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I open it.

He's standing there in sweats and a hoodie with the garbage bag over his shoulder, and his hair still smells like cider. He looks tired. He looks like he's been hit by a truck and enjoyed it.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"I don't know where to put this." He holds up the garbage bag. "Wes kind of wants his floor back."

"Here," I say.

He comes in. He puts the bag down in the corner, next to my desk. On the desk, the framed photo that was face down all year is standing up again. Me and Nico at the lake, when we were twelve and ten. Theo looks at it for a long moment.

Then he turns around.

I close the door. I lock it.

The window's open. I don't close it. He doesn't ask me to.

"Rules," I say.

He smiles. It's the slow one. The real one.

"Still the rules," he says.

"Word?"

"Whistle."

"Truth?"

"Always." He comes toward me. "In here and out there. That's a new one. That's my new rule."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay," I say. "Out there too."

I give him orders, and he takes them, and none of it's hidden anymore.

Strip. He strips, slow, his eyes on me the whole time. Come here. He comes. Kneel. He kneels, on my floor, right where he knelt the morning after center ice, and he looks up at me with nothing in his face but wanting. He's not performing, and he's not hiding.

I put my hand in his hair.

"Good," I tell him. "You're so good."

He closes his eyes. He leans his face into my thigh.

I let him take me in his mouth. I let him do it slow, because he wants it slow, and I tell him so. Slow. Like that. Look at me. He looks up at me with his mouth full of me and his eyes wet and dark, and I hold his head and tell him how good he is, how beautiful, how proud of him I was tonight at center ice, at the statement, every morning since September when he came down that tunnel with two coffees. All the things I only ever said to him in the dark.

I say them out loud now. With the window open.

When I can't take any more, I pull him up and put him on the bed.

I tape his wrists. He holds them out for me before I even ask. Black, heel to toe, overlap by half, seven wraps. I tie him to my headboard, and he pulls against it once, to check, and it holds, and he sighs like he's finally home.

I take him apart.