Chapter 1
The buzzer that ended the game severed a wire in Finn's head.
A loss that shouldn't have happened.
A defensive breakdown in the second period that Finn had tried to patch up, skating until his lungs burned and his quads screamed, but it hadn't been enough.
It was never enough.
was never enough.
The aftermath was a blur of overstimulation.
The locker room was too quiet, heavy with the sullen disappointment of twenty men.
The showers were too loud, the water hitting the tile like shrapnel.
Then came the media scrum—lights flashing in his eyes, microphones shoved too close to his face, the repetitive, inane questions demanding he explain why they failed.
Why.
How.
What will you change.
He gave them what they wanted—the PR answers, the steady voice, the blank face.
The mask he'd been polishing since he was seventeen.
But underneath, the static built.
It started at the base of his neck, crawled up his spine, settled behind his eyes—a low hum that made his skin feel two sizes too small.
By the time he reached his car, he was vibrating out of his own body.
He wanted to sit in the dark and let the silence drown him until there was nothing left but a body that kept breathing because it just
didn't know how to stop.
But he also wanted Alexei.
That was the new variable, terrifying and wonderful all at once.
For a week, they'd been on opposite coasts, surviving on text messages and late-night calls, today was supposed to be their reunion.
Finn had spent the entire morning—before the disaster of the game—feeling a giddy, almost teenage anticipation about coming back to the apartment and just
being
They hadn't managed to cross paths before puck drop.
Alexei's flight touched down during the first intermission, which meant no pre-game coffee, no grounding touch, no moment of quiet before Finn had to suit up and become someone else.
Alexei had gone straight to his apartment—having the code already memorized—to wait for him.
Between periods, right before the night went off the rails, Finn had checked his phone and found a text and a photo attached to it.
Alexei sprawled across the beige sectional like he'd always owned it, long legs thrown over the armrest, one arm behind his head, the TV casting blue light over his face.
Looking, for all the world, like he belonged there.
He had smiled at the screen, a small, private crack in his game-face.
Feeling how the warm expanding in his chest loosened a fraction of the tightness there.
He loved seeing Alexei take up space in his home, filling the empty, sterile corners with his loud, undeniable presence.
Fitting himself into the negative spaces of Finn's life.
They were still figuring out what that meant.
The
us
of being together.
What shape two people who'd spent a decade alone in all the ways that mattered really form when they existed together.
For ten years, losing had meant solitary confinement.
He'd go home to an empty house, sit in the dark, and dissect every mistake.
Then he'd restrict—food, comfort, or anything that felt like a reward—because that was how he clawed back control.
It was a bad habit, a lonely one—but it was
The kind of thing he had learn to hold close because no one else would understand, and because, somewhere underneath the shame of it, it had kept him standing when he didn't know how else to stay upright.
Tonight, though, the apartment wouldn't be empty.
Alexei was there.
His boyfriend.
The word still felt foreign like sneakers he hadn't quite broken in yet.
But God, there was relief there too, relief of not being alone.
Of knowing someone was waiting for him to come home.
Finn loved him so much he sometimes felt an urge to crawl his way under his skin and never leave, to make a home between his ribs and keep his heart safe.
But tonight, seeing him meant performing.
He couldn't just shut down.
He'd have to be present, to try for happy partner, even while his skin crawled and his ears rang and all he wanted was to scratch himself raw.
Don't be weird,
he told himself
putting the code in.
Don't ruin this.
He's been waiting.
He opened the door, and the wall of scent hit him like a physical slap.
Garlic.
Heavy cream.
Bacon fat.
Under normal circumstances, it would have smelled delicious.
Alexei had cooked.
Alexei, who usually just ordered takeout or ate raw ingredients over the sink, had took the time and care to cooked for him.
It was a gesture of love so loud it made Finn's chest ache.
But tonight, with his sensory processing already red-lining, the smell was thick and suffocating.
It coated his throat and made the nausea he was already carrying from the game roll uncomfortably in his stomach.
"Finn?" Alexei's voice boomed from the kitchen.
He walked out, wearing sweatpants and a tight t-shirt, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder.
He looked soft and domestic.
He looked like everything Finn wanted and everything Finn felt he didn't deserve right now.
"Hey," he managed, hic voice sounding thin to his own ears.
"I know, I know.
Game was shit," Alexei said, dismissing the shitshow that was his night with a wave of his hand.
Like it was nothing, just another lost, like loosing didn't cost him as much as it did to Finn, like everything was alright when it clearly
wasn't
Unaware of Finn's internal battle, Alexei walked over and pulled him into a hug.
Finn stiffened at first, his body a live wire, but then Alexei kissed him.
It was a grounding thing, solid and warm and it cut right through the screaming static in his head, silencing the noise of the locker room and the press and the failure.
For a few blessed seconds, there was no sensory overload, no exhaustion, just the taste of Alexei and the simple, undeniable fact of him.
It was a pocket of pure, silent peace in a night that had been nothing but war.
Then Alexei pulled back, and the world rushed back in with violent speed.
The heat of the kitchen, the smell of bacon and garlic clinging to his boyfriend's t-shirt, the hum of the fridge—it all crashed over him again, heavier than before.
The peace was gone, replaced instantly by the suffocating
muchness
of everything. instinctively, Finn forced himself to relax his shoulders, to pat Alexei's back, to tried and put his mask more securely around his face, but his control over himself was slipping by the second.
The two of them were alike in many ways, but what made them fundamentally different—surprising as it might seem to some—was hockey itself.
Yes, they were both arguably the best players the league had seen in the last ten years, maybe even longer.
But where hockey was a means to an end for Alexei, for Finn, it was the very air he breathed.
So when Alexei couldn't reach his goals, when he had a bad game or a slump in the season, he was disappointed—angry, even.
But he could continue.
He could take the loss, learn from it, and rise again.
With Finn, it was different.
In his mind, there was no world in which a lost was acceptable, let alone a string of them.
So when the inevitable failure happened—because, and despite what he would like, he was no God and therefore could not control every single play nor how the other team would react—he didn't just get mad; he shut down.
And that is why, naturally, his boyfriend could never have imagined how destroyed Finn truly was after a bad game.
After all, Alexei had never been there for the aftermath before.
Back when whatever was between them was just sex, Finn would use a quick fuck to burn off the surface-level frustration, and then he would retreat to his own apartment or a lonely hotel room to lick his wounds in private.
But now things were different.
Now they were together and they spent every spare second glued to each other's sides, desperate to make up for the years they had wasted being too stubborn to acknowledge any other thing other than lust in the other's eyes.
And because of that closeness, there was nowhere left to hide.
Tonight, Alexei was about to learn exactly how much it cost Finn to lose.
How unforgiving his mind could get with himself.
"A shame not everybody in your team can play like you, but is okay," Alexei murmured into his hair, unaware that the comfort he was offering was currently scraping against Finn's raw nerves.
He pulled back further to scan his face, his eyes searching.
"You look tired.
But you are here.
And I made dinner.
Actual food.
Not your rabbit one."
He looked so proud, so eager to please.
Finn felt a wave of guilt so sharp it nearly doubled him over.
He couldn't tell him.
He couldn't say,
I need to sit in a dark room for an hour without speaking,
The smell of cheese is making me want to tear my skin off,
I need to not eat tonight because it's the only way I can feel in charge of my body.
Those were Finn's problems.
Ugly, messy, solitary problems.
You didn't dump those on the boyfriend you were still trying to impress.
You didn't taint the first night back together with your neuroses.
"That's... great," Finn lied.
"Thanks, Alexei."
"Go wash up.
I serve."