“Come on, Matty. It’s a small thing, yeah, but it will get your name out there again. You are your brand.”
Matty gripped Rob’s cordless phone. “Joanna, please, I’m the one who told you that. Don’t start spouting it back at me now just to get your way. How did you even get this number?”
“What kind of agent would I be if I couldn’t? Listen, you’re going to do it. You’re great with kids, and you’re a good teacher. It’s on your calendar, and you’re going to do it.”
“Fine, but I really don’t see how teaching a children’s seminar in Missoula is ‘getting my name back out there.’ Get me on Oprah, woman. What do you think I’m paying you for?”
“Matty, to get interviews you have to have something to say. They’ve already heard about your injury. What they need is a comeback story, so we’ll hit them when you’ve actually, you know, come back. In the meantime you can create the material for a heartwarming story of how you mentored youth in the sticks.”
Matty was sitting on Rob’s back porch next to the wood-burning outdoor fireplace, throwing a stick for Lila. Up in the pastures, he could see the outlines of Dino and Terry on horseback, and two of the work dogs moving in and out of the herd.
“Fine. Later.” He hung up on Joanna before she could say something else to annoy him, because he was in that kind of mood. He was trying to spare her. Or that’s what he told himself.
Rob was in the house making hot chocolate for himself, and a cup of hot water with six drops of bitters for Matty. “It’s like Christmas in a cup, I’m telling you,” Matty had said earlier. “It will warm you up inside and take all the Grinch away!”
Rob had laughed. “Then why are you such a bitch lately?”
Matty deflected. “You try landing a triple Axel in combination with a triple toe—not just once, but consistently, because your life completely depends on it.”
“I’m a very observant boyfriend and I haven’t noticed the tell-tale red dot on your head from the hit-man’s laser.”
Matty had just stared at him then, the word boyfriend thrown into the space between them without any warning or reaction from Rob. He’d been thinking of Rob as his boyfriend for a while now. What else would he call the guy who had confessed his love to him, and bossed him around in the near-nightly Naked Olympics held in Rob’s bed?
But he’d been very careful to never say it. People thought he had no filter, but he did. The most important things, the things that scared him, were kept incredibly close. The fact that Rob was his boyfriend was apparently one of those things, even if it was extremely obvious.
So obvious that Rob hadn’t even seemed to think Matty’s stunned reaction was due to the term, but instead to his making fun of Matty’s life-or-death feelings about triple Axel combinations.
Rob had chuckled. “Come on, sweetheart, assassins aren’t hanging out at the rink, okay? It’s not so dire as all that.”
“It’s dire,” Matty had said, and vacated to the porch, demanding his hot water be delivered to him there.
Instead he’d been handed the phone, and now was roped into a small-time seminar with some pre-teen kids at a rink in Missoula. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t enjoy it, because he would, but he was starting to feel washed up.
God, if only he had the money now. He could be training with a serious coach instead of trying to convince himself that the drills he was doing were moving him toward his full potential. He knew he was too big of a baby to push himself all the way. Every day he walked away from the rink thinking that if he had proper motivation he could have done more.
Then there was Rob, and how fucking in love with him Matty had fallen. It was killing him to feel this way. It was like an endless bipolar mess, swinging between ecstasy and misery and back again in seconds. The idea of leaving Rob behind made him feel like he was in physical pain, and he was angry about it. Fuck Rob for making him feel this way. Fuck him for bringing wood and getting all of this started.
Fuck him for plowing the drive, and for having a son that skates, and for being amazing in bed, and for making Matty come like that’s all his body was built to do. Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him.
The back door opened, and Rob handed him the hot mug. Matty cradled it close, smelling the steam and hating everything.
“Everything okay?” Rob asked.
Matty didn’t answer, distracted by his churning stomach and the taste of bile in his mouth.
“Who was that on the phone?” Rob sounded concerned.
“Joanna. My agent.” His sigh was epic, and he felt a furious weight pressing down on his shoulders. “Everything’s fine.”
Rob didn’t say anything for several minutes, and Matty was grateful. If he had, Matty wasn’t sure that Rob would like whatever was said in return.
Rob finally sighed too. “I’m going inside.”
Matty nodded, his eyes on the horizon, and his hair whipping in the cold wind. “Yeah. Do that.”
Just before he shut the door, Rob said, “It’s okay that you’re anxious to go now that you’ve lined up your new coach. You don’t have to pretend you’re not.”
Matty’s lip curled into a snarl, and his hands tightened on the mug. He turned around just as the door closed completely.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? He wanted to go, but he wanted to stay, and he couldn’t have it both ways. He threw the mug on the concrete patio, a mixture of satisfaction and annoyance flooding him when it broke into five chunky pieces. He stared at the mess a few moments, and then knelt down and carefully cleaned it up, knocking Lila away as she tried to lap up the spilled water.
He only cut himself once.
***
Rob’s attention to his finger was sweet. Medicine, Band-Aid, kisses, and now Matty was on the bed, face down in a pillow, being fucked so hard he was grunting, sweating, and breaking out into chills with each stroke. It was better than the hysterics he’d been so close to earlier. Easier to let himself go in bed—and less humiliating.
