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Bryan understood straight people a little less every day. He’d thought he got them just fine, but that was back when he thought he was one.“So, like—not at all, then. Not even a little.”“Nah.” Shearsy waved off the horsefly that had been harassing them out here in the middle of the lake with no breeze to keep it away. He scratched his stomach and took a sip of his beer. “Dudes are gross.”Bryan nodded. “I understand that, and I agree.”“So why would I wanna make out with one?”“Because it’s not really a matter of gross or not gross. You’re telling me you’ve never wanted to just, like…” Bryan trailed off. Kiss the shit out of your linemate when he scores? Get your face in a guy’s armpit or his crotch to see if he smells better than his gear? Grab on and hold on and kiss and bite and fuck— Obviously, he couldn’t say any of that. If he did, Shearsy would think Bryan wanted to do that stuff any time they were in the room or in a game. Any time Bryan was naked with all his teammates. And he wouldn’t be 100% wrong, but he didn’t want Shearsy wondering and, like, getting uncomfortable because he thought Bryan was over at his stall barely concealing his boner. Because that wasn’t right, either.“Help me out, Murr,” he said. “Mr. You Can Play. You know what I mean, right?”Matt sat perfectly still in the shade of the boat canopy. He didn’t answer, but when Rusty opened his mouth to repeat himself, that fucking fly landed on Matt’s arm. Matt, like the Karate Kid, smacked the shit out of it.“Got you, fucker,” he said with a satisfied smile and looked up to regard Bryan from behind his sunglasses. “I’ve always known there were guys I would bang, so yeah, I know what you mean.”That wasn’t it, either. Not exactly. But, at a loss, Bryan let it drop. He’d kept his mouth shut this long—opening it had taken beer, two of his best friends, and Murr’s boat in the middle of a Canadian lake—he could shut it again. Nobody talked about this stuff, but he’d always assumed they all felt it. How could they not? No matter how many stupid jokes and insults the guys flung at each other, it was all just to cover up how intense their feelings were. It had to be. No way was Bryan alone in this. The world did not make sense if guys like Horny and Hags and Tanger were straight. But, after losing in the NHL playoffs for the first time in his life, Bryan couldn’t claim to have as firm a grip on these absolutes as he used to. “Fuck it, who’s ready for a swim? It’s hot as shit out here.” He thunked his bottle down in the cupholder and whipped off his shades. The June sunshine beat down on them, hotter than normal for the very start of summer. He needed more sunscreen. But, yeah. Fuck it. Without waiting to see if either Shears or Murr were joining him, he cannonballed off the side of the boat and into water that had not yet caught up to the air temperature. It stole his breath as it closed over his head, instantly dropping his body temperature and clearing out his jumbled thoughts. He kicked hard and shot forward for a few strokes before opening his eyes to see murky blue and green below him, a few weeds reaching up toward the sunlight. Who knew what wild Canadian, teeth-filled creatures lurked down there. A little spooked at the thought, he was relieved at the percussive sound of another body hitting the water and broke the surface to see Murr swimming toward him underwater, his pale skin flashing in the sun in a way that sucked at Bryan’s breath just like the cold had. Matt came right for him, and a thrill of anticipation shot up his spine in the moment before Murr grabbed for him. A breathless shout of laughter burst from Bryan’s chest as Matt rolled him under the water, arms tight around him, one of his long legs slotting between his. Yeah, this. This was what he meant. Bryan held on and shivered as Matt’s rough, bony fingers slid up his ribs. They shoved each other farther under, rolled and shoved some more, sharp shins and slippery skin, until Bryan surfaced, gasping for breath and laughing. Matt came up with him and shook his hair out of his face, chest heaving, and grinned at Bryan like he knew exactly what he was doing.Or did Bryan just assume he knew? Murr had never been shy proclaiming his bisexuality—he’d named his dogs after his two biggest man-crushes—but Bryan had never actually seen him with a guy. All the times they’d gone out, all the bars and all the clubs, Matt had his arms around a different tiny blond girl. He’d put his chin on the crown of her head and smile that slow, sleepy smile and appear totally satisfied.A would-bang list wasn’t the same as the bone-deep attraction Bryan had to… about half the guys on the team. How could he not love them after they’d been through so much together? How could he not want to kiss and cuddle his feelings out? Didn’t everyone want that?The moment had run too long. Treading water, Bryan felt the heat of Matt’s body, one of his feet still brushing Matt’s ankle. His eyes, always a difficult color to pin down, had brightened to reflect the white-gray humidity of the sky. Bryan opened his mouth, though he wasn’t sure what he was about to say. Matt’s fingers ghosted back along his ribs. “I hope you guys don’t need rescuing, because I’m not jumping in that lake.”Kicking away from Matt, Bryan looked up to see Shears sitting with his feet over the side of the boat, silhouetted by the late afternoon sun. “You should,” he said, voice jumpy. “The water’s fucking awesome.”