Page 41 of Game Misconduct

At some point Danny knocked Mike’s helmet off and then lost his own.

Everything narrowed down to him, just his fists and his body and the pain sparking behind Mike’s eyes.

He chanced a look up into Danny’s sweaty face, bright red and eyes shining, thought,god, you’re fucking beautiful, and tried to ram Danny hard enough to knock him down. And Danny let him, or Mike had got him at just the right angle to throw him off. Everything happened very fast after that.

They tumbled, and as Mike landed hard on top of him, Danny murmured in his ear, “Room 516.”

“What?” Mike said, confused. Blood dripped from his nose into Danny’s face.

“My hotel room. After the game.” And Danny threw him off like he weighed almost nothing, flipped him over, and slammed him down on the ice so hard his jaw rattled.

“What the fuck?” He was confused as hell, but he couldn’t help the idiot smile that was splitting his face, a grin that probably made him look completely insane, completely out of character for both him and the situation in general. The entire fight and the fact that he’d just gotten the wind knocked out of him.

“What thefuck,” he repeated, because this wasn’t fucking fair. His head was a mess, and it wasn’t because he’d been punched in it. They’d barely talked for so long and Mike had tried so hard and, like, of course, letting Danny punch him in the face fixed things. He should have known.

Danny only raised his eyebrows as the linesman skated him away to the box, and Mike hauled himself to his feet, and realized he was going to have to fucking play the rest of the game thinking about this.

He swore under his breath, but he was still fucking grinning, and he couldn’t stop.

They lost the game, but Mike didn’t even give a shit. His stomach churned with nerves and nausea and anticipation and Danny sayingRoom 516 after the gameechoing in his head. He felt like he could peel his entire skin off.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he got through the postgame shit. The reporters were in his face about the fight, and like always lately, someone was asking him about why he fought Danny, whether he knew they’d fought every game they’d played against each other. Mike had mumbled something about how guys like him and Danny needed to look out for the stars and obviously he’d hit Lévesque pretty hard, which was true but probably more diplomatic than they’d expected, and tried to duck out of there as quickly as possible.

Mike was one of the last ones in the shower, and he looked down at himself, half-judgmental, seeing what Danny would see. He wasn’t bad-looking. He had some muscle. He wasn’t as big as a lot of guys, but he was strong. He might have been constantly bruised or stitched up, but it was hard to see most of the time, hidden under the ink. Blocked shots did a number on you and so did getting thrown into the ice by giants.

And maybe getting thrown around later. He wasn’t even trying to convince himself he wasn’t going to go. It was just a matter of how quickly he went. Or how desperate he wanted to look.

Who was he kidding? As soon as he got dressed, he was going to walk back down to the Navy Yard, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Part of him realized it was a stupid fucking idea anyway—what if he got recognized in the lobby?—but finally he settled for throwing on his winter leather jacket and a hoodie under it. He flipped the hood up and hoped no one would look too hard at the tattoos of hands gripping his throat, distinctive and recognizable.

Thank fuck he hadn’t been dumb enough to start tattooing his face when he was a teen. He’d almost done it, once, but the guy doing stick and pokes in a Portland basement in exchange for weed had realized Mike was fifteen and suddenly developed some fucking scruples.

He was still buzzing with nervous anticipation when he slouched through the lobby of the hotel, when he leaned against the wall in the elevator as it went up. Luckily it was late enough that although there were some people hanging around at the bar, they were the kinds of people who were focused mostly on drinks.

Mike knocked quietly at the door of Room 516. There was a pause, and the door opened, and he looked up at Danny—all six foot five of him—and his mouth went dry. Like, sure, Danny was hot: he was abigguy, a presence, all thick slabs of muscle and strength held in check. But Mike had never noticed the thick white scars poking out from the hem of his boxers or messing up his knee or any of the other injuries he’d collected from a lifetime of taking a beating. He’d never noticed the way Danny collected bruises the same way Mike did, dark splotchy purple and yellow under his skin. He’d never noticed the way Danny’s eyes looked when it hit him that it was Mike, that he’d actually come—like he could ever not come—like a light turning on in a dark room.

Like Mike meant something.

His first instinct had been to make a smart-ass remark, to make a joke of the whole thing, but instead he found himself lunging forward, up onto the tips of his toes, and smashing his mouth against Danny’s.

It wasn’t much like a kiss. At least not at first. What Mike did was attack Danny’s mouth, their teeth clacking together painfully, ringing in his skull. What Mike did was grab him by the beard and yank him down, his fingers digging into Danny’s jaw so he couldn’t pull away, even if he’d wanted to. What Mike did was bite his lower lip until Danny gasped and opened his mouth and let Mike lick the blood off it and the taste of whiskey out of it, their lips clashing, just like any other fight on the ice.

And Danny kissed him back just as ruthlessly, despite the sutures on Mike’s mouth.

It took him a minute before he realized the door hadn’t closed behind him and he was a fucking idiot, and he was—he waskissingDanny. Kissing him, like some kind of dumb teenager, his hands on either side of Danny’s face. Even though Mike had never really kissed anyone much when he was a teenager. Jesus fucking Christ, Danny fucked him up.

Mike pulled away, breath ragged, and kicked the door shut. Kicked his boots off too, because he wasn’t a fucking monster. Took a minute to orient himself. It was just like any other hotel room, two queen beds, one of which had Danny’s bags and shit spread all over it, the other one rumpled, like he’d been lying in it, waiting for Mike. There was a glass with probably whiskey in it on the end table, half-full, and a bunch of Danny’s other shit piled behind it. And Danny himself, already stripped down to his boxer briefs while Mike was still in his coat and hoodie and clothes.

Danny, all hot eyes and strangely melancholy smile, a smile Mike wanted—needed—to change.

“Jesus,” Mike said at the same time that Danny exhaled and said, “Wow.”

Mike took another step forward and said, “Are you—are we actually—”

“I need this,” Danny said, simply, like it was an explanation, and Mike thought,I need you, although he was suddenly furious that he’d bared everything, every feeling he had, every embarrassing fucking weakness, and Danny had just let him dangle on the end of the line like it was nothing.

Somehow he was moving like he was on the ice, his entire body and weight crashing into Danny’s. Then they were on the floor and Danny was moving with him like he wasn’t even a little surprised, like Mike’s 180 pounds on top of him wasn’t anything. It probably wasn’t. It was probably exactly what he wanted.

Danny wasn’t even trying to throw him off, he was just trying to unzip Mike’s hoodie and get him out of his clothes. Okay, fine. Mike could work with that. It got frantic quickly, Danny muttering, “Why do you wear these fuckingjeans, Jesus Christ,” as Mike tried to wriggle out of them and Danny pressed clumsy, biting kisses against Mike’s chest, shoulders, whatever he could reach. By the time Mike was mostly naked, he was still on top of Danny, and Danny was staring up with an unreadable expression, so intent that if Mike was a different kind of person he might have felt shy, weirdly exposed.

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