The Oilers have agreed to extend Mike’s contract for two more years, but he has no illusions about after that. He’s slowing down. He’s staying hurt longer, taking every blow harder. He’s going to go down one day, and he isn’t going to come back from it.
In the meantime he’s just going to empty his locker, pack up the house for the summer. Go home, see his mom, his brother. There’s fishing, golfing, boating. There’s training. He’s got a whole other life off the ice.
Liam appears behind him when Mike’s through offering a couple brusque sound-bites, gives a few of his own before he shoots Mike a meaningful look. What that meaningful look is actually supposed to mean Mike doesn’t know, but he follows Liam out to the parking garage, throws his bag into the bed of his trunk and just resignedly accepts it when Liam throws his in as well.
“Can I come over?” Liam asks, once he’s already buckling himself up in the passenger seat.
They really fucking exaggerate Canadian politeness.
Any attempts Mike’s made to improve Liam’s manners haven’t fucking stuck, so he doesn’t bother now, just drives them back to his place, Liam practically nipping at his heels on the way in.
“So,” Liam says once Mike’s in the kitchen, rustling up something for them to eat. “End of season.”
“Yep,” Mike says.
“You’ve probably done this a lot,” Liam says.
Mike eyes him. “Yep,” he repeats.
“It’s kind of the first time for me,” Liam says.
Mike hopes his eyebrows convey the ‘no shit?’ he means all the way into his soul.
Liam fidgets, and Mike starts to assemble sandwiches, because clearly it’s going to take the kid awhile to figure out how to say whatever the fuck he’s trying to say.
“What do you usually do during the summer?” Liam blurts out while Mike’s slicing the tomatoes.
Mike doesn’t pause. “Go home. See my family. Train, fish, swim. Read.”
“All in Minnesota?” Liam asks.
“Yep,” Mike says, and adds mayo to Liam’s sandwich, hands it over.
Liam looks down at it with a truly tragic look, and Mike focuses on applying mustard to his own sandwich because Liam’s expression is sort of depressing him.
*
Mike doesn’t leave for a couple days, has to finalize details first: remind his neighbor in Edmonton to take his mail in, make sure his place outside of Duluth is cleaned and stocked, pack up the shit he’s going to need for the next few months.
Liam presumably has the same amount of preparations. Hell, he probably has more, considering he’s got to move all his shit out of Rogers’ in preparation for living on his own next season — Mike has ignored any mention Liam makes of that fact through pure stubbornness, because again, not a lunatic — but you wouldn’t know that from the amount of time he spends at Mike’s place getting underfoot.
The night before Mike leaves for the pain in the ass trip back home, Liam’s even more underfoot than usual, which is saying something. It’s a good fucking thing that Mike’s had plenty of practice packing under a time crunch.
They take it slow that night. Mike brings Liam off fast and easy with his mouth first so that he doesn’t bitch Mike out for the pace he sets after, a slow grind into him, Liam’s cock rubbing sticky between their bellies, Mike’s face in Liam’s neck.
Liam’s more asleep than awake when they shower after, and Mike practically has to hold him up under the spray. They’re still wet when they get under the sheets, Liam tucking himself around Mike’s body, asleep in a minute flat.
Mike’s awake for awhile.
*
Home is home. His mom makes him food despite his protests that he’d prefer to cook his own shit, his brother Tom goes fishing with him on the first clear, warm day. The fish don’t bite and his mom’s never been much of a cook, but it’s home.
Within the first few days he starts getting text updates from guys who must have stuck the team on a filter or something. Rogers is running through wedding preparations and panicking at anyone who’ll listen, poor fuck. Other guys have started texting their best miles and their golf scores. Liam texts him about nothing of any substance, just filling the space between them with words that don’t mean much. Mike responds sometimes, but making conversation just to make conversation isn’t in his nature, and right now there’s nothing he can say to Liam that wouldn’t make him or the kid miserable.
