Page 66 of Two for Roughing
Damir heaved a sigh and pulled out his phone. He pressed his thumb to the side, and the screen unlocked with the browser already open on the San Francisco Chronicle’s webpage.
There was Kilian’s name, splashed all across the headline. Sea Lions Trade Kilian Howard Over Rumors About Sexuality. Was LGBTQIA+ Charity Work a Smokescreen?
And right below the title, a series of images lined up of Kilian in the stupid pink crop top, dancing under strobe lights, some random guy’s hands all over him.
He hadn’t even fucked the guy.
He’d gone to the bathroom and recorded a filthy message for Damir.
He skimmed the article. There wasn’t much by way of actual fact in it; Kilian’s presence at a gay-friendly club in the Castro, dancing with a man, constituted Starling’s only scoop. It was barely news. The remaining text was pure conjecture.
At the very bottom, she’d added, “Howard couldn’t be reached for comment.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. So she’d been calling for a reason.
He dug out his phone to check, but he had over three hundred notifications. The sight of them all blinking at him from his message app and Insta and TikTok and Twitter and the missed calls widget made his breathing go haywire again.
Damir snatched the phone out of his hand.
“You haven’t confirmed anything,” he said in his deep, solemn voice. “It’s not too late.”
Kilian had to laugh.
Chapter Twelve
“… After months of pro-LGBTQIA+ charity work, the sudden trade of forward Kilian Howard just as images of him in a compromising position with another man emerge casts the San Francisco Sea Lions’s dedication to the cause into question. Was it all for show?”
Top comments:
seelionssaylions: Really? We’re outing people in 2025? There are wars and shit.
CLions2010: tbh, either way it’s a good thing they traded Howie, this would be distracting af for the team
grant16rules: the total media silence from the sea lions is pretty damning, ngl
Jefferson Howard: Kilian, if you’re reading this, please call me back
(From “Sea Lions Trade Kilian Howard Over Rumors About Sexuality. Was LGBTQIA+ Charity Work a Smokescreen?” by Olivia Starling, published in the San Francisco Chronicle on 12/19/2025)
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
Damir cringed, instinctively moving his shower caddy in front of his dick. Practice had been over for all of five minutes, and he was trying to get through cleanup as fast as humanly possible so he could rescue Kilian from the front office, where he’d been called the second Coach had ended the session.
Lissy, as always unconcerned by social niceties such as personal space, came closer to lower his voice further. “What the article says about Howie? He is? Gay?”
Damir grunted noncommittally.
“Come on, Damir.”
A first-name callout. How novel.
“If he’s not ready, I can’t speak for him.”
“Commendable of you, but surely that ship has sailed?”
Damir said nothing. He knew Lissy was right. Short of PR digging a suitably bottle-blonde fiancée out of the woodwork, preferably already pregnant, Kilian was out, ready or not. Kilian could deny it all he wanted, but the rumor would persist. Damir should know—people still joked about how he didn’t “carpet munch.”
In the last day and a half since the article dropped, Kilian had barely spoken. He spent the remainder of the flight home staring out the window, jaw set and eyes wet. Damir recognized a boy who’d been told not to cry often enough that he hated to be seen doing it. Like knew like. So, he didn’t push.
