Thrown Off the Ice

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

Mike’s never been that kind of possessive asshole, never spouted that ‘I want to be your first and only’ crap, thinking that if someone’s been touched by anyone else they’re spoiled goods. He thinks it’s disgusting, insecure bullshit people peddle so they don’t have to compare their tiny dicks and zero knowledge of foreplay to someone who might actually know what they’re doing.

“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.

“There’s something wrong with you,” Liam says, choked, and as soft as an admission of love, “There’s something broken.”

That he stops this now or he puts it in Liam’s hands to do what he will, because Liam’s more responsible than him in the only way it really counts, and Mike loves him, and Mike’s fucking sick of it, of loving him and not having him and not being able to blame anyone but himself for it, sickly grateful for any sign that Liam’s better off without him.

Mike didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he sent Liam that text. Didn’t have a clue that when he opened that door a crack, to let Liam choose whether or not he wanted to push it open the rest of the way, Liam would decide instead to blow the damn thing off its hinges.

Mike always thought Liam, young as he was, would leave at the first hint of something newer, more exciting, but it’s been six years now that Mike’s known him, and the only time Liam stayed away is when Mike drove him off. Even then that didn’t really stick. He’s starting to figure out that as long as he lets Liam in his life, distance be damned, his own lack of charms be damned, Liam is going to keep coming back.

Mike doesn’t have hockey anymore. Doesn’t have booze, or more than a measly cup of coffee a day. Can’t properly exercise, handle an entire movie, read more than a chapter of a book at a time, drive up to Duluth without needing a break at every fucking rest stop. Can’t keep his hands from shaking. He has Liam, though, and maybe that’s not much, maybe that’s not enough, but in this moment, it suits him just fine.

“Most people don’t ask someone to move in with them because it’s efficient,” his mom says. “I do,” Mike says.

“You cool with me telling the guys I have a boyfriend?” Liam asks, and then before Mike can say anything, “I live with you, telling me I’m not your boyfriend is actively deluded at this point, Michael.”

It’s an objectively stupid moment that Mike realizes he’s going to be stuck with Liam for the rest of his life. They’re doing the crossword, Liam reading out the questions and carefully filling the small boxes in pencil when Mike gives him an answer.

They don’t tell you that when you let a ridiculous teenager with more balls than sense into your bed, you aren’t getting him to leave. If Mike knew that, he never would have done anything with Liam, wouldn’t have considered it for even a second.

It would have been a mistake.

“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.”

Look at Liam!!

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.”

“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 person to deal with sometimes.”

If their roles were reversed, Mike knows he wouldn’t have stuck around, wouldn’t have been able to, not knowing that shit would end no matter how hard he held onto it, not knowing that every extra day would make the end result harder to bear. But then, Liam’s always been stronger than Mike. Stubbornly, stupidly stronger, and so much more brave. There’s going to be nothing left for Liam — there already isn’t much left for Liam. Mike’s not the guy he fell for twelve years ago, not even close, a diminished version of himself, and still Liam stays.

“I don’t want you to leave me behind,” Liam says, muffled into Mike’s shirt. Liam never says the word death.

“I’m so fucking angry every day,” Mike says. It comes out rough, uncomfortably honest. “I’m so angry that I probably won’t see what stupid shit you get up to with your mid-life crisis.”

“I’m going to miss so much,” Mike says, then turns and hides his face in Liam’s hair, mouth pressed against his temple. “I’m sorry,” he manages. Barely manages.

I love you so fucking much, he doesn’t say, but he thinks it so goddamn hard he’s pretty sure Liam hears it anyway.

and the word ‘marriage’ would get Mike skittish as anything, but fuck it, Mike can’t argue: we were married in everything but name. Til death do you part.