Mike gets training underway. Spends a few weekends at the lake house he bought a few years back. Tom invites himself more often than not, which Mike doesn’t mind. It’s a little cool on the lake, but that’s never bothered him. Play on the ice for a living and you get pretty inured to the cold, so sitting in a canoe on a brisk May morning suits him just fine.
“You remind me of that guy from Twilight,” Tom says, breaking the comfortable silence.
“You read Twilight, Tom?” Mike says.
“Don’t need to, know all I have to,” Tom says. “Old sulky dude obsessed with a teenager and being angsty about it. Sound about right?”
It was a mistake to mention Liam to Tom after a few too many drinks last night. It was a much bigger mistake telling him Liam’s age. Tom may not be in the Liam Fitzgerald school of annoying little brothers, but he can step up from time to time.
“I will push you in the fucking lake,” Mike threatens.
“Sure,” Tom says, but thankfully shuts the fuck up.
*
Mike’s not sure why his mom and Tom keep bitching at him about getting out more. He’s training. That’s generally a good thing to do; you could go as far as to say it’s a professional fucking obligation.
Besides, he needs to train harder and harder every year to keep up with the kids, stop his ass from getting scratched or thrown down to play in the AHL. No fucking way Mike’s going down to Bakersfield if he can help it. Sure, the weather’s a fuckton better than the freeze your balls off cold of Alberta, but Mike isn’t exactly a California boy, and boiling to death doesn’t sound any more pleasant. So he’s training hard. Catching up on his reading when he isn’t training, since some little shit spent every other plane ride during the season bugging him whenever he cracked open a book. He doesn’t have time to go out.
Mike hears a key in the lock. He doesn’t bother to get up, knowing it’s either his mother or Tom. Heavy footsteps confirm the latter.
“Welcome to my house,” Mike says, not looking up. “Thank you for knocking before entering like a civilized person.”
“You’re being a sad sack,” Tom says, and Mike looks up from his book to glare at him.
“I’ve been training,” Mike says.
“That what this is?” Tom asks.
“This is a book,” Mike says. “I am reading a book, Tom.”
“Like a sad sack,” Tom says. “Gang’s meeting up tonight,” he adds.
“I’m busy,” Mike says.
“Being a—” Tom starts.
“Fuck off,” Mike interrupts.
“Come out,” Tom says. “You haven’t seen anyone since last August. They miss you.”
“That doesn’t ring true,” Mike says.
“They miss you buying the beer,” Tom says.
“There we go,” Mike says.
Tom manages to talk him into it, mostly because the book wasn’t great, and honestly, he could do with seeing some people he’s not related to by blood. They pick up a few cases of beer on the way, because Mike always brings the beer. He can’t complain. He may be scraping the bottom of the Oilers roster, salary wise, making just above league minimum, but that’s still over half a million bucks a year, might be more than the rest of them make combined. He can spring for some beer. And at least this way he can make sure no one’s drinking Bud.
“Mike’s here!” Cadie shouts when he shoulders his way through the gate to her backyard, hauling two cases of beer to Tom’s one. “He brought beer!”
“Do I ever not?” Mike asks.
“Quit
showing off and put those down,” Rich says. “Don’t need to see the fucking gun show, Mike.”
“I do,” Brittany says, and Mike raises an eyebrow at her.
“Not sick of it yet?” he asks.
“Nope,” she says, and grins, unmistakably an offer.
Mike and Brittany have never been on an actual date, but if he’s single in the off-season — which is always — and she’s single in the off-season — more often than not — generally they fall into bed at least a couple times. Familiarity breeds contempt, maybe, but it also means you get pretty good at getting one another off.
She doesn’t say much to him, beyond the shallow ‘how were the last nine months of your life’ crap he has to do with almost everyone, since he’s shit at keeping in touch. He talks to Tom every couple weeks, but it’s not like Tom’s gossiping about their mutual friends’ lives.
Chatty or not, Brittany sticks in his orbit most of the night, in his peripheral even when she’s talking to someone else. Mike’s reminded of the way Liam stuck to him when he first came up to Edmonton, the way he had been close enough to reach out and touch more often than not, the way it’d been so hard not to give into the urge to just do it, no matter who was watching.
