Work Text:
i.
It starts like this:
Kent is woken up by the sound of his phone ringing. It’s Nate’s ringtone, which means that he probably shouldn’t ignore it, because Nate wouldn’t be calling him at some ass o’clock if it wasn’t important.
He reaches for the phone and rolls onto his back, pushes the button.
“Yeah?” he says into the receiver, his voice raspy from sleep.
“Dude, what the fuck, have you seen this?” Nate asks on the other side of the line, and Kent goes through a whole catalogue of things that could possibly get that reaction from Nate, comes up blank.
“Dude, it’s seven a.m. on our day off, what the fuck do you think I’m doing?” he says, rubbing the sand out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “I was sleeping. What’s up?”
He can hear the way Nate inhales sharply.
“Zimmermann got outed.”
Kent sits up. His mouth suddenly feels like cotton, his throat dry.
“What.”
There’s some rustling on the other side of the line and the sound of a door opening and closing, then Nate says, “Yeah, Apple got hacked again, they got his pictures in bed with some blond guy plastered all over the internet.”
Kent takes a deep breath, then another.
“Fuck.”
He needs to get to his laptop. He needs to call Jack.
“You don’t sound surprised,” Nate says, and there’s no judgment in it, just the acknowledgment of the fact. It’s one of the reasons they’re friends.
“I’m not.” Kent swallows. It’s like a dirty hit over the head when he’s not wearing a helmet, and it leaves him with a ringing sensation in his ears. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, man,” he continues, still feeling like someone tripped him up on the ice when he was least expecting it.
“It’s fucked up, what happened to him,” Nate says, blunt and honest. Another thing Kent likes about him.
Kent gets up and drags his laptop back into bed, boots it up, then does a quick Google search. The pictures are like a punch to the gut, a memory of a summer a lifetime or two ago, Jack’s soft eyes and vulnerable smile.
Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound.
“I need to call him,” he says, keeps his voice even. “Lunch later?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Nate says. “The usual place?”
Kent nods, even though he knows Nate can’t see it. “I’ll get us a table.”
He calls Jack, who tells him Kent doesn’t have to worry about Jack saying anything about the two of them, which is just about the most fucked up thing Kent’s heard since waking up, and he started his day with the news that his best friend got outed in a fucking hacker leak.
He feeds Purrson, who apparently doesn’t have a worry in the world, because she keeps rubbing her sides against Kent’s calves like the world hasn’t just tilted on its axis, then he gets into his workout clothes and goes for a run.
Sometimes the Nevada heat still hits him the same way it used to back when he was new to Vegas, the overall number one pick who almost threw up in an ambulance the night before the draft, looking at Jack’s blue lips and white face.
It’s one of those things he doesn’t think about. It works, most days.
.
“So, like—and feel free to tell me to fuck off, but—you knew, right?” Nate says once they’re waiting for their orders, his voice low. “You were pretty tight in the Q, so I figured—”
Kent almost wants to laugh, because it’s an understatement of the century, and maybe this is the perfect opening to let Nate know, but also it’s sort of crass to tell your friend you like dick over a bowl of pasta the same day your ex got his private pictures with his very, very blond boyfriend—who sort of looks like you if you squint—leaked for the entire world to see.
“Yeah, I knew,” is what he settles for instead.
He pauses for a moment, debates whether to say anything else, but if he can’t say these things to Nate, then who the fuck can he say them to.
“Fuck, what a shitshow,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “And get this, I go for a run in the morning, yeah? And this journo comes up to me as I circle back through the Arts District, and this complete tool asks me if I have a fucking comment for him, because we were so close in the Q, Zimms and I. So I’m like, so, basically, what you want to know is if I took it up the ass from Jack Zimmermann. Then I told him to go fuck himself, and that he can quote me on that, so, uh, I probably should call management.”
Nate just looks at him, a hint of amusement in the corners of his mouth.
“Yeah,” he says. “You probably should. You talk to him yet?”
Kent is about to open his mouth, but then the server brings them their orders, and smiles at Kent in that particular way which tells him he’s been recognized, and, fuck, that’s the last thing he needs right now. What he does need is to be left the fuck alone.
The guy decides to be professional about it, though, which Kent can appreciate. It’s one of the greatest things about living in Vegas—no matter how many times you’ve been featured naked on the cover of the ESPN body issue, and no matter how famous you are in the NHL, it usually means fuck all when there’s Madonna putting on a show five days a week just a few blocks away. Nobody here gives a shit how loaded you are, unless they want to milk you for your cash over a blackjack table.
Finally, the waiter goes away, and Kent leans forward in his chair.
“Yeah, we talked,” he says, takes a bite of his Caesar salad. It’s not really his place to say anything else, so he just settles for, “He’s a tough guy, he’ll be fine.”
Nate looks like he wants to say something but then thinks better of it.
“You know the other guy?” he asks eventually once they’re done eating, while Kent nurses his beer along with his headache. “From the pictures, I mean.”
Kent has no idea how to even begin to explain this weird, entangled web of relationships that connects them—the way he follows the guy sleeping with his ex on Twitter, the way they all inexplicably come together in places they wouldn’t expect, the way he’s not hung up on Jack anymore but will never stop loving him in his own way.
“Yeah,” he says instead. He knows he has been settling a whole fucking lot in this conversation—for half-truths, for handy omissions, for one-word answers. “It’s a guy from his school, I met him last year. Nice kid. Southern.”
Nate scrolls on his phone for a while, then looks up, studying Kent’s face with scrutiny.
“He looks—” he starts to say, but Kent just shakes his head.
“Don’t say this.”
Nate doesn’t avert his eyes, keeps looking straight at Kent. “Okay,” he says.
Kent swallows. The air between them is thick with what has been left unspoken. “Okay. Wanna go hit the gym in the afternoon?”
Nate pushes his plate away and reaches for his beer. Kent’s heart is not pounding against his ribs anymore.
“Sure,” Nate says and pats his abdomen. “Gotta work off all these calories somehow. I swear to god, Parse, I have no idea how you can eat all this junk and still have abs like that.”
Kent doesn’t flip him off because they’re in public, and there are children one table over, but it’s a near thing. “Fuck you, Olsen. My body is a temple.”
Nate laughs. “Yeah, a temple to Dionysus, maybe.”
“Rude,” Kent says, then flags down the waiter to get their bill.
