You Could Make a Life

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  "Juliet was like, thirteen," Dan points out. Finally, grade ten English has apparently come in useful. "I'm eighteen. Therefore I'm way more tragic than her." It is, he's pretty sure, an infallible argument.

  Sarah snorts. It's incredibly unladylike, and Dan informs her of this, which leads to a poke fight. Beer gets all over the carpet, and Dan is going to blame that exclusively on Sarah when his parents get home.

  "Seriously though," Sarah says, after she's reluctantly declared him the victor, and gone to replace her beer. "This is an intervention. I am intervening. You're ruining the Riley name with your pining. I fucking wish my romantic problems were as simple as yours, but here you are. Pining. Pathetically pining."

  "I'm not pining," Dan argues weakly, then, "Do I need to beat someone up?"

  "Pining," Sarah repeats decisively, then says, "I don't think little brothers are supposed to offer."

  "They are when you only date losers who are all six inches shorter than me and built like twigs," Dan says.

  "Point," Sarah says. "Though you basically just described Alex, which is—weird. Whatever, I don't want to talk about it."

  "But you get to hold an intervention?" Dan asks.

  "First born privilege," Sarah says. "Suck it up."

  Dan sullenly drinks his delicious raspberry vodka. Sarah turns the TV back to TSN, where it's Vancouver and Chicago and considerably more interesting, and they go back to not talking, which Dan prefers. He's drunk and exhausted when Sarah turns the TV off after the game and goes up to her old room, so he sacks out on the couch, uninterested in navigating the stairs.

  When he wakes up the next morning there's aspirin on the coffee table beside a bottle of Gatorade. Accompanying that is a note that says,

  You're a pining loser, Juliet.

  Also a lightweight.

  xo

  Sarah

  Dan's head hurts, so he can't really argue the second part, just takes his aspirin, drinks his precious electrolytes, and goes upstairs to bed for a nap before practice.

  *

  Marc confronts him again with a week left in the season and the fifth place basically theirs for the taking, barring some action by sixth-seed Montreal, which Marc would probably masochistically enjoy. He's asleep when Dan gets back to their New York hotel, and in the morning he's clear-eyed and awake while Dan's still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and watches Dan fumble around the room for awhile, solemn enough that it's sort of unnerving.

  "What the fuck?" Marc asks, finally, like that's a proper question all in itself. Dan guesses it is, though, because he knows what Marc's asking.

  "I go out," Dan says, careful. "It's not a big deal."

  "This is our job," Marc says, and the thin veneer of composure that's always on his face seems to crack, twist into something unrecognisable. "What happens if I stop covering for you, Dan?"

  "Like you care if it's our job," Dan says. "I work twice as hard as you."

  "You ever play as well as me and I will shut up," Marc snaps.

  Dan stares at him. It's not like it isn't true, not like it isn't obvious to everyone, but Marc doesn't usually mention the fact he's a fucking prodigy. Dan's never been sure if it was modesty or he just didn't notice or care how much better he was than pretty much anyone, and especially Dan.

  "Sorry," Marc mumbles, rubs his eyes, looking so tired, suddenly, that Dan aches, feels it right alongside him, everything catching up, the bruises and scrapes and long games and long nights. Everything.

  "My fault," Dan says, automatic, because it is, and they manage a tentative truce until the playoffs start, them against the Rangers, who pulled an upset by managing to be the best of a bottom of the barrel division, while Montreal had worked voodoo to snatch fifth from the Leafs' clutches.

  Dan swears off on going out, because even a city as big as New York is hard to hide in when you're the enemy, especially since playing a team for games in a row tends to make fans familiar with the enemy's face. He's not stupid enough to think there'd be an exception at gay bars, because witness Dan: gay, the face of the enemy. Barely making the roster, but still.

  He doesn't go out the first two games, huddles in the hotel with the rest of the team, with the video games and the trash talk and the uneven beards that give Dan a serious case of second-hand embarrassment. His own comes in okay. Marc's is the worst, the blond scruff almost invisible, so he just looks vaguely fuzzy and not at all bearded.

  Dan is deeply embarrassed by the fact he wants him anyway.