“I bet your balls have totally disappeared inside of you, so, no thanks.”“Graphic,” Matt muttered, swimming toward the ladder mounted on the back of the boat.Bryan followed and, putting on a burst of speed, reached around Matt to grab the side of the ladder just as Matt clutched the middle rung. “We should get back, right?” Bryan said. “Check on the boys.” They agreed it’d been too hot to bring the dogs on the boat. And too crowded.The wings of Matt’s shoulder blades slid beneath his skin as he lifted himself halfway out of the water. He turned, gaze snagging briefly on Bryan’s arm, then traveling to his face. He looked away quickly. “Yeah, I’m ready. We can get a fire going and start up the grill.”The tension of their earlier proximity was gone so quickly, Brian wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing. *Not for nothing was Shears sometimes compared to Sid—particularly his tenacity. Bryan had opened the door on the question out there on the boat, and now Shears had his foot wedged in the jam. Technically, he was leaned back in a lawn chair with his feet up on a log by their bonfire, but no way would Bryan be able to close the door on the conversation now. Conor’s glasses had slipped down his nose some and he watched Brian over the tops of the frames. “How often would you say you’ve wanted to make out with your teammates?”Bryan rolled his eyes.“Hey, no judgment,” Conor said. “I just wanna get a sense of the scale of this thing.”Shooting Murr a glance, Bryan found him messing with his phone and the Bluetooth speaker playing country music between his feet—seeming to ignore the whole conversation.“Uh, I don’t know,” Bryan answered. “Plenty of times. It’s an intense game. But wanting to doesn’t mean I would, obviously.” He fidgeted with the bottlecap from his beer. “I guess my question is, when your buddy makes a crazy pass or scores the game-winner or saves your ass on a play, what do you wanna do if it’s not make out? Like, what do you even feel?”Conor shrugged. “Happiness. Joy. Relief.”“Yeah, but is it just for you, or is it for your team too?”“I feel like we’re getting away from my question.”“Well, you’re not the only one with questions, bud, believe me.”“All right, it’s for me and for the team, obviously,” Shears said. “And how would you describe your feelings for your teammates?” He said it like one of the beats, mic extended to catch his answer. Or maybe like a therapist.It was Conor’s turn to roll his eyes. “I love you guys, but—” He gestured at Bryan with his beer bottle. “—that doesn’t mean I’m down to fuck, or whatever.”“That’s not what I’m saying, either.”“So, just making out? Not sex. Is that the line?”“Ugh.” Bryan tipped his head back against his chair. “It’s not a line. It’s not a rule. It’s just like… knowing, man. Like, in the moment, whatever that moment is, I would—I would fucking move mountains for you.”“For me?” Shears pointed at himself, eyebrows lifting.“Yeah, for you!” Bryan scoffed. “For Sid, for G, for Phil, for—” He slid a look to Murr, but he was still fucking around on his phone.“Well, I feel that way too,” Conor said. They were both kind of yelling now. “But sex doesn’t come into it, like, at all.”“How can that be, though? That doesn’t make any sense. ‘At all?’ Come on.”“No, man.” Conor shook his head. “Sorry.”“Shit, then…” Bryan took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’ve never been straight a day in my life, I guess.” He took a sip of his beer. “Fuck.”“It’s okay,” Conor offered, like he thought that was the generous thing to say.“Of course, it’s okay,” Bryan bit back. “I guess I just always believed, in my heart of hearts, that all straight people felt like I did. Now I just feel bad for you. You’re missing out on a lot of feelings, dude.”“Hmm.” Conor acknowledged that and pressed the mouth of his beer bottle to his chin in a considering pose. “But how much sex am I missing out on?”Bryan snorted. “Beats me. I just feel stuff—I don’t actually do anything about it. That’d be scary.”“What about you, Murr? You’re a confirmed bisexual.” Conor pushed his glasses up his nose, and Bryan felt for a moment like they were back in college, and this was an academic debate. He’d missed those. “What am I missing?”Matt stood, abruptly towering over them. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, and neither does Rusty.” He threw another log on the bonfire and headed for the house, posture rigid. After a few seconds, Leo and Beckham detached themselves from the sunset-shadows around the edge of the circle and followed him. When he’d gone, Conor shot Bryan a guilty look. “Shit,” he said. “I didn’t think he was that sensitive about it.”Bryan shook his head, following Matt’s progress inside his house as he passed in front of windows, turned lights on and off, and finally flopped on his couch overlooking the lake.“I always thought he was really casual about it,” Conor said.He always seemed casual about it, Rusty corrected silently.“Are we… hey, are we cool?” A couple twigs bounced off Bryan’s thigh, and he jerked his eyes away from Matt. “Did you just throw that shit at me?”“Yeah. Pay attention.” Conor fidgeted with his now-empty bottle. “Are we cool? Was a line crossed?”“We’re cool,” Bryan said quickly. “As long as you don’t, like, tell Sid I’ve thought about making out with him. Since apparently that’s a weird thing to want.”Shears actually shuddered. “Jesus, can you imagine?”“Imagine whatever, man. It’s what gets me through.” And it would have to for the foreseeable future, if this was where talking about his feelings got him.*Matt had quit playing video games cold turkey years ago, and he was a snobby bench about it on most days, but he still had the gear for when his bros visited, because he was a good host. After they’d grilled corn on the cob and three kinds of meat, Shears and Bryan settled their feelings with Mario Kart while Matt sprawled on the sectional and read his book. He totally watched, though. Bryan caught him in his periphery more than once. It was after Shears had passed out upstairs and Bryan had brushed his teeth and changed into his PJs that he felt mellow enough to go back downstairs and flop next to Matt on the couch.“Good book?” he asked when Matt didn’t look up at him. “Yup,” Matt answered. Bryan blew out a breath. “Look, I feel like I should apologize, but I’m not gonna because I’m not actually sorry.”That got him to look up from his tablet. “What are you not sorry for?”“Talking about my shit with you and Shears.” Bryan looked down at his flannel pants and picked off a fuzzy. “I felt so stupid at first. Like, what kind of idiot thinks everybody feels the same way they do?” He shrugged. “But at least I know now, right? It’s good to know for sure that you’re a freak instead of wondering about it.”Matt set down the tablet and pushed himself upright against the couch cushions. “Don’t say that. You’re not a freak.”“How could I have been so wrong about straight guys for so long? In fucking hockey, no less.”“Because you grew up playing hockey, so you don’t know anybody else. If I had to take a stab at it.” Matt said it in his usual deadpan, with just the corners of his mouth curling up. “Yeah, but it’s not like guys who play never fuck around. I didn’t just make it all up.”Matt’s smile fell away, his gaze locked with Bryan’s. “For real?”“Yeah!”“When? Where?”“In college, man. I mean, obviously it wasn’t, like, team orgies or anything like that. But…it happened a few times, and I didn’t think it was a secret. I thought it was normal to just…hook up sometimes after games or on the bus.”“On the bus?” Matt’s eyes got bigger than Bryan had ever seen them.“Yeah, after everybody was asleep.” he hesitated. “You’ve never done that?”“Done what, exactly?” A flush was creeping up Matt’s neck into his beard.“You know.” Bryan made a gesture with his hand that anyone would recognize. “How quick can you jerk each other off. Sometimes blowjobs in the bathroom.” Matt made a face. “Gross, dude.”“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”Matt shook his head. “Yeah, sounds like normal straight-guy stuff.”“I thought it was!” “Did you have…you know, a boyfriend? Did you date?”“No, it wasn’t like that.”“How many guys?”“Two. And a half, I guess.”“Over your four years?”“Yeah.” Bryan didn’t mind the questions. He felt like, in the dim light from the lamp next to the sectional, he and Matt were sifting through important history—history Bryan had been so sure they all shared.“Did you ever talk about it with them?”“God, no.” Bryan smiled humorlessly. “Straight guys, right?”“Right.” Matt drew one knee up and wrapped his long arm around it. “Shit. And you never thought you might be bi?”Bryan twitched a shrug. “I don’t know. I didn’t know any guys who were bi, and the gay guys obviously stayed away from the athletes on campus. I guess I figured those guys dated other guys. But I obviously wasn’t going to date anyone on the team.” “Obviously,” Matt echoed again.“I just figured, you know. Straight guys do gay stuff sometimes, that’s all. But I guess they don’t?”“No, I think if you do gay stuff, and you like doing it, you’re at least a little gay.”