Chapter Seven

November

Aronson , the text message from Sullivan said, way too late to make any kind of question as to what the point of the text was. It was only by chance that they had each other saved as contacts: Sullivan had come in with grand plans of building a camaraderie among the coaching staff, and Eric had promptly spit in his face about it. There were a few texts in the chain that they had with Petey and Heidi, but this was the first direct message he'd ever received.

What do you want?

Where do you live.

What?

Where do you live. Come on. Give me your address.

For a second, Eric stared at his phone. Sullivan wasn't the kind of person to pull stupid pranks, but it was still a weird request. What's wrong with you? he asked, instead.

Just give me your fucking address, man. I've had a long day and I'm going to stop by.

YOU'RE going to stop by? MY house?

Yeah. Are you scared I'm gonna piss on your stoop or something? I'm house trained.

It was one of the things Eric had considered, but he wasn't about to tell Sullivan that. No. He hesitated for a second. He still wasn't sure what the hell was going on with the extracurricular activities. He still wasn't sure how the hell he felt about it, other than annoyed that he was apparently fucking easy for it. He was annoyed he was even considering this.

He sent his address.

Was that so hard? Sullivan asked.

I'm going to rescind the invite if you can't behave.

Sullivan wrote, LOL , and Eric had to stop to count to ten, pinch the bridge of his nose and move on.

Eric looked around at his apartment. It wasn't as depressing as some places. He only had a galley kitchen, but he used it. He'd taken the time to actually hang some art, and he had some plants in the window he hadn't killed yet. He had real furniture that wasn't from IKEA. It had made many trips with him over the years, but it was still intact.

It had been a long time since he'd invited anyone he was sleeping with back here. It had been a long time since he'd had anyone except Petey over, and Petey didn't give a shit if his coffee table was covered in papers and books that Eric always started with the intention of finishing. Petey didn't care if there were pots and pans drying on the counter. Who was he kidding: Sullivan probably wouldn't care about that, either. Eric racked his brain, trying to remember when he had changed his sheets last.

Maybe that was optimistic. Given the way the last few times had gone, the odds of Sully actually seeing his sheets were not certain.

In the end Eric settled for picking up the dirty clothes from the floor of his bedroom and throwing them in the laundry basket, kicking it into his closet and shutting the door. That'd have to do.

By the time he actually got a text that said open your door , it was even later. Later than he would normally be considering having someone over. He opened the door and said, "You couldn't just find someone else to bother?"

Sullivan didn't say anything at first, just frowned at him until Eric took a step back, letting him over the threshold.

"Look," Sullivan said. He dropped his winter coat on Eric's floor. He looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, the T-shirt he was wearing under his jacket still stained and smudged from whatever he'd been doing before he got there. He took a deep, ragged breath, like if he didn't plow on with what he was saying, he'd never get it out. "I don't want to talk, I don't want to think, I don't want you to be fucking nice to me. I don't want to have to be mature, I just—I just—"

Eric stared at him. This was probably the least Sully conversation he could ever remember having. For the first time, he didn't have that cheerful, cocky self-assurance he usually had, the aura of a guy who was used to the world giving him everything he wanted. Eric thought about asking him what he really wanted. Instead, it was like his body reacted without his brain's input. He leaned down to kiss him, and Sully's mouth opened immediately, eagerly, under his.

"You want me to be mean?" he asked, pulling away, trying not to laugh at the frustrated little noise that came out of Sully's mouth. He put one hand against his chest, walking him backward toward the couch.

"Yeah, I—" Sully licked his lips. They were dry and chapped, a little red like he'd been chewing on them. Eric wondered what the hell he'd been doing on their day off that had him acting like this.

"Well. What if I don't want to give you what you want?" Eric said, and pushed him down on the couch. "What if I decide I'm gonna treat you so nicely—"

"Aronson," Sully snapped, from where Eric had pushed him sprawled on the couch, "I swear to god, can you turn it the fuck off for twenty minutes ?"

