Page 3 of Puck You Both

That's the last normal thing that happens to me for the rest of the night.

The room isn't empty.

The frozen game footage casts the whole room in dim blue arena-glow, and in that glow, maybe fifteen feet away, is Patrick Grześkowiak. Still in his base layers, the black compression shirt, sleeves shoved up over forearms that have (and I only know that because I saw it once on Becker’s phone) their own fan accounts. He has his back half-turned to the door.

And he has someone pressed against the desk.

My brain runs the identification protocol before it understands what it's identifying. Brown curls. Number 19's warmup shirt, rucked halfway up a lean torso. Moreau. The loud winger.

There’s a lot about this image that doesn’t make sense.

Why is Moreau’s shirt riding that high? Why am I seeing this much of his throat? Why is his mouth open, his head tipped back against Patrick’s shoulder, and why is Patrick’s hand down in the front of his—

Oh. Oh.

Leave.

That's the protocol here. That is unambiguously the protocol. You walked in on something private, you have your puck, the door is inches behind you, you turn around and you leave and you take this to your grave, next to the junior final and the time you cried at a dog food commercial.

I want to be clear that I issue the command. Legs: retreat. The order goes out. The order is received. The order is ignored.

Here is what I did not know, as of ninety seconds ago: that Patrick Grześkowiak likes men. That Theo Moreau likes men. That they apparently like each other. Eight years I've studied this man: his angles, his tells, his post-whistle habits, the exact degree his shoulders drop when he's beaten.

This? This was not in the file.

Patrick's hand moves slow. That's the thing that's wrecking me, if I'm being honest, and I would rather not be, but the room's dark and my honesty appears to have snuck in with me. It's the peace. Moreau is squirming, hips chasing, hands white-knuckled on the desk edge, clearly begging for faster with every part of his body. And Patrick just doesn't give it to him. He keeps that same steady rhythm, wrist rolling, thumb doing something on the upstroke that makes Moreau's breath punch out of him in these small broken sounds. Patrick's other hand is flat on Moreau's chest, pinning him back against the desk. Immovable. Built like a door and using it.

It's the calmest I've ever seen him.

Moreau, by contrast, is losing his mind quietly.

Patrick's saying something. I can't make out the words. His voice is low, a steady quiet current of it against Moreau's ear, and whatever it is makes Moreau's whole body arch off the desk like a bow, his hands scrambling back to grip Patrick's thighs.

My heart is doing something silly, reminding me to get the hell out of here.

I should have left ninety seconds ago. There is no version of this where I'm supposed to be here. This is private, this is theirs, this is two men in a dark room who checked that the hallways was empty, and I'm the variable they didn't account for, six-foot-seven of variable pressed into the shadow of a doorframe.

Except…watching is what I do. My job is to stand at the back of the play and read bodies, track hands, predict what someone wants a half-second before they know they want it. This is a study, then.

Even I don't buy that, and I'm the one selling it.

Grześkowiak does something with his wrist. Moreau's knee buckles and Grześkowiak just takes his weight. Absorbs it, without shifting his stance, he holds Moreau up against the desk one-armed like it's nothing.

I should be disgusted with myself. I'm waiting for the disgust to arrive. What arrives instead is the same thing that arrives in overtime when the puck's in my zone and everything goes slow and sharp and I can see all of it, every lane, every option, every twitch.

I have never felt this at any point in my life that did not involve hockey.

I don't know what to do with that. I file it. I'll deal with it never.

Moreau's getting close. You don't need film study to see it. His rhythm's gone, his heels are sliding on the floor, his voice is climbing with every stroke, louder, louder, and Grześkowiak's free hand comes up and covers his mouth. Big hand. Whole jaw. Moreau moans into his palm, eyes screwed shut, hips stuttering, right on the edge.

And over Moreau's shoulder, calm as a save he's been tracking all night, Patrick Grześkowiak lifts his eyes and finds mine in the doorway.

I don't breathe.

And he doesn't stop.

Chapter 2