  He gets through a win and a loss in NYC and a win and a loss in Toronto. His face itches, his skin itches, and he hasn't felt anything like this before, the low simmer of excitement, of something big happening. And then they're back in New York, the same simmer, the same itch, the familiar one, like he's going to break out of his skin. They get there the night before so that they can get a morning practice in, get in early enough that Dan could drop off his bags and just go and find someone to suck off, if he wanted. And he wants to.

  He gets to the room, and Marc disappears, because he's trying teammate bonding during the playoffs like it's a sociological study or something, 'The Obnoxious French Outsider Blends With the Herd'. Is that sociological? Maybe anthropological. Dan doesn't care. Marc would know, but Marc's fucked off to do his little experiment, hopefully without telling the guys that he's there doing an experiment, and Dan itches. Watches a snatch of TV and itches. Changes out of his travel clothes and itches.

  Pockets his key card and walks out into the night, because nothing could be worse than the feeling under his skin.

  This time he manages to make it out of the bathroom, goes back to a guy's place, fucks him, taking it slow, because there's no hurry, is there. Marc covers for him, and Marc will always cover for him, and that's what Marc is. A cover, and a friend, and a fucking waste of sentiment.

  The guy kisses Dan until he's probably got beard burn all over his clean-shaven face. They don't always bother with kissing, Dan finds, and he's not sure how he feels when they do. Dan's got a sinking feeling in his stomach again, like he needs to go, but he stays awhile, lets the guy give him a beer and head, returns the favour, and it's late now, it's so late, late enough that Dan's only going to get snatches of sleep before tomorrow, and Marc's right, this is unprofessional, this is pathetic, but Dan doesn't know how to share a room and a rink and a life with Marc and let it go without festering, so this is what he has.

  When Dan takes a cab back he's still somewhat drunk, the beers at the guy's place knocking him over his accepted 'in public' limit, tips the cabbie way too much because the only change he's got is Canadian, and he doesn't think he can slip in a few toonies on the sly.

  He tries to sneak through the lobby, like anyone cares, like the night manager's hooked up to Coach's phone and is obligated to call every time someone comes in late. It's stupid, and it's probably way more obvious because he thinks he's lumbering more than tiptoeing, but he gets to his floor without incident, and that's a win.

  He makes his way through the silent hall, leaves the light off when he gets to their room and starts to undress in the dark as quietly as he can manage while still tipsy. Almost home free, and he can leave all the exhaustion and self-loathing to the morning.

  It's pointless, in the end, because a bedside lamp flicks on when he's half out of his jeans, and Dan startles, tripping over his pants and falling down hard on the carpeted floor.

  "Jesus, Marc," Dan says, heart hammering out of his chest.

  "Curfew was three hours ago," Marc says, face completely blank.

  Dan nods dumbly up at him.

  "It is Game Five tomorrow," Marc says.

  Dan nods again, manages to regain his feet, tugging his jeans back up his hips.

  "I lied for you," Marc says. "I keep lying for you."

  "It's not—" Dan starts. "It's not affecting my play."

  "Who gives a fuck?" Marc shouts, gets out of bed, boxer-briefs and messed up hair, moving right into Dan's space. Dan's afraid, sudden
ly, completely despite himself, not because Marc's intimidating, so small in comparison to Dan, but because he can't remember the last time Marc yelled at anyone but an opposing player, and even that's rare. Because Marc's never been mad at him before, not like this.

  "Where were you?" Marc asks, dangerously quiet, suddenly.

  And Dan blurts it out without thinking, the words coming out harsh. "Out blowing some asshole who let me fuck him first." His mother would be fucking ashamed.

  Marc's eyes narrow. "Do not start acting like Stevens just because—"

  "I'm not," Dan interrupts, and he can feel the flush now, the one that Marc always seems to bring out in him, though usually when he's teasing, embarrassed pink heating his ears and creeping down the back of his neck. "I'm not kidding."

  Marc's silent for a long moment, and then he starts to laugh. It hits Dan low in the gut like a blow.

  "I am sorry," Marc chokes out. "I thought it was drugs, or the mob—"

  "The mob?" Dan asks incredulously.

  "Something bad," Marc says, sobering up.

  "It is bad," Dan says, unthinking, and watches Marc's face go all sympathetic, almost pitying, like Dan's some self-loathing closet case. "Not the—" he starts, doesn't know how to finish. "I'm not ashamed."

