Off the Ice

by Avon Gale

  Ryu stood at about five foot ten, small for a goalie, and his dark, silky hair was cut into a feathery, face-framing style—layered up top, long enough to brush his collar in the back—that made him resemble a Japanese rock star more than a professional hockey player. He also possessed the same eerie intensity nearly every goaltender seemed to share, and compared to most of their rowdy teammates, Ryu might be considered downright taciturn. He wasn’t, though. His sense of humor was quietly snarky. He made Tristan laugh, and his self-possession appealed to the part of Tristan that missed spending time with his easygoing family.

  He’d only known Ryu for a little over a year. They’d bonded last season after Ryu had gotten called up from the Rattlers, the Venom’s AHL affiliate, as the backup’s backup when Elliott, their starting goalie, broke his leg in two places. Elliott had retired shortly afterward, and Ryu had stayed on the team instead of being sent back down to the Rattlers.

  During Ryu’s first game in net, Tristan had thrown off his gloves and punched out the winger who kept crowding Ryu and spitting ethnic slurs. No one messed with Tristan’s goalies. Ever. Especially not like that.

  Thus, their friendship had begun.

  Ryu met him in the entryway of Powerhouse. Outside, the gym appeared to be nothing more than an industrial warehouse. Inside, it was a mecca for any athlete or fitness diehard, with everything from obstacle courses to rock-climbing walls to boxing rings and MMA cages, plus all the other standard exercise equipment.

  By way of greeting, Tristan and Ryu exchanged smiles and a fist bump—Ryu wasn’t much of a hugger unless it was on the ice.

  “How’s it going, man?” Tristan asked. “Let’s go find Lewis.”

  They hunted down their joint trainer, who put them through an hour and a half of weight work and interval training before they joined a thirty-minute Pilates class. Afterward, they showered and drove separately to Tristan’s favorite Thai restaurant.

  “How was Sweden?” Tristan asked once they were seated across from each other with glasses of green jasmine iced tea. The panting and profuse sweating they’d done while working their asses off at the gym hadn’t allowed for much in the way of conversation.

  “It was fine. We worked on focus and protecting the top of the crease. The drills weren’t much different than what I do with Coach Marsh.” Ryu shrugged. “But I did make a stopover in Amsterdam for a couple of days. The trip was worth it for the canals alone.”

  Tristan laughed mid-sip and started coughing when tea went down the wrong pipe. “The canals,” he said through a wheeze. “The many and varied canals. Yes. I’ve heard they’re pretty memorable.”

  Ryu’s broad grin defined cheekbones that were already sharp as blades. “How have your classes been?”

  “Fine. I wanted to ask you for some advice, actually.”

  “Oh, yeah? What about?”

  Tristan cleared his throat and fiddled with his straw. “Um. It has to do with one of my professors.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I—There’s—” Tristan gnawed on his lower lip as he considered how to word his question without revealing he needed advice about a man. He couldn’t ask Morley for help. He knew what Morley’s suggestion would be, at least if Morley thought Tristan’s professor was a woman. Morley would probably start singing “Hot for Teacher” and then wish Tristan success on his cougar hunt. Ryu was infinitely more levelheaded.

  For a second, Tristan contemplated telling Ryu the truth. How much easier would it be if they could discuss the situation openly? Two words and it would be out there: I’m gay.

  Tristan’s brain rejected the idea almost as soon as it popped into his head. He wasn’t ready for his friends to know. They were good guys. The best. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even care. But what if he was wrong?

  He wasn’t prepared to risk losing them. Not yet. Not anytime soon.

  “I think there might be something between me and one of my professors,” he finally went on. “Like...sexual tension.”

  Ryu’s dark eyes widened. “And you want to do something about it?”

  “I think so, yeah... I mean, Professor Cruz isn’t the only person in the Sociology Department. If I wanted to take another class, I’m sure I could find one being taught by another instructor. So maybe...”

  Ryu tilted his head, his forehead wrinkled. “There are rules about that, aren’t there?”

  Tristan shrugged. “Probably. Conflict of interest, you know? But the term will be over in a few weeks.”

