Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The streak starts at home, although none of them realize that at the time, not until later, not until things are really going.

But it starts at home, an otherwise unassuming Tuesday, when everything seems to be going their way, the puck finding their tape and all the bounces going their way.

Not that it's difficult to enjoy a 5-1 win over a good team; that's fun no matter when or how it happens, but at the time—

It doesn't feel like a big deal.

They'd beat Tampa earlier in the week, too; one of their best games of the year, Nick thinks. Said so at the time, too.

Everything had been clicking: they'd gotten to the net, moved the puck fast, moved their feet, been where they were supposed to be.

Getting a powerplay goal himself then hadn't exactly hurt, either. It had felt great to tap Cam's shot in, even with Hedman draped all over him in front of the crease, like the world's tallest and most aggressively Swedish coat. Even if he'd wound up eating it, flat on his stomach on the ice after taking the shot, well.

He'd been grinning too hard to care.

And as good as that game down in Tampa had felt, getting the win at home was even better.

Okay, sure, they hadn't managed to keep the shutout for Bob, that part wasn't ideal, but he was damn proud of how they'd played, everyone contributing, spreading out the goals and keeping the cannon and the scorers busy. Nick didn't want to dwell on the numbers, not that early in the season, but it was hard not to know it had been one of the better Novembers they'd ever had, putting up franchise record numbers.

So yeah, it was easy to enjoy that.

The locker room afterward was humming, the guys joking around and yelling compliments and insults at each other in about equal portions. Half of them moving just off-beat to the music they had going, or in Cam's case, singing along, and Nick had to shake his head, because for professional athletes some of them sure had a terrible sense of rhythm.

Dubi was chewing on his lip, frowning as he picked tape off the blade of his stick, concentrating and ignoring Wild Bill as he leaned around him to yell something at Wenny. In the corner, half of the rookies were having a hushed conversation that was probably just about where they were going out after they were done with interviews and whatever else the team needed them all to do before they were free for the rest of the night. It was doubtless not even remotely as serious as the very intent whispers they were conducting whatever good-natured argument it had turned into in, but Nick wasn't gonna worry about that.

Let the kids do what they wanted to blow off a little steam, especially when it was something as harmless as a slightly late night. It wasn’t like any of them would be able to sleep if they went right home as it was.

Nowadays when they had games at Nationwide Nick didn't tend to go out all that often afterward anyway; it was too easy to just head home and get some more precious time with his family. Besides, as Dubi liked to tease him, he was old enough now that drinking and being up past his bed-time wasn't all that personally appealing anymore anyway.

Not that Dubi could really talk, though, because Nick wasn't sure the last time he'd seen Dubi go out with the kids, either. Not that reality would ever get in the way of Dubi running his mouth for the sake of it.

A ripple of laughter went through one side of the room, standing out even in the relatively raucous atmosphere and Nick straightened up—he'd been looking down as he buttoned up his shirt—and glanced over.

He frowned a little, brows drawn together as he noticed—

[]

He frowned a little, brows drawn together as he noticed a blur of motion in the corner of his eye, something green-brown moving towards one of the trainers' rooms. Green-brown wasn't exactly a common color around Nationwide. Nick was pretty used to everyone in various shades of blue, and he was pretty sure all the coaches had been in gray for the game, excluding whatever plaid monstrosity Shaw had been wearing.

But something about it set off the vague alarm bells at the back of his mind that he seemed to have spontaneously developed when Milana was born; the mostly-parental sense that something was going on that he should check out. Having a bunch of teammates barely out of their teens—and still in them, in Zach's case, not that you'd know it to watch him—had just made it all the more acute.

Nick put down his tie and figured he could come back for it later, and stepped around Cam and Matty where they were tag-teaming some kind of joke at Hartsy's expense, while Brian the camera guy tried futilely to keep them out of frame and out of earshot where he was filming Maetz asking Saader questions for the postgame.

He'd normally wonder if that was something he should keep an ear on, but Cam and Matty were at least both pretty good at keeping a lid on things, and were certainly old enough to know better, anyhow. The kids maybe not so much. But he could probably just trust them not to push anything too far, even if he had no desire at all to find out why they were talking about Burt Reynolds.

The racket from the locker room faded off a little as he stepped outside, and more again when he turned the corner. They'd designed this part of Nationwide well, and everything seemed so normal that Nick would almost think he was being paranoid in following whoever it was when there was a loud crashing noise from just down the hall and around the corner.

Nick hadn't come this way for a while, and he was pretty sure that the door he could could see slowly closing on its automatic hinges was for the security office, where they had all the cameras for the CCTV around the arena, and where the security team were based when they weren't doing their rounds.

It was probably fine—it wasn't like anyone could just walk into the room and not get asked exactly what they thought they were doing—and Nick nearly turned back, except that was when he heard a startled yell.

He hit the door at a run, not really sure exactly what he thought he was doing but going on pure instinct, letting adrenaline flood him, momentarily wiping out the aches and pains of a hard-fought game.

And then he stopped dead, hardly even flinching when the door closed behind him and barked his heels.

There was—

Nick hadn't seen Jurassic Park in a couple years or anything, but he'd been in a kid in the 90s, and the shape was unmistakable. The feathers were a bit of a surprise, although he vaguely remembered reading something about that the last time he'd been to a museum, the one in Chicago, he was pretty sure. Not that that was the important question on his lips then and there, not when—

"That's a dinosaur," he said, too stunned to even stop himself saying the words out loud.

This was going to be pretty embarrassing if this was an elaborate prank the guys had cooked up, and he did glance around quickly to see if he could see a camera anywhere. It was an awfully convincing looking animal, though; leaning over the desk with its—beak? muzzle? face?—a foot away from Ashley, the head of security who was sitting at her desk making a face that eloquently expressed the sentiment that she did not at all get paid enough for this crap.

Nick could sympathize.

"Yep," she said, and pulled a drawer open, grabbing something that looked like a carrot out and tossing it in the air. The dinosaur reached up and swallowed it in one gulp, before chirping pointedly.

"What," Nick said dumbly, and at least two octaves higher than normal, and then he cleared his throat and tried again. "What's going on?"

At least when he pranked Cam, it was dumb stuff that they could laugh off pretty quickly. And didn't take a lot of effort and time and possibly a Hollywood special effects budget.

This had to have taken so much planning. And Nick wasn't sure what the joke was.

However they'd built it, that thing was way more convincing than all the T-Rex costumes he'd seen Youtube videos of people wearing to skate around in or shovel snow or ride horses or whatever.

Ashley sighed, and shoved at the dinosaur's face to get it to side-step enough that she could see Nick properly. If Nick had been guessing, he'd say that the dinosaur looked…sheepish? As ironic as that was.

"Let's just say some assholes on the internet called Torts an old fossil one time too many," she said finally.

Nick cringed automatically, and then blinked, and then shook his head, figuring he had to have misheard. She couldn't possibly be implying—

"Excuse me?" he said.

"I'm not sure what he is this time," she said. "Last week it was a triceratops. And let's just say afterward we had to get someone in to fix the door to the coaches room, it was a huge pain in the ass. At least this time he's something smaller."

"You're saying our coach is a were-dinosaur," Nick said skeptically.

The dinosaur—the word oviraptor or something like that was coming to Nick's mind, from wherever it was buried with memories of Transformers and Pokemon—turned to look Nick directly in the eye.

He swallowed hard. He had to admit even in dinosaur form that look was—

Somewhat recognizable.

"This is the weirdest fucking team I have ever heard of," Nick said, and sat down in one of the terrible plastic chairs they seemed to keep there to maim visitors or attempted trespassers or whoever else wound up in the security office.

"You're telling me," Ashley said. "He'll probably be back to normal in a few minutes, you just gotta wait it out."

Well, Nick thought. It could have been worse, really. At least it was him, and not one of the kids deciding they needed to document all of this on the snapchat.

Or the twitter account.

Nick took a moment to consider just what the internet would do with "Blue Jackets coach secret dinosaur" and decided to be very glad that this was not actually his problem to deal with, mostly. They had enough going on.

"Anyhow," Ashley said. "Since you're unavoidably also in on this secret now, congratulations, next time you get to bring a salad or something just in case."

Nick blinked. "What do you do if he's not a herbivore?"

The dinosaur appeared to be ignoring Nick, and pointedly crunched the carrot even more loudly. Nick did not want to know what that meant.

Ashley gave him a sweet smile and pushed her hair back behind her ears. For a small blonde woman she looked remarkably ruthless all of a sudden.

"Hope you guys didn't have too many turnovers that game?"

Nick was pretty sure his dad never had to deal with this kind of stuff when he was captain.

[]

He frowned a little, brows drawn together as he noticed Saader sitting in his stall, half undressed, grinning down at the phone in his hand.

It wasn't a look he'd seen Saader wear a whole lot, either; a little bit soft and clearly delighted, like he was getting really good news, or hearing from family or someone he loved. Nick blinked, and wondered if Saader had started seeing someone, maybe. He'd gotten the impression after he got traded that Brandon was leaving someone behind. Someone who couldn't or wouldn't travel to Columbus with him, someone whose shadow hovered behind Saader's expression sometimes, dimming his smile.

Good for him if that was what it was, Nick thought, and turned his attention back to getting dressed.

He didn't notice Boone noticing the same thing he had.

Brandon couldn't quite stop himself from grinning stupidly at his phone, at the message that had been waiting for him when he'd picked it up after the game. He hadn't exactly had a banner night personally: one shot off the crossbar and a couple others that just straight up missed wasn't much to write home about, but knowing Nick had been watching made him feel even better than the 'good work' pat on the back he'd gotten from Dubi as they filed off the ice after decisively crushing the Bolts for the second time in a week.

A three game point streak was nice, feeling like things were really starting to click on the ice for them this year, the way they were supposed to have last year… that was even better. Not that Brandon wanted to spend a lot of time and energy thinking about last year. He knew well enough that was a bad idea on a couple of levels.

Instead, better to let himself focus on how well his teammates were playing, on the day off they'd earned for the next day, on the fact it was just over a week till the Islanders would be in town, too.

They'd closed out November pretty nicely, in the end, and sure as hell a lot better than most people thought they would, and that was satisfying in and of itself. And worthy of celebration.

That seemed to be on everyone's minds, more or less, and Brandon jumped as Boone flicked him with the corner of a towel to get his attention before drawling, "Saader, you're coming with us, yeah?"

Brandon blinked, gave him a second to decide if he was going to chirp him for being so far off in his own little world like that, and then asked, "Going where?"

Boone shrugged and gave him a grin that was all teeth. "Out," he repeated, in the tone that promised potentially unwise amounts of alcohol, a late night, and plenty of opportunities to mock the rest of his teammates for their inability to hold their liquor and for their taste in women or men.

Brandon had been quietly relieved, the first time he'd gone out with the majority of the team after their win in LA and found that he wasn't the only one whose eyes followed the hipster-looking bartender with a well-groomed beard, instead of the tall, stacked woman he was serving who Brandon half-thought might actually be a model. And the completely unselfconscious chirping that Will got for asking the guy for his number was refreshingly exactly the same as Brandon had heard teammates get over the years when they tried to pick up anyone. No one had said anything weird about it, and no one seemed to expect Brandon to say anything weird about it—although Boone had given him a quick look, clearly taking his temperature on the moment, before turning to say something to Murrs with a quick grin and an easy laugh.

Boone was straightforward in a way that Brandon appreciated; quick to look out for his guys, quick to read a situation, quick with a laugh and just as quick to grab someone and haul them off if they looked like they were getting out of line.

He was so steady and grounded, so easy wearing a letter on the ice that Brandon forgot sometimes that they were more or less the same age. He knew everyone thought he was mature beyond his years himself, but Brandon had been making an effort to shake that whole 'manchild' thing, thanks. That was one nickname that could stay in Chicago. But Boone seemed to come by a similar mindset even more naturally, like he'd been depended on practically since he'd been a rookie, and he'd never stopped trying to meet that responsibility.

Brandon had known since they traded for him that he was being looked at as a veteran, a calming voice in the room, someone who'd been there before and knew what to expect, and he was happy to provide an example to lead that way…but there was a part of him sometimes that still doubted it, that wondered if he was doing as much as he should, if he was doing that part right. He didn't think Boone had those kinds of doubts, even if he was fighting it on the ice at the moment and not scoring nearly as much as he had a year ago.

