swimming in sevens, slow dancing in seconds (and I'm the one that loves you) - Chapter 2 - cloudcjty (2024)

Chapter Text

Luke slumps into his duvet, laughing at its edges, hemmed with the words Vancouver 2030. There’s a Canadian flag on his bedside table, stuck into a cup of pens. Beneath the cup rests a sheet of paper, explaining the rules of the Olympic village, and it wishes him well, that he’ll enjoy his stay.

The only flight available was a connecting flight, over eight hours long with a stopover in Seattle. He had the choice to fly with the team, but told them he’d be arriving a couple of days early. Luke flew with Bella.

He left Bella with Pekka, who was living with one of Juuse’s friends in Vancouver for the duration of the Games. He trusted Pekka with her, and he knew Pekka would help him sneak out of the village to visit Bella.

Luke would have preferred her to be with Juuse, but Juuse was a floor below him in the hotel, rooming with Joonas.

Luke didn’t ask why Juuse had decided to play in the Olympics. He didn’t ask how. He didn’t ask any questions when he saw Pekka at Training Camp, arriving two weeks late, on leave for bereavement, telling Luke nothing other than the fact that Juuse wasn’t pregnant anymore. Luke supposed it wasn’t his place to know what had happened.

He peels off his coat while he lays in bed, shoving his face into his pillow. He won’t be sleeping much, with Team Finland under his floor.

His jersey hangs in the corner of the bedroom. The hotel room isn’t all that large – Luke is sleeping in a twin-sized bed and sharing a nightstand. There’s a basket of prints for Luke to sign, passing them out to fans that next morning before the torch is lit. There’s a dozen prints of his Wheaties ad. There are over two hundred prints of his Calvin Klein campaign.

Luke is too tired to sign them, so he drops his coat to the floor and smacks his lips, ready to fall asleep. His roommate will be there soon, his teammate Anthony Beauvillier. After being on the Predators together for six years, Luke and Beau have never had a conversation, always running in different circles. He hopes that Beau can tolerate his alarm clock that he brought with him, waking him up with rain sounds each morning.

(Luke has developed a skill for mindfulness. It helps him survive as an NHL player and a single parent.)

He is almost asleep when his forehead starts to ache. He’s forgotten that he wears a backwards hat, its snaps against his skin. Luke tosses it across the room and hears it smack the window – the bedroom is that small.

He wears an Apple watch to sleep, programmed to vibrate if Pekka calls him. If he were in Nashville, he would have it programmed to only alert him of a call from Emily, Bella’s nanny.

Luke supposes that he should sleep beneath his new duvet, so he slips beneath it. His jeans find their way to his ankles and his shirt falls onto the floor, landing on his coat. He grabs hold of his necklaces, cold against his palms, and falls asleep with his fist at his chest, resting on a fresh tattoo. It’s Bella’s birthday on the left side of his chest. He copied the idea from Pekka’s tattoo last summer.

He’s never been good at sleeping alone. His hand against his heart reminds him of why he’s playing the Olympics.

Juuse lays in his twin-sized bed, laughing as he and Joonas throw a stress ball back and forth. He pities whoever sleeps above them.

The Olympics serve Juuse as a distraction. They’re a way to keep his mind from reeling, from closing his eyes and transporting himself back to September, when he was preparing for one child’s birthday and mourning another. Now, when he closes his eyes, he hears whistles, and skates against ice, and a grueling training schedule. Juuse chose to work out on his own, in his own time, with a trainer that the team had hired. He was able to see his family and take care of the kids with Pekka, while simultaneously playing hockey.

Stopping pucks helped clear his mind.

It’s what he tells Joonas, and the rest of the team, and all of his friends. Pekka is the only person who knows that Juuse plays hockey to stay alive, that his therapist said to return to the sport once more, that his entire life can’t revolve around his kids if he is still grieving one of them.

He and Joonas joke about their teammates, almost everyone on Team Finland being the same roster they had at worlds. They rehash their vacation to Spain, and Juuse gets defensive about Luke, and Joonas apologizes for the nth time. Joonas tells Juuse about the apartment he bought back in Oulu, using the money that Pekka gave him.

Juuse always smiles when he recalls that Pekka wrote Joonas a check. Pekka did it under the guise of Joonas fighting Aaroni off of Juuse – which, was partly why – instead of saying what he really meant, that Joonas reminded him of himself when he was young, and that Joonas, through all his flaws, still deserves a good life.

Juuse catches the stress ball from Joonas and throws it back. Throwing isn’t a great word – he’s just barely tossing it in the short distance between their beds.

Joonas asks Juuse how the kids are doing, and Juuse gets to smile, saying that they’re doing great. Kaia is walking and talking since the last time that Joonas saw her. They’ve put Kaarina, Miika, and Mati into hockey, even finding a special league for Mati to join. Miika has grown out of his motion sickness. After the Olympics, they’re all flying to Nashville, and Mati is getting fitted for hearing aids again. Kaarina can read.

Juuse tosses the ball too high and it hits the low ceiling. Someone stomps against the floor above them.

(Later, Juuse finds out it’s Luke who sleeps directly above them.)

(Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Luke wakes up, just to stomp. He starts it when he learns that Joonas is Juuse’s roommate.)

Juuse falls asleep early and tells Joonas that he should party in the common room. He makes kissy noises to all of the kids through the phone, then says dirty words to Pekka in English so that they won’t understand. He falls asleep on the phone, listening to Pekka sleep inside of his earbuds, just as he did in Kazakhstan for Worlds.

Luke forgets that he hasn’t told anyone that he decided to shoot the Calvin Klein ad. He wakes up to Beau’s laughter, opening their blinds and pointing to the building across the alleyway. There’s a ten-story billboard plastered against it.

It’s a billboard of Luke half-naked, his pants loose against his hips, his stomach airbrushed to hell. His hair is wet and dripping in his face. He notices that his face is photoshopped, his jaw much more defined. The photo is black and white, with the words LUKE EVANGELISTA, PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY PLAYER. #MYCALVINS.

He covers his face with one pillow and throws the other at Beau’s face. “f*ck off,” Luke slips beneath the covers, hiding himself. He’s sure that he’ll get an earful in the common room, his teammates either clapping him on the back or poking fun at him.

He waits for Beau to go back to sleep, aware that their alarms haven’t sounded yet. Luke sneaks from his bed and goes toward the open blinds, lifting them fully, and staring out into the alley. Snow frosts the window, and Luke has to draw his face back, fogging the glass with his breath. He has to imagine that Bella woke up early this morning, too, and that Pekka took her to play in the snow with his own kids. He has to imagine that she’s bundled up tightly, in one of Kaia’s coats, built for frigid temps, making a snow angel. Luke can’t see the ground from his room, but he hopes that the snow hasn’t piled up too high for her to walk in.

Luke shakes his head. He stares at his billboard and can’t help but laugh, just as Beau did. That billboard is the version of himself that he wishes he could see. Luke wishes that he could see himself as confident, and boyish, and demure. Everyone else sees that – he’s forced the world to perceive him as someone that he isn’t. Luke wishes that he was that person inside, that he was strong, that he was brave.

Instead, he’s closing the blinds and grabbing his clothes from his suitcase, heading into the shared bathroom to shower, blinking away the fact that he misses his daughter, when no one on his team knows her name.

Luke throws his clothes onto the vanity beside the shower, and he laughs again. He’d grabbed a pair of Calvin Klein underwear. He’s sure that when he changes into his gear during practice that no one will laugh at that….

He scrubs himself clean and basks in the boiling hot water. He shampoos his hair and forgets conditioner. He runs a loofa against his skin and winces as it catches at his belly, at the scar that will never go away, that became infected and healed incorrectly, that still bleeds and still hurts him. Luke thinks it wouldn’t hurt so badly if it weren’t shaped like a f*cking hook. It’s impossible to hide it. Part of her being born early meant a few things went wrong, including a scalpel that carved too deep into his skin, in the shape of a f*cking hook.

At least he doesn’t have that on the billboard. At least his stomach is airbrushed to hell, dark shadows on his abdomen, showing off a six-pack that is barely there in real life.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door. Luke jumps out of the shower, telling his teammate that it will only be a minute. He shimmies into his black jeans, his legs still wet. He towel dries his hair and fluffs it wildly, throwing on his t-shirt and then a ballcap over his head. His necklaces are flush against his chest and Luke moves them to rest on his shirt. There’s no time to brush his teeth – he’ll put a menthol tobacco pouch against his upper lip later.

Luke goes back into his shared bedroom. He opens the door to Beau leaning to his side of the nightstand, trying to shut off Luke’s alarm. Luke turns it off without mentioning Beau’s struggle back to him. “I’m going down to get breakfast,” Luke says. “I think there’s a restaurant downstairs.”

He puts on his watch and checks the time. It’s seven a.m., exactly. Practices start at ten, only a few blocks away.

Luke will meet Juuse in the hotel lobby as soon as he can. If he knows Juuse well enough, Juuse is already there waiting for him. Juuse found a hidden exit the night before and told Luke about it. They’ll have about three hours to sneak out of the village and visit their family.

Juuse does pull-ups in the gym while Luke stretches beside him. He watches Juuse’s body curl, and he shifts his gaze to Juuse’s hands, sweating against the bar. He and Juuse have matching teeth marks on their thumbs, from Kaia and Bella teething at the same time.

Juuse has earbuds in both of his ears, nodding his head to the beat of his music as he lifts his body. He’s losing his grip on the bar and has to jump down. Luke tosses him tape to wrap around his palms.

“Are we forming an alliance?” Juuse takes out an earbud. He begins to wrap his hands. “An alliance between Team Finland and Team Canada?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Luke smiles, standing up and moving to the bar beside Juuse. “I’m going to smoke you in the games.”

“Sure,” Juuse says, watching Luke accomplish one pull-up and then slip from the bar. Juuse wears the roll of tape like a bracelet, and he hides his wrist as Luke asks for it back. Luke grabs onto Juuse’s shoulders, pulling him down.

“Give me that,” Luke laughs. They’re both laughing now, pretending to fight on the mats.

Luke takes hold of his tape, taking it from Juuse’s wrist and wrapping his own hands. As he removes the tape from Juuse’s wrist, he notices cursive writing wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet, incredibly thin writing, right beneath Kaia’s birthday. He recognizes that the writing is Finnish, but he doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t bother to ask Juuse, he’ll look it up later.

(It’s two bands of writing, Lapsi on kuin kirves; vaikka se sattuu, kannat niitä silti harteillasi. And the letter M.)

He manages more push-ups than Juuse does. Juuse gives up when Luke is just getting started, having arrived at the gym an hour before him.

Juuse wears a faded Predators t-shirt, soaked in sweat. Luke can see his chest tattoo through it, and the tattoo on his ribcage, and the hip tattoo that rests just above his shorts. He remembers that Juuse has another hip tattoo, a few inches further down.

“We have a team meeting in an hour,” Juuse says, wiping sweat from his forehead with the hem of his shirt. He hacks spit into it, too. Eventually, Juuse takes off the soiled shirt entirely, replacing it with a white t-shirt two sizes too large.

“And who is ‘we’?” Luke laughs. “Remember, no alliances.”

“Your own child is a Finn,” Juuse is low as he speaks, watching Luke roll his eyes with a smile.

Luke is very, very aware. He carries Bella’s Finnish passport as they travel, and her birth certificate, and even bloodwork that proves he is her parent. Traveling through borders with a different country passport than his daughter is humiliating – they spend at least an hour at immigration each time.

