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“Look,” Mike says. “You have your little crush on me, and that’s fine, that’s great. You’re a great fuck, you’re a good kid, you’ll be a good boyfriend for someone. You’re going to get over this idea you got into your head that you’re in love with me, and both of us will move the fuck on, and we’ll probably both be happier. But right now, you need to get over this. And you need to let me get over this.”
“You called me,” Liam says. “You were drunk, I guess. You called me at four in the morning, and you told me you kept thinking about coming to see me, you couldn’t stop thinking about it. That you thought about it all the fucking time. You don’t remember that, do you.”
“I will,” Liam says. “I promise. I’ll stay.” “You can’t promise that,” Mike says. “I can try,” Liam says, muffled into Mike’s chest.
Liam orbits around him. He supposes that’s mutual, to a certain extent. Even when Liam’s halfway across the room, Mike tends to know where he is, and that’s only partly because he never shuts the fuck up.
They’re wrapped up in each other, and Mike knows it, knows it’s not good, something he needs to put the brakes on, but he doesn’t know how to. Doesn’t even want to, if he’s being honest with himself.
Liam keeps nudging his knee, a silent ‘pay attention to me’, and when Mike ignores him to continue his conversation with Jacobi, Liam cracks. “Mike,” he whines. “Don’t interrupt people’s conversations,” Mike says without looking at him. “But Mike I have something to say,” Liam presses, and then, as Mike knew was inevitable, “Pay attention to me.”
“Aww, it’s like watching a chihuahua pester a rottweiler,” Jacobi says, and Liam sputters with indignation before throwing his jock right at Jacobi’s head.
“You’re just happy he called you a rottweiler,” Liam sulks. “No one’s calling you a chihuahua. You don’t understand my pain.” Honestly, the more he bitches about this, the more he sounds exactly like a yappy little dog, but Mike’s not stupid enough to say that out loud.
“Maybe you should smile more?” Liam says. Mike swears he hears a squeak when he bares his teeth at Morris. “You knew what I meant,” Liam chides, but he looks more amused than anything.
“You could fuck me in front of everyone if you wanted,” Liam says hopefully when Mike wonders aloud how he got on a team with so many dumbasses. “Pipe down, you little exhibitionist,” Mike says. “You’re no fun,” Liam says.
He doesn’t think he noticed it at the time, too caught up in the way they had their hooks in one another. It ended ugly. Those things usually do. Hooks hurt when you remove them, hurt worse when you tear them out.
“Yeah,” Mike says. “But you’re kind of a masochist, kid.” “Well,” Liam says. “Fair. But only like, in a sexy way. You don’t see me like, moaning when I block a puck.” “I think you cried last time, yeah,” Mike says. “Fuck off, I did not cry,” Liam says.
Almost two weeks to the day after that conversation, Liam comes into Mike’s place like a damn whirlwind, which is unusual for the kid, if only because it’s not even ten in the morning and he doesn’t generally hit full hyperactivity until after noon.
mike knows liam way too well
“I told you,” Liam says. “Yeah, weirdly I trust test results more than ‘I didn’t do anal, so obviously I’m all good’,” Mike says, and Liam gives him the finger.
Liam toes his boots off — “in the fucking hall, Liam, I know you know where those go” — and moves to straddle Mike’s hips. “Hi,” Mike says dryly, then, “Hey,” when Liam takes the book he was reading, puts it on the coffee table, thankfully still open, because it’s boring as shit, and Mike doesn’t think he’d bother trying to find his place again at this point, but not finishing it doesn’t sit right with him.
That’s not to say it isn’t different at all. It is. It is because every thrust of his hips is like punctuation that Liam’s his, no one else’s, his to touch and taste and take, and that won’t be true forever, he knows, but it’s true right now.
It’s out of his control, and he resents Liam for that, for being someone Mike would feel the loss of.
I LOVE THIS LINE SM
Mike’s not stupid enough to agree to sharing a hotel room, but he does check if there are any adjoining suites, and that means Liam spends the first day in Toronto periodically and delightedly opening the door between their rooms and greeting Mike. It’s like a goddamn game of peek-a-boo. He’s fucking ridiculous.
Mike fucking refuses to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame, but he reluctantly cedes to the aquarium, because sharks are cool.
“That was a nice date,” Liam says to the ceiling after. Mike resists the urge to groan. “That was not a date,” he says. “Baseball,” Liam says, starting to tick off his fingers. “Drinks. Dinner. Getting epically laid. Sounds like a date.” “Sounds like most of the times we hang out with the addition of baseball,” Mike says. Liam gives him a triumphant look, and Mike realizes, too late, he got played.
“I had a good date,” Liam murmurs, just when Mike’s finally started to relax, and Mike rolls him off his chest. The only thing that saves Liam from landing on the floor is the way he grabs at Mike as an anchor, fingers digging viciously into his skin. “You can’t bully me into not being your boyfriend!” Liam says, as Mike pries his fingers off one by one, and he looks all too smug, in the end, for someone who just landed ass first on the floor.
He’s not depressed, his head is broken, is all, but he fills the ‘scrip after they tell him it might alleviate the headaches, because Mike would probably kill a man if it alleviated the headaches.
feel this so hard
“How was the doctor?” Liam asks when Mike gets home. He’s sitting on Mike’s couch, watching TV, drinking a Gatorade and eating a power bar. Mike’s favorite kind of power bar, in fact, which he fucking hid so Liam wouldn’t eat them. Unsuccessfully, apparently. “Huh,” Mike says. “I could have sworn this was my house.”
“That guy was an ass,” Mike says. “Treated me like I was brain damaged.” “To be fair,” Liam says. “That’s kind of exactly what a concussion is.”
“This isn’t being blunt,” Mike interrupts. “Even if you recover from your symptoms, if you get another concussion, you may well be dead before you reach a hospital,” she says, and there. That’s blunt.
“I wouldn’t recommend a return,” she says, and something about the way she says it has it sink into him finally, that this is it for him, that he’s never going to get back on the ice. That even if the symptoms go away, even if he can start conditioning again, run a fucking mile without feeling like he’s going to die at the end of it, even if he gets into the best shape of his life, it won’t matter. He’s through.
It’s bad enough to be aching, flat on his back with a pain he can’t hit back, to be told he’s never going to play again, maybe never going to get past this, but Liam makes him feel helpless, and Mike won’t be helpless, not for anyone.
He’s up for restricted free agency this year, and he’s good enough to get something worthwhile instead of playing with a bunch of has-beens and could-have-beens, running around fetching and carrying and getting underfoot of a veteran who can’t even watch a hockey game anymore, let alone play one, the only person in the world who believes that Mike’s ever getting back onto the ice.
Liam’s got something Mike’s never had, that Rogers doesn’t have, that little Morris doesn’t have. He’s got the spark that means he could be a star in the right situation.
The kid’s in love with him, Mike won’t tell himself otherwise. It’s clear enough by the way he’s still sticking around even though Mike’s made it more than clear by now that he’s far from a prize. The kid’s in love with him, and he’d let that love drive his career into the dirt. Let Mike drag him down right with him, if need be, let Mike anchor him underwater. Mike isn’t going to let him do that. He’s fucked up enough things without adding fucking Liam over to his list of sins.
“I’m ending this,” Mike says, and the bravado disappears, Liam’s face going unguarded and hurt. Everything Liam feels gets written across his face, and Mike hates it, because he can’t pretend he doesn’t know when he’s hurt him.
“There’s something wrong with you,” Liam says, choked, and as soft as an admission of love, “There’s something broken.”
Mike’s used to Liam knocking around the kitchen when he cooks, sitting on a counter and kicking his heels against the drawers, or pressing himself up against Mike so he can’t concentrate. Mike’s cooking better without him around. He has that, if nothing else.
Red Wings snatch him up with an offer sheet. It’s a good deal: fair salary, Cup contending team. Everything that Liam deserves, and everything he would have turned down out of some misguided loyalty, for love. A week later Mike retires.
Mike’s finally getting better. He’s not getting better in a cure way, not in a ‘soon this will be gone’ way. This will never be gone. This shit will stick with him until the grave.
He’s learning a whole bunch of words that completely mask what’s being said, because doctors don’t like to come out and tell you your body’s betrayed you, that no matter what you do, you’ll never be the same.
They claim he can be a real boy, most of the time, but they don’t know shit, because they tell him his lack of energy is understandable, but he was a goddamn professional athlete: not having the energy to get out of bed some days means his world has fucking ended.
Him and Liam may not have been a secret, exactly, but Mike isn’t saying anything. He keeps it locked up inside him so he can hold it there, keep it safe.
His mom keeps urging him to go out and find someone, try dating again, but what the fuck is he supposed to do, hit on someone in the produce section of the grocery store? Waggle his fucking eyebrows in the neurologist’s waiting room?
He’s young and talented and starting to learn how to control his temper on the ice, almost poised. He got the spark he needed in Detroit, is just as fucking good as Mike always knew he would be if he got the fuck out of dodge. Mike knows this because he’s a masochist, or he because needs validation for his decision, he’s not sure which.
Liam was drunk enough to slur, which takes a lot, his voice breaking right down the middle — wide open, because he’s never learned how to protect himself. Never puts his hands up until after the first blow lands.
Mike doesn’t know what he’s expecting from Liam, but it’s not a text the night before the game, im in minnynapolis, which is almost excruciatingly painful to get, just for the butchery of Minneapolis alone.
“Yeah,” Mike says, because there’s no point lying. “I knew. And what would you have done if I told you? What were you going to do, hang around on a dead end team trying to play fucking nurse with a dead end player? You didn’t need to know.” “It was my choice to make,” Liam says, and Mike hears the waver now, almost soft enough to miss. “And you would have made a shitty choice,” Mike says.
Liam’s got hopes, got his eye on the prize, got a spot on the third line of a team that’s stacked as hell right now, but may bump him up in the future, when they’re weaker or he’s stronger. He’s playing hockey, real hockey, not the shit they played in Edmonton, and if Mike wanted some validation for his choices, well, it’s right there.
Liam grins at him, unrepentant, the first grin Mike’s seen all night. He forgot how hard that grin hit him. Liam heads out of the bathroom, then, and Mike follows, because he can’t do anything else.
“You going to kiss me, old man?” he asks, and Mike wishes he’d kept the lights down low, because it looks like Liam’s never going to learn how to avoid spelling everything out on his face. Right now, it looks a lot like desperation.
“You’re no fucking fun,” Liam says, and turns on his heel before going upstairs, like he has any idea where he’s going. Mike keeps back a couple steps, lets Liam open the door to the bathroom, the linen closet, pressing his lips together to keep from saying anything, until Liam finally lands on Mike’s bedroom and gives him a triumphant look.
Mike should say no, but he doesn’t want to. He has Liam sprawled out on his bed for the first time in years, and he wants to keep him there.
