Roommates With Benefits [BL] Chapter 74: Something To Remember Tonight

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He wasn’t doing anything special, just sitting there basking in his own delight, and I knew it with that kind of certainty you get when you’ve spent enough ti around soone to pick up on their emotional states without trying.

I decided to sneak a glance.

Big mistake, a colossal mistake. The kind of mistake made by soone who knows better but looks anyway.

He was smirking. Not a big grin, Damien didn’t do big but it lingered at the corner of his mouth like it intended to stick around.

What irked the most was the fact that he was completely unbothered, like he knew sothing I hadn’t figured out yet and was just waiting for to catch up.

Which was ridiculous. If anyone ought to know what was going on in my head, it was .

Unfortunately, I was starting to doubt my own judgnt. Recent evidence suggested my personal insights had been pretty shaky for weeks now.

The ga picked back up before I could continue arguing, which was the first good thing to happen in the last ten minutes.

Hockey, to its credit, really tried.

As the players returned to the ice, the energy in the arena surged again, and the crowd began to find its rhythm. The familiar pull of the ga, that intense need for full attention...slowly pulled away from my spiraling thoughts.

When my team scored midway through the period, I was on my feet before I even realized what I was doing.

"YES—" My fist shot into the air, and I turned to the nearest stranger to share the excitent, grinning with the pure joy that cos from forgetting everything complicated for just a mont.

Then it hit that Damien was still next to .

I sat back down instantly.

He was watching , not the goal replay on the big screen or the surrounding celebrations, just , with that look he gets when he thinks sothing is worth noticing, which lately seed to include nearly everything I did. And I had no idea how to handle that.

"Don’t you have investnts to manage ntally?" I shot at him. "A private island to ponder?"

"I’m thinking about the ga."

"You’re looking at ."

"You’re more interesting than the ga."

I faced forward, forcefully. "Watch the ice."

As far as I could tell, he did not watch the ice.

The ga intensified as the clock ticked down, and despite my brain trying to sabotage , I couldn’t fully disengage. Every near miss had leaning forward.

Every save made hold my breath, as if I actually had a stake in the outco. Every big hit against the boards sent a ripple through the crowd that I felt before I even processed it.

For long stretches, I managed to forget. About lanie. About the kiss cam. About that awkward kitchen conversation over cold coffee and the six words that had mixed things up in ways I didn’t even know were possible. About all of it.

Then my team scored the winning goal.

The arena erupted.

Everyone around sprang to their feet as one, and the roar beca sothing so unified it transford into this physical wave of sound.

I was laughing, high-fiving a complete stranger in a rival jersey who also seed thrilled, and for that one wonderfully uncomplicated mont, there was nothing but joy.

No confusion, no overthinking, no competing thoughts cluttering my mind. Just a hockey ga that ended well and the pure happiness that ca with it.

It felt amazing. Really, genuinely amazing. I’d forgotten how nice that feeling could be, in such a simple way.

Then I glanced to my side.

Damien was already staring at .

Of course he was.

And just like that, my emotional crisis ca rushing back, like it had never left, refreshed and ready, as if it had taken an intermission of its own.

Fantastic.

The crowd began to drift towards the exits, moving slowly like people who’d had their fill and weren’t in any rush to return to reality. I figured we’d join the throng right away.

Instead, Damien slowed down by one of the souvenir stands, where they had jerseys, pennants, and various trinkets displayed under bright lights.

I halted beside him. "What are you doing?"

"Shopping."

"Why?"

He shot a look that suggested I was asking a delightfully unnecessary question. "People do that."

"Not you. You’re the kind of person who has things acquired for you. You have a whole support system."

Damien chuckled, the genuine kind... and returned to examining the display. I just stood there, watching him take a real interest in the stuff, and I felt sothing in my chest loosen slightly that I hadn’t realized was tense.

A few minutes later, he ca back.

He held sothing out to without a word or any preamble.

I looked at it, keychain. Simple and small, just the team mascot in tal, like the kind of thing you find in tourist shops everywhere, costing almost nothing and serving no real purpose except to get stuck on keys and seen every day.

He had the matching one in his other hand.

I stared for a mont, at the one he was offering , at the one he was holding, at the utter simplicity of the gesture.

"Oh," I managed.

That was it. Twenty-one years of language skills, and all I could muster was oh.

He shrugged, the way he did when he’d done sothing he didn’t plan to make a big deal out of. "Sothing to rember tonight."

The words seed effortless. They weren’t, really, there was a weight beneath them, sothing careful and genuine, wrapped in the ease of a shrug and given without expecting anything in return.

Nobody had bought anything like this in ages. Not a birthday gift or a customary present, but just sothing small and random and specifically for tonight, simply because he wanted to.

The kind of thing that only holds aning because soone thought of it, and that thoughtfulness is what counts.

Sothing inside my chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with embarrassnt.

"Thanks," I said, quietly.

His expression shifted, just a tiny bit, just enough. "You’re welco."

I wrapped my fingers around the keychain and tucked it into my pocket before my face could give away any more of my feelings.