He and Juuse bonded over the predicament, because at one point, Kaarina had both American and Swiss passports, but not one from Finland. She’s the youngest person Luke knows that has renounced citizenship twice.

Luke thinks about Bella while he works out, remembering how she greeted him this morning, shaking because she was so excited to see him. He’d only been away from her for twelve hours. She jumped into his arms and grabbed his necklaces – the necklaces that will one day become hers, when she’s eighteen and Luke can trust her not to take them off.

He does another set of pull-ups, then sits on the mat, taking a breath before he finds weights to lift. He misses her, terribly, but he knows she’s in good hands. Pekka will take care of her. She has Kaia to play with, only four weeks between them. Pekka and he and Juuse’s kids are living with past Vancouver players. Juuse is good friends with Sam Lafferty, and his kids are with Sam’s. Bella has made friends with them as well. It’s practically a daycare. Sam’s kids – Ruther, Linnea, Lilia, and one more on the way, due in two weeks. Juuse’s – Kaarina, Miika, Mati, and Kaia. Bella is there. Matthew’s kids – Klaus and Klaudia.

Bella has nine kids to play with, and competent parents to watch her. He isn’t worried.

He’s not worried, but he’s still allowed to miss her while he lives in the village.

Luke does as many curls as he can, then squats with the weights. His back aches with the heaviness, but he doesn’t mind the pain. He wears sweatbands on his wrists and wipes them against his forehead. He’s not as strong as Juuse is, he’s not raising the hem of his shirt to dry his face.

Luke has nothing to be ashamed of. He looks exactly as he does on his Calvin Klein ad. The only difference is its shadows, darkening his jawline and his abs, and the airbrushing beneath his navel. He has the huge muscles, stubbled chin, and bronze skin. The scar is the only part of his body that deviates from the beauty standard, and, even then, he shouldn’t be ashamed of it.

Luke changes in the corner at the end of his work out, slapping a towel over his shoulder and heading out of the locker room. Juuse grabs him by his shirt sleeve and walks Luke down the hall. Luke has never been on a national team before, but he’s always known that it’s a non-stop party. Juuse walks Luke down the hall, guiding him to the showers, then the steam room. It’s close enough for a sauna for his team to crowd into it. “Joonas brought beers,” Juuse smiles. “There’s a few of the Canadian guys in there, and the Swedes. I won’t go in, but, you might want to.”

Juuse won’t go in there because his team thinks he’s too old to put up with it – drunk in a sauna when they have a team meeting in thirty minutes. Luke thinks that Juuse should know him better than that, that Luke would never do it either.

And when Luke tells Juuse this, at the end of the day, Juuse says that Luke should know him better, too. His team doesn’t think he’s old. His team are witnesses in a lawsuit, testifying what happened to Juuse the last time he was with his team in a sauna, drinking beer and dropping their towels to the ground.

He goes back to his hotel room, collapsing into his bed. The duvet is falling on the floor and his pillows are folded. Luke forgot to make his bed that morning. He always makes his bed, and he has since he was a child, but he was too excited to sneak downstairs, to spend what hours he could with Bella.

Beau is leaned back in the twin bed beside him, scrolling through his phone. He’s on a call with a friend and says something in French. Luke falls asleep to his voice, understanding every other word. He failed his French immersion classes in high school. Beau says something about the Olympics, and about an ex, and about how tired he is. Luke thinks that if he takes a nap, his roommate will too.

“Did you know Sam was pregnant? I didn’t know until I came to visit this morning,” Juuse takes a call from Pekka once Joonas has gone to the common room. “No one told me anything.”

“No,” he hears as Pekka puts down the phone for a second, and also hears that Pekka grabs a child sleeping beside him. Juuse can bet money that it’s Kaia. “I think he was so busy with getting everything together for the families to stay with them during the Olympics, and being gone from Nils, since he’s playing, that he just forgot to mention it. Or maybe it’s just not a big deal. You weren’t telling people ahead of time that you were pregnant with Kaia. She was special to us, but to everyone else you were just… pregnant again.”

Juuse rubs the tattoo that wraps around his left wrist. It roughly translates to A child is like an axe; even if it hurts, you still carry them on your shoulders. Juuse takes care to rub the single initial after it. A bold-faced M.

“That could have been me, you know,” Juuse sighs and curls with his blanket. It’s the pink, fuzzy blanket that he and Pekka have shared for years. On its inside, Pekka had his mom sew two pieces of cloth onto it – Miika’s blanket that he outgrew, and another baby blanket identical to the one which they bought for Meelis, the blanket that flowers grow through in the backyard.

“It should have been you,” Pekka says. “You don’t have to come back over. We can meet with the kids somewhere else. There’s rinks here, and cafes, and libraries….”

“I’ll survive,” he stifles out a laugh.

Juuse thinks about the house, which is more or less a hostel now, or a glorified daycare. Miika and Mati are sharing a room with Matthew’s son. Kaarina and Kaia are with Bella. Though, Miika and Kaia both sleep with Pekka. And Luke has given Pekka permission that he can sleep alongside Bella if she wakes up in the night.

Pekka’s room is nice, albeit small. He volunteered to take the smallest guest room, its ceiling slanted like an attic. It still fits a king-sized bed, though it touches each of the walls. There’s a large window with lace curtains. The bed is plush. Juuse hopes that one night he can sneak out of the village and cuddle up with his husband there. It looks like a cozy place to sleep. He imagines sleeping beneath their blanket together, with Miika at his back and Kaia in Pekka’s arms, and the heat on high, while the window is fogged with snow.

That will be his safe space for the duration of the Olympics. He can close his eyes and transport himself to that bedroom. A mental safe haven to imagine himself in.

Juuse uses that image to fall asleep that night, asking Pekka to change their phone call to a video call, smiling at the bedroom behind Pekka, sleeping to his snores.

Luke retches into the snow. He does it in succession with Bella, who threw up oatmeal on his shirt. He’s gained a lot by becoming a parent, but he hasn’t gained immunity to body fluids. He coughs and drops to his knees, still holding Bella to his side as spit comes from his nose.

Juuse bends down and pats his back, giving Luke the shirt off his back. -1 C isn’t cold to Juuse, Luke can guess.

“Did she eat too fast?” Luke wipes his lips with the back of his hand, gagging again as he sees his own vomit on his knuckles.

“I think so,” Pekka bends down as well, taking a wet wipe from his pocket and handing it to Luke. Luke rubs it against Bella’s chin. “She drank two cups of milk.”

“She’s bad about that,” Luke rolls his eyes. The snow burns his knees through his jeans, and his bones are about to break from the cold. He has one hand on the ground, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think his palm had frozen to the pavement.

He lifts his hand to Bella’s hair, pulling her face close to his chest, praying that she doesn’t dirty Juuse’s shirt. He plants a kiss on her forehead, humming into her skin, telling her that it’s okay. She whimpers against him.

Luke takes a thin hair tie from his wrist and braids back her hair, then he plays with her hands, wrapped inside of tiny, woolen mittens. He knew Vancouver would be cold, but there wasn’t snow on the forecast. Bella wears Kaia’s snowgear, insulated with sheep’s wool and goose feathers to protect against Finnish winters.

“I’m going to lay down with her,” Luke holds her tightly, rocking her by swaying his hips. “You can go ahead and go to lunch without me. She needs me here.”

He and Juuse have two hours left of free time before they’re needed in the village. They made lunch reservations the day before, at a nice restaurant in downtown Vancouver. Juuse and Pekka both understand, nodding as they tell Luke to go back inside, to lay down with Bella in the guest room. Mati and Kaia share a sad look between each other as Luke goes indoors, disappointed that they won’t see their friend Bella.

Luke stares at the ceiling, smiling to himself as Bella lays against him. She asks him to turn on the television, so he does, and she asks him to change the channel to Bluey, so he does. He can only guess that she’s been spending too much time with Miika.

His stomach growls. He skipped the team breakfast, assuming he’d get lunch. He doesn’t want to raid the kitchen in a house he doesn’t live in. Luke sits up in bed, Bella’s face smushed into his shoulder. He does it all for her.

When he looks at Bella, it’s like looking into a mirror. They have the same wavy black hair. They have the same haircut. Even with her long hair, too many people think that she’s a boy. Luke has a Ziploc bag with a collection of bows. She unclips them after an hour, and misplaces each one.

He looks at Bella and thinks about when he was a child. He was the eldest of three. His sisters were his parents’ focus, he was just… there. The forgotten child, unless he was playing hockey. He grew up not being masculine enough for his parents, so sports were what they turned to. And Luke turned to become the man that he wasn’t. He learned to crave approval. He learned to act out to get what he wanted. He learned that he was never their priority, and turned to partying, and nicotine, and beer. He’s thankful that it was hard to find harder drugs in Toronto’s suburbs.

He doesn’t remember any moments with his parents growing up, other than fights, other than forgetting to pick him up at practices, other than buying his school clothes off his neighbors and buying his sisters’ uniforms at the mall.

Luke saw his mom in July. They didn’t hug once. She opened the front door and saw him standing there with Bella and shut it. He was in Toronto for less than twelve hours.

He looks down to Bella and she’s stolen Kaia’s toys from the nightstand. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her to put them back. She holds two cat figurines in her hands, making them talk to each other. She babbles, but Luke understands every word. He’s learned another language to communicate with her. More than one.

He’s learned what she says when her words slur together and her lips are too small to make the right sounds. He’s learned ASL, sitting in on virtual classes three times a week.

Luke sat in an office chair with Bella resting on his knees for his classes. He taught her as he learned himself. His instructor found out, and when Luke graduated from the course, he and Bella sat together on the video call, in matching graduation caps.

Bella teaches him what love is every day. He should have learned it from his own parents, but this is good enough. This is so much better.

“Mama sleepy,” she says.

Her therapists taught her the words for parents. Luke doesn’t mind that she chose to call him mom instead of dad. Bella could call him by his first name, for all he cares. If she says he’s her mama, then he is.

It’s not like Bella to take a nap. It’s an uphill battle that Luke fights every day. But, he knows she’s sick, that she lays against him with an upset tummy.

Luke finally takes the toys from her hands and pulls back the covers. He knows that Pekka won’t mind having to make the bed again. Luke pulls her close, kissing her ears, then her cheeks, then her nose. She lets out short giggles. He reaches into his back pocket and removes her hearing aids, placing them in their case, taking a cloth to make sure her ears are dry. It’s her cue to fall asleep.

He never wanted to be a parent, and Luke knows now that sentiment came from the way his own parents raised him. Bella is not part of his life; she is his whole life. He’ll work every day to be a better person for her. He’ll work every day to be the best parent in the world.

One day, he hopes that other people can see that. Instead of boyish charm, rugged looks, and skills on the ice, he hopes that the world sees his devotion to his daughter. That’s the legacy he’d like to leave.

Luke comes back to the hotel and Beau is in the common room. He has his hand in a box of cereal, eating it dry. Arturs Silovs is on the side of it.

“Congratulations,” Beau says. He’s watching television and reaches for the remote, turning its sound off. “You’re not f*cked for being an hour late to practice today. I covered for you. You’re welcome.”

Luke forces a thin smile and nods his head, giving Beau two thumbs up. Admittedly, he was over an hour late to practice. Not a hockey practice, but a practice much more important. The rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony.