Boone was straightforward in a way that Brandon appreciated; quick to look out for his guys, quick to read a situation, quick with a laugh and just as quick to grab someone and haul them off if they looked like they were getting out of line. He was so steady and grounded, so easy wearing a letter on the ice that Brandon forgot sometimes that they were more or less the same age. He knew everyone thought he was mature beyond his years too; Brandon had been working to shake that whole 'manchild' thing, thanks, but Boone seemed to come by that same attitude even more naturally.

Brandon knew he was being looked at as a veteran, a calming voice in the room, considered to be someone who'd been there before and knew what to expect, and he was happy to provide an example to lead that way…but there was a part of him sometimes that still doubted it, that wondered if he was doing as much as he should, if he was doing that right. He didn't think Boone had those kinds of doubts, even if he was fighting it on the ice at the moment and not scoring nearly as much as he did last year.

Brandon wasn't exactly scoring at a great clip these days, either.

So, yeah, he could sympathize.

"Okay, sure," Brandon said, slipping his phone into the pocket of his jacket, tugging his cuffs down over his wrists and standing up. "I'm down for that, where are we heading?"

"The usual," Boone started to say, but it was drowned out by Wild Bill and Wenny whooping, and Andy and Zach joining in, and Brandon gave up on even trying to have any kind of conversation until they'd all finished up their obligations for the night and picked up at least a drink or two.

If past experience was anything to go by, they'd all wind up jammed into one booth arguing over whose turn it was to buy a round for at least an hour before anyone would have worked off the endorphin high or the smug satisfaction from a game where they'd played well enough to beat anyone in the league and they all knew it.

Brandon resigned himself to not getting to his bed until some time well after midnight, and after a moment's thought pulled his phone back out again just long enough to text Leds to let him know he'd talk to him tomorrow, or whenever it was that they next both had a day off.

It was good to know now that that wasn't going to be a problem, that neither of them was going to be upset or jealous or resentful, that Nick was probably just at home in New York, glad that Brandon had a good game and pleased to hear that he was getting some quality time to spend with his teammates.

It helped that the Jackets weren't having an historically terrible start to their season, Brandon would be the first to admit that. But having been through everything last year definitely made things feel much easier, and while Brandon still missed Nick—and everyone else, but Nick most of all—it wasn't nearly as acute as it had been. Made it easy to enjoy the slightly-too-loud music of the bar when they got there, and to just nurse a drink for a while and listen to what everyone else was saying.

"Good work tonight, Saader," Boone said, and pushed a glass closer to Brandon's hands where he was leaning on the table, lost in his thoughts.

Brandon shook himself, let the mood drift away and let himself smile normally at Boone.

Well, okay. Smiled a little bit more than normal. So sue him, he liked Boone, and he wasn't exactly hard to look at, either.

"You too," he said, and took a healthy swallow of his drink. Boone apparently also had good taste in tap beer, which was something Brandon appreciated in a teammate.

Boone shrugged at him, but looked pleased enough. He hadn't found himself on the scoresheet either, but he'd been hitting everything he could see in a white jersey, and Brandon knew he wasn't the only one who'd taken note of that.

"So, how long do you think it takes Jonesy to get back with the next round?" Boone asked, gesturing with his chin towards the bar, where Seth was deep in conversation with Josh and Zach and hadn't so much as looked at the bartender in a few minutes.

Brandon wasn't all that bothered really; he had a drink, and Boone was good company. And he was pretty sure the other three were talking football considering how they were all facing one of the big flatscreens behind the bar, and Brandon just wasn't that big on football, where it was Ohio State or the NFL.

Wenny and Bill could usually be depended on to change the subject—admittedly, often to soccer—but they'd made themselves scarce already. Brandon had some sneaking suspicions about what exactly they were doing that wasn't quality time with their teammates, but he didn't exactly plan on saying anything about that. Not unless they started the conversation. Brandon wasn't blind, even if half the time people seemed to forget he was around for some conversations. It was easy to get overlooked when you didn't have to hear yourself talk constantly, or so he'd tried to tell Andy and Tro both over the years. Neither of them had taken that observation all that well, actually.

"I think we're on our own for the time being," Brandon said ruefully, figuring some kind of answer was expected of him, and Boone just laughed and said, "Yeah."

As it turned out, Zach and Andy and Jonesy did eventually work their way back to the booth, having collected Sedsy and a couple of the other younger guys again on the way, and Brandon let himself get shuffled closer to Boone, pressed up warm against him while they tried to fit a few more people than were probably intended into the space. It was easy to just sit there and let the conversation wash over him, add a comment or two when there was a gap to do so, and to join in on giving Zach shit for the completely pathetic fake that he was still using and somehow getting away with.

Brandon should probably not be encouraging Zach to come out with them anyway, but at the same time…he wasn't the one at the table wearing a letter, and it wasn't like anything was going to happen while he was with the rest of the team. That was probably safer, really, than anything that might happen at a house party or whatever where there weren't older and wiser (or at least more sober) people. Brandon'd had a couple drinks, sure, but he was still more than capable of looking out for himself and others. He'd had a lot of practice.

He'd also had a drink or two more than he'd quite intended to, and by the time they were completely failing to figure out how to split the bill—even with three iPhones out using the calculator app—he felt the alcohol hitting him harder than he usually indulged in during the season. Definitely more than usual. He didn't feel bad, and he didn't think he'd be hungover or anything like that, but the world seemed warmer, and a little too bright, and something made it seem all too natural to drift back towards Boone, leaning into him while they stood around and argued over who was covering the tip.

Boone didn't seem to mind.

Brandon would've thought he didn't even notice really, but for the fact that as Brandon shifted his weight from one foot to the other Boone slung an arm around him, hand settling at Brandon's hip to steady him. Brandon froze for a second and then mentally shrugged and decided to let himself just enjoy the moment. He was tipsy, Boone was there, all solid and warm and beardy and—

Yeah, okay, Brandon thought. So he had a type.

No harm done there.

"You wanna split an Uber, Saader?" Boone asked, as they all walked outside, talking too loudly even after getting out of the bar, cheerfully drunk enough to not remember to care about just how much of a spectacle they were making.

It was reassuringly familiar, really; Brandon had been doing this with teammates almost longer than he could remember.

Definitely longer than it'd been legal for him to do it, that was for sure.

"Sure," Brandon said with a shrug, and he let his fingertips tuck under the waistband of Boone's pants, just to get a slightly better grip on him. It was fine. They were totally fine.

"Wait, did we lose Murrs?" he asked belatedly, glancing around the group and realizing he wasn't sure the last time he'd even seen Ryan.

Boone barked out a laugh and said, "Nah, he went straight home. He turns into a pumpkin around midnight, you know that."

"Right, right," Brandon replied, and he did know that.

Did usually remember that as much as Ryan liked to hang out with the rest of the team, it was rare for him to actually do the whole loud bar with a lot of people and even more booze thing. Hell, it was rare enough for Brandon to do that, so he could probably be excused for forgetting.

Their car turned up shortly after, and Brandon just followed Boone into the backseat without waiting for any further discussion, waving at Josh and Zach, who were either still trying to work out who was going to actually pay for the car or whether they should just walk home anyway. It wasn't that cold out, and at least they lived close.

"They're probably fine, right?" Brandon said, mostly rhetorically, glancing over his shoulder out the back windscreen to check up on them.

It seemed unlikely that either of them would somehow wander off and end up as an embarrassing front page story about falling into the river and drowning, at the very least.

"Yeah," Boone said with a shrug, and if Boone wasn't worried about them then Brandon wasn't going to, either.

He turned to glance out the window beside him instead, not really tracking much more than the lights flashing by as they drove, the short drive seeming to stretch out longer than it could possibly be. The leather of the seat creaked beside him as Boone shifted his weight, and then Brandon had to work not to startle obviously as Boone stretched his legs out enough to kick gently at Brandon's ankle, getting his attention.

"Yeah?" Brandon said, turning back to look at him. Boone was wearing an expression that Brandon half recognized, but couldn't immediately place.

Boone licked his lips and swallowed, and Brandon forgot to pretend like he wasn't watching that, like he hadn't noticed. Boone grinned, and didn't seem even remotely flustered or uncomfortable. And, oh, right, Brandon thought, the obvious answer trickling through to the front of his mind at last: that was interest. Flirting. That was the way Boone looked when he'd seen someone he liked the look of, someone he was into.

Brandon'd seen it directed at more than one woman in Columbus and on the road; Boone was a shameless flirt and didn't care who knew it. He'd seen it directed at Murrs, too, and he'd really thought that he and Boone were—were something, anyhow. But then again, maybe Brandon was just projecting.

But Boone was definitely aiming that look in Brandon's direction, and, well. Brandon couldn't deny that he was interested in looking right back.

Inconveniently, that was exactly the point where the car pulled up out front of Brandon's place. Their driver turned back to say, "Here you go," with a grin, and waited for Brandon to get his act together and get out. He paused for a second, and then made the decision.

[]

"You wanna come up?" Brandon asked, making eye contact with Boone. Hoping his expression was saying exactly what he meant it to.

Boone didn't hesitate before saying, "Actually, yeah," and then leaned forward to add, "Uh, sorry," to their driver, passing over a twenty that Brandon figured would more than cover the difference between what the fare would've been as far as Boone and Murr's apartment.

He followed Brandon up the path to the front door, close enough that Brandon fancied he could feel his warmth, or at least couldn't fail to be hyper-aware of his presence. They kicked off their shoes just inside the door, and Brandon turned to lock it behind them, flipping the hall light on so they could actually see what they were doing. He caught a quick glimpse then of his own face in the mirror hanging by the coat rack, his cheeks flushed pink with alcohol and cold wind and more than a little arousal, hair messed up from the half-hearted way he'd dried it after showering. He looked more than a little flustered, but definitely awake and mostly on his way back to sober. Definitely okay enough to make the decision he was pretty sure he was about to.

"I'm not reading this wrong, am I?" Boone said, from right behind his ear, his breath warm on Brandon's neck.

Brandon grinned automatically. "Well, I didn't invite you in for coffee."

"Good," Boone said, and instead of going for Brandon's pants like he half expected him to, or turning him around to kiss him, Boone just leaned in enough to press his lips to the side of Brandon's neck, mouth open, tongue swiping roughly across the skin.

Brandon shivered, let his eyes close while he made a tiny noise of appreciation—and then his eyes opened again, fast, as he realized what had been nagging the back of his mind for the last couple of seconds.

"Boone," he said, swallowing hard as Boone kept kissing down the side of his throat. Letting himself just roll with this because it felt good was probably not a smart move. "You wanna explain why you're not showing up in the mirror?"

Boone froze.

"Uh," he said, looking slightly guilty.

Brandon frowned.

Boone stepped back, and let his hands fall to his sides from where they'd been at Brandon's hips, and as Brandon turned to look at him he shrugged, wearing the most sheepish expression Brandon had ever seen on him.

"So I'm kind of a vampire now," Boone started, and Brandon snorted, not bothering to hide his involuntary laughter.

"No shit," Brandon said. "When were you planning on mentioning this?"

Boone continued to look shifty. "Uh…whenever it came up?"

Brandon narrowed his eyes at him.

"Look," Boone said, "this only happened over summer, okay, I'm still getting used to it. It doesn't exactly come up in conversation! And I wasn't going to bite you or anything, me and Murrs have a system, it's fine."

"Ah," Brandon said, and that did explain some things. "I just wanted to check. Like, there might have been some other explanation, but that's cool."

Boone looked like he wasn't sure he believed that last comment. And now that Brandon was looking at him closely, and in better lighting… it was clearer still that Boone looked a bit stressed—a little distressed—in a way that Brandon wasn't used to seeing from him. The same way he'd looked since they came back for training camp. Now that he knew, Brandon couldn't believe he'd thought Boone was just tense because he wasn't scoring as much so far that year. He should've been able to figure out something else was going on, too.

"It really is fine," Brandon repeated, feeling the ground steady under his feet, metaphorically speaking. Because now he really was on much more familiar terrain. "You can bite me too, if you want."

Boone blinked, and Brandon got the feeling he had surprised him with that.

"I—what?"

Brandon stepped closer, back into Boone's personal space. He tilted his head to one side, knew how it exposed the lines of his throat, how it would lock right into Boone's instinctive responses.

"You can bite me," Brandon repeated. "I was gonna say, I'm seeing someone. But it's long distance so we're, you know. Flexible."

Boone raised an eyebrow. "Wow, Saader. Guess it's true what they say about the quiet ones, huh?"

"What?" Brandon gave him back the exact same look.

"You're—I wouldn't have expected you to be into that," Boone admitted. "The open relationship bit. I mean, okay the biting part, too. But mostly the other part."

