You Could Make a Life

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  They start off training together, but it's a bust from the start. Dan's early morning jog is snubbed by Marc, who likes to sleep in and prefers the treadmill for some godawful reason, and their weight training routines are obviously different, considering the differences between their body types and styles of play. The only real parallel in their routine is swimming, and Sarah suggests a membership at the University of Toronto gym, which has mostly emptied out during the summer, so they have the Athletic Centre practically to themselves, can compete for most laps and then meet Sarah for coffee after. She's decided to take summer courses for no reason Dan can figure out, since she's not behind, unless maybe his parents told her she'd have to get a summer job. Sarah's definitely the type of person who'll work really hard to avoid work.

  The patchwork training carries them into mid-June, and they watch the Stanley Cup Final together, the whole Riley family plus Marc. Sarah comes home for the night, his dad lights the barbecue, and his mom is making summery cocktails because Dan's nineteenth birthday has just come and gone. Marc, still eighteen, argues that Quebec's drinking age should stand, considering, which isn't a particularly convincing argument in Dan's opinion, but it still ends up getting Marc a fond smile and a large glass of sangria, so what does Dan know.

  Dan keeps a good foot of space between him and Marc on the couch, but judging from the looks he keeps getting from his parents, the smirk from his sister, and Marc's pointed, aggravated sighing, it's a wasted effort. When Pittsburgh takes it, a two goal lead that stretches from the second period to the third, Dan snaps the TV off before the Cup comes out, ignoring Sarah's shout of dismay, nudges his shoulder against Marc's and feels Marc nudge back. It hurts, low, watching the Cup go anywhere but into their hands, but it'll be resting back in its home in the Hockey Hall of Fame soon enough, barely a stone's throw from the Air Canada Centre, and it'll be theirs, eventually, everyone at home's saying it, hopeful for once, with a talented minor team offering depth, a healthy, mostly young roster, and Marc fucking Lapointe lighting it up.

  It was easy to forget while the playoffs were still on, but Marc has to go eventually, has been having increasingly long and strained conversations with his mother, conversations Dan can't understand a word of but that still leave him feeling guilty. Three days after the Cup lands in the Penguins' hands Marc leaves, up home, first, and then off to the NHL awards. Before he left for Montreal he offered Dan a spot as his plus-one, and Dan laughed off the invitation like a joke and pretended he didn't see Marc's jaw clench.

  Dan watches the NHL Awards alone. His parents had joined him at first, but after his mom tried and failed to still his bouncing knee and his dad made a joke that got Dan snapping at him, they disappeared. Marc took his mom instead, when they pan over to Marc in the audience Dan can see her, looking far more calm and collected than Dan feels. That face doesn't change when they announce the Calder winner, Zach Parrish, and neither does Marc's.

  Marc calls Dan after the awards, sounding far less upset about losing out on the Calder than Dan is on his behalf. He humours the rant Dan had been preparing since he saw the award go to Parrish, who hasn't done anything particularly special, in Dan's mind, playing on a team that's already set, getting assists and goals handed to him by virtue of having an insanely skilled, experienced wing, and taking what is by all rights Marc's.

  Marc hums acknowledgement, if not agreement, while Dan lists the reasons Marc deserved it more, and only points out that Dan's biased twice, which is probably him holding back. Dan says just about everything except how much he wants Marc to come back and pretend to sleep on his inflatable mattress, like anyone but Dan was still pretending they weren't crammed into that twin bed together, always in danger of knocking one another onto the floor.

  Dan stays revved up after Marc hangs up to go out to meet his mom and shake some important hands, that itchy, awful feeling he had all through the year, but different, because Dan doesn't want to go out and drink and pick someone up for the length of a handjob, so instead he puts his sneakers on and runs in the dark all the way down to the beach and then back home, until his pulse is pounding too hard for him to hear anything above it.

  He starts training the next day, his training, not the set of compromises that him and Marc training together brought. He's set on bulking up, fighting the remaining gangliness that comes along with being nineteen. Trains hard, running before dawn or after dark to avoid the sticky hot humidity, joining the GTA based NHLers for loose scrimmages, investing in better weights for the basement, getting his dad to spot him when he's home.

