Page 1 of Puck Tease
1 – COLLATERAL
Achemical tang of Lemon Pledge clung to the air, sharp and falsely clean, trying to mask something foul beneath. It was 4:00 PM on a Friday. The stale air in the living room pressed in, a heavy blanket of silence that usually meant the apartment was empty. Usually.
I sat hunched at the cheap IKEA desk, the particle board digging into my thighs, in the corner of my bedroom. A PDF on macroeconomics glowed on my laptop screen, a useless beacon. The cursor hadn’t twitched in twenty minutes. The words blurred, grey static, refusing to coalesce into meaning. My heart hammered, a frantic drum against my ribs, fueled by a wired mix of caffeine and pre-workout, and something heavier, a lead weight of obsession I’d buried deep for four years. It pulsed, a constant throb behind my eyes, making the room seem to swim.
My schedule, etched in my mind, had me three miles away, buried in the hushed stacks of the library. Jax, on the other hand, should have been a world away, at the rink, gliding across pristine ice. A pre-season scrimmage, a press conference, some public appearance that maintained his untouchable aura as the golden boy of Michigan State hockey. That was the script. We were planets in a terrifyingly tight orbit, navigating the worncarpet of the hallway with stiff nods, keeping the bathroom door locked between us. We breathed the same air, yet existed in separate realities, pretending we were nothing more than two guys whose parents happened to be neighbors back in Detroit, splitting the rent on a cheap off-campus apartment.
We pretended I didn’t trace the curve of his shoulder with my gaze when he thought I wasn't looking. We pretended he didn’t feel the burn of it.
I shifted, the cheap plastic back of the chair digging a sharp edge into my spine. My left leg, a thick column of muscle, bounced under the desk, a restless tremor I’d fought to eradicate in countless hours in the weight room. My eyes dropped to my forearms, resting on the desk. They were thick, ropes of muscle cording beneath the skin. Two years of waking at 5:00 AM, force-feeding myself until my stomach rebelled, and deadlifting until black spots danced at the edges of my vision had chiseled me from a gangly scarecrow into a heavy-set slab of meat.
Six-foot, two hundred and twenty-five pounds of dense, heavy muscle. I outweighed most of the linebackers on the football team, my shoulders broader than theirs. This body was armor, a fortress built brick by brick to stop the feeling of shrinking, of being dwarfed, whenever Jax Carter stood beside me.
It hadn't worked. Jax could still stride into a room and the air thinned, the light seemed to bend towards him. My breath would catch, a knot forming in my gut, every time.
I snatched my phone from the desk. The screen glowed, empty. No texts, no courtesy "stopping by" warnings. My thumb flew to the team app—a digital leash, a shameful habit. The GPS tracker, a tiny red dot, still showed the team bus parked at the arena complex, across town.
A slow exhale loosened the vise around my chest. My shoulders dropped an inch. I was safe.
I slapped the laptop shut. The fan whirred for a moment, then died, leaving the room in a silence that felt even heavier than before. My knees cracked like dry twigs as I pushed to my feet. A jolt of restless energy, sharp and insistent, coiled in my gut, demanding release. I needed to move, to burn this restless itch.
My feet carried me to the shared closet, a sliding door monstrosity that delineated our two worlds. On my side, button-downs hung in neat, color-coded rows. His side was a battlefield. Hoodies lay crumpled on the floor, jeans dangled precariously from single belt loops, and in the corner, a dark, bulging shadow: the laundry hamper.
It was overflowing.
A mesh bag, distended, stuffed to the brim with the detritus of his week. My logical brain screamed repulsion. It should have been repulsive. Instead, a gravitational drag I couldn’t fight. It reeked of the locker room—that specific, chemical bite of treated ice, the acrid tang of old rubber, the sharp, metallic sting of stale adrenaline, and beneath it all, the overwhelming, potent musk of pure male sweat.
To anyone else, it was just dirty laundry. To me, the scent promised a rush, a dizzying high. It smelled like everything I shouldn't touch.
My gaze locked onto it. A voice, small and rational, urged retreat.Walk away, Tom. You’re a scholarship student, a grown man with a future. Not some pervert sniffing his roommate's gym clothes like a dog in heat.
My feet remained rooted to the spot, concrete blocks.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a desperate bird flailing against a cage of bone.Just one hit.A whisper in my ear.Just to take the edge off.He wouldn’t be back for hours. The scrimmage ran until six. Then showers. Then team dinner. I had time.
My hand, a traitor, trembled as it reached out, a slight tremor betraying the cool facade I usually maintained. I plunged it into the mesh bag, pushing past the stiff, salty fabric of tube socks and a towel that still carried the chill of dampness.
My fingertips brushed against the coarse, synthetic mesh.
I pulled it out.
His practice jersey. Dark green. The number 17, stark white, peeled slightly at one corner. It felt heavy in my hand, stiff with dried sweat, the salty crust clinging to the fabric. The neckline, a darker shade of green, was stained.
I lifted it, bringing it to my face.
I inhaled.
The scent was a physical blow, a concussive force that slammed into my limbic system, bypassing thought, going straight for instinct. It was raw, visceral. Intoxicating. It reeked of violence and pure, unadulterated effort. It smelled, undeniably, like Jax. My stomach lurched, and a hot, shameful wave pooled low in my gut, bypassing my brain entirely, a direct current to my groin.
"Fuck," I rasped, the word muffled against the fabric.
My cock sprang to attention, instantly, painfully hard. The grey cotton of my boxer-briefs strained, tenting awkwardly, a blatant accusation.
I shouldn't. I really shouldn't.
But the scent was already deep in my lungs, a heady fog, and logic dissolved like smoke. I turned, clutching the jersey like a lifeline, and stumbled toward my bed. The mattress groaned a low protest as I dropped onto the edge.
My sweatpants pooled around my ankles, tangling with my sneakers as I kicked them off. I didn’t bother removing them completely; I just needed access.
