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Luca threw the shot of vodka back. It burned all the way down, but he didn’t wince. He just swallowed with his head still tilted back so Roz could see his throat work, then wiped across his mouth with two fingers.
Roz smiled like a wolf, toothily, and reached across the table to ruffle Luca’s hair. “Atta boy. You’ll get him next time.”
He was talking, of course, about the guy Luca had been dancing with, who’d been strong and handsome, and who Luca hadn’t let buy him a drink. He hadn’t told that part to Roz, exactly. Just said he’d struck out.
Luca didn’t pick up a lot, but he did, sometimes. Just not when Roz was around. He tried not to unpack that.
Luca nodded, wide eyed and dumb. “Thanks, Roz.” His voice cracked when he said it. He crossed his legs under the table and tried not to think about the half chub in his pants. He liked when Roz looked out for him, when he patronized him a little, when he bought him a drink and touched him like Luca was his to touch.
“Now, I need to see where Bergy has gotten to,” Roz said, and shimmied out of the booth.
Luca watched him go.
Roz walked with the kind of swaggering confidence that would’ve made an average ass look good, but Roz’s ass, like everything about him, was enormous and exceptional. His whole silhouette, really, was extraordinary, the strong solid waist, his meaty thighs, his broad shoulders. His chest, lightly haired and devastatingly strong, with that golden cross glistening against his skin.
Luca spent more time thinking about Roz than he’d like to admit. Not to mention that too much of it with his fist around his cock or a dildo in his ass.
He was so distracted watching Roz depart that he barely noticed Shane approaching until he slid into the seat across from Luca that Roz had just vacated. He pushed a glass of water across the table toward Luca. “You look like you need it,” Shane said evenly.
Luca liked Shane just fine, but he wasn’t sure he got him just yet.
Shane had arrived in their dressing room at the beginning of the season quietly, considering the fuss that had preceded it. It was funny to say that a player like Shane Hollander had fit right in, but he had. He played his part, worked hard in practice. Sometimes during games, he’d lean across the bench with an iPad and show you something on the game tape you could’ve done better, or a gap you weren’t taking advantage of, and if you tried out whatever he said on the next shift, he’d give you a quiet little fist bump.
He didn’t say a lot in the room. Luca understood that the end of Shane’s tenure with the Voyageurs had been characterized by nastiness, so maybe that was part of it. He also wasn’t a captain anymore, and Roz was plenty loud himself, so maybe Shane figured that was enough. Or maybe he’d never been loud.
Luca didn’t know.
So Shane was quiet. It had been two months. Maybe he’d get louder. After all, now he was sitting across a booth from Luca expectantly, even though they’d never had a conversation about anything but hockey.
Luca grabbed the glass and took a long sip, because it seemed like something he was expected to do. He hoped Shane hadn’t seen him ogling Shane’s husband. He was pretty subtle, he thought. “Thanks.”
Shane smiled, a small tight thing that didn’t reach his eyes. “I didn’t really have guys looking out for me when I was a rookie,” Shane said, like it was an explanation.
“Oh.”
“I mean, J.J. kept an eye on me, but he was only two years older,” Shane continued. “It’s better here, I think.”
It wasn’t a question, but Luca answered it anyway. “Yeah. Everyone’s been great.” Especially Roz, who encouraged him in the gym, helped him with his face-off form, and always had something nice to say after the game. Luca didn’t say any of that.
He was harbouring a crush, sure, but it was a harmless one.
And, okay, yes, last year sometimes he’d fantasized about his captain inviting him over to his quiet house in the suburbs and bending him over the arm of a couch. That was back when he thought Roz was probably straight and definitely single.
Now, sometimes he wondered whether Roz and Shane were exclusive. Whether Roz would be open to putting Luca on his knees and coaching him through it the way he coached him through improving his wrist shot. But that seemed like a dangerous can of speculative worms to open, even if sometimes Roz winked at him so salaciously Luca had to take a cold shower about it.
“Good,” Shane said. He glanced down at the water glass and back up at Luca’s face, drumming his fingers on the table.
Obligingly, Luca took another sip. Shane stayed quiet, so Luca took another.
“You were dancing tonight.”
Luca shrugged, his cheeks warming slightly. “A little. Didn’t go anywhere.”
“Did you want it to?”
Luca didn’t know where the questions were coming from, and he hadn’t realized before this moment that Shane Hollander’s carefully neutral gaze could feel this heavy. He looked away, eyes finding Roz standing by the bar laughing with Haysey. “Wasn’t feeling it,” Luca said casually.
