a hockey sideblog

Lauren drops the reel on a Friday when she and Celeste are out for the whole day and night, celebrating a birthday with their extended group of friends, so it's just Connor and Leon and the dogs at the cottage. They'd been in Newmarket to train with Gary and skate every day this week, early mornings every day and only driving back to the cottage late afternoon. They're both pretty wrecked, building back up their conditioning under Gary's demanding regimen of strength training and intervals and more food than even Leon enjoys putting back in a day, protein shakes and chicken breasts and so many fucking eggs, but Connor's finally putting some weight on after three years of getting leaner and leaner, thank god, so Leon tries not to complain about it.

He'd gone for a late evening swim by himself, the dogs wading in the shallows, and then showered off the lake, which Connor always made fun of but beavers shit in that lake, right? It isn't sanitary, even if it is the biggest lake he's ever seen outside the actual Great Lakes, which are their own category, really, freshwater seas more than lakes. He's never really got over the scale of things in Canada, everything just bigger than in Germany, so much damn space everywhere.

Anyway, he spots Connor out on the couch on the deck, his face glowing in the low light of his phone, Lenny and Bowie sprawled out on the cool stone, too wet to be allowed up onto the furniture or more likely right into Connor's lap, so Leon drops himself there instead.

"Oof," Connor says, looking up from his phone. "Dude."

Leon grins at him and reaches out to push Connor's glasses back up his nose. He looks ready for bed, contacts out and smelling like toothpaste. It's barely nine, but they were up at five-thirty this morning. "Hi."

"You're too fucking heavy," Connor complains, spreading his thighs so Leon sinks down between them instead, but he curls his hand around Leon's waist anyway. "And everything hurts."

"Yeah," says Leon with a hum of satisfaction, tilting sideways and pulling up his legs, prodding at Connor to make room so that he can tuck himself tightly between the back of the sofa and Connor's long lean warmth, twining their bare legs together and resting his chin on Connor's shoulder. "Whatcha looking at?"

Connor tips his phone up over them, his photo app up with a shared collection from Lauren titled July 2026 Oilers Weekend for Insta. She shares everything she puts up of the four of them before posting, but Leon told her years ago he trusts her and doesn't bother looking most of the time, just sent a thumbs up in the group chat on the album links and waited for the official drop to look. But Connor doesn't have Instagram on his phone, just on the iPad he pulls out when his social media manager needs to confirm something, so Leon knows he likes to look.

"I like that one of the four of us," Leon mumbles against Connor's t-shirt.

"I hope she doesn't put my fam on this one," Connor mutters. For all he was pretty chill about them all in private, he was the most nervous about what people would see if they looked too closely and figured out the truth, but Leon's always figured that made sense. He'd bear the brunt of any backlash if they got outed.

Leon tickles across Connor's stomach and rubs the flat of his palm over Connor's chest, into the shallow hollow over his sternum and up over the curve of his far pec, flexed a little as he holds up the phone. "It just makes the fans happy to think you aren't going anywhere."

Connor hums non-committally and then opens up a blue-tinged video, the one of Leon playing air guitar thanks to him and Bouch being too stoned to be self-conscious about joining the band Lauren hired for the evening. Leon watches as the video pans around the group of onlookers, Celeste singing along and filming in the middle, and then there's a flash of Connor himself, unusually also filming, with a look on his face that makes Leon's heart squeeze almost painfully in his chest with that rush of disbelief that overcomes him every now and then that this is his life. That he gets not just his career and his wife but this man, this incredible marvel of a man whom Leon loves with a raw intensity that hurt before he knew what to do with it.

"I can't believe you did that," Connor says, ignorant of the way Leon's guts are rearranging themselves over nothing but Connor's besotted smile.

"I was pretty stoned," Leon admits, watching the video loop around again until it lands on Connor again. "Bouch's shit is way stronger than your gummies. Is she really posting that?"

"I don't think it's obvious you're high."

"That is not what I'm worried is obvious," Leon says dryly.

Connor drops his phone by his side and turns his head, eyes a little owl-like behind his dorky glasses and glinting in the warm light from the cottage behind them. "Your secret rock star career?"

Leon snorts. "Not me. You."

"I'm hardly in it," Connor protests.

"Your face is in it," Leon says, deadpan.

Connor makes a different kind of face at him, and Leon laughs and leans in and kisses him until he can feel the grimace melt under his lips. It's been a year since the first time he kissed Connor, and it still gives him a thrill, how he tastes and feels and moves differently from Celeste but somehow feels just as familiar, the shape of him imprinted on Leon's soul.

After a minute of increasingly languorous kisses - Connor's glasses fogging up and his fingers winding into Leon's t-shirt, Leon's hand sliding around to the small of Connor's back and then down over his ass, lower still to the hem of his shorts, gripping one of his broad thick hairy thighs to pull him tight, both of them shifting together to find a little bit of friction, just a satisfying, easy rub through their shorts - Connor puts his hand on Leon's jaw and pushes him back a couple inches. "I'm not worried about it," he says.

"No?" Leon says lightly. So Connor did see it, had just been pretending not to.

Connor shakes his head. "The people that matter know now," he says, scritching his fingers through Leon's beard. They'd told their families last season, and then at Lauren and Celeste's 30th birthday party they'd resolved the betting pool that had apparently been running for a good few years amongst their closest friends. "Other people might make jokes, but nobody's gonna believe it. Not in a way that matters. And anyway, it's all true."

"That you're so gone for me that my air guitar karaoke performances get you going?" Leon says teasingly.

Connor taps Leon on the cheek, chiding and fond. "That you make me happy, dummy," he says in that low, soft rasp that shivers down Leon's spine.

"Oh," Leon says, face going stupidly warm at something so simple, something he knows perfectly well, but it's not the kind of thing he ever imagined Connor saying to him rather than Lauren. "Alright then."

Connor rolls his eyes and then rolls himself off the couch and onto his feet. Leon shivers at the loss of the warm press of his body, and blinks up at Connor, and then takes his hand and makes Connor really put some strength into hauling him to his feet before tripping into him and catching him back around the waist.

"Sex?" Leon says hopefully, because that feels like a good way to deal with the stupid fluttery mess in his chest.

Connor makes a face. "You've got the energy?"

Leon gropes down the front of Connor's shorts this time and gets his hand over his semi, squeezes firmly enough that Connor twitches and rocks up on his toes. "You don't?"

"Not if you're a pillow princess about it," Connor snipes, which, okay, fair if they're actually gonna fuck, but Leon rubs his thumb along the line of Connor's cock through his shorts and he can see Connor wavering.

"Lazy blow-jobs?" Leon offers instead.

"I can handle that," Connor says, the same way he would with another set in the gym or another drill on the ice. It's kind of hot, how he puts the same expert focus into fucking as he does into hockey, but Leon likes it lazy, too.

And then a little lazy sixty-nining, curled up on their sides, not the best angle for anything deep but comfortable and cozy, and it's convenient they're the same height, really. Connor's complaining he might be too tired to come, sorry, but after Leon spills in shivery pulses, he flips around and gets Connor's cock deep into his mouth, fists him with a slick hand and pushes the other up under his balls and it doesn't take long after that after all. Leon pulls off and places a stupid little kiss on the head of Connor's cock where it's reddest and then hauls his way up the bed to collapse beside him.

"Way better than the musical performance," Connor says.

"Didn't take a video," Leon says sleepily.

"Maybe next time."

"That'd really give the game away."

"Group chat material only."