  "Okay," Marc says, but he sounds disbelieving, still cloyingly sympathetic.

  "The fuck would you know about it anyway?" Dan snaps, defensive. Marc's always so decent, the little activist who knows jack all firsthand.

  "Dan," Marc says gently.

  "Fuck off," Dan says, sharp. Suddenly it's too much, all of it, the pressure and the chance of glory, and the grit of the fuck still lingering even after he showered it off at the guy's place. Marc's understanding, sympathetic, condescending face, that doesn't mean anything when it comes down to it. Oh, Marc would be understanding. Marc would be sympathetic. Marc's made no secret about his causes, even when it gets him looks and jeers. But that's just Marc, through and through, and Dan can't handle the potential of losing that.

  Except Dan can handle the potential of loss, maybe, or maybe he just trusts Marc enough, because he pulls Marc to him before he can think, hands curling around his shoulders and lips landing just left of centre. An awful kiss, and one that lasts just long enough for him to panic—because Marc laughed when he heard, and sticks up for anonymous gay men everywhere in the locker room, but this is different, half dressed in the dark, and what if Marc hates him, or tells, and he becomes the faggot that attacked his roommate, and no one will play with him, his career over at eighteen—before Marc pulls away, slow. "Dan," he says. "You think too much."

  Dan huffs out a disbelieving laugh, because with his pretentious books, his pet cause of the week, his constant mockery, Marc has no leg to stand on, but before he can voice that, Marc says "shut up," gentle, the words caught in the air between their mouths, what scant amount that is. Then pulls him back in, not gentle at all, blunt nails digging into the back of Dan's neck.

  It is, objectively speaking, a bad kiss, just as bad as the first, Marc's teeth cutting into Dan's bottom lip, his nails cutting into his skin, but Dan doesn't care, hauls Marc in until Marc's bare chest is leaking heat through Dan's shirt, until he can run his hands up Marc's back, feeling the muscles tense beneath his skin.

  It gets better, slowly, Marc's hands sliding under his shirt, up the curve of his spine, Marc's mouth gentling against his, and when Marc nudges them two steps over to Dan's bed, Dan lets Marc push him over. He's exhausted, and drained, and he's already gotten off twice tonight, but it doesn't seem to matter, Marc's thighs straddling his hips, the flex of Marc's muscles under Dan's fingertips, his blood thrumming through his veins.

  He's almost lost in it, could get completely lost in it, but Marc pulls back, looks shy, suddenly. Dan's never seen him shy in his life. "I have not—" Marc says. "With a guy," he adds, quickly. And suddenly it isn't enough, Marc over him.

  Dan feels hot all over. "We can stop," he says, because it isn't enough, not remotely, but Marc looks nervous and that's more important than sex, always. Marc looks nervous, like Dan's something to be nervous of, and Dan will do everything in his power so that he never looks at Dan like that again.

  "No," Marc says with a decisive head shake that is so Marc it hurts, "I want to, with you." And Dan has to get his hands on him, lets Marc's hands, always so clever, get his jeans open.

  It isn't elegant. They can't get the rhythm straight, but it's good anyway, Marc's head tucked down into the curve of Dan's neck, panting harsh against Dan's shoulder. When he comes it's almost silent, but that's probably because he digs his teeth into Dan's shoulder like the vicious little shit he not so secretly is.

  Dan ends up adding to the mess, and they stay there, unmoving, until Marc starts getting the kind of heavy that means he's falling asleep, face tucked in Dan's neck. Dan nudges at him until he moves because he loves Marc, god help him, but Marc is not exactly a delicate flower, and Dan does actually need his legs to work tomorrow. Marc grumbles but gets off him, rolls over onto his back beside Dan, and Dan hauls himself up long enough to clean himself up in the bathroom, to shuck his clothes, to throw a wet cloth at Marc's disgruntled face.

  Marc looks like he's considering murder, briefly, but he cleans himself up and then deigns to let Dan lie back down beside them, wriggle them under the covers with sheer force of will, considering Marc's lazy ass won't move. Marc arranges Dan as he sees fit once Dan's done all the work, and Dan lets him.