Eric choked on his own laugh, but more of them bubbled up behind. "Twenty minutes? Jesus, what kind of sex have you been having?"

Sully's whole face was red, although whether it was humiliation or fury, Eric couldn't tell. "Lately? Just on the desk at work. And twenty minutes was being generous."

"Wow," Eric said, moving forward, "don't recall any complaints from you at the time, actually. It was mostly a lot of come on and oh my god and please , eh?" When he got down on the couch to straddle Sully, trapping him in place, it took him a second to gauge whether it was the right move. Sully was built like a barrel, but Eric was a lot bigger. That didn't stop Sully at all from trying to angle his head up for another kiss, but Eric pushed him back down. "Maybe I'll just make you wait?"

Underneath him, Sully was already squirming, although there wasn't much room to move. Eric could feel every movement of his body, his muscular legs shifting underneath Eric's thighs, his heart beating a million times a minute against Eric's chest, his dick already hard.

"You wouldn't," he managed, his voice a little strangled.

Eric shifted his arm up, his forearm pressing just so against Sully's neck. He could feel the Adam's apple bob. Sully's little gulp of surprise. Of nervousness . "You don't know me at all. I can be really fucking patient. And somehow, I get the idea that you're not very good at that, either."

Sully didn't answer immediately, just looked up, mouth twitching like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to scowl or to smile. When Eric pressed his forearm down again, Sully said, his voice a little strangled, "Do you know how long it took me to crack a major league roster? I'm real patient."

Instead of arguing, Eric shifted down. Even with the wrist against his neck, Sully kissed him eagerly, mouth open and sloppy, even though his breath felt ragged and strained. He was shifting again, seeking some kind of friction, movement from Eric, anything. His hand had moved around to try to grab Eric's ass. As soon as he did it, Eric stopped moving. He pulled his mouth back.

Sully's eyes flew open, the scowl back again. "Come on ," he said.

"You're a terrible fucking liar," Eric said, unable to hide the laugh in the words, using his free hand to grab Sully's wrist and pin it back against the couch.

Sully held himself still, almost ostentatiously so, like he was making a point of it. Even with the renewed effort, he was trembling, with excitement or nerves, Eric couldn't tell. For a second, the doubt: was he moving too fast, assuming too much? It was pretty clear that Sully had never fucked around with a man before, however queer he might've been. It was pretty clear that he was enjoying it, but it was still... Well. Sully was a big boy. If he wanted Eric to stop, he could say it.

Instead of worrying further, Eric lost himself in the push and pull. The teasing, the promise of more pulled away just when Sully started to get into it. Eric could feel the pulse in Sully's wrist, hammering under his grip. Eric could feel Sully gasping into his mouth, trying to angle his head for a more bruising kiss. Eric could feel every inch of him, hard and straining upward, more and more frustrated the longer Eric let things go without slipping a hand down his pants, without really doing more than holding him down so he couldn't pursue the touch he clearly wanted desperately.

Eventually, Sully broke, his voice a raspy growl. "This is—god, you're such an asshole."

"You wanted me to be mean," Eric said, a little singsong.

"Yeah, I didn't mean torture me, I—"

"Jesus, you even talk too much in bed? I should have fucking guessed."

"This is the couch ."

Eric pulled back, looked down at Sully, measuring. He took the pressure off of his throat. "Do you want to move it to the bed?"

Sully blinked. His whiskey-brown eyes were a little hazy, distracted. He looked stupid as hell and Eric had the brief animal satisfaction of knowing he'd done that. "Considering the way my knees felt at practice after the last time, yeah. Move it to the bed."

Eric's own knees creaked a little when he shifted out of Sully's lap and moved himself off of the couch. When he looked down at Sully, he had his eyes closed for a second, like he was trying to gather his wits before he stood. He followed Eric into the bedroom without any further smart-ass remarks, though, and Eric was briefly glad he'd thought to clean up.

Sully sat right down on Eric's bed like he owned it, looked up at him with the kind of challenge in his eye he always had at practice if they were demonstrating a drill and Sully especially wanted to put him in his place. "Get naked," he said, and pointed one finger at Eric's pants, which, admittedly, were not doing a whole lot to hide how into this he was, either.

