“You’re it!”

“Oh, you motherf—get back here!”

Matty stumbled to a halt as he pushed the side gate of the gym open only to find four guys in the middle of what looked like a game of tag.

Then, Klein was slapping his shoulder as he sprinted past Matty. “It! Move or play!”

“Reciprocal tags allowed?” Matty yelled as he dropped his gym bag and took off after him.

Kevin was nearby and laughing, jogging backwards to stay well clear of Matty’s path. “Nope!”

Matty turned on his heel and closed the gap between him and Kevin in a few easy strides, dodging around the field goalposts when Kevin tried to use them as shelter.

God, he could just take Kevin down…

Matty slapped Kevin’s shoulder. “It,” he winked.

Kevin stumbled and glared, but he was breathlessly laughing, too. He was so cute when his cheeks were pink.

No, shit, he had to stop thinking that before he hung out with the guy regularly.

Unless, of course, Kevin’s little fidget when Glenn told them to hook up had meant that.

Matty stayed out of the way as Kevin took off to tag Klein right back. He had a big advantage over the rest of them: one of his main skills was sprinting. Every coach had told him he was light and quick on his feet, which helped with his aggressive point-scoring style.

That made games like this almost no fun, because he could evade the others for long enough for them to get bored and choose another target. The only exception was Kevin: he could keep ahead of him, but only barely. Being challenged was both hot and irritating.

When Glenn came to yell that the game was over and tell them to get their asses inside, Matty jogged back to the gate to grab his bag. Kevin was nearby, leaning on the fence for a moment to catch his breath.

“You’re quick,” Matty told him.

Kevin winked, then rubbed his arm down his face and shook his head. “You too. I can’t believe I couldn’t get you there.”

Matty laughed. “It was close, though, man.” He clapped Kevin’s arm as they set off towards the gym side door together. “Just got here?”

“Yep, this was our warmup.” Kevin’s eyes sparkled with a moment of childlike joy. “Been years since I played tag.”

“What a warmup, huh?” Matty grinned. “Now you know why the guys like him. It’s not just grunt work. He finds ways of making it fun.”

Kevin nodded. “I don’t care how fun it is, as long as the end results are worth it, but… I’m weird.”

Matty totally understood what he meant. Some guys got bored—in other words, lazy—when their exercise programs were too same-samey. He didn’t care—he’d eat the same meal ten days in a row, or do the same workout ten days in a row, if it was effective. He high-fived Kevin and jerked his chin in a quick nod. “Agreed.”

“Cool,” Kevin grinned, then held the door for Matty to head through.

Once Matty dropped off his gear, he went to find Glenn, but the smirk on his face made Matty slow his steps. “Oh, no.”

Glenn laughed. “It’s not a bad thing. I just noticed you’re in pretty good shape considering where we are in your recovery period.” Kevin was standing next to him and laughing under his breath.

“Which means I get to do what?”

“You’re both doing sleds.”

Oh, boy. Pulling weighted sleds across the field was usually a little later in the season, or even in their intensive week-long training camp. Glenn must have thought they were in fine form.

Matty wasn’t convinced, but if Glenn thought he could handle it, he’d do it.

“Go get ready.”

Matty stripped his t-shirt off and dumped it on a bench by the door, then grabbed his water bottle and headed to the weights area.

Glenn was already there, handing them the ropes of two weighted sleds. “Out you two get.”

Kevin’s sled looked about heavy as his: a hundred pounds. Not a lot, especially for guys like them, but the idea was a low weight and more reps.

“You know the drill, Matty. You wanna talk Kevin through the unloaded ones, and I’ll get these guys set up?”

Matty nodded, leading Kevin to the turf outside. “Right. We do a couple unloaded reps just to get used to having the harness on, then a set of twenty loaded reps, improving our form with everything Glenn tells us. Then a couple more reps without the harness on, and you’ll be blazing. We do a lot of this during the camp. He must want you to be familiar with it.”

Kevin was studying him and nodding, taking note of every word he said. Those cute pink lips pinched together with focus, making it really hard to focus on anything but them.

It was pretty easy to get the harness on and the sled unloaded, and then Matty went first to demonstrate. Just before he took off, Glenn stepped outside to supervise them both until they started the weighted reps.

Matty focused totally on his body, keeping himself leaning forward and his feet positioned just as he’d been taught. His main focus was on his form, and he kept an ear out for any corrections from Glenn.

Once it was Kevin’s turn, the guy took easily to corrections and seemed focused on his own performance. Matty could already see what Glenn meant about his work ethic; Kevin seemed to want to work out as hard as he could. No wonder, given what they were paying for training.

Then they were left alone for the remainder of their reps, watching each other’s forms.

Kevin was really giving her, as his American teammates would tease him for saying. Matty could watch Kevin shirtless, the harness straining against his hips, all day long. Sweat trickled down along his chest and over his smooth stomach, and ran down the hollowed ridge of his spine. His hair clung to his forehead, his lips parted for deep breaths, his eyes bright and absolutely focused.

He looked like he’d be deadly on ice.

Once they were done, the harnesses off, practicing sprinting together down the field, it felt like Matty was flying. He barely felt the ground under him without the weight behind him.

And Kevin was there by his side, breath rasping at his lungs, the occasional grunts as his feet hit the ground and propelled himself forward.

