Season's Change, page 25
He’d never thought this was something Benji would do, but there he was, blinking up at Olly like he wanted to see how he reacted as he gave him a long, slow lick. He wasn’t hard all the way yet, but he got there quick.
Benji made a low, appreciative noise; Olly couldn’t find anything to say that wasn’t going to show too much. He shut his eyes instead, felt Benji chuckle into the crease of his hip and go to work.
* * *
“Fuck,” Benji said, when they were both done. He was braced up above him on his good arm, Olly’s legs wrapped around his waist. They were both sticky with come and Jesus Christ, Benji had a dab of it drying next to his mouth. “If I’d known how hot that was going to be, I would have done it before.”
Olly thumped him with a heel. Benji just said shit like that, like it didn’t matter. “You’re heavy. Get off.”
Instead, he rolled them over, landing on his back with Olly on his chest. It shouldn’t be hot, how he could manhandle Olly with no discernable effort. Olly wasn’t small, but Benji moved him around like he was insignificant, didn’t hesitate to put him wherever he wanted him: which was sprawled across his chest with a possessive hand on his ass.
“I’m going back to sleep,” he muttered, chest rumbling under Olly’s cheek. “Wake me up for breakfast.”
“No can do,” Olly said. “Got a tee time with the boys.”
Benji smacked his ass. “Fuck you, you do not.”
“Definitely do.” He didn’t need to be awake yet, not really, but he couldn’t survive staying here, either.
Benji made a betrayed noise and followed him up.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Benji took a pass on golfing, because of his shoulder and also because he only golfed to drink outside with his buddies. He was at the fucking beach; he could drink outside wherever he wanted.
Olly golfed. Of course. One of the Frenchies asked his handicap at breakfast, and the number made the whole table groan.
“What, I’m not that good,” Olly said, which was a lie from the way everyone immediately started pelting him with napkins and sugar packets.
“Mr. NAHA Summer,” Antoine muttered. “He fishes, right? Does he own a lake house?”
“Obviously.”
“Wakeboards?”
“Safe bet.”
“Christ.” Antoine took a resentful swig of coffee. “Where’s the pretty blonde, eh? That’s all he’s missing.”
“Still working on that one, I guess,” Benji said. And then he was thinking about Olly with a blonde wife and a house in Minnesota, full of strawberry blond babies and Siberian huskies.
He couldn’t quite see it, somehow.
Maybe he didn’t want to see it. Olly getting married—that was weird, even though once Benji thought about it, of course he would. Olly was so obviously a family man. Loved kids. Didn’t fuck around. Parented the shit out of half the team already.
It wasn’t like Benji thought they were going to be roomies in the 505 forever.
Benji’s inexplicable bad mood lingered while he sat on the beach, pretending to read a magazine but mostly drinking Bloody Marys. Because fuck it, rich assholes drank Bloody Marys before 10 am all the time. And he was a rich asshole now, he guessed.
Either he had a delayed-onset hangover or...whatever. He was kind of pissed at Olly. Maybe both.
He hadn’t come down to Mexico to not hang out. But Olly was finding every excuse to avoid him: kayaking, dipping out of the club, golf.
His fucking jaw was still sore.
He’d never done that before, okay. He hadn’t expected a commemorative puck and a round of applause, but it would have been nice to get more than kicked out of bed for golf. Was this how his not-a-friend-with-benefits-after-all had felt, back at Quinnipiac? Shit.
He was moodily scrolling through Instagram—it was all dogs and golf, babies and highlights from the lucky bastards still in the playoffs—when Beth and her friends showed up, wall-to-wall perfect asses and one girl in a bachelorette sash.
“You get abandoned?” she asked.
“For golf,” he answered, fake-pouting up at her.
“We’re doing a booze cruise, if you want to come.”
It turned out that Benji did want to go on their booze cruise, thanks. He hadn’t put anything on Instagram lately, other than an end-of-the-season thanks-to-the-fans post; but he made sure to get one of the whole group out on the boat, frozen drinks and smoke show girls for days.
