Kitchen Counter Fic

The kitchen smells good. It’s filled with the scent of baking bread. Warm winter sunlight slants in through the windows. The whole room feels cozy, heated up by the oven. Jeff is hit with a sudden, swelling wave of nostalgia. His mom baking on cold winter mornings, getting Jeff to help knead the dough, the white powdery flour that would coat his hands.

Mike’s already awake, standing at the sink, washing out a bowl. The sound of the faucet is drowning out whatever awful tuneless humming he’s doing. Jeff just watches him. Mike’s shifting his weight back and forth in a way that could be called dancing if he were still in middle school. His lips are curled into a genuine crooked smile. It’s such a difference compared to the last time Jeff spent any time in Mike’s kitchen in Kenora. That time, Mike’s face was lined with a darkened angry tension, his head bowed, the room filled with a choking sort of dread.

“Hey,” Jeff says. He walks into the room, leans against the kitchen island and scans the room for coffee.

Mike glances up at him and places the bowl on a drying rack. He raises an eyebrow -- probably at the fact that Jeff decided to show up shirtless wearing only his boxers despite the chill -- and tilts his head to the side, gesturing towards the oven. The move bares his throat, shows off the hickey Jeff left low on his neck and collarbone last night.

The sight of it burns low in Jeff’s belly. Mike’s so comfortable, so in his element. And maybe that’s not on the ice anymore, maybe hockey’s not something Jeff can share with Mike any longer, but he’s always wanted something like this to fill the void. Both of them were fully aware that their careers came with short life expectancies. Mike’s was just shorter than anyone anticipated.

Jeff wants him. Wants him like this: soft and content and satisfied.

“Hey, yourself,” Mike says. A hesitant, almost shy, flash of teeth.

Jeff kisses him. He bends his head down and Mike tilts his head up. It’s a slow, lazy sort of kiss. No rush. They’ve got hours and hours before Jeff’s flight. Jeff puts his hands on Mike’s hips, backs him up against the kitchen island. Mike lets him. Mike doesn’t dig his heels in when he’s happy. He gets loose and easy, amenable to sex on all sorts of surfaces.

Like a kitchen counter, for instance.

Jeff bends his knees, gets a good grip on Mike’s hips, hauls Mike up onto the island. Jeff can bench his own bodyweight, so lifting all 195 pounds of Mike’s body is doable, but it’s not exactly comfortable. Like this, Mike is taller than him. Only by a couple of inches, but it means that Jeff has to tilt his neck up to kiss him. Jeff’s not used to that. Mike laughs into Jeff’s mouth. Nips at Jeff’s bottom lip. Digs his fingers into Jeff’s neck. He’s mocking Jeff; Jeff can tell.

“You suck,” Jeff says. He settles himself between Mike’s knees. Mike’s fingers thread into Jeff’s hair.

“Not as much as you, eh?” Mike says. He tugs, hard, with his fistful of hair. It stings a little bit, but mostly it makes Jeff’s mouth water. His cock hardens in his boxers. He tries not to get ahead of himself. It would be awkward like this. Too high up for Jeff to be up on his knees. Too low for Jeff to bow his head. That doesn’t mean Jeff’s not hungry for it. He wants to put his mouth on Mike’s cock.

“You asking for something, Richie?” Jeff says, just to be a dick.

“Do I even need to?” Mike reaches between them, palms Jeff’s cock through his boxers. “Like I don’t know how much you’re gagging for it.”

As much as Jeff loves Mike when he’s just being a little bit quiet, a little bit sweet, nothing turns him on faster than Mike’s careless arrogance. Mike pushing Jeff around in darkened clubs. Mike punching in the face of some asshole who decided to pick a fight with him on the ice. Mike laying down a nasty, brutal hit. Mike giving a cool, displeased, soft-spoken lecture to a gaggle of rookies. Jeff hardens more under Mike’s touch. “I’m a sure thing, am I?” Jeff says. He tugs Mike’s t-shirt collar out of the way so that he can put his lips on the hickey there. Mike smells a little like his bed, a little like flour and yeast, a little like Arnold after a walk outside by the lake. Jeff bites down, tastes Mike’s skin. It still brings back sense memories of being nineteen and desperate all the time, desperate for Mike’s body, Mike’s touch, Mike’s filthy mouth.

Mike scrapes blunt, bitten-down nails over Jeff’s scalp. Jeff shivers. “Surest thing there is,” Mike says, and for all that he’s trying to sound like an asshole, he can’t keep the affection out of his voice. Jeff can hear him grinning.

Jeff yanks at the waistband of Mike’s sweats, pulls on the elastic as best he can one-handed. It’s not that Jeff’s in a hurry or anything, but Mike is wearing too many clothes right now. There’s too many layers between Jeff and Mike’s dick.

When he finally gets through, finally gets his hands on the hard, silky length of Mike’s cock, Mike laughs at him, which is really just unfair for someone who’s about to get a handjob. “Why the fuck did you get dressed?” Jeff grumbles.