  It sticks, the weight, Dan doesn't think he's imagining it, because when he gives in after two weeks and books a train up to Montreal, makes hotel reservations he has to cancel because Marc drags Dan home with him, he really isn't imagining the speculative gleam in Marc's eye. Whatever ignorance Dan's parents were pretending for his sake is not happening with Marc's parents, who make him a bed on the couch with eyes that dare Dan to try sneaking up to Marc's room, and manage to give him a really convincing 'hurt my son and I'll hurt you' talk without saying a single word in English.

  Marc's the one who sneaks down, dragging Dan into the basement laundry room, so that getting off's sort of uncomfortably cramped and smells like fabric softener. But after, Marc tugs him to sit down on the cold concrete floor beside him, tracing his fingers over the new definition slowly coming to Dan's stomach, chest, shoulders, chin tucked over Dan's shoulder, and the trip's worth it for that alone.

  By the time Dan has to head back, frustrated by Marc's refusal to obsessively train with him, back sore from sleeping on a couch every night, about three whole new words of French picked up for all his efforts, Marc's mother has stopped pretending she didn't speak English and will actually talk to him without Marc playing translator, and Marc's brother insisted on practicing his English with Dan instead of Marc, so Dan figures he's gotten as much of a stamp of Lapointe approval as he can. He isn't going to be adopted any time soon, like Marc practically has been with his family, but he's him and Marc's Marc, so he isn't surprised by it.

  *

  Meanwhile, Toronto management's busy trading. They end up with Keewatin, a veteran goalie who'll give them a few good years before they'll have to put him out to pasture, and Stevens goes off to Dallas for Fyodorov and Larsson. Marc delivers the news via skype with such a wriggle of glee that Dan doesn't have the heart to tell him that the two wingers they got back are meant for the bottom six, are experienced, at least more experienced than Dan, and decent, and cheap, and are going to be competing directly with Dan for his spot on the roster.

  The whole summer's a back and forth, almost easy, even with five hours between them. Dan trains and visits Marc, and trains and meets Marc at Union Station, at the airport, the two of the blowing enough money on travel that it'd be worrisome if they weren't young and loaded and, at least in Dan's case, stupidly in love enough that money's irrelevant.

  Labour Day weekend they get a hotel room in Kingston, almost exactly halfway between their cities, and Sarah laughs herself sick at Dan and then smuggles a gigantic box of condoms into his duffel, which he discovers when he gets there. Dan's not particularly amused, but he supposes it's useful, because he wasn't really looking forward to that drug store visit, on the slim chance someone recognizes him and the slimmer chance that what, they're going to see him buying condoms and know he's fucking a teammate? They've talked about it, usually at night while Dan's got a hand down his boxers, but seriously, too, he guesses, the logistics of it, Dan's experience and Marc's lack of it, and how that'll work out.

  Dan's fucked guys before—Alex a few times before they broke things off and that time last season, a couple of the hookups who took Dan home. It's never happened the other way, though. Alex wasn't interested, and Dan figures people take one look at him, at how big he is, and just assume he won't want to. He has nothing against going the other way, and told Marc that, though Marc, ever logical, pointed out it's probably a good idea if someone know
s what the hell they're doing, which is fair.

  There's no hurry, anything's great after his hand, but Marc—again logical, and Dan might have been annoyed if he wasn't arguing in favour of sex—pointed out that once the season comes about, the logistics get a little messy, that if they fuck up, a twinge while walking's going to be a nightmare when skating, a liability in a game.

  He reiterates all of that after a rushed first round, neither of them patient enough to wait once they're in the same place.

  "How much research did you do on this?" Dan asks. It's a dumb question. Marc researches everything, of course he's going to research sex. And not the porn kind of research, Dan bets, the actual in depth guide kind.

  "Always be prepared," Marc says solemnly.

  "You sound like a boy scout," Dan accuses.

  "You are the one with fifty condoms in his bag," Marc points out, and Dan goes red.

  "Sarah did it," Dan mutters.