He captioned it and the boys asked if I wanted to go golfing!! Davo responded immediately with fire emojis and Bowie you’re a legend.
“Ugh, why are you sitting in the corner on your phone?” Beth asked, dropping down onto the bench. “Boy trouble?”
Benji snorted. “Nailed it, babe.”
She flicked an invisible piece of dust off her perfect shoulder. “I’m going to act like I believe you,” she said, “so we can do my guaranteed heartbreak cure—tequila shots.”
After, like, four shots—maybe more, he wasn’t counting—Benji remembered why he hated tequila. It made him horny, which made him sick: here he was, on a boat in Mexico surrounded by beautiful women, and all he could think about was goddamned Olly.
That pissed him off, to be totally honest.
Beth was giving off zero DTF vibes, though. So they could kick back in their corner with a pitcher of piña coladas, and everyone would think they were trying to fuck each other and leave them alone, except for an occasional hopeful intrusion.
“Are you taken?” Beth asked, after he’d dispatched the most recent girl who wanted to laugh at his weak-ass jokes. “My friends are hot and you aren’t into it.”
“Nah,” he said. “Just not feeling it.”
“I thought you were a professional athlete,” she said. “Aren’t you always supposed to be feeling it?”
“It’s, whatever. Complicated.”
“Aw, girl troubles for real? I was joking before, you poor big, sexy, baby.” She dropped her chin on his shoulder. “Promise she’s not worth it.”
Even halfway blurry, Benji knew he did not want to go down that road. So he said, “You should fuck my buddy Poiro. He’s an asshole but I think you’re perfect for each other.”
“Oh, honey.” She was laughing harder. “You know my type, then. You’re way too sweet for me. Hope your girl figures her shit out.”
* * *
Benji staggered off the boat with the bachelorettes, maybe got a little lost getting back to the suite. When he finally made it, Olly wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t fucking there.
Benji chugged a bottle of water and lay down on the floor, because it was cool, and he was sweaty, and his bed was too far away. The bed he hadn’t slept in. He’d been annoyed with Olly for running off last night, although not as pissed as he was today; but mostly his drunk brain had wanted to be, whatever. Close. Feel Olly breathing under his arm, and have him be there, skin-to-skin and the smell of the nape of his neck when he woke up.
Well. He’d gotten that. It had worked out great.
He should have fucked a bachelorette. Someone uncomplicated, with an expiration date, who wanted him.
He could think that, safely behind a locked door. Even his drunk brain knew he wouldn’t have done it. He’d had every opportunity, a good angle on an empty-netter. But he hadn’t wanted to shoot, because he was mad at his fucking roommate slash fuck buddy slash who even fucking knew.
He’d moved from the floor to the couch and turned on Finding Nemo, when Olly finally showed up.
“I’m pissed at you,” Benji said.
“Okay.” Olly tossed his baseball hat onto the table next to the couch and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry,” he added, with automatic Midwestern politeness. “Do you want me to give you the room? I can go down to the beach.”
“Great, yeah, that would be fucking perfect.”
Olly put his hands on his hips. He looked like a golf ad: spotless white shorts, a navy polo setting off his eyes. He had a strip of sunburn on his wrist, where his glove stopped. He’d probably had the best fucking day. “What’s going on, bud? I didn’t even think you’d be here.”
“Where the hell did you think I’d be?”
“With Beth,” he answered, looking everywhere in the room except for Benji. “I saw your Insta.”
“I came back to wait for you, asshole.”
“I—Sorry,” Olly repeated, like he didn’t get it but would default to apologizing, anyway. “We just finished dinner.”
“Do you even want me here?” Benji couldn’t keep sitting; paced over to the window, looked at the beautiful view of the beautiful pool. The water glittered like a piece of jewelry, blue on blue.
