clions2010: Dump Easton over the summer, dump Vanderbilt immediately, and there’s thirteen million right there just waiting for the perfect goaltender.
seelionssaylions: @clions2010—Damn, that’s a little harsh.
clions2010: @seelionssaylions—Hockey is a business.
sealionsfan8216: @clions2010—It may be a business, but the players are still humans.
(From “Possible Shake-ups in the Sea Lions’ Roster?”by Olivia Starling.Printed inThe San Francisco Herald, 01/04/2025)
Ben adjusted his tie for the fifth time since he’d entered the elevator.
He couldn’t wait to finish this job.Not only could he stop pretending he knew anything about hockey, he would also be able to come clean about his identity and figure out what to do with Charlie.When the world found out who he was, surely even Charlie would understand they couldn’t keep living with Phil.Which was good, because Ben didn’t know how long he could keep from falling into Phil’s magnetic grasp.
Over the course of the last week, he’d tried to keep his distance and his sanity, but he was man enough to admit Phil had eroded both with every sweet word and casual touch.
Or not so casual touch.
As two decades of failed Mormonism attested to, Ben was shit at resisting temptation.He’d spent many nights in Phil’s bed, too tired after balancing Charlie’s increasingly complicated school-and-hanging-out-with-the-shelter-kids schedule with his own hockey-and-investigating-white-collar-crime schedule to protest when Phil turned those wide, pleading eyes on him or, worse, sucked him off.
For a man who had recently identified as “not gay,” Phil really enjoyed giving blow jobs.
And Ben was useless after—syrupy and weak as putty and willing to acquiesce to whatever Phil wanted.If Phil had renewed the marriage proposal with Ben a naked puddle of satisfaction in his bed, Ben wouldn’t have been able to keep resisting.It was only a matter of time.And then Ben would give himself over to whatever Phil had to offer, and everything would go to shit, from the investigation to the hockey team to their living situation.
In total, the imminent end of this extremely confusing period of Ben’s life meant only good things.He could remove himself from temptation, by which he meant Phil, and he could secure Phil’s future with the Sea Lions by ceding the coaching position to him.And as an upside, when he finished this job, he’d also finally be able to stop wearing ties every day.It felt like being strangled by a very weak person.
Finally, he arrived on the twenty-sixth floor.The building belonged to an investment company, the same company Maxwell Van Giesing had made his fortune with.For the team’s owner, the San Francisco Sea Lions were one of many business ventures, and they’d turned out to be a losing one in terms of viewership and sponsorship, at least in comparison to the greener pastures of the NFL or the NBA.
A security guard stood watch outside the door.
Ben’s heart rate spiked.
It wasn’t as though he wore a wire.He was a journalist, not an action hero.His only tools comprised the open voice memo on his phone to record this meeting and the screenshots he’d backed up on the Cloud.He hoped like hell the security guard didn’t ask to take his phone.
But when the guard gave him a perfunctory pat down, Ben realized he was looking for weapons.
What had he gotten himself into?He’d never seen a gun; he didn’t want to go into a situation where people might bring them.
Ben gave the guard a shaky smile.He couldn’t back out now.After speaking to Trout and Van Giesing last week at the New Year’s party, they expected him to jump into their betting scheme with both feet.If he pulled out, at best he’d wasted months of work.At worst, they’d get suspicious.
“So,” Van Giesing said after Ben entered the office.His leather chair was even bigger and more impressive than Ben’s.“A betting man, eh?”
Ben affected his best devil-may-care smirk.“What can I say?A man’s gotta have vices.”
“Amen.Now, how much has Mr.Trout told you?”
“He told me if I’m interested in lucrative bets while I’m on the Sea Lions payroll, you can cut me in.”
“Good.Benjamin—it is Benjamin, right?”
Ben nodded.
“Would you call yourself a God-fearing man?”
He almost laughed.“Depends on what you mean by God-fearing, sir.”
“You think your sins get punished in the afterlife?”
Unsure whether Van Giesing wanted him to be religious or not—but guessing this was the reason Pulvermacher had never made it to the inner circle—Ben said, “Better in the afterlife than in this one.”