"I have layers," Brandon said, mildly insulted, and then he made the mistake of looking directly at Boone again, at which point they both said, "…like an onion," in unison, before cracking up.

"For real though," Brandon said, after they'd gotten themselves under control again. "I think that we kinda killed the mood here, but if you want one for the road before heading home, well. It wouldn't be the first time."

Boone looked at him a lot more thoughtfully, and Brandon felt the trickle of slow heat along his spine, felt all the tiny hairs on his arms stand on end at the combination of desire and hunger that rippled through him in response.

"Yeah, okay," Boone said. "That's, uh. That's really nice of you, Saader."

Brandon shrugged one shoulder, dismissing that. "It's not like I'm not getting anything out of it."

Boone tilted his head to look at Brandon more carefully. "Say what?"

Brandon had been about to ask Boone if he wanted to move this conversation to the living room, or the bedroom, wherever he'd be more comfortable, but he stopped dead at that, mouth hanging open for a second before he could work out how to respond to that. He couldn't imagine how Boone hadn't found that out yet.

"No one you've bitten has been getting off on it?" Brandon asked, after failing to come up with a less crude way of putting it, and deciding that if he and Boone had been inches away from sleeping together anyway then it was probably just fine to come out and say it like that.

It was Boone's turn to blush a little then. "Uh, well, we keep hooking up after, but I thought that was just—"

Just what they did, Brandon had no trouble in finishing that sentence. It was kind of nice to hear he'd read that situation correctly, though.

"Right," Brandon said. "Uh, if you don't mind me asking, why are you, you know. Here."

"Ryan wanted an early night, and I don't want to wear him out," Boone said. "Uh, his iron was getting kind of low, too."

"Yeah, that'll happen," Brandon said, with the voice of experience. Him and Nick had found that out the hard way.

"Also, we're kind of—flexible too," Boone added. "Mostly with girls, but. You're hot, and interested maybe, so I figured… why not."

"Right," Brandon said again. "Well, if you wanna come upstairs and get some, we can do that. And if you want, I can probably give you someone to talk to about the whole vampire thing, too. If you like."

"Your guy's a vampire too, huh?" Boone said, putting it together.

Not that it was particularly difficult, really. Brandon figured if Boone was less tired and probably also a bit less distracted he'd probably be able to guess pretty quick just who exactly Brandon's guy was. But since he hadn't, Brandon was gonna wait to check with Nick first. Everyone was better off that way.

Boone cleared his throat and went on. "Can I say, uh. Both? I wanna do both, if that's cool."

"Yeah," Brandon said, and took that as a good opportunity to start heading towards his bedroom, with Boone hot on his heels. "I think we can do that."

And he was pretty sure that if this went well, well. Maybe the next time Nick was in town all of them could get dinner or something. And then see what happened. Brandon wasn't exactly opposed to the idea of seeing what happened with more than one vampire in his bed, that was for sure.

[]

Well. He made the decision to not actually make a decision, to act like he didn't actually realize exactly what Boone's expression was trying to suggest to him.

"Well, uh, night," Brandon said, feeling awkward and kind of dumb as Boone kept looking at him with one eyebrow raised.

He could read the silent invitation that Boone was dangling, and a large part of him wanted to take him up on it, too. But he couldn't quite bring himself to make such a potentially huge decision on the spur of the moment, after more shots than he liked to think of. If this wasn't just a one-off thing then there'd be other opportunities, and his dick could damn well just deal with that.

Besides, it wasn't like he wanted to try and explain his relationship status while half-tipsy.

If Boone was disappointed, he covered it well, just reached over to give Brandon a friendly punch to his upper arm before saying, "Yeah. Night, Saader. Catch you later."

Brandon climbed out of the car and headed inside, and did not let himself turn around to watch Boone go. No matter how much he was tempted to.

With just a day between games and no major break in the schedule any time soon, they had the Wednesday morning off completely, with nothing planned before they were due to fly out late afternoon. That was probably for the best, because Brandon slept late into the morning, his body taking the opportunity with no alarms to keep him in bed well past when he'd usually be up.

He wandered into his kitchen late in the morning, barefoot on the tiles and wrapped up in his bathrobe over pajamas, feeling significantly better than he could have done, mercifully spared the hangover he probably deserved. With nowhere to go and nothing he absolutely had to do, for once more or less on top of most of the chores and errands that tended to pile up in the middle of the season when they were away from home for large chunks of time, even.

It was nice to be able to linger over his cup of tea with breakfast, and then to wander into the living room and put his feet up on the table, catch up on some of what was on his DVR.

His phone buzzed around lunch time, and Brandon hit pause on the remote, picked it up and couldn't help the grin that spread across his face as soon as he heard Nick's voice.

"Hey," Brandon said. "How's it going, Leds?"

"Not bad, not bad," Nick said, and Brandon could picture him so easily; sitting at his apartment on his couch, probably with his feet up on the coffee table as well, same as Brandon was. Brandon had seen him like that often enough. Had been right there next to him often enough, too. "Just got lunch, gonna nap soon, and then the game, you know how it is."

"Who've you guys got tonight again?" Brandon asked.

He had enough on his plate remembering his own team's schedule, and that got reinforced at practice and with video sessions; he pretty much only guaranteed he'd remember who the Isles were playing when it was the Jackets.

And that was its own separate issue, of course.

"Pens," Nick said, and Brandon said, "Ah," and then added, "Definitely finish them off before overtime, please."

Nick laughed, that time, and said, "Sure, just for you, babe."

"Ouch, uncalled for sarcasm," Brandon replied. "Anyway, sorry I didn't get to catch up last night. We, uh, went out after. I got in pretty late."

"It's all good," Nick said. "Have fun?"

Brandon paused, not sure how to best put it.

It wasn't as if he hadn't planned all along to tell Nick, anyway.

When they'd decided to stay together long distance, but that hookups were okay as long as they were safe, being able to talk about it was the one rule they'd decided to have. And so far it had worked out just fine; Brandon had picked up a couple of times—well, twice—and he'd had fun, and then he'd had even more fun telling Nick about it after. He'd been reassuringly pleased to get updates on Nick's low key flirtation with one of the Isles rookies, too, and whenever he thought about Nick maybe doing anything more than just making out with him, there was a decided lack of jealousy, other than for the fact that Brandon kind of wanted to watch. So he didn't anticipate a problem, but still—

It wasn't something he was used to talking about, yet. Even though they were both clear on what they were free to do.

"Saader," Nick said, after Brandon had been quiet for probably a couple seconds too long. "What happened?"

"Nothing bad," Brandon reassured him. "I, uh. Nothing happened, really."

There was a pause. "Did you want something to happen?" Nick asked, too perceptive as always.

"I think I was flirting with Boone," Brandon said.

Nick made a considering noise. "Jenner?" he asked. "Yeah, I can see it."

Brandon blinked, and wished they were on Skype or Facetime or something so he could see what Nick's expression was doing. Or so he could give him the kind of look that kind of comment deserved.

"Uh, yeah," he said, after a moment. "What do you mean you can see it?"

"I mean, he's hot," Nick said, and Brandon blinked. "And kind of your type, no wonder you want to flirt with him. Does he, uh. Do you know if he's into guys?"

"I'm pretty sure he's sleeping with his roommate. Or he was. I think, anyway."

Brandon wished that he had a better idea of what was going on there, because if Boone was interested—if Boone had been flirting seriously with him, and not just kind of drunk and easy and horny—then Brandon was interested right back, yeah. But not if there was any chance it could turn into some kind of drama inside the room. Brandon was never going to be hypocritical enough to think there was anything automatically wrong with hooking up with a teammate, but unnecessary drama was best to sidestep.

"Right, yeah, you should work that out," Nick agreed. He paused for a second. "And if that works out, find out if he's interested in a threesome."

Brandon's eyebrows raised without his conscious permission. "Nicholas Leddy," he said, unable to help the grin spreading across his face as he imagined that. "Are you suggesting you maybe have a thing for a guy on another team in your division?"

Nick laughed right back at him. "I'm sleeping with you, aren't I?"

Brandon had to give him that point.

"Sure, Leds, I'll let you know what happens," he promised.

"You better," Nick said. "You know I like the details," and he did, too.

It made Brandon blush even thinking about it, let alone narrating it, but Nick really, really got off on hearing Brandon talk about sex with anyone, whether it was the cute guy he'd met at a club in LA, or just reminiscing about some of his hookups back when he was in Saginaw.

And Nick getting off got Brandon off, so really it was win-win all around.

This time around, they managed to beat the Avs, deeply satisfying after the OT loss earlier in the month, although it wasn't like any of them felt great about letting the 2-0 lead slip away. Brandon had scored early on, and picked up an assist, so he was feeling pretty good about his performance, and Boone crashing the net for a greasy one for the game-winner was the icing on the cake, felt somehow inevitable after how hard he'd been working without actually getting the results up till then.

Brandon had leapt to his feet on the bench when they saw the red light go off, and he hadn't been the only one; they'd all seen how Boone had been fighting it recently, and Brandon just hoped now that some of the pressure was off he'd be able to start putting the puck in a little more often again.

From there, it was on to Phoenix, and another win, and then home to beat the Yotes again even more comprehensively, and that was the end of the four in seven, all four wins, and a few days off to catch their breath between them.

They didn't go out again after that win, although Brandon figured no one would've been surprised if they had. 4-1 was enough of an ass-kicking to power anyone through a couple hours in a bar, but it had been a long week, and he figured he couldn't be the only one who was looking forward to sleeping in his own bed for a couple nights with nothing more pressing to worry about.

Still, he found that he and Boone kept gravitating together, sitting together on the plane and talking more when they went out for meals as a team, finding a new equilibrium. They hadn't talked about it really; not the look in the bar the other week, or the way Brandon had found himself leaning in in the car later, and the way he'd kept leaning in every time they'd been around each other and not actively playing hockey all week.

It would have been easy to just tell himself that it didn't mean much of anything, except Brandon kept catching Boone watching him back. He'd got to know him well enough last year, although that had been a whirlwind of adjusting to a lot of new teammates, but Brandon had worked out quickly that Boone was a lot more perceptive than he got credit for, and it was no mystery why he was wearing one of the As for the team.

With all that in the back of his mind, it wasn't a shock at all when Boone caught his eye after practice and asked, "You wanna go get sushi or something, Saader?"

"Yeah, sounds good," Brandon said, and deliberately didn't look to see if anyone else was noticing that Boone hadn't invited any of the other usual suspects. He wasn't sure if it would be worse if anyone had, or if he'd just see a complete lack of surprise round the room. Better not to focus on that, really.

By sushi, Boone apparently meant stopping by the place they usually went downtown and then getting takeout, before heading back to his apartment. That was probably smart, it meant they wouldn't have to worry about being overheard. Or… anything else, Brandon thought, and felt his face flush, knew the tips of his ears were probably pink too.

"Murrs is over at Z and Andy's place," Boone said casually, digging chopsticks out of the drawer in the kitchen and handing them and a plate to Brandon before sitting back down at the kitchen table beside him.

"Right," Brandon said, and for lack of any better ideas, focused on eating his share just like they weren't sitting there with this awkward giant thing looming over them.

Lunch seemed to be over twice as quickly as Brandon was prepared for, and he found himself fidgeting with his chopsticks for lack of anything better to do with his hands. For some reason, this part never seemed to get any easier, no matter how comfortable he was with the person he was hoping to hook up with.

However well he knew them.

He'd probably been as attuned to Nick as it was possible for another person to be when they'd first gotten together back in Rockford, and it had still been one of the more uniquely awkward moments of Brandon's life.

"So," Brandon said, breaking the silence. Boone grinned at him.

Okay, so maybe this wasn't going to be that bad.

"I'm not misreading this, am I?" Brandon asked, and Boone almost didn't need to answer, not with the way the grin he was wearing stretched even wider.

"If you're reading, 'we don't have to worry about Murrs overhearing anything' and thinking about getting naked, then, no, you're not," Boone said, still smirking. He was awfully sure of himself, and Brandon would probably find that the slightest bit annoying if he wasn't also getting off on it. So Brandon had a type, take two.

"Not gonna make anything weird, right?" Brandon asked, trying to remember what else went on his mental checklist for these moments, and wondering if it would be weird to write that down. Then he wouldn't worry about forgetting anything, but then anyone could find it and that would be—even harder to explain. He was going to have to wing it.

"Nope," Boone said, pushing his chair back and standing up, walking over towards Brandon.

"Anything off the table, in particular?" Brandon asked. It was better to cover that kind of thing before they wound up in the bedroom, before anyone got naked and stupid or embarrassed.

