Thrown Off the Ice

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  He’s cooled down by the time Liam gets back, at least enough that if Liam doesn’t bring it up again, Mike will let it lie, pretend that it never happened. He’s fine with that.

  That feeling’s apparently not mutual, and Liam’s always been good at throwing down the gauntlet.

  Liam kisses him when he comes in, cold mouth, cold hands, eats the pasta salad Mike’s been steadily working through since he left town, and Mike thinks it’s fine, thinks Liam’s letting it go, until Liam calls him into the living room after lunch, not with that whine that means he wants a favor, something else in his tone.

  Mike considers pretending he didn’t hear him, but it’s not his hearing that’s damaged. Mike knows of a few guys who ruptured an eardrum during a fight, but he guesses he got lucky there, if you can call it that. The days he has migraines, he’d probably prefer the hearing loss.

  “Hey, sit?” Liam asks as soon as Mike walks in, and Mike gets his guard up even more. He’s imagined half a dozen scenarios, none of them good, before his ass even hits the couch.

  “I can’t keep doing this,” Liam says, and Mike thinks, for a moment, that by ‘this’ he means, well — them.

  He thought he’d feel relieved. It’s the right choice for Liam, and Mike wants the best for Liam. Mike knows the best for Liam isn’t him. He should be relieved.

  He feels like he’s going to be sick.

  “Okay,” Mike manages somehow, through the bile in his throat.

  “Not—” Liam says. “Jesus, Mike, seriously? Fuck, I’m saying this all wrong.”

  “What—” Mike says, swallows the bile down. “What exactly can’t you do?”

  “Remember the stuff I showed you about service dogs?” Liam asks.

  Considering they didn’t talk for the entirety of Liam’s trip because of it, Mike’s not sure why Liam’s asking. “I told you I’m not doing that,” he says. “We’ve already talked about this.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re talking about it again,” Liam says. “Because right now I can’t keep playing, the way things are.”

  “What the fuck does that mean, you can’t keep playing?” Mike asks.

  “What do you think?” Liam asks.

  “You better not be goddamn talking about hockey,” Mike says, but Liam’s expression says he is.

  “You are not goddamn talking about hockey,” Mike says, because maybe if he says it again it’ll break through Liam’s hard fucking head how stupid that is.

  “You know my contract’s up at the end of the season,” Liam says. “And I’m like, probably a few weeks away from a deal with the North Stars right now, and I — I don’t want to, not if—”

  “You’re twenty-seven years old, for fuck’s sake,” Mike says. “You’re still in the fucking prime of your career.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Liam says.

  “I’m not taking away your goddamn—” Mike starts.

  “I don’t even enjoy it anymore!” Liam yells. “I spent every fucking moment on the road this month terrified you were going to slice your hand open again or fall down a flight of stairs and that no one was going to be there when you needed them. I can’t spend every fucking road trip thinking I’m going to come home and find you—”

  Dead. That he’s going to come home and find Mike dead.

  “So if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m not going to keep playing,” Liam says. “Because I can’t do this. I feel sick all the fucking time, and I can’t do this.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare threaten me,” Mike says.

  “I’m not threatening you!” Liam says. “I’m giving you a choice!”

  “You’re not giving me a choice, you’re giving me a fucking ultimatum,” Mike says. “You go nuclear on me, you think you can take that back?”

  “I don’t care!” Liam says. “I swear to god, I don’t care. You want to leave me over this, you leave me, but I am not letting you go around taking stupid risks because you’re too goddamn stubborn to think of what it’d do it me if you — I don’t care. I retire or you get a service dog. Or you leave me and I get your mom to haunt your fucking life until either you get a service dog or she moves in with you. You don’t do this alone.”

  “I don’t recall giving you permission to make life decisions for me,” Mike says.

  “Tough shit,” Liam says. “You don’t get to pretend that what you do doesn’t have an impact on my life just because you’re too emotionally fucking constipated to admit that if we still lived in Edmonton we’d be fucking common-law married at this point.”

  Mike doesn’t have to fucking listen to this.

  “Where are you going?” Liam asks.

  “Out,” Mike snaps.

