Page 62 of Two for Roughing

“How’s it feel to lose to your little brother?” Kilian jeered at Fuller as he made his way to the box.

“Last I looked, we were tied. And Connor can do his own chirping.”

Connor. Good to know. “Yeah, but he won’t. You know why?”

Looking as though he already regretted it, Fuller asked, “Why?”

“He has enough talent he doesn’t need to.”

“Wicked self-burn, bro,” Fuller said.

Kilian shrugged. He knew his own skill set.

The Chicago Firecrackers either didn’t, or they were more desperate than Kilian thought. They’d put Kilian on the first power play unit even though he hadn’t scored on the Sea Lions’ PP1 all season, which meant he stayed on the ice once Fuller was locked up. Fortunately, the Firecrackers’ power play had one thing the Sea Lions’ didn’t: Damir.

They weren’t on the same line in five-on-five. No way Kilian was making the first line, but even with all of three or four minutes of ice time together per game, Kilian could tell he was playing with one of the greats.

And unlike playing with Jax and Tom, Damir knew he existed, which was pretty sweet. So far, being on the power play had netted Kilian an easy point and a half per game over the first five he’d played as a Firecracker. As they raced up the ice, dodging the Magpies’ penalty kill, Kilian could feel in his bones they would continue the trend tonight.

He caught a pass from Damir on his stick, made a split-second decision that the angle was too flat for a shot on goal, and took the puck farther, around the net. He passed it back to Damir just before the Magpies’ whale of a defenseman crashed into him. Kilian hit the boards hard, but the goal light went off, and the Philadelphia crowd booed loudly.

Kilian got to his feet grinning. His shoulder ached where he’d hit the boards, and his thighs were tense and sore from the double shift, but who the fuck cared? They’d scored, leaving them up three–two.

He made for the bench as the power play ended and five-on-five resumed with the third line skating out to center ice. “Dude,” he told Fulls. Connor. Whatever. “Your brother’s a dick.”

Fulls grimaced. “Trust me, I know.”

Ouch.

Kilian’s dad and grandpa might be overinvested to the point of invasiveness, but at least he liked his sisters.

Unfortunately, in the last twenty seconds of the period, the Magpies equalized again. They really were desperate for that playoff spot. Served them right for trading Jax.

In the intermission, Lissy held one of his patented locker-room speeches. Kilian was used to a few quiet words from Tom, followed by Jax and Breezy teaming up for something meant to pump everyone up. The Firecrackers functioned very differently. Lissy wasn’t a role model like Tom, not in the way he spoke or in his style of play, but his enthusiasm and desire to win hyped the team up every time. He did it with the most unhinged mixture of negging and praise Kilian had ever witnessed in a locker room, but somehow it worked.

“…and Howie! Our baby!”

“Hey, I’m not the youngest guy on this team!” Kilian protested.

“In our hearts and minds you are.” Lissy patted him on the shoulder. “You might have hair only a mother could love, but those soft hands! I bet the girls are lined up all down the street to have you fingerblast them!”

“Jesus Christ!” Kilian ducked out of Lissy’s hold. “What is wrong with you?”

“I have been asking that question for six years,” Damir told him morosely. “Just ignore him.”

Despite his dark tone, he shot Kilian a hint of a smile, and warmth suffused Kilian from head to toe.

When he was in the locker room, Kilian tried very hard not to think about their nightly phone calls, not least to avoid getting an unfortunate public erection. Rocky’d had one of those after a nail-bitingly close overtime last week in which he’d gotten a few epic takeaways. Kilian was keeping count of the “Rocky’s rock” puns. So far, there’d been twenty-two.

The best way to keep his sanity was to pretend Damir-on-the-phone and Denny-on-the-ice were two different people, so Kilian tried his best. Damir smiling at him did not help. He so rarely smiled properly, and it made his whole face change from grim and serious to twenty-six-year-old hockey superstar.

Kilian took a deep centering breath and tuned back into the world outside their stalls.

Lissy had moved on to simultaneously cajoling and teasing Fulls using equally vulgar language. The gist seemed to be that he ought to draw more penalties from his brother.

So this was what an NHL locker room run by a straight man was like. Good to know. It was loud, rambunctious, and fucking disgusting, both in terms of the shit Lissy, Petterson, and sometimes even the rookies said, and in terms of the stink of wet hockey gear. Tom would never have let the Sea Lions locker room get this bad; he’d have died of secondhand embarrassment. No one wandered around fully nude in San Francisco, no one talked about their sex lives, and everyone made sure to get their gear in the laundry bins as fast as possible. Kilian would appreciate the last one for the sake of his nose, but the rest he didn’t mind.

He’d never had a locker room where he felt like one of the boys. In U-15, with his dad as the coach, he’d had no chance. In Juniors, he was meant to take everything super seriously because he had a chance at getting drafted. In San Francisco, the dynamic worked so differently that no one was one of the boys.