“So, what’s she like?” Beau asks, and he laughs as Luke’s face turns red. “I mean, you were with a girl, right? What team’s she on? Or is it a guy? I don’t know what you’re into.”

He thinks back to a package that he found in his hotel room a couple of days back. It was complimentary of the Olympics Committee. Part of the package was two rolls of condoms. There’s no way that there’s an entire complex of athletes and none of them f*ck.

“It was… It was a family thing, I was on the phone for hours with my- my cousin,” Luke shakes his head. “Thank you, Beau. I appreciate it.”

Luke heads into their bedroom, sliding off his shoes and grabbing them with his hands.

He turns back and looks to Beau, already watching television again, the volume on full blast. Beau’s a nice guy. Things wouldn’t be too awkward between them if they’d actually had a conversation while they played together in Nashville.

Beau is a nice guy, and he makes his bed every morning, too. He only tried turning off Luke’s alarm once. He stays around at the end of practice and walks with Luke back to their hotel room. He apologized for laughing at the billboard and hasn’t opened the blinds since that morning. He’s caught on that Luke leaves every day, and today he covered for him.

And Luke needs a friend that isn’t Juuse.

And he doesn’t want a friend that isn’t Juuse, because he’s kind enough to know that he can’t build a friendship upon dishonesty. Making new friends requires hard work, and requires trust. Luke can’t share his full self without sharing his life. He doesn’t share Bella with anyone. Sometimes, he isn’t sure that he would have told Juuse, had he not been in Finland when she was born.

There’s the fear of being vulnerable, and the irrational fear that someone would hurt her. Luke’s too anxious to let go of either.

He turns around and looks to Beau again. Beau smiles at him and removes his hat, and ruffles his fingers through his brown hair. He smiles with his eyes, a ridiculous shade of sea green.

Something more than friends shouldn’t be a possibility either.

Canada wins their first game, 6-4 against Denmark. Luke smiles as he skates off the ice, scoring two of the goals. Beau scored one as well. He forgets who the other three were attributed to.

Their game is earlier in the day than any other teams are. They’ll have free time for the rest of the evening. Luke already has a cab called to pick him up, dropping him off at the house. It’s scheduled to arrive outside of the hotel in their complex, his driver parking outside of valet within the hour.

Luke strips from his gear and wraps a towel around his waist. He’s the first to get undressed, and he takes a bar of soap from his bag. Luke pills it with his thumbs as he walks into the showers.

He turns as he exits the locker room, and he catches Beau looking back. Luke almost makes an excuse as to why he’s leaving so soon. He’s about to speak, but he stops in his tracks, only opening his jaw instead. Beau’s smiling at him.

Luke reminds himself that Beau is a nice guy, that this is nothing sinister, unless he wants it to be. But there’s no guarantee that Beau would feel the same; him asking Luke if he left to hook up with a man or with a woman doesn’t mean that Beau is gay, just that he doesn’t care.

He also reminds himself that they can’t be something more. They’re not just roommates for the three weeks of the Olympics, but Luke is his Captain back in Nashville. It doesn’t matter that Luke has been dishonest with Beau for years – it matters that something more would complicate everything with the team.

Beau winks at Luke, but Luke has already turned around. Luke grips the tile of the locker room with his bare feet, keeping himself steady, distracting himself with the feeling of grout against his toes. He barely hears as Beau slaps his own towel against his shoulder.

Luke has trained himself to look away. He’s showered in the same room as twenty other men almost every day, for the past twenty years of his life. He can’t look away when Beau walks into the shower room. Luke knows better than to look down, but it doesn’t mean that he can’t stare at Beau’s face.

His hair is already dripping wet with his sweat. He hasn’t turned on his own shower head yet.

Luke turns his water to cold. As cold as it can go. And he raises his bar of soap to his face, hoping that it gets into his eyes, that way he physically can’t keep staring.

Beau steps beside him, so close that their shoulders brush. Luke looks to him, not exactly faking a look of concern.

“I won’t do anything that you aren’t comfortable with,” Beau nods, and steps away, just a few inches. “I can promise you that.”

Luke knows that Beau isn’t lying. He doesn’t understand how he knows – maybe that is what trust is. Maybe he can trust someone he hardly knows, especially someone as kind as Beau is. Or he only trusts Beau because he towers over him with wet, long hair and green eyes.

He has his bar of soap in his hand, scrubbing his chest. Beau puts his hand above Luke’s own. He takes the soap from Luke and runs it down his arms, behind his neck, against his chest again. Beau’s eyes meet Luke’s, and they don’t leave him.

Luke turns, placing his back to the shower wall. He’s giggling, and smiling, as Beau runs the soap along his body, as a handsome man touches his skin under the stream of water. He watches as Beau bites his lip, as he keeps his stare to Luke’s eyes.

Then Luke lifts his leg, touching Beau’s thigh. He knows he ruined this, as soon as he does it, as soon as their skin touches. Beau holds Luke’s hips, and his gaze hardens, smiling before he looks down. And Luke can feel his stomach dropping. He can feel his blood running cold.

“Luke,” Beau starts to speak, but Luke slips from his hands before he can finish.

He turns back to his shower head, rinsing himself clean from suds. He puts his soap into his shower caddy and ignores his shampoo. Oily hair is better than whatever this is.

Beau watches him, swallowing and tracing his back. Luke turns around again to wash his back, and Beau watches his face, his closed eyes, his pink chest beneath the hot water. He tries not to look down.

Luke finds his towel strewn onto dry tile and bends to take it, wrapping it around his hips once more.

He doesn’t bother to change into clothes before he walks the hallway. He shoves his arms into his coat and zips it, covering his towel. He’ll change in the bathroom of the hotel lobby. He doesn’t have time for this.

He doesn’t have time for this because it’s the first day of the Olympic games, and that means that no one is with Bella other than Sam and Pekka, and it means that she’s not getting enough attention at all, and it means that making it to his black car in time is more important than zipping his jeans. It’s far more important than humiliating himself in front of Beau. Though, Luke knows he already has. His cheeks burn.

His cheeks burn again as he pulls up to Sam’s house. It’s noon, and two of Sam’s cars pull in as well. Children pile out of them. Apparently, they’ve all already been to the zoo.

Which, is he and Bella’s thing. It’s their thing to get strawberry soft serve and wave to the tigers, it’s their thing to visit the penguin exhibit and dip their hands into cold water, it’s their thing to go to the zoo. He supposes that Pekka and Sam didn’t need permission to take the kids on a field trip, but he wishes that he would have known. Bella isn’t even wearing her special zoo t-shirt.

She’s toddling up the driveway, encased in a puffer coat. Her arms stick out straight from wearing so many layers. Beside Bella is Kaia, walking as slow as Bella does, stumbling on her steps. They waddle and bump into each other like cats.

Luke sneaks up behind her and scoops her into his arms. Pekka remarks that Luke’s wet hair is starting to freeze. Who cares.

Little Mati walks up to Luke, begging him to put Bella down. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Juuse that Mati would always have a friend. Mati is whining at Luke to put his friend down. Luke should have superiority here, he’s Bella’s mother. He laughs at Mati’s sad, ugly Finnish crying sounds.

(Mati cannot hear. He has no basis for how to cry, but Luke has seen Juuse cry a few times, and tells him that Finnish people are the ugliest criers.)

He kisses Bella’s pink nose, changing color with the cold. Her wide, brown eyes try to swallow Luke whole. They always succeed.

He snuggles her tight against him, unzipping his coat and wrapping her inside of it. Her head peeks out of his collar, her beanie – sewn with brown yarn, adorned with bear ears – covers his eyes. Luke wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Luke, if I did anything to offend you-“ Beau starts to speak as Luke enters their bedroom. He cuts him off by throwing his coat onto the floor.

He takes off his jeans and balls them into the corner. “’Doesn’t f*cking matter anymore, does it?” Luke strips from his shirt, stretching his chest. He climbs into his lofted bed and turns away from Beau, beginning to face the wall.

“Luke-“

“I don’t want to talk,” Luke pulls his duvet high against his shoulders. He picks at his cuticles. “Okay?”

“That’s okay. Just tell me what I did wrong, will you?”

Luke hums to himself. How can he convey the look he saw on Beau’s face? In the split second before Luke turned away, Beau had looked beneath his hands, and his lips had parted. His lips parted slowly, and his eyes caught hold of the scar. Luke saw Beau’s eyelashes trace its shape. That goddamned hook. And how can he convey that he felt safe enough to hike a leg against Beau just before? Luke withheld all of his fear as Beau ran the soap against his chest. He let go of his fear as Beau’s eyes grew warm. He placed the small of his thigh against Beau’s hip, and he knew, he knew that Beau would feel nothing against him. He knew that Beau would look down and see most secret part of him.

“I feel… gullible,” Luke says. He coughs and finds his phone charger, his phone completely dead.

Luke turns to lie flat on his back. He stares up at the ceiling of the dingy hotel room, their overhead light flickering. He takes hold of his necklaces and plays with them in his hands. Luke laces his pinky into one of the links of Sulho’s silver chain. He puts the crucifix of his gold necklace between his front teeth. When he drops the chain from his fingertip, it falls cold against his tattoo, still a bit raw. He wonders if Beau tried to read his tattoo while they showered.

“I didn’t try to trick you,” Luke hears Beau shuffle beneath his covers, rustling the sheets of his own twin bed. The three feet between their mattresses only feels like an inch. “We can forget that today ever happened. I want to get to know you, though. I’d at least like to be your friend.”

“Nobody wants to be friends with a man with a puss*,” Luke puts a finger into a link again and cracks his nail.

“Don’t talk about yourself that way.”

“It’s true, is it not?” He rolls over in bed, but only to turn off his lamp. The overhead light does nothing to illuminate their room. Luke crawls beneath the covers again, placing his head beneath a blanket. “We’re f*cking hockey players, Beau. Don’t you wonder why I’ve never told anyone? There are other guys like me, but no one really flaunts it. It’s embarrassing as sh*t. And don’t lie and say that you still wanted to have sex with me in those showers after you saw. I saw your jaw drop. I know that men like you don’t want to f*ck a puss*.”

“You talk about it like you hate yourself,” Beau says. Luke can’t pretend that he doesn’t hear him.

“Because I do, Beau,” Luke throws back his covers in frustration and turns on his lamp again. He stares across the distance to Beau. “Because I really, really do. And, so does everyone else that I’ve ever been with. The women don’t care, but I don’t think I’m into women very much these days. The last man I slept with didn’t tell me that he already had a girlfriend. The first man that I slept with couldn’t speak English.”

He could care less that he’s revealed to Beau that he’s only had sex with another man twice. Beau knows much worse about him.

Luke opens their shared nightstand and takes out a shooter of alcohol. He starts to open it, cracking its seal for the first time, but stops as Beau begins to speak again. In his periphery, he can see Beau sit up completely in his bed, swinging his feet off, yielding his sight directly to Luke as he talks to him.

“I’ve seen your gloves, and the inside of your skates, and the text on the handle of your stick. I thought the name Bella belonged to your mom or a girlfriend. Bella’s your daughter, isn’t she?”

The shooter of Tito’s finds its way back into the drawer. Luke shivers as Beau asks the question.

“There are five people in this world who know,” Luke sits up as well, crossing his legs. “Don’t make me regret having told you.”

“You have every reason in the world to be scared,” Beau sends Luke a tight, flat smile. “I can tell you that I won’t hurt you, but I know you won’t believe me yet. And it’s okay. I understand. I do.”

