“Oh yeah, like Bracken doesn’t rattle the walls every once in a while.” Arlo draped himself over Harrison’s legs so he could smack Jett on his thigh. “Dude, your captain is hot. Can you give me his number?”
“Only if you give me Étienne’s.”
Harrison met Jett’s gaze, conveying how annoyed he was by that comment.
Arlo sat up with another obnoxious laugh, wiping tears from his eyes. “No, man. If I were you, I’d stay away from Étienne. I’m pretty sure he’s hung up on someone else.”
“Bracken didn’t make the noise complaint,” said Harrison, trying to move away from the topic of the Montreal captain. “It was someone else because he and Powers were sending me texts about how happy they were for us to find each other, but we needed to quiet the fuck down.”
“At least they’re being nice about it.” Arlo scowled, and Harrison mentally prepared himself for what was about to come out of his mouth.
“On my team, the new guy has to room with the captain for their first season. Some bullshit about teaching them the way and keeping them in line. I can’t even jerk off unless I find an unoccupied bathroom or something.”
Jesus,Harrison missed the old days when Arlo would tone himself down around him. Now that he was with Jett, sex was all his cousin wanted to talk about. He didn’t want to know any of this—he liked to think that Arlo was still a virgin and hadn’t moved past the handholding stage.
Not that Harrison lacked experience, but he didn’t talk about it all the time like the two men next to him did. They were feeding off each other’s chaos.
“Did Wolf at least treat you nice?” Jett asked, and Harrison was thrown momentarily into shock because there was no way they were talking about Detlef Wolf.
“It was more likemetreatinghimnice…with my mouth.”
Harrison jumped up and hurried to the kitchen to pour another glass of water. It was mostly an excuse to get away from the conversation, but also because the urge to drink around Arlo could sometimes get overpowering. At least the kid kept him well-hydrated while simultaneously giving him grey hair.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, but one look at Jett and Arlo told him it wasn’t them. They were the only ones who texted him besides Bracken, so Harrison knew who it was. He wasn’t against inviting Ryan over too, if it would get the current company to settle down.
He wasn’t expecting to see Jin Park’s name pop up on his screen when he looked at it, followed by what looked like a link to something.
Harrison knew he would regret clicking on the link, but curiosity got the better of him. His screen switched to a video sharing website, and he watched confused as a countdown of his best goals in junior hockey started playing upbeat music.
He normally hated watching himself play, but froze when the video started. He watched transfixed as a younger version of himself pulled off insane moves that still brought him some sense of pride to see on the screen. He remembered scoring every single one of those goals, no matter how hard he had tried to forget over the last five years.
Jin: Isn’t that the thing Jett did during our game?
Harrison read the text and knew exactly what Park was talking about. Yes, he had beaten the flashy move into Jett’s head over the summer and had no regrets.
Harrison: It is. Jealous?
Park seemed like a guy with an easy trigger, and Harrison couldn’t help the urge to set him off. Pissing people off was one of his favourite things to do in his spare time.
Jin: You fucking wish, Killinger. I’m not going to have sex with you.
Harrison didn’t understand how that correlated at first, but remembered that everyone thought Jett was getting private hockey lessons from him because they were sleeping together. He didn’t care enough to correct the Ottawa player, so he let it go.
He barely had time to put ice in his glass and fill it with water when his phone buzzed again. The screen showed another text from Park, along with another video.
Harrison opened it, expecting to see more hockey, but instead was greeted with a clip about crazy people hiding in the woods to wait out the apocalypse. It looked to be part of a documentary, but why there would ever need to be a documentary about the subject, he didn’t know.
Harrison: Haha, very funny.
Jin: I thought you would like that.
By the time he returned to the couch to rejoin the conversation, Park had sent him 4 new videos to open, and a series of emojis he couldn’t comprehend.
“Are you drinking water or piss?” Arlo asked, startling Harrison from his glaring contest with the phone. “You’re making a face.”
Harrison failed to hide his grimace as he looked at Jett. “Is Park texting stupid shit and making you watch videos?”
Jett picked up his phone from the side table and started typing. “Yeah, he’s been sending me cat videos all night, and stuff to do with books. Particularly the grumpy/sunshine trope? Not sure why though.”
