Page 67 of Speak in Fever
He's almost to his car when he hears his name.
"Rath, wait," Percy calls, jogging over with obvious determination, still pulling on his jacket. His hair is damp from the shower, sticking up in the way that usually makes Rath want to reach out and fix it. "We need to talk."
Rath's hand is already on his car door handle, escape so close he can taste it. "About what?" he asks, though he knows exactly what Percy wants to discuss. The question comes out sharper than he intended, and he sees Percy flinch slightly.
"About whatever's been going on with us this week." Percy's frustration is evident in the way he's gesturing, the familiar animated hand movements that Rath has come to associate with Percy working through a problem. "Our timing is completely off, we can barely complete a pass to each other, and you haven't come over once."
"Coach is going to separate us permanently if we don't figure this out," Percy continues, taking a step closer. "And I can't—I don't understand what changed. Everything was fine last week. Better than fine. We were playing the best hockey of our lives, and now it's like..." He trails off, running a hand through his damp hair. "I know it's me. Tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it."
They're apparently going to have this conversation in the parking lot where anyone can see—where teammates might walk by, where coaches might overhear, where the whole fragile house of cards that Rath has been trying to protect might come tumbling down. The setting feels wrong for something this important, too exposed and public for the kind of honesty this moment demands.
Rath takes a deep breath, the cold evening air sharp in his lungs. "Are you serious about me or do you just want to hookup?" he asks, the words coming out in a rush before he can think better of them.
Percy goes very still, his expression shifting from confusion to something that looks almost like hurt. "Is that really what you think this is? Just hooking up?"
"Isn't it?" Rath challenges, even though part of him desperately wants Percy to contradict him, to say the words that would make all of this unnecessary. He wants Percy to laugh at the absurdity of the question, to list all the ways their relationship has moved beyond casual, to make it clear that what they have means as much to him as it does to Rath.
Percy opens his mouth, then closes it, and in that moment of hesitation, Rath has his answer. If Percy had deeper feelings, if this meant something more to him, he would have said so immediately. The pause speaks volumes about his uncertainty, his inability to define what they've been doing in terms that go beyond physical attraction and convenient companionship.
In that silence, Rath can almost hear Percy's internal struggle—the careful calculation of how much truth he's willing to share, the weighing of Rath's feelings against his own comfort level. It's the sound of someone trying to find the right words to let him down easy, to preserve their hockey partnership while gently redirecting their personal relationship back to safer territory.
"I need to go," Rath says, climbing into his car before Percy can respond, before he can offer some middle-ground explanation that will only make this worse. His hands are shaking as he starts the engine, and he grips the steering wheel tighter to hide it.
As he drives away, Rath catches sight of Percy in his rearview mirror, standing alone in the parking lot with an expression of complete bewilderment. Like he's trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces, trying to understand how everything went wrong so quickly. His phone is still in his hand, forgotten now, andhe's staring after Rath's car with the kind of lost confusion that makes Rath want to turn around and explain everything.
But explanation would require hope, and hope would require believing that Percy could change, could want something more than what they've been sharing in secret. The image makes Rath's chest ache with regret and longing, but he doesn't turn around.
Better to hurt now than to keep pretending he can handle being Percy's casual convenience when what he actually wants is to be Percy's everything—the person Percy thinks about first in the morning and last at night, the one he calls when something amazing happens or when everything falls apart, the one he chooses over and over again without hesitation.
Even if Percy could never want the same thing in return.
Chapter 22
It would be no understatement to say that Rath gets checked a lot. He knows he's a target. He knows he's half the size of some of these guys out here and they just can't help but throw their weight around. At five-foot-nine and 165 pounds soaking wet, he's built for speed and agility, not for absorbing the kind of punishment that guys like Warren dish out on the regular.
And yeah, he's been on the receiving end of some pretty heavy hits—shoulder checks that leave him seeing stars, hip checks that send him sprawling, the occasional late hit that earns the other guy two minutes and leaves Rath picking himself up off the ice with his ears ringing. But he's not made of fucking glass. He can take a hit. He's been taking them since he was twelve years old and decided that being small wasn't going to stop him from playing the game he loved.
Tonight, though, something feels different. Maybe it's the way Warren has been eyeing him all game, like he's got a personal vendetta instead of just doing his job as a defenseman. Maybeit's the cheap shot Warren took at him behind the play in the first period—nothing the refs caught, just an elbow to the ribs when Rath was focused on the puck. Or maybe it's the way Warren grinned at him afterward, like he was enjoying the opportunity to rough up someone who couldn't really fight back.
The hit comes in the second period, just as Rath is chasing down a loose puck in the neutral zone. He's focused on the play, head up and scanning for passing options, when Warren comes out of nowhere with a hip check that's perfectly legal and absolutely devastating.
Warren checks him so hard he goes up in the air, he feels afraid for the first time in a while. There's a moment of complete weightlessness where Rath realizes he's not in control of where he's going to land, and all those horror stories about guys getting paralyzed or suffering career-ending injuries flash through his mind in the space of a heartbeat.
He lands on his ass, not his head or his back, and he's so grateful even though it still pushes all the air out of his lungs. The impact sends shockwaves through his entire body, from his tailbone up his spine, and for a terrifying moment he can't feel his legs. Then sensation floods back—pain, mostly, but pain he can work with.
Rath stays down for a moment, more winded than hurt, waiting for his vision to clear and his ribs to remember how to expand properly. The ice beneath him is cold even through his gear, and he can feel the vibration of skates as players circle around him. Above him, he can hear the usual post-check commotion—teammates asking if he's okay, referees making sure the hit was legal, the crowd noise that accompanies any big impact.
"You good, Rath?" JP's voice cuts through the noise, and there are gentle hands helping him assess whether anything's broken.
"Yeah," Rath manages, though his voice comes out rough. "Yeah, just give me a second."
The crowd is buzzing, that particular mixture of appreciation for a good, clean hit and concern for the player on the ice. Colorado fans are cheering—it was their guy who delivered the punishment, after all—but Rath can hear the worried murmur from the section where his team's supporters sit.
He does get back on his feet, with JP's help, testing each limb as he rises. His ribs ache and he's going to have a spectacular bruise on his tailbone, but everything seems to be working properly. The relief is overwhelming.
He is not so disoriented that he doesn't see his captain come flying across the ice, right into Warren's face.
Percy moves with single-minded purpose, his skates throwing up ice chips as he changes direction so sharply that Rath's surprised he doesn't lose an edge. There's something almost violent in the way Percy cuts across the ice, and every player on both teams recognizes the body language of someone who's about to start something.
