You Could Make a Life

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  When Dan gets back to the hotel room, Marc's still out, probably competing for last place in what's shaping up to be a tournament that'll last half the night and get all their asses kicked by Coach when they show up bleary eyed tomorrow, and Dan showers, passes out before Marc gets back.

  *

  The next time he's an hour late for curfew, and when he gets in, Marc seems to be already asleep, sprawled out on his stomach on the far bed. Seems to be, at least, until Dan's stripped to his boxers, the room tipping sort of dizzily around him as he lies prone, and Marc says "Dan?", quiet enough that Dan can claim plausible deniability, can feign sleep.

  *

  It's not like he makes a habit of it. He just does it when it gets to be too much, the endless cycle of cities, the dirty jokes and exaggerated hook-up stories and Marc picking a new cause to champion to the annoyance of the team. When it gets to be too much to share a room with Marc, to see him curled up, defensive, in sleep, the long line of his back, the way his hair brushes the nape of his neck.

  It's maybe more often than it should be, but it's good, it works. Dan doesn't know if it's coincidence or the power of dude-on-dude orgasms—he's going with that if he ever gets outed and Stevens wants to ape his swagger—but he's playing better than he ever has, racking up more and more ice time as the season goes on. When he calls Sarah she says something about sublimation, whatever the hell that means, but he hangs up on her when she starts sounding too smug.

  It works fine, a few insubstantial and uneventful encounters taking the edge off, making Dan feel great, then decent, then like shit, then itchy for it again. It works fine until it isn't quite enough, until he's itchy more and more, wants to put his hands on Marc, on the vulnerable nape of his neck, on the spot where his collarbone juts out, stark, on the hard muscle he's comprised of, on his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, where he no longer has the freckles but Dan knows they were there and that's enough. That's too much.

  But it works fine for awhile. They get all the way into February, mid, late, then the beginning of March. Dan managed two months, wanting, teeth clenched. His play is good and Marc's play is great, still running up to a Calder nomination, a clear winner if he stays this good, and they're staring a playoff spot in the face if they can just hold onto it for awhile.

  They're heroes in their city, a city that isn't used to heroes, and every homestand is a night to take advantage of that for the single guys, the ones who don't go home to wives and kids but instead go out to be adored. Dan avoids it, mostly, allows them all to mock him for letting his mom crack the whip, doesn't want to watch girls all over everyone, let girls hang all over him, when if he did what he actually wanted to he'd be front page news while rest of the guys garner blurry twitter pictures at most.

  He manages to avoid it, but then comes the night he gets a goal, a rare goal, and draws a slashing penalty that leads to a sore wrist for him and a game winner for Buchanan, so none of them will hear his excuses. Even Buch comes out, buys the first round before disappearing to go home and make sure his kids actually went to bed post-game, and half the team's there, splitting up slowly to pick up or dance, but retaining a table as an epicentre. Marc showed up, probably because Dan went, since he thinks that's the only way they can get Marc to participate, giving him a Dan buffer. Probably the only way they can stand Marc participating, honestly.

  Dan nurses a beer at the mostly abandoned table, leans into Marc, sitting beside him, seemingly as content not to move as Dan is. Dan's tired, and he's sore, and he promises himself after two beers he'll let himself go home, but Pazuhniak comes over with a group of girls, all pretty and dressed nice and giggly, and generously donates two of them to the rookie cause, or so he says.

  He donates one practically right into Marc's lap, and she leans into him, says something too low for Dan to hear. Marc laughs, a genuine one, startled out of him, and Dan watches the crowd, tries to catch their waitress's eye. Lets himself look over at them when he knows the drinks will keep coming.

  She's pretty, Dan guesses, in the exact way his teammates all seem to like in a girl, blue eyes and blonde hair and a lot of eyeliner. Small, compared to Marc, and they look good together, her curves nestled against him. A cute couple is what Dan's mom would describe them as.

  Dan feels sort of sick. The waitress comes and he switches to water, which doesn't help at all. Tries switching to shots, and that helps a little. He buys a bunch of drinks for the girl's friend, dark haired and dark eyed, pretty enough, he thinks, though he's no judge, and probably the female equivalent of a wing man, because Dan's no prize, and definitely not one tonight.

