Tommy grinned to himself as he sent Vicki a text saying “You” attached to a picture of a blobfish, the creature’s pale body practically melting into a gelatinous puddle on the ground.
Vicki responded surprisingly quickly, avoiding any words and going straight to the point—a picture of a gutted fish.
Tommy: wow ok ok ok violent much
The little typing icon appeared for a long time before a single shrugging emoji appeared.
Tommy had to bite his lip as he imagined Vicki painstakingly going through the emojis like an old person to find the right one.
Tommy: youre a loser u know that?
Vicki: I’m sorry, who won the last two games between us?
Tommy: low blow u got lucky gonna beat your ass next time
Vicki: Tommy, I’d love to see you try.
First of all, Tommy wanted to know who put a period after their texts. Secondly, why did that make a rush of heat go through him? It was like some weird Pavlovian response to Vicki being mean to him—any challenge coming from him translated into the image of how easily Vicki had overpowered him in the past, holding him down right where Vicki wanted him so he could—
“Yo, what is look on your face?” Mayo asked, jostling Tommy’s shoulder as he sat down on the locker-room bench beside him.
Tommy turned his screen off quickly. “Nothin’.”
“You texting girl? Yes?”
“Yeah, your sister. She said—ow! What’s with you Russians and hitting me over the head?”
“Yeah,” Schmidty said from the other side of the room. “Don’t bang his head up, Mayo. He doesn’t have neurons to spare.”
“Okay, feelin’ real attacked right now,” Tommy whined.
Mayo shrugged. “You have dummy face when look phone, we make fun. Simple.”
“You know what, no rookie should be so confident. Show me some respect.”
“Respect?” Mayo laughed loudly. “You little boy. You show me respect. Talk about sister, I kill you.”
“Urgh, always with the killing…you have anger issues, Mayo-lite. Frankly, I’m worried about you.”
“Worry about self,” Mayo suggested, giving him a gap-toothed smile after all the pucks he’d taken to the mouth in the KHL.
“Yeah, yeah. Go take a shower, you stink.” Tommy waved Mayo away. He waited until Mayo was off for his post practice shower before pulling his phone out again.
Tommy: how bout a showdown tonight at urs
Tommy put his phone away to avoid checking it obsessively for a response, heading off to shower. He even managed not to jump at his phone as soon as he made it back to his locker. By the time he was dressed, though, he found there was a text lighting up his screen.
Vicki: Your place at four.
It was fucking ridiculous how Tommy’s heart skipped a beat. He sent a thumbs-up and put his phone in his pocket.
Four o’clock was three hours away. Plenty of time to get lunch with Ricky and then go home.
He ended up cutting it close, getting to his apartment fifteen minutes before Vicki knocked on his door.
“Hey,” Tommy greeted but didn’t have the opportunity for any awkward small talk, Vicki pushing him farther in and closing the door behind him.
Tommy made a startled noise that melted into something softer, hotter, as Vicki gripped his hair and kissed him savagely, zero to a hundred in a single second.
Tommy couldn’t help but feel something had changed now that Vicki had shown a willingness to step beyond his blinkered hatred of Tommy. Now that Tommy had peeked at the vulnerable underbelly Vicki guarded so viciously—his childhood dreams for the future, his love for his friends, and the care he took with them.
That didn’t mean they were friends—far from it—but now when Vicki grabbed his hair and muscled Tommy back into his own room, there wasn’t that sick, unsure undercurrent.
Vicki didn’t like him, but he wouldn’t harm him either.
Vicki stripped him down ruthlessly, knocking Tommy’s hands away when he tried to reciprocate. Instead, he shoved Tommy onto the bed, holding him down by the jaw.
“Watched your fucking game yesterday,” Vicki growled.
Something lit up inside Tommy, a firecracker flaring in the night. He’d been on fire yesterday against the Mississauga Moose, an assist and a beaut of a goal when they’d needed it most, sliding the puck between the goalie’s pads during their own penalty kill.
Fuck, Tommy loved shorthanded goals. Nothing felt better than sticking it to a team when the Sea Dogs had one less player on the ice.
Well, maybe not nothing.
“Yeah?” Tommy drawled.
Vicki glowered down at him, but there was a playfulness in his expression like they both knew this was a necessary act. “Filthy fucking goal.”
Tommy smirked, tracing the dip of Vicki’s top lip with his tongue. He didn’t need to say anything, just lifted his hips to rub his already half-hard cock on Vicki’s fully clothed form, which—fuck, that was hot. How bare he was compared to Vicki.