"I think this is the most you've talked all at once in weeks," Boone said, pausing for a moment beside Brandon's chair. Brandon stilled, and worried.

"Is that a problem?" he asked.

"No," Boone rushed to assure him, "It's actually kind of—I dunno, I'm into it. You got a list, Saader?"

Brandon emphatically did not blush. "No," he said, and pushed back his own chair, standing up so that he was on Boone's level, face to face. Nose to nose.

…right about exactly lined up to kiss him just as easy as he could stare him down.

"Just before we do this," Brandon said, because that was the important thing, the bit that you couldn't exactly take back and undo afterward if you wanted to, "I, uh. You know I'm seeing someone else too, right?"

Boone nodded, slowly, but didn't step back. "Yeah, I thought you might be. It's why I didn't, uh. Say anything sooner."

"It's long distance," Brandon said, choosing his words carefully. "We're not exclusive, it's not cheating, or anything like that."

Boone didn't break eye contact, but he looked about as serious as Brandon had ever seen him—at least, as serious as he'd ever looked without that edge of mad, or sad, or the sheer furious heartbreak that had been Brandon's first eight games with the Blue Jackets all tied up in one awful expression.

"That's fine," Boone said, and corrected himself almost immediately. "I mean, that's good. I'm pretty much in a similar spot, but we can talk about that later, right?"

"Of course," Brandon said. He guessed that answered his question about Ryan, or—maybe it didn't. Time to think about that later, though, that was most emphatically not the time.

"Okay, so… we're doing this?" Boone said. "You should get naked already, Saader."

"Why did I know you'd be bossy," Brandon said under his breath, just loud enough for Boone to hear, and he grinned when Boone just swatted at his flank in response. "Okay, yours is the room on the right, yeah?"

"Yeah, the one where you can see the floor," Boone replied, and followed right on Brandon's heels as he headed down the hall.

Boone's bedroom was, as promised, tidy; his belongings set out neatly or put away in the closest and chest of drawers. His bed was made up in muted, soft grays with a checked pattern, something that Brandon didn't think looked like something he'd picked himself, but it looked comfortable and—when Brandon brushed his palm over the side of the sheets—it was soft.

"The thread count is like, some fucking ridiculous number," Boone said, his eyes tracking Brandon's movement.

"It's nice," Brandon said, and immediately wanted to kick himself for how trite that sounded. "I mean, I bet it's comfortable."

Boone gave him a heated look, and reached out to start tugging the buttons on Brandon's shirt undone. "Get undressed faster and find out," he said, before leaning in and completely unhelpfully pressing his lips to Brandon's. It was a rushed kiss, fast and hot and a little sloppy, but Brandon wasn't going to complain, not when it felt that good.

Slowly, and not particularly gracefully, they both shed their respective clothes, and Brandon wasn't terribly surprised to note that Boone set all of his down on a chair beside the dresser instead of just letting them drop. He wasn't sure what to do with his own—putting them with Boone's just seemed likely to end up in some kind of comedy of errors where he'd wind up seeing someone else with an incriminating 38 somewhere on his clothing without realizing.

"Here, let me," Boone said, seeming to notice Brandon's hesitation, and he held a hand out for Brandon's pants and shirt, waiting mostly patiently for Brandon to peel his undershirt off and then—after a heartbeat of hesitation—his briefs.

Brandon refused to look embarrassed—they were both adults, and it wasn't even as if they weren't naked around each other every second day anyway—but he could feel Boone's gaze as it tracked up and then down his body like it was a physical weight, the slow brush of attention prickling along his spine, making hairs on his arms stand on end.

He didn't have to ask if Boone liked what he saw, either, because Brandon could look right back, could see that Boone was just as turned on as he was.

"Right," Brandon said, tugging the covers down and climbing into the bed, looking up at Boone, daring him. "How do you wanna do this?"

"Fuck, Saader," Boone said, and climbed right on top of him, slinging his knee over Brandon's waist, settling his weight heavy over Brandon's lower body.

He was careful as he shifted, making sure that what he was doing was more like a slow, steady pressure just where Brandon most wanted to be touched. Boone dug his toes into the mattress, leaned forward just enough to kiss Brandon again, keeping himself in place by bracing with his arms.

It felt good; his tongue slipping easily into Brandon's mouth, leading the easy give and take as they kissed and kissed and kissed. Brandon tried not to buck up too obviously, didn't want to put Boone off balance, although it was kind of killing him; Boone's dick pressed hot and obvious between their stomachs, leaking hot and slick onto Brandon's abdomen.

Brandon might have felt slightly left out—or just off balance, not that he couldn't wait and get Boone off first, Jesus, he wasn't that selfish—but just as Brandon was thinking that, Boone shifted his weight so that he only had one forearm braced high on Brandon's chest and sat up just enough that he could reach behind himself, shoulders and back twisting as his hand found Brandon's dick easily, as he ran his fingertips lightly over the head and then slickly down Brandon's length.

He gave Brandon a few more slow strokes like that, balancing carefully, his face turned to watch Brandon's expressions and his hand moving inexorably behind him, where neither of them could see it, but they could both feel it and fuck, Brandon would never have picked it, but that was—surprisingly hot. Was absolutely doing it for him.

He bit his lip, and then gave in, arched up into Boone's grip, let himself pant and moan the way he was desperate to. Boone looked pleased, but mostly like he was concentrating hard, his brows drawn together, muscles standing out in relief as he shifted and flexed. His dick bobbed rhythmically with Boone's movements, too, slapping against his own stomach as he bent backwards to keep working Brandon over.

And—right, there was more stuff Brandon could be doing there, too. Even if he was starting to shake a little, feeling the orgasm build up, an itch along the base of his spine that somehow felt like it had a direct line running right from his balls to his neck, or maybe the back of his teeth. Whatever it was, it felt good and impossible and absolutely imminent.

"God, that's so—good, fuck," Brandon panted. Boone's hand felt good on him and Boone's weight felt good on him, anchoring him in the moment, to the bed.

Boone just grinned tightly at him and didn't say anything, but he also sat up, arching his own back until he found his balance, and then got his other hand on his own dick, starting to jerk himself off. Brandon got caught up watching for a few seconds—that was so fucking hot too, Boone touching himself, Brandon wanted to watch that more, a lot. And then he blushed hard, because, right, he wasn't just a passenger there, he could actually do something too, and he said, "oh shit, can I—?" and reached down to cover Boone's hand on his dick, tightening his grip so that Boone slid forward an inch or two just in instinctive response, catching his breath and then murmuring, "Fuck."

"That a yes?" Brandon asked, and Boone nodded, disentangled his own hand to give Brandon free rein, and rolled his hips in rhythm with Brandon's touch.

It wasn't the easiest way they could be doing that, but it was working, building into a feedback loop where Brandon tightened his fist, or carefully slid Boone's foreskin back, working it over the head, and Boone rocked forward and dragged his own fist up and down Brandon's dick, and then switched it up by dropping lower to tug gently at his balls, making Brandon shiver and curse enthusiastically in response. Boone got his hand back on Brandon's dick again, his fingertips tracing over his slit experimentally as Brandon bit his lip and moaned, as he felt his dick twitch in Boone's grip, precome pooling and smearing all over Boone's hand and Brandon's dick.

Brandon's hand was pretty wet as well; Boone was so responsive and it felt like it took all of two minutes before he was arching his back and freezing his hand on Brandon's body, hips jerking forward as he gasped, "gonna come, Saader, oh god," and came all over both of them.

Brandon looked down to see Boone's come streak his chest and his eyes widened and he let himself follow suit, arching up before sinking back into the mattress, before Boone tipped forward and rolled slightly to the side, so that he was lying flat out as well, half on Brandon still, and breathing like he'd just run a couple miles. Looking a lot more wrecked than he had done when they'd all had to do that, even.

"I guess that worked out okay, then," Boone said peaceably, half mumbled into the side of Brandon's hair.

It was lucky Brandon was used to translating from other people who tended to be a lot more soft-spoken than Boone usually was, really.

"Yeah," Brandon said slowly, and maybe they should be talking about it more, but instead he found himself reaching over to touch Boone's shoulder.

As Boone snuggled closer and let his eyes close Brandon accepted the inevitable and reached out to try and grab the blanket with his toes. It took some undignified squirming and some stretching that he thought might be difficult even for Bob, but he managed to get it close enough to grab and pull over both of them eventually, and Boone just snuffled something incoherent into the pillow which Brandon thought-hoped-was a thank you.

He couldn't stop himself from letting his palm rest high on Boone's back, though; the skin surprisingly soft and smooth, easy under his hand when he let himself run his fingertips all the way down his back, tracing the curve of his spine, till his hand was brushing over his hip, his side, the generous curve of his ass.

God, Brandon really liked sleeping with hockey players. There was no point in even denying the fact he had a type, that was for sure.

It felt new and different, though, and not just because it was, technically.

Brandon loved Nick; this wasn't going to threaten that at all—add to it, maybe—but it'd been a while since he'd been with someone else, and the differences were all-too-easy to catalog. Not that Brandon was going to be in a position to throw any stones about body hair ever, but it was a little novel to run his hands over Boone and find so much smooth skin, just the faintest sprinkling of hair down the center of his chest, darkening and thickening in an arrow from his bellybutton down to his dick. Although given how thick Boone's beard came in when he let it, well. Brandon wondered, idly, if he waxed. Or shaved, or something. Ryan would probably know.

And, now that he was thinking about it again, Brandon definitely had some questions about Murrs. Or maybe for Murrs. But he could think about that later, that was for sure.

[]

Brandon dropped off to sleep easily enough in the end, too; slept deep and dreamlessly for what felt like a solid couple of hours. He hadn't exactly looked at the time when he and Boone had gone to bed, but when he woke up again it was somewhere around what he'd classify as late afternoon. Maybe early evening. Late enough for dinner, if he'd been hungry again yet, which he wasn't, quite. And definitely early enough still to have visitors, for it to be entirely unexceptional that Brandon was at Boone and Murrs' place, that he was still there.

Of course, that theory was one that would cover nosy neighbors, and maybe even nosy teammates, but it did sweet fuck and all when the nosy teammate in question was also the roommate. And home unexpectedly early.

Or, Brandon thought, glancing outside the kitchen windows, stumbling to a guilty halt on the tiles, it probably wasn't unexpectedly early, Brandon just hadn't stopped to think before leaving Boone's room, with Boone still sacked out on the bed and dead to the world. He wondered for a split-second if it was worth trying to pretend like anything else had been going on, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do that. Besides, depending on how long Ryan had been home, that could be incredibly pointless anyway.

Brandon mostly just hoped he hadn't been home long. Boone was… not quiet.

"Hey," Brandon said after a moment, and forced himself to keep walking into the kitchen, going to grab a glass from the cabinet and helping himself to some water.

Ryan's face was carefully expressionless.

Brandon really, really hoped this wasn't about to get awkward. More awkward. Extra awkward. Fuck, maybe it was too late for that, given how close he felt like he was to freaking out.

"Hey Saader," Ryan said after a moment.

His voice was low, measured, easy. He sounded perfectly normal. Definitely not like a guy who was about to have some kind of homophobic freakout. Or a jealous one, which was the other option Brandon wasn't at all prepared to deal with on his own, thanks. So that was a good sign.

"You and Boone have fun?" Ryan asked, eyebrow raised.

His tone was so carefully neutral as he asked that that Brandon knew, absolutely, that he knew they'd slept together. He knew exactly what they'd been doing, and what he was asking. Brandon's brows bunched together and he threw Ryan a sharp look, and like it was choreographed, Ryan's pokerface cracked and he started snickering.

Brandon sat down at the counter, more heavily than he'd quite intended, and the chair creaked in protest as he glared at Ryan, trying to pretend like the corner of his mouth wasn't twitching. It wasn't like he couldn't see the funny side too, but Jesus, Murrs.

"Yeah, we did," Brandon said eventually. He raised an eyebrow right back. "Worried you're missing out?"

It wasn't like Murrs picked up a lot when the team went out, and Brandon didn't think that kind of teasing was out of bounds. Not when he was already getting it from him in the first place.

'He started it' was an excuse that had stopped holding water about the time Brandon was in preschool, sure, but that had never stopped him from wanting to use it occasionally. Especially when it was true.

Ryan gave him a distinctly unfamiliar smirk right back. Brandon hid the moment of shock, or at least hoped he had.

"Nah, I'm good," was all he said, letting the implications dangle, and Brandon wasn't sure whether he should start trying to pick his way through that tangle, or if he should just wait till he could talk to Boone.