“I’m going to head out,” Brittany says, when people start to leave, mostly the ones with young kids off to relieve their babysitters. She gives Mike a look that’s impossible to misinterpret, and it’d be so easy to go back with her. He wonders if she’s still got that shit apartment: the mattress that squeaks like it’s going to give out under them, tiny balcony they can both fit on, her smoking after, him having a drag or two, the cigarette far more illicit than the sex. He stays over more often than not, because they’re drunk more often than not. In the mornings she makes him frozen waffles, and he thinks about what his life would have been like if he was still living in Duluth, and he appreciates every fucking step he took to get away, and every single step he takes to go back every summer. He doesn’t know how he can feel both those things at once, but he does.
“Mike?” she asks, when he doesn’t take the cue.
“Sticking around,” Mike says. She’s going to leave it alone, he knows she’s going to leave it alone, but he’s probably going to see her a half dozen more times during the off-season, and he doesn’t want to do this song and dance again each time, her asking, him turning her down. “Got someone back in Edmonton.”
She looks surprised, but only for a second. She hides it quick, which he appreciates for the sake of his ego. “Serious?” she asks.
“Who fucking knows,” Mike says.
“So, serious then,” she says, reaching out to pat Mike’s shoulder, companionable. “Congrats, didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Fuck off, Britt,” Mike says, and she laughs, squeezing his shoulder once and then disappearing into the night with a flash of teeth and a wave goodbye.
Mike wanders over to Tom. “I don’t know why I did that,” Mike tells him.
“I don’t know what you did,” Tom says, “But I am almost positive you could use a drink.”
“Sounds likely,” Mike agrees.
Mike has a drink.
Mike has a lot of drinks.
The next morning he has no memory of getting home, and, far more soberingly, an outgoing call to Liam at two in the morning that lasted just over seventeen minutes. He hopes, dimly, that he’d waxed poetic about Liam’s ass rather than telling Liam about his idle searches of how long it would take to drive to Halifax (thirty hours), or whether there was any flight there that didn’t take an absurd, ridiculous route (no).
Liam calls him two days later, chatters about his training without mentioning the call, and Mike can only hope that’s a good sign.
*
Mike keeps in touch with Liam as much as he does with anyone else. Liam sends him a stream of texts to update him on the exciting news from Halifax, as if that’s actually a thing, and Mike texts back once in awhile, but there isn’t much to say. He isn’t doing much that’s interesting to anyone but him, and unlike the kid, he doesn’t feel the need to submit others to the boring details.
Liam’s updates become a little more sporadic, the kid’s attention span as short as it was initially devoted, and by July they’ve petered off. He’s still alive, grinning stupid in pictures from Rogers’ wedding that are emailed to them en masse. Mike was invited, but it was too long a trip. Just as long for Liam, Mike supposes, but then, he lived with Rogers and Lady Rogers for months, so the relationship’s probably a little closer.
He looks bigger than he did before summer started, broader, like the training’s paying off and also maybe like he’s had one last growth spurt. He’s toned and gorgeous, and Mike can’t keep his eyes off the line of his throat where his tie’s been loosened, his arms where his sleeves got rolled up by the end of the night.
Eventually Mike realizes he’s been mooning over Rogers’ fucking wedding pictures for a pathetic amount of time. He closes the email, sends Liam a quick text to tell him that training’s clearly paying off, and goes out for a jog. When he gets back, he’s got a reply from Liam, just ‘thx!’ and nothing else.
He doesn’t think about it.
*
By the time training camp swings around Mike’s gotten all of three more texts from Liam, none of them longer than a few words. He’s not a fucking moron: he knew it was going to come, and it came. Liam’s nineteen — a whole year older now, what a difference — and summer was probably an eternity in his mind. Fuck, Mike’s impressed that Liam remembered Mike existed after he left the country. He’s heard that infants lack object permanence.