"Oh, you're giving the orders now?" Eric asked, amused. "Pretty bossy, Sully. ‘Be mean to me.' ‘Move it to the bed.' ‘Get naked.' I'm getting some mixed signals, I think."

Sully said, "Oh my god , you're insufferable," and in one quick movement, yanked his sweater and undershirt up over his head, and just as quickly, pulled his pants and underwear down and kicked them off.

Eric had seen him naked before, in the showers at the rink. But it was different there: you couldn't look too long or too hard, and Eric had spent years of his playing career being normal about it in the locker rooms.

Today, he had the ability to look at Sully all he wanted to, the compact body formed and shaped especially for the sport: the barrel torso and the layer of fat over a core that Eric knew felt hard as a rock underneath, the absurdly muscular legs that seemed almost too big for the rest of his body. His broad shoulders and thick neck.

And his face, handsome and charming and stupid , the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the twitching smile that always seemed to tug the corner of his lips up, the strong jaw and stubborn chin. The warm brown eyes with short, lush eyelashes that were currently staring back up at Eric, focused only on him.

His dick—thick and hard, already leaking, gripped in one calloused hand.

"Are you just going to stare at me," Sully said, for the first time sounding a little uncertain, "or are we going to get this show on the road?"

"What'd I say about being patient?" Eric asked, and Sully groaned and said, "Still?"

Still clothed, Eric got down on the bed, took one hand to Sully's chest and pushed him down. "You wanted me to be mean," he reminded him.

"I thought you were going to—I don't know, talk to me the way you do in practice, or push me around, I didn't think you were going to—" He was twisting again under Eric's body, one leg hooked over Eric's to keep him from escaping. "I really didn't think..."

Eric shook his head. "Again, I wanna know what kind of sex you were having." He stopped, when something in Sully's eyes shuttered, started closing down. That wasn't what he wanted. It was only fun if both of them were into it. "Okay, fine. You said you didn't want to think? Don't think."

It turned out that Sully liked it when Eric held his wrists down, when he had to try to push back against his full body weight to arch himself up into a kiss. And he could, for a time, lift Eric up. It wasn't quite the same as the bench press, with the force pushing back down and the particular angle, but he had that smug little smile when he did it that made Eric want to humiliate him.

It wasn't hard. All he had to do was shift one hand down to take Sully's dick in his hand, and he surrendered almost immediately, his body twisting pinioned between the two points of contact.

It was intense, how badly Sully wanted it, how roughly Eric could touch him and he'd still be panting for it. It wasn't quite a wrestling match. Eric's bed wasn't big enough for that, and neither of them were fully young enough for it, but Sully managed to turn the tables, climbing on top of him, a heavy weight seated on his hips as he bullied Eric back against the headboard.

"Take off your clothes ," Sully demanded, grinding against him, and Eric couldn't help laughing.

"I really think," he managed, "you gotta make up your mind what you want out of this."

Sully, his hands tugging at Eric's shirt, looked him straight in the eye and said, "I think I made that pretty clear. I want you . I want everything."

Eric, mouth dry, did not ask are you sure , because it was pretty fucking clear that Sully was. Maybe they'd been heading toward this the whole time anyway. Maybe it had been inevitable, the first time he'd leaned down angrily, attacked Sully's mouth with his own because he hadn't known anything else to say to express his frustration. It was funny, now, that he almost couldn't remember why he'd been so furious, not when he had Sully in his bed, annoying and persistent and trying to pull Eric's pants off without actually letting him up to move.

Eric had to shove him down into the bed before he could actually get his pants and shirt off, laughing again when Sully took the opportunity to stare at him, too. He wasn't sure what he was seeing. Especially after he'd stopped playing, Eric wasn't anything special, tall and more lanky than built.

