Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Original Male Character(s)

Additional Tags:

Desire, Homophobia, Hockey culture, Hazing, 5+1, Locker Rooms

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of New Hockey

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-04 Words: 602 Chapters: 1/1

Never Looking Down

Summary

It’s his hand zipping a bag shut.

Notes

i read this article and was intrigued by martial’s poem recited in it. title pulled from there. i'm assuming by reading the tags that you're not looking for an uplifting fic.

thank you both to salad and ren for nitpicking this and providing invaluable feedback.

To keep his fingers in Shane’s short hair and force his head down, the boy has to grip it tight. Smelling salts, he says, you have to try ‘em. He’s smiling square-mouthed and Shane remembers it as a stretch of lips over teeth, cupid’s bow and acne-prickled skin. Shane doesn’t look at the bottle in the boy’s hands. Just his eyes. His knees scraping the floor. Someone’s palm over his mouth for encouragement, come on, Hollander—sniff it! Scent ripping through him. He angles his knees in for cover. Thighs flush together and tense. His scalp stings, body lurching shamefully hot.

He learns that pose quick, knees bruising each other. They don’t always let him screw his eyes shut. Shane’s youngest, still has to say thank you when his bag unzips to acrid, damp gear, skates stuffed with sopping underwear. That underwear makes it to his mouth; since the salts weren’t doing it for you, here’s pit-stench, thigh and groin-crease musk. Pinch his nose, mouth left free. A gentle thumb prodding his cheek. Shane’s the kind of pretty that’s for laughs. He wishes his body could mirror other boys’; as in, wants their bodies together; as in—skin to lips. It’s dizzying.

Their hips flush at a party. Fireball to his lips, spice-sweet and new, Shane holds that boy’s eyes and looks down when he swallows liquor. Only a glance, hungering inside for wet-mouth red-lips. Wants that taste, too. Does everyone see it on him, all the time? That boy touches his neck and says, Don’t be a pussy. Strong hand prying his mouth apart without resistance, shoves his grimy, sweaty fingers into Shane’s mouth, and Shane knows that taste from soaked boxers. What’s Shane’s soft palate feel like? His bulging, squirmy tongue? Shane is grateful making him gag is easy work.

Someone says they’ve got a video of a girl getting fucked in the ass. The guy wiggles fingers out, pretending to cup cheeks and spreading them. Shane laughs at the precisely right time because he’s going to be captain soon.

That's how fags do it, right? Is the question. How’s it even fit in the ass? Might be simple to slide from knees onto elbows, too. Shane knows what guys sound like exhausted, excited. Knows how their hands would look prying him open, too, now. But he’d be on top, right? Feeding cock into a hole. His kneeling is temporary.

But if they present themselves, wrestling their bodies into Shane’s vision, it’s not his fault. Boy exiting the showers, a ruddy expanse of skin as he passes Shane’s stall. Shane turns one knee, pinches his thigh where it’s soft. He imagines sweat, the hipline towards another length, solid, silky, even, if anything like his own. His lips on that jut of hip, its warm, soapy taste. A palm on his spine, arching him—and aren’t you gonna shower, Hollander? Come on, drop the fucking towel. You’re our boy, we’ve seen it already. He made it. Even bile tastes good today.

Then: catch someone else breaking the perfect formula for where to look and how long. Risking everything for the swell of a chest, curved shoulder muscles, knobbly hips. Staring straight ahead, Shane remembers smelling salts and carpet-burnt knees, says, Can you stop staring at my dick with your mouth all wet, what are you, a—

sat on a gym floor, observing pink tongue, gold cross, not looking up

—? And his boys, soft-boiled inside their gangly bodies, say in the practiced cadence of all rooms: Eyes up, fag! But Shane’s body can mirror now. It’s his hand zipping a bag shut.