There was a long pause. Of course Olly didn’t know; of course he’d make it complicated, get everything knotted up inside his head. Or worse, he did know, and he was trying to come up with a nice way to tell Benji to leave—because he could be snappy in the day-to-day, but when it came down to it, he was a good guy.
So maybe Benji had crossed a line this morning. Maybe it had been too much, or too...whatever.
Finally Olly stepped up beside him, and leaned on the windowsill, palms down. There was a spike of laughter from the pool, muffled through the thick glass. He could see the crisp line of a razor at the nape of Olly’s neck, the perfect fade of his new haircut. He hated it, even more than the fucking mullet.
“I didn’t think it mattered what I wanted,” Olly said at last. He was looking down at his hands, braced against the white paint of the windowsill.
“Of course it does.”
“It really doesn’t.” Olly looked up, and he looked bleak. His eyes were blue holes in his pale face. Benji felt his anger drain away: there was old pain there, something bruised deeper than his own annoyance.
He didn’t know what he would have said, then. Never got a chance to find out, because Olly stepped into his body, kissed him lightly at the corner of his mouth, then deeper and hotter until there was nothing else left.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Olly didn’t wake up the next morning, really, because that would mean he went to sleep; and he hadn’t. He lay in bed with Benji’s arm across his back, listening to the quiet, regular sound of his breathing, trying not to let the sleeping curves of his face burn themselves any more deeply into his brain.
But there they were. He knew how Benji would stretch, slowly, while he was waking up; knew exactly what color his eyes would be the first time he blinked them open, and how dark the stubble would be along his jaw. His fingers itched to push the stubborn curl of Benji’s hair off his forehead, to remind themselves of the exact contours of his cheekbones and the healed ridge of bone in the middle of his nose. He wanted to kiss his morning breath and let Benji roll him over, press him down into the sheets with the weight of his shoulders and the slow roll of his hips.
He didn’t do any of that.
Instead, they went to breakfast, Benji grumbling about a headache until his ibuprofen kicked in. He’d turned the hardcore stuff in to the team doc. He might joke about getting a pill problem like everyone in his hometown, but Olly knew Benji took that seriously as hell.
For as hard as he worked, Benji liked to make it look easy. Liked to laugh everything off, liked to accept help—from Olly, from his billet mom, from his stylist or coaching staff—with easy self-assurance.
Sometimes Olly had to wonder what that cost him: to keep it up, to act like nothing other than his sister ever bothered him. And he’d been bothered the night before. Olly didn’t know how to make sense of that.
“You’re quiet.” Benji had his head propped up on one fist while they waited for coffee. He looked so goddamned hot, even in a Hawaiian-print shirt unbuttoned halfway to play peek-a-boo with his chest hair. Loic had gone to town with his vacation wardrobe, and Benji made it work with an ease he’d never had in a suit. Even half-asleep and three-quarters hungover, curls flattened against the back of his head, he got looks.
Olly was just saying: it wasn’t fair.
“Coffee,” he answered vaguely.
Benji snorted. “You know what? I barely even drank coffee before we moved into the 505, but now I’m this fucking misery-zombie and it’s all your fault.”
“It’s all my fault,” Olly agreed.
Benji kicked his ankle under the table. “Asshole.”
“Fuckhead.”
“Bag skate of dicks.”
“Hawaiian shirt motherfucker.” Which made Benji snort again, and then they were both laughing, even though it wasn’t funny.
“Hey,” Benji said, when the teenaged giggling had died down. He nudged Olly’s ankle under the table. “Sorry I kinda yelled at you yesterday.”
“You didn’t yell at me.”
“Snapped, whatever.” He waved it away through the morning mugginess. “I just—I dunno. I’m not used to you not wanting to hang out, and it made me, whatever, worry.” His hazel eyes were all big and earnest and made Olly want to hide under the table.
“You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I know.” Benji shrugged. “I’m not saying it makes sense. It’s just, like, more obvious down here, with the golf and stuff, that I don’t really...fit. And usually I don’t care, but I guess it got to me a little bit.”
