#yes yes yes he’s one of the leading scorers shut the fuck up

[andreabarzagli]

We’re really paying 30m/year for a penalty taker and a free-kick hogger

[multsicorn]

fic: physical chemical (jack/parse)

Jack needs anything to distract him from the worries in his head. So - he kisses his hot best friend.

Explicit, ~3400 words, also here on ao3.

The Rimouski Océanic lose to the Montreal Junior Hockey Club 3-0.  It's their fourth loss in a row, the team record deteriorating from a respectable if disappointing 4-2 at the start of the season to an early-mounting avalanche of defeats that's becoming harder and harder to come back from.  Morale in the locker room is starting to crumble, and Jack, as captain, feels both duty-bound and hopeless to turn the course of this leaking ship back towards land before it sinks.

They probably shouldn't have named him captain.  He was the leading scorer, last year.  This year Parse is edging him out even for that title, 7 to 6 so far.  But he doesn't know how to motivate people.  He has no idea how to lead.  He may be the best player on the ice, driving power plays, making shots on goal, but if he can't figure out how to play captain as well as he's always played center, the dashed hopes of the Océanic will be all on his shoulders.  And he'll never get to play seriously again.  He can't even imagine.

The cold spray of the locker room shower ought to sting his skin.  He'd been waiting for the pain of it as soon as he trudged off the ice.  But somehow, caught up in his own head, he can't feel the needles of water as they penetrate the heavy gray cloud of self-directed anger and loathing.  He lathers up and rinses off quickly, and if he's shaking when he gets out, it's neither from tiredness or temperature but from sheer animal terror.

He needs to get away from the arena.  He wants to get away from everything.  But in half an hour, he also needs to be meeting his parents for dinner, with Parse, so he goes up into the nearby hotel to change.

Parse is watching cartoon ducks flying a helicopter on the TV when Jack gets in and throws himself facedown on the other bed.  "Zimms," he says.  Jack grunts in response.

Dinner with his parents.  Fuck.  Papa's always gone over the play with him after a game.  It's what makes Jack a better player than his teammates, what's helped him improve year after year: the opportunity afterwards to revisit every missed opportunity on the ice.  It's not just the play-by-play, either, though that will be painful enough.  Papa will ask for his ideas on how to resuscitate the sinking Océanic (and thus, unspoken, Jack's planned-on career).  Jack can't bear to imagine telling his father that he's been too overwhelmed by their failures, and too paralyzed by fear, to have come up with any plans.  Papa's ideas will be better than Jack's would have been in any case, he's sure, but that doesn't change the fact that he can't go into this situation without a single defense plan prepared.

"We should get going now," Parse says, "if we wanna meet your parents on time."  Jack hadn't noticed, but the TV's off now.  He wonders how long he's been lying here for.  Parse tosses something at him from the direction of the dresser, and the nice gray slacks Jack had brought for this occasion whip across his face when he doesn't move to catch them.  From across the room come the sounds of Parse changing: rustle of a too-stiff shirt, clink of belt.  "C'mon, Zimms.  The hell are you waiting for?"

"Go on without me," Jack groans.  He waves his hand tiredly, like a soldier bleeding out, who needs to say to his comrades: there's nothing more you can do here.  Leave me to die.

Parse snorts.  "They're your parents, dude.  I don't think they wanna see me without you."

"Just - tell 'em I'm sick or something.  Can't you?"  Parse always covers for him.  It's mutual; Parse had asked him first, always the joker, the troublemaker, back in their rookie year.  Now Parse shakes his head, and Jack doesn't know if he's scared to lie to Jack's father or tired of the shifting balance between them or what.

The balance of the bed is disturbed as Parse climbs onto it, then holds the back of his hand to Jack's forehead for a few seconds.  "You're not, are you?"

Jack shakes his head to get rid of the intrusion.  "I just don't have anything to say to them.  I played like shit today.  You saw it."

"You've gotta stop beating yourself up, man.  The game's over."  Parse's voice is too warm, and Jack wishes it would just go away.

"Shut up, Parser.  You - "

"It hurts the whole team when you do this," Parse's voice cuts over his.

"You don't even know what it's like.  Your passes connected today.  This is all me.  I couldn't make 'em count."