Vicki put a firm, commanding hand on Tommy’s abs, forcing him still.
“Fuck,” Tommy murmured, shuddering.
He scrunched his eyes shut as Vicki’s hands went lower, fingers tracing the length of his cock so lightly it was worse than no touch at all.
Tommy’s hips twitched upward, seeking friction, but all he got was a pinch to the thigh for his trouble.
“Ow. Fuck.”
“Stay fucking still, or I’m not touching you at all.”
“Oh, please. You think I can’t find someone else to give me what I want? At least they’d actually—” Tommy choked on the rest of the blatant lie as the hand Vicki had on his face tightened painfully.
Vicki leaned down slowly until they were nose to nose, breath to breath. “You think I’m going to believe someone gives it to you better than I can? Don’t think I’ve forgotten how nicely you beg, Tommy.”
Tommy felt himself go hot at those words—at the truth in them. The implicit threat.
“You think I don’t know you’d beg me to stay if I tried to leave right now?”
Tommy’s breath stuttered as Vicki’s grip on Tommy’s cock tightened, a fingernail digging into the slit slightly, making him writhe as his dick twitched and leaked, giving him away.
“You think I don’t know how much you like this?” Vicki asked softly, voice steely, hand moving up and down with the same merciless pressure.
A hand job shouldn’t be that hot, but Vicki seemed to have a gift for turning every single fucking thing molten. Tommy didn’t understand how his orgasm could be so far away and yet the pleasure already so high, so ruthless.
He didn’t have an opportunity to get used to the torture before Vicki released him and shoved him onto his stomach.
Tommy flushed even darker as Vicki yanked him up onto his knees, parting his cheeks and then, without any fucking warning, sucking on his hole.
Tommy cried out, elbows collapsing so he was face down on the sheets. He’d always been crazy sensitive there, and Vicki seemed to have figured it out. His thumb dipped into Tommy, stretching him slightly so Vicki could lick inside.
“Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” Tommy groaned. It was like he was being shot through with electricity, body reeling from being overstimulated too quickly. Jesus, Vicki hadn’t even undressed.
The thought made Tommy’s mind blank out for a second.
Vicki fucked him carefully with his thumb even as his tongue took no prisoners, rubbing against the rim only to dig inside, the hot wetness of it filling him up.
Spit slid down his crack, and Vicki used it to rub two of his fingers into Tommy’s perineum.
Tommy scraped his face against the bed, practically sobbing as Vicki just kept going, pressing a finger in beside his thumb and tongue. He arched against the burn, reveling in that in-and-out pressure he loved so much until he was losing his goddamn mind.
He drooled onto the mattress, babbling incoherently. He just wanted to be fucked.
“Please. Please, Vicki, I’ll be good, I swear, please fuck me. I need—”
Vicki stopped completely, pulling back like he’d been surprised by something, but Tommy couldn’t guess what, couldn’t think.
He whined, uncaring about how he sounded, and Vicki squeezed his ass harshly.
“Yeah. Fuck, yeah, okay.”
Tommy waited as Vicki got the lube from the nightstand, moaning shamelessly as three fingers slid in at once. Tommy let them pump in and out a few times before he was demanding more.
“Now, come on, I wanna feel you.”
Vicki’s movements stuttered gratifyingly, and for once in his goddamn life, he didn’t deny Tommy, putting on a condom and slicking up before he draped himself over Tommy’s back.
God, that first press in was so good, made even better by the way Vicki dug his teeth into Tommy’s shoulder, making him jerk and clench.
Tommy felt Vicki groan against him, and he squeezed again, on purpose this time, just to hear the echo of that noise.
“Fucking brat,” Vicki growled, pulling away, and proceeded to fuck him into next week.
It was just like Vicki to find the perfect angle and keep hitting it unerringly. Tommy had been close to the edge for so long it was almost too much, too good, like his body couldn’t coagulate into something thick enough to be an orgasm.
There was only pleasure, and light, and Vicki.
“You’re gonna come just like this. Come on, Tommy. Let me see you.”
It was like a flip was switched. All the sensation that was ransacking his body magnetized together until it was too big, hurtling over the edge as orgasm hit him.
It took Tommy with it. He didn’t know how long he hung there, only that he was still being fucked, absurdly grateful for the way Vicki was filling him up, keeping him there, until Vicki too succumbed to the heat and wash of sensation.
Tommy collapsed onto the bed under Vicki, squeezing the still-hard cock inside him and shuddering at the way Vicki moaned right in his ear, arms wrapping around him.
