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It wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t anything at all, really.
It was impossible to be a hockey player without becoming intimately acquainted with every inch of your teammates. Decades of cinderblock locker rooms, communal showers. Hot and funky with sweat and bodies and everyone shedding layers of soaking gear.
Quinn didn’t even really see bodies anymore, they faded into the background from years of exposure. Then he got on the ice and bodies were all that mattered. The flex of his wrist. Speed across the ice. Weight, crushing him into the boards. Who was where and why, who he could rely on, who he couldn’t.
Hockey was inherently physical. Crushing embraces and hard slaps on the back. Run-and-jump tackling hugs after an overtime winner. Touch was nothing more than camaraderie, confirmation of a bond deeper than the physical.
That’s why the thing with Kirill wasn’t a thing. They were two bodies, finding each other for support. Touching. Connecting. Anything else was a natural bodily reaction. Uncontrollable expanding of blood vessels and twitching tendons.
They were kind of similar, except for all the ways they were different. Similar in the way they shied from cameras, got into their own heads too much on the ice, how their whole lives were hockey. So it’s not weird when Kirill comes to his room with a question and stays to watch TV after the game. Not weird when he climbs atop the scratchy white comforter and kicks his shoes off at the foot of the bed.
Post-game jitters would keep Quinn up for a while, usually. That nagging itch in his stomach that made him toss and turn, replaying every fraction of a second decision he’d made. It’s funny to him that Kirill, the Wild’s apparent franchise hero, doesn’t understand this at all. We won, Hughesy. Just think of sleep, yeah?
He lets Quinn get ready for bed. Doesn’t seem to mind that he’s just in his briefs. Doesn’t look twice. Nothing he’s never seen. Quinn thinks he’s probably seen ten times as many naked men than women. Doesn’t dwell on it. Kirill doesn’t show any signs of wanting to leave.
His English is actually pretty good. Quinn wishes English wasn’t his first language – it’d make it easier to dodge questions from the press. Kirill agrees. They always ask obvious thing! Why did you not win? The other team score more goals, stupid.
It’s easy to laugh with him. The cold pit in his chest, the one that had been there since he’d stepped off the plane at MSP, has almost started to subside. Maybe he could fit in here, for real.
Was it hard when you first got here, you know, not knowing a lot of English? He asks and Kirill laughs like he’s another stupid reporter, hounding him outside the locker room. Quinn tries not to feel the heat creeping up his neck.
Yes, and no Russian guys on the team, then. He laughs happy and bright. And covid, too. Hated Minny, at first.
What changed?
Met Zuccy, started playing hockey. Hockey is, uh, no matter Rossiya or English. It is hockey. He smiles and his eyes crinkle at the corners.
Quinn smiles because he’s never felt like this at all. Always felt like hockey was a complicated, nuanced language all in itself that he’s always short of fully deciphering. Still, he lets himself sink into this idea, that Vancouver and Minnesota weren’t so different at all. That if Kirill could do it, fresh from the KHL, barely a lick of English, then maybe he could too.
When Kirill falls asleep, on top of the bedspread, Quinn doesn’t wake him. He has an early alarm set already. His face isn’t peaceful, exactly. He looks a little dead, mouth slightly open, drooling, eyelids so still he’s sure that he’s not dreaming. Instead he lays down, too. Leaving the TV on, like that preserves their dignity somehow, an accidental sleepover instead of a purposeful one.
Kirill is just another body, breathing. A dip in the mattress. He times their breaths together and falls into sleep, too. Dreams of nothing at all.
He feels Kirill before he opens his eyes. The weight of his body, strong and wide, pressed into his back. The quieted breaths, hot on his neck. When he stares into the dark of the hotel room, he thinks maybe Kirill’s asleep, that he’s having a dream and rolled over into Quinn by pure coincidence.
Okay, Hughesy?
His voice was soft and syrupy from sleep. He’s pressing into Quinn. He’s hard, that’s easy enough to tell. Slotted easily in the curve of his ass, through his sweatpants. He’s kind of pressing into him, in the half-hearted way that happens when you’re turned on but slow from sleep.
Been awhile or something? Jesus, dude. Quinn says, even though he should roll away and tell him to fuck off. Never speak of it again, because nothing would ever happen.
Mmm, hard to pick up girls here. Don’t like Minny bars.
He’s pressing harder now, in slow, hard drags, shifting their bodies back and forth. Quinn doesn’t like bars in general. Doesn’t like picking up girls who probably just want an autograph and bragging rights about sleeping with him.
Kirill slings an arm over his abdomen and pulls him close. His nose presses into the hair at the back of his head. He lets it happen. His own cock is stirring in his boxer briefs, against any will of his own. Kirill’s arm around him is tight, his bicep flexing with every ministration of his hips.
He’s thrusting now, really. Any pretensions are gone. Quinn lets him rut into him, not really knowing why. Maybe this was a really weird dream.
He listens to the TV. It’s a rerun of some trashy reality show. The light from it is just dim enough that the dark of the room is still overwhelming. He feels blindfolded, all his senses stripped from him besides the stick of sweat on his back, the warmth of Kirill and the friction from the drag of fabric on his ass. The quiet groan of the bed springs as he quickens his pace. He felt more awake now. The push of his hips was aggressive. So much so that Quinn doesn’t know how it even feels good at all.
Kirill comes with an aborted grunt and a long sigh. He rolls over, the loss of warmth like a cold plunge. There’s a couple moments of shuffling sheets and muffled breathing. Quinn thinks he’s going to say something, but his breaths level out and he realizes he’s fallen back asleep.
When he finally works up the courage to look over, Kirill is rolled onto his back, splayed out on the bedsheets, a dark stain on the front of his sweatpants.
Moving as quietly as he can, Quinn goes to the bathroom, not even bothering to turn the lights on, and jerks off into his hand. Completely silently, with rigid precision. He tries to think of nothing at all.
The next morning is like nothing happened at all, because it wasn’t a thing. Wasn’t anything. Kirill smiles at him just as warmly, says, thanks Hughesy! See you on bus. And Quinn lets him walk out of the room with a smile and a wave.
Pretends to himself that Kirill was just another body, who needed a body, and that was perfectly okay.