I Didn't Want Him To Know About The Bet At All

Curtis's POV

Hockey practice wrapped up, and Dean followed me to the frat house like he always did.

I settled into the corner couch in the basement, watching Brendan pin Dean down for his third drink.

Vodka mixed with fruit punch—the color looked harmless enough, but the kick was real. Dean's pale fingers slipped twice against the glass before he managed to grip it steady.

He tilted his head back and downed it. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, a bit of pale pink liquid escaping the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with his sleeve.

Brendan was still egging him on. "One more. House rules for new guys—you're not one of us until you drink up."

Dean sat on the floor diagonally across from me, knees drawn up and pressed together. His face had already flushed red, eyes slightly glazed, but he reached out for the fourth glass anyway.

"That's enough."

Brendan's tone turned sour. "Curtis, since when did you become such a babysitter?"

I added flatly, "He's got footage to edit tomorrow morning."

"Can you even stand?" I walked over and crouched beside him, my knee brushing against his. He flinched.

Dean looked up at me, voice slurred. "I'm not drunk."

"Stand up. Let me see."

He braced himself against the wall, trying to rise. His knees wobbled, and he pitched forward. I caught his arm.

Dean was too thin. Even through the fabric, I could feel the shape of his bones.

I half-dragged, half-guided him toward the basement exit. His back pressed briefly against my chest—burning hot, probably from the alcohol.

Behind us, Brendan whistled. I didn't turn around, but I could picture him smirking with his nose in the air.

The parking lot wind hit us hard. Dean shivered and leaned into me. I opened the passenger door and maneuvered him inside, bending down to fasten his seatbelt.

My hand grazed his hip bone. Sharper than I'd expected.

I circled around to the driver's seat and started the engine, glancing over at him.

He'd already slumped to the side, lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. He was still wearing my hoodie—the one I'd tossed at him weeks ago when I saw him standing outside my dorm in that ratty zip-up with the broken zipper. It hung loose on his smaller frame.

I pulled up the GPS, unfamiliar with the route. The mechanical voice announced the street name.

Dean mumbled something. I couldn't make it out. "What?"

He said it again. "Turn left... there's a road behind the dorm. Closer."

I glanced over. His eyes were still closed. Was he faking sleep? Or half-conscious?

I followed his directions and turned left at the next intersection, my mind drifting back to a few weeks ago.

After practice, I'd been changing in the locker room while Brendan sat on the bench scrolling through his phone. He laughed suddenly and turned the screen toward me. "Look at this shit."

I scanned it. The screen showed a serialized story on some encrypted forum—Checking Orders: The Cold Captain Barebacking His Teammate.

Brendan scrolled down a couple of pages. There was a hockey captain character in it. Blond hair, blue eyes.

"Who wrote it?" I asked.

Brendan pocketed his phone, a smirk twisting his mouth. "Traced the IP. Posted from the school rink. That broke kid who just started in the equipment room. What's his name again—"

"Dean."

"Right. Dean." Brendan shoved both hands in his pockets. "A guy who spends all day in the hockey rink, writing porn about you. Think he's gay?"

He went on. "Let's make a bet. Get him to admit he's gay within a month. Next semester's away games—you lose, you sleep on the floor."

I pulled on my jeans and smirked. "You lose, you buy the team breakfast for a month."

Brendan stuck out his fist. I bumped it.

Brendan had sent me screenshots of a few chapters. The "Hunter" character was detailed to the point of absurdity, but some of it was disturbingly accurate.

My left hand gripped the stick tighter than my right by half a turn. My core engaged before my arms when I took a shot. These were habits I'd developed over years of practice—things even the coach hadn't pointed out.

He'd picked it up from a few recordings.

It was just a bet. I didn't think much of it at first.

I didn't dislike Dean, but I didn't care about him either. Getting him to admit he was gay wasn't going to be hard.

A guy who couldn't even lift his head when someone bumped into him in the hallway was writing that kind of thing online. I figured it'd be easy to watch him fall apart in real life.

I'd imagined his reaction—cornering him against a wall, asking him who he was writing about. He'd probably go pale, tremble all over, stammer out denials.

But what actually happened wasn't what I'd expected.

Last time in the equipment room, I pushed the door open and Dean jumped like he'd been shocked.

