Page 37 of Goaltender Interference

Mom snorted. “I knew this wouldn’t go well. You’ve always been stubborn, especially about that...” She trailed off, like she wanted to say something worse. “About that man.”

“His name is Aiden, Mom.”

“Iknowwhat his name is. That doesn’t mean I have to...acknowledge him.”

Matt rubbed his fingers over his eyes. If things kept going the way they’d gone, he’d have to figure out what he was going to do about his family and the way they felt about Aiden. It was still early to force things, but he couldn’t put that off forever, either. “Look, Mom. I hear you. I understand your concerns. You just have to trust me that I know what I’m doing and that things are different this time. I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Fine,” Mom said, but she wasn’t happy about it, and he knew it wasn’t going to be the end.

The rest of the conversation was strained and stilted: she pretended to have an interest in the way his training was going and how his knee was feeling, but the fact was that she had onlyreally called because of Aiden. When they hung up, it was with the uneasy feeling of issues unresolved.

And Matt, left with the uneasy knowledge that even as he was approaching middle age, his parents still treated him like a child. Maybe it was deserved. The bad years had been really fucking bad, and he’d almost lost everything because of it. It had been nearly a decade since, and he’d changed. But he wasn’t sure if his family realized it.

It was hard to describe the feelings. The frustration and the unease and the worry. All of it was knocking around in his head like a maelstrom. Matt needed to get his fucking head on straight, get it calm before the season started. He couldn’t afford to fuck things up for the boys. He’d dealt with this over the years, learned how to force himself to be even-keeled even when he didn’t feel it.

The difference now was that Aiden was here, and Aiden looked up when Matt came out of the bedroom with a concerned expression.

“Matt? Are you all right?”

Matt thought about telling him, but he didn’t want to burden Aiden further by reminding him of the negative opinions of his family. Aiden had enough on his shoulders. Instead, he sat down on the couch next to Aiden and leaned forward. Aiden’s mouth melted under Matt’s, and he gasped, the sweetest little noise of surprise that Matt swallowed down.

He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to this.

It had always been like this between them, that electric chemistry, like their bodies knew how to communicate better than their mouths ever had. Even now, Aiden’s big hands were gripping his biceps, an anchor. Even now, Aiden’s body against his was a comforting weight.

“What’s wrong, hey?” Aiden mumbled into Matt’s mouth. He had shifted so he straddled Matt’s thighs. “You’ve been acting weird since that phone call.”

Matt looked up at him, the familiar face that had morphed into something unfamiliar and was slowly shifting back to something he knew intimately again. He lifted his hand, cupped it around Aiden’s cheek. Let Aiden turn his head into the touch. His beard was so soft under Matt’s fingers. “You know. It was my mom.”

“And...?”

“My parents, ah, they’ve been a little worried about me. Just in general. It’s just, it’s just, it makes me feel pretty shitty sometimes.”

“Do you want to...talk about it?”

“No. God, no.”

Aiden’s eyes crinkled in a smile, one of the few Matt had been able to coax out of him recently. “Okay. So we don’t have to talk about it. But what can I do?”

“Fuck me,” Matt said, before he could stop himself. “Fuck me until I can stop thinking about this.”

Aiden laughed and kissed Matt’s forehead, one of those affectionate little gestures he’d done so casually a decade ago, and Matt’s heart clenched a little when he did it now. “I can do that, Matty.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Aiden said, and slid off of his lap. He held out his hand, and Matt took it.

Aiden thought that Matt was probably going to drive him completely insane, one of these days. It was like he had regressed to a younger version of himself, a raw kid with anobscene refractory period and the desire to just fuck Matt up and be fucked up in turn, constantly, continually.

Like if he was otherwise occupied, Matt wouldn’t stop to think too long about whether Aiden should still be there, taking up space and time in his life, an ugly shadow lurking at the edges of his neat existence. It was hard not to feel at least a little shitty about it, when he was still consumed with the uncertainty of what exactly he was doing in Montreal.

But that didn’t mean he was going to stop.

Aiden, on his knees, pulled back to take a deep breath and look down at his work. Matt sprawled on his back, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, blotchy red and damp with sweat and his own come. He still looked a little dazed as Aiden reached out to rub his thumb under the head of his dick, shuddering and flinching away from the touch.

“Aiden, I’m not twenty-one anymore, Ican’t—”

“Let me try?”

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