“The problem is that I will believe you. I feel safe with you, Beau,” Luke regrets putting the shooter back into their drawer. “I’ve been burned too many times before, though. It’s hard for me to trust, but the second that I do, I go all in. I’m trying not to do that with you. If I were following my heart, I’d be in your bed.”

Luke’s hands are in his lap. He plays with his fingertips, pulling his cuticles, peeling back calluses.

He shifts his legs back, placing them beneath his duvet once more. He tries to roll over, but his body won’t let him. Every part of Luke wants to continue staring at Beau. At green eyes, at soft, long hair, at freckles dotting along his nose. He stares at those freckles like they’re the night stars themselves. Beau’s lips are still against his teeth, that tight smile taunting Luke. Luke can imagine the taste of Beau’s lips against his own.

He forces himself to close his eyes and to lie on his back again. He scoots his body against the mattress, listening to his bare back tug against thin sheets. Luke’s shoulder touches the wall now. He turns his head back to Beau and lifts his covers. “If I were following my heart, I’d be in your bed. My mind is telling me that you should be in mine instead.”

So, Beau slips beneath Luke’s duvet. There isn’t enough room in the bed for them both to lie on their backs. Luke swallows, and he lets himself have some reprieve. He wraps an arm around Beau’s chest and lies on top of him. He hasn’t done that in years. The last time, and only time, was the morning after with Sulho, cozied up in his small cabin, after Juuse had kicked him out. Luke had no idea how much his life would change after that day.

“No sex,” Luke says. “I’ve f*cked every woman in Nashville on a first date, and I’ve never been on a real date with either of the men. I want to talk to you first, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t have much experience.”

He places the palm of his hand in the center of Beau’s chest and raises himself up with it, looking down at him. He doesn’t remember any of this from Sulho, doesn’t remember the way a man’s jaw hangs, fat on their face holding onto their stubble, eyes weak but round with age. Beau’s not all that older than Luke, but the only men Luke has been with have been younger. He likes this.

His necklaces dangle over Beau and Beau grabs at them gingerly. Luke doesn’t argue. “The crucifix is just… I don’t know, it’s fashion, I mean, but it’s also religious? I don’t f*cking know. I believe in a God. And I stole the chain from Bella’s dad. I wear it for safe keeping. When she’s older she can have it. I want her to have something from him, I guess.”

“Luke,” Beau laughs. “Forgive me if this sounds rude, but, I didn’t know you had this in you. I thought you were just… Luke Evangelista, handsome hockey captain.”

“Everybody thinks that,” Luke says. “Everybody thinks that, but I don’t want you to. Not anymore.”

Beau reaches to trace Luke’s tattoo, letting his necklaces hang free. “August 1, 2028,” Beau hums. “She’s young.”

“She’s eighteen months old,” Luke rolls off of Beau, squished against the wall again, and finds his phone. He turns his phone on and tilts it toward Beau’s face. “This is an older photo of us.”

Luke’s lock screen is a photo of himself and Bella. Admittedly, the photo is old. He and Bella were on the beach in Spain. She was five months old. Juuse took the photo of them together. Luke holds Bella at his chest and she smiles for the camera, one tooth poking out of her bottom gums. She wore a pink, floppy sunhat, far too big for her head. Luke looks like he could be her big brother, not her mother.

Beau studies the photo. “Do you have anymore?”

“Do I have more?” Luke laughs out loud. “Yes. I have thousands.”

He scrolls through his camera roll, showing Beau a recent photo of them. He shows Beau their summer vacation in Finland, shows Beau the day they spent in Toronto, shows Beau a photo of himself with Bella in Times Square. He shows Beau a photo of he and Bella at the zoo, then another, and another, and another. They’ve been going to the zoo once a week for almost two years now. Luke scrolls a bit too far and stumbles upon the single photo he took of himself while he was pregnant. He turns his phone away and hovers over the trash, ready to delete it. Beau leans over Luke’s shoulder.

“Don’t delete that –”

“I wish I could believe you when you say that.” He lends Beau a sad smile. “I don’t like remembering that. I don’t like to talk about it.”

“We don’t have to.”

“Thank you,” Luke crawls back onto Beau’s chest. “One day I might be ready to talk about that. But not right now. I hate that I’m different. And I know there’s millions of other men like me, but, it’s hard when you grew up playing sports. It’s hard when you grew up playing hockey only because your parents were afraid you’d start to act like a girl. I’ve started trying to learn how to live this, but I can’t face what it was like being pregnant. I have never felt so detached from my body, so far away from myself. It was absolute misery. I’ve never been so depressed. That’s not the person that I feel like I am inside. In my heart and my mind, I don’t have a puss*. I’m like most other guys. I don’t have that stigma and that shame. I can ignore it for the rest of my life, but I couldn’t for nine months. I never want to feel that way again.”

He reaches over Beau and takes his phone back. Luke opens his photos again and changes his lock screen to a newer photo, him and Bella together that afternoon. He’s kissing her cheek and her hair is pulled back in two silk bows.

“You’ve got that baby pimped out,” Beau zooms in. “’Got her pink Airpods.”

“I wish. Those are her hearing aids. You can’t see from her hair, but they go over her ears,” Luke finds a better photo. “Sometimes it’s easier not to tell people that she’s deaf, just that she gets her listening skills from me. You know I don’t pay attention to jacksh*t. My stubborn baby.”

Beau nods. He smiles in understanding, remembering how Luke calls out anyone and everyone in the locker room for talking sh*t, even if they’re out of earshot. It makes sense now that Luke can read lips; he must have taught himself so he could teach his daughter.

Luke shows Beau another photo of him and Bella at the zoo, and speaks bitterly about Bella going to the zoo that morning without him. “Because it’s our thing!”

He’s had a crush on Luke for a while now, but in this moment, Luke has never been so alluring. Luke isn’t a handsome face anymore. Luke is a whole person, with wants and needs, and one intense, all-consuming love. And Luke is no longer his Captain sitting on the other side of the locker room. He’s spicy deodorant and clean cologne, and a Calvin Klein waistband peeking out of his jeans, and slightly yellowed teeth – his right canine pristine, because it’s made from porcelain.

Beau cups Luke’s chin. He’s never been this close to him before. He’d like to kiss Luke, to feel plush lips against his own. He’d like Luke’s stubbled jaw tickling his skin. For the time he’s spent on the Predators with Luke, he’s always believed his eyes were almost black, blending into his pupils. Now, though, he can see that Luke’s eyes are a chocolate brown. There’s a single golden highlight in his left eye. He wonders if Luke is studying his face the same way.

Beau kisses Luke, slowly but with fervor. He catches that Luke smiles and rolls his eyes. He’s not used to this – this idea of being taken care of.

“You don’t want me,” Luke laughs. “There are so many other people that you could be spending your time with. You’d like them so much better.”

Nevertheless, Luke still kisses him back. Other people may like Beau better, but Luke won’t give himself that grace. Beau might be his only one.

“I’ve had a crush on you for a couple of years, Luke. I’m done with waiting,” Beau runs a hand through Luke’s hair. “Well, I didn’t have a crush on you. I was enamored by the idea of you. The real you is even better.”

Luke holds himself up on Beau’s chest, his palm against him still, his fingers brushing against his chest hair. Beau removes his hand from Luke’s hair and begins to rub his neck, then traces swirls down Luke’s back. He takes hold of his hips and holds a light grip on his sides.
“Tell me how you got that,” Beau places a warm thumb against Luke’s scar. Luke winces.

“What do you mean?” Luke’s brows draw together. “Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t that what turned you away from me in the showers? Or at least wasn’t that what you saw first?”

“I’m only asking a question, Luke. I don’t know everything about you. I hardly know anything at all,” Beau kisses him again. “What happened there?”

“I went into labor six weeks early with Bella. She wouldn’t have been strong enough to survive any other way. They cut me open to get her out, and they went way too deep. I don’t know why it’s shaped that way. But it’s never going to go away. It keeps getting infected, almost two years later. At least it’s to the side a little, and not straight across me. I think that’d be even worse.”

He rubs the scar again. Beau does notice that it’s a little high, that it’s a little to the left of where the incision of a c-section is supposed to be. It’s clear that Luke hates it, but it isn’t something that he can hide. If it were a straight line beneath the waistband of his briefs, it would be another thing to hide, another thing to worry about endlessly.

“You talk about that like it was nothing,” Beau kisses him once more, and Luke kisses him back as he shrugs. “That was very traumatic, no?”

“Do you want the whole goddamned story of my life, or do you want to f*ck me?”

“You said no sex tonight,” Beau sits up. Luke curls into his lap. “And I said that I wanted to get to know you.”

“I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” Luke says. He scoots out of Beau’s lap to grab his pillow, propping himself against it, ready to talk. “It would have been traumatic if I had given birth to her. It would have been so horrible. I hate to say that, but I know myself, and I know that’s true. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I would have had to come to terms with a lot about myself, very, very quickly. They just gave me a needle and pumped me up with morphine, and then the next thing I knew, I was holding her, then I passed out and slept for about a day. She was born early, so they kept her in the hospital for about a week. That gave me time to myself to recover and to get my life together for her. And of course recovery from that sucked, getting up and walking and moving around and going to the bathroom was f*cking hell, I mean, I had just been ripped f*cking open, but I didn’t have to worry about the trauma of my body changing as much, I didn’t have to worry about as much direct pain. Anything to keep myself from remembering I’d been pregnant or that I have a puss*, the f*cking better.”

Luke fluffs his pillow once more and nuzzles his nose into Beau’s neck. “Are you happy with that? I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“I just wish that the rest of the world knew how strong you are,” Beau cups his hand against Luke’s jaw. He rubs behind his ear, tangling his fingers into the thick waves of his hair. “And I wish you could recognize that none of this is normal. You need someone to talk to.”

“I have you, don’t I?”

“You do,” Beau breathes in Luke’s shampoo. “You most certainly do.”

“Tell me something about yourself,” Luke stretches his arm across Beau’s chest and latches a hand onto his shoulder. “That nobody else knows. No one in the world.”

“I can’t go home anymore,” Beau nods his head, shifting his eyes from Luke’s hair and up to their shared ceiling. “’Mom’s not a fan of the whole… being gay thing.”

“Me either,” Luke nods as well. “That might be the worst part of all of this. That I don’t have my mom to talk to anymore.”

“I’m glad you understand,” Beau smiles as Luke moves away from his pillow and wraps himself at Beau’s chest, his ear against his heart. “It’s almost as if I don’t have any family left.”

He doesn’t expect it when he hears Luke start to cry.

Beau grabs Luke by both his shoulders and lifts him to sit. He pulls him into his lap. Luke wracks his lungs raw, apologizing profusely through every labored breath.

Luke is skinnier than Beau once thought. He’s muscles wrapped tightly over bone. He’s shorter than Beau thought. His face is slimmer. Beau recognizes him as something to protect. He’s far too aware that Luke has never had that before.

“I know I’m crying in front of you, but don’t get used to it,” Luke shakes his head and coughs into his hand. “No one has seen me cry before except her godparents. They’re the only family that I have left. I know how hard it is.

“And even then, if I were in a burning building with them and Bella, I’d shove them into the fire so we could get out faster,” he starts to anxiously play with one of his necklaces, unable to stop crying. “You and I are having this… moment right now, but the second that whatever you and I are comes between me and Bella, you’re cut off from my life entirely.”

Beau doesn’t know how to tell Luke that he will never do that.

