Page 137 of Puck You Both

MY KEYS, MY code, my building.

The arena at one in the morning belongs to nobody. One bank of lamps over fresh ice, the compressor humming under the stands, twenty thousand seats holding their breath in the dark.

I've had keys to this place for six years and I have never once brought anyone in. This is where I'm the thing on the wall posters. This is the one place on earth I have never not been in control.

"Skate it out," I tell them, which is what I told myself in the car, and it's even mostly true.

We raid the stall room for skates and sticks and lace up at my bench in street clothes, and then there's cold air moving over my face and a fresh sheet of ice under my blades, the three of us spread across it with one puck, passing for no reason, keeping no score.

Wall drifts to the far end and, without a word, backs himself into the visiting crease. A hoodie, no pads, hands loose on a borrowed stick. I send the puck down easy and he sends it back the same, and my chest makes a full production out of a routine pass—the whole war is suddenly out here with us, him in one paint and me in the other, and it isn't heavy anymore. It's sweet. We built the thing without ever knowing what we were building.

Theo collects the puck, winds up through center ice, abandons the puck entirely, and "checks" Wall into the boards.

It's the gentlest check in the history of the sport. It's also not a check at all—his fists are already in Wall's hoodie, Wall's hands leave the stick to catch him, and the boards give a soft boom that rolls all the way around the empty building. By the time the sound comes home from the upper deck, they're kissing.

I stand in my crease and watch. The part of me that controls every second of everyone’s life stays off duty. The rest of me pushes off and glides down the ice for the plainest reason available: they're there, and I want to be too.

Theo hears my blades and turns, mouth wet, eyes bright. “Well, finally.”

We come off the ice tangled, laughing at the physics of us, a stick clattering onto the runner where it can lie until morning.

The bench is where it stops being playful.

Wall sits, pulls me down across his lap, and kisses me slow, my jaw held in one huge hand. Theo fits himself behind me, mouth at the back of my neck, hands sliding under my jacket, and my shirt, spreading warmth across my stomach. I'm hard before a single zipper is involved, aching, grinding back against Wall on instinct. The sound I make into Wall's mouth returns off the walls a half-second late.

This arena gives every sound we make straight back to us, and the perfect volume.

Theo laughs against my neck, dark and thrilled. "Oh, we are going to have so much fun with the acoustics."

My jacket goes first, then my shirt, peeled up over my head so the cold gets a full pass at me. Every place their hands land turns hot, and every place they leave goes cool, my skin building a map of the difference. I strip Wall's hoodie off him and put my open mouth on his chest just to feel his breathing change. Theo loses his own shirt in the time it takes me to think of it, then goes to work on my fly, pops the button, and rests two knuckles against my cock through my boxers, pressing lightly, holding there until my hips chase it.

I know what I want tonight.

I've known for a long time, if I’m being honest with myself, probably since Theo and I first started being a thing we didn’t have a name for.

And if Theo ever wanted it himself, I'd flip a coin right now and be perfectly happy with either outcome. But Theo has informed us both, cheerfully, more than once, that his interests all run in the other direction, permanently. Which leaves the man currently holding my jaw like something breakable.

It also leaves me having to ask.

"Wallace."

His eyes come up. I open my mouth and nothing follows. Theo's hands go still against my stomach, and heat crawls up my neck.

I’ve never been good at asking people for anything. I can only ask for small things, things they can refuse, no hard feelings involved.

This? This is the opposite.

This one has to go out with no armor on it.

When I finally get myself to say it, I say it with my eyes closed. Somehow that seems safer. "I want…” I swallow around the words that are real, but not easy. “I want you inside me." Only then do I get the courage to open them again.

Even the compressor seems to pause.

Wall searches my face, and there’s the flare in his eyes. "Are you sure?"

"I don't say things I'm not sure about."

"I thought… When's the last time you—"