  He's pretty sure he's really rude to the girl, whose name he was given and then promptly forgot, and he feels bad about it—she knows about hockey, or at least more about it than the average person, so the familiar taunt of 'puck bunny' doesn't seem fair—but her eyes had lit up in recognition when she was introduced to him and Marc, and as nice as she seems, he's pretty sure 'sorry, I'm gay, nothing personal,' would make it to Deadspin before the night was over, or at least to the friend who's still halfway in Marc's lap.

  Marc and the girl are talking close, the kind of talk that Dan knows from experience is less about the actual content and more about the proximity, the knowledge that you could kiss in a moment, any moment, the way he talked to Alex for weeks before anything happened. He finishes off the dregs of Marc's beer, forgotten beside him, and levers himself up, doesn't even bother to say anything to the girl beside him, who's clearly given up on him and is busy texting. It's likely totally defamatory things about him, but he doesn't give a shit.

  He goes to the bathroom, stares at a self-loathing face, walks through the crowd and then straight out the door, refusing to let himself look for the golden strands of Marc's hair bouncing off the strobes, his head probably bowed with the bleach blonde of the girl he's going to go home with.

  Dan bums a cigarette off a girl out front, borrows her lighter, more for an excuse to be outside than anything else. He barely smokes it, doesn't even inhale, half-paranoid a trainer's going to spring out and proceed to kick his ass, and after he stubs it out he starts walking.

  He learned from a breezy summary of university life from Sarah that Alex was single again. She threw it in between a rant about a condescending TA and a story about the latest antics of her perma-stoned friend Cassie, but it still felt kind of pointed. Or at least pointed enough that he thinks about it now, two blocks away from the bar and still wandering further north, no destination in mind except away. He texts Alex, whose number has sat unused in his phone for months, a want 2 grab a drink? i cud use 1 he doesn't really expect a reply to.

  Alex texts back two minutes later, with Come over. and then his address. It isn't more than a twenty minute walk from where Dan is, deep in the student ghetto, so Dan texts him an ETA and heads north, gets there in fifteen to find some grand old house made less grand by the fixed-gear bikes lining the gate and the empties overflowing a bin on the porch.

  Alex's already down there, sitting on a rickety plastic chair, greets him with two beers already open, and Dan follows him up the cramped staircase to the third floor, a fancy European beer sweating in his palm. Alex gives him a tour. It's a glorified attic, sloping down enough that Dan needs to hunch his shoulders to avoid getting brained on the ceiling in the corners, so the tour isn't exactly long.

  After that, they sit on Alex's futon, drinking, silent, stilted, until Alex finally says "This is kind of awkward, isn't it," and Dan puts down his beer to kiss him.

  They don't slow down from there, pausing only to convert the futon from a couch into a bed, for Alex, half naked, to scramble to the bathroom for lube and a condom. When they'd been whatever they had been, a couple only in the loosest sense of the word, the sex had been exploratory, sort of giggly, both of them inexperienced and embarrassed about it. This isn't like that. Dan isn't in the mood, and Alex doesn't seem to be either.

  Dan doesn't know what to do after they've cleaned themselves up
. Alex isn't like the guys in the bathrooms of random cities, but Dan still feels itchy, like his skin's too tight, like he needs to run ten kilometres and punch something until it bleeds. Alex falls asleep beside him though, and leaving seems like a dick move, especially to a friend, so he stares at the ceiling, wondering why he feels so unsatisfied, why he thought it'd be a good idea to come, until he finally falls asleep.

