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Dieter held out a hand. “Dieter. Tell me about your camera.”
I smiled as I watched Jonah and Dieter chatting about cameras and film and dark rooms. I had an errant thought that maybe I needed to visit Jonah in a dark room. Surely, dark rooms made for good private kissing. Great. Now, I’m thinking about kissing.
“Eyes on your skates, Tyler!” Shaun snapped at me, super tense as he had been all morning.
“Sorry, cap,” I apologized, and retied my laces, because I’d done a piss poor job of that while staring at a smiling Jonah. We headed for the ice, the door slamming open behind us and a windswept Kenji Kelly stumbling in—seemed, maybe, he saved all his grace for the ice—apologizing for being late.
“What’shedoing here?” Shaun muttered.
“I asked him,” I semi-apologized. “I thought maybe Dieter would have brought his husband with him.” Shaun blinked at me. “Y’know, Trent Hansen, the figure skater, and Kenji is a figure skater.” I pointed at Kenji, and it happened that he caught me, grinning a hello until his gaze rested on Shaun, and his smile fell. “Stop scaring him!” I warned Shaun out of the corner of my mouth.
Shaun turned away from me, heading past each cubby, a terse comment here and there, and nothing at all like what he was normally like. I guess the pressure of being there with NHL stars, when everyone said he could be one of them, was heavy.
We headed out to the ice, and took a moment to take it all in. The boarded oval didn’t have much in the way of seating to watch—that wasn’t the point of this place, it was the single point where Railers skaters learned how to be a team, and we had two of the best on the team waiting on the ice for us.
“Holy shit,” Shaun broke the silence, and sounded a lot less tense than he had before. “Holy fucking shit, this is everything.”
He was allowed to say that. We stayed quiet and let him have his moment.
“Fuck,” he repeated, and when Ten noticed us all gathered by the gate, waiting to come out, he skated over, and Shaun’s entire posture changed from shock and awe, to respectful and excited. His emotions were infectious as Ten iced to a stop with the biggest grin.
“Let’s do this!” he said, as Dieter skated up next to him.
“Ready, guys?” Dieter asked.
We chorused ayesto both, and in my periphery, I clocked Jonah buzzing around capturing the whole thing on camera.
Only a tiny part of me was nervous about hitting the ice with him watching; the rest of me was proud, and yes, I definitely showed off when he was watching. I may not be the biggest player, or the most physical, but I was fast, and Jonah loved that.
He told me so.
In Shaun’s basement.
In fact, he spoke for so long that night about how I looked on the ice, that Felix had to tell him to shut up.
Soren fist bumped Ten as he skated past, wriggling as Ten caught him in a hug and smooshed his face with his glove.
“… hate you!” Soren said, but he was grinning like a loon when Ten let him go.
“Okay, boys, line up at center.”
We all skated straight to the middle, and just after we were all lined up, a flash of scarlet and silver announced the arrival of Kenji, who spun and slotted nicely at the end, a grin on his face and a fist bump for me. It didn’t escape my notice that Shaun frowned at Kenji—probably didn’t see a place for a figure skater on hockey ice—but he had his idol in the shape of Ten, so the frown didn’t last long.
“Do you think Trent is here somewhere?” Kenji asked, a little breathless with excitement. “I have so much I want to ask him.”
“I know he’s here. I saw him,” Felix said from my other side. “He was Facetiming someone.”
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Kenji said, and he almost hopped from skate to skate. I glanced down—he was wearing hockey skates, not the ice skates I expected.
“Can you play hockey?” I asked, not expecting him to be on the ice for actual skating with us.
“Sure, I can, just don’t like it as much as figure skating.”
“Just don’t break anything; not on my watch.”
“Can I ask you something?” He pointed at my hair. “Is that shade 403 pink quartz, or the 404?”
“Oh, 403, but I tend to—”