  "Did Sarah pack lubricant too?" Marc asks, and Dan goes redder, before checking his bag to find out that yes, yes she did.

  "I love your sister," Marc says.

  That makes one of them. Dan says so.

  "This way we are not buying it," Marc points out.

  "She's okay, I guess," Dan allows. "But you know she did it for evil reasons."

  Marc laughs, tugs him in for a kiss, lopsided, the curve of Marc's lips against his, smile too wide for it to be anything like a success.

  They grab dinner first, just Tim Hortons, because it's close and they're lazy, and return to regroup, Marc taking a shower while Dan fiddles with the bottle of lube, unaccountably nervous. He hasn't felt like this since the first time, when he had no idea what the hell he was doing and was paranoid he was going to hurt Alex and they'd end up at the hospital for sex related injury, the doctor giving Dan a narrow eyed look and then calling his mom, his coach, and his agent, or something. He was a paranoid seventeen year old.

  He's probably not much better at nineteen—he knows a hospital visit isn't in their near future, and knocks twice on the wooden side table to undercut any jinx that thought might bring—but Marc hasn't done it, and he wants it to be, well. Good. Great. Doesn't even know how he'd feel if Marc regretted it, regretted him, when Dan's so gone on him it's probably pathetic. It's been barely four months, a good chunk of which they spent in different cities, and already the idea of losing him makes Dan feel ill, though, to be fair, that feeling's been there from the start.

  "Okay," Marc says bossily, once he's come out of the bathroom, shaking his head like a wet dog so he spatters Dan with water droplets, because he's a shit. Dan suspects he's currently smiling goofily at him, but it's a losing proposition to try to stop.

  "Okay?" Dan asks, playing dumb.

  "We are doing this shit," Marc says, and Dan laughs, tugging him in by the knot of his towel.

  "We really don't have to," Dan says. "I could blow you again."

  "Tempting," Marc says. "But Sarah went to all that trouble."

  Dan makes a face. "Rule one," he says.

  "Do not mention your sister?" Marc asks.

  "You want me bringing up Patrice right now?" Dan asks.

  Marc's nose wrinkles. He doesn't like mention of his brother at the best of times—they get along about as well as Dan and Sarah did when they were kids, which is to say, not at all.

  "Point taken," Marc says, then, back to bossy, "Why are you wearing clothes?"

  Dan is fully capable of taking a hint. Things have the potential to get awkward once they're down to skin and a bottle of lube as obnoxiously oversized as the box of condoms was, but Marc distracts him with a kiss, another, slow and lazy like afternoons after they were finished training, before Dan's parents came home, the weather hot enough that touching felt like a feat of will, skin tacky with sweat, the taste of salt when Dan kissed the hinge of Marc's jaw.

  Marc's got the determined set of jaw now that means he won't take no for an answer, and that lasts through prep. Dan watches his face, the blush that crawls down his throat, across his chest, so it looks like he's blushing everywhere, skin hot when Dan brushes his mouth over Marc's throat.

  "Hurry up," Marc says before he seems ready, voice hitching, eliding the 'h' entirely, and Dan ignores him until he repeats it, steadier, then he finally obeys.

  Marc makes a grumpy noise.

  "Patience," Dan says, though it's not one of Marc's virtues.

  Marc bares his teeth at him. It's really the only way Dan can describe it—it's certainly not a smile.

  Dan fumbles with the condom for an embarrassingly long time, even after he wipes his fingers off on the sheets, grateful they got a room with two doubles, for more reasons than the magic of plausible deniability.

  "Okay, this is probably not going to last long," Dan warns Marc.

  "Make it good, then," Marc says, and Dan's torn between laughing and giving him the finger. Dan takes it slow until Marc digs his nails into Dan's biceps and goads him into going faster, breathing harsh and uneven against Dan's mouth as Dan kisses him, kisses his cheeks and temple and his closed eyelids, arms shaking as he holds himself over Marc on the sheets. After, Marc grins smugly while Dan cleans them up, opening one eye and saying, "Successful. Next time I want to fuck you."

  "Yeah," Dan agrees instantly. Then because he's kind of an idiot and doesn't think things through, "I love you."