Tommy tilted his face just enough to exchange a sloppy, sated kiss with Vicki before sinking into the mattress again.
Time lost meaning, stretching so it thinned, consciousness slipping in and out. It was only when Vicki pulled out that Tommy stirred, opening his eyes blearily.
“Holy fuck,” he groaned, stretching his body. Vicki snorted from where he was throwing the condom away.
“You good?”
Tommy blinked in surprise as Vicki sat back on the bed, leaning over him.
“Not really,” Tommy joked, but it must have fallen flat because something panicked crossed over Vicki’s face. “How the hell am I supposed to get anything done after being fucked like that?”
Something soft unraveled in Tommy’s chest as Vicki’s concerned expression dropped into amusement despite the way he rolled his eyes. “Maybe next time don’t try and bluff about getting it somewhere else.”
Tommy shrugged, stretching his arms over his head. “It got me what I wanted, didn’t it?”
Vicki didn’t reply, staring at him. For a moment, Tommy thought he was going to be kissed, heart thumping at the possibility, but of course that didn’t happen.
They didn’t do that. This was about sex, not romance.
Tommy tilted the corner of his lips up. “Good luck tomorrow. You better break Houston’s winning streak. They’re getting fucking unbearable.”
“We’re going to fucking demolish them.”
Tommy shivered at the feral confidence in Vicki’s voice, his dick twitching valiantly about it. For such a stoic guy, he could be surprisingly violent in his sentiments. “Good.”
Tommy watched as Vicki got up and dressed, eyes drooping sleepily. He was sticky and gross, but who the fuck cared—he’d more than earned a nap.
His body must have deemed Vicki safe enough to pass out in front of because between one second and the next, he was asleep.
The thing about Tommy was that he didn’t realize how much of an optimist—or a naïve fool—he was until it hit him right in the face.
He wasn’t even paying much attention to the TV at first. He’d half watched the Salem Cats versus the Brooklyn Phantoms game, his attention waning further as the postgame presser started. Vicki’s voice, though, had Tommy perking up like a fucking dog, smile stretching his cheeks as Vicki’s flushed, sweaty face appeared on the screen.
Unbidden, images from the sex three days ago floated into his mind. The way Vicki had cradled Tommy’s face for a second, cheeks red and skin glowing. How Vicki’s voice had sounded before he pulled Tommy in for that last kiss even though they’d already come. Despite how rough the sex had been, for a second Tommy had felt—
“You’ve spoken a lot about Thomas Tremblay from the Queens Sea Dogs being a dirty player. What’s your opinion on the injury he caused Clay Chancey last night? Did you watch the game against the Durham Stallions?”
Tommy had to laugh at the question. Someone had rammed into Tommy from behind, causing a domino effect that ended with Chancey bruising the bones in his knuckles on the boards. To say Tommy had caused that injury when he’d been practically standing still by the net, waiting to tip in a puck, was a clear fucking example of how biased the Brooklyn media was.
On the screen, Vicki frowned, no doubt at the ridiculousness of the question. Tommy leaned forward a little—this was going to be the first time Vicki defended him in public or even said anything half-decent about him.
“I didn’t watch the game, but whatever the injury is, I’m not surprised. The guy’s reckless, and one of these days one of his targets isn’t going to recover.”
Tommy half grinned, waiting for the punchline. For some sarcastic roll of the eyes to highlight the fact he was joking.
Instead, the reporter spoke again. “Your two teams are set to play against each other during the charity Christmas game. Do you think you’ll be able to keep it civil?”
“I don’t have a problem staying civil—you’ll have to ask him if he’s capable of playing a clean game. As long as he doesn’t injure any of my players, I don’t give a—I don’t care if he’s on the ice with me. It’s not like he makes much of a difference.”
Tommy stood up, walking slowly toward the kitchen. There was a weird buzzing in his ears, brain filling up with cotton, mouth dry.
Obviously, Tommy hadn’t expected Vicki to just let go of all his prejudices. Tommy could be a difficult person to like sometimes, and Vicki was never gonna change his mind about that.
It was just…he’d seen Vicki when he was kind. Taking care of Zed, Davesh, and Kevin as they all sat around a table in Warung Selasa, making sure everybody got food. The way his teammates spoke about him in the press—about how he was loyal and hardworking. Noble.
And yet there Vicki was, making assertions about Tommy without even seeing the fucking game he was talking about. Like, how much of a piece of shit could someone be to hold Tommy down and fuck him like Vicki had and then turn around and spew some ignorant bullshit like that?