  “If you drive, I swear—”

  Mike lets the front door slam behind him before Liam unleashes another fucking threat. He would drive just to spite Liam, but his hands are shaking too hard for it. Anger, he thinks. Just anger this time.

  He walks to the park around the block, though it’s honestly too cold to sit outside without a coat — wonderful, he’s been getting lessons from Liam — sits down on a bench, watching his hands tremble. If they quit he can go back, drive somewhere. He doesn’t know where. Not here. Somewhere Liam can’t find him right away, somewhere he can get himself under control again.

  His mom calls, and Mike doesn’t know if Liam called her or she just picked a shit time to call him. Doesn’t matter: if he doesn’t pick up she’ll just keep calling until he does.

  “You driving right now?” his mom asks the second he answers. Liam called, then.

  “I wouldn’t pick up the phone if I was,” Mike says, instead of ‘it’s none of your business’. It isn’t, but it’d sound pathetically adolescent leaving his mouth.

  “You in your car?” she asks.

  “Liam incapable of looking out a window?” Mike snaps.

  “Hey,” his mom snaps right back.

  “Sorry,” Mike mutters.

  “Liam told me about his idea,” his mom says. “Got all afraid you’d be pissed if he asked, but I told him you’d be reasonable. More fool I.”

  It is many, many years of discipline that keeps Mike from telling his mother to fuck off. “When did you two decide you had the right to decide my life behind my back?” he says instead, ‘fuck off’ interwoven between every word.

  “I think a dog’s a good idea for you,” she says. “But here you are walking out on the poor kid like he asked you to kill someone.”

  “He tell you he threatened to retire if I didn’t?” Mike asks. “Or that he offered you up to move in? He tell you that, mom?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “And I offered to move in myself, he was just passing along the message.”

  “You’re not invited,” Mike says.

  “Oh no?” she asks, and Mike grits his teeth but doesn’t insist upon it. His mom’s got a spine of fucking steel, and he’s pretty sure if he pushed back harder, she’d move in just to call his bluff. “I don’t see why you’re so against doing this.”

  “I don’t like dogs,” Mike says.

  “You don’t like taking ten kinds of pills either, but you still do it,” his mom says.

  Twelve, but who’s counting, honestly.

  “They have a purpose,” Mike says.

  “And a service dog doesn’t?” she asks. “At the very least, it’ll make Liam worry less.”

  “So I should do it to what, humor his paranoia?” Mike asks.

  “You’re really going to call it that?” she asks. “Really, Mike?”

  “What else would you call it?” Mike says.

  “You think I don’t worry too?” his mom asks. “You think I don’t worry every single fucking day that I’m going to outlive you, that something will happen to you and I won’t know until it’s too late? Don’t you dare mock that boy for giving a shit about you, because you are lucky to have him, and if I were you I’d be doing everything in my power to keep it that way, because god love you, you are not an easy pers
on to deal with sometimes.”

  Mike swallows once, again.

  “You get that fucking dog, Michael,” his mom says.

  “I’ll think about it,” Mike says.

  Mike stays outside until his teeth start chattering, heads back then. ‘The cold will give you a cold’ being bullshit aside, he feels like shit enough lately not to tempt illness on top of everything else.

  Mike heads right up to bed, and Liam, wherever he is, doesn’t stop him, which is smart of him. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, just warm up, but it’s dark out when he feels the bed shift beside him, Liam getting into bed.

  “Don’t make me sleep in the guest room,” Liam says when Mike turns to face him.

  “Okay,” Mike mumbles, rolling away, and goes back to sleep.

  *

  Mike wakes up too hot, still in yesterday’s clothes. Liam’s radiating heat against his back, nose pressed between his shoulder blades, arm tight around his waist.

  Mike gets out from under him with only a little manhandling, showers the sweat off. Liam comes downstairs when Mike’s finishing up his one alloted cup of coffee, sits down at the table with an expectant look on his face, like Mike’s mom called him back, told him Mike was going to fold.

  Mike wishes she wasn’t right all the fucking time.

  “Do you promise to walk it and feed it and you’ll be so good, you promise?” Mike asks.

  Liam rolls his eyes. “If that’s what it takes.”