“I’ve been awake for two hours already, asshole. Not all of us are on Pacific time.” Mike shifts a little, arching his hips into Jeff’s hands.

“So?” Jeff says. He jerks Mike off slow, teasing, barely any pressure at all, in a way that Mike hates. Jeff loves it, though. Working Mike up like this usually aggravates Mike into being pushy and demanding, and Mike a little desperate, a little mean, is exactly how Jeff likes him.

Mike’s fingers tighten in Jeff’s hair. His breath gets shorter, wheezing from his mouth. It’s not sexy. It really shouldn’t be sexy. Mike says, “Come on. Harder.”

“Yeah?” Jeff says. He smirks against Mike’s neck.

Mike grunts in annoyance. Then he uses his leverage, his strong fucking hands, to force Jeff’s head into his lap. It would probably be rude and kind of gross if Jeff didn’t get off on it so much, if Mike didn’t know exactly how much Jeff got off on it.

Jeff ends up half-squatting, half-bent over, and his back is going to fucking murder him later, but he breathes in through his nose, inhales Mike’s scent where it’s strongest. He presses his lips to the head of Mike’s cock, licks the tip, tastes the salty pre-come there. Mike lets out a soft moan. Jeff leans in a little closer, takes the head into his mouth.

“Jeez, Carts,” Mike says. “Look at how fucking pretty you are like this.” His voice sounds a little breathless.

And Jeff can’t blame him, because he’s feeling a little lightheaded himself. Just from the taste, the smell, the stretch of his jaw, the sensation of being filled up, the pleased and approving undertone to Mike’s voice.

He’s too turned on to be teasing now. Not with Mike’s hands holding him in place. He groans around Mike’s cock as Mike arches a little, pushes Jeff’s head down further. Jeff’s nose brushes up against Mike’s wiry, dark pubic hair.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Just like that.” It’s so good, overwhelming, right at the edge of what Jeff can take. Mike knows Jeff’s limits. They learned all of each other’s limits together. And Jeff really fucking loves pushing his body to its limits.

Jeff lets himself get lost in the feeling: the slide of Mike’s cock against his lips, the murmured encouragements that seem to be coming from the back of Mike’s throat, the pads of Mike’s fingers digging into his skull.

Mike tugs hard on Jeff’s hair. From the way he’s breathing, Jeff can tell he’s close. Jeff looks up at Mike’s face, and it’s not like, objectively beautiful or anything, but Jeff loves the way Mike has his eyes closed, his mouth hanging open, head tilted back, flushed red from his cheeks down his neck. Jeff loves him like this, lost in pleasure, pulled out of his own head for once.

Mike lets out a choked-off groan when he comes. Jeff swallows, hands still clinging to Mike’s hips, body still lit up with his arousal, the low, dark pull of his desire. He’s always filled with a fierce sense of pride when he can do this, when he can make Mike feel good, when Mike will let him.

Jeff stands up. His knees make an awful cracking noise. Mike pulls him into a kiss, licking the taste of himself from Jeff’s mouth. That was never Jeff’s kink, but Mike always seems to like it. Jeff always wonders if that’s a thing he does with the girls he picks up (or picked up, when Mike did that sort of thing more often) or if it’s something he reserves for Jeff.

Mike reaches between their bodies, slides his hand into Jeff’s boxers. He pulls Jeff’s cock out over the waistband and jerks Jeff off lazily. He always takes his sweet time after his own orgasm. But the thing is, Jeff really likes it, likes being just a little frustrated, likes letting the arousal ramp up bit by bit. On one memorable rest day, Mike made Jeff wait three fucking hours to come, just slowly edging Jeff with his hands and his mouth until Jeff was ready to tear Mike’s face off, but Jeff loved every fucking second of it. He still jerks off to that memory sometimes.

“Having a baby around means you aren’t sucking as much cock as you used to,” Mike says, with a vicious twist of his wrist that makes Jeff whimper. “You really are gagging for it.”

Jeff doesn’t bother to point out that he almost never picked up guys even before he ended up with a live-in nanny and a whole lot of parenting shit to worry about. He just kisses Mike quiet instead. Mike grips a little harder, moves his hand a little faster. Jeff bites down on his bottom lip, grinds his hips into the pressure as much as he can.

“Yeah,” Mike says, his voice going lower and rougher, and the sound of it travels down Jeff’s spine. “Just like that.”

Jeff presses his face into Mike’s shoulder as he comes, digs his teeth into the cotton of Mike’s t-shirt. He’s pretty sure he gets jizz on Mike’s sweatpants, but he can’t bring himself to care.

They stay like that for long moments. Jeff just breathes into the curve of Mike’s neck. Mike licks Jeff’s come off his fingers and then cups the back of Jeff’s neck.

Jeff closes his eyes. “Mike--” he starts.

The kitchen timer picks that moment to go off. Mike shoves Jeff away, hops off the counter, pulls the waistband of his sweats and boxers back up, goes to check on his bread.