They pay, leaving a hefty tip, and Kent goes to use the washroom before they go. It’s a single stall, thank god, so he locks himself in, braces himself on his hands against the sink and allows himself the freak-out that’s been bubbling up just under his skin this entire time. It’s sudden, and intense, and then it’s over, leaving nothing but an echo of a tremor in Kent’s muscles. He pulls himself together, thinks, He’s okay. You’re okay. You’re both okay, then he washes his face and runs a hand through his hair, takes a deep breath. Leaves.
“Okay, asshole,” Kent says to Nate once they’re standing in front of the restaurant, cool and collected, like nothing happened. “See you at six.”
.
So it goes like this: Jack gets outed, and then the world doesn’t end.
People talk, because they always do, and Jack does some interviews, starts working with You Can Play, the whole nine yards. His sponsors don’t drop him and his organization is behind him every step of the way.
Kent is not stupid, though, and he knows what people write on the internet, he’s read the comments he should have never read—about Jack, about Bittle, even some about himself. He wonders if Bittle reads those, too. He doubts that Jack does.
Sometimes he thinks about this—what would happen if he just said fuck it, fuck all of it, and let himself get photographed at a gay club with his tongue down some guy’s throat. (How’s that for speculation, TMZ.)
What could happen, realistically.
Not much, he thinks. There’s not much he hasn’t already done, in terms of hockey, so it’s not like they could just sweep his career under a rug and be done with it. He’s not some no-name who went last in the draft and got bumped to the AHL first day of camp just to stay there for the next few years in the hopes of being called up, even though the chances are close to zero.
Still, he doesn’t really go out a lot. He doesn’t pick up at bars. He doesn’t hook up very often. Doesn’t use Tinder. (He used to have an account under a fake name, his profile picture a photo of his abs instead of his face, his stated preference: men. He deleted it after less than a month.)
Sometimes it’s like an itch that he just can’t scratch, and isn’t that a fucking cliché. He could hook up with girls, in theory, but in practice, he hasn’t slept with a woman in a long time. (He hasn’t slept with anyone in a long time.) He has no idea when that changed, exactly, when his preferences shifted so significantly, or what it really means for him, but he wants what he wants, no point in overanalyzing it.
“Dude, what the fuck are you thinking about?” Nate asks, digging into the meat of Kent’s thigh with his toes from where he’s stretched out on Kent’s couch in the living room, with the PS4 controller in his hands.
Sometimes Kent gets those stupid urges when he’s with Nate, to yank him up by the collar of his shirt and kiss him or do something equally dumb, equally rash, something he could never undo.
Then he thinks, Never again. Not with a teammate.
“Nothing,” he says, then tips his head back, leaning against the back of the couch, looking up at the ceiling. He swallows. “Fuck, I need to get laid.”
It’s a dangerous territory to head into, but he might just as well tell the truth—or something like it.
The thing is, he likes Nate. Nate was drafted second overall the year after Kent had come to Vegas, and the two of them clicked the way Kent hadn’t clicked with anyone since—since the Q. Since Jack. But it was different, too, different enough that Kent could even be Nate’s friend in the first place. Different enough that he didn’t expect to find blue eyes whenever he looked at Nate.
“Dude, there’s, like, a line of puckbunnies all the way down to Caesars Palace whenever you so much as step outside,” Nate says, amused, and he laughs in a way that does something to Kent’s insides. “How you’re not getting laid more often is a mystery.”
“Well, maybe I’m a mystery,” Kent protests, but it’s more perfunctory than anything else.
“Full of shit is what you fucking are.” Nate kicks Kent in the thigh with the heel of his foot, and Kent catches him by the ankle just to let go a moment later like he’s been burned.
So maybe he likes Nate a little too much, whatever. Not like he could do anything about it anyway—not with Nate, who definitely isn’t into guys but who is Kent’s best friend in Vegas.
And Kent—Kent has been there, he’s done that, and he’s not doing that again.
It’s another thing he’s good at—blurring the boundaries between friendship and lust until all that’s left is a mess of feelings, repressed and hidden behind the wide smile and the easy jokes.
“Whatever,” Kent says, then observes as Purrson jumps up onto Nate’s chest, curls up in the hollow between his sternum and his ribs and does what she does best—purrs. The traitor.
Honestly, it’s not that Kent wants some bullshit white picket fence fantasy straight from the suburban hell, but he lives in a huge penthouse in downtown Las Vegas, for god’s sake, and sometimes just him and one cat are not enough to fill all that space.
“We could go out,” Nate prompts, but Kent just shakes his head. “It’s still early. You could have some hot chick back here by midnight, still make the morning skate.”
Kent pretends like he’s considering that option.
“Nah,” he says. “Let’s just stay in. Wanna order Thai?”
.
He wins his fourth Art Ross in seven seasons, the Aces make the playoffs and Kent makes another fake profile on Tinder.
It’s the same drill as before—fake name, a photo of his abs instead of his face as his profile picture (this time with additional hint of the hipbone dip visible above the waistband of his jeans), mostly fake interests. He’s talked about his real ones often enough and publicly enough that he just doesn’t want to risk it.
Hooking up at clubs is risky—a lot of people means a lot of phones, and there’s no way to know if there are any paps outside, waiting for some washed-up C-list celebrity to walk out right into their next scandal. The internet isn’t much better, but at least with this, Kent can control some aspects of these encounters.
He gets the usual messages—the creepy guys who don’t realize they’re being creepy, the oh my god, you’re so hot ones, a lot of begging for dick pics.
He looks through the profiles some more, swipes right for a few guys who would do in a pinch, and some of them even get matched, but then Kent thinks about the logistics of it—he’d have to go out, get a hotel room, because it’s not like he can bring them back here, with Rob the doorman who always greets Kent by name, and his apartment, which got featured in various behind the scenes videos over the years and can be easily found on the internet for everyone to see.
By the time one of the guys sends him a message asking him to meet, Kent can’t even remember what he even did all that for.
.
“Fuck, Parson, I could fucking kiss you right now,” Nate says in the locker room after Kent gets a hat-trick against the Kings and wins the game for Vegas in regulation, getting them all the way to the conference finals.
Kent doesn’t freeze, doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t do any of those things that would inevitably give him away, because that’s not who Kent is. Instead, he makes a come-hither gesture that makes everyone laugh, then peels off his under armour and goes to shower.