They hadn't exactly planned much of this, or had any sort of a debrief. Brandon had never been one to do much more than doze after sex, satisfied and smug; he hadn't really ever gone for the kind of post-hookup chat that some of the guys he's been with seem to want. Nick had never needed it—he and Brandon were too much on the same page most of the time to need to do more than exchange looks or a few words when that suited—and Brandon had been happy enough to just nap with Boone warm at his side, figuring they could do any necessary talking afterward, but that didn't exactly leave him with a shared plan of action for right then and there.

He wished, briefly and passionately, that he had been inconsiderate enough to wake Boone up before going to find some water, to stretch his legs a bit as well. How long did Boone even nap for, usually? Brandon's body had woken him up automatically, knew exactly how long a nap would work for him most of the time, leave him refreshed and rested rather than stuck halfway through a REM cycle.

Something of that inner conflict must have crossed Brandon's face, because Ryan took pity on him and said, "He'll probably be up in fifteen minutes or so, if you guys went to sleep about the usual time."

"Uh, yeah," Brandon said, and wondered why he was blushing so hard now. This wasn't the embarrassing end of the conversation. "You're—this isn't too weird?" And maybe he should have waited for Boone to start that conversation, but maybe it would be easier with just the two of them. And that was important too; Ryan was Boone's roommate and friend, and both of those were important relationships, but Ryan was also Brandon's teammate, and they had to be okay, too.

"It's fine," Ryan said, and then astutely gathering that Brandon needed to hear more than that, he added, "Really, Saader, it is. We—did he say anything about that, yet?"

"Not so much," Brandon admitted. "We, um. Got distracted."

"Yeah, I know what that's like," Ryan said, making a vague and incredibly filthy gesture below his belt that Brandon had zero difficulty in translating as a reference to Boone's dick. Which…well, fair. His ass wasn't the only generously sized part of his anatomy, that was for sure.

"You're not expecting him to be exclusive, right?" Ryan asked, and Brandon had the feeling he was actually getting to the meat of it then, to what was most important to him, too. "I mean, if this is more than a one-off, scratch-the-itch type of thing."

"You guys get that a lot?" Brandon asked, curious. Not that it was any of his business, but—

"Yeah, sometimes," Ryan said with a shrug. "We used to be a package deal for that kind of thing," and Brandon definitely blushed again, imagining that. He couldn't say he'd have turned it down, either, if it was on the table. Although Nick might have something to say about Brandon getting the D from another dman, so to speak. "But it happens. You know, guys who need something, but haven't exactly been free to ask for it much."

There was an implication there that Brandon wasn't green enough to miss either, and he was answering that more than anything else Ryan had said when he replied, picking his words carefully. Tried not to focus on that 'used to be' and wonder just how past the past tense was.

"I think this might happen again," he said. "I mean, if Boone's interested, I'm not going to just assume. But I like him, and my boyfriend does too, and we haven't been exclusive for a long time now, so… it's not all new to me."

It was unspeakably relieving to actually say that, Brandon realized. It had been a while since he'd been in the position to just say, 'my boyfriend', casually, like it was something everyone knew, safe and easy and familiar. And he couldn't deny it felt good to have all his truths out there in the open, to not be hiding anything, no matter how pleasant or wicked or fun it was to play with secrets sometimes.

The weight of that had been bothering him more than he'd quite realized right up until the moment where he let himself shed it. Until the moment where he decided that, yeah, he did fit in Columbus and he was happy there. Admitted that he could be happy with everything he had and everything he could own up to now, that he could be private but he probably didn't have to be secretive anymore. Not that it'd probably been hidden at all from anyone who was looking, any time they'd been playing Nick's team.

Brandon knew what people said about him: that he was mature, quiet, grown up, reserved. But he'd never been able to keep his feelings for Nick off his face. He'd been giving those away just about from the moment they'd settled into his skin, the tiny delicate tendrils of affection taking root and blossoming into a deeper friendship, an unshakeable bond, undeniable fucking storybook l-o-v-e love.

Brandon didn't know a whole lot of love stories where the principals got to see and date and sleep with other people too, to fall in love with them as well and to fuck around when and where they wanted to, but god, it worked for them. And if it worked for them, it had to work for other people, too.

And now he was even more convinced than his half-baked suspicions earlier had been that Ryan and Boone were some of those same people. That they had been, whatever they were now.

Ryan nodded, understanding in his eyes.

"Boone usually tries to have this conversation before," Ryan said, with a rueful grin that was nonetheless fond, and maybe just a little resigned. "But I can't really blame him for getting, uh, distracted."

Brandon felt the faintest blush start creeping up his neck at that, his ears burning just a little at the openly speculative look Ryan gave him. He was glad he'd bothered getting dressed again before leaving Boone's bedroom; if he'd just wandered out in his shorts or something he'd be feeling a lot less sure of himself in this conversation. Brandon was happy enough not to be keeping secrets, but it didn't mean he enjoyed feeling vulnerable all that much, and however much he and Boone and Ryan were all on the same page, this still entailed a necessary amount of that. So yeah, he was pretty glad he wasn't half-naked for this conversation.

"He probably didn't think I'd come out here without waking him up first," Brandon said, trying to be fair. It was good that he felt comfortable enough in Boone and Ryan's place to do that, probably, but he definitely hadn't been prepped for a serious relationship-type talk—especially when it was with a person he wasn't sleeping with—when he was only three quarters awake and mildly dehydrated.

Reminded, he helped himself to a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge and downed most of it in one go. He'd sweated a lot earlier, that was for sure.

"It's fine," Ryan said again, grabbing a bottle for himself. He seemed to realize that wasn't quite as reassuring as he might have hoped, because he reached over and gave Brandon a none-too-gentle punch to the upper arm. "Seriously, Saader, it's fine. It's good. I mean, I'm assuming you guys had fun, so…"

"Yeah," Brandon said, with a helpless grin stretching across his face. He'd known Boone had good hands—you didn't put up thirty goals in a season without them, not these days—but imagination paled beside reality there. And he knew Ryan knew exactly what he was thinking about, too.

Ryan reached over and touched the top of his bottle to Brandon's, an ironic toast. "Yeah, exactly that," Ryan agreed.

"Thanks," Brandon said after pausing for a moment. He wasn't sure he'd be quite as gracious in Ryan's position, however well-intentioned or actually okay with it he might be. There was a difference between knowing what was happening when he wasn't there—knowing in detail, sometimes, because listening to Nick talk about it was fucking hot—and actually seeing it, and he wasn't sure whether that might matter to him or not. He was… probably going to find out next time they were in New York, he realized after a moment. Because Nick was interested, and Boone was maybe tentatively interested right back, and—

Well, come to think of it, now that he was imagining Nick's hands on Boone, well. Brandon was probably going to be okay with that after all.

But those were thoughts he could have on his own time, at home, with the privacy to pace a bit, or talk to himself, or at the very least without someone else sitting opposite him who could maybe read more than he wanted to be telling on his face.

"You wanna stay for dinner?" Ryan asked, peering into the fridge again, changing the subject smoothly like it was no big deal, like it was any other time Brandon had been at their apartment.

"Sure," Brandon said, pitching his tone somewhere around Ryan's, aiming for casual and maybe hitting within spitting distance. Good enough.

He and Boone would probably have to talk later—and maybe some other stuff, Brandon was definitely on board for a repeat if Boone was—but for the moment, it was simple enough to just help Ryan start putting together a meal for all three of them. By the time Boone wandered into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed, shirtless, and clearly only half awake himself, Ryan and Brandon were almost finished prepping, and were just talking normally, the same as any other time.

"Oh," was all Boone said, blinking, and he wasn't surprised to see Ryan back, apparently. Brandon made a mental note to give him shit for that, later; Brandon could have done with a warning at least, even though it had obviously turned out fine. "You guys are making food? Awesome."

"You're doing the dishes," Ryan warned, mock-serious, but Boone just smirked at him and—after a quick glance at Brandon to try and read the room—leaned in to press a kiss to the side of his mouth before saying, "I guess I can load the dishwasher."

"It's a dirty job but someone has to do it?" Brandon suggested, and he was only a little surprised by the way that Boone just smirked at him, too, before repeating the gesture.

Boone scratched the back of his neck, stretched again—Ryan and Brandon both openly watching appreciatively—and went to start setting the table for three. It was… remarkably unawkward, really. Brandon snuck a look at Ryan and couldn't see anything concerning in his posture or on his face, so—

Yeah, it really did look like things were fine.

Brandon could work with that.

"Babe," Nick said, his voice warm and familiar and Brandon ached for a moment, missing him.

They were going to be in New York soon, it wasn't like they hadn't waited longer to see each other. Brandon pushed the memory of his last season in Chicago away; he wasn't going to dwell on that now, not now that things were so good again, now that they had their shit together and knew what they were doing. It was fine, and soon he was going to see Nick and maybe they could take Boone out somewhere and it was going to be fine.

"…Saader?" Nick said, a few seconds later, like he was worried the line had cut out, or it wasn't really Brandon at all, and Brandon realized abruptly that while his mind had been wandering he hadn't actually said anything yet. He'd just seen Nick's name on the caller ID and hit accept call, going warm all over.

"Hi, sorry, yeah," Brandon said, all in a rush. "What's up?"

"I can't call just to check up on you?" Nick asked, low, joking, teasing Brandon just a little bit.

"I guess you can do that," Brandon said, and he leaned back into the couch cushions, let his head fall back, neck stretching out as his eyes closed.

His free hand was just resting on his thigh, and he hadn't been up to anything more than catching up on his Tivo—the episode now paused and muted since his phone had rung—but his body was having the familiar conditioned response to hearing Nick's voice on the phone; his dick starting to perk up, heart beating just a little faster than usual. They didn't even have phone sex that often, and some day Brandon's automatic responses were going to get him into trouble but right then and there he didn't have to question it at all.

"What's up, I figured it'd been a while," Nick said. "You got time to talk now?"

"Always," Brandon said, and opened one eye again to sneak a look at the time on the clock. Yeah, they had plenty of time before he should go take a nap. "Thought you were taking your boy out today, I wasn't expecting you to call till after."

"That was yesterday," Nick said promptly, and with enough of a hint in his voice that Brandon sat up straighter.

"Nick," he said. "Something you wanna tell me, babe?"

"I kinda feel like I don't have to," Nick said, and Brandon made a grumbling noise in the back of his throat.

"C'mon, I want details, I always give them to you," and he's relieved to find that he does, still. He wants to hear all about what Nick and his rookie got up to, wants to hear that Nick's being well taken care of, looked after, loved and appreciated the way Brandon would if he could be there all the time.

"We just went to a movie," Nick said, the airy tone belying the subject matter. "It was fun, but kind of predictable, so, uh. We might've made out in the back row for a bit."

Brandon laughed, warmth flooding through him as he pictured that. "Well, you are dating a teenager," he said. "I guess that's appropriate."

Nick made a noise that was a little more pained than he probably had meant it to be, protested, "he's almost twenty, Saader, c'mon."

"I'm just kidding," Brandon said, even though he was pretty sure Nick knew that. He paused for a moment, let the silence draw out. "So then what did you get up to?"

Nick hummed, slow and thoughtful, drawing the story out, and Brandon shivered. This usually meant one or both of them were going to get off, and yeah, Brandon was definitely in the mood for some fast, hot phone sex. And if Nick ran out of details too fast, well, Brandon had stories to share in return.

"Went back to my place," Nick said. "I figured maybe we'd make out on the couch some more or something, but…fuck, Saader, his hands. We'd been kissing for maybe a minute? Maybe even less, and then he just looked me in the eye and asked when we were going to bed."

Brandon groaned appreciatively, let his hand rest on his stomach, lightly over the flies of his jeans. Felt his dick stirring in his pants and rubbed his palm lightly over it, giving himself just a little pressure, just the slightest touch.

"Yeah, that was about what I said," Nick said, his voice rougher, going soft and low the way it did when he got turned on. He was right there with Brandon, that was for sure. "So we did. I sucked him off, let him fuck me with that toy—you remember, the blue one?"

The image was crystal clear in Brandon's mind; partly from how much Nick was telling him, building the picture up for them both, and partly just because Brandon knew him so well, knew how Nick looked, spread out naked in his bed, knew how he looked, sweating and twisting and moaning when Brandon pressed a toy inside him, knew exactly the curve of his spine as he arched and swore and pushed back against Brandon's hands.