  He wakes up early. Alex is still passed out, head on Dan's arm, which has gone numb beneath it. He's pretty, Alex, all long lashes and baby face. Dan had been totally blown away by how pretty he was when Sarah introduced them, pretty and friendly and gay, and at sixteen that had meant everything. Dan thinks about how easy it would have been if he could have just fallen for Alex, how much easier, except that's stupid, because Alex's the kind of guy who marches in pride parades, who joins all the Queer alliances, who'd use phrases like 'out and proud'. Vice President of the LGBTQ Alliance on campus, which is how he met Sarah, who was maybe a little too proud of Dan when he came out to her and his parents at sixteen. He's the kind of guy who would want Dan to come with him to the gay village, and charity events, and would never understand that Dan's refusal to do any of it was just him being protective of his career, not self-loathing. They'd already hashed all that out a year ago, when Dan was still in the OHL, and Alex kept trying—and failing—to take Dan out to places where they'd be seen, and all those problems are magnified with Dan in the NHL, on the Leafs, whose fans are obsessive, and whose media is worse.

  He gets through that train of thought, old regret, well-tread by now, before he has to get up and piss, nudging Alex's head off his arm. He looks at himself in the mirror when he washes his hands, because his teammates have been exchanging looks when they think he isn't looking, Marc hovering around him in a way that satisfies Dan and makes him feel guilty, all at once. He doesn't really look different, he doesn't think, just tired, and there's no one who could blame him for that with the way he's been playing. He splashes some water on his face, cold water to wake him up, and goes back out. Alex's awake now, blinking sleepily at him, and he shifts to sit up when Dan joins him on the futon, grabbing for his jeans.

  "Practice?" Alex asks, tipping into Dan a little, hair ticklish against Dan's arm.

  "Flight," Dan says, even though they're not leaving until early afternoon.

  "You off to somewhere exotic?" Alex asks.

  "Tampa," Dan says, and slides his jeans up his hips.

  "Lucky," Alex yawns, and moves away to grab his briefs, hidden half under the futon.

  When Dan's dressed, he's not sure what to do. He hasn't done this, morning afters, not with Alex or in general, between the bar hookups, the insistence in Juniors that handjobs were totally not gay, the fact that Dan was in high school when he'd been fooling around with Alex on the sly, and his mom was both psychic and protective.

  Alex leans his chin on Dan's shoulder. He fits there, fits well. Dan wants to flee the country, is grateful that he can.

  "I was kind of in love with you," Alex says quietly.

  Dan closes his eyes.

  "It was good to see you," Alex continues, chin digging into Dan's shoulder with every word he says. "But we probably shouldn't do this again."

  "Yeah," Dan says. If he'd expected this—which he hadn't, really, he wouldn't have come if he had—he'd expect to feel sad, or relieved, or something, but he doesn't feel anything, not really, and then just guilt about that lack, simmering low.

  Alex walks him down to the street, because he's always been kind of a gentleman in weird ways. It's eight in the morning, and any other neighbourhood would be bustling, but it's quiet, a whole block of people sleeping off hangovers and all-night papers.

  "Guess Freckles isn't working out," Alex says, voice neutral.

  "Alex," Dan starts.

  "No, sorry," Alex says. "Sorry." He bites his lip, then gets up on tiptoe. He's short enough that the kiss he aims for Dan's cheek lands more on his jaw than anything else. "Have a safe flight."

  "I'm really sorry," Dan says. He's not sure what he's apologizing for, really—not coming out a year ago when Alex wanted him to; the homophobia of sports; Alex being in love with him once; the booty call; Marc's freckles. Maybe all of it.

  "I know," Alex says. "Break a leg out there."

  Dan blinks at him. Alex looks back at him innocently.

  "You're a dick," Dan says finally.

  "Oh, is that not what they say in hockey?" Alex says.

  "A dick," Dan repeats, because that's better than blurting "sorry I couldn't fall in love with you instead", and ruffles Alex's hair in retaliation, leaves while Alex's squawking indignantly, laughing a little. He's probably going to get an irate call from Sarah later. Probably not going to see Alex any time soon, and it'll be awkward when he does. He should care more about it. He wants to care more about it.

  He takes a cab home. His parents are both at work, but there's a note from his mom on the fridge. He doesn't know how she does it, but he can hear the lecture in his head as he reads it, about calling if he's not coming home, about crazy Leafs fans and kidnapping and he better not be murdered or she'll kill him. He scrawls an apology under her note and then goes upstairs to pull the covers over his face and hide for a couple hours.