He knew it was going to come, and he was clearly right, and it’s fine. It’ll be awkward, but Liam’s a fucking ray of sunshine who’ll barrel through the awkwardness and probably force Mike to be normal with him, and it’ll blow over.
It’s fine.
Chapter 10
Mike gets back to Edmonton with a couple of days to spare before training camp, spends them unpacking and hitting the gym a few extra times so that the young guns don’t actually lap him. The first day back is like the first day of school, everyone hugging and backslapping and Mike staying the fuck out of it other than saying hello to anyone who greets him, keeping to his own business. He doesn’t look for Liam in the crowd. Liam’s small, it’s easy to miss him among a bunch of guys a head taller.
They’ve got media bullshit before they can actually come here to do what they need to do, shuffling in front of a photographer for their player photos, because Mike clearly needs another flashback to high school. He can’t say he’s ever excited for training camp, because training camp’s hell, but he’d rather be on the ice than in front of a camera any day of the week.
When they finally get on the ice there’s warm-ups for ten minutes before they get down to anything more formal. Mulligan seems to be in a good mood, which would usually make them all suspicious, but a four month break from dealing with the lot of them makes him more cheerful, clearly. He’ll probably be back to his surly self within a day, tops.
Mike does a few slow laps, getting his sea legs back. The first real view of Liam he gets is all flailing hands and wild expressions, because of course it is. Morris is looking on tolerantly, as only someone used to him can.
Liam stops mid-sentence when Mike skates past, before going red and ducking his head. It’s not awkward, his expression, like Mike expected it to be. Well, it is, but that’s not the first word Mike would use. The first word Mike would use is guilty.
Mike swallows, does another lap, finding Rogers leaning against the boards with Jacobi.
“Fuck off, Jacobi,” Mike says, and Jacobi rolls his eyes but skates away.
“What’s his name?” Mike asks, not looking at Rogers.
Rogers is quiet for a minute. “Jonathan,” he says finally.
“He a hockey player?” Mike asks.
“No,” Rogers says. “And he’s actually Fitzy’s age.”
Mike’s jaw se
ts. “Good,” he says.
“Mike —” Rogers starts.
Mike skates off.
In one of the drills Mike gets put on Liam’s wing. Liam keeps his eyes forward. His ears are pink, his jaw set.
“I won’t make this awkward if you don’t,” Mike says, low.
Liam looks over.
“We’re on a team, kid,” Mike says. “You want to insist you’re an adult, fucking act like one.”
“Okay,” Liam says quietly.
“Okay,” Mike says, claps Liam on the shoulder.
Neither of them does particularly well on the drill, but Liam’s able to hold eye-contact long enough to make passes, so it’s fine. It’s all fine.
*
Training camp is a brutal regimen for everyone, but the older you are, the worse it makes you feel. Mike doesn’t have the leeway to have a drink, sulk with some Ben & Jerry’s, maybe go out and find someone to put his dick in. He’s got to be up by six, spend all day trying to keep up with kids who are more than a decade younger than him. He doesn’t have time to feel sorry for himself.
The full extent of dwelling on it he allows himself is two extra minutes in the shower the next morning, glaring at the tile, wet and miserable, before he bucks the fuck up.
It’s not like he’s broken-hearted. Shit happened, and then shit stopped happening. Nothing to dwell on.
The week is long, and the week is terrible, and that would have been true whether or not Liam was taking over half his bed, so it’s pretty much irrelevant.
*
At the end of camp everyone goes out to celebrate their continued existence, drink themselves into a stupor that even the aches and pains of camp can’t rob from them. Happens every year, and this year is no exception. They take over the usual place. Mike sticks to beer, along with a few of the guys who have to go home relatively sober that night. A good chunk of the team doesn’t, and it shows, especially since Jacobi’s offered to foot the bill for everyone’s shots.
The kids have mostly taken him up on that, and Liam’s gotten himself involved in some complicated drinking game with the young guns that seems to involve vodka and slapping. Mike isn’t sure it’s a game that can actually be won: judging by the amount of drinking going on, everybody’s losing.
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