hockey, cause I like pain

you’ve been thinking about the wall at the end of the hall for weeks. the one where the light pools in the afternoon and there’s nothing there to catch it.

the painting’s in your tote, still wrapped in the brown paper the woman at the flea market folded around it. an abstract in a chipped gold frame — big careless slabs of red and rust and hot pink shoved up against each other, not trying to be anything in particular. eleven dollars. you’d stood in front of the booth for a full minute before you understood why you couldn’t put it back down. it was warm. in a house full of right angles and the color of wet concrete, it was just — warm.

you measure with your eye, then with the level on your phone, then with your eye again. tap the nail in. it goes cleaner than you expect, and when you hang the frame it sits a little crooked, so you nudge the bottom corner with one finger until it doesn’t.

then you back up to the other end of the hall to look.

it’s loud. that’s the whole thing about it. against all that gray it’s almost rude — all that red practically buzzing, the gold of the frame catching the window light — and you stand there in the middle of his hallway with your arms crossed, grinning at it like you got away with something.

you take a picture. thumb hovering over his name. but you don’t send it.

you want to see his face.

———

he’s home a little after six, gym bag over one shoulder. you’re up off the couch before the door’s all the way shut.

“don’t take your shoes off yet. i got you a surprise.”

“yeah?” he gets one shoe half off, then leaves it. “what’d you do.” but he lets you take his hand, lets you walk him backward down the hall toward it.

he sees it.

you’re watching his face, because that’s the part you’ve waited for all afternoon — and it does open, it does, just not the way you’d been picturing. he laughs. surprised, easy, the sound he only makes when his guard’s all the way down and something’s caught him sideways.

“baby.” he’s grinning at it. “that’s the ugliest thing i’ve ever seen.”

he’s still in it, delighted — “where’d you even find that?” — looking from the painting to you and waiting for you to be in on it with him.

“flea market, over on vine.” you say it too fast. “eleven bucks.”

and the afternoon just goes out of you. quiet. all at once. you feel the grin you walked in with come off your face before you can keep it there.

he catches it. half a second late, but he catches it — he watches everything — and the laugh settles.

“it’s just not my thing,” he says. gentler now, looking at you instead of the wall. trying to walk it back to somewhere okay. “good find, though. eleven bucks, you can’t lose.”

“right?” you hear yourself say it. “it’s hideous.”

you reach up and straighten the corner that doesn’t need straightening, and you let him think you’re both laughing at it. it’s the easiest thing in the room to do. he rolls the shoulder the bag strap sat on and tips his head toward the kitchen, says something about what you’re doing for dinner, and goes.

behind him all that red goes on buzzing against all that gray.

———

you leave it up three more days. he doesn’t bring it up again — but then, to him there’s nothing to bring up. it was a bit. he walks past it on the way to bed, on the way to the kitchen, the way you walk past a thermostat.

so you take it down.

it’s a tuesday, he’s at the facility, and it comes off the wall easier than it went up. you wrap it back in the brown paper. the nail you leave — pulling it would mean spackle, and there’s no point making a project of it. just the bare nail at the end of his hall, where the light still pools and there’s nothing now to catch it.

it rides in your passenger seat to your place.

your hallway’s narrow and already crowded — photos, a mirror you painted, a row of cheap postcards. you find a spot between the window and the closet and tap the nail in yourself, and it goes up against your wall like it was cut for it. here it doesn’t fight anything. it just looks like the rest of you.

you step back and look at it a while.

it’s a good little painting.

———

you’re back at his place that weekend like nothing happened, because nothing did, technically. you made dinner. he did the dishes, sleeves shoved up, while you sat on the counter and told him about your week.

it’s later, when he’s coming back from the bedroom pulling a clean shirt on, that you catch him stop.

just for a second. at the end of the hall.

he’s looking at the bare stretch of it — the nail still in the wall with nothing on it. you watch it not quite land; he figured the ugly thing had run its course, and a nail with nothing on it doesn’t say anything to him yet. he tugs the shirt down and keeps walking.

you figure that’s the end of it.

it isn’t. he’s easy through the rest of the night, loose, but when you’re loading up your bag by the door he leans on the edge of the hall and tips his head back toward it.

“hey — what happened to your painting?”

“oh —” you zip the bag and pull the strap up onto your shoulder. “took it home. it wasn’t really a this-house kind of thing.”

you say it light. like it’s nothing, because you’ve decided it’s nothing.

he doesn’t answer right away.

you look up and he’s standing there with one hand on the edge of the wall, and you watch him run it back. all of it. the way he laughed. ugliest thing i’ve ever seen. the eleven bucks out of you too fast, your face going before you could stop it, the hideous, right? — the out you handed him so he’d take it. three days of walking past it like a thermostat. the bare nail. the painting forty minutes across town in a hallway he’s never seen, where you’d decided it should live instead.

he gets to the end. you can tell the second he does.