The worst part was that standing there in his kitchen, hands shaking a little from the adrenaline of anger and shock, Tommy felt doubt worming around between his ribs, down to his gut. Some sick feeling of shame was bubbling up, even though Tommy knew he hadn’t done anything wrong—that he shouldn’t care what Vicki thought.
Somehow, Vicki had gotten under his skin, and Tommy didn’t fucking know how to get him out.
Almost the first thing Tommy saw when he got to Madison Square Garden—the place they’d converted into a rink for the charity game—was Vicki.
Because of course it was.
Tommy turned away from him, uninterested in whoever the fuck the hot guy Vicki was talking to was. Let him be a romantic interest for all Tommy cared. He didn’t give a fuck.
“Dima’s bailing on the charity ball, the fucker. Says his parents being here for Christmas is a good enough reason,” Jacki said as they walked to their assigned locker room.
“What the fuck? I’ve been trying to get out of that thing for months. He can just bring them along.”
“They don’t know English, so Dima said they’d be uncomfortable, which I guess…fair enough.”
“Urgh. Christmas isn’t even for another two weeks. He’s just…manipulating the system.”
“Oh God, not the system. All hail the mighty system.”
“All hail the mighty system,” Tommy crowed as they joined most of their teammates in various pregame stages. “Hey, Mayo. You heard Dima isn’t going to the ball?”
Mayo turned to Dima and said something quick in Russian. Dima scoffed and waved him away.
Tommy grinned, satisfied he’d stirred some shit up, laughing as Jacki bumped into him.
“Fucking brat,” Jacki said.
Tommy just shrugged, ignoring the fact that the word was something Vicki would call him. From Jacki, though, it wasn’t demeaning.
The game itself was pretty fucking fun. Tommy wished they’d just get a few days off to rest their injuries and get some shut eye, but that’d mean the NHL losing out on an expensive exhibition game and, well…fuck the NHL, basically.
Still, it was nice to play hockey without worrying about points or hard hits. Vicki looked ridiculously focused during the game, but most of the other players were obviously putting on a show instead of trying to win by any means. Dima went full old-school goalie, windmilling his legs to stop the pucks, making some pretty showy stops. The crowd cheered every time he did one of his moves, even when the puck went in.
“You wanna drop gloves?” Zed asked as they stood to the side of the face-off, knees bent.
Tommy looked at him in surprise, Vicki’s words dropping on him. “You wanna…?” He’d thought that everything was good with Zed, but if he wanted to make an example out of Tommy at a fucking charity game…
“As a joke, bozo. Show ’em there’s no bad blood.”
Relief swelled into a smile as Tommy nodded. “Let’s do it.”
As soon as the puck hit the ice, Tommy and Zed shook off their gloves and put their fists in front of their grinning faces, the crowd going crazy. Tommy waited for Zed to make the first move, an obvious swipe that Tommy evaded easily.
Tommy went back with a feigned jab to Zed’s middle only to flick his nose with his other hand. Tommy’s bench erupted into laughter as Zed reared back.
“Oh yeah?” Zed challenged.
“Damn, this is why you never fight, huh? You suck at this.”
For his troubles, Tommy ended up in a headlock, Zed giving him a noogie while crowing loudly. Tommy managed to escape, making kissy-faces at him as the linesmen finally separated them. They both took a bow before stepping into the penalty boxes.
The Sea Dogs hadn’t been chosen for last year’s charity game and Tommy hadn’t been picked for the all-star game, so it had been a very long time since Tommy had played for fun. It was…liberating. He’d sort of forgotten hockey was supposed to be something he was passionate about instead of just his job. Tommy loved winning, but he loved hockey more. It was difficult to remember that sometimes with the pressure of the NHL on his shoulders.
It didn’t hurt that they beat the Phantoms four to two. It might not technically mean anything for their chance at the playoffs, but it was the boost they needed after two dropped games against their rivals this season.
“Let’s fucking go,” Ricky crowed as they filed into the locker room after the final buzzer. “Beaut of a goal, man. Look at this guy, he’s trying to outplay us.”
Tommy grinned—it had been a good fucking goal, a coast-to-coast attempt that had him almost sliding into Kevin as he tried to avoid the Phantom’s second-line defensive pair. “What can I say? It comes naturally.”
The boys laughed, shoving Tommy around a little before Coach Monroe came in for a few encouraging words.
Tommy’s heart felt lighter than it had in months. This was what his life was about—team, loyalty, competition, determination, having fun. Anything—or anyone—who made him forget that should be cut out of his life.