  Before they get the ball rolling, Mike needs to provide his medical history, which makes sense — Mike can unfortunately easily imagine some shitbag pretending to deal with symptoms they don’t have to get a service dog. He reluctantly brings it up at his next meeting with his neurologist. Or, one of his neurologists: Dr. Morgan is the latest, a specialist his general neurologist referred him to once he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He’s half hoping Dr. Morgan will tell him a service dog’s entirely unnecessary, that Mike clearly doesn’t need it.

  “I think that’s a really great idea,” Dr. Morgan says, and Mike scowls at the floor. He leaves the paperwork on the kitchen table for Liam when he gets home that evening, goes to bed early.

  Liam, impatient shit, has no interest in going on a waitlist, dropping a presumably horrifying amount of money — he’s not telling Mike how much, so it’s got to be horrifying — on getting the dog from a place that fast tracks shit.

  “Jumping the line with money,” Mike says. “Nice. Really nice, Liam.”

  “We have the money,” Liam says. “And isn’t that kind of how your healthcare system works? I’m adapting to being an American.”

  “Don’t recall you applying for citizenship,” Mike says.

  “I’m half-assing it,” Liam says. “Too much work unless an American decides to marry me. Can’t imagine where I’d find—”

  “I’m leaving the room,” Mike threatens.

  “You planning on doing that any time soon?” Liam asks when Mike doesn’t move.

  “In my mind,” Mike says. He just sat down, and it’s not worth the effort of getting up — unless Liam mentions marriage again, because he might just muster the energy to leave then. “In my mind I’m leaving the room and this conversation.”

  “Okay, baby,” Liam says, patting his arm.

  Mike frowns at him, because either Liam’s calling him an infant or using a pet name. They’re equally likely, and equally annoying.

  “Leaving the room,” Mike says, almost meaning it this time, but then Liam drapes himself across Mike’s chest and he’s stuck.

  *

  They get Bella within a matter of weeks. Mike really doesn’t want to know what that cost, because he has zero faith Liam will let him pay him back for it — he’d just do that annoying thing where he points out he makes millions of dollars a year.

  Mike’s never been much of a dog person, but Bella is a very good dog. She’s got a dumbass name, thanks to whoever trained her, but they were sure as shit better at training than dog naming.

  Mike’s got nothing against dogs themselves, he supposes. He just dislikes barking. And their tendency to lick you. And the way they get underfoot.

  Bella doesn’t do any of that shit. She’s the opposite of underfoot, actually: she’s more liable to steady Mike if he stumbles than get him stumbling over her, probably because that’s literally what she was trained to do.

  She’s not exactly free of dog traits that annoy Mike: he’s been doing a lot more vacuuming since she moved in, because labs shed a lot, and she’s almost as bad as Liam about not giving him space, will move from room to room with him, even hovering outside the bathroom. She was probably trained to do that too, keep close if he needs her, but it’s a lot when Liam’s home and he feels like he’s being trailed by two fucking ducklings around the house.

  Honestly, though, she’s better behaved than Liam is. Less likely to bite, too. Or beg for food with big sad eyes. Or demand to be petted.

  Jesus, Mike picked up a fucking puppy long before he picked up Bella, didn’t he.

  With Bella, his life changes. Mike doesn’t mean that as some inspirational starry-eyed shit, just that, by necessity, his day-to-day has to change.

  Liam kept him to a schedule when he was home, albeit a somewhat unpredictable one due to the shifting nature of game times and practices, but when he was away, Mike didn’t have much holding him to one. Doctor’s appointments, when he had them, but the days were otherwise fluid. If he had an appointment, he had to be up an hour before. If his mom dropped by, he had to answer the door. But other than that, it didn’t much matter to anyone how long he was up, what he did in that time. Some days — too many days — he barely got out of bed, though he never told Liam that.

  With Bella, he has a schedule again. If he doesn’t get out of bed by eight in the morning she goes hungry, and she isn’t much of a whiner, but Mike’s guilt will get him shuffling downstairs, no matter how shitty he’s feeling. Down the stairs at eight even when his head’s pounding, even when every noise is so magnified that he winces at the sound of kibble in the bowl.