“…oh,” he says.

his hand comes off the wall. he looks at the empty stretch of it like it’s saying something to him it wasn’t an hour ago.

he doesn’t say anything else. he’s looking at you the way he watches film of a game that’s already over — like he can see the whole thing unfolding and there’s no reaching in to change the play.

———

he shows up thursday. no text, just the knock, and when you open the door he’s already got the look — the one he gets when he’s decided something on the drive over and is bracing to go through with it.

he doesn’t say hi. he comes in, walks down your narrow hall like he’s been here a hundred times, and stops in front of it, between the window and the closet.

then he lifts it off the nail.

“hey —” you’re behind him. “what are you doing?”

“taking it.” it’s already under his arm, no paper, just the bare frame against his side. “it’s mine.”

“you didn’t even like it.”

he turns around. whatever he usually does in a corner — the joke, the warm pivot, the easy version of the sentence — he’s not reaching for it.

“you put something of yours on my wall,” he says, “and i laughed at it.”

his jaw works. he looks at the painting instead of you.

“i gave you my opinion on it. like you’d brought it over for a grade.” he stops. “you let me think it was a joke because that was easier than telling me it landed wrong. you handed me the out, and i took it.”

he drags a hand back through his hair. the frame stays tucked against him the whole time, like setting it down isn’t on the table.

“you’ve been in it the whole time,” he says. quieter. “you’re the only thing in that house i’d notice if it was gone.”

a breath.

“so it’s going back up. tonight.”

———

you follow him back across town. he doesn’t put the painting in the trunk — sets it in the back seat, upright, like it’s a person.

at the house he goes straight to the end of the hall. the nail’s still there, right where you left it, nothing hanging off it. he hangs it back up without measuring, without the level on his phone, and of course it sits crooked.

he steps back. looks at it.

reaches out and nudges the bottom corner with one finger until it isn’t.

the same fix you made the first time. he doesn’t know he’s making it.

“better,” he says.

you stand at the far end of the hall, where you stood that first afternoon — except now he’s next to you, shoulder against yours, the two of you looking at eleven dollars of red and rust and hot pink glowing against all that gray. it still doesn’t match a single thing in the house.

he doesn’t tell you it’ll grow on him. he looks at the other walls instead — the empty ones — and you can feel him seeing them for the first time.

“bring the rest of your stuff next time,” he says.

like it’s nothing.

“i’m not moving in with you.” you say it from where you’re leaning, shoulder still against his. “it’s been five months.”

“five good months.”

“joe.”

“you’re here four nights a week. your shampoo’s in my shower, there’s a drawer.” he counts it off easy, like he’s had the argument loaded for a while. “you did one wall better than the decorator i paid for the whole house. that’s a tryout. you passed.”

“that’s a sample size of one wall.”

“so move in and do the rest of them.”

you laugh. “we’ve known each other five months. people don’t —”

“people do it in less.”

“people who aren't the only one giving something up do it in less.”

he doesn’t have a fast one for that. tips his head — fine, that one’s real, and he’s not going to be the guy who throws money at it to make it not real. but he’s still got the look, the one that decided something on the drive over and hasn’t undecided.

“the sentiment, i love,” you say, gentler. “you want me here. you want the house to have me in it — i got that the second you hung the ugly thing back up crooked. the u-haul, give me a year.”

“we’ll see.” he’s not agreeing to the year. there’s the grin now — the one you walked in with all those days ago, except it’s his, and aimed at you instead of the wall. “i think i can wear you down before then.”

———

he's the one looking at you now, not the painting.

you don't decide to do it so much as stop deciding not to — you turn into him, hand flat on his chest, and he goes still under it. not guarding himself. holding his breath, like moving wrong might end it.

"hey," you say.

he lets the breath go.

you kiss him. and there's none of the ease he does everything else with — he kisses you back a half-step behind, the smoothness that runs every room he walks into no good to him here — in his own hallway, the painting glowing red beside you, the one thing in the house with anything to say. just a guy with his hands coming up to your face, catching up.

you kiss him until he stops being behind it. you feel the moment he quits keeping up and lets you have the pace — his hands going slack on your jaw, then sliding back into your hair to hold on instead of steer.

