Sasquatch to the Moon

8: Mario Kart

ROCKET

It's just his shoulder. It's just his shoulder. It's just his shoulder. It's just his fucking shoulder.

God but he's pretty and there's just something about him.

It's the stupid white frosted blue eyes. It's the white eyelashes over dark eyes. Plus. He's never acted like that before. The jokes came out of nowhere and frankly, I loved it. 

Thinking about it, he's never been anything more than formal with me, bitchy here and there, but formal. I feel like it takes him a while to warm up to new people. The joking around that he just did must be close friends only. I'm rather honored by that one.

"Mario Kart, you guys in or out?" Fen raises his voice to catch our attention and tips his chin, challenging us.

"Oh you just challenged the wrong person," Jackie mumbles. I raise my eyebrows.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, Jackie has easily whopped all our asses in a very Jackie way. Complete silence, nothing but relaxed focus.

Fen is talkative while he's losing. Nico has a crazy good game face, her elbows on her knees, chewing her lip. Greenie just gets frustrated and smaller and angrier... and smaller, and angrier, and smaller...

Steph just stays Steph and laughs it off. He's relaxed. I'm not paying attention at all because four large guys on one couch is tight, so whenever Yeti's left hand strains, I can feel the ripple go all the way up to his shoulder.

Which is making it really hard to breathe.

Really hard to breathe because his arms are twice the size of mine and I can't tell if he's a tense person or if he hates sitting this close to people but his arm is rock solid against mine, broad shoulders and big body taking up more room on the couch than I am but I'm happy to accommodate and let him have the rest of the space just so I can keep looking at him out of the corner of my eye. 

There's something about how he looks so lost all the time and how the crease in his eyebrows from years of expressions looks so hurt that makes me want to get closer to him. I know he wouldn't back away, there's nobody for him to back up to. I want to break his walls in, I want to know who is on the other side. 

And then I realize I haven't been paying attention to the conversation at all because suddenly he's laughing.

I've never heard Yeti laugh before. It's... it's not what I expected in the least. Steph's laugh is short kind-of hiccupping and involves a lot of his shoulders shaking. Fen's laugh is a couple of seconds of loud and then it's mostly silent. Greenie sounds like he's hiccupping or crying. Jackie's is a small exhale. Nico laughs in a regular way, but covers her mouth and leans so at least her shoulder is touching Fen. 

But Yeti. He doesn't laugh much at all, considering it's been about six weeks knowing him personally and this is one of the first times. But his head goes back and his laugh is a heavy rolling noise. It's deep and tumbles around the room. It's frankly the best laugh I've ever heard. His laughing smile is ridiculous as well. He's got a dimple up by his eye, might be a scar, might not. I could probably count teeth all the way back to his molars if I wanted.

Steph elbows me in the side. "What do you think?"

I blink a couple of times, "sorry, spaced out, what's up?"

"And that's the ADHD," Steph snorts. It was not the ADHD. He gives me a little look, he knows something's weird. It's one of those things that happens with a guy that's been attached at the hip to you since you were sixteen: he knows goddamn everything. 

***

YETI

The first game after ping pong is LA at home. Morning skate is easy and slow and we're all pretty relaxed for this one.

Except me, of course.

That's because Rocket Stojanovič decided to get green highlights on one of his helmets. Two green stripes up the sides. White lightning in the stripes. They highlight his eyes perfectly. Yesterday's practice did the same thing to me.

I couldn't shoot, I couldn't skate near him. The only thing that I could do was defend him so I didn't have to look in his direction, because every time I did, I couldn't pay attention to anything else.

And that was all well and good because I got put on his scrimmage team, and then we had to work out afterward.

Normally I'm fine with that. I put in my headphones and I work out for an hour and a half, then I go home. Ice in the morning, weights in the afternoon. Every practice day works the same.

But yesterday I got distracted quite a bit more than I would have hoped. I have a regular beaten-down schedule of exercises. First things first, to warm up, I do some easy leg presses. Not heavy yet, just to warm up. And then I was watching Rocket start off with Paxton and their first few exercises. They workout together, if Paikkala was out of the hospital, he'd be working with them.

Point is, Rocket's shirt was a little on the tight side. It took a lot of breathing exercises to keep me focused.

It wasn't actually all that tight. It just pulled in all the right spots across his shoulders. It helped that he's a huge fan of using the bottom lip of his shirt to wipe off his forehead. I caught him almost every time he did it, just so I could look at the skin stretched over his muscle in that one way. Toned but not defined.

Plus, he's got that natural hockey flow. All long and wavy just how hockey boys like it. But when he's working out, he slaps a hat over it. His hair curls out the sides of the hat, and it works wonders on him.

Today, with the warmup skate, I was undressing afterward, all of us in the locker room, and I realized that today was the first day that I've focused on him shirtless. Like I said with the lifting of his shirt yesterday. He's toned, not bulked. I'm bulky, Fen's bulky. Steph's somewhere in the middle. Greenie as well. Rocket's got almost olive skin. He honestly looks a little Greek and a little Slavic at the same time. His hair is too straight and too light to be Greek. But his skin is too dark and too tan to be Slavic.

I'm staring.

God I'm staring. 

***

Is anyone else feeling lonely?

It just can't be me only,

Losing our cool so slowly.

It would feel so good to,

Steal some time.

It would feel so good to,

Make you mine.

is everybody going crazy - nothing but thieves

***

Anyway, pining

g'day

-rabid