“Yeah.” Bryan frowned. “Fuck.”“I’m glad you told us. Even if Shearsy was weird about it. He’ll get over it—he’s always been super cool with me.” “Yeah, what about you, man?” Bryan asked. “All this time, I’ve been a bona fide bisexual, and you had no fucking idea. Does your gaydar not work, or something? Is bidar not a thing?”“I don’t think it is.” Matt was back to not looking at him. “So you—” He cut himself off. Matt had gotten real prickly the moment Shears had looped him into the conversation. But Bryan liked having somebody to talk to about this stuff, and it didn’t feel fair to only talk about himself. “So I, what?” Matt said, reaching down to spin his tablet on the couch cushion.“So you didn’t hook up with anybody on your team, then, I guess. In Junior?”Matt shook his head. He put the tablet on the coffee table and sat back, cracked his knuckles and scratched a hand through his hair. He was fidgeting. Bryan wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Matt fidget before. He was always the quiet one in the room, still and calm.“Have you ever—” He’d never known anyone who could be so still in one moment and move so quick in the next. Matt leaned across the right-angle of the sectional, all his weight on one knee, hooked Bryan by the back of the neck, and angled his mouth against Bryan’s in a hard kiss. Open-mouthed, plenty of tongue, and an unsteady exhale. Belatedly, Bryan shut his eyes and leaned into it. He put one hand on Matt’s arm to brace him and swayed after him a little when he pulled back. Sitting back on his side of the couch, Matt wiped his mouth. “Now I have,” he said. Bryan blinked as that sank in. Matt’s first kiss with a teammate? Or with any guy? Matt the You Can Play rep and openly proclaimed bisexual? He was definitely flushed and maybe regretting having admitted that, even in the privacy of his living room with his best friend. Maybe especially then. Matt played his cards pretty close to the vest with the team, and Bryan felt like he’d just laid them on the table. It felt like there was no table at all, and their cards were just scattered on the floor in a pile.They stared at each other for a few more seconds before Bryan decided it was stupid to wonder how it was that he, who hadn’t even known what the fuck he was about until this year, had more experience with guys than Matt Murray. Clearly, tight pants, leather bracelets, and a knowing smirk did not correlate to worldly sexual experience. Bryan wasn’t sure why he’d thought they had.“Wanna do it again?” he finally asked.Matt nodded. His fingers were hooked into those bracelets, fidgeting again. Bryan stood, and enjoyed the long curve of Matt’s throat as he craned back to look up at him. “Were you making a pass at me in the water today?” Bryan asked. “It felt like you were.” Matt nodded again. “You got real weird after that.”“I freaked myself out,” Matt admitted. Dropping his eyes to Bryan’s middle, he reached for Bryan’s ribs like he had in the lake. His fingers curled against the soft fabric of his shirt. “Thought it was crazy to make that kinda move.”“Even after what I’d told you?”Matt shrugged one shoulder up and shook his head but didn’t say anything else. His breath caught as Bryan put a knee on the cushion next to his own. He shot a quick look up at him and tentatively reached for the back of Bryan’s other leg to draw him the rest of the way down onto the couch, straddling Matt’s thighs. “Come here,” he said, and Bryan leaned forward to kiss him again, cupping both hands against the bristle of his beard. “You think Shearsy’s gonna come back down?” Matt asked against Bryan’s lips. Bryan shook his head. “Nah, he got cooked out there today. He’s done.”Matt twitched a nod and shifted sideways along the back cushions until Bryan got the idea and slid down with him. The couch was just deep enough for the both of them, probably because Matt still mostly disappeared when he turned sideways. He hooked his arm across Bryan’s back and tugged him a little closer, away from the edge, while they sorted their legs out, Matt finally slotting his knee between Bryan’s. Fuck, he’d missed this. He’d been out of school four years, and it wasn’t like he’d had it all the time then, but there was something about this closeness with a teammate that grounded him. Steadied him on his feet. It felt so…normal and good, he’d been knotted up about it since coming to Wilkes and finding that no one did this. Not even the beanpole goalie from the Soo who wore his bisexuality like a Scout badge.Bryan breathed out a huge sigh against Matt’s throat and felt him smile in answer. “Oh yeah?” Matt said, his voice a gentle rumble beneath Bryan’s lips. Bryan nodded. “Oh yeah.” *Bryan dug his fingers deep into Matt’s hair, then gentled his grip and circled behind his ear down to the side of his neck. At Matt’s soft noise, he did it again, groaning when Matt licked into his mouth and sucked gently at his bottom lip. His lips swollen and his chin tingling, Bryan wasn’t sure he’d ever kissed somebody this long. Just kissed them. The quiet sound of their feet shifting against the couch cushions blended with their breath to fill the air with something like static, the absolute darkness outside making the time impossible to judge. The only thing he knew for sure was they’d been kissing long enough, lying on their sides, that Bryan had a kink in his neck. Finally, he reached up for a throw pillow, one big enough that he and Matt could share it.