Page 47 of Home Ice Advantage

Sully’s eyes fixed on Eric like he was an anchor in a very rough sea, and he said, “Can I come in? Please?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Come on up?”

“Thanks. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—I don’t know, what do you even do on Christmas?”

“Well,” Eric said, gesturing for Sully to go up the stairs first. “You may have heard of my people’s long-standing tradition of Chinese food and a movie. I already finished dinner, but I was watching something. If you, you know. Are interested.”

“Thanks,” Sully said, once they were inside Eric’s apartment. He was still shivering, and he looked so fucking pathetic, like a cat that had been pulled out of a pond.

“Uh,” Eric said, unsure of how to handle this. He’d seen Sully a lot of ways since they’d started working together: inspiring and confident and bitchy and completely undone, but he hadn’t ever seen him like this, and he didn’t know how to react. “Did you walk all the way over here in that jacket?”

“I just—you don’t really know anything about my family, right?” They were still standing in the middle of Eric’s living room, just looking at each other. “I don’t really know how to explain it, but I fucking... Ihategoing back there. They’re just the worst kind of asshole and there’sfiveof them. But it’s not even that. It’s just—it doesn’t matter what I’ve done. Even now. After all of these years. How I’ve proven all of them fuckingwrong—”

Sully took a step forward, and his mouth was turned down, furious and intent. His hands were fists at his sides. He was shaking, although whether it was with anger or the cold, Eric couldn’t tell. “I hate listening to that bullshit. And I hate feeling small, Eric. I fuckinghate it.”

At any other time, Eric would’ve made a joke about how much Sully liked when Eric pushed him around, but his body was moving for him. He took Sully’s hands in his. They were icy as hell. “Jesus, you’re cold.”

“I left my car there,” Sully mumbled, but he didn’t pull away when Eric tried rubbing the warmth back into them. “I just had to...go. I don’t know. I couldn’t do it tonight.” He looked up again. In the dim light of Eric’s living room, his eyes were wide and dark. “I just—wanted to be somewhere else.”

Eric realized belatedly that he was still holding Sully’s hands in his. “Well, you’re here now,” he managed, before Sully was kissing him, pressing himself up against Eric’s body. Eric wasn’t sure which one of them started moving backward, but they were falling onto the couch, Eric first, Sully on top of him; Eric yelped in shock when Sully got his icy hands under Eric’s shirt.

“You littleshit!”

“Warm them up,” Sully mumbled into his neck. His hands stroked Eric’s sides, and Eric shuddered. “Warmmeup.”

“I don’t really have a choice about this, do I?” Eric demanded, squirming as he tried to get away. Behind them, the TV started playing again and Eric shifted again, realizing he’d sat on the remote.

Distracted, Sully’s head whipped around. “What the hell are youwatching?”

“Uh...it’sInherit the Wind.”

“You mean the one about the Scopes monkey trial?”

“Yeah, you know it?”

“That’s an interesting choice of holiday viewing.”

“It was my dad. He always liked old movies, and this was one of his favorites. He’s been gone for a little while now, but I like to keep the tradition going.” Sully’s hands were slowly warming up against Eric’s skin, but he shivered anyway. “I really hate movies. But I have a lot of...a lot of good memories of them, with him.”

Sully had pulled back a little. He looked down at Eric with an inscrutable expression. “You really love your parents, huh.”

“They’re good people,” Eric said, embarrassed.

Sully had pulled his hand out from beneath Eric’s shirt. Instead, his fingers traced down the line of Eric’s wrist, over his sweater. “I left home as early as I could to get away from that. And then my mother died when I was away at college. And my dad, well. I don’t have a lot of fond memories of him. So it’s just nice that you love them so much. It’s not what you’d think about you at all. At least not when first meeting you.”

“What would you think about me?” Eric said. He had meant it to come out sarcastic, but his voice was weirdly quiet instead. How fucking weird was it that he actually cared what Sully thought about him?

“You’re kind of an asshole at first, but you’re also kind of a big softy, aren’t you? You reallydocare.”

“Oh, spare me,” Eric said, with an exaggerated groan, and then he had to immediately lift his hand up to swat Sully’s attempt at pinching his nose away. “All right, that’s it, I’m cross-checking you into the boards the next time we’re on the ice.”

Sully shifted around in Eric’s lap, and Eric bit back a small groan. Sully was grinning, the kind of shark-toothed smile that he had during drills, sometimes, when he knew that he was really wearing the team out. “That’s exactly what I mean. You don’t want anyone to know what you’re really like. But nowIknow.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“No,” Sully said, and leaned down to kiss him. His skin had warmed to the temperature of Eric’s apartment, finally, and his kiss was eager and hungry. Eric didn’t want to think too long about the fact that Sully had wanted to be anywhere except his family’s house, and that the first place he had thought to go was Eric’s. “Hey. You’ve got a perfectly good movie and a perfectly good tradition going, huh?”

“Youreallywant to watch Spencer Tracy cross-examine an old fundamentalist?” Eric said doubtfully, finger brushing the line that demarcated Sully’s hair and his neck. “We could just fuck.”

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