“Mm.” Shane’s fingers stopped drumming on the table. “Look,” he said, and now there was something sharp and commanding in his voice, even though it was quiet. Luca couldn’t help but look back at him. “I know Ilya’s a lot.” He said it sympathetically, but his eyes were still cold.
Luca froze. Did Shane know? Had he seen?
“I know he doesn’t mean it, and he knows he doesn’t mean it, and I hope you know he doesn’t mean it,” Shane continued with the cutting precision of a knife. “But I know it’s a lot to have that focused on you.”
Luca’s mouth went dry. “I don’t–”
“The kind eyes. The sweet little way he cares. The touching.”
And Roz… did touch, sometimes. In ways Luca liked. In ways that were friendly, if a little heavy handed. The hip bump on the ice, the friendly wrestling on the way to the bus, the hair tussleing.
“I know it’s just friendly, but I’m happy to set a boundary if that would make you more comfortable,” Shane finished.
“A-a boundary?” Luca didn’t want that, he didn’t think. He liked Roz’s attention on him.
Shane shrugged. “He knows you have a crush.”
Luca felt that like a punch to the gut. Fuck, did he really? Luca was sure he was red, his eyes fixed on the wood grain of the table.
“And I trust him. I know he’s not really flirting, I know nothing will happen. But he’d stop, if I asked.” Shane leaned back in his seat, perfectly at ease. He looked small next to Roz, folded into his shoulder, and Luca forgot sometimes that Shane was as big and powerful as the rest of them. He was terrifyingly intimidating now. Fuck, this was Shane fucking Hollander. And Luca had a crush on his husband. “So, a boundary. If he’s making it hard for you to… get over it.”
That was, Luca thought, a quiet little imperative. Accept the boundary or don’t, the instruction was clear.
Get over it.
“It’s fine,” Luca said, voice rough.
Shane cocked his head like a curious spaniel that was contemplating whether he should lunge forward and snap Luca’s neck. “Are you sure?” He leaned forward, voice low, like he was confiding something. Like he was being nice. “I think it would’ve been hard for me if I’d had a captain like Ilya at your age. God knows I never got over Ilya, and he was a very different kind of menace at 21.”
“It’s really fine,” Luca said. “Please don’t say anything to him. I’ll– back off.” He didn’t know what he meant by that, and he didn’t like that it felt like admitting fault, but it was the only thing he could think to say that wasn't an apology. There was something sickeningly humiliating about the kindness, made all the more maddening by the feeling that Shane was almost gloating. And yet here was Luca tripping over himself, desperate to make sure Roz never thought there’d been a problem, because the only thing more embarrassing than this was if Roz started treating him differently. And then people would know that Luca had wanted him and, worse, had the audacity to hope he had a shot.
“There’s no need.” Shane waved him off carelessly. “Like I said, I know he doesn’t mean anything by it. I’d talk to him if that was a concern. I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
It was embarrassing how much that hurt, but Shane was blisteringly clear. Luca’s fantasies were just that: fantasy; and they’d never be more than trivial daydreams.
Luca should’ve just gone home with the guy he’d been dancing with, instead of, what? Fake moping so his captain would give him attention? Fuck.
“I’m good,” Luca insisted. “I get it, seriously. I know it’s just… friendly.”
And he did know. Really, he had. He’d known that the rest of it had been up in his head, delusional at best.
Roz was married to Shane fucking Hollander. Who the fuck was Luca, compared to the hockey legend who was sitting across from him, poised like a predator.
Then Shane leaned back, the smile on his face suddenly warm again. “Exactly. He’s like a puppy, you know, he jumps on everybody, but not everyone understands he’s just playing.” Shane started to scooch out of the booth, then stopped. “But let me know if you change your mind,” he said. “This is a good team, and you’re an important part of it. I don’t want you feeling confused about your place in it.”
Confused. Yeah, not after this. “Crystal clear,” Luca said shortly. “Thanks.”
“Good,” Shane said, and then he was gone without a glance backward. He didn’t carry himself like Roz did, all swagger and pride, but there was a quiet power to him. Shane walked up and tucked himself into Roz’s side as easy as anything, then leaned up to whisper in his ear in the middle of his conversation.
Roz paused just a second to look at him, and then he was excusing himself and walking toward the exit with Shane under his arm. Like they were a pair, a matched set, inseparable.
Luca had been stupid to think there might be any place in that for him.