“Whatever,” Luke sits up and turns away from Beau. He holds his head in both hands. When he lifts his face up again, Beau recognizes that he doesn’t have dark circles, but that he has tear stains. He doesn’t cry in front of anyone, but he must cry often. “Whatever! Let’s just have sex now, so you can forget about me being a freak, and a whiny bitch, and sad about everything.”

Beau doesn’t respond immediately. He reaches across the threshold between the beds and grabs his own blanket, then gingerly wraps it around Luke’s shoulders. He hugs Luke tightly and nods as he continues to cry. “Are you used to being taken advantage of?”

Luke’s never thought of sex that way before.

“No, no, I mean—No. Joonas didn’t hurt me, he’s still a good guy, Juuse and everyone’s still friends with him, he just… had a girlfriend and didn’t tell me. And I think with Bella’s dad there was just… such a language barrier. It’s not his fault I got pregnant, it was mine for not being able to read the contraceptives.”

“Someone can still be a good person and have hurt you. Someone could have taken advantage of you in ways other than rape, or assault, or anything else at that scale. You don’t have to make excuses for someone who used you to homewreck. You don’t have to make excuses for someone who clearly knew enough about sex to have come inside you.”

Luke sucks on his bottom lip. “Sex is just sex. It’s not anything important.”

“You say that because you hate yourself. You hate your body. You hate the way you were born. You hate that you’re a man with… a puss*,” Beau hesitates because he hates that word – there’s better ways for Luke to refer to himself without purposely turning himself dirty. “You hate that you aren’t the sex symbol that you’ve portrayed yourself as for years. You have sex to harm yourself because you think you deserve to be hurt. You hate yourself so much that you think sex shouldn’t feel good, but that it’s a means to an end, and that you’re just a puss* that belongs to someone else, for their pleasure, never yours. Do you even know what good sex is?”

“I don’t even know what I feel like,” Luke says. “You might know what good sex is Beau, but that’s because you’re f*cking normal. You don’t lay in bed and try to rub one out and cry because you wish that you were born with something else. You don’t walk into that locker room every day and change in the corner because you’ve feared for your life since you were thirteen, when the other boys in the room started to make advances at your friends because they had a puss*, because they weren’t man enough, because, like you said, we were just holes to f*ck. Can I tell you a secret? My best friend in the goddamn world, one of Bella’s godparents, is one of the greatest goalies of all time. He’s playing in these Olympics, just like we are. He has a gold medal from Juniors and a silver medal from Worlds. He won a Stanley Cup. He was raped by his teammate last year because he found out my friend had been pregnant. So, no, I don’t know what good sex is. I’m terrified of it all. I f*cked every woman in Nashville to get over that fear, but it didn’t help because I’m attracted to men. And I’ve never said that aloud. That it’s only men, and it only ever has been. I’m not like you, Beau. You can’t save me from myself.”

And it’s then that Beau knows. No one has ever loved Luke before.

Luke is not Beau’s problem to fix. Recognizing that is step one.

Choosing to stand by him anyway is step two.

Juuse calls Pekka after his game and doesn’t receive an answer. He thinks nothing of it and gets undressed from his gear. He books a cab to the house and takes a quick shower, rubbing sweat off his neck. Juuse smiles, ready to tell Pekka that he won his first game and that he hasn’t thought of September since he stepped on the ice. Judging by the date on the calendar, it’s a massive step forward.

He stops by the compound and lingers in the hotel lobby. Juuse sifts through the gift shop and gets Olympic sweatshirts for each of the kids. Kaarina’s is purple, Miika’s is green, Mati’s is blue, and Kaia’s is pink. They’ll keep the kids warmer than a jersey would. Juuse imagines all four of the kids in their matching pullovers when they come to watch a game. He continues to smile.

Pekka calls Juuse back as he sneaks out of the hotel. Juuse is slipping into the taxi as Pekka tells him not to come home. “I don’t know the address, but, we’re somewhere downtown. I’m in the waiting room, because that’s the right thing to do. Sam’s having his baby. I drove him to the hospital a couple of hours ago.”

Juuse tells his cab to wait. He goes back into the hotel and buys another sweatshirt, sized for a baby. Everyone brought him gifts for his babies when they were born. Like Pekka said, it’s the least he can do.

He sits down in the cab once more and checks Pekka’s location – nothing sinister, nothing that stems from not trusting each other, only to keep each other safe. Juuse feeds the address to his driver. He’s over an hour away.

Juuse laughs as he checks today’s schedule. Sweden is playing England at nine that night. Nils won’t be on the ice for it. That’s okay – England wasn’t going to win gold anyway.

He’s never been on the other side of the door. He’s never visited someone in the hospital who’s just given birth. Juuse is used to waiting for his friends to walk down the hall and say hello, to drop off flowers and food and warm wishes. For the first time, he realizes how nervous that they were.

“They have a nanny with them,” Pekka says as Juuse sits down beside him. “Sam had one on call, in anticipation of today. I drove and then Nils met us here. I can tell you, I do not miss having to drive someone to the hospital who’s in labor.”

“I gave you good experience,” Juuse takes Pekka’s hand. “You should be a professional at this point.”

“Yeah, but this was dire,” Pekka shakes his head. “Sam asked me if I knew how to deliver a baby. I said yes because I didn’t think he was serious.”

Pekka keeps Juuse’s hand in his own. He wraps his limp hand around Juuse’s back and nods as their wedding bands brush. Pekka pulls Juuse close and breathes him in. He rubs his back gently. “You can go home. You don’t need to be here. I’m just here to finish out my good deed of driving him. You don’t need to be here for this.”

Juuse wonders where Sam was nine months ago, what led him here. Juuse remembers where he and Pekka were; having sex in the lake. He remembers it as he looks down at his phone again, as he swipes away from the team calendar and to his own. An event that he didn’t have the heart to erase at the top of his screen.

“Sam is my friend, and he’s helping us take care of our kids while I’m playing. Why shouldn’t I be here? I even got the baby a sweater,” Juuse lifts the sweatshirt into Pekka’s line of sight.

Pekka rubs Juuse’s mustache as he watches him smile. Juuse relaxes into him. It’s not the time or place, but Pekka wants to laugh at what Juuse told him a few days before. Pekka’s let his facial hair grow out, and Juuse tells him that once he has a mustache that their lips will stick together like Velcro.

They’re already inseparable, anyway.

(And Pekka won’t talk about the fear that he’d held onto since September, the statistic that over 70% of parents who lose a child lose their relationship, too. It’s why he tells Juuse to go home, to tell Juuse to be anywhere but here. It’s Pekka’s job in life to protect him. It’s in the vows he swore to him.)

Juuse kisses Pekka and leans into his shoulder, closing his eyes. “I have a feeling that we’re going to be here for a while.”

“Me too,” Pekka says. He takes off his coat and wraps it over Juuse’s lap, turning it into a blanket. “From what I saw, things weren’t going very well. He’s going to have a c-section.”

Luke throws his phone across the room as it begins to ring. He doesn’t care that he hears its screen scatter. He’s hours deep into a conversation with Beau, and it’s the only deep conversation that he’s ever had.

“One day, I want you to show me what good sex is,” Luke says. He sits on his knees, across from Beau in his bed. Beau has his hands at Luke’s back again, fingers massaging his hips. “I trust you… to do that.” He’s afraid to say it fully, that he trusts Beau. For anything.

Another instance of Luke falling too fast. He trusts too easily. He can never swim out of it.

“You already know that I’m an open book,” Beau takes Luke’s hands from his face and kisses him once more, for the nth time that night. “What else do you want me to tell you?”

“What would we do? If… if we did it tonight?”

“You said no sex tonight,” Beau holds Luke’s fingertips and takes care to crack his knuckles. Luke laughs at that. “So, I don’t know. I’ll really have to plan. I’ll make it special for us.”

“So, what I’m hearing is you’re going to put some rose petals on the bed and light some candles, and hang some string lights from your kinky mirror,” Luke watches as Beau rolls his eyes.

“No,” Beau shakes his head. “I want to take things slow because I don’t want you to hate yourself when we go all the way.”

“Okay, then, if it’s going to be a few times before we go all the way, why don’t we get started tonight?”

Beau kneels back on the bed and tells Luke to lay his head on his pillow. “You’re sure?” Luke nods and smiles. “Okay. Open your legs.”

Luke does as he’s told. “What are you going to do?”

Beau removes Luke’s underwear, already wet in their middle. “I’m about to go down on you.”

Luke howls in laughter again.

Rolan Lafferty is born at 2:17 a.m., February 19, 2030. Juuse is the first person other than his own parents to hold him.

Juuse sniffles as he looks down, smiling and cooing at the little boy. He has a wisp of hair at the top of his head, a copper color that reminds him of Pekka’s beard. Rolan can’t keep his eyes open, his lips forming small yawns every other minute. His blue eyes catch the light of the hospital room when they do open, and squint closed from the brightness. His cheeks and his nose are pink, and his skin is incredibly pale. Juuse can imagine that he’ll gain thousands of freckles as he grows.

His hands are wrapped in mittens, and Juuse asks if he can take one off. Sam says yes, and Rolan’s tiny fingertips wrap themselves around Juuse’s thumb. Juuse starts to cry as he realizes Rolan won’t be letting go anytime soon.

As he yawns, he makes the smallest, tiniest, highest baby sounds.

“You have a beautiful son,” Juuse says. His voice is meek.

He catches Pekka in his periphery. Pekka’s hand against his back has also turned into thin eyes, watching him in concern, watching him in sadness. “Do you want to hand him back?” Pekka leans into Juuse’s ear to ask the question.

Juuse doesn’t respond. Instead, he rocks his hips back and forth, staring down. “Was today your due date, Sam?” He lets himself cry a bit more. Juuse’s nose runs like a faucet, but he’s careful not to let too many tears fall. He’s afraid to burn the baby’s new skin.

“Yes,” Sam says, and reaches out his hands.

“He wants him back,” Pekka keeps his lips at Juuse’s ear. He rubs Juuse’s back a little harder. He kisses Juuse’s cheek.

“Today was my due date, too,” Juuse clears the congestion in his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t need to be here,” he lets Pekka dry his eyes with his shirt sleeve. “You have a beautiful little boy. You’re very lucky to have him. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He takes a deep breath and licks the salt from his lip. Juuse finally looks up to Pekka, tilting his head to meet his height, inviting Pekka to take Rolan from his arms.

“You can hold him a little longer,” Juuse can hear a sympathetic smile in Sam’s voice.

“I can, but I shouldn’t.”

Pekka nods and puts his hands beneath Juuse’s own. Juuse pretends that he doesn’t notice that Pekka is crying, too. He pretends he doesn’t notice Pekka’s own hesitation as he hands Rolan back. Pekka’s hands are shaking. When he returns, he rubs the tattoo on Juuse’s wrist.

Juuse placed his bag from the gift shop onto the floor. He reaches for it and takes out the sweatshirt. Red, like Rolan’s hair. “I thought you might like a gift,” Juuse recognizes that he’s sobbing. He’s never been so embarrassed before. He’s ruining a wonderful moment.

“Thank you, Juice,” Sam takes hold of the sweatshirt. “You can come to the house anytime you want. You can always visit him.”

“That’s not a good idea for me,” Juuse bites his lips. “You did good bringing him into this world. I’ll let you have your time with him. I need to get back to the hotel.”