"We all have bad days."  Parse's voice is sharper, now, cause that's the effect Jack has on his friends, apparently.  "You don't get to act like you're the only one this team matters to."

"I can't," Jack says.  "I can't have bad days."  But this inability feels free-floating and all-encompassing.  He can't do anything, anyone can see that, and Parse is too close to him on the bed, and his parents are too close waiting downstairs, and the draft is too close, months away, closing in, and there's nowhere he can go to get away, not from any of it, not even for a second.  He can't breathe, and he feels his lungs laboring, the bedspread shaking in his clenched fingers, and in the background of it all he feels Parse's hands, moving slow and steady on his back.

"Breathe, Zimms," Parse is saying.  "Just breathe."  Jack wants to object that it's not that easy, that if he could be breathing he would be, but in fact of course he can't say anything.  He can only keep hanging on as his heart and lungs decide whether to recalibrate themselves.

After some time he tears his eyes up from where his hands are still bunching up the tiny blue-on-blue floral print to look at Parse's head, which is bent in front of his own.  Jack can't see his face just now.  What he can see and he can't stop staring at is the tousled mess of golden curls that Parse always tries to put into some sort of order, but Jack is in love with just the way they are.  Whether because Jack's breath coming so deep, or because Parse is just sitting so close to him, a few strands of hair wave back and forth as Jack breathes in and out.

"D'you need anything?" Parse asks.  "Pills?  Water?"  Jack should say yes.  Should choose something like that.  But he's not thinking again and he can't.  start thinking.  and.  he thinks.  Parse is right here -

"Just tell me," Parse says.  His hand is still on Jack's back, and Jack leans up and pulls Parse to him with a hand in his shirt collar.  He kisses him like he'll never have to worry about breathing again, with his tongue and his teeth all at once, and for three heart-stopping seconds Parse doesn't kiss him back, and then he does.

It's a perfect distraction.  Parse moves the hand that had been lingering on Jack's back to hook under his arm, to help pull Jack up as he himself leans down so there's no strain left in the way of their kiss.  So there's nothing left in Jack's universe except the remarkable softness of Parse's messy hair, in his hand, except for the unexpected marvel of Parse's spit in his mouth.

Parse pulls back, after some moments, and leans his forehead up against Jack's.  "So we're doing this?"

The color of his eyes is no more definable from up close than it's ever been, but Jack still loses time in trying to parse the boundaries between blue and green and gray.  Parse watches him back for a while, eyes wide and almost steady on Jack's face, but eventually he breaks.

"Cause I don't know about you, but I - I really - " and Jack says, "Please," in answer to Parse's last question, on the way to both kissing him and shutting him up again.

When Jack kisses Parse, Parse pulls him closer, into him, even onto him, and Jack follows, chasing Parse's mouth and the salty skin of his neck and the heat of his body.  Parse pulls, and Jack pushes, both ever closer, so that eventually Jack is lying with his upper half on Parse's chest, and Parse is bent backwards at the waist.  Jack thinks it must be uncomfortable, but with his hands on Parse's ass he can't muster up the thoughts to care.  He wants skin, though, even more than anything, so he moves his hands and spreads them out wide over Parse's hips, fingers dipping under his trousers and crawling up under his untucked shirt.  He wants to feel all of Parse's skin, right now, wants to surround himself in it, wants suddenly very badly to know just how far they can push this thing between them.

"Can you?" Jack whispers, right into Parse's mouth.

Parse is smiling like he thinks his next shot might be a game-winner.  "Yeah?"

Jack moves his fingers to indicate.  "Take it off?"

"Sure."  Parse pushes at Jack's shoulders, then.  "You gotta get off me first, though."

"Oh.  Yeah."

Parse is beautiful when he gets up from the bed.  When Jack lets him get up, which is thrilling.  But then, Jack always thinks he's beautiful -

Well, that's because he is, objectively.  There's nothing new about the motions of Parse pushing his shirt off his shoulders, or his pants down his thighs, much less the lightly-muscled but wonderfully mundane flesh that he exposes by doing so.  Jack's boner had been getting uncomfortable in his shorts, and so he removes them and his underwear all in one quick motion, then lies down on his side to watch Parse finish undressing.