“Thanks,” Matt said gruffly. His eyes were darker in this light, somewhere between blue and gray, and they darted from Bryan’s mouth to his eyes and back, never settling anywhere long enough for Bryan to meet them. Mostly Bryan just kept his closed. He rolled his hips against Matt’s in a slow rhythm that sent shivers up his spine but kept his pleasure at a simmer. And Matt showed no interest in speeding up their pace. He answered Bryan’s movements with careful responses, only grabbing Bryan’s ass after Bryan had done it first to him. Ducking down just a little, Bryan pressed his brow to Matt’s chin and exhaled unsteadily, needing a breather. He slid his hand from the dip of Matt’s waist down beneath the hem of his shirt to the hot skin of his lower abdomen. At the careful touch of Bryan’s knuckles against the trail of hair into his sweats, Matt blew out a sharp breath and didn’t inhale again—not until Bryan had traced his fingers up to the bottom rung of his ribs and curved them around to his back, still beneath his shirt.Matt twitched hard, a laugh forced out of him. “Tickles,” he murmured.Bryan leaned back to watch him as he did it again. “I’ll stop in a second,” he said with a smirk.Matt laughed and shivered some more, in the process his hips kicking against Bryan’s. “Wanna get off?” Bryan finally asked. “I’ll do whatever.”After just a beat of hesitation, Matt shook his head. “Not sure I could right now,” he said, startling in his honesty, though Bryan should be used to that by now. His eyes were on Bryan’s throat when he ducked down to rub his beard against over-sensitized skin. “Feels like I’ve been jerking off for hours already.” He mouthed at the tendons of Bryan’s neck. “You know?”Too much incidental stimulation and friction, not enough deliberate attention. Yeah, Bryan had been there. More than just about anything, he wanted to slide down Matt’s long body and see how much of his cock he could fit into his throat. He’d bet good money that heat and wet and suction were all it’d take to bring Matt to that edge and spill him over it. But Bryan could wait. He’d waited four years to feel this with a guy again—he could make it a while longer, and enjoy it. “What was your first time with a guy like?” Matt asked instead, keeping his attention mostly on Bryan’s neck and the stretched collar of his shirt.“Uh.” A short laugh jittered out of him. “Pretty bad, I guess, by present standards.”“But at the time?”“Fucking awesome,” he answered readily. “I was on the US development team, right?” Matt nodded. “No privacy with my billet family ‘cause they had like six kids. So when the team traveled and I could hear my roommate jerking off in the other bed, I was just like, fuck it. And I did it with him.”“Like, with him?”“No, we stayed in our own beds, but he definitely heard me. We did that for a while until he got a girlfriend and blew me off. Uh. How was yours?” he asked, trying not to tense up, though the weight of the question was obvious. When he tried to lean back to see Matt’s face, Matt tightened his grip and nipped the thin skin over Bryan’s collarbone. “Going pretty great so far,” he said. Jesus. Bryan exhaled slowly, unsure how he felt about being a guy’s first. His best friend’s first. “Cool,” he managed. “Can I, uh, ask you…”“Yeah?” Matt tipped his chin up to kiss on the mouth again. It was an effective distraction for a bit, but Bryan had his eye on a prize. Turning away just enough, he said, “I guess I don’t really get why you’d come out as bi to the whole world when you’ve never been with a guy before. Why put yourself in that position when it’s not something anyone really needed to know? You know? It’s not like you’re married to a dude or dating a dude, or anything like that.” He shut his mouth as the words began to trip out faster and tried to soften the question with a kiss to Matt’s jaw. Shifting beside him, Matt looked up at the ceiling when he answered.“There were a couple guys who used to give me shit for the way I looked—the way I dressed, my skin, my hair, whatever.”