Pekka walks Juuse out, guiding him with his hand at his waist. He’s already called a cab. He’s riding back to the hotel with Juuse and he’s going to sneak in. He can worry about sneaking back out later.

Juuse falls asleep on Pekka in the cab, his tears staining Pekka’s shirt. Pekka isn’t sure which tears are Juuse’s and which are his own. His collar is stained from the tears that roll down his chin. Pekka cries for himself, for losing a son. And he cries for Juuse, because Juuse was the one who physically lost him. It isn’t something that they talk about. Maybe that’s for the best. Because Juuse is snoring loudly in his sleep, from the snot caught in his throat, from the tears he’s still crying through his dreams.

Pekka will hold him in his hotel room, in that dinky, twin-sized bed. He’ll say hello to Joonas, and he’ll swear Joonas to silence, to never repeat what Juuse will tell him, about the child he lost, about the grief that follows him.

“I can’t believe no one has ever told you how soft that you are,” Beau speaks against Luke’s thigh. “How warm. How sweet you smell.”

Luke wonders how true that those words are. More than that, he wonders how Beau’s lips would feel against the heat he mentions, how much better they’d feel inside him than on his thighs.

He digs his hand into Beau’s hair. Beau presses his nose against him.

“Is this okay?” Beau’s lips are like silk against Luke’s cl*t. So, so impossibly smooth.

Luke only grips Beau’s hair a little harder.

“Have you ever done this before?” Luke asks.

“No,” he can feel Beau’s teeth against him as he smiles. “But I like you, so I can learn.”

Beau takes his cl*t between his teeth. He does so gently, just enough that Luke can feel the pressure as he pulls Luke between his lips. He reaches upward, dragging his hands down Luke’s body, clammy hands against Luke’s skin. He suctions his lips against his cl*t, then taps it with his tongue.

Luke recognizes that Beau is pulling the oldest maneuver in the book. He’s spelling out the alphabet with his tongue against his cl*t. Luke begins to laugh, but Beau quickly shuts him up. Luke moans instead of laughing.

His back arches against the bed and his knees pull forward. He’s afraid of crushing Beau between him. He bites back another moan, loud enough to shake their walls. Their teammates are next door. Juuse and Joonas sleep directly beneath them.

Their bodies shake the bed. The lofted beds are made of cardboard, discouraging the athletes from having sex with each other, but certainly not stopping them.

He digs his nails into Beau’s back, listening to Beau hum at the pain. Beau flicks his tongue a little further down, barely grazing his cl*t now, lapping his tongue against the heat of him, nodding at the taste of Luke.

Beau dips his tongue inside of Luke. Luke knows he’ll scratch Beau until he draws blood if he keeps his hands on him. He balls his fists into the sheets and arches his back again. “Beau, please,” he says, and Beau knows what he means.

He pulls Luke’s c*nt between his teeth once more and sucks hard. Luke can’t help but to grab Beau’s hair again. His tongue is warm against Luke, but it’s nothing compared to his own heat. Beau continues to shift his tongue, up and down, sucking and pulling and scraping and licking and kissing. It’s the kissing that makes Luke come undone. The way that Beau kisses the inside of his thighs until Luke gets beard burn. The way that Beau kisses his cl*t, short bursts of energy bottled within Beau’s lips.

Luke doesn’t have the strength to arch his back once more. He gives up on caring about their neighbors and moans as he’s defeated. Sweat drips into his hair and down his body, and his fingers shake as he takes them from Beau’s scalp.

Beau rises up from Luke’s body and pushes his legs together with his hands. He moves Luke to lie on his side and finds a t-shirt on the floor to dry him off. Luke notices that Beau’s lips are wet and white, but he doesn’t turn away when Beau kisses him, his bottom lip against Luke’s chin.

“How was that?” Beau rubs his lips with the back of his hand and kisses Luke again.

“I want to feel that good every damn day,” Luke smiles and closes his eyes, sleepy from his exhaustion. “You’re going to turn me into a sex addict, Beau.”

“I’m glad it was good,” Beau plays with Luke’s hair, getting it out of his eyes.” If it can feel so good, why do you hate that part of yourself so much?”

Luke realizes he has one hand between his thighs. He moves it in an instant. He stares at Beau absentmindedly, trying to form a thought that resembles something coherent. Luke bites his lower lip and he can taste himself.

“Because I’m going to wake up in the morning still smiling like an idiot, then I’ll roll over and you’ll be laying in your own bed. I’ll be blushing and elated and all I’ll be able to think about is sex, and you’ll be regretting you ever took me. Because to you I’m just someone who opened their legs on the first night, and that makes me worthless. I’m always going to be someone who you f*cked, who was an easy lay for you, who was desperate. You’ll never look at me the same again, and I’ll go back to hiding myself,” Luke keeps his eyes on Beau, as hard as it is to focus on him, as hard as it is to tell him the truth of how he feels. “Because, once-a-f*cking-gain, I gave everything I had away on the first night, and there’s nothing left of me to want. No one wants a second date with someone who overshares, who gives away their vulnerability, who trusts at the drop of a hat, just because they want to be able to trust so badly.”

Because it’s not Beau’s place to spend the day with Luke’s daughter. He’d never intrude on them.

“And how early are you going to lay in bed before you go to the gym?”

“I don’t want to get in the habit of having to have sex to function in the mornings,” Luke laughs. He keeps as close to Beau as Beau will let him, which is as close as possible.

He can still feel a second heartbeat between his thighs. For the first time, Luke isn’t embarrassed of that feeling. Beau’s right – it does feel good.

“God, I need to shower,” Luke winces as sweat begins to stick him and Beau together. “Eugh, I’m nasty. There’s… I don’t even know, come all over me.”

“I’ll still be here when you come back.”

Luke hesitates to get up from the bed, to weasel himself out of Beau’s hold.

He grabs his robe from the back of the door, ready to cover himself as he walks through the common room. “Before you do that,” Beau sits up in bed. “Stand in front of me, for just a second.”

Luke’s aware of his sex-flushed skin, red and patchy, pink in all the wrong places. He’s aware of swollen lips that hang between his legs. He’s aware of sweat that sticks his hair directly to his forehead. He’s aware of a blood vessel that he popped in his lip, from biting down too hard. His chest heaves up and down in exhaustion. His skin is pilled with the cotton of his cheap sheets.

“That’s the person they should’ve put on the billboard,” Beau sends Luke a sincere smile.

Juuse holds barbells in each of his hands as he suffers through Russian twists. Luke catches him from the far side of the gym and walks toward him, placing his duffle bag onto a mat. “What the f*ck happened?”

“Rough night,” Juuse says, continuing to strain his muscles.

Luke sits beside him, leaning forward to stretch his arms, grabbing hold of his toes. He hears Beau’s feet padding against the mat beside him. Luke reaches up an arm to grab his hand and pull him down to sit. Beau sits cross-legged, his knee hitting Luke’s hip.

Luke opens his duffle bag and takes out a Powerade. He hands it to Juuse and Juuse thanks him, placing his barbells onto the mat and cracking its seal. Sweat causes Juuse’s shirt to grow thin, adhered to his chest and his shoulders.

“Don’t go so hard, you’re liable to tear something,” Luke tightens his shoe laces and continues to stretch. “Remember when I tore that muscle? And I couldn’t play in Paris?”

“Thank God that you didn’t see me in Paris,” Juuse takes another gulp of the Powerade. That’s right – that was his last night with Roman. Or maybe that happened in London. It all blurs together, so many years later.

Beau stands up and finds weights of his own, returning to stand a few feet away from Luke and begin a rep of squats. Luke silently raises a hand and waves Beau back over.

“I don’t bite,” Juuse says. “You can hang out with us, Beau.”

“Yes, he can,” Luke smirks as Beau squats for the first time and his knees pop. “I invited him to the gym.”

Beau does his reps and observes the way that Luke and Juuse speak to each other. They’re the last people in the world who Beau would think to be friends. Luke and Juuse crack inside jokes, they whisper in each other’s ears, they fight against the mats like children. And, speaking of children, Luke talks openly to Juuse about Bella, and Juuse does the same with his own. Beau was unaware that Juuse had children. He doesn’t pry, he doesn’t want to ask Juuse any questions. Though, he becomes well aware that Juuse is the best friend and godparent that Luke mentioned the night before. He’s glad that Luke has Juuse as a constant.

They say a lot that Beau doesn’t understand. Beau doesn’t know the first thing about kids, about parenting. But, he’s more than willing to learn. It’s a part of Luke’s life that Beau should acquaint himself with.

He also overhears Luke and Juuse talking about life in Finland. He learns from that conversation that it’s the country where Bella was born, that Juuse was in the room with Luke, that Luke wasn’t alone through those long months. And he recognizes in the same conversation that Juuse and Luke are in different places in life, again. That Juuse can’t always be that person. That Juuse is married and has four kids of his own, that Juuse is busy with his career, that he’s busy with his husband’s. Juuse is a constant for Luke, in the way that he’s a lifeline, he’s Luke’s one phone call. Beau wants to be a constant for Luke in the sense that Luke will never have to make his one phone call – he wants to be beside Luke every day.

It’s a lot to think about, having only kissed Luke for the first time twelve hours before. But it feels right. It is right. If Luke thinks he’s going too fast, Beau will show him what fast is.

Beau remembers something Luke told him after he’d showered, that he tries not to let being a parent consume him, but it’s difficult when that’s all he has. His best and only friend lives in the North Pole.

Beau had chuckled at that.

He wonders what happened to the Luke that he once knew, the Luke which he knew only a day before. The Luke who went out every night. The Luke with hundreds of friends. The Luke who was the playboy. He wonders if that was ever Luke, if that was ever really him, or if it were an act Luke used to protect himself.

He can’t stop himself from staring as Luke begins working out. He wears a muscle tank and a backwards hat. He holds the crucifix of his necklace between his front teeth. Beau thinks that if he were an animal, he’d be going into heat.

Luke’s muscles are huge as he pulls himself up on the bar, completing nineteen push-ups before falling off. “I meant to do twenty,” Luke says. Beau wishes that Luke had the confidence to pull his shirt over his head, to flex his back, to let his muscles pump the way that Beau knows they can.

Luke laughs at something Juuse says. Beau watches his eyes light up. He notices how the golden sliver in his left eye shines. Luke’s olive skin swells as he goes back to the bar, pulling himself up a few more times. Beau could stare at him forever, at black stubble against his chin, at his shirt clinging to him and exposing the lines of his abs, at his wavy hair curling toward the brim of his hat.

He’d like to take Luke out for lunch after this. He’d like to shower with Luke as he’d meant to the day before, then to call a cab for the two of them, and to go somewhere nice. Beau knows that Luke can’t do that – he has his daughter to go back to. A responsibility that Beau cannot conceptualize.

He’ll learn to conceptualize it. He’ll learn to understand. He’ll learn that the handsome, daring Luke in the gym is the same man he shared a bed with, he’ll learn that Luke the hockey player is the same as Luke the mother.

If Luke even likes that word. Beau wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t. That’s fine. Luke can be whoever he wants.

Juuse spends his fifth morning in a row at the house. He cuddles up in Pekka’s bed, in that small attic room, pressed against him, hiding from the frost on the window. Miika lays on top of them, with a curly mop of hair at the top of his head. Luke got bored -- Luke gave Miika a mullet.

He wraps himself around Pekka, kissing his chest, letting Pekka kiss his head. Pekka pets Juuse’s hair, he touches his cheeks with his fingertips, he rubs his mustache until he gets a laugh. “I don’t want you to fix me,” Juuse says. “I want you to teach me how to grieve.”