"Fuck, yeah," Brandon said, and whoops, his jeans were undone now. He dragged the zipper down with his thumb, carefully got his dick out, slid his palm along the length, eased by the way he was sweating, the slow drip of precome from the slit smearing over his hand.

"Jerking off, Saader?" Nick asks, and hissed in a breath that made it clear he was doing the same. Brandon should've asked what he was wearing. "God, I miss you. So fucking hot like that, love to watch you."

That was something of an understatement; Nick really got off on watching, and Brandon liked to put on a show for him. It was a pity neither of them could be bothered getting on Skype for the conversation but then, Brandon could see in his minds eye what Nick must look like and that was good enough.

It was definitely going to be enough to get him there, especially when Nick went on to talk about how Beau felt, what he tasted like, how hard he made Nick come. Brandon got off fast and then slouched back into the couch, tucked his dick back inside his underwear and tried to find something within reach to wipe his hand off on before shrugging and just wiping it on his shirt. That'd be easier to clean than the couch.

Nick's voice got tight as he got closer, the words spaced out further, and Brandon took over, gave him a taste of what Brandon had done with Boone, how they'd had fun. How Boone had said that yeah, he might be on board to try something with Nick. That's what did it in the end, tipped Nick over the edge until he was moaning into the phone, panting harshly as he came.

"Fuck, that was good," Nick said, after he'd caught his breath, while Brandon was starting to feel somewhere between post-coitally sleepy and a little awkward. "I'm gonna nap now, you?"

"Yeah," Brandon said, and fought back a yawn. "Thanks for calling, Leds."

"Any time, babe," Nick said, and just as Brandon was about to say goodbye and hang up he added, just a trace of slyness in his voice, "Can't wait to see you next week. And your boy."

"You bet," Brandon said, and felt his dick give an optimistic twitch as he helplessly, automatically pictured what it might be like to get Boone and Nick in bed with him. Yeah, that was—that was a thought he was going to be taking out a few times later, jerk off fodder for sure. "Later, Nick."

"Night, Brandon," Nick said, and then they both hung up, and Brandon stared up at his ceiling and wondered just what, exactly, he was getting himself into. He used to have such a—he tried to find the word normal, and found that didn't fit any more, not really. This was just as natural as every other relationship he'd found himself in, just—more complicated, and usually the better for it.

Well, it wasn't like he didn't have plenty of reasons to look forward to the week ahead. He just needed to make sure he was in the best possible shape to enjoy it. And that meant plenty of sleep, eating well, keeping hydrated and making sure they banked as many points as possible before they got to New York.

[]

By the time Boone woke up, the room was darker, the sun clearly below the horizon or well on its way there, and he was alone in bed, the faintest dent in the pillow to his side the only real hint that anyone else had even been there with him.

Well, that and the faint ache in his hips from twisting around and moving with Brandon, from the tension building and releasing as they'd gotten off. To say nothing of the unmistakable evidence that was dried tacky and flaking on his thighs and around his dick, or the unsubtle stain on his sheets, darker and still a little wet where he'd wiped his hands off, where Saader had rolled over and then made a face that made Boone laugh at him, for all that he'd have reacted the same.

Boone couldn't quite hide the smirk at the memory, either, although the fact Saader wasn't still there was maybe a problem.

Or maybe not. For all Boone knew he'd gone to the bathroom, or to get some water, or—something. They hadn't exactly talked a whole lot before falling into bed, but Boone felt pretty safe in the assumption that they were more or less on the same page.

He rubbed grit out of his eyes and swung his legs over and off the mattress, stretching until he felt the tightness leave his shoulders, shaking his hands out as well. He took a brief pit stop in his bathroom and washed his face and, after a quick glance in the mirror, ran a washcloth over his chest and lower, too. He'd normally just shower and be done with it, but he figured finding Saader first was probably more of a priority. And it had to be getting awfully close to dinner, and Boone was kind of starving, now that he'd thought about it, so probably they could just order something in, eat and then, well. Maybe he could get some company for that shower, too.

Boone wasn't sure that Saader would be up for staying over—Boone liked to spread out when he was sleeping and he was kind of out of the habit of sharing a bed regularly, if nothing else—but it might be nice to have the option.

What he wasn't prepared for was to hear voices and, as he walked into the kitchen, one hand scratching the back of his neck as he tried to get his hair to behave again, to see Ryan and Brandon chatting easily as they moved around the counter, clearly finishing up putting together whatever they'd had in the fridge for dinner.

Boone briefly wished he'd taken the extra thirty seconds to put a shirt on, not like it was anything both of them hadn't seen before, and was glad he'd bothered to clean up a little at least.

"Hey," he said, in lieu of anything more intelligent, and the look Ryan threw him was amused and indulgent, whereas the quick glance he got from Brandon was—significantly more incendiary.

Yeah, okay, Boone was probably going to get lucky again in the near future. That was good news. Even if Murrs was a cockblocking asshole who was meant to have been picking up Boone's psychic vibes to suggest he stick around at Josh and Z's place to give Boone some additional privacy.

Okay, so maybe Boone should've taken five to send him the text equivalent of a sock on the door, whatever. This was how it was going to play out for now, and Boone could adjust on the fly, it was fine. And at least he wasn't going to have to wait all that long for dinner, apparently.

That was a definite silver lining.

Thankfully for Boone's peace of mind, Ryan made himself scarce after they finished eating. He left Boone and Brandon to clean up the kitchen, too, so it sure wasn't an entirely philanthropic choice, but Boone appreciated the privacy at least.

He and Saader moved around each other just as easily as ever, putting salt and pepper back in their usual places, stacking the dishwasher and half-assedly rinsing out the pots and pans left on the stove top. At least with an extra person for dinner there really weren't any leftovers to wrangle, so that was one less chore.

Boone raised an eyebrow and caught Brandon's eye, at that thought, wanted to check. "You had enough, yeah? Not still hungry?"

He's not sure exactly what he'd do if Brandon was, but his parents raised him to be polite, and he was going to stick to it. Especially with his—whatever it is that Brandon was going to be to him.

"Totally fine," Brandon assured him, closing the dishwasher with his hip, and Boone had to swallow a joke about him using his ass mostly because it now seemed a whole lot too close to what Boone actually wanted to do with him. That was an unexpected side to this.

"Uh, I guess—you and Murrs talked, already?" Boone asked, feeling the awkwardness crackle along his nerves, knowing his voice was less steady than he might like. Brandon and Ryan seemed easy with each other, but Ryan was hard to predict, for all that Boone absolutely believed that he also had Boone's best interests at heart.

Brandon shrugged, not confirming anything. "Kind of?"

"We should, uh, you wanna go sit in the living room?" he asked. They could talk in there, and Ryan's room was far enough away that no one would have to feel like they were being overheard—or unable to avoid eavesdropping.

"Sounds good," Brandon said, and shot Boone a quick smile, one that heated his blood, made him start thinking about other things they could do on the couch and down, boy; that was not what he needed to be focusing on.

They arranged themselves on the couch, Boone's knee just touching Brandon's, with just a touch of the ease they'd had earlier in the kitchen, and even earlier than that, in the bedroom. Something about the space, the way they'd functionally and literally moved somewhere between friends and lovers in that time; something made it more difficult all of a sudden for Boone to feel the same sense of ease in Saader's company, made it seem awkward all of a sudden want to rest a hand on his thigh, or to let it slide suggestively towards his belt.

"So," Brandon said, and then trailed off, seeming to run into the same problems Boone was, by the look of it.

"Yeah," Boone agreed, and felt the uncertainty twist in his stomach, the tension making him sit up straighter, settling with a low ache into his shoulders. This was stupid, he thought, and then said aloud, "This is dumb, right?"

"Right now?" Brandon asked, raising an eyebrow in invitation for Boone to clarify. "Or, uh, in general?"

"This, now," Boone said, waving his hand to take them both in. Maybe he should have turned the TV on after all for some cover if nothing else."I—Jesus, I had my hand on your dick an hour ago, this shouldn't be the hard part."

He made the mistake of making eye contact with Brandon at that point, and Brandon's facade cracked, and he snickered, like a 12 year old making dirty jokes in the locker room, and Boone snorted and then broke into laughter as well, because, honestly, when was it ever not funny to make dick jokes. God, they probably deserved each other.

"Mmm," was all Brandon said, once he'd caught his breath and stopped laughing, but his lips were still twitching just a little. It felt easier to talk then, though.

"I guess we should, uh. Clarify this?" Boone said. "I said before, right, I'm not seeing anyone right now. I—might want to, if we keep this up, but we can talk about that if it happens. You're, uh. With Leddy, right?"

A soft smile stole across Brandon's face for just a moment, pure affection and complete faith. "Yeah," he said. "That's—that's my non-negotiable. We're not exclusive, but, well. We've made it this far."

"That's fine with me," Boone said, rushing to reassure him of that. It was important to Brandon, so it was important to Boone too. And being up front about that was probably the best choice they could both make.

"Can I, uh. Tell him?" Brandon asked. "I mean, I'll tell him we're—trying this, but, uh, he likes… details."

"Oh," Boone said, and then as the meaning dawned more fully on him, "Oh, you mean—" He paused. "Saader, you are not at all what people expect."

Brandon gave him a tiny, smug grin, dimples flashing. Boone just wanted to dive right back in and kiss that smirk off his face. But they needed to talk this through properly, and that meant actually finishing the conversation and not just getting distracted by hooking up again. He took a deep breath, and went on.

"—And, yeah, that's fine. I don't mind, you can tell him what we do. That's—kind of hot, actually."

"Yeah, he's gonna think so too," Brandon said, and he leaned over and kissed Boone, quick and firm, slipping him a little tongue as well. "Thank you," he said, after pulling away again, and Boone licked his lips and tried to make a last-minute grab towards his dignity.

"So, that's settled. Was there anything else we should, uh, figure out now?"

Brandon paused and thought for a moment, if Boone was reading his expression right. "I was wondering, I mean—you don't have to tell me, but I kind of thought maybe you and Murrs—?"

Boone sat back, and reached for the right words to describe it. Him and Ryan were complicated, but Brandon needed to know and he had every right to ask, too.

"He's my best friend," Boone said simply, to start. And before Brandon could say anything else, he added, "And, yeah, we were—sleeping together. For a while. It wasn't—no, that's not right, it was serious, it was maybe too serious?"

A while was understating it, but Brandon needed the basic information, not an in-depth analysis of Boone's tangled history with Ryan and all the ways that they were perfect together and simultaneously perfectly suited to driving each other crazy.

Brandon frowned, not getting it, and Boone chewed on his lower lip and tried another tack. "Our relationship is really important. To both of us. But right now we really don't work when sex gets mixed into that, so eventually we figured out it was better if we saw other people for that."

Brandon looked dubious. "So you're not sleeping together, but—something still?"

Boone really should be better at this part by now. Maybe he should've asked Ryan what he'd said to Seth, though he had a feeling what Ryan had actually said had been more along the lines of hitting on him and then saying, "just buds, right?" For all that Ryan was quiet and reserved and didn't give a whole lot away most of the time, he could be shockingly filthy when he wanted to be. And—well, Boone understood, now, why Ryan could say that he loved him and not really want to have sex with him at the same time, but sometimes he did miss that. The sex had been good, when they'd had it.

"Pretty much," Boone said. "It's like—we do just about everything else. But he's happy for me to have other relationships too, and I like getting laid, and I like you—" and there he fixed Brandon with a hot look that said just exactly how much he liked Brandon, "—and I probably shouldn't talk too much about Ryan when he's not in the room, but, well. We work, this way. And I hope you can, uh, work with that?"

Brandon nodded, slowly, still chewing it over. "I don't know that I understand all of that," he said honestly. "But I get what you're telling me and what you—want? I think? And I'm still game if you are."

"So on board," Boone assured him. "Uh, is this enough serious relationship shit talk for now? Because I feel like I haven't gotten off in forever—" "Like an hour," Brandon corrected, but Boone kept talking because that wasn't the point, "—and I kind of want to—"

And Brandon was apparently also entirely ready to stop talking for a while, if the way he swooped in and kissed Boone in reply was any indication. Boone let himself slide down the couch and squirm onto his back so that Brandon could spread out on top of him comfortably, and they spent a mutually enjoyably long time making out just like that, until Boone couldn't take it any more and demanded they move back to his room before he wound up getting Brandon naked right then and there.

Brandon made a noise that suggested he wouldn't entirely be opposed to that, and Boone went hot all over before filing that away for future reference, preferably some time when he could be sure they weren't going to get walked in on, and also when he'd have time to clean up if anything unfortunate happened on the couch. Ryan might be perfectly happy for Boone to fool around with other guys in communal areas, but he was fastidious enough to probably not want to have to think about anyone's jizz on the couch.