But for a guy who'd apparently waited until middle age to figure out that he was into other men, Sully was certainly enthusiastic about looking, and he was certainly enthusiastic about touching. He was enthusiastic when Eric pushed his head down and said, "Suck my dick, then," and he was enthusiastic when Eric got a hand in his hair to tug at it.

Eric was honestly obsessed with the sounds he made, the gasp when Eric yanked him back up so he could kiss him, the choked-off noise of surprise when Eric pushed him back down. It was that Sully just liked everything so fucking much, no matter what Eric did, even when Eric hadn't touched his dick at all, he was still achingly hard, gripping himself with one hand like if he didn't, he was going to come right then and there.

"Fuck, you really like that," Eric said, which was stupid and obvious and also made Sully groan around his dick, so it was worth it. "God, that's—yeah. Like that." Eric held out as long as he could bear it, but at a certain point, if Sully wanted everything ... He pulled Sully's head up, trying to bite back another laugh at the offended noise Sully made when he did.

"I don't want to come before we actually fuck," Eric said, and Sully groaned again, and said, "You're killing me."

Eric tried to collect his ragged wits, tried to think of all of the ways he should explain things to someone who'd clearly never done this with a man before. "Do you have any preferences or—"

Sully shrugged. He looked ridiculous, his hair an insane bird's nest, his mouth wet with spit and precome, his lips red and swollen. His dick slick and wet from where he'd been grasping it while Eric fucked his mouth.

"You're the one with the experience," he said. "I'm willing to learn new things."

It turned out that Sully couldn't shut up if his life depended on it. He couldn't stop laughing when Eric slid one slicked-up finger inside of him, and when Eric said, "What the hell is so funny?" Sully said, "I'm just, uhhh, oh, thinking of prostate exams, how awkward it is, you know—" and Eric, who was at once so fucking horny it actually hurt him and so fucking in awe of Sully's ability to just say anything that came into his head, said, "Well, I'm clearly not doing this the right way if you're still thinking about that."

It turned out that it took a little while and some careful stroking and a few more fingers before Eric said, "Are you still thinking about the doctor's office?"

Sully, on his stomach on the bed, shifting restlessly against Eric's sheets, his hands fisted in the blankets, managed, "What?"

"That's what I thought," Eric said, smugly.

By the time they were actually ready to attempt it, Sully was sweating, red-faced, the flush visible down his neck. "I've, uh—kind of done this before. Once. Shannon was trying to spice things up in the bedroom and I said I'd let her, but then I couldn't stop laughing the whole time..."

Eric stared at him, disbelieving. It was just such a ridiculous thing to say, but there was Sully, his pupils huge and his hair insane and his body swaying into Eric's, just talking and talking and talking like it wasn't completely insane. He was just so fucking ridiculous. He was a Cup champion and an MVP and all of that stupid shit, and he was a divorced middle-aged man who had no idea what the fuck he was doing, and he had shown up at Eric's door and basically begged Eric to fuck him. He had told Eric that he wanted him . It was just—

"I'll tell you what," Eric said, pushing him over on the bed. "If you're laughing like that once we get started, I'll..." He didn't know what to offer. They were already here, in bed, Sully was already on his hands and knees, waiting, while Eric fumbled around with the condom package. "It won't be like that."

"Okay," Sully said, a little strangled, when he felt Eric pressing against him.

Eric couldn't help touching him while he was doing it, tracing the lines of the muscle bunched along his shoulders and back, how tense he was, how warm his skin was. Learning the texture of it, the scrapes and scars he'd picked up from a lifetime of playing hockey.

"Relax," Eric said, "come on. Just relax. Remember when I said I'd treat you nicely?"

Sully sounded startled when he laughed, a little puff of a chuckle that escaped before he could stop it. His head hung down and Eric rested his hand on his neck, right at the hairline. Sully said, "I'm fine. It's fine."

It was more than fine, actually. By the time Sully had relaxed enough that Eric felt comfortable moving on, it felt like they'd been frozen in place like that for an insanely long amount of time. He hadn't really done this in a while; he'd been busy at the beginning of the season and then Sully had basically fallen into his lap. Sully, who was tense under his hands, who was waiting for something, as Eric shifted his hips, moving so slowly it was almost painful.