Because he spends his life waiting for the next best thing, waiting for something good to wash away the bad, instead of working through it.

Pekka nods at Juuse’s request. He kisses him again, and he presses a hand into the small of his back. “I’m here,” Pekka smiles into Juuse’s skin. “I’m never leaving. I’ve got you. I’ll do anything I can.”

Miika is heavy as he lays across them. Juuse pulls him close. He’ll never grow tired of this. He knows that Miika needs his own bed, but he’s still a baby. He’s three. He has the rest of his life to sleep alone.

“Sometimes… sometimes, I feel like you’re not here. I can hold you, and I can talk to you, but you’re not really there. You’re in your head,” Pekka watches Juuse shiver from the cold and rubs his shoulders with warm hands. “I know that it’s been hard for you, but when you told me that you were going to train again, right after we lost him, I was terrified. And I still am. You know the majority of couples that lose a child end their relationship. We already lost him. I’ll never survive losing you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Juuse kisses him. “I’m not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. I made a vow when I married you. I veered from that by being in my head, but I’ve never broken it. I’m not planning on ever breaking it.”

Pekka slots a hand into Juuse’s hair. “It’s my role in life to protect you. But it’s hard when I have to protect myself. I’m grieving, too.”

“I want one good year,” Juuse sits up in bed, with the both Miika and their duvet still wrapped around him. He lets Pekka sit up as well, snuggling into his side. He holds Pekka, for a change. “I want one good year where nothing happens.”

“When we go home, the kids will go back to playing hockey. You and I will spend all day at their practices. And we’ll spend the summer on the lake, and nothing bad will happen. Kaia will be two in the fall. We can finally go back north in November, and we can roll in the snow again, and we can sweat it out against each other.”

“I’d be happy just to do this. Just to lay in bed,” Juuse smiles as he hears a knock at the door. He’s met with Mati’s pink face, panting from climbing the steep stairs. He crawls up the bed, dragging himself up on the fabric of the duvet. He nuzzles into Juuse the way he always has. Juuse’s first memory of Mati – outside of when he was born – was the first night they spent at home, where Mati slept with his face in the crook of Juuse’s arm. He cried any time that Juuse tried to move him. Mati is bigger now, but he still curls into the side of Juuse’s chest.

He lays with Pekka, who is half-asleep, exhausted from helping Sam with the new baby, from watching all the kids in the house. He lays with Miika, and his Bluey stuffed animal who’s missing an arm. He lays with Mati, who giggles as he hums into his hair. He rubs the tattoo that wraps around his wrist. Juuse has all his boys with him.

Not really. Only in spirit, in memory. But three out of four isn’t too bad. He knows he’s luckier than he deserves to be. He knows he’s lucky to have children at all. He knows he’s lucky to have Mati breathe against his chest.

He’ll have a good year if he can remember that.

The sound from the television starts to sputter out. It makes sense – the speakers have been on high all night. The common room for Canada’s floor has turned into a house party. Luke ignores the red cups shoved toward his lips, after taking one gulp and spitting out a ping pong ball. Beau is on the couch beside him, on the opposite side, but their legs are stretched, and the balls of their feet are touching. He’s not drinking either, too focused on whatever hockey movie is on the screen. Luke didn’t know so many movies about hockey existed.

Luke’s not watching, though. He’s too focused on Beau, tracing the way that a lock of his hair hangs down his face, just barely brushing his jaw. Beau needs a haircut. Luke won’t be the one to tell him.

Beau catches Luke’s stare and smiles at him. He wonders if one of Beau’s bottom teeth is fake, since it’s brighter than the rest of them. He supposes he’d find out if he kissed Beau a little harder. On one of the first nights in their room, Beau had pretended not to notice Luke taking out a porcelain canine before bed.

They’ve been in Vancouver for two weeks, now. Seven days of that time has been spent sharing each other’s beds. There’s more talking than there is sex. There’s hardly sex at all. Luke likes that. He prefers that. He never thought he’d think that way.

Luke thought he was programmed to want sex over romance. There were years of his life where he believed he didn’t want romance at all, when he’d scoured sex blogs and declared himself as aromantic.

He genuinely enjoys laying on Beau’s bare chest, not caring to scan his eyes down further, beneath his naked hips. Luke would like to see more. He supposes that he isn’t missing much when he and Beau are only talking. They talk about anything and everything. Luke has never been so open. And then there’s the added bonus that, every couple of days, Beau will tell Luke to roll off of him, to spread his legs open, to let Beau’s fingertips and tongue explore him. Luke likes to return the favor, too, with a closed fist around Beau’s co*ck, teasing him and laughing.

Because Beau would prefer that the first time they have full sex is when they’re in their own beds. Beau would like to take Luke in his apartment, or in his own. And he knows Luke enjoys simple, intimate petting, and Beau’s lips between his thighs, but Beau’s aware that Luke is waiting for something more. Beau doesn’t want to disappoint him, and he doesn’t want Luke to think he’s using him.

Luke scoots closer to Beau on the couch. He crawls over Beau’s legs. No one is watching them, too consumed by the drinks in their hands. Luke steals from a bag of chips at Beau’s side. “It’s only seven,” Beau takes the bag away from Luke and closes it. “Do you want to go out?”

“And eat something that isn’t sh*t? Or from that Olympic cafeteria?”

“Yes,” Beau sits up, having slouched into the couch pillows. “Something that isn’t tan or gray.”

“We should do that,” Luke stands up and starts to walk back to their room. “I’ll make some reservations. I’ll call an Uber.”

“I’ve got it.”

Luke smiles at that.

He doesn’t bother to take his hat off as he enters the restaurant. It’s an Italian restaurant, and Luke will show great offense to the country where his parents disowned him, even if he’s Italian himself. But, he can’t lie and say that he doesn’t like the food. Or that he didn’t purposefully give his daughter two Italian names.

He lets Beau order their wine and doesn’t complain when its corked. Beau does, though, and their waiter returns with a second bottle. “Can you read any of that?” Beau asks Luke, pointing to the Italian wine label. Luke just rolls his eyes.

Beau kicks Luke’s shins beneath the table until Luke laughs at loud. Beau doesn’t let him get embarrassed, smiling back to him, enamored by his laughter. Luke’s cheeks are pink, and Beau notices a few light freckles there. Luke’s eyes sprout wrinkles at their sides when he partakes in strong, belly laughter.

Beau wants to tell Luke he’s beautiful, but the wine in their glasses is strong. He doesn’t want Luke to think he’s only saying it because he’s tipsy.

Luke thanks their waiter when he hands them bread and olive oil. He breaks the bread into two, then breaks those halves into smaller pieces. Beau’s seen Luke devour food before, as if he’s never eaten. That precaution must be from having Bella beside him most days, breaking bread more for her than himself.

“I’m so f*cking nervous for tomorrow night,” Luke speaks with his mouth full, olive oil dripping down his chin and staining the table cloth. He covers his mouth with his hand to hide it. “Semi-Finals. Us versus Denmark. Finland versus Team USA.”

“We beat Denmark during our first game of the Olympics,” Beau takes some bread as well. He coughs as he takes a bite, having dipped it in the oil, not noticing that Luke ground black pepper into it.

“We beat them 6-4. We only won by two, which doesn’t feel like much when there’s ten goals in a hockey game. And, like you said, that was the first game. Our team has grown stronger since then. So has their’s.”

“Are you worried about your friends with Finland?”

“God, no,” Luke shakes his head. “Sure, if they put Joonas in the net. But I’m not worried for Juuse. They’ll beat America, easy. Don’t ask me that when it’s us versus Finland in the Finals, though.”

Luke opens the menu and begins to thumb through it. He orders the same dish at every Italian restaurant, but he’ll take his time tonight, pretending to read through every option.

Beau’s asked Luke why he rarely talks about her disability. Luke says that it is, genuinely, not a big deal. Every family handles it differently, each person is affected in different ways. Luke was never scared of it, and he had the money and the time to be proactive. He swore Beau to secrecy, telling him about Juuse and about Mati, how life is much more difficult for him. Luke understands that he is very lucky.

“We’re going to the zoo the day after tomorrow--” Luke pauses as their waiter approaches, giving his order before returning to their conversation. “So, no matter if we win or lose that game, I’ll still have a good weekend.”

Beau remembers the photos Luke has shown him. Eating strawberry soft serve with his daughter and watching the tigers, pulling her along in a shaded wagon, buying her stuffed animals from the gift shop. It’s a sort of kindness and gentleness that Beau wouldn’t expect from another man. It will draw tears too his eyes if he thinks of it for too long, how Luke flaunts himself as the man in the Calvin Klein ads, but on the inside, he’s a lover. His heart belongs to his daughter, with bows falling from her hair and Cheeto dust on her fingertips.

Beau is content with knowing Luke’s heart will never belong to him. He could become Luke’s boyfriend, he could marry Luke, they could spend the rest of their life together, but that love would never come close. Beau admires Luke for that.

The restaurant is dim enough that no one would recognize them. Beau reaches across the table and holds Luke’s hand. He watches as Luke begins to blush. Luke takes Beau’s knuckles tightly. He’s never noticed how soft that Luke’s hands are. It makes Beau want to pull Luke across the table to kiss him. He can’t – Luke’s cheeks are still stuffed with garlic bread.

“One day, I’ll have to cook for you,” Luke says as their dinner is delivered to their table. “This is the kind of food we grew up eating.”

“You know how to cook?”

“I cook every meal when I’m at home,” Luke spins his fork in his pasta. “I don’t exactly like to cook, but it shuts my mind off. My brain goes quiet when I’m cooking something.”

It shuts my mind off. My brain goes quiet.

Beau doesn’t like the stress that implies. He doesn’t like that Luke has a special alarm to promote the idea of mindfulness. Doesn’t like that Luke takes hour-long showers. Luke’s not one to complain, but Beau can tell that there’s too much on his plate.

Because he’s never brought another man into Bella’s space.

Beau admires that.

He’s never had to navigate a relationship like this before. He’ll soak everything in and learn.

Beau takes his napkin and rubs vodka sauce from the corner of Luke’s lip. He likes the smile that Luke gives him in return. He likes Luke with one less tooth. It’s charming.

Luke leans over and kisses Beau, on the same side of Beau’s lip, doing so instead of taking a napkin to his chin. Beau takes care not to kiss Luke in return, not to drag him over the table and into his lap. He’s never felt this way with anyone else.

They both eat quickly and leave two hundred-dollar bills on the table, not waiting for their bill.

Beau holds both of Luke’s hands as they lay together. They’ve pushed together the two twin beds, and they’re against the sheets, fully clothed. Luke’s hands shake, but he can feel the warmth of Beau’s palms course through his entire body. That warmth calms him down.

“We don’t have to,” Beau’s knees are against the mattresses, between the crack where the beds connect. Luke lays beneath him, his legs spread against the sheets, though his body remains flat.

“I want to,” Luke nods. “And you want to.”

Their curtains are open. It’s late into the night and snow has stopped falling. The light of the city trickles in, dim enough that the billboard across the alleyway isn’t illuminated. Luke asked that Beau turn their lights off. Beau had to let in the light pollution of the city – he wants to remember every moment of this.