“No, but seriously, you fucking rocked it today,” Nate says a moment later as he steps into the stall on Kent’s left. Kent keeps washing his hair, even though he can still see Nate out of the corner of his eye. “We’re going out after the presser, you coming?”
Kent closes his eyes and rinses the shampoo out, then reaches for his body wash.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he says. “I’m in.”
They go to one of the clubs they’ve been to before and get into the VIP section as soon as someone recognizes Kent. It’s great, because it gives him more privacy, but more privacy means also more scrutiny and less room to be inconspicuous, to blend in with the crowd. Less room to be anonymous for a moment.
They get drinks, and some of the guys bring a few girls up with them to their table. The girls are nice—they’re apparently all seniors at the UNLV, majoring in graphic design, out for the night to start the weekend off on a high note, and one of them lands next to Nate, leaning against him with her hand on his forearm, her red dress riding up on her thighs, the lace on her stockings peeking out.
Kent can feel the heat of Nate’s thigh where it’s pressed against Kent’s leg, and when the girl makes eye contact with him behind Nate’s back, Kent is somehow convinced that she knows. It doesn’t really make him panic, not even when she—Gretchen, right, that’s her name—asks, “So are you two, like, a package deal or what?”
Nate looks at Kent and laughs.
“Wait, are you serious?” he asks after a beat, and the girl shrugs with a smile, in a way that’s supposed to look innocent but is not innocent at all.
“Sure, I mean, why the hell not?” she says. “You’re both hot as fuck, you gotta know that, right? I’m game if you are.”
Nate looks like he’s actually considering it.
“Dude, come on, what the fuck,” Kent says before Nate has a chance to open his mouth to say something that will inevitably fuck with their friendship forever, because there are many, many things friendships can recover from, but accidentally kissing your straight teammate in the heat of the moment during a threesome just to go no homo a second later even though you really want to kiss him for real is probably not one of them.
And you can say a lot of things about Kent, but at least he’s trying not to make the same mistakes twice.
“What’s Olly done this time?” Orlovsky asks before Nate has a chance to respond, because Orlovsky has no sense of good and bad timing.
“Fuck off, Jax, I’m innocent. It’s just Parser being weird,” Nate says, completely oblivious to the way the girl observes them with an amused smile.
“Why are you being a weirdo, Parse?” Orlovsky asks, and Kent just rolls his eyes.
“Lay off me, both of you,” he says, getting up. “I gotta piss, be right back. Get me a vodka sour if the server comes by?”
By the time he comes back, the girl and Orlovsky are gone, and it’s just Nate at the table, drinking his whisky soda and guarding Kent’s vodka sour.
“Thanks, man,” Kent says and takes a long drink, then coughs when it goes down the wrong way. “What happened to the girl?”
Nate shrugs. “Believe it or not, Jax is probably getting laid tonight. By an actual, living, breathing girl.”
Kent pretends to wipe a tear in the corner of his eye. “They grow up so fast,” he says.
Nate laughs.
“No, but seriously,” he says then, and fuck, Kent knows this tone. “Why did you get so weird when that girl asked for a threesome? You never been in a threesome before?”
Kent downs approximately half of his drink in one go, because he’s way, way too sober to be discussing this right now. To be discussing this with Nate.
“Please, who do you take me for,” he says, his voice striving for casual and actually getting there, because he’s just that good. He’s an old pro at this by now. “‘Course I’ve been in a threesome, come on.”
It’s not even a lie, because he doesn’t say outright it’s been with two girls, even if the implication is still there.
They leave the club after three, and when Nate asks if he can crash at Kent’s place, because he lives in a completely different part of the city that’s more than half an hour away by cab, Kent just says, “You’re paying for the ride, though.”
They do that sometimes, after a night out—Nate comes back to crash at Kent’s and cuddles with Purrson until she runs away to hide in Kent’s bedroom, and they get Chipotle on their way back to eat in front of the tv, watching late-night NHL highlights and winding down slowly until they can finally go to sleep.
This time it’s no different, even if the alcohol makes Kent acutely aware of the warmth of Nate’s side pressed against him on the huge couch, and he can smell his aftershave every time Nate moves, and it’s just so goddamn unfair that the top of the world is such a lonely fucking place.
ii.
It happens like this:
They win the Cup, and Kent hoists it above his head, surrounded by his teammates, and maybe he’s crying just a little bit.
Sam is there, and so is his mom, and they both hug him as soon as he leaves the locker room.
“I’m so proud of you, kiddo,” his mom says, pressing her face into Kent’s hair, damp from the shower.
“You did all right, big bro. I guess,” Sam says as she punches him in the bicep, and, god, she’s always been such a brat. Kent loves her so fucking much.
“So what you’re saying is that you don’t want that apartment in Flatbush you’ve been lusting after since January?” Kent says, looping an arm around her neck to pull her closer, and Sam shrieks.
“Bro,” she says then, looking down at Kent, and, honestly, it’s so fucking unfair that his own sister is taller than him. Especially in those ridiculous heels.
“Shut up.” Kent can’t help it. He smiles.
Sometimes it still amazes him, that this Kent who went to his first hockey practice in borrowed, ill-fitting gear because that was everything his mother could afford at the time, and this Kent who has enough money to buy his sister an apartment in New York are even the same person at all.
“Sorry, Mrs. Parson,” Nate says a moment later, coming out of the locker room with a few other guys, and he gets his arm around Kent’s neck, trying to drag him away, “but we’re taking him with us. I’d say we’ll bring him back the way we found him, but that would be a lie. C’mon, Parse, we’re going. There’s a bottle of champagne with your name on it, it’d be rude to let it wait for too long.”
His mom just waves him off, laughing, and Sam pouts a little when mom tells her she’s not twenty-one yet so she can’t go with them, and then he’s being dragged away for real.
The party is at a hotel a few blocks away from the arena—one of the classy ones, not the kitschy, touristy ones. Kent has never been here before, but there’s open bar and food, and music, so it’s not too bad.
Then there’s the afterparty, and they pile into the cars waiting for them at the curb, ready to take them to one of the upscale clubs just off the Strip to get deservedly and thoroughly smashed.