  Marc opens both eyes in order to look at him then, a hard look, and Dan doesn't know what he sees, but it's enough to get him to close his eyes again, mouth quirking, tugging blindly at Dan's arm until Dan folds himself beside him.

  "You too," Marc says, quiet, after Dan's spent a good minute internally panicking. "And I am still going to fuck you."

  Dan muffles his laugh against the curve of Marc's smile.

  *

  Dan drives home with a stupid, helpless grin on his face that he can't seem to wipe off, redoubles his training efforts—running ten kilometres a day, practicing his back-check with Harmon, a D-man on the Flames, until they're both more bruise than man and can do it blind, going out for drinks after and only blinking tiredly at each other until they split up to go home and sleep the sleep of the sore. A rotation of swimming laps at the community centre, free weights, the scrimmages that are breaking up now that everyone's preparing for training camp, going their separate ways.

  There's new blood coming in, rookies and Marlies and trades, and Dan doesn't know how he'll stack up against them, can't, no matter how much game tape he watches, so he just competes with himself, with last season, tries to skate faster, hit harder, get the sort of endurance that could help him play twenty minutes a game—not that he's aiming to play those minutes, because he does have a realistic idea of his own abilities.

  He got lucky last season, he knows he did—the roster was weaker than it's shaping up to be this year, was weak in general, and there were a few long term injuries that opened it up for someone like Dan to step into a bottom six role. This year they're going to be better, and Dan has to be better if he wants to play with them instead of being sent down to the farm team. He is better, has put on muscle that was harder to gain as an adolescent, weight that he needs to carry him through the physical devastation of an eighty-two game season, can throw a hit and dodge a check and stay on his feet. He's in the best shape he's ever been.

  Even so, he knows it's coming before it happens.

  iv. giving in for the interim

  When training camp comes, Dan's as ready as he can possibly be, puts in everything he did last year, deja vu, except this year the new guys actually want to talk to Marc, seeing the reputation and the skill over the prickly loudmouth, so they both have to decline invitations, that first night.

  Dan follows Marc back to his apartment and they just sleep, exhausted, already wrung out when they wake up for the next day. And the following. Ad infinitum, as Sarah would say.

  This time Marc's the one getting hasty stitches on the bench while Dan shoves at the guy who took the drill way too s
eriously, shipped in from Dallas and going to be sliding right into Dan's spot if he isn't careful. Marc calls him his knight in shining armour with enough sarcasm to kill a lesser man, gets let out early while Dan glares across the ice at Fyodorov, who makes confused faces back.

  Two days later Dan's told to stay back and talk to Coach Walters, and he knows exactly what's coming. Marc doesn't. Marc's blissfully, brilliantly talented, and sometimes oblivious to the fact that Dan's job hangs by a thread. He wants to wait around, but goes peaceably when Dan nudges him out the door.

  "Shut the door," Coach Walters says, when Dan walks in, and Dan does, doesn't take a seat and isn't asked to.

  "You look good, Riley," Coach says. "You've put on a lot of muscle, you look determined out there, you're going to be a great asset to this team."

  Dan nods, waits.

  Coach takes off his hat, rubs a hand through his hair. "We've got a full forward corps with these new guys. I'm not saying you're not going to play. You've got the potential and you've got the grit. But right now it's the Marlies you're going to be playing on. And we'll see what happens this season."

  "Okay," Dan manages. It's harder than he would have thought to say, because he saw this coming, he's been seeing this coming all summer, but it doesn't make it any easier to hear.

  He goes straight home that night, and whatever his mom sees on his face means he gets babied, tea and baseball, which she hates but watches with him until he spills the beans. "Oh sweetheart," she says, tugs him in until he's got his head on her shoulder like he's a kid again. She waits all the way until the top of the sixth before she says, gentle, "have you told Marc?" and sighs but doesn't say anything when he shrugs jerkily against her.

  He doesn't call Marc that night. He knows he should, knows it's a dick move not to, but the last thing in the world he wants right now is Marc getting angry on his behalf when Dan feels too tired to muster up anything but hollow.