Not that he and Ryan hadn't hooked up on the couch a few times. But that was neither here nor there.

"So," Brandon said, a few weeks later, while they were catching their breath, both flat out on the sheets in Brandon's bed, sweaty and only half-undressed.

Boone had kind of jumped him, the second they'd made it inside Brandon's front door, and it had been fast and dirty and incredibly good, and probably nothing the Folignos would've been able to see from their porch. Boone loved Nicky and he was a great captain, but he definitely didn't want to think about him getting any more information about his sex life than that he, you know. Had one.

"Mmmm?" Boone said, not really expecting much conversation from Brandon. He recovered pretty quick after getting off, but Brandon was always a little slower; sweet and determinedly affectionate and—to be honest—sleepy, not generally ready to do more than doze through the afterglow.

"Remember how we're going to be in New York soon?" Brandon asked.

Boone rolled onto his back and squirmed around to get his jeans back on, tucking himself back in before zipping and buttoning them, and then sitting up. Brandon hadn't sounded casual at all, and Boone kind of wanted to be dressed for this conversation, if they were having it. He didn't think Brandon was about to break up with him; he wasn't at all the kind of guy to hit it and quit it like that, or at least not without some kind of warning. Not when they were decidedly past casual, even if they hadn't exactly stopped to define their exact relationship yet.

Brandon made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat as he saw what Boone was doing, but he followed suit almost immediately, sitting up and reaching over to tuck a pillow behind Boone's back, and another behind himself before shuffling around so that he was half-facing Boone.

"New York," Boone repeated. "And the Islanders," because that was pretty obviously where Brandon was going next.

"Yeah," Brandon said. "Uh, did I tell you before, Nick wants to meet you?"

Boone blinked. That wasn't where he'd thought this conversation was going, although he wasn't sure where he had thought it would go. He stepped on the initial urge to say that they'd met, because it was pretty clear Brandon didn't mean on the ice.

"Okay," he said slowly. "Like, for dinner, or…?"

Brandon looked down at his hands, and Boone stared in vague disbelief. Was Brandon blushing? He'd thought they'd gotten past that stage.

"Uh," Brandon said, and then he cleared his throat, squared his shoulders. "To start with, sure. Shit, I should have made him do this part. If you're interested, he's, um. Interested."

"Oh," Boone said dumbly. "You mean. Huh."

It was definitely worth thinking about. It was probably something Boone was going to think about a lot, because he couldn't deny that the conclusion he'd jumped to—that Leddy wanted him too, that Leddy wanted a threesome—was hot. Stupidly hot, really. The idea of watching someone else touching Brandon was—surprisingly intoxicating. And Boone had eyes, he'd watched Leddy out on the ice enough to be sure that the base-level attraction was there; that smooth stride and crooked mouth was more than enough to get Boone revved up. More than enough to be happy to spend the time to see if there was something there.

"We can definitely start with dinner," he said after thinking about that for a few seconds longer.

Brandon relaxed, and slumped back against the pillows. "Oh good, I was hoping you'd say that."

Boone elbowed him in the ribs.

"Saader, c'mon, you know I'm easy."

Brandon mumbled something about how it'd taken him long enough to make a move on him, which Boone elected not to hear. They could be much more profitably engaged in actually getting undressed and going for round two.

[]

"You wanna come up?" Brandon asked, making eye contact with Boone. Hoping his expression was saying exactly what he meant it to.

"Actually," Boone said, straightening up, eager. "Yeah."

"Cool," Brandon said, feeling a little foolish about it, but not enough to bite the words back. "Uh, sorry man," he said to the driver, a white guy in his thirties, with implausibly lavender colored hair in a mohawk, clashing wildly with the yellow dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. Brandon was a little jealous; all of his own interesting hair choices had been playoffs-related and therefore by definition kind of awful.

The guy shrugged. "It's fine," he said. "Have a good night."

Boone followed Brandon up to the door, close enough that it made the hairs on the back of Brandon's neck prickle, too aware of him.

They hung their coats by the door and Boone followed Brandon almost on automatic back to the living room, sat down facing him on the couch.

"So, we missed you at Savvy's the other weekend. You gonna come run with us when we're up in Canada next week?" Boone asked, while Brandon sat there and tried to figure out what he was doing with his hands, and more importantly what to say next.

"Oh, uh," Brandon said, fumbling a little. The western Canada swing. In just over a week. Right. The full moon. Shit. He hadn't thought that this might be pack business, he'd just… jumped to conclusions. "I guess? I don't have any other plans." He tried to play that off with a laugh, but wasn't sure Boone believed that any more than he did himself.

That had been something else to adjust to in Columbus; the wolves on the team didn't always get together for the full moon, although they'd been starting to do so more regularly by the end of last season. Brandon hadn't always joined in though, as much as they were his pack now too, for better or for worse. It had just always felt a little awkward, like something was missing.

And he didn't even need to think that hard to work it out, either, because it was obvious what was missing: Nick. His Nick, the guy he'd been so tangled up in for years now. The first year after Nick went to New York had been the worst and the hardest, but just when Brandon had started adjusting to having his pack split like that, he'd been traded himself, and in a way it had felt like starting all over from scratch. Starting over even further back than the starting line, in some ways, everything subtly wrong. Not what he was used to.

Trades were nothing new in hockey, and nothing that Brandon hadn't expected to deal with at least tangentially, but he hadn't expected his mate to be traded away from him.

Hadn't expected to be traded himself.

And then his first season in Columbus really hadn't gone to plan, either. It felt like they were starting to work their way out of it, though, and when Brandon stopped to think about it, yeah, he was actually looking forward to spending the next full moon with the rest of the Columbus wolves.

Some more than others, even.

Boone was still sitting there, looking at him, wearing a much more opaque look than Brandon was used to seeing on his face. It wasn't that Boone wasn't complicated; everyone was complicated. But Boone usually left that well away from the ice and his team, made sure he was easy to read, easy to follow, easy to be around. This… definitely felt new.

"That's good," Boone said eventually.

Brandon bit his lip.

"You, ah," Boone stopped mid-sentence, and scratched the back of his neck, stretched a little, seemed to be searching for the right words. Brandon stopped biting his lip and stared covertly. He'd never seen Boone be this level of awkward before, it was almost impressive in its own way. "You smelled different, after summer," he said eventually, and Brandon's eyebrows went up involuntarily.

"You sniffing my neck during a celly, Boone?" he asked, keeping his tone deliberately light. Enough that he could play it off as a joke if he had to.

Boone's head came up, jaw set, and Brandon felt a shiver run along his spine. Felt the weight of that look go to other parts of his anatomy, too. "Yeah, maybe," he said softly. "I know, you're seeing your guy soon," and Brandon still wasn't entirely sure how half his team knew that much about his love life, but hockey players were the biggest gossips he'd ever met, so it probably wasn't all that surprising after all. "But you've, ah."

"Been seeing other people sometimes," Brandon finished, his voice matching Boone's, low and steady. He wasn't doing anything wrong, this was fine.

"Yeah," Boone said. "You don't have to talk about it, obviously, I just—wanted to ask. If you wanted to talk about it."

Brandon forced his hands to lay flat on his thighs, trying to let the tension drain out of him, down the long muscles of his legs and out into the ground below. "It's not—I'm not cheating on him." He doesn't say that Nick could probably smell it on him if he was, they both know that well enough. "We just agreed, you know. That we don't get to be around all the time, and if there's someone special who is, well. That's okay."

"Right," Boone said. "Uh, in that case. Want company for dinner some time this week?"

"In a not just teammates type of way?" Brandon asked carefully.

Boone gave him a look that suggested Boone knew Brandon wasn't as dumb as that question made him sound. "Yeah."

The last bit of tension in Brandon's shoulders relaxed, finally. "Yeah, that—I'd like that."

They got dinner on the road as it turned out, ditching the rest of the team to find somewhere slightly more quiet for dinner in Arizona, and Brandon let Boone carry most of the conversation, and didn't let him pick up the bill. He also let Boone maneuver him into agreeing to go back to Boone's room and catch up on some TV.

Brandon hadn't expected they would actually wind up watching TV, and he was happy enough to be proven right.

He was quite happy to have a room of his own by then, too, and no nosy roommate to notice when he didn't come back to his own room until the next morning when he needed to shower and shave, either.

Of course, half the team would know something had happened by the time they hit the next full moon, but that, Brandon thought with some satisfaction, crawling back into bed by Boone and nudging him to share the covers again, was something he could deal with when it happened.

[]

The full moon was squarely in the middle of the western Canada road swing, right after they'd beaten Edmonton, and before they were due to play the Flames.

Despite having two days between, they'd flown straight out to Calgary after the win. It had been their eighth in a row, and Nick almost couldn't begin to believe how good that felt, especially in comparison to losing eight straight. Nick had possibly never been so happy to close the book on one season and start another, even though the length of their summer, once again, had grated on him.

The main benefit to that one last grueling bit of late night travel was that it gave themselves two full days more or less in one place. The story for anyone who cared to ask was that they wanted to take advantage of the Olympic facilities in Calgary, as well as getting settled ahead of a game at the Dome. That they were getting ready to play at altitude, even if it wasn't quite so draining as Denver. And that was all true enough, but there were some other perks to getting an afternoon out at Lake Louise, and a night to stay in Banff.

Of course, those were largely for the wolves on the team: plenty of space and fresh air to roam in, and very little chance of coming across anyone who might be panicked before realizing that they were shifters and not actual wild animals. But that aside, Nick figured the plain old humans on the team also weren't exactly going to be sad about good food, good views and what was a very nice hotel even by their standards.

What it was, though, was absolutely fucking freezing. Calgary had been cold enough; Banff was even colder. The air was crystal sharp on every inhalation, prickling along the bridge of his nose and aching into his lungs, making every transition between indoors and outside a shock to the system. Nick was used to the cold, but this was something else, even by his standards. Even the guys from the prairies were spending as little time outdoors as possible.

At least, while they were still on two feet.

The cold made the air seem clearer, the sky stretching ahead seeming to be more open and wider, even with the mountains dominating the view. The sun began to slide below the horizon late afternoon, and Nick felt the itch start up between his shoulder blades, the unconscious and involuntary reaction to the moon rise that was coming.

They grabbed an early dinner, just inside the hotel, not lingering over it at all for a change. Nick could see all the wolves around the table start exchanging impatient glances, measuring; checking to see who was going to make the first move.

That was his job, of course, and after he judged that they'd all gotten as much benefit from the meal as they were going to he pushed his chair back in a silent signal that it was time to move. He waved a goodnight to the rest of the team as he went, catching Dubi's eye in a quick passing over of responsibilities, of attention. He was going to look after his part of the team, and Dubi and Jack would keep an eye out for the rest of the guys. Not that he anticipated any problems, of course, but it was a good habit to be in. Kept all of them more settled when they knew who was where, and who to talk to.

Or not talk to, Nick thought, with some private amusement, catching the way that Boone and Saader were oh-so-carefully not making eye contact, lingering at the back of the group with a clear delineation of the space between them in a way that was just as telling as it would have been if they'd been puppyishly climbing over each other and giggling like half the rookies were. He'd caught a few glimpses during the week that had made him wonder if something had happened there, but if his suspicions were correct, well. Good for them.

Zach was shoving at Josh, with Sedsy and Olly exchanging looks behind them, but all four of them seemed relaxed enough, or at least as relaxed as anyone could get with the urge to change crawling irresistibly along their nerves.

It was the first time they'd had a full moon on the road this season, but it wasn't as if the basics were any different from any other team Nick had ever played on, from Atom all the way up to the OHL. The hotel had a discreetly accessible cloakroom, with a decidedly uninterested doorman, a white man in a black coat and trousers, lounging half-visible against the door and almost vanishing into the shadows in a way that suggested either complete apathy or incredibly expensive training. Or, given how nice the hotel was in general… possibly both. Nick put that out of his mind as he turned to the locker in front of him and started to unbutton his jacket and shirt, stepping out of his pants and hanging them up underneath his jacket.

Even with the heavy door separating them from the outdoors the cold was starting to radiate into the room, but while Nick knew normally it would've made his skin break out in goosebumps, by then the change was close enough that it just felt like a relief, like incipient freedom.

He put his wedding ring and watch carefully up on the shelf, fingers lingering on the smooth metal for a breath, and then let himself relax all over. He breathed in, out, in again, and then extended out into a new form as he settled down on four paws, grinning as best he could as he shook out his fur and stretched all the muscles he hadn't had in a month.