They’re happy and still riding the adrenaline high, and they ply Kent with champagne and shots that make his head fuzzy and his inhibitions lowered, until he does this stupid, stupid thing where he actually looks back when he notices one of the guys at the club looking. His teammates are way past sloshed already, and they don’t pay any attention to Kent, especially since they’re surrounded by pretty girls, ready to celebrate their Cup win with them in a variety of different ways.
So Kent looks, and he looks, and then he casually makes his way to the upper floor bar and climbs onto the stool to get himself a glass of water. He might be partying hard today, but he doesn’t want to wake up in a world of hurt. So maybe he’s acting like a grown-up, sue him.
The guy—dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, incredible forearms—sits down next to him and orders a beer.
“So what are you doing here?” the guy asks, leaning into Kent’s space in a way that remains painfully obvious to anyone looking, but Kent thinks, fuck it, fuck all of it. He has two Cup rings under his belt now, he’s won the Art Ross four times in the last seven seasons, and his name is up there with the likes of Wayne fucking Gretzky, so really, fuck it all to hell.
Kent leans back in his chair. “Celebrating,” he says.
The guy flashes him a smile. He has incredibly white, incredibly even teeth.
“Celebrating what?”
Kent laughs. Of course, this is still Vegas. Most of the people here don’t give a fuck about hockey. Some are even surprised the city has a hockey team to begin with.
“The Stanley Cup,” he says. “It’s a hockey thing.”
The guy takes a long drink from his glass. “I know what the Stanley Cup is,” he says. “Congrats. I’m Mark, by the way.”
It takes Kent less than a second to decide.
“Kent,” he says, shaking the guy’s hand.
“Oh, yeah, I think I heard about you, actually,” the guy—Mark—says.
Kent downs his water and signals the bartender for a drink. “It’s fine, you don’t have to lie,” he says, laughing just a little, more at his own expense than at Mark’s.
“So, Kent, you from around here?” Mark asks, and when Kent’s eyes wander to the exposed skin of his arms, he notices the tattoo, the color of the ink only a few shades darker than his skin. It’s big, cutting off at the elbow, and the design is amazing, and it looks hot.
“Nah,” Kent says. “Upstate New York, born and bred. Got here when I got drafted by the Aces, back in two thousand nine. You?”
“Rural Iowa, believe it or not,” Mark says, and laughs. “Moved here for a job.”
“Yikes.” Kent winces.
“Yeah.”
Kent is about to drop the pretence and ask Mark if he wants to take this conversation somewhere more private—and then maybe have him go down on Kent for like half an hour, because, miracle of miracles, he’s still painfully aware that he can actually get it up despite the amount of alcohol in his system—when Nate and Orlovsky find him at the bar.
“Dude, where the fuck’d you fuck off to?” Jax asks, and he looks incredibly wasted right now. Next to him, Kent feels downright sober.
“Yeah, Parser, we’ve been looking for you,” Nate adds, and he, at least, seems slightly more coherent.
Mark looks between them, and Kent knows exactly what’s about to happen.
“Sorry,” he says to Nate and Jax, “I’m a huge fan and couldn’t believe my luck when I found him here. Couldn’t just let a chance like that go. Congrats on the Cup, guys, and he’s all yours now. I’m just gonna go. It was so great to meet you.”
He shakes Kent’s hand, like he wasn’t about to get Kent’s dick in his mouth just a minute ago, downs the rest of his beer and leaves.
“I’m gonna go get some air,” Kent says before either of them has a chance to open his mouth, turns on his heel and walks down the spiral staircase and through the crowd of people on the main dance floor until he’s outside, leaning against the wall, frustrated and half-hard in his jeans.
“Dude, what the hell?”
When Kent turns around, Nate is standing just outside the main entrance, looking straight at him. Kent wishes he had a cigarette right now.
“Whatever,” he says. “I just needed to be alone for a minute.”
“C’mon, Parse, talk to me,” Nate says, taking a step closer, then another.
Kent laughs.
“Go back inside,” he says. “I’m gonna be right back.”
Nate takes another step towards him. “Kent…”
“Just fucking drop it, Christ,” Kent huffs, irritated at himself, at Nate, at the guy for bailing on him before anything could happen, at everything. “I’m drunk, I needed some air, I think I’m crashing on my adrenaline high, whatever, take a fucking pick.”
Nate is silent for a moment. Then he asks, “Wanna go?”
Kent thinks about it for a moment. It’s late, he’s exhausted, and drunk, and frustrated, and right now, he wants nothing more than to be done with this party—hell, with this entire evening. It’s not how he imagined the night after his second Cup win going, and he’s angry at himself for letting this happen in the first place; seriously, what the fuck did he expect, flirting with a guy in the middle of a club full of his hammered teammates who have less than no idea that Kent likes to suck dick on the regular.
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “Let me just grab my stuff and we can go. My place?”
And he might be stupidly angry with Nate right now for some bullshit, totally irrational reason, but no one who has just won the Stanley Cup should ever go home alone.
“Yeah,” Nate says. “Thanks for letting me crash.”
Kent smiles, and it surprises even him when it doesn’t feel bitter down to his bones.
“Anytime.”
.
He wakes up the morning after winning his second Cup to only a mild hangover and the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen.
He kisses Purrson—who has climbed at some point into his bed and curled up next to him—straight on the nose, and meows back when she meows at him.
“I know,” he says. “I know, I should just go for it. Clearly, you’re better at this life thing than I am.”
He takes an Advil, washes it down with a glass of water standing on his nightstand and gets out of bed.
In the open kitchen area, Nate is cooking eggs.
“Jesus, dude, what the fuck,” Kent says, scratching his abdomen absentmindedly just above the waistband of his pants. He feels overheated, even without a shirt on. “I thought you’d be, like, dying.”
Nate shrugs. “Hangovers just don’t stick to me, I guess.”
Kent shakes his head, then opens the fridge and downs almost a quart of orange juice in one go, straight from the bottle.
“You lucky fucker,” he says, then gets himself a cup of coffee. The mug is roughly the size of his head—he got it from Sam a few years ago, and he doesn’t allow anyone else to drink from it, ever.
“Like, don’t get me wrong,” Nate continues, undeterred by Kent’s fake disdain, “I woke up and I immediately wanted to die. But I got better, like, ten minutes later. It’s a family thing. My sister used to drink guys twice her size under the table just to wake up the next day fresh as a fucking daisy.”