“Your teammates didn’t back you up?” The question was a reflex—how could his guys not have his back? Bryan’s stutter had been the worst in high school, but nobody gave him shit for it. His teammates didn’t stand for that. The quick, sidelong look Matt gave him answered his question. “They were on the team.” He shrugged. “It was a joke to them. I don’t think they even thought they were being shitty. It was just how they were, you know?”Bryan nodded. “But I knew it was true. The worst thing—the absolute worst was I had it so bad for one of them. Like, one of those terrible crushes, right, that you know is terrible but you can’t help it.”“Shit.” “So I said fuck it. If they were gonna say that shit about me, I was gonna own it and fuck with them just as much. I didn’t have any trouble getting girls to go out with me, so I dated a lot, and stared at their junk in the locker room every chance I got.” He looked downright smug about it.“And they didn’t, like, retaliate in that situation?” Bryan’s stomach tightened at the thought of it. Sure, he’d been certain all the guys felt like he had back in college, but he’d had enough of a self-preservation instinct to be subtle about the stuff they did. And he’d never claimed to be anything but straight. “That sounds like a situation ripe for retaliation, man.”Matt shrugged. “I was starting a lot of games, and I got drafted here. And they were cowards.”“I think you got lucky.”“Maybe,” he said with all the cool of someone who’d never had to fake an ounce of his own confidence. “But I knew I could make a difference. Be a role model for other kids who didn’t know if they could play hockey and be queer.” He shot Bryan a quick look. “Never hooked up with a teammate, though. That was rule number one.”Bryan made a considering face. “Huh,” he said. “That was not a rule I made for myself.” He’d also never said the word queer out loud before.They regarded each other in silence for a few more moments before Bryan broke first and laughed. The low sound of Matt’s rumbled through Bryan’s ribs where they were still pressed together. “Do you wanna come up to my room?” Matt asked, tucking in close and murmuring right in Bryan’s ear. “With Shears, I mean, you probably shouldn’t sleep there. But do you wanna come up for a minute?”Bryan nodded, and pressed cheek-to-cheek, his favorite thing had become rubbing his beard against Matt’s. “Yeah, I’d like that.”*They traded blowjobs in Matt’s king-size bed, with the blankets thrown back and a stellar view of the nighttime lake behind them outside a wall of windows. Matt had bought his dream house this year, and Bryan gave him props for dreaming big.Bryan had also been dreaming when he’d imagined fitting Matt’s dick in his throat. Predictably, it was proportional to the rest of him. But Bryan prided himself on his enthusiasm and his work ethic, so he made it work. He made it good, if the way Matt screwed his eyes shut and dug his heels into the mattress was any indicator.After so long on the couch, kissing and rubbing on each other, the sex felt like a necessary exhale more than anything too momentous. Yeah, Matt’s was the first dick Bryan had sucked in four years and Bryan’s was his first ever, but the intimacy they’d already shared had broken that seal. And even though Bryan had promised he wouldn’t sleep in Matt’s bed, they drifted together after. Matt was passed out on top of him, so obviously he didn’t want Bryan to leave that badly. In the privacy of his own head and the early-morning dark, Bryan let the changed landscape of his reality settle around him. The rest of the world was a lot straighter than he’d originally thought. Or he was a good bit gayer. He’d have to think on whether that distinction was important—maybe on the drive home.And if he was gayer than he originally thought—and not just a straight guy who liked some gay stuff—then maybe he was actually the type to date a guy. Maybe dating a dude would do something great for him. Complete him. Fill a gap he hadn’t known was there. Something like that. Dating Matt could be beyond great. They worked together, so their schedules obviously lined up. Road trips and team obligations would be time together, instead of putting such a strain on the relationship like with somebody not on the team or in hockey. Bryan wasn’t the best at balancing hockey with the rest of his life. The rest of his life was mostly sleeping. And videogames with his teammates.Plus, there was the general Matt-ness of him—which Bryan had found appealing from the very beginning, no matter what anyone said about his brashness or his aloofness. Matt was warm and funny and generous to those who’d earned his good opinion. That he was a little stingy with his good opinion only made Bryan prouder to call him one of his very best friends. Also, Bryan had wanted to do this with him since their first playoffs together in Pittsburgh.After sucking him off and spitting into a tissue, Matt had collapsed back between Bryan’s legs and fallen asleep with his head pillowed on Bryan’s stomach, just beneath his ribs. With the