  After, they lie still, Marc's head against Dan's chest. Dan should sleep, needs to, with the game looming, but he's too caught up in everything—he should probably move so they're in different beds, people are going to figure it out eventually, and then who knows what'd happen, whether they'd separate them or trade one of them away (Dan, obviously, they wouldn't give up Marc) or what—

  "Dan," Marc says, sleepy sounding, and then, for the second time tonight, "you think too much."

  And now he can feel the curve of Marc's smile against his chest, the familiar, twitching one that means Marc hasn't yet decided if he's laughing at or with Dan.

  "Go to sleep, asshole," Dan tells him, feels that stupid, precious smile against his skin, and follows his own advice.

  iii. training wheels

  Dan gets basically everything he wants right when there's absolutely no time to take advantage of it. There isn't really time to do anything at all, not even with a shared room and a door with a deadbolt. If the regular season's exhausting, playoffs are worse, and Dan didn't realise that he was running entirely on fumes, following that itch under his skin while it wrung him dry, until it's disappeared. Now they have the privacy, the opportunity, but all they manage before game five is a sleepy make out session before their designated nap time, which they are both taking very seriously.

  They win game five, and the Rangers, who'd been spewing cocky bullshit on the ice, look a little stunned by it, even though they've been trailing the Leafs all series. If the pattern holds up, the next game belongs to the Rangers, and Buchanan shuts down that line of thinking before game six. "Our families are out there," he says. "Our fucking fans are out there. You want to make them wait? You want them to watch us take this on TV? Light 'em up."

  Dan doesn't know if Buch meant light the Rangers up or light the fans up, but either way they do it. Marc's on the ice when the buzzer goes, a 4-2 lead, the game winner clinched by him in the second, and there's a moment of hesitation on the bench before they're all hopping over, swarming Jaworski, who held out against a barrage of shots in the third. Pazuhniak yells something in Dan's face that he can't hear over the noise of the crowd, but whatever it is, he agrees with it, he's sure.

  He somehow finds Marc in the scrum, throws an arm around him and pulls him in, chin banging painfully against Marc's helmet. Marc squeezes him back, and Dan can hear his giddy laughter, even over the roar.

  Playing Pittsburgh's less triumphant. They lose both of the games in Pittsburgh, go back to Toronto to a slightly more
subdued crowd. Dan goes back to Toronto to get benched, told he'll be watching the game from the press box—he took a dumb slashing penalty that lead to a power play goal, and even though the final score of the last game was more than a one goal difference, who knows what would have happened if Pittsburgh hadn't streaked ahead with the momentum of that goal. It's a well deserved benching, and one that doesn't last long—they eke out a win in Toronto, but that's it. They go back to Pittsburgh down 3-1 in the series, and leave Pittsburgh facing down their summer vacations and a disappointed city.

  It isn't all bad. No one was expecting them to win the Cup, not even their most die hard fans, and they made it to the second round for the first time in years, which is progress. The press has Marc to look to as well, not even nineteen yet but with a series winning goal, a shortlisting for the Calder, and an inability to manage anything but an embarrassed humble streak with the media. He's become the de facto face of Toronto rising from the ashes, the face of what a rebuild could look like, and press and fan consensus is tentative excitement to see what next season will bring.

  Dan can't really be disappointed with the start of summer when Marc uses the excuse of sticking around to see how the playoffs pan out in order to stay in Toronto. He's got his own apartment, but it's a total dive, so messy Dan can't help but start cleaning it every time he goes over, which seems to drive Marc as nuts as the messiness drives Dan nuts, so they mostly end up at Dan's parents' house. Marc's ostensibly on an inflatable mattress on Dan's floor, but it sits unused while Marc lies over him and smacks his palm over Dan's mouth whenever he gets too loud while his parents are home.

  Pittsburgh keeps barreling on, taking down the Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Finals, which Marc gets annoyed by because he has the worst loyalty in the world, or the best, depending how you look at it. Either way Dan is reluctantly charmed by Marc's disgruntled muttering before bed, only muffled when Dan tucks Marc's head under his chin so he's stuck muttering into Dan's chest.

  "There there," Dan says, a little mocking, as he rubs Marc's back, and is utterly unsurprised when Marc bites him.