He already felt like his life had changed completely.

  It was Mickey was the one who had done that. He was grateful, but he was also scared, because it did change everything. It changed everything about who he thought he was, it probably also changed everything about his future.

  Their future.

  If that was what Mickey wanted. God, he really, really needed to talk to him.

  “Yo,” Pink said. “This is not telling me anything. You’re just sitting there staring at the wall like an idiot.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Bjorn said. “It’s just—it’s been really weird, okay? I mean, it’s been really wonderful; don’t get me wrong. But it’s also been really weird, too.”

  “Weird bad or weird good?”

  “Well, weird good,” Bjorn replied. “Definitely weird good. But I don’t know, it does mean that things have changed for me.”

  “So like,” Pink said, sitting up and gazing directly on Bjorn. “Does this mean you’re gay? Have you always known? Does it—I mean, I don’t know, did you want to tell us before? I know we make gay jokes sometimes, but we don’t really mean anything by it.”

  “No, I know,” Bjorn replied, smiling thinly. “I mean, I make gay jokes as much as all of you, maybe even more.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s what I’m saying, like if it’s a denial thing—”

  “It—it isn’t,” Bjorn said, closing his eyes tightly. “Or maybe it is. Honestly, I don’t know. But can we cool it on that? I never thought it was a very nice thing to do. Especially not now, right?”

  “Right,” Pink said. “Definitely not now. Look, if you’re gay, we support you. We’re still your friends no matter what.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Bjorn replied. “I just don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know if I’m gay, Pink, I really don’t. Here’s what I do know. I’ve never felt this way about anyone else in my entire life, girl or boy. Mickey makes me feel amazing, like, in the most interesting of ways. I really want to know what’s going to happen if we keep doing this. I really want it go further than this.”

  “Wait,” Pink said, shaking his head. “What do you mean? Like, how far has it already gone?”


  “I—I mean, I assume you kind of gathered I spent the night with him,” Bjorn replied.

  Pink nodded, slowly, still looking right at him. “Yeah, but—I mean, I’m not sure what that means in terms of how far the two of you have gone.”

  Bjorn swallowed. Admitting his feelings for Mickey didn’t scare him, but admitting that they had been together sexually kind of did. When he had been with him, he had loved it. The day after, he had loved it. Now he was worried that his friends were going to think less of him because—well, he wasn’t sure why exactly. He had never considered his masculinity that fragile, but maybe he was wrong. After all, he only wanted people to know that he was with Mickey if they considered him his equal. Instead of accepting his feelings, he thought the situation had to be “handled,” turning it into a joke. It was probably because he was afraid.

  Not afraid of liking Mickey. That had never been a concern. Well—it had been alarming, at first, but his feelings won over. He shuddered to think of what Mickey would think about what was running through his head right now. He knew these sorts of thoughts were exactly why Mickey wanted to take it slow, and it pained Bjorn that he had put Mickey in that position in the first place. He wanted Mickey to understand that he wanted him, really wanted him, without any of the bullshit that came along with being with a dude for the first time. Unfortunately, Bjorn also now knew, now for a fact recognized that he wouldn’t be able to provide that. He knew that because of the way that he was reacting to what he was pretty sure was an innocent question posed by one of his closest friends. If it were someone that didn’t like him—or even worse, a member of the media—he would probably react like this too. They wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving or as patient as Pink was, and they would obviously draw their own conclusions. Conclusions that Bjorn now knew would probably be right, even if he didn’t want them to be.

  He tried to swallow down the knot in his throat. “We’ve gone all the way, Pink. Like, all the way.”