Page 29 of Goaltender Interference

Aiden exhaled, sharply, and said, in a rush, “Matt, I’ve fuckingmissedyou. I’ve really fucking missed you.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, softly. “Well. That’s how it goes.”

Even though they hadn’t hooked up since New York, Aiden slept in Matt’s bed every night.

It would have been a lie to say it wasn’t torture every time he woke up with Matt’s furnace of a body draped over his back, Matt’s arm wrapped around him, Matt’s erection pressedagainst his ass. He didn’t want to ruin the fragile peace of whatever he had here, but it was also hard to ignore how his body responded, hard to ignore how his heart responded.

It was torture and yet he slept better than he’d slept in his own bed in longer than he could remember.

You could talk to him about it,the reasonable part of Aiden’s brain said.

Don’t fucking ruin it,said the part of Aiden’s brain that had gotten him to Montreal without clarifying this beforehand.

Aiden didn’t say anything.

cap,Jammer texted Matt in the morning,what’s up?

Matt frowned at his phone.What do you mean, what’s up?

u’ve been acting a lil cagey recently. just not like u. if it’s contract stuff or w/e u can talk to us u know

He could feel himself smiling, just a little, lopsided. If it was only the contract stuff, that would have been easy to handle. Not easy. Manageable. Something he could make lists for. Pros and cons. Something he could think through logically, even if thinking about it made him want to scream and take off running down the hall.

Matt couldn’t explain to Jammer that he had thrown caution to the wind, invited his ex to stay with him for the summer and had promptly realized two things: his ex was fuckingdepressedand also, that Matt was still as stupidly in love with him as he had ever been.

Neither realization happened all at once. They snuck up on him, gradually. Aiden had always been tightly wound, a perfectionist, compulsive in the way that goalies often were. But around Matt, he’d learned how to smile easily, flash a goofysense of humor. Not to mention the wild shit that came out of his mouth in bed, the insanely filthy things he asked Matt to do to him. The complete opposite of the calm, serious face he presented to the media.

Matt couldn’t see any of that in him now. Aiden was quiet and withdrawn, watching Matt with sad eyes, barely saying anything. There was a bitterness to his words that hadn’t ever been there before. He ate mechanically, without any of the enjoyment Matt remembered. He’d told Matt that he’d mostly been eating the same thing every day for the last few years which was—Aiden had always been a creature of habit, but that seemed alot.

When Matt caught him unaware, he would often just be sitting there, legs folded in some kind of ridiculous way underneath him, frowning into space like he was thinking about something. Was it retirement? Was it something else? Matt, who had always been good at getting reads on guys and had spent years of his life intimately attuned to the tiniest shifts in Aiden’s mood, found that for once, he just couldn’t figure it out.

Matt woke up every morning with Aiden wrapped up in his arms, partially underneath Matt’s body. Matt still knew Aiden’s tells well enough to know he was awake, that he could definitely feel Matt’s morning wood pressed up against his ass.

Every time, Aiden said nothing. He barely breathed. It was like he was afraid to move and ruin the moment, and Matt could absolutely sympathize.

Every morning he thought about rolling Aiden over and kissing the haunted look off of his face. Every morning he thought about what would happen if he did it, if he slipped his hand down between them to take Aiden in hand the way he used to do. By this point in the week it was a given that Aiden was coming to bed with him.

But something held Matt back. It seemed wrong, somehow, to try anything when Aidenlookedlike that, like Aiden might kiss him back not because he wanted Matt, still felt anything for Matt except the desire to feel any differently than he was feeling then.

Matt had thought about this a lot of ways over the years, how things would go if he had the chance to talk to Aiden again. Sometimes he imagined punching him in the face and telling him to fuck off. Sometimes he imagined holding out his arms, Aiden falling into them gratefully.

He’d never really thought about what he would do if Aiden turned up on his doorstep, bedraggled and shaggy and sad as fuck, and juststayedwith him, clinging like a koala at night, moping around during the day.

Matt realized, horrified, that as much as it was physically painful to wake up every morning and have to hold himself back from the reactions that still felt automatic after all of these years, he was holding himself back because of Aiden. Because he wanted to do the right thing. Because he wasstill—

It’s not really anything I can explain,Matt said to Jammer.I’ll feel more like myself once camp starts.

ok.

I promise, Jams.

On Saturday night, Aiden picked the movies, and they watched a double-header ofVenomandLet There Be Carnageon the couch. Aiden found himself trying to explain to Matt why Carnage was really the superior comic book villain, especially considering Venom was more of an anti-hero at this point. He could feel himself rambling, the way he sometimes did aboutthings he’d been so interested in for so long, the way that had always embarrassed his sister when they were kids. But he couldn’t stop it now any more than he could have done then.

“You know, the bond with the symbiote is stronger, and it’s fused with Kasady’s blood, so the body doesn’t really need to rest the same way Brock does.”

Matt leaned forward, took Aiden’s face in his hands and shoved his tongue in Aiden’s mouth. Aiden’s muffled noise of surprise got lost in it; it took him a second to react beyond that exclamation. Then he was all in, breathless by the time they broke apart, his heart thumping in his chest like the bass of a particularly intense breakdown.

“Matt,what—?”

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