Beau is slow to reach for Luke’s jeans. He plays with their waist, then unbuttons and unzips them. He’s tickled by the boxers Luke is wearing – a gag gift from years ago, pink silk underwear with red hearts on the ass. They’re worn in, their waistband loose. Beau runs his thumb against their middle seam, smiling that they’re cold and wet, that Luke is warm and another heartbeat beneath them. Until Luke shivers and pulls his legs together, tightly toward his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Beau says.

“Don’t apologize,” Luke leans up and kisses Beau, missing his lips, rubbing the stubble of his chin. “I want you. I just keep forgetting that you want me, too.”

“Never forget that,” Beau takes his hands to the hem of Luke’s shirt, pulling it over his shoulders. He kneads against Luke’s chest. His skin is tight against his muscles, against a six-pack of abs, against muscles at his ribs so defined that they resemble gills, against raised pecs. Beau runs his fingers down Luke’s olive skin, appearing sun-kissed, even in the dead of winter.

Beau removes his own clothes, not wanting to feel if Luke’s hands shake against him. He knows that Luke wants this, but anxiety overwhelms both of them.

He’s careful to hold onto Luke’s kneecaps, leading Luke to press his legs down from his chest. Luke reaches to Beau’s hips, running two fingers beneath the waistband of his briefs. He’s slow as he scrapes his nails against Beau’s soft skin. Luke takes one corner of Beau’s briefs and pulls them down.

“’Already hard for me,” Luke bites his bottom lip, where he already bit it a few days before, wincing as he pops a scar. “I’m not lucky enough to have you.”

He wraps a hand around Beau’s co*ck. Luke’s fingers don’t fully cover it; his index finger doesn’t touch his thumb. Beau’s not the longest of the men that Luke has been with. That’s okay. Luke prefers that. He thought that pain was sexy the first time he’d had sex; now he knows that passion feels much better. Luke taps his thumb against Beau’s slit. He doesn’t have much experience with this. If he hadn’t already told Beau, then this moment would reveal it. Luke strokes Beau’s co*ck as if he’s never had sex before, as if he’s never seen another man’s body. He shivers again as pre-cum leaks from the velvet of Beau’s tip.

Luke imagines Beau inside of him, and for the first time, he imagines sex as more than… sex. He imagines it as more than two bodies pounding into one another. He imagines it as something that matters, that can do more than drive him crazy, something that can help him accept the body he’s in.

Beau wraps his hand around Luke’s and removes it from his co*ck. Luke takes no offense to that.

“Can I?” Beau places both hands at Luke’s hips, his wrists rubbing against the silk fabric of his boxers. He won’t be offended if Luke only asks to pull them to the side.

“You can,” Luke nods. Beau lets go of a breath that he forgets he was holding.

He wishes that the lights were on. He wishes he could see all of Luke, that nothing was hidden in the shadow between his thighs. Beau rubs his hand against Luke’s pubis and he’s clean shaven. He doesn’t know how to bring it up to Luke that he’d prefer if he didn’t. Out of instinct, he lowers himself, before kneeling into the mattress once more. He’s not going down on Luke.

“Is there anything that I can’t do?” Beau kisses behind Luke’s ear and listens to him keen.

“You can do anything to me,” Luke kisses Beau back, missing the back of his ear, biting his earlobe. Beau moans as well.

Luke sees the metallic covering of a condom wrapper appear between Beau’s teeth, reflecting the light from their window. “Except that,” Luke laughs, taking the condom away from him. “I can’t get pregnant again. I don’t have that to worry about. And I want all of you.”

Beau clears his throat and runs his hands through his hair. Luke knows that Beau is growing nervous again. Luke is, too.

Luke raises a knee and presses it against Beau’s hip. Then, he arches his back toward him. Beau sinks a little further into the mattress. He takes his palm and cups his co*ck, making sure he’s slick.

Luke grabs the back of Beau’s neck and their lips meet. He kisses Beau deeply, his tongue in the back of his mouth, seducing him, calming him down. And he can feel Beau against him, then an inch of him inside himself, then another, and another, and another.

“Oh, God,” Beau kisses down Luke’s neck as Luke cranes his head back into his pillow. “Oh God, Luke. I’ve never been with anyone like you. I’ve been missing out on you for my entire life. You’re going to drive me crazy, Luke.”

Luke can’t help but laugh. He laughs out of surprise, out of happiness. He likes what he hears.

“Goddamnit, Luke. I’m barely inside you. I’m not going to last fifteen seconds.”

Luke wraps both legs around Beau’s back. He lifts his head from the pillow and presses his lips into Beau’s ear. “Let’s find out.”

There’s no friction between their bodies. Luke grips onto Beau tightly, but Beau can move in and out of him, he can thrust into them and connect their hips, and just as easily can pull out, and just as easily Luke can let go. It’s the first time that Luke’s had sex where he feels as if he and his partner are equals, both putting in the same amount of effort, both enjoying sex just as much.

He has both hands against Beau’s back, but almost immediately lets go. His hand slip from Beau’s shoulders. He grabs Beau’s hips instead. “I don’t want your body too far from mine. Move in and out, but don’t leave me.”

Beau nods. He gets into a rhythm and his body stops shaking from his nervousness. As he thrusts into Luke, he notices that Luke keens as his co*ck hits him, as his tip hits a soft, spongy part of his body. Beau couldn’t say what it is, only that he aims to make Luke feel good again, and again, and again. He tilts his hips and grabs the base of his co*ck with one hand, keeping himself steady, keeping his body straight, hitting Luke where he needs to.

He’s read a few sex blogs, trying to prepare himself for this night. Beau takes his free hand and places his thumb against Luke’s cl*t. As the pad of his thumb rubs against him, Luke pulls Beau impossibly close, trapping him against his body with his knees and arms wrapped around him. “You’re going to kill me, Beau. This is how I’m going to go out. Death by org*sm.”

“You flatter me,” Beau continues to pleasure him. He notices that they both take deep breaths, that he can see the shadow of Luke’s heart beating out of his chest. “This is the best that I’ve felt in my entire life, Luke.”

Luke changes out of his gear and into a towel after the game-winning-goal against Denmark. He and Beau stand in the corner together. He doesn’t turn away from Beau as he stares at his body.

Juuse and Luke lay together on the carpet. They lay on their stomachs, taking crayons into coloring books. Mati sleeps on top of Juuse. Kaarina sits beside him, and Bella is beside Luke.

“Our last day as allies,” Luke says, scribbling an orange crayon over a drawing of the sun.

“Yesterday was our last day, as far as I’m concerned,” Juuse borrows a blue crayon from Luke and hands it to Kaarina. “You got lost at the zoo today.”

Luke rolls his eyes. His cheeks are still flushed from embarrassment, having heard his name over the loud speaker. “Luke and Bella Evangelista, your parents are looking for you. They are worried and at the help kiosk.”

Pekka was the one who told the employee to call for them, arguing that Luke is practically another child.

“I got lost because someone threw up ice cream on her zoo shirt. We had to buy another!” Luke musses his hand through Bella’s hair. He’d like to take her to the doctor soon. He thinks that she’s lactose intolerant.

Luke hands her a pink crayon. She starts to chew on it. He has to wrestle it out of her fist.

“I didn’t know there was anything going on between the two of you,” Juuse smirks.

“I don’t know how this has happened so fast,” Luke and Bella swap coloring pages. “But it’s so good, Juuse. It’s so good. I’ve never been with anyone like him. I’m in a good place.”

“Does he know…?”

“Yes, he knows all about Bella,” Luke wraps an arm around her. She rolls over and curls into him. “It’s new territory for him, but he said he’s willing to learn. He sent me the money to take her to the zoo today. Like I didn’t already have it.”

“When’s he going to meet her?” Juuse reaches over and plays with one of Bella’s braided pigtails. She and Kaarina have matching hair – Luke took the time to French braid their hair that morning.

“We’ve only been… f*cking,” Luke whispers, “for two weeks. I’m more than okay with taking things fast with Beau, but I don’t want to pull her into it. It needs to be something gradual. He thinks so, too. He and I are gonna reevaluate what we are when we get back to Nashville, then we’ll go from there. Neither of us have ever done this before.”

It’s times like these where Juuse remembers how mature Luke is, that Luke is no longer his twenty-two-year-old friend who pulls him out to dive bars and dilutes their vodka with water so they can drink it longer.

The ice beneath Luke’s feet feels worse for wear. It’s in desperate need of a resurface. Denmark and America skated it thin as they tried for bronze. Whatever Zamboni that the Olympics owned was clearly on its last leg. The ice was still jagged beneath his skates, even with water hovering above it.

He and Beau skate around in circles to warm up, passing a puck back and forth, dodging it with their skates, catching it with their stick tape. Beau reminds him of home. They grew up six hours away from each other, and they don’t share a native language, but Beau is from Canada, and it’s a welcome change from anyone else Luke has been with.

And he reminds Luke of home because Luke doesn’t have a home anymore. He never really did. He knows that Beau is comfort, and a soft, warm body to kiss and hold him. That’s home. He’s a place for Luke to rest.

Luke picks up a puck with his stick and stands in place. He juggles it up and down, he kicks it with his skates. He’s not worried for the game tonight. He’s never had a silver medal before – and it’s either silver or gold that he’ll walk out of the arena with. Silver could be nice.

Their coaches call the team over to the bench, pulling out a dry erase board and showing new warmups, something lighter than what they’ve been doing, just simple skating to calm them down for the Finals. He notices that as he takes a knee, Beau skates over and kneels down beside him. Their gloves touch. Beau opens his fist. So does Luke. Luke’s gloves have Bella’s name written across them. Beau’s gloves have Luke’s.

Luke’s been an A for the duration of the Olympics. Their Captain is out with the flu for this final game. He’s ushered into the locker room after the briefing, and he starts to pull the A off of his chest. His coach doesn’t meet him with a smile.

Juuse pulls the gold medal from his lips and co*cks his head. He can’t see his teeth marks in it. He bites down a second time and feels his jaw clench. That does it.

He strips from his gear and nods his head to the music that fills the locker room. Juuse bends to untie his skates and gets hit in the face with a stream of champagne. He has to laugh it off. Maybe he shouldn’t have been offended when Luke suggested he was too old to drink with the team after practice. Juuse wants to go to the house, to that king-sized bed squeezed into the attic. And he wants to find his phone. There’s one thing more important than winning gold in the Olympics – it’s finding out why Luke wasn’t skating for the team that lost.

But he can’t dwell on that. He can’t worry while he’s in the locker room. And he certainly can’t worry when he walks down the hallway and sees his family, when he sees all four kids in matching sweatshirts, when he sees his husband with open arms, ready to pick him up and pull him close.

Juuse forgoes a shower. No one else is showering either. There’s a party bus parked outside to take them to a bar. The Olympics picked up their tab.

Joonas walks past Juuse and tells him to open his mouth. Juuse does so absentmindedly and Joonas pours an entire beer down his throat. Juuse chokes.

He hangs up his gear and trusts that someone will take care of it for him. He pops three Altoids in his mouth to remove the taste of the alcohol. Pekka stands outside for him in the hallway, flowers in his hands in congratulations. The kids aren’t with them.

“They’re already back at the house,” Pekka says. He kisses Juuse and Juuse accepts the roses. “We’re going to see Luke. He needs something.”

“What does he need?” Juuse holds onto Pekka’s side, waiting for Pekka to grab him in return, to hug him tightly and to talk to him about the game.

“I don’t know,” Pekka shakes his head. He runs his hands through his hair. “He just told me that he needed something, anything, just… needed someone with him. It scared me.”