"come here," you say against his mouth, even though he's already there.

you walk him backward down the hall. the same way you walked him to the painting that first night, except he goes easy now, no surprise to brace for, letting you steer him by the front of his shirt past the bare walls he's going to let you fill. the bedroom's dark. you leave it that way.

you take his shirt off first. he lifts his arms, ducks his head, and then he's just standing there letting you look at him — and you watch the joke arrive. the easy line, the thing he'd hand anyone else to take the edge off being looked at this long.

he doesn't say it.

"stay here," you tell him.

"i'm here." he means it the way he meant the hard sentence in your hallway. present. no exit cued.

you get the rest of it off between you. you take your time — no show in it, but no hurry either, because you want to watch what waiting does to him. and something it does. the guy who walked in cocky thirty seconds ago, who said i can wear you down, is gone. his hands come up like they want to help and then don't know where they're allowed, and he lets them drop, and he just lets you.

you put a hand flat on his chest and walk him back until his knees hit the bed. he sits. you climb into his lap, and he makes a sound low in his throat when you settle against him, both hands finding your hips like it's the only place they're sure of.

you kiss him slow, and you can feel how hard he's holding still underneath you — like if he moves he'll stop being able to let you run this. so you run it. you take one of his hands off your hip and put it where you want it, and his breath stutters against your mouth, and he follows you there. he's good with his hands the way he's good at everything — except there's no plan in it now, just him learning you in real time, reading you off every sound you make.

"there," you tell him, when he gets it right.

"yeah?" low, rough. he does it again, watching your face like the answer lives there.

you don't make him wait long. you lift up, reach between you, take him in your hand — and he goes still all over, jaw tight, bracing. then you sink down onto him slow, and the sound that comes out of him is nothing like the man who's smooth in every room he walks into. his forehead drops to your shoulder. his hands clamp down and stay.

"god," he breathes into your skin. "okay. okay."

you set the pace. slow at first, rolling down against him, and he lets you have every bit of it — whatever instinct a man built like him has to take it back, to flip you, to run it, he doesn't use it. he just holds on and feels it and says your name when you grind down, says it again, like it's the only word he trusts himself with.

then you slow. almost to nothing. he makes a sound, hips lifting to chase you, and you put a hand flat on his chest and hold him down.

"say you're sorry."

his eyes come open. "— what?"

"for my painting." you roll down once, slow, and feel his whole body try to follow it. "you laughed at my painting."

"i'm sorry —" it comes out fast, on a breath, like he'll say anything to get you moving again.

"mm. too easy." you go still. "sorry for what."

"for laughing."

"at."

his jaw works. you can see him clock that you're going to make him say all of it. "at your painting."

"and?"

"and —" his hands flex on your hips, and whatever's left of the smooth guy is gone, and he says the real one. "it was the best thing in that house. and i laughed at it."

"better." you give him an inch back — a slow grind, just enough to pull a groan out of him — then take it away again.

"now tell me how bad you want me to move in."

"you're killing me."

"how bad." you don't move.

"bad." it breaks out of him. "i want you in it. i want to come home and have it not be empty. move in."

"mmm." you tilt your head like you're thinking it over, rolling down slow while you do, and you watch him try to hold the thought and lose it. "i'll think about it."

"you said — god — you said a year."

"i said i'd think about it." you lean down, mouth at his ear. "you wanted to wear me down. so wear me down."

"baby —" it slips out of him. the same word he laughed the painting off with. nothing easy in it now.

you tip his face up. make him look at you — and that's his line, the one he'd run a whole room with, except you're saying it and he's the one who does it, eyes coming up to yours, glassy and open and not hiding a thing. he doesn't reach for the joke that would put the wall back between you. there's no wall left to reach for.

"i've got you," you tell him. you, to him. the line he'd usually be the one saying.

something goes out of him at that — the last of the holding-on. his hands start to shake where they grip you, his breath goes ragged, and you can feel him fighting it, the instinct to hold the line even here, even now.

"let go."

and he does. he comes with your name in his mouth and his face pressed to your throat and both arms locking around you like he's the one who needs holding through it. you don't stop. you take him all the way to the end of it, slow, until he's shaking and spent and still won't let go.

you follow him a breath later — his hand finding its way between you, clumsy and sure at once, working you until you come apart with your forehead dropped against his.

after, he doesn't let go. keeps you in his lap, both arms around you, his face in your neck, his heart going under your palm.

"a year, huh," he says into your skin. low. half gone.

"a year."

"...we'll see." no argument left in it. his arms don't loosen — he holds onto you the way he wouldn't put the frame down, like setting you anywhere else isn't on the table — and you stay where you are, in his lap, in his house, and let him.