Around him the rest of the team finished up getting undressed, going through whatever private rituals of their own they might have about the change, but it only took a couple of breaths before Nick could see them all milling about, nails clicking on the tiled floor, as they greeted each other. More importantly, he could read all the scents in the room, virtually all familiar by now, three months into the season, tangling together into a complicated mess that just said Pack.

And even more importantly, that meant they were ready to run.

He barked out a thanks as the quiet, darkly dressed man held the door open for them to head outdoors, not even shivering despite what Nick could feel through his coat and the pads of his feet as being absolutely chilling cold, and as the last few stragglers chased each other out, yipping in excitement, the man gave a short salute to Nick as their leader, and walked away, letting the door close behind him.

The courtyard they were in was well shoveled, clear of snow, and had obvious cameras high in the corners of the eaves of the building, so Nick had no concerns about how they'd get back in once they were done. He trotted over to the front of the pack, took one more look around to get his bearings, and then set off at an easy lope towards the high meadow behind the hotel. It was an unbroken panorama of white with a few hardy bushes pushing their way through the snow, trees rising dark around the edges, and Nick could hear a few rustles of other nocturnal animals going about their business, the chattering prruck-prruk of ravens bedding down high in the branches above them, and far off the cry of some other wolves, a pack who'd gotten a slightly earlier start on their night.

They were far enough out that Nick wasn't too worried about any territorial issues, and human wolves were usually more laid back about that kind of thing anyway. Though he was glad that none of the fields full of cows they'd passed on their way up into the mountains were anywhere nearby. It wasn't like any of them would deliberately go after stock, they were all too well disciplined for that, but mistakes happened, sometimes. And in wolf form, most of them were hard-wired to chase if something smaller or weaker than them happened to run…

Nick shook off the introspection; it made his head hurt in that form if he worried about anything for too long, and turned his attention back onto his pack.

There were more noises from around him, too; the pack communicating in their own ways as they moved, play-biting and swatting at each other, Josh and Olly tumbling in an ungainly somersault as they tried to wrestle, rolling right into Savvy's way. He was unflustered of course, and just leapt gracefully over them, but Nick didn't think the spray of snow he sent back in their direction was any kind of accident.

Saader and Boone had made their way up through the group to be flanking Nick, heads up and looking around with interest, building up an image of their current environment with eyes and ears and noses, and they were more than close enough for Nick—and, doubtless, the entire rest of the pack—to tell without a doubt that they had been spending a lot of time together. If he'd been a betting man, he'd have been ready to rake in his winnings on that call.

Not that it was any of Nick's business unless it affected the team as a whole.

As hard as it was to stick to more human thought patterns in that shape, Nick reminded himself to just let it all go, not to focus, with the instincts that came along with that body, on the crude details and a connection that wasn't actually his business, however blatantly obvious it was to anyone with half a nose to smell it. And then the rich gamy scent of deer drifted across the path in front of his nose, more effective than any pep talk in redistributing his attention, and just like that, they were off.

[]

The moon was just setting behind the mountains by the time the pack made their way back to the hotel, pleasantly worn out and much calmer than they'd been in the lead up to the full moon.

They'd chased the deer's trail until it crossed a bear's, and if there was one thing even werewolves were going to leave well alone, it was a bear who was likely to be unfriendly if interrupted while it was feeding or hibernating. Zach wasn't exactly sure if it was late enough in winter for hibernation to be a thing yet, but it seemed better to be safe than sorry, and Fliggy had led them all back into the meadow and along a half-frozen stream instead, the message from their captain perfectly clear for all that it was necessarily unspoken.

He'd had fun chasing Sedsy around, at least, and they'd managed to annoy Josh into trying to knock the both of them into the ice thickly coating the stream. It wasn't deep enough to cause any of them problems, but mostly Zach had noticed the way the ice crystals shattered into tiny points of refracted light in his fur, all the water caught at the very ends and not making its way through the thick coat to make him cold at all.

Chasing each other had turned into chasing some of the ground squirrels, although they hadn't caught any of those, either. That had less to do with talent or luck and a lot more to do with Zach managing to remember—just barely, in wolf form—that trying to get that taste out of his mouth again afterward was awful, and there were only so many times you could brush your teeth before it was a lost cause.

The chasing was much more fun than the eating, anyway, and as much as he didn't hesitate to drop the mitts out on the ice, in wolf form Fliggy didn't tend to encourage violence.

Or, at least, nothing more than the nips and scratches earned in play fights, or scuffles born of slightly more serious reasons. But Zach hadn't even come back from a run with the Jackets pack with bruises yet; that was another nice thing about a pack made up of humans who all genuinely liked each other, who enjoyed each others' company.

And, well, it was nice to have such familiarity in his new pack, too. It felt just like being with the Monsters still, in some ways; the familiar scents of Andy and Sedsy and Scotty; Nuti fitting right in with them like he'd been there all along, too.

The changing room in the hotel was much quieter as they all finished changing back and dressing; filled with sleepy contentment, the pack sense dissipating slowly as they emerged from grey and brindled coats and donned woollen ones, as well as all their other human accoutrements.

Zach just sat on the bench seat for a couple of minutes, breathing deeply, enjoying the lingering sense of peace and accomplishment. It felt like that sometimes after the really good games, the ones where the bounces all went your way and it felt like you were flying out on the ice, barely touching the ground.

Despite the time, he didn't quite feel like going straight to bed; he was tired, sure, but in that good worn-out way, the pleasant ache of well-used muscles and plenty of fresh mountain air. Tired, but not quite ready to sleep.

He drummed his fingers on his thigh for a moment, thinking.

Sedsy poked at his shoulder with his finger, trying to get his attention.

"Mmm?" Zach said, blinking fast. Getting used to electric lights again was always a trip.

"You want to come watch a movie or something?" Sedsy asked. He shrugged, shoulders rippling, and Zach let his eyes linger. "We're not that tired."

"Sounds good," Zach said, and got up to follow.

"Everyone invited?" Josh asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sure," Sedsy said.

"Thanks, but I'm way too old to pull an all-nighter," Hartsy said cheerfully, and Savvy grunted agreement, waving to them as he turned down the corridor towards his room.

Zach considered protesting the all-nighter designation, it was more like a short rest, but he had a feeling that if they made it through to breakfast without napping they probably would just be up for the day. He'd done worse in college, and they still had a couple days before they'd have to face the Flames, so. Yeah, team bonding time it was.

The TV was playing, the volume turned down low in deference to the actual time, but Zach wasn't all that sure what they were even watching, his attention drifting. Maybe he was a little more tired than he'd wanted to admit.

He was sacked out on one of the double beds, Nuti curled up beside him, and Sedsy and Josh had started out on the other bed, but one by one migrated over to curl up around him and Markus, all four of them tangled up together. It was remarkably pleasant, even with Josh's feet closer to his face than Zach was totally happy with. Sedsy's breath was warm on the back of his neck, making Zach shiver occasionally. There was something so comforting about sharing skin and warmth like that, even in human form, and it made him want to hum contentedly, feeling like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

"Stop thinking so loud," Josh said, and Zach reached over blindly to jab him in the ribs. He missed, and came awfully close to getting Nuti somewhere much more delicate, which made him protest, and Josh didn't miss a beat before chirping Zach about his aim.

"I had my eyes closed," Zach grumbled, but it wasn't as if any of them were really all that worried. Hockey players were pretty lacking in personal space and modesty at the best of times; when they were also the guys you ran around the woods with once a month and saw in every possible circumstance, well.

It wasn't like Zach didn't know what every guy he played with looked like naked, just about. Not that he was looking, either. Just—it happened.

"Stop talking over the movie or shut up and go to sleep already," Sedsy complained, sounding sleepy and a little grumpy, so Zach reached over to pat his shoulder—this time he did not miss—and tell him it was just fine, they'd behave now.

"Good," Sedsy said, and nuzzled at the back of Zach's neck, affection in the press of his skin, and a gentle warning in the scrape of his teeth. Zach shivered and squirmed closer; he wasn't going to back down. Especially when it was mostly Josh talking, anyway, as he pointed out.

"Yes, but I can't reach him," Sedsy said logically.

"I'll bite him for you," Zach offered, without thinking too hard about it. Sedsy snorted, and then Nuti snickered, and Zach managed to hold his laughter back for a couple of seconds, but then he broke too. Okay, sure, that hadn't been his most mature comment ever.

"I'm not saying I'd complain," Josh said, and that set all of them off again, even Josh, and as Zach shifted and made himself more comfortable in their makeshift puppy pile he thought to himself that yeah, he could definitely get used to all of this.

[]

The deer gave them a good run, deeper into the woods, winding in circles and back over elk tracks that very nearly got half the pack distracted. Not quite enough to split the party, but the yips coming from the trailing wolves were enough to get Brandon and Fligs to both slow down, turning back to gather in the stragglers. That was the work of a minute or two, eerie in the darkness, and even with the full moon there was only enough light to catch glimpses of silver and gray bodies darting amongst the spruce and conifers, milling about in the underbrush.

There were cougars and bears in those woods, enough that none of them liked to split up, however unlikely it even was that any unshifted animal would bother a pack of werewolves. As fast as they were, the unfamiliar terrain meant they'd never really been close enough to the deer to catch sight of it, just the echoes and faint snatches of scent.

Communication in wolf shape was mostly just body language and some pointed growling, and Fligs made use of both to get everyone's attention, Boone a silent, larger shadow beside him, working easily with him. Brandon paused, leaning up against Zach while he watched. He'd made his peace earlier in the month about the fact the changes in his relationship with Boone weren't going to be private after the moon, weren't going to be a complete secret any more. He had a feeling Cam for one had guessed, and maybe Fliggy too, but then Fligs lived right next door to Brandon and thus had the entirely unfair advantage of being able to glance out his front windows to see just how often Boone's car had been parked out front.

The two of them probably hadn't been quite so subtle as they'd thought, Brandon had to admit to himself, although it was easier to do that in wolf shape. Harder to be stressed out, harder to worry too much about the future when there was Then and Right Now, and the faint lingering scent of his Nick on the coat Brandon had left back in the dressing room, of Boone layered right on top, beside that and intermingling. It settled Brandon in a way he hadn't felt in far too long, and he wished for a moment that Nick was with them too, but only for a moment, and then Boone shook off the maturity he'd been showing ever since they'd changed and leapt onto Brandon, sending him tumbling first into a bush, which crackled and popped as branches shattered and bent, and dropped the snow it had been covered in all over Brandon's fur, and then secondly into Savvy, who didn't move a muscle, just laughed right in Brandon's face, his breath hot and meat-sour.

Brandon sneezed, and picked himself up off the ground, shaking most of the twigs out of his coat.

He'd get Boone back for that later.

It was around moonset before they made their way back to the hotel, careful to stay in wolf form until they were all inside the room and the door closed behind them. Brandon didn't have a whole lot of objections to winding up naked outdoors in summer, but that was definitely a bad idea right then.

Still, getting to run around with the rest of his pack—with his team—had settled him in a fundamental way, made the voice at the back of his mind quiet down in the most satisfying way. He caught himself humming as he followed Boone, Fligs and Bob into the elevator, while they left the rest of the guys to finish working off their post-run nervous energy, chattering and shoving each other. Brandon thought he'd seen Andy snap a towel at Z when he bent over to pick up his shoes, which was amazingly cliched for one thing, and also made Brandon newly aware of just how much older than some of the other guys he felt sometimes. Even if he wasn't, really.

The elevator beeped as it stopped on the fourth floor and Nick gave them a half salute, saying "Good night, Saader, Jenns," with such a perfect lack of intonation that Brandon blushed as hard as he would have if Fliggy had actually said anything pointed about what was going on with them. Bob just grinned at them as easily as ever and followed Nick down the hall, and the doors closed again in silence while Brandon let himself lean back against the wall, not quite looking at Boone.

Their room—Brandon's, technically, not that it would have made much difference whose room they'd met up in—was only a floor up from the others. The little bit of extra distance from anyone who was looking at them—who could see and hear and smell anything compromising—helped Brandon relax again.

He relaxed even further when Boone reached out to tug him closer, using his body to box him in against the coat closet, leaning heavily into Brandon.

"That was fun," Boone murmured, grinning easily. His hair was about as messed up as his coat had been in wolf form; windblown and careless, and Brandon gave in to the urge to reach up and get his hands into it, mess it up even more.

Boone shoved his knee in between Brandon's