Kent takes a seat at the table in the breakfast nook, nursing his cup of coffee and his mild hangover. Then he looks at Nate, who’s plating their eggs (over easy, just the way Kent likes them), humming under his breath, and he thinks, fuck it.
He’s done. He’s done with this.
“I’m gonna come out,” he says, and then he chews his eggs like his life depends on it. “Not, like, today, but soon. That’s why I got so pissed last night. I was looking to hook up.”
When he looks up, Nate is staring straight at him with an empty fork in his hand, his eggs completely forgotten.
“Shit,” he says after the silence stretches a bit too long.
Parse takes another bite, because he’s determined not to make this morning even more weird than it already is, and proper nutrition is part of his daily routine, so he’s gonna eat his fucking eggs even if he chokes on them.
“I just wanted to tell you before I told anyone else,” he adds when Nate doesn’t say anything else.
There’s another moment of silence, then, “Shit. Anyone else know about this?”
Kent laughs, but there’s not much amusement in it.
“My mom and sister,” he says. “Jack. My middle school friend Adam, because I blew him in the equipment room after practice one day. The guys I hooked up with over the years who pretended like they didn’t know they were fucking Kent Parson, I guess.”
He waits for a reaction—something, anything.
Nate swallows slowly—Kent can see the way his Adam’s apple rises and falls. He feels faintly sick, because Nate is still not saying anything.
“Nate?” he prompts after a moment, because it’s just fucking unbearable. “Dude, you gotta say something.”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Nate says, and the sick feeling at the back of Kent’s throat intensifies. “I just…you know. Thanks for telling me, though. And you coulda said, yesterday. We’d have just left you alone, Orlovsky was so fucking wasted he wouldn’t even remember a thing, and I would’ve covered for you. C’mon, Kenny, you gotta know that.”
Kent can feel the tightness threatening to crush his ribs slowly disappear. Purrson jumps into his lap, and he pets her absentmindedly, his attention focused on Nate.
“Yeah, well, you know. It’s…whatever,” Kent says. “But I just can’t do this anymore. Not like this. And now…I won’t be the first. And it’s not like they can do anything to me, not anything that would matter. Jack’s doing okay for himself, so it won’t be, like, awful. Just the normal kinda crap.”
Slowly, Nate finally starts to eat. “So…did you and Zimmermann, like, you know,” he says after a while. “There were all sorts of rumors about the two of you in the juniors, but I figured they were mostly bullshit.”
“They weren’t,” Kent says, and shoves another forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Bullshit, I mean. Just…don’t tell anyone about this part, okay? In case Zimms doesn’t want anyone else to know.”
“No, yeah, sure.” Nate half-nods, half-shakes his head. “It’s just…shit.”
“Yeah.”
Kent lets that sink in for a while. It’s a lot to take in, he can admit.
“So…we good?” he asks and wipes his slightly sweaty hands on his pants, suddenly nervous.
Nate looks up at him. “Yeah, man, why wouldn’t we be?”
.
What happens is this:
Kent goes to the NHL Awards and gets his Art Ross and a couple of other trophies. He sits at one table with Jack and Bittle, and they’re so fucking in love it’s hard to watch.
A couple of days later, Kent flies his mom and sister out to Vegas to spend his day with the Cup with the two of them. He quietly comes out the day after that via Twitter.
The world still doesn’t end. People talk, and write things about him—some good and some bad, and there are paparazzi waiting for him outside his gym, but either way, the world doesn’t end.
Two days later, Kent sprains his ankle while shooting hoops with a couple of his buddies from the local basketball team.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Nate asks when he comes by Kent’s apartment later in the afternoon. Kent is lying on the couch with his leg in a contraption that looks like it belongs in a science fiction movie. One thing he’s positive about—the thing itches like a motherfucker.
“Funny you should say that,” Kent shoots back, looking over the back of the couch to where Nate is pulling groceries out of a bag. “Zimms asked me the same thing. They were about to board for Nova Scotia, though, so he just sent me a strongly worded message, but I think I can expect a pissed off call pretty soon.”
“No, but seriously, Parse, what the fuck were you thinking,” Nate repeats, and this time it doesn’t even sound like a question.
“Look, listen, it’s all good,” Kent explains. “The doctors said it’s gonna be two weeks, tops, and then I’m as good as new. It’s just a light sprain, nothing to worry about. I’ll be skating weeks before any of you fuckers even start to think about camp.”
Nate rolls his eyes.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Parson. I’m making you dinner, and I don’t want to hear your ungrateful ass complaining about my cooking skills.”
Kent can’t help himself.
“Oh, but my ass can be very grateful,” he says.
Nate laughs but doesn’t comment, just turns around and starts chopping peppers, and Kent thinks, What the fuck are you even doing, Parson.
Purrson climbs the leg of his pants and settles on Kent’s chest, then goes to sleep. And Kent—Kent is bored, and out, and perpetually horny these days.
“There’s a guy who says he wants to snort coke off my abs,” he calls out to Nate, scrolling through Tinder. “You think I should reply to that?”
“What?” Nate turns around so fast he probably gives himself whiplash. Kent waves his phone at him from the couch.
“I’m on Tinder,” he explains. “But, in the guy’s defense, my profile pic is a very good photo of my abs. Can’t really blame him.”
“But why the fuck are you even on Tinder?” Nate asks, looking over his shoulder as he goes back to chopping vegetables.
Kent makes a sweeping gesture around the apartment.
“It’s not like I’m spoiled for choice over here,” he says. “And I can’t exactly go clubbing or anything to pick up, but I can get my quick fuck delivered right to my doorstep.”
Nate stops for a moment and turns around once again to face Kent, looking like he really wants to say something before he thinks better of it.
“Your leg is in a splint, or whatever the fuck that thing is,” he says eventually. “How do you even—”
Kent rolls his eyes at him. “C’mon, have some creativity. Like, I wouldn’t even have to move from this couch to get head.”
Nate slowly turns back to the counter to continue with dinner preparations.
“How the fuck do you even have Tinder?” he asks after a while.
Kent looks through the pictures on some guy’s profile—he looks cute, ginger with lots of freckles and killer abs. He has a dog—a huge, black Newfoundland.
“It’s a fake one,” he says. “Y’know, fake name, fake interests, no pics of my face, the whole nine yards. Could change it to a real one now, but that would just attract creeps.” He thinks back to all the messages he’s received. “Well, more creeps.”