Parse is standing in the space between their beds wearing just his black boxer-briefs, with his thumbs tucked into the waistband and a sheepish half-grin on his face.  He's hard.  The bulbous near-cylinder of his cock stretches the cloth out deliciously, almost but not quite poking out of the waistband.  This Jack hasn't seen before, not in locker rooms or in hotels, and even contained in a layer of cotton, his mouth waters for it.

He wants Parse to come back to the bed just like that, wants to mouth at his cock through the fabric before Parse lets him taste for real.  He wants to ask Parse to - he just wants to let Parse fuck his mouth.  He's made significant if embarrassing progress on bananas and cucumbers, but he's not sure he's good enough to try for real yet.  He doesn't want to risk messing it up.

"Like what you see?" Parse asks.  He's insufferable.  Smirking, now, under Jack's stare, but Jack knows Parse's smirks well enough to see the currents of uncertainty under this one.

He swallows, still wanting to ask for more.  "Everything?"

"Okay."

Parse strips off his boxer-briefs and climbs back onto the bed in one fluid movement, depriving Jack of his opportunity to continue staring.  But then Parse is naked, and next to him, warmth radiating out and filling the inches between them with such an intensity that the space feels almost like a physical entity.

"Hey," Parse says.  There's laughter in his eyes, but his voice is as serious as it gets.  Jack leans in to kiss him again, bare contact of lip on lip.

"Hey, yourself."  Jack kind of wants to pull Parse all the way into him, or to roll forward into Parse.  Either way, just so they're pushed together.  But he doesn't move because he wants to get to touch Parse's dick just a little bit more than that.

Parse runs his fingers careful-light up Jack's sides, up under the sky-blue t-shirt that he'd honestly forgotten he's still wearing.  "You're not even naked."  There's laughter in his voice now, too.

"But you are."  Jack reaches out, but his fingers hover bare millimeters away from making contact with Parse's body, barely further than the pale golden hair that curls in the middle of Parse's chest.  He's not sure where he's allowed to touch.  He ends up putting his hand on one of Parse's pecs, and Parse's skin rises and falls minutely as he breathes where Jack's touching him.  "Can I jerk you off?" he says.  It's about all he can think of.  Though Parse's torso is fascinating, too, from up close.  Even if Jack must've seen it before, he's never noticed the trail of fair hair that leads almost invisibly down from the lowest of Parse's abs to where his cock is standing out, flushed, only an inch or two from the meat of Jack's own thigh.

"Like I'd say no to that, Zimms."  Parse's answer interrupts Jack's concentration, but it's what he's been waiting for.

"Okay."  Jack bites his lip, and lets his hand travel down.  The pull feels inevitable, like gravity.  He skims over the firm surface of Parse's abs with his fingertips, over the heartbreaking cut of muscle between his obliques and his hips, and wraps his hand, finally, around the shaft of Parse's cock.

Parse twitches in his hand with a low sound that punches Jack right in the gut.  Jack wonders how many more sounds like that he can get Parse to make.  Parse shifts his weight, then, so that he's lying more on his back and Jack's hand slips off - it must have been too sweaty, with the nerves.  After a moment of re-balancing he wraps his fingers around Parse again, more tightly this time.  His fingertips almost meet the base of his palm, which is crazily hot, to think he can engulf Parse in this way without even trying.  Parse's cock is red, flushed with blood and excitement and Jack could swear he can feel Parse's heartbeat through the addictively soft skin there.  Or maybe it's just his own, pounding through his fingers.

Parse isn't saying anything, as Jack moves his hand up and down, isn't even making noise, and as much as Jack loves what he's doing he's starting to wonder if he's doing it wrong.  He's run this play in his head more times than he'd care to admit, but real life is always different, his imagination insufficient to fully account for changed angles and the responses of the other players involved.  Now, when he tears his eyes up from Parse's dick long enough to see his face, it's flushed, as if he's just taken off his helmet.  Cheeks as red as his dick, hair looking like a hurricane's been through it... and his eyes, whatever color, are closed.

"How'm I doing?" Jack asks.  It sucks, having to ask that, not being sure.