top of his head in such easy reach, Bryan combed his fingers through his hair, wishing Matt had waited to cut it shorter until after they’d hooked up. His longer hair would’ve been nice to touch like this. He wondered idly how he was supposed to extract himself from the bed without waking Matt up. He wondered if he could sleep with only Matt for a blanket, no matter how warm the weather was. He wondered how weird their morning after would be, or if it’d be like Bryan’s old college hookups and not weird at all. It was very soon after wondering this, that Bryan dropped off to sleep, his hand still in Matt’s hair. *He awoke to an awesome view of morning sunshine on the lake and an empty bed. Downstairs, he found the guys with coffee, bagels, and dogs lounging on the back deck. Nobody really seemed awake yet, so, after pouring himself a mug, Bryan grunted his good-mornings and dropped down into an empty deck chair. Back behind his sunglasses, Matt might have been looking at him sidelong, but Bryan couldn’t tell if he was, and since he gave no other acknowledgment of what had happened between them the night before or that he was pissed Bryan has slept in his bed, Bryan took his cue and let it lie.*He couldn’t see leaving without saying something, though. They’d taken Shears to the airport and then, on their own, walked the dogs, and Matt still wasn’t talking…two days after they’d hooked up. Bryan wouldn’t see him now for close to three months. Not until camp. “Hey, are we cool?” he finally asked when they’d returned to the house, the dogs sloppily lapping water from their bowls. “Sure, why wouldn’t we be?” Matt answered, flipping through the mail he’d picked up on the way in.“Okay, I guess that’s not my question, then.” Bryan grabbed the pitcher from the fridge and poured a glass of water. Setting the mail down on the counter, Matt finally slid his sunglasses up into his hair and gave Bryan his full attention. “What’s your question?”“My question is—should you and I, you know. Go out. Date. Be boyfriends.”Matt smiled crookedly and lowered his gaze. “Should we?” he echoed.“Do you want to, I guess is what I’m really asking. I do—or, I mean I’d liked to give it a try.”Matt rubbed the back of his neck, then took the sunglasses from his hair and set them on top of the mail. “I don’t know, man. Seems like a bad idea, right? We’re teammates.”“No, that’s why it’s a great idea,” Bryan said quickly. “Workplace romance?”“It’s not like we’re in an office, or you’re my boss. We’d just… you know.” Bryan shrugged. Some picture would emerge. They’d figure it out.“I don’t, actually, know,” Matt said, looking him in the eye again. “I’ve never dated a guy before. I don’t know what we’d do. What we’re supposed to do. You never have, either.”“So? It’s a brave new world. I’m at least bi and inching closer to gay the more I think about it. I had a really great time the other night—why not go for it?” Bryan wet his lips. Matt’s unease poured off him; he could almost smell it.“Because…what if we’re bad at it? What if I’m bad at it because I’m not ready to be queer for real?”“You’ve been out for years,” Bryan said. “Since you were seventeen! You were, like, groundbreaking.”Matt shook his head sharply. “That was…academic. You’ve done way more than I have—you know what you want better than I do.”“I’m not sure that’s true,” Bryan grumbled.“It was fucking wild listening to you and Shears on the boat. The more you talked it through, the less I was sure of anything. You’re better at being queer than I am. I feel like I’ve been faking it this whole time.” He bit out those last words, and Bryan’s heart sank. This was why Matt had let it go—why he probably would have let Bryan leave without saying a word. He was definitely one of those competitive types that if he couldn’t win, then the game was stupid and he didn’t want to play. Bryan figured that was probably 80% of the reason he’d quit videogames, no matter what he said about having better things to do with his time. Bryan took a deep breath into his belly and blew it out slowly. It was the best medicine he had for when his emotions and his nerves got caught in his throat. “Man, I spent…” He counted back on his fingers. “…almost ten years thinking that what I wanted wasn’t gay because gay guys were theater-geek pussies.” Matt twitched at the word. “But obviously all athletes wanna fuck each other because sports are emotional, and being on a team is intense and manly, and manly emotional intensity and sex just go together.”Matt snorted a laugh, then tried to hide it by rubbing at his beard. “Yeah, that’s pretty fucked up.”