Rob seemed to be working out something too. His grip was rough, and he kept pulling Matty back into place, slapping his ass hard and making him yelp. It was hot, but it wasn’t Rob’s usual behavior. While he was always commanding, he was also emotionally focused. Now he felt absent, that he was fucking to fuck, not fucking to communicate something deeper than that.
If it hadn’t been Rob he was in bed with, Matty might have been scared. As it was, he just felt like he probably deserved it.
Rob grabbed a handful of Matty’s hair and held his head down against the pillow, and then jerked his head back up again. “Ready for more?”
“Yeah. Always,” Matty said, hoping he sounded casual and brave, and not needy and broken.
“Don’t bullshit me.” Rob tugged on his hair again.
Matty whimpered and closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t bullshit me ever, but definitely not in bed.” Rob smacked his ass so hard Matty clamped down on Rob’s cock and simultaneously scrambled at the bed to get away.
Rob rubbed the place he’d smacked, soothing the pain, and Matty relaxed enough to pull off Rob’s cock and roll onto his back, tears smarting in his eyes.
“That fucking hurt.”
“You’ve got a safeword. Use it.”
Matty covered his face with his hands. His ass was twitching, and he wanted to get back on his hands and knees, but he wasn’t sure if he could take whatever it was Rob was offering. His clothes were on the chair across the room. He could get dressed and go home.
“Are you ready for more?” Rob asked again.
“No,” Matty said, the word breaking a little.
“That’s better. That’s at least fucking honest, which is more than you’ve been with me all day.”
Matty stared at Rob’s flushed face, his green eyes hurt and angry at the same time. He started to say something but Rob just shook his head, and Matty closed his mouth.
“You talk a lot, but lately you’re not telling me everything, and it’s got to come out.”
Matty cleared his throat. “Can you please just fuck me?”
Anger cracked Rob’s expression, and Matty felt strangely like laughing when Rob flipped him onto his stomach and pushed his legs apart. He thrust into him hard, fast, and deep. Matty arched his back, pushing his ass up. Rob grabbed a handful of his hair and shoved his face in the pillow again, fucking him with rapid, strong thrusts until Matty was kicking and digging his fingers into the sheets.
Rob pulled Matty up to his knees, released his head enough for Matty to catch a breath, and then pulled his cock out of Matty’s ass. Matty keened, pushing back for it, begging with his body, and Rob shoved his shoulders down, shoving his face back to the mattress. Matty could feel his ass clenching on air, and he whispered, “Please.”
At the same moment, Rob pushed his dick all the way in with one long, smooth stroke, and then all the way out again. Matty frantically reached back, trying to grab hold of Rob, but Rob caught his hands and forced them down, holding Matty still as he pushed his cock in and out again.
“Rob, please, for fuck’s sake—”
Rob punched his cock in again, and pulled it free. Matty fought Rob’s grip on his wrists, trying to get loose so he could change his position, or stop, or go faster—just anything that meant Rob’s cock stayed in his ass for longer than three second intervals.
But Rob took his time, holding Matty in place and jamming his cock in fast and pulling it out slow, or thrusting in slow and jerking it out fast. Matty felt like he was going nuts, twisting and bucking, trying to get free, but Rob was heavy and strong, and he was clearly determined to make Matty lose it.
He was going to. Matty was going to lose his fucking mind.
After screaming and biting the pillow, Matty got his hand free and threw an elbow at Rob. Rob caught it and brought it back to the mattress, holding him in place and fucking him hard for several long, almost perfect strokes. Then he was out again.
“Fuck me, you bastard.” Matty’s throat was raw, and his heart pounded with rage and lust. Rob pushed Matty’s hands harder into the mattress, and used his other leg to hold Matty down as he rubbed his cock along Matty’s ass crack and didn’t push in at all. Matty squirmed and fought, struggling to get more. Fuck Rob. Fuck him for teasing him, and for making him want to cry.
“Goddammit,” Matty yelled. “I hate you. I fucking hate you.”
Rob pressed into him slowly, and Matty stopped fighting. His heart ached as he whispered, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you,” over and over as Rob finally, finally started fucking him with long strokes.
Rob released his hands, and held him tight now, whispering in his ear, “There. That wasn’t so hard. There you go. There, sweetheart.”
Matty rocked his hips in time with Rob’s thrusts, and rubbed his face in the pillow, his chest tight with sobs he couldn’t release. He didn’t know when his chant changed from “I hate you” to “I love you,” but it was all the same, and Rob knew that.
Rob knew exactly what he needed, and Matty wanted to hate him for it. But somehow it got twisted into this—into love, and sex, and being fucked while he begged and sometimes cried. It was fucked up, and it scared the shit out of him to think about leaving it behind.
He barely recognized his own voice. “I’m scared of losing.” He meant so much more than competitions.
Moving together now, they reached for the edge, crying out softly as they tumbled over. Afterward, Rob pressed tender kisses to Matty’s flushed skin, like he was made of the most precious stuff in the world. It all left Matty feeling like he’d been taken apart and put back together again. He almost wanted to ask if the seams were visible. Would anyone else know?
Could they take one look at him and see he’d been remade?