" - shit.  Fuck."  Parse's vowels are bitten off, which Jack thinks hopefully is a good sign.  "Could you, like - "

"What," Jack asks, but Parse doesn't explain.  Instead he puts his own hand over Jack's, tugging them together to twist counterclockwise around the head on the upstroke.

"Okay," Jack says.  He's got it, but Parse doesn't let go of his hand, which is frustrating.  How's he ever gonna get better at this if Parse doesn't let him try - but, well.  The sight of the two of them stroking together is pretty nice, too.

Parse's hips finally start snapping up into their interlaced fingers, and Jack pushes his palm and his fingers back down onto and around him even harder.  He wants this forever -

But he only gets to have it right now for a minute or so before Parse is coming.  His release smears thrillingly on Jack's fingers as he works him through it, until Parse pries him off with his other hand to finish stroking himself through the aftershocks.

A few drops stick to Jack's thigh.  He wishes there were more.

Parse lies flat down on his back, then.  His breathing is loud, but otherwise he's silent, and Jack follows him over.  He tucks his face into the space between Parse's shoulder and neck, and wriggles so that his weight presses his dick firmly into Parse's hipbone.  He's still hard, though he he'd forgotten for a while.

Parse breathes, and Jack takes it all in: the aftermath, he guesses.  Twin feelings of contentment and arousal expand like colored clouds of smoke to fill his mind.  He doesn't notice that he's rubbing against Parse's hip until Parse puts a hand on his ass and says, "Zimms.  Calm down."  As if the action and the statement taken together aren't completely contradictory.

He gets an elbow under himself and levers his upper body off Parse, carefully, disentangling till only their feet remain together.  "Do you mind if I jerk off?"  If Parse doesn't want to reciprocate, then fine, but he's getting uncomfortable by now.

"Just gimme a minute," Parse says.  Jack thinks he's already given him plenty.  But he doesn't point this out, after all, first of all because it's unlikely to help, and then because Parse is flailing around, trying to move uncoordinatedly, and then he's holding Jack's cock in his hand, which is.  Yes.  Well.  That's good.

Jack's been waiting too long at this point.  The visual of Parse's hand on his cock, the way that Parse's smaller fingers make Jack look all out of proportion and almost too big, is incredible.  But he can't be sure of the placement of the calluses on Parse's hand, which must be different from his own.  He can't tell how literally soft Parse's hands are or aren't on his dick - they're on his dick! - and still, he wants to know how they feel choking up on Parse's stick.  Because he's been leaking for ages, and he's desperate, and then he's coming already, and by the time he's managed to think all these things, half of them are in retrospect.

And then he's sitting half-up, panting over his messy dick and Parse's messy hand and what despite its theoretical shortcomings is still by far the best orgasm he's had so far in his life of now, he definitively knows, way too few orgasms.

He flops back down to the bed.  He feels like he's floating in a sea of stars.  Like it's one of those nights they've gone down to the beach, when the sea and the sky are both so clear that all of the stars reflect into the water, as if they've taken over the world.  When they float looking up into the sky, and everything in every direction looks the same as in every other.

"Are you okay?"  Parse's voice doesn't quite wake him up.  Jack hadn't been sleeping, but at the question he blinks abruptly alert.  Somehow Parse must have gotten up, showered, and dressed again, all while Jack was lying here.  "Because we have to go meet your parents, like, right now.  We're already late."

Parse looks worried, but Jack is still feeling lazy.  "Don't wanna," he says, both to see what Parse will do now, and because it's still true.

Parse leans down to kiss him quickly, which must be an answer to that question, which is amazing, and then grabs Jack by both arms to pull him up off the bed.

"But you gotta," Parse says.  "Come on."

Honestly?  If anyone asked Jack, right now, he'd say he mostly wants to stare at Parse's face forever.  He probably he should eat something.  But the unbearable weight of anxiety that he remembers had almost broken him down earlier seems to have dissipated, for now.  Like when he's out there on the ice: maybe it's endorphins that do the trick.  In any case, dinner feels possible right now.  So he washes quickly, Parse slapping his ass as he heads into the shower, and he wrestles the dress slacks he picks back up from the floor over his thighs.  They're hopelessly wrinkled, but he doesn't care.  He buttons up the shirt that Parse digs out of his suitcase while he's fastening his pants, and brushes the back of his hand against Parse's before they walk out the door.