Blindside

Five: Gala

Ronan / Levi

Ronan owned exactly one tuxedo and hated it exactly as much every time he put it on — a reliable, almost comforting misery. At least the tux was predictable. Unlike, apparently, whatever this season had decided to do to the rest of his life.

The league's midseason charity gala was, in Ronan's professional opinion, the single most exhausting night of the year that didn't involve actual competition — four hours of small talk, sponsor photography, and standing around in expensive shoes while people who'd never played a shift of hockey in their lives explained the game to him. He'd have skipped it entirely if attendance weren't mandatory for captains, a fact he was reminded of, unhelpfully, by Wyatt's texted photo of himself already three drinks deep at the open bar an hour before Ronan had even left his apartment.

He should have known the seating chart would find a way to be cruel. Team captains, alphabetically by club — Ironbay, Meridian — meant Ronan spent the cocktail hour one place setting away from Levi Ashford, close enough to smell the guy's cologne, which was, infuriatingly, good.

Levi looked different out of gear. Ronan had known that in an abstract way — obviously the man had a life outside a rink, obviously he wore clothes that weren't padded — but knowing it and standing four feet from Levi Ashford in a black suit that fit like it had been made for exactly this purpose were two very different kinds of knowing. He'd swapped the on-ice scowl for something more careful, more public, and it didn't suit him nearly as well. Ronan almost said so before he caught himself.

"Didn't peg you for a suit guy," Levi said, sliding into the seat beside him with the ease of a man who'd decided, somewhere between the door and the table, that he wasn't going to give Ronan the satisfaction of looking uncomfortable about the seating chart.

"Didn't peg you for the type to read a place card and not immediately request a transfer."

"I thought about it." Levi picked up his water glass, didn't drink from it, just held it like something to do with his hands. "Decided it'd look worse than just sitting here being normal about it."

"Very convincing normal."

"I'm working with what I've got."

"You do this every year?" Levi asked, gesturing vaguely at the ballroom, the string quartet, the entire overproduced apparatus of the evening. "The gala circuit?"

"Every year since I got the C." Ronan considered his water glass like it had personally wronged him. "They tell you it gets easier. It does not get easier."

"Small mercies. At least the food's good."

"The food is mediocre and you know it. You're being diplomatic because there's a camera pointed at the room."

Levi laughed — actually laughed, quick and surprised, like it had gotten out before he'd approved it — and for a second neither of them seemed to know quite what to do with the fact that it had happened.

It was, against every instinct Ronan had spent three years cultivating, almost fun. There was a version of tonight where they spent the whole dinner trading exactly this kind of low-grade fire and it would have been, if not enjoyable, at least survivable. That version lasted about eleven minutes — right up until the event photographer arrived at their table with a request neither of them could politely refuse: a photo of the two captains, rivalry angle, for a sponsor who apparently thought conflict sold tickets.

"Closer," the photographer said, the way photographers always said it, like closeness was a simple technical adjustment and not an entire negotiation. "A little closer. Perfect — Levi, if you could just — there, hold that."

Levi's shoulder ended up against Ronan's, close enough that Ronan could feel the warmth of him straight through two layers of formalwear, close enough that some old, quiet, locked-away part of him sat up and took very direct notice. He held still through six or seven flashes, mostly out of self-preservation, because he did not trust what his face might do if he let it react to any of this honestly.

"You can let go of my arm now," Levi said, low, not quite managing to sound as unbothered as he clearly wanted to.

"I'm not touching your arm."

"You're touching my arm."

He was, in fact, touching his arm — one hand settled at Levi's elbow at some point in the last ninety seconds, without Ronan's conscious permission, the kind of instinctive, possessive gesture he had exactly zero business making toward a man he'd put through the boards two days ago. He let go like he'd been burned. Neither of them said anything about it. Both of them were thinking about it loud enough that Ronan half expected the whole table to hear.

Levi found the balcony around ten, mostly to get away from a sponsor who'd cornered him for what felt like the fortieth consecutive minute about brand synergy, and discovered, with the bad luck that seemed to define his entire relationship with this man, that he wasn't the only one who'd had the idea.

Ronan didn't turn around right away. He was leaning on the railing, jacket off, tie loosened, looking out at the city skyline like it owed him an explanation for something.

"I can go," Levi said.

"You don't have to."

He stayed. He told himself it was about the air, the noise, the general exhaustion of performing normal for four straight hours in front of people who wanted a story more than they wanted the truth. He didn't examine, too closely, why staying felt like the easiest decision he'd made all night.

They didn't talk about hockey. That was the strange part, looking back — two men whose entire relationship, as far as either of them would have said out loud a month ago, existed entirely on eighty-five feet of ice, and out here neither of them brought it up once. Levi asked about the tux, badly, as an opener, and Ronan told him some story about his mother forcing him into formalwear for a cousin's wedding at age eleven that had nothing to do with anything and made Levi laugh anyway — the first real one all night.

"You're different than I thought," Levi said, before he could stop himself.

"Careful. Almost sounds like a compliment."

"Don't let it go to your head."

Ronan looked over at him then — really looked, in a way that felt different from the ice, different from the seating chart, different from the photo. Steadier. It made the back of Levi's neck go warm despite the cold.

"Too late," Ronan said, quiet.

For one long, stretched-out second, standing on a hotel balcony above a city neither of them lived in year-round, Levi genuinely thought he might close the four feet of space still between them and find out exactly what that would feel like.

Then his phone buzzed — Marcus, something about a morning interview — and the moment broke, and Ronan straightened up like he'd remembered, all at once, every reason this was a terrible idea.

"We should get back," Ronan said.

"Yeah," Levi agreed, and neither of them moved for another five full seconds before they did.

He thought about that balcony the entire drive home. He was still thinking about it three days later, which was, by any reasonable measure, a problem — one he had absolutely no intention of solving anytime soon.