Underneath Eric's body, Sully started shifting back against him, like he was testing how it felt, seeing what he could take.

"Shit," Sully mumbled.

"See?"

"Are you going to—to make me wait again?"

Eric thought about it, thought about drawing it out until Sully lost it and started trying to order him around again, frustrated and furious. It was an appealing thought, but if he didn't start moving, he was going to explode, and not in a sexy way.

"No," he said. "I'm not going to make you wait."

He didn't.

It took Sully a few minutes to get the rhythm of it, to relax enough to really let himself go, but once he did, Eric was a fucking goner. It was insane to feel the heat of Sully's body, the strength of it underneath Eric's, the way his shoulders and back and ass felt under Eric's hands. He was making these noises whenever Eric thrust, half-incomprehensible words of encouragement and half-incoherent groans of appreciation.

For all of the competition they had coaching and on the ice, Sully was pretty fucking easy in bed, shuddered when Eric dug his teeth into his shoulder, moved his head when Eric yanked it at an angle to kiss.

It felt like forever; it couldn't have really been that long. Eric could feel himself getting close, the drag up and down his spine, everything in him tightening. He pulled out and the noise of loss that Sully made almost ended him right then and there. He took a second to breathe through his nose, get himself under control, and pushed Sully back down on the bed, on his back. After everything they'd done, Sully was loose and relaxed enough that Eric could just push back in with a sigh, could watch as Sully's eyes fluttered shut again.

Sully was panting, now, his hands grasping at Eric's shoulders like he had to hold on to something or he was going to fly away. "Fuck," he gasped, "Aronson, come on, harder, I'm—" And then he opened his eyes, looked up at Eric's face, and the crooked grin was back. He was laughing, that unrestrained, stupid, joyful laugh of his that was so annoying during practices and felt so different in bed, with Sully's furnace of a body pinned under Eric's.

"What's so funny ," Eric managed, shifting around so he could press his forearm on Sully's throat again. That, it seemed, was the right move.

"It just feels—this is what I wanted," Sully said, still grinning like a loon, even while he was gasping and twisting and sweating, "not to think. Fuck. Yeah , like that," and then his whole face screwed up in an objectively dumb-as-fuck expression, and he came, hot and wet against Eric's abs.

It didn't take Eric long after, the kind of orgasm that knocked him flat on top of Sully's sweaty body. When he opened his eyes, slowly gathered himself up to pull out, he caught Sully's tiny wince of discomfort.

"Sorry."

"It's fine. I'm just—well. Shannon and I didn't really make it that far the last time."

"Jesus Christ—"

"Sorry, I probably shouldn't...that was...fuck, Aronson. That was something."

Eric couldn't think of anything to say. Sully sat up in his bed, slowly. His body was marked up with Eric's teeth, from his fingers digging into Sully's skin. He stretched, slowly, like he was testing out all of his limbs to make sure they still worked. He looked up and Eric couldn't really decipher the expression in his eyes, just that they were still wide and a little crazy and darker than they usually looked.

Sully said, "Thank you. For, you know." He gestured around to the crumpled sheets, the sticky mess.

Eric snorted. "Yeah, such a hardship." He groaned, pulling himself into a sitting position. "You can clean up first, if you want."

He sat in silence in the bed, listening to Sully in the bathroom, the splash of the sink and the toilet flushing. He wondered, again, why Sully had turned up here looking like a truck had run him over. It wasn't any of his business to wonder or to care about that.

Sully emerged, still naked, from Eric's bathroom and started picking up his clothes from the floor. "I'll, uh, see you at work tomorrow," he said, awkwardly hop-stepping into his pants.

"Do you want me to see you out?" Eric asked, a little sarcastically.

"Nah," Sully said, "I know where the door is."

"Okay," Eric said, and wondered whether this was the full, real Ryan Sullivan experience. It was not what he had been expecting. But it was almost as annoying.