  He doesn't check his phone until he's on the subway on his way to meet the team for the flight, feeling too drained to drive, and he's got two missed calls from his mom and eight texts wondering where he disappeared to from various members of his team. Four of those are from Marc, at different times and clearly different levels of drunkenness, and finally, a missed call from Marc at three in the morning, when Dan must have been sacked out beside Alex. It says something horrible about him, probably, that this is the thing that makes him the most guilty: not Alex, or that Sarah's going to be furious, or that he worried his mom, but that he didn't pick up when Marc called. It says something pathetic.

  *

  After that, going out isn't once in awhile. After that going out becomes something almost sick, until every game they leave town for, Dan's finding someone he can get off with fast, hopefully before curfew hits. When he doesn't get back in time he assumes Marc covers for him, because no one says anything. His play stays decent, and it's almost like it isn't happening at all. There's Dan the winger, who plays fourth line and even third line, sometimes, when he's amazing – or when Pazuhniak gets the flu, but both are fine. And then there's Dan the guy who goes to bars and will fuck just about anyone with a dick so he can pull the itch out from under his skin. Homestands are torture. Long road trips are wearing him out. The season's about to end with them still in the running, almost guaranteed a spot, and nothing feels real about it at all.

  Underlining the unreality is the fact that, for the first time, Dan and Marc aren't getting along. It isn't anything anyone would notice, but Dan knows Marc by now, knows him too well, probably, and Marc's pulling away from Dan in bits and pieces, barely looking up when Dan gets in just before curfew, his bare back facing the door when Dan comes in after curfew, supposedly asleep, though Dan knows he isn't. He still talks endlessly when Dan's there, engaged, still leans on Dan's shoulder on the plane to get more comfortable, reaches into Dan's bag without asking to find yet another pair of replacement glasses, but something's fucked up. Dan knows why, but Dan doesn't know how to fix it without dealing with the Marc problem proper. And he doesn't want to do that. He's not going to do that.

  Marc doesn't acknowledge it, mostly, until the day that Dan wakes up, dry-mouthed and bleary, to someone shaking his shoulder. It's Marc, hair wet, half-dressed, his tie balled in his hand. Dan sleepily smiles at him, and Marc smiles back, briefly, before his expression goes weirdly flat.

  "I let you sleep in," Marc says. "We have to go in thirty minutes, and you need a shower unless you want to tell Coach why you smell like booze."

  Dan drags himself out of bed. The shower does a lot towards making him feel human again, and when he comes out, Marc's gone, but there's room service he must ha
ve ordered. Eggs and toast and half a litre of coffee all work towards erasing the night before.

  He gets on the bus just in time, slides into his usual seat beside Marc. "Thanks," he says, nudging Marc's shoulder, and Marc doesn't say anything, but after a minute he nudges back.

  *

  His parents are out when he gets back in town, visiting his grandmother, so he isn't expecting the knock on his door on a night off, is expecting to see Sarah even less. He braces himself, prepared to be yelled at over Alex, but she holds up a bunch of vodka coolers, and Dan would never admit it to anyone—other than Sarah, who already mocks him for it—but they are probably his kryptonite, so he lets her in.

  She doesn't ask to talk, or yell at him, or anything, just hands him a raspberry vodka, opens a beer for herself, and turns on TSN. The Islanders are playing Florida, a veritable snooze, so eventually they switch to some stupid comedy, and she's mercifully silent as Dan gets steadily drunk, as much on the refined sugar as the alcohol. He doesn't know if Alex didn't tell her, or if she is uncharacteristically butting out, but either way, vodka coolers and not being yelled at make for a pretty good night.

  After a couple hours, and more than their fair share of empty bottles littering the coffee table, she turns to him. "You're eighteen," she says.

  Dan looks at her. "Yes," he says, cautious, because Sarah's really good at springing traps.

  "You know you're not in a Shakespearean tragedy, right?" she says, "You're not Juliet."

  Dan pauses for a second to think about that. "Why am I Juliet in this?" he asks.

  "Marc's more dashing than you," Sarah says dismissively.

  Dan can't really argue with that. But.