“I don’t care about your golf handicap.”
“The golf was a, like, metaphor.”
“I haven’t had enough coffee for metaphors,” Olly said. “But you know I’m not going to stop being your friend because of that, right? Or because you snapped at me one time?”
Benji looked low-key dubious. “I think it’s been more than one time by now.”
“You get it, though. Don’t you?”
Poiro and the guys showed up before Benji could argue the point any further, since the province of Quebec had another tee time to get to.
Olly—conscious of Benji staring down at a pile of scrambled eggs and guacamole, not saying a fucking word—begged off. Even though he was historically bad at chilling on beaches, and it was a horrible idea to let himself laze around with Benji, no matter how big and sad his eyes had been. Things kept getting more and more twisted together; he was going to lose his mind when it fell apart.
He’d ask for another trade, if he was playing well enough to be worth something, or maybe he’d retire. He wasn’t strong enough to watch Benji lose interest, to play the supportive buddy when Benji found a girl he wanted to keep around.
“Stop looking so serious,” Benji ordered, while they were strolling down to the beach.
“Just thinking.”
“Fucking stop, then. Jesus, we’re on vacation and we already maxed out the serious convos for the day.” He slung an arm around Olly’s neck. It was an awkward way to walk, with his shoulder jammed into Benji’s side and their hips bumping into each other. Once it was obvious that Benji wasn’t letting go, he didn’t have another option but to rearrange their shoulders and slip his arm around Benji’s waist.
They claimed an umbrella near the water. The surf was low, barely more than a ripple of white foam where it lapped onto the beach. It was hot already, even with a breeze off the water, and despite everything Olly felt himself start to relax.
“I’ll get your back.” Benji held up the sunscreen.
Olly let Benji shove him down face-first onto the beach chair. He was thorough, big hands everywhere over the muscles of his back. It reminded him of that night after they’d played the Wolves, when Benji had given him a massage. He’d felt—taken care of. He felt that way now, reluctantly and against his better judgment, with Benji’s thumbs digging into his traps and heat radiating out from his palms. Benji had a few calluses, from weight bars and his gloves or whatever else. Olly was dialed in enough that he could feel them against his skin.
It made him shiver, which made Benji make a low, pleased noise. He rubbed his thumb over the back of his neck, like there was a smudge of sunscreen, or like he’d wanted to. “There.”
“Thanks,” Olly mumbled into his forearms. Benji stayed perched on the edge of his lounger, close enough that their hips touched. They talked about nothing in particular: Olly’s golf round, the bachelorettes’ shenanigans, Yelich’s upcoming wedding in Alberta.
Olly felt wrung out, and warm, and comfortable, with Benji’s voice rumbling over the quiet waves. All the tension was leaching out of his body. Which was fucking stupid: he wasn’t any better off now than he’d been the day or the week or the month before, but maybe for now, maybe for the rest of his vacation, he could just let it go.
“You falling asleep, bud?” Benji asked, voice low.
“No.” It was probably a lie.
Benji chuckled and stroked a hand down his spine, fingers lingering in the small of his back. “I’ll stop bothering you.”
“Don’t,” Olly said, and that wasn’t a lie at all.
* * *
Benji stole Olly’s iPad out of his backpack, because obviously he was pulled-together enough to bring more than his phone and card key to breakfast.
Olly needed the sleep, probably. The alcohol had gotten to Benji last night and he’d passed out as soon as they’d both gotten off. Which was rude, but one of the benefits of hooking up with Olly versus some random girl was that he was supposed to understand about shit like that.
Not that Benji understood a damned thing about what was going on. He’d never given this much of a shit about someone he was fucking around with before. It was complicated and it made him mad and he could run through a mental list of every single reason why he didn’t fuck with repeats, and not one of them seemed more important than the bone-deep rightness when he had Olly where he belonged.
