“It’ll be worth it, I promise.”
He’s not wrong. Any thought of trying to be a brat about it dies in Nick’s head once Matt really gets going, fucking him with slow, steady strokes. Nick’s head tips back, heat building low in his gut. He moves to wrap a hand around himself, but Matt bats him away, gripping him just the right side of too tight. “Jesus, you’re so hot,” he murmurs, pressing deeper inside Nick, leaning forward to press their mouths together clumsily. “M’close.” Matt speeds up, hips moving with a rhythm that manages to be powerful yet still gentle, each burst of pleasure edging Nick closer to breaking point. Emotion swells up inside him which is nothing to do with his impending climax—he’s not sure what he was expecting when he pulled Matt into his bedroom, but for the musician to be so damnsweetto him hadn’t even crossed his mind. He clenches his fingers in Matt’s hair, drawing out a low moan, rocking into each thrust with a breathless whimper.
Nick’s orgasm hits like a cross check: his vision whites out, his whole body thrumming with ecstasy. Matt fucks him through it, giving a handful of desperate thrusts before he goes taut as a bowstring, gasping Nick’s name.
They collapse together, panting, Matt rolling to the side before he can squish Nick beneath him. Not that Nick would mind that. He whines when Matt pulls out, earning a raspy chuckle from the musician. “Look at you,” Matt murmurs fondly, peeling off the condom. Nick tries not to squirm under the gaze—what is he seeing that Nick can’t hide? Can he see the way his shaking has little to do with aftershocks? Does he know that Nick cannot remember a time when sex felt like that? Like a dance, like somethingsharedbetween two people rather than taken.
Like he’s precious, worth treating tenderly.
Plastering on an appreciative smirk to watch Matt get up and throw the condom away, Nick ignores his racing heart, his anxious thoughts whirring back to life. If this were a hotel-roomhookup, this is when Nick would be thanking him and leaving, but… this is his apartment. And he doesn’t want Matt to go.
Thankfully, Matt returns to bed, kissing the smirk off his face. “You wanna know the best part about doing this in a real bed?” he drawls, and Nick raises an eyebrow at him. “We can go for round two whenever you want.”
Nick’s pulse jumps. “You do that to me again and someone’sdefinitelygonna notice on the ice tomorrow,” he says, hoping it comes out like a joke.
Matt winks. “Still leaves us with plenty of options, doesn’t it?” He shuffles closer, resting his forehead against Nick’s shoulder. “Just give me a couple minutes to recover. That was… damn.” He looks up, suddenly concerned. “It wasn’t too much for you, was it?”
It takes everything for Nick not to laugh in his face. “No,” he blurts out, “no. I’m… only sore in the good ways. Promise.” With a teasing wink, he’s relieved that seems to be enough because Matt settles down against him once more.
Physically, that was exactly what Nick needed. Emotionally?
Well, he can deal with that after round two.
It’s dark in Nick’s bedroom, though the faint glow around the edges of the black-out blinds shows that the City of Lights lives up to its name. Nick lies on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Beside him, Matt sprawls out with one arm stretched towards Nick, his breathing slow and even—a far cry from Nick’s rapid, trembling inhales.
This isn’t how tonight was supposed to go. This is the exactoppositeof how tonight was supposed to go.
It was almost like a date. The thought sends butterflies ricocheting through his belly.
He’s never been on a date before. Not a real one. Some terrible attempts at dating women, back when he first moved to Vegas and needed to keep up appearances. Awkward, drawn-out dinners and uncomfortable cocktail evenings because he couldn’t bear to show up to another team event solo.
He pushes away that line of thought when his mind fills with a vision of him and Matt walking the strip, holding hands, like any other couple—because they’re not,he’snot, he can’t do things like that without ruining his entire life. Hell, there arestillsports journalists making snide insinuations aboutthe truth of his relationship with Connor LaPorte. Hockey fans have long memories and hold longer grudges.
Nick has worked so hard to move past that. To prove himself, on the ice and off—to show that hebelongsin the NHL, that he deserves to be where he is, that he is just like the rest of them. It’s a lie, all of it, but it’s the only thing he’s got. An image and a reputation like a shell that he has lived in for so long he’s not sure he can get out.
He thinks, suddenly, of a Twitter thread he once saw about hermit crabs. About how the crabs, if not provided with suitable options for moving into a larger shell, will just straight up stop growing. They will cram as tight into that shell as they can fit, and then stay that way, even when they have the potential to grow much larger.
He used to think that the shell he built was the only thing that would protect him, but now he’s wondering if he has become like those hermit crabs, stuck in something too small to let him grow, trapped by his own refusal to seek other options.
But what other options does he have?
Slowly, tentatively, Nick shuffles his arm across the bed until his fingers brush Matt’s. He flips his hand over, sliding his palm over the musician’s, tangling their fingers together.
They can’t do this in public. Nick can’t date guys—sure as hell can’t expect a guy as out and proud as Matt Hudson to go back in the closet for him and sneak around like what they’re doing is shameful.
He already feels like he’s being watched whenever he goes outside. He couldn’t cope with actually having something to hide.
Carefully, he slips his hand out of Matt’s, rolling over to grab his phone off the nightstand. 1:03 a.m. He has a game in eighteen hours.
He stares at his lock screen—a picture of Dolly stretched out on her back, staring at the camera—and steadies his breathing, hears it rattle his chest in the quiet of the night. He can’t text Marco. Not when he knows exactly what his best friend is going to say.
For one wild, ridiculous moment, Nick thinks about texting Connor. He can imagine how that would go:“Hi, I know it’s late, but can you tell me what it was like for you the first time you fucked someone you cared about after you dumped me, because I just did that and I think I’m going to die from it.”Totally normal thing to send to your ex-boyfriend-turned-tentative-friend.
But he has to talk tosomebody, or he’s going to explode. Being around Matt, spending time with him,touching him… it’s all making Nick’s heart Do Things, and he has no idea how to handle that. Not with a man who seems to have all of this figured out already.
He swipes his phone back to life, the glow illuminating the arch of Matt’s cheekbone as his head tilts a fraction closer to Nick, a deep, satisfied sigh escaping the sleeping man.
And then it hits him, who he can talk to. The only other person in the world who has seen him through his worst.