“So what is your name? Y’know, on your fake Tinder.”
“Blake,” Kent says, and Nate cracks up.
“Doe Blake have a fake last name to go with that, too? Y’know, in your mind or whatever.”
“Yeah,” Kent says. “It’s Johnson. Blake Johnson.”
“You sound like a supreme douchebag.” Nate laughs, bright and clear.
Kent only shrugs in return. “Yeah, but my abs are amazing.”
They’re quiet for a while; Nate prepares dinner and meanwhile Kent kicks Orlovsky’s ass at Words With Friends.
They’re waiting for the chicken to roast when Nate asks, “So, you ever hook up with anyone through that thing?”
Kent looks up, surprised at the question. He thought they were done talking about it. Honestly, it’s sort of pathetic, the way Kent is out now, so, technically, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted without the fear of being outed, and he still can’t even get properly laid.
“Yeah, a couple of times,” he admits. “It’s, y’know. It is what it is. I had to be more careful.”
Nate doesn’t say anything to that.
They play some Smash Bros after dinner and watch tv until Kent starts to doze off, slightly high on painkillers. He lets himself press his side against Nate for a moment, then pulls back when Nate doesn’t react in any way.
“You should probably go to sleep,” he says after a while, looking down at Kent.
This time, Nate doesn’t stay the night.
.
Nate comes by to see Kent the day they remove the cast. He has an early morning appointment and he intends to just call the Uber because he can’t drive with that thing on his foot, but then Nate calls the night before and offers to take Kent to see the team orthopedist.
Kent takes him out to lunch by way of thank you, and then Nate drives him back home before he has to leave to make his late afternoon flight.
Kent is mostly bored the few days Nate is out of town to visit his sister—usually, he would just throw himself into his off-ice conditioning, but he still needs to take it easy for at least a week before he can run his usual route and really make his body work for it at the gym. As it is, he works out as much as he can, whoops Orlovsky’s ass at Words With Friends some more, plays GTA until his thumbs threaten to give out, and scrolls through several hundred profiles on Tinder but never really talks to anyone.
Nate comes back on Friday morning, and he comes by just as Kent puts his shoes on, almost ready to go out for the evening. Nate looks at him for a long moment when Kent opens the door, then comes inside.
“Hey, loser, I got all your sad, pining messages,” he says, leaning against the wall in the hallway while Kent looks for his apartment keys. “What’s up?”
“Pining, my ass,” Kent shoots back, rolling his eyes. “I’m actually going out in a second.”
Nate steps aside as Kent starts rummaging around his closet for his wallet—he knows he must’ve left it in one of his jackets, but he has no idea which one, so he tries all of them one by one.
“You mind if I tag along? I’m bored as fuck already,” Nate says, and hands Kent the wallet which he apparently left on the little shelf by the coat rack.
Kent laughs. “Dude, believe me, this ain’t your kind of party, okay?”
Nate looks at him, his face blank, like he doesn’t get it at all.
“I’m going out to pick up,” Kent says with emphasis. “Y’know, at a gay club.”
Nate just shrugs.
“Cool,” he says. “I mean, unless you don’t want me to come with, but, like, what’s the worst that could happen, right?”
Kent has an entire list of things that could go wrong with that scenario, and he can feel hysterical laughter bubbling up his throat, because that’s just his fucking life, apparently—a huge joke.
It was supposed to be a way to exorcise this thing about Nate that has been building steadily inside Kent, to fuck it out of his system until he can go back to just being buddies. Being friends. Now, apparently, he’s gonna do that while Nate watches from the sidelines.
They go out together—Nate in a shirt he borrowed from Kent, because he didn’t want to be repping the Clippers at a club in Vegas—and the Uber leaves them in front of a recently opened club that Kent heard good things about but had never gone himself.
Inside, it’s the usual fare—loud music, dimmed lights, a crowd of bodies moving on the dance floor to the rhythm of the bass. A few guys look at Kent as they walk in and smile. A few other guys look at Nate.
They make their way to the bar and Kent gets them drinks, flirts with the bartender a little while he’s at it. He feels rusty—it’s been a long time since he went out to a club with the explicit purpose to pick up.
They lean against the bar for a while, methodically destroying their drinks, and guys try to flirt with Nate like crazy. He usually just smiles and leaves them with a variation of I’m flattered, and thanks, but no, thanks.
Kent has no idea if the sensation in his stomach is from the alcohol or something entirely different.
“I’m gonna dance,” he announces once he’s done with his vodka sour. He slides the empty glass back onto the counter and pushes himself off, looking above his shoulder at Nate, who doesn’t follow.
It doesn’t take him long to attract a bunch of guys—Kent used to be a bad dancer when he was younger, and Jack used to make fun of him for that, but he’s gotten better. A lot better. By the time the music changes for the second time, Kent has his arms looped around a guy’s neck, the guy’s hands low on Kent’s hips.
“Fuck, you’re so hot,” the guy says into Kent’s ear, like the start of a bad porno, and Kent throws his head back and laughs.
“So are you,” he says eventually, because his mama raised him nice like that. And it’s not even a lie, the guy is hot—tall, muscular and broad in the shoulders; dark hair, dark eyes, great ass.
“What’s your name?” the guy asks over the music, and Kent doesn’t protest when his hands wander under the hem of Kent’s tank top, his plaid shirt discarded a long time ago. It feels great, not having to pretend that this is anything other than the lead up to a quick fuck in a bathroom stall.
“Kent,” he says, and that’s another thing that feels great. He’s done with fake names for good.
“Nice,” the guy says, then offers, “I’m Grant.”
Kent doesn’t even care if that’s his real name or not, as long as he keeps pressing into Kent like that. He can feel the way the guy is already half-hard against Kent’s thigh.
The music changes again, slows down just a tiny bit, and the bass gets even deeper, pulsing through Kent’s veins in sync with his heartbeat. The guy—Grant—turns him around and plasters himself all over Kent’s back, grinds hard into the curve of his ass.
“Jesus,” he says in a breathy voice straight into Kent’s ear, then bites gently at his earlobe, and Kent’s eyes fall half-shut for a second as he stops the moan just as it threatens to slip out. “Your ass is fucking amazing. And your thighs, fuck.”
“I play a lot of hockey,” Kent says, turning a little to look up at the guy. “That usually does it.”
