Page 102 of Two for Roughing

“Denny,” Lissy said seriously. “I love you. You are the light of my life and the fire in my—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence. I can change my mind—”

“No, no, everyone hurry! Fulls, Matheson, call an embarrassingly large vehicle. We’re headed downtown.”

The rookies scrambled to obey, and Kilian finished getting dressed. He smoothed down the lace top, no worse for wear after being folded haphazardly in his locker during the game. Beside him, Damir eyed the locker room warily, probably in case Lissy decided to orchestrate a flash mob in celebration or something else suitably extra.

“You don’t go out much?” Kilian asked.

Damir grunted.

“It must be shitty to watch everyone get drunk when you don’t drink.”

“You have no idea.”

“You don’t have to come tonight. I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy.”

Damir raised an eyebrow.

Kilian flushed and looked away. Fine, he wasn’t as big as Damir, but he stood half a foot shorter; no one expected him to be.

“I want to,” Damir said, a transparent lie. “It will be fun.”

From the first moment they entered the club, it became evident he was not having fun. Generic pop music blasted from massive speakers, permeating every secluded corner. The drinks, even the nonalcoholic ones, cost over ten dollars, and while Kilian didn’t particularly care because he earned enough to pay twelve bucks for a vodka soda with a maraschino cherry on top, Damir got fussy about the value of consumables.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Kilian told him. “We’re here to have fun.” He popped the cherry in his mouth.

“Right, fun.”

Kilian rolled his eyes. Why was he so into this guy again? “It wouldn’t kill you to pretend you enjoy spending time with the team for five minutes.”

He instantly felt guilty when he saw how stricken Damir looked. It reminded him why he liked Damir so much. Under the thin veneer of grumpiness, he was the most caring person Kilian had ever met.

“I didn’t mean…”

“No, no, you’re right. You should enjoy yourself. Dance.” Damir glanced over at the floor, where Fulls and Matheson had taken up residence. “Or try to.”

Kilian followed his gaze and winced in sympathy. Fulls appeared to have lost all range of motion in his hips while Matheson thrust his about wildly. A year or so ago, Kilian would have been the same, but frequent clubbing and copious amounts of alcohol had taught him how to do better.

He glanced around to suss out his other options. Rocky stood by the bar chatting up a woman, and by chatting up, Kilian meant he was stammering awkwardly and liable to knock over the three beers the bartender had just served him.

Kilian spotted Petterson doing shots with the D-core, but Kilian wasn’t on the D, and he didn’t know any of them well. None of them had said anything rude or prejudiced to him (yet), but they also hadn’t been as supportive as Lissy and the rookies. Besides, many of them hailed from Scandinavia, and he knew better than to do shots with the European crowd.

Ketchup and Lissy were nowhere to be found, so Kilian drained his drink, spat out the cherry stem, nodded at Damir, and made for the dance floor. He wasn’t a huge fan of EDM remixes of songs that had been popular ten years ago, but the crowd seemed to love them. He nodded his head along to the beat and swayed from side to side, which put him leagues above Fulls and Matheson. Though it would be cool to actually know how to dance.

Maybe he should take classes.

He snorted at himself. Yeah, right. Between Valeria and the hockey season, he’d be lucky if he managed to go clubbing more than this once. It was a shame. He’d enjoyed it in San Francisco, once he got past the doors and his own terrible fear of being caught. Ironic, given the photos of him were taken inside the club. Not all gay guys cared about protecting people in their community.

Whatever.

Kilian was over it.

Fulls and Matheson welcomed him with open arms or, rather, with trying-too-hard upnods. He made sure to keep distance between their bodies. Even on a crowded dance floor, he didn’t want to give them the wrong impression. Not when things were going so well.

They wasted some time doing dumbass party dances through the boring songs. Matheson did a hilarious bus driver routine. Fulls got them another round, all beers. Kilian shrugged mentally and downed his. He had no plans to hook up tonight. No one would care if he was bloated. Besides, it had been ages since he’d drunk, since the trade actually, and—

Oh, fuck no. Kilian was not going to acknowledge that his improved performance on the ice had anything to do with abstaining from alcohol and eating healthy. Damir would never let him live it down.