  She’s not a small dog, and she needs exercise. On the worst days, all Mike can do is open the back door so she can trot around a bit in the backyard, do her business, but most days he walks her, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, a short one before he goes to bed.

  He has structure in a way he hasn’t had since he retired, and he appreciates it. Fuck knows he’s never telling Liam that, but he does.

  Mike hadn’t realized how alone he felt whenever Liam went away until he wasn’t, and even if it’s just a damn dog — it helps.

  *

  Mike and Bella are in bed when Liam comes in. It’s late — the North Stars won in OT, and Liam was presumably out celebrating with the team after — and Mike would usually be asleep, but his mom got him an e-reader that has a good backlight and magnifies print enough that he can read more than a chapter of a book at a time without his head pounding, and he’s gotten wrapped up in some probably overhyped thriller, sticking with it to see if the twist is exactly what he thinks it is.

  “You’re up,” Liam says from the doorway, and Mike puts the book down, because fuck knows he’s not finishing it tonight, not with Liam like this. He’s not drunk, exactly, but loose from a few beers, eyes bright from the win, ready to demand attention. Bella picks her head up from where she’s been resting it on Mike’s ankle, wags a few times. She’s a sucker for Liam, which is rich considering Mike’s the one feeding and walking her.

  “Shoo,” Liam says. “You’re not even supposed to be in here.”

  Bella looks at him impassively.

  “We can’t have sex with the dog in here,” Liam complains. “It’s weird.”

  “Now you have shame?” Mike asks, but says, “Out,” and Bella trots out into the hall, Liam closing the bedroom door after her.

  It’s late, and Mike’s tired, so they don’t do anything fancy. Haven’t lately, if he’s going to be honest about it. If Mike starts thi
nking about how long it’s been since they had a proper fuck, the kind that lingers, gets Liam breathless and flushed and so fucking gorgeous — well, he’ll get depressed. It’s not like Liam’s complaining about Mike’s mouth or anything.

  Mike brushes his teeth after, Liam following suit. Liam always wants to do it together, but he’s finally admitted there isn’t enough room for both of them in front of the sink, and it only took about ten inadvertent elbows to get him there. Mike crawls into bed while Liam’s brushing, and he’s half asleep with Bella warm against his feet when Liam comes out of the bathroom.

  “No,” Liam says to Bella. “You have a bed.”

  “She has a bed,” he tells Mike, when neither he nor Bella budge.

  “On the floor,” Mike says.

  “It’s comfortable,” Liam says. “She’s comfortable on that bed.”

  “She cries,” Mike says.

  “She cries because every time I’m not here you let her sleep on our bed,” Liam argues.

  Mike doesn’t deny it. “She cries,” he repeats.

  “Fuck,” Liam says. “How are you this much of a sap?”

  “Do you want to sleep on the floor?” Mike asks.

  “This is my bed,” Liam mutters, but he gets in anyway, tucks himself around him, and Mike falls asleep surrounded by warmth.

  Chapter 27

  There’s a lot of complicated legal shit involved when you know that you’re dying, but you don’t know when. Not that everyone isn’t dying, or whatever that trite bullshit everyone says is, tied with ‘you could be hit by a car tomorrow’ for the sort of carpe diem crap Mike doesn’t have time for.

  He could get hit by a car tomorrow, sure, but that’s a whole other thing than living with a diagnosis that guarantees things are going to get worse, and not worse before it gets better or some shit, not some ‘miraculously one day you’ll be cured’. That today is going to be the best day of the rest of his life, and so on, and so forth. That some days will be better and some days will be worse, but he’s on a downward trajectory that ends in him dying or not cognizant enough to really count as alive.

  He’s not going to die of Post Concussion Syndrome. Not going to die of the CTE he almost undoubtedly has but can’t be diagnosed with until after he’s dead. It doesn’t kill you, it just, well. Kills you. There are a whole bunch of ways it can do it, indirect: Parkinson’s, dementia, all the fun shit that tends to have a less than great impact on your life expectancy. And then there’s the possibility of the symptoms getting so bad that the only way to get them to stop is to just — stop. End it himself.