The guy kisses him then, and it’s hot and sloppy, with lots of tongue and a hint of teeth, and it’s killing Kent’s neck just a little bit, but, fuck, it’s so good, too.
When they break apart, Kent looks ahead to the opening in the crowd and sees the way Nate is watching him. Watching the two of them.
The guy’s hand goes for Kent’s dick just as his mouth goes for his neck, and Kent’s head falls back, his eyes closed, his lips tingly and slick with spit. When he opens his eyes after a moment, the guy is still kissing up and down his neck, leaving a trail of faint hickeys which are going to fade in a few minutes, and Nate is still looking straight at them from his place at the bar with the strangest expression in his eyes.
Kent licks his lips. “C’mon,” he says, pulling the guy by the wrist in the direction of the bathroom. “You’re getting lucky today, buddy.”
Turns out, the guy gives passable head, but by the time Kent gets really into it—locked in one of the bathroom stalls at a gay club, because he’s classy like that—he realizes that he’s about to come, and the entire experience leaves him more frustrated than anything else. He gives the guy an earnest if not overly enthusiastic handjob and a fake number, and they call it a night.
When he comes out of the bathroom and makes his way back to the bar, Nate is still there, still with that strange look in his eyes.
Maybe that’s it—maybe he’s fine with Kent being…whatever the fuck he is (gay, he guesses), but he can’t handle the sight of Kent, freshly fucked, with the taste of himself from when they kissed after still on the back of his tongue.
“What?” he asks, then flags the bartender down for a drink, washes the taste from his mouth with a glass of whisky.
Nate shakes his head and looks down at his lap. “Nothing,” he says, then downs his drink and asks for another. He doesn’t seem angry, or disgusted, or uncomfortable. Just…weird in a way Kent can’t figure out, and it’s bugging the fuck out of him.
After a while and a few more drinks, Kent is ready to be done with this little excursion. He got his orgasm—not amazing, but better than his own hand, and much less pathetic—he got his buzz on, he’s ready to go.
“Yo, Olly, you coming back with me, or are you staying to enjoy the sights?” he asks, reaching for his plaid where it’s slung over the back of Nate’s chair.
Nate looks at him for a moment, and there it is again, that strange expression Kent can’t even begin to understand.
They go back to his place, both of them falling into that comfortable space right between tipsy and pleasantly buzzed, and they stop to get greasy food on their way, because it’s the off-season and they can eat a damn cheeseburger if they want to.
Somewhere along the way, Nate stops being so goddamn weird about all of this, and they sit down next to each other on the couch, eating their cheeseburgers and drinking water to help with the dehydration.
“You don’t look like someone who just got laid,” Nate comments as Kent comes out of the bathroom, freshly showered, in his sleeping pants and nothing else, because summer in Vegas is the work of the devil, and his apartment might be air-conditioned, but it’s still fucking hot.
“Ah, yes, the great romance of a quick bathroom fuck.” Kent lets the gravity work its magic and falls back onto the couch with a thud.
Nate laughs until he doesn’t anymore, and then he kisses Kent.
It’s rushed and sloppy, and everything Kent wanted for a long time, and then he pushes Nate back.
“Dude, what the fuck,” he says, then takes a deep breath, and another one, tries to ignore the way Nate is looking at him. “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but just because I’m gay, it doesn’t mean that I— I’m not gonna be your big gay experiment, okay? I’m not doing this, Nate. Not again. This is not— You can’t do this, okay? It’s not fucking fair.”
They should probably talk about this—or maybe they shouldn’t, because it’s just the alcohol and the residual adrenaline high they’re still riding, and Nate isn’t into guys, for god’s sake, Kent would know if one of his two best friends was into dudes.
“Come on, Parse, you really think you’re the only one?” Nate asks, and Kent can feel his heart beating frantically against his ribs. “It’s not a fucking experiment for me, okay. But I’m gonna go if you want me to.”
He moves to get up, and Kent could just let him go, because that would probably be better in the long run for both of them, but he could do something else instead, like wrap his fingers around Nate’s wrist to stop him from leaving.
“You don’t need to go,” he says. “But it’s—”
“Look, just because until today I never even kissed a guy doesn’t mean I didn’t want to do it for a long time, okay?” Nate says, exasperated. “So what the fuck do you want me to do?”
Kent shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “You don’t have to do anything.”
Nate takes a sharp breath. “But what if I want to?” he asks.
“You’re wasted,” Kent says as he puts more space between them.
“So are you.”
“Yeah,” Kent says, “but I have actually sucked a dick before and I know for a fact that I like it. That it’s not just the alcohol talking.”
“It’s not,” Nate insists. “And, like, I get it if you don’t want to, and that’s cool, but I really want to kiss you right now.”
He looks up at Kent, licking his lips, and fuck it, Kent thinks, because really, fuck it, so maybe he wants it, and maybe he wants it with Nate, because Nate has been his best friend here in Vegas, and it hasn’t been like it had been with Jack, and thank god it hasn’t been like it had been with Jack, because Kent is not sure if he could handle it, and everything has always been so easy with Nate, so maybe this will be easy with him, too.
He kisses Nate, and it is so, so easy, and Kent wants this so, so bad, but also he doesn’t want to fuck it up, because frantic kisses and quick handjobs in equipment rooms or behind the locked doors of his bedroom at their billet family might have worked for him when he was seventeen and in love for the first time in his life, but he’s not seventeen anymore, and this isn’t Rimouski.
He moves away as soon as Nate reaches for the waistband of Kent’s pants.
“So I’ll make you a deal,” he says, trying to ignore the way he’s getting hard again. “If you’re still here in the morning, sober, and you still want to suck my dick, or maybe you want me to suck your dick, we’re gonna do that. But for now, sorry, I’m not doing this to myself or to you.”
He can see Nate swallow slowly, then nod.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay,” Kent echoes, trying to keep a level head. By now he’s a pro at not getting his hopes up.
iii.
It ends like this:
In the morning Nate is still there.
Kent wakes up early and lies on his back for a moment, staring at the ceiling for a while before he decides to leave the bed.
When he walks into the living room, Nate is sitting on the sofa, watching the news with the sound turned down, until it’s just a flashing procession of images that registers somewhere at the back of Kent’s mind. Nate looks up at him and makes an awkward, aborted gesture, and this is it, Kent thinks as he runs his hand through his morning stubble, he’s gonna bail.