  “Well...” Ryu tapped the tabletop with his thumb. “I’d be careful if I were you. Wait until the class is finished and grades are in. That way your actions can’t be misinterpreted. It won’t seem like a bid for favoritism.”

  Tristan nodded slowly. He knew waiting was the smartest option, even if the idea of holding off for a few more weeks before making a move felt torturous. Then again, he might be getting ahead of himself. He didn’t know if Professor Cruz actually wanted him. Or if he was single. Just because Tristan had caught the guy checking out his ass didn’t mean Professor Cruz wanted to tap it, or that he’d cross that line if he did.

  There might be a way for Tristan to find out, though. He still needed to put together the prospectus for his final paper before discussing it with Professor Cruz. Maybe he could use the assignment as a subtle way to reveal his sexuality, and the meeting itself to gauge Professor Cruz’s interest. Yeah...that might work. Tristan already had a topic in mind.

  * * *

  During his meeting with one of his students about her final paper, Sebastian had to remind himself—more than once—that he was supposed to encourage them, not tell them why all their ideas were basically wrong. He did like teaching, for the most part—he just had very little patience when someone sat in front of him and clearly showed how she hadn’t been listening while he’d been doing it.

  “So, like,” the girl said, whose name was something with more vowels than were necessary, “I wanted to, you know, like, show that people who were popular in high school were perceived as being bitchy and cliquey when, like, we totally weren’t. And work it into how, like, girls who thought that were usually ones who didn’t want to take the time to get to know us.”

  “Ashleighy.” Sebastian fixed the young woman with his usual sharp stare. “It’s an...interesting rough concept, but I should point out you’ve written every assignment in this class on a very similar topic.” Someone is having a tough time leaving high school behind, he thought, which was probably uncharitable.

  He tried to talk Ashleighy into rethinking her proposal and expanding it a bit, maybe examining something that had to do with nonprivileged white people, but he wasn’t sure how much of it got through. In the end, it was up to Ashleighy and she’d be graded accordingly. He couldn’t deny that she tried—she was always in class, always turned in her assignments—and she even seemed interested in the material...as long as it somehow related to her and her circumstances.

  Remembering the situation with Tristan made Sebastian chide himself about making assumptions, though thinking about Tristan was immediately distracting. He returned his attention to Ashleighy and tried suggesting a few books that were a little more diverse in their focus, but he had no idea how much good it did.

  She gave him a bright smile and a cheery wave, with an admonition to “Have a good weekend!” as she bounced out the door. He sighed and rolled his eyes, flipping his pen around in his hand idly as he waited for his next—and last—student appointment of the day.

  Tristan.

  Thoughts of Tristan’s prospectus made Sebastian nearly drop the pen. He’d blinked at his laptop the night before when he’d read it while preparing for the meeting today, because Tristan’s proposed final assignment was dealing with homophobia in professional sports, and how it informed perceptions of masculinity and affected power dynamics in a team’s locker room.

&nb
sp; At first, Sebastian had thought maybe Tristan was angling for a good grade because he knew Sebastian was gay, but he’d dismissed the thought fairly quickly. He’d already made a substantial assumption about Tristan when he’d jumped to conclusions about the plagiarizing, and he was determined to give Tristan the benefit of the doubt this time. Especially when it came to something like this.

  Besides, there had been a few times when Sebastian had thought he’d seen Tristan looking at him with more than academic interest—even after his colossal fuckup and the resulting apology. While he’d admitted that was probably wishful thinking, seeing this prospectus made him question if maybe Tristan was expressing some sort of interest.

  The thought, while gratifying and definitely arousing, was best left for the privacy of his bed at night. Tristan Holt was Sebastian’s student and—according to the YouTube videos he’d watched and the online articles he’d read—an up-and-coming athlete with a promising future. There was no way he was interested in some academic asshole who’d been a dick to him, even if Sebastian had apologized.

  Tristan was right on time, if not a few minutes early, and Sebastian noticed he was wearing the Pink Floyd shirt again. It made him want to smile, but instead he gestured briefly to the chair across from his desk and said, “Have a seat, Mr. Holt.”