“Right? Those are some serious mental gymnastics! You know who you are, and you have from the beginning. It’s one of the things I really admire about you.”Matt’s smile faded, and he shrugged a shoulder up. “When the guy you’re crushing on calls you a fag in front of the whole team, you figure your shit out pretty quick.”Bryan winced. He’d been luckier than he knew, building and maintaining his own bubble, finding the right teammates to keep his little reality safe and whole for so long. “I got burned,” Matt said, keeping his eyes on the counter. “Girls don’t—they don’t do that shit. They think it’s hot dating a guy who likes guys. I can talk about anything with them. I can be myself. I thought I was.” He shook his head. “I hate feeling like a fake.” The anger in his voice was all for himself.“Hey, go easy,” Bryan offered quietly. “A wise dude once told me that if you do gay stuff and you like it, you’re at least a little gay.”Matt gave him a flat smile, a quick twitch of his mouth.“It seemed like you were pretty into making out with me the other night.”“I was,” Matt confirmed.“And you liked my dick okay?”There was that smile again, the corners of his mouth turned up a little farther. “It was very nice,” he said with characteristic, gentle sarcasm.“Then I think you’re legit. I don’t care about guys as a group, or whatever. I care about us. I mean, your taste has obviously improved since you were seventeen.”Matt exhaled a short laugh, and from where he was leaned against the lip of his counter, he slid a step closer to Bryan. Closer enough that his height became a factor. And just like that, Bryan was back on the ice with him after every win, waiting his turn in line to grab Matt by the helmet and hold him close for a second longer. Fuck, he lived for those seconds—that perfectly allowable intimacy. Matt had put himself within reach, so Bryan reached for him, closing his fingers in the front of his t-shirt and keeping his gaze there. “I’ve always felt normal,” Bryan said and tightened his fist so his knuckles pressed against Matt’s stomach. “I know that this is normal. Wanting this is normal. So, all right, maybe I’ve been gay all this time. I still feel normal.” No matter how Shears had looked at him on the lake that day. No matter how much he should feel like a freak for wanting something that, apparently, his teammates didn’t. Maybe they just thought they didn’t or assumed they shouldn’t, but like hell was Bryan torturing himself anymore with how much he loved his teammates. “I would. I would love you the way they do—your girlfriends,” he offered. “You’d be safe with me the way you are with them.” He chanced a look up, and found Matt smiling crookedly, his eyes crinkled and warm. “What?”“Well, I don’t think it’d be exactly the way it is with them.”Bryan huffed a laugh and shrugged. “Not exactly, no. But you can trust me. You know that, right?”Matt nodded. He put his hand on Bryan’s shoulder and snugged it up tight against his neck. In broad daylight in his kitchen, and this close, his knuckles were visibly dry and rough. In the wintertime during the season, he couldn’t keep them from cracking. Bryan had felt a wonderful, tender ache watching him bandage them before each game. Yeah, he’d felt it for Sid, too, when he taped his wrists to guard against slashes. He felt it for Cully, winding his tennis tape, and for Geno, rubbing his palms over the lines of KT tape on his forearms and calves—all of it a ritual of protection, mental as much as physical. That Bryan could maybe pour some of that love into this thing with Matt made him feel like a container about to spill over. He covered Matt’s hand with his own, feeling out the rough grooves of his skin for himself, and closed his eyes. Matt startled him with the kiss, a bristly, soft press of lips that tipped him back into something deeper. He braced against the counter, and Matt leaned a little further into him. He pressed his brow to Bryan’s, and it was just as good as post-win.“I don’t wanna be a dick to you because I wasn’t ready to be with a guy,” he said. “I don’t wanna do that to you.” Bryan nodded. “I get that. But you’ve never once been a dick to me. I don’t see why you’d start now.”“Because I hate not knowing what I’m doing.” Matt was pressed tightly to his front, close enough that Bryan could feel the slight hitch of his breath, feel him getting hard.“We can take it slow. Start wherever you want and work our way up or down. In or out—whichever direction.”Matt grabbed at his waist, his long fingers clenching hard. “You could stay a few extra days, and we could fuck around some more. See where we get.”Bryan flushed, the heat of it rising right from the kick of want in his gut. He returned the grip on Matt’s waist and with his other hand, steadied himself to hop up onto the counter. “Sounds like a good spot to me.” Spreading his knees, he pulled Matt between them.Matt slid his arms the whole way around Bryan’s middle and locked his hands together behind his back. He put his head on Bryan’s shoulder and breathed unsteadily for a long moment. Bryan squeezed him back with his knees.This was a good spot, too.