But then Nate reaches for him, and Kent falls, in more ways than one.
This time, when Nate kisses him, Kent kisses back and doesn’t stop when Nate’s hands start to wander, and it’s so, so good, the way their bodies press against each other, the way Nate feels under Kent’s fingers, the way his thighs flex and shift as Kent straddles him and grinds down.
“Fuck,” Nate whispers against Kent’s hair as he kisses Nate along the side of his neck, his left hand resting against Nate’s sternum, feeling the frantic beating of his heart.
“Dude, I need you to be sure,” Kent says, leaning back in Nate’s lap, shifting his weight so he can think with his head instead of his dick. “Like, one hundred percent sure.”
Nate looks up at Kent and licks his lips. “Look, I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
Kent takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
This time, when he kisses Nate, it’s all tongue and teeth, and Kent presses the palm of his hand to the curve of Nate’s jaw and holds him there, feeling the rough stubble under his fingers. Nate makes a sound deep in his throat, something between a moan and a whine, and Kent thinks he could come just from this.
“I’m gonna blow you,” he says and watches as Nate’s breath hitches a little even though Kent hasn’t even done anything yet. He’d make fun of him for that if he weren’t so fucking turned on himself. “That okay?”
“Sure, knock yourself out,” Nate says, laughing, but he sounds breathless.
Kent keeps kissing him for a while, as his fingers slowly work their way into Nate’s sleeping pants that somehow get regularly mixed up with Kent’s laundry, and, fuck, maybe he should’ve seen that one coming, after all.
He kisses Nate one last time before he moves off the couch to kneel in front of Nate, between his open legs, the outline of his dick visible through the thin fabric of his pajama bottoms. He’s not wearing any underwear.
“C’mon, off with these,” Kent says, tugging at the waistband of Nate’s pants, and Nate raises his hips off the sofa to allow Kent to slide the pants past his thighs and then completely off. Kent tosses them to the side.
When he looks up again, Nate is staring at him, his lips red and wet, a blush spreading down his chest.
“What do they say about imagination being better than reality? Because I can see now that it’s bullshit,” he says, reaching out to touch the side of Kent’s neck, and it makes him go hot all over.
It’s only a second later that Nate’s words actually register.
“Oh my god, please, don’t tell me you jerked off to my ESPN pictures,” Kent says as he leans his forehead against Nate’s thigh, shaking with laughter.
Nate honest-to-god blushes. “Look, in my defense, they were fucking hot.”
“Oh my god.” Kent presses his lips together, trying to stop laughing. “You know, I could just leave you like that, boner and all.”
Nate shifts a little and gently presses his toes against the outline of Kent’s dick. “Sure you could,” he says as the pressure increases just a tiny bit and Kent groans.
Kent sucks a bruise into the skin of Nate’s inner thigh in retaliation.
“You know, my dick is right there,” Nate says, and Kent licks a stripe all the way up to his groin, then pulls back.
“Yeah, I noticed,” he says.
The first rule of being gay in a locker room is don’t look. And Kent hasn’t, for the most part, but sometimes he would glance at Nate, almost involuntarily, and see all those things he wasn’t supposed to see, wasn’t supposed to want. Now, he has Nate in front of him, and there’s nothing stopping him.
He leans in, closing his mouth around Nate’s dick, and Nate’s hips buck up, almost choking him.
“Sorry, fuck, sorry,” Nate says, but Kent just shrugs it off and goes for it, taking him deeper until the tip of Nate’s dick hits the back of Kent’s throat, and, fuck, he hasn’t done that in a long while, but it’s like riding a bike, in a way—once you’ve sucked your fair share of dicks, it always gets easier after a moment.
“Oh my god,” Nate breathes out above him, and really, Kent would smirk if only his mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied, because Nate keeps making the best sounds, like he’s never gotten better head in his life, and Kent feels like he’s going to come without even being touched, his dick pressed between his abdomen and the couch cushion.
He can feel the way Nate’s thigh muscles keep spasming where Kent’s palm is pressed to his skin, like he’s trying not to shake, and it’s an exhilarating feeling, to know that Kent is the one doing this to him.
Kent swallows when Nate finally comes, and he pulls off a moment later to see Nate flushed and thoroughly fucked, his lips red and his eyes slightly glassy.
“Fuck,” Nate says, and Kent reaches into his pants without even getting off the floor, still kneeling in front of Nate. He manages one stroke before Nate pushes his hand away. “No, no, c’mon, I wanna do you now. Just, like, gimme a sec.”
Given Nate’s history, Kent thinks he’s getting a handjob. What he gets instead is Nate’s lips on his dick, sucking experimentally, like he’s trying to get used to the feeling, while Kent is desperately trying not to come right that second, because that would be just fucking embarrassing.
“That okay?” Nate asks after a moment, pulling off to look up at Kent. “You gotta tell me, dude, I’m kinda flying blind over here, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s okay,” Kent says, and now it’s his turn to sound out of breath, apparently, because Nate is doing some pretty great things with his tongue, and it’s sloppy and wet, and Kent can tell Nate has never sucked a dick before, but also he doesn’t really give a fuck, because it feels pretty amazing, all things considered. What is even more amazing is the sight of Nate, settled between Kent’s thighs, and this is precisely what does it, in the end—Kent warns Nate at the last possible moment before the orgasm hits him, and he spills all over Nate’s hand and his thighs, his body taut like a string until it relaxes all at once, leaving him boneless and happy, and satisfied.
Kent almost thought it would be like a déjà vu, those thirty-four perfect days all over again—summer and the heady feeling of being in love and too overwhelmed to think straight; and it is like that, but it’s also not like that at all—he still feels the heady rush of endorphins, the hazy warmth of emotions wrapping themselves around his ribcage like vines and squeezing until his heart feels like it’s about to explode, but it’s calmer, too, and more than raw want and raw feeling, cutting right to the bone.
For as long as he can remember, summer has been about the end for him—end of season, end of friendship, end of love.
Now, it’s not just that—not just a matter of waiting until his life resumes as summer turns to fall.
“So what happens now?” Nate asks, climbing into Kent’s lap, and he kisses Kent again, and again, and again.
Kent grins. “Whatever the fuck we want. That’s the best part.”
They have the whole summer ahead of them, after all.