For some reason, it was an emotional moment.

Then they slowed as they reached the fence at the other end of the field, and Kevin whooped and grabbed him around the shoulders to haul him in for back-slapping celebration.

“That was fast as lightning,” Matty grinned, clapping Kevin right back and bumping their chests together.

Their bare, hot, sweaty chests rubbed together, and fuck, for a second, Matty couldn’t get the image out of his head: Kevin’s body under his as they moved together, fast and hard, in the sheets.

Matty pulled back abruptly with another punch to Kevin’s shoulder, then strode down the field towards the gym again while Kevin jogged to catch up with him. “Fuckin’ great,” he told Kevin.

“Yeah,” Kevin panted. “Awesome. That did feel like… flying. Wow. I’ve never felt like that, except on ice. And maybe skis.”

Matty laughed. “You ski?”

“I have. Cross-training. Not much, though. Ski season is skating season, so…”

“Nothing happens during skating season,” Matty nodded. “Man, you’ve got better abs than me.” He reached to playfully try to slap them while Kevin twisted away and laughed. “The fuck did you do that for?”

“I can show you my crunches,” Kevin offered with a grin. “I add an extra twist.”

Matty jerked his head in a nod and elbowed Kevin’s arm, pushing him off-course before taking off in a jog for the building. It was great to find a buddy who didn’t mind joshing around, too. “That’d be sweet.”

Kevin kept his voice down as they approached the building. “It’s so great to do things other than, like, pilates and monkey bars.”

Matty laughed. “I know, it seems boring, but trust him. All the tumbling and handstands and toning shit helps when you come out of a rough season next year.”

“Yeah,” Kevin nodded. “Especially if we go all the way.”

It took an embarrassing second longer than it should have for Matty to finish, To the playoffs. “Right,” he quickly nodded. “All right, let’s see what other hell he wants to put us through.” Despite his complaint, he was grinning, and so was Kevin.

There was nothing like the adrenaline that surged through his body when he was working out, except the thrill of an actual game.

Or…

No, he had to keep his mind off Kevin’s cute little ass.

* * *

The first thing Matty noticed when they stripped in the locker room after their workout was, of course, Kevin. His ass wasn’t so little, actually. Hockey players had the best asses. It was a shame Matty hadn’t managed to find a hockey guy to date, really.

Matty pushed the thought aside. Locker rooms had stopped being scary—dangerous, even—after his first few years. Now, he could see dicks and asses all day long and not react at all, even to hot, flirtatious, smart, fit guys slapping him on the ass.

But Kevin? One look at Kevin and he wanted to crowd up into his space and kiss him?

This was something completely new for him.

“So we’re going downtown to get a bite to eat and a drink?” Kevin asked, snapping Matty from his reverie of staring at the shower water tap while scrubbing his body off.

“Yeah, sure,” Matty agreed. “Anything you feel like?”

“I know a pulled pork place, about ten or fifteen minutes away.”

That sounded like heaven, actually. Matty grinned and turned off the water, then headed for the benches. “Sold to the man in… nothing at all.”

Kevin’s sharp, surprised laugh echoed off all four tiled walls of the shower room.

They dressed in relative comfortable silence, politely ignoring the groan or two they heard from each other when they bent this way or that to get dressed.

“Long day here, wasn’t it?” Matty finally asked as they locked away their gym bags.

Kevin nodded hard. “God, yeah. I like it, though.”

“It’s the best job ever.”

“It is.”

They waved their goodbyes to Glenn on the way out, then set off down the sidewalk. The spring air felt even more pleasant drying Matty’s damp hair from the shower.

Matty’s worry about what he’d say when he was alone—as much as possible on the sidewalk of Toronto—with the guy vanished after Kevin brought up last week’s trades. Before they knew it, they were at the pulled pork sandwich place, passionately discussing Carter jumping to the west coast.

“I played with him, though,” Matty repeated himself. “I know the guy.”

Kevin conceded the point and huffed, raising his hands and letting Matty open the door for him. “Fine, but I still think it’s gonna be a mistake.”

“Is it a loyalty thing?” Matty asked, raising a brow. God, this place smelled divine. As he followed Kevin in, he inhaled deeply.

Kevin hesitated, then grimaced. “Yeah, probably. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, doing all that work with Coach Walker and then jumping ship the second some team with a better record offers. If guys didn’t do that, you wouldn’t see the skewed stats you do. Instead you have teams who’ve never won, even though there’s plenty of great guys that have played with them.”

Matty chuckled quietly. “It’s always gonna happen, man. Whatcha having?”

“The original. That’s the best. Their gravies are good, though,” Kevin told him.

Matty wound up ordering the same as Kevin, and when they sat down to devour their double-meat sandwiches and kill the workout hunger beast within, he was glad he’d chosen that. It was a damn good sandwich.

“Wanna go to the museum, kill some time before the pub? I feel like a loser if I drink before five,” Kevin grinned.

“Yeah, sure,” Matty laughed. He had a keen sense of humor and strong opinions in addition to that pretty face, clever mind, and good style on the ice. He was in danger of crushing on the guy if he wasn’t careful.

And Kevin was watching him a lot, smiling readily, laughing at even his bad jokes. He was the kind of guy it was nice to kill time with. Matty just hoped they were on the same page here.