  Tristan’s mouth quirked, but he settled his tall—very, very tall—frame into the chair. He was fresh-faced and bright-eyed, holding an actual notebook and pen on his lap.

  “I read your prospectus,” Sebastian said, not one to waste words and also not wanting to leer at his student any longer, no matter how nicely defined his legs were. “As you know, it’s a subject near to my own academic interests, but it might be a little off from the scope of the course.”

  Tristan nodded, leaning forward eagerly. “I thought about that, yeah. I really wanted to do this topic, though, so I was hoping maybe there was a way you could help me figure out how to, uh, apply the idea to the class.”

  Oh, could I ever. Right over my desk. Sebastian dragged his thoughts out of the gutter and nodded. “Certainly.” He grabbed a piece of paper and started jotting down some book names. “Here is a list of sources I think would be a good starting place for the academic portion of your paper. Remember that while personal experience is always valuable, a sociologist is, in part, a passive observer, and their work should include references from other scholars.”

  Sebastian pushed the list over to him, then paused. “I shouldn’t ask this, but I’m going to anyway—are there any issues with your team that are putting you or your personal safety at risk in the locker room?”

  Tristan blinked those baby blues a few times, then shook his head. Sebastian couldn’t tell if he looked pleased or embarrassed that Sebastian had assumed he was somewhere on the LGBT spectrum. “No, but I’m—I’m not out to my team,” he said, his chin raised a little. “But I keep thinking about what happened when you told the class you were gay, and I wonder... I guess I want to see if it’s the same in a professional hockey locker room.”

  “Did you follow the coverage about Michael Sam?” Sebastian asked, referring to the college football player who’d come out before the NFL draft a few years ago.

  Tristan winced. “Yeah. I felt bad for him, but mostly because of the media. They were so obsessed with the fact that he was gay, I think they hounded him out of wanting to play football.”

  Sebastian had thought much the same thing, but he’d also wondered what the situation for Sam had been like on his college team. “I’m sure that didn’t help.”

  “But there’s a lot that goes on in the locker room that the media doesn’t see,” Tristan continued, clearly warming up to his topic. “And the whole idea of the power structures we talked about, how people see each other...that’s what I wanted to focus on. The inner circle, or whatever.”

  Sebastian nodded. “That makes sense.” He spent a few more minutes helping Tristan narrow down his focus so that it fit with both his interests and the key ideas of the class, and Tristan really did seem interested and invested in the project. “Are you intending to major in sociology?” he asked, unsure if he’d like to see more of Tristan in his classes or if that might be way too torturous.

  “International business.” Tristan sat up straighter. “I travel a lot with hockey, which I really like, and if something happens and I get injured, I need to have something else on my résumé besides keeping guys from scoring.”

  Sebastian noticed Tristan subtly knocked at the wood of his desk, and raised his eyebrows in question.

  Tristan flushed. “Sorry. Superstition. Hockey players, man. We’re like that.” He laughed sheepishly.

  It was a nice laugh, which didn’t help Sebastian’s completely inappropriate attraction in the slightest. “So I hear. I just run marathons. Which is probably not the same.”

  “I thought you might be a runner,” Tristan said, and then his flush got deeper, which told Sebastian that maybe he wasn’t wrong about Tristan’s attraction to him.

  If it was wishful thinking, perhaps Sebastian wasn’t entirely off base. “I didn’t play any sports growing up, and neither of my parents are into it.”

  “Do they know you’re gay?” Tristan leaned forward a bit. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, that’s...probably not appropriate for me to ask. But I guess I wondered how it—how it was for you.”

  It wasn’t appropriate, but it told Sebastian that Tristan probably wasn’t out to his family. It was never his intention to be anyone’s gay mentor, but it was hard to help himself around Tristan, and besides, it was just a question. “It’s all right. Yes, they know, and no, it wasn’t easy. There are a lot of expectations for young men in my culture, and subverting those wasn’t easy. I’m certainly not the only gay Puerto Rican from the Bronx, but it was more about being out than anything.”

  Tristan nodded eagerly. “Exactly, that’s how I feel about being a gay hockey player. Like, I know I’m not the only one, and honestly, I feel like hockey is a tolerant sport—for the most part. That’s why I’m interested in why no one’s come out yet, especially since they have in other professional sports.”

  The enthusiasm was always something Sebastian appreciated, and along with Tristan’s bright smile and the subtle signals he was giving off—leaning in closer, meeting Sebastian’s eyes, that sort of thing—it was time to end their meeting.

  “If you need any more assistance with the project, let me know,” Sebastian said, intending it as a dismissal and hoping it didn’t come across in the would you like to see my etchings sort of way.

  Tristan put his notebook away, stood up, and shouldered his backpack. He was at least five inches taller than Sebastian when they were both standing, so with Sebastian still in his chair, Tristan looked even taller. But Sebastian didn’t stand up, though it wasn’t necessarily out of any desire to show that Tristan’s height didn’t intimidate him.

  It was more the semi he was sporting in his suit pants.

  Tristan’s gaze shifted to the Pink Floyd poster on Sebastian’s wall. “You into Floyd? Cool. Me too. My favorite’s ‘Comfortably Numb.’ What about you?”

  “You seem a little young to be a Pink Floyd fan,” Sebastian said, despite himself. “And my favorite’s ‘Wish You Were Here.’”

  Tristan grinned that killer smile of his and shrugged his broad shoulders, which were nicely defined beneath his T-shirt. “I had a friend growing up, and his dad always brought us to games and practices and stuff. He had, like, three tapes in his car. Kansas, Floyd, and Zeppelin. So, you know. Lots of happy memories.”

  That was a much-needed reminder that Tristan was younger than him and, no matter how attractive Sebastian found him, also his student. It kept him from sharing his own memories of classic rock and how his dad, too, had been the one to introduce a young Sebastian to the genre. “If there’s nothing else, I believe I have another appointment,” Sebastian said,
though he didn’t. He needed Tristan Holt to get out of his office before his brain tormented him with images of fucking Tristan over his desk.

  Never going to happen. While thinking about it when he was alone in his bed was one thing, it was inexcusable to entertain the thought when the object of his fantasies was standing right in front of him.

  Tristan blinked, maybe looking a little hurt, but he gave an easy shrug. “Sure, sorry to take up your time. See you next week, Professor Cruz.”

  Sebastian nodded and watched him go. He told himself firmly to get a grip, then decided to distract himself by grading a few student papers he knew would be terrible. Nothing took his mind off sex like the badly written academic efforts of students who never showed up.

  Chapter Seven

  Nothing cleared Tristan’s mind quite like the sharp crunch of skate blades biting into ice. For Tristan, the noise held a sensory appeal. Whenever his brain got too loud, too cluttered, he closed his eyes and imagined the sound to center himself. It never failed—until lately. Since the prospectus meeting with Professor Cruz, not even the slicing scrape of skates-on-ice could save Tristan’s concentration for long.

  During class, Tristan forced himself to recite parts of the NHL rulebook whenever he got distracted by thoughts of how his professor’s long, lean body might feel against his. Outside of class, he spent more time than was probably healthy having filthy student/uptight professor daydreams. Tristan wondered about the taste of Professor Cruz’s come, about how he smelled up close and personal. He imagined that low, growly voice giving him orders. Fuck. The other day he’d even tripped and nearly broken his nose by face-planting on the treadmill when he let his mind wander and it drifted straight to the fantasy of Professor Cruz smirking and asking him things like, Do you want to choke on my dick? before forcing his cock deep into Tristan’s throat.

  As Tristan had groaned in pain from his position on the floor, Morley had laughed himself stupid and abandoned his own run to catch his breath. He’d stood there, chuckling and wiping tears from his eyes, while Ryu grabbed Tristan a towel to try to staunch the bleeding from his nostrils. Afterward, Tristan looked like he’d taken a vicious right hook to the schnoz, which earned him a double take from Professor Cruz during the following class.