It’s done, apparently. Mike pulls it out of the oven, drops it on a wire rack to cool. Jeff rearranges his own boxers and tries to ignore the pinpricks of goosebumps on his arms. The room feels a lot colder now that he’s separated from Mike’s body heat.

“Back to LA tonight, right?” Mike asks.

“Uh, yeah,” Jeff says. It startles him a little bit. He thought that maybe LA was one of the things that were off limits for discussion, like Mike’s hockey career. They’ve chatted about former teammates, about Jeff’s dogs, about Caden, about Mike’s boats, about how difficult it is to find a decent fucking electrician. But there’s been gaps. Maybe Jeff’s the one who should be filling them in.

“Cool,” Mike says.

“Mike--” Jeff starts again. His throat closes up. He tries to clear it. “I’m--”

Mike looks up at him and raises his eyebrows. “Jesus Christ,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Not you too.”

Jeff frowns. “What--”

“Please tell me this visit wasn’t some sort of pity fuck thing.”

Like Jeff has ever pitied Mike for one moment in his life. Like Mike would have ever let him. “You know me better than that, man,” Jeff says.

“I’m over it, you know,” Mike says. “I’ve had a whole fucking lot of time to get over it.”

Jeff squints at him, trying to get a sense of how much of what Mike’s spouting is utter bullshit, but Mike isn’t hunched and defensive and pissed off. He’s not avoiding Jeff’s gaze. His brown eyes are clear in the morning light. He’s got that wry half-smile on his face. Mike has plenty of experience spouting platitudes and guarding his tone, but he’s not using any of his usual tricks here. Jeff says, “Tell me that you wouldn’t be playing hockey right now if you had a choice.”

Mike shrugs. “It’s not up to me.” He stares Jeff down without flinching. “It might not be up to you either.”

Jeff turns away. He swallows hard. It’s been something he’s been deliberately not-thinking about since Mike got put on waivers. About how his foot never quite stops hurting, about the way his hips creak in the morning before he warms them up, about how he just wants to fucking sleep all the goddamn time some days.

Mike continues, “Everyone’s got to face up to it some day. I’m just sick of all you assholes projecting your shit onto me. I’ve got enough of my own shit to deal with.” Jeff knows he’s been in contact with a lot of the other guys, that he never really stopped, even in the darkest days. He wrote long-winded texts to Jeff about how the fucking Mounties were the worst; he challenged Kopi to beat his high score on stupid iPhone games; he went fishing with Mitchie in Port McNeill. Jeff wonders what they’ve been saying to him.

Mike rattles through the cabinets while Jeff gets lost in thought. He looks up to see Mike pulling down a cutting board and taking out a bread knife. Mike slices an end off the loaf, slathers butter onto it, offers it to Jeff. The bread is denser, yeastier than the stuff Jeff’s mom makes. It’s still delicious, still warm from the oven. Jeff chews so that he doesn’t have to say anything.

“Just, you know,” Mike says, the smallest smile returning to his face, “enjoy it while it lasts.” He tears off a chunk of bread and feeds it to Arnold, who showed up and started begging for food as soon as he heard the cabinets opening. Mike cuts another slice for himself, dumps more butter on it, drops the whole thing onto a plate, which is downright civilized of him compared to how much of a slob he was rookie year. Well, not that Jeff has room to be judgmental about that.

Mike brushes by Jeff to get to the refrigerator. He slaps Jeff on the ass with his free hand. It’s definitely a teasing sort of slap, not the friendly ass-pats they’ve shared as professional athletes. Jeff raises his eyebrows at Mike and gets a smirk in return.

“You can stay here and brood,” Mike says as he pulls a carton of orange juice out of the fridge, “or we can veg out on the couch and watch terrible TV on Netflix.”

“This better not turn into a ‘Netflix and chill’ joke,” Jeff says.

“It can if you want it to,” Mike says. He leers at Jeff in a way that would probably get him maced if he tried it at a bar.

“You fucker,” Jeff says. He follows Mike out to the living room, steals Mike’s blanket, curls up against Mike’s side on the couch.

Mike turns the TV on, flips it to some sort of cooking show that’s playing a whole lot of classical music in the background. Jeff closes his eyes and just soaks it all in while he can. The heat of Mike’s body. The smell of Mike’s shampoo. The uneven breaths from Mike’s mouth. The heavy arm Mike’s thrown across Jeff’s shoulders.

Jeff thinks he might understand it, just a little bit. How to be happy, even if you aren’t playing hockey anymore. Mike’s figured it out, somehow. And that’s good. It makes Jeff’s chest hurt a little bit, knowing that Mike’s out here, doing all this work to stitch his life back together without him, but it’s also-- it is good.

“You should put on some damn clothes,” Mike grumbles. “I want my blanket back.” He pokes at Jeff’s shoulder.

“Nope,” Jeff says, clutching the blanket tighter so that Mike won’t try something sneaky. “It’s mine now.”

“You’re the worst,” Mike whines, but he still sounds fond, underneath it all.

Jeff squeezes his wrist, just once. He doesn’t have to say anything else.

FIN.