I stepped closer and he backed away. It was amusing, so I decided to mess with him a little.

I grabbed his chin, thumb pressing against his lower lip. It was chapped but soft.

I waited for him to shake or pull back.

Instead, Dean bit down hard on my thumb.

Honestly, that caught me off guard. He looked more shocked than I was after he did it, panic flooding his eyes, like he was more scared than me.

The tooth marks stayed at the base of my thumb for three days. Every time I felt it in the shower, I'd think of the look on his face.

Later, when I wrapped the bandage around his hand, he wouldn't look at me the whole time. His ears turned red, almost translucent. When I rolled the gauze and my fingertips grazed the cut on his palm, the fine hairs on his forearm stood straight up—but he didn't pull his hand away.

That kind of person. Trembling, but refusing to back down. I could've called him out right then and there, but I didn't.

Reeling him in too fast would've been boring. The bet had time. I could take it slow.

Over the past two weeks, I'd started noticing details I hadn't paid attention to before.

When Dean logged my training stats, he always added an extra column that Abel's data team didn't—shot angle deviation, time to recenter after weight shift.

I flipped through the pages on his desk once. His handwriting was careful and precise: Wednesday shooting drills, left-side accuracy up 3.7% from last week. Recommend more work on the right.

I pointed at the notes. "You calculated this?"

"Just tracked it." Dean rubbed his fingers together, not looking up. "When you stop short on your right side, your back edge catches the ice a little, but your left side doesn't. So your weight transfer before a right-side shot is half a beat slower than your left, which gives the goalie enough time to read your direction—"

He stopped mid-sentence, probably realizing he was lecturing the team captain on technique. "Anyway... I saw it in the footage."

I asked offhand, "Have you ever skated?"

Dean paused. "I skated at a community rink for a couple years when I was a kid. Didn't have the means to keep it up after that."

Two years and he could pick up on all this?

I asked, "Who taught you?"

He didn't answer. Just kept writing. He clearly didn't want to talk about his past.

Two weeks ago, when I'd agreed to Brendan's bet, I hadn't expected to care about some equipment room grunt.

Now I was sitting in my idling car, waiting for him to wake up. I even reached over and adjusted the AC vent to blow toward his face.

What the hell was I doing?

My phone buzzed. Brendan: Curtis, what's your problem?

You dragged him out in front of everyone. Where does that leave me?

I typed back: He drank too much. If he can't get up tomorrow, how's this supposed to work?

Brendan replied instantly: Who are you bullshitting? You could've just cornered him and asked, 'When you wrote that shit, were you jerking off to my pictures?' See if he pisses himself on the spot.

I sent back: Why are you in such a hurry? It's coming.

Brendan replied with a middle finger emoji. I tossed my phone onto the seat.

Dean's eyes slowly opened. His voice was hoarse. "Are we... at the dorm?"

"Yeah."

Dean pushed the door open and stepped out. The hem of his hoodie rode up, exposing a strip of pale skin at his lower back. Right above the dimples of his spine—just enough space to fit a fingertip. I stared for a few seconds before looking away.

Dean turned back to look at me. "Curtis... why did you cover for me tonight?"

My hand rested on the edge of the steering wheel. Brendan's face flashed through my mind—the bet, the one-month deadline, sleeping on the floor or buying breakfast. I should've brushed him off with something casual.

But I looked at his eyes, flushed red from the alcohol, the way his tongue flicked out to wet his dry lips before pressing them together again—and I couldn't say any of the lines I'd rehearsed.

After a few seconds, I said, "If you can't get up tomorrow, who's going to edit the footage?"

He nodded. "Got it. Thanks for driving me back."

He shut the door and walked away, steps unsteady but he didn't fall.

That night, I sat at my desk in the apartment and, on some inexplicable impulse, opened the forum as a guest and searched for the story Brendan had shown me.

Chapter seventeen was already up. The view count had gone up since the last time I'd looked.

I closed the page and leaned back in my chair, thumb unconsciously rubbing the spot at the base where the tooth marks had long since faded.

The bet was still on. But I realized I wasn't in a hurry to end it. I couldn't explain why.

If he found out about the bet, what would his face look like? Would he cry? Or would he bite my thumb again like last time?

Either way, I realized I wouldn't feel any sense of victory.

I didn't want him to know about the bet at all.