Thrown Off the Ice

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

Hell, guys under twenty-five make up most of the roster. Mike, at thirty, is practically an elder statesman.

Mike isn’t the most popular guy in the room, but Fitzgerald’s already pretty damn close, seems to have decisively won over the majority of the room by being the kind of annoying that circles right back into endearing. So again, the fact that Mike’s suddenly inherited a full-time shadow is downright inexplicable.

Fitzgerald stays close, and Mike starts wonder if it’s something else, hero worship or some misguided way to get the enforcer on his side. If it is, it’s something he should shut down, but it’s funny, the way Fitzgerald gravitates to him like he’s magnetized, and it’s sort of sweet in a dumb puppy kind of way. Mike lets it happen, lets Fitzgerald chatter in his ear about whatever’s caught his attention, amused by the enthusiasm he still has about everything:

He’s like an annoying little brother. Mike’s heard that description of him plenty from the vets, the same vets who tuck him under their wing like he needs protecting. Mike has a younger brother of his own, but Tom doesn’t have shit on Fitzgerald when Fitzgerald’s on a hyperactive tear, mouth going a mile a minute, babbling about utter bullshit Mike tunes out half the time. Annoying little brother should fit.

but Fitzgerald’s little kid hero worship is endearing, and Mike can’t help but want to shake some of that innocence out of him, knows he’s awful because all he wants to do is get Fitzgerald onto a bed and make him fucking cry. Mike’s never claimed to be a good person — fuck, he wouldn’t even claim he’s a decent one

Fitzgerald latching onto him in the first place, at least right up until he started following Mike around so often the team started calling him Mike’s duckling.

He’s got big blue eyes and hair constantly falling in his face and an ass that’s spectacular even compared to the average hockey player, and Mike wants him so much his teeth hurt, but Fitzgerald has no clue what he’s playing with, so Mike keeps his goddamn hands to himself.

But this shit isn’t a game to Mike like it seems to be to Liam. He’s too old and tired and paranoid to find it fun to sneak around, to play with his fucking career, his life like that. Liam may find the whole idea of it hot, the risk, the chance of getting caught with their pants down, seems to get off on it, but Mike managed to go years and years without a soul in the NHL knowing his dick is indiscriminate, and he doesn’t plan on that ever changing.

Liam’s eighteen. Mike remembers eighteen, how intense everything was and how quickly that intensity faded. He knows that Liam’s going to get his fill and then jump right into another adventure with equal enthusiasm, sans gag reflex. And that’s okay. Mike’s okay with that, he understands it, except with Liam asleep on his shoulder on the way back from Pittsburgh, mouth slightly ajar, bottom lip pink and plush and always too inviting, Mike realizes for the first time that when Liam trots off for his next adventure, Mike will regret his leaving.

Liam is eighteen, stretching his little rookie wings, and Mike is thirty, on the wrong end of his career, starting to look retirement right in the eye. He’s too old for the shit they’ve got going, but he’s gotten in too deep to cut himself free, and he’s made his peace with that too. Well, minus some wailing and gnashing his teeth whenever he remembers that during his own rookie year, Liam was in the first fucking grade.

“You don’t pay attention to me,” Liam says, petulantly directing the words to the floor. A brat. A spoiled fucking brat. “I don’t pay attention to you,” Mike repeats flatly, and when Liam looks up, jaw set, “If you want someone to fall at your fucking feet, go find a puck slut.” “I don’t want—” Liam starts, then sighs, loud and theatrical, like the fucking teenager he is. “I want you to pay attention to me.”

“I am not your boyfriend, brat,” he says, slow, so that Liam can’t pretend not to understand him. “I am never going to be your boyfriend. If you want one, go find some naive idiot who’ll take you.”

Liam’s never able to leave well enough alone. Except maybe Mike actually got through his idiot head this time. Maybe this time he actually said something that stuck. Shame it wasn’t something he meant. Seems like Liam chose a bad time to start listening.

Mike wants him so much it hurts a little, but then, he always does, so it’s an ache he’s learned to live with.

“The fuck do you want from me, Liam?” Mike asks, and he doesn’t think it was meant to come out plaintive. In fact, he’s almost certain it wasn’t. Liam doesn’t answer, just leans down and kisses him, and Mike kisses him back, reflex. He’s grown so used to the feel of Liam’s mouth that he felt genuinely at sea without it, because he’s fucked, he’s so fucked here, strands of Liam’s hair between his fingers and Liam getting a knee between his thighs. Liam pushing and Mike going because this is where he wants to be. Liam pulls back, and Mike says, “Liam.” He isn’t sure what he wants to say, what he should say. He’s fucking positive that they aren’t the same thing.

“Why can’t I just stay with you?” Liam asks. Mike stares at him. “Because I’m not a fucking lunatic,” Mike says. “And I would become one if I had to deal with you all the fucking time.” “I’m here all the time anyway,” Liam says. “And I’m already one day away from killing you,” Mike says, sitting down on the stairs beside Liam. Liam leans his head on Mike’s shoulder, and no amount of shrugging will make him get off.

The kid thinks he’s in love with him, but the season’s up in a couple weeks, and the off-season is a whole other thing. He’ll get over it, and Mike will get over him. Eventually. Mike wraps his arm around Liam’s shoulder. “Not your boyfriend,” he reminds him. “Says you,” Liam mutters, and Mike graciously ignores him, just turns his head, face pressed to Liam’s hair. “Let’s go inside,” he says, and when Liam reaches out, Mike helps him up.

Well, beyond the marks that are undeniably sex related, and that Rogers has studiously avoided looking at ever since he went red and bashful the first time he saw them, like the finger marks on Liam’s hips broke his protective, vanilla brain.

“Then you can wait until we have time for more than a quickie before going to work.” “We don’t have to leave for an hour,” Liam argues. “Yeah, well,” Mike says. “Maybe I want to take my time.” Liam’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah, okay,” he says, finally. Mike bets his imagination’s working over time. “Okay,” Mike says.

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.

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. With the right line, the right coaching, he could blow the fuck up. He doesn’t see it, maybe, but there’s no way in hell that management doesn’t, that other teams’ management doesn’t. Liam’s going to have the market running hot, vying for him, if he doesn’t fuck it up and re-sign with Edmonton, who can hardly afford the least he deserves, and he would, just to be where Rogers is, where Morris is. Where Mike is.

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.

The key ends up on the floor, the bags over Liam’s shoulders, and Mike finally looks him in the eye. He wishes he hadn’t. “There’s something wrong with you,” Liam says, choked, and as soft as an admission of love, “There’s something broken.” Mike swallows, looks down at the key on the floor. “Go home, kid,” he says, finally, and Liam listens to him for once, at least for as long as it takes Mike to lock the door behind him.

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. And then, almost immediately, can i c u tonite?.

That Mike stops this now or he doesn’t stop it at all, because he doesn’t have it in him to hurt the kid again. Doesn’t have it in him to break his own fucking heart again, doesn’t think he could do it, not without flinching. 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.

The thing is, Mike’s selfish. He’s tried so hard not to be where Liam is concerned, but he is. He’d rather have the kid miserable than be miserable without him, and if that makes him a son of a bitch, he can’t make himself care anymore.

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.

But it’s one thing to recognize a fact and it’s another thing entirely to depend on it, and Mike realizes, with depressing clarity, that he’s doing the latter. That as empty as his days can get, as monotonous, Liam’s prepared to bolster them with the paper-thin presence of phone calls, Skype, or, less frequently, his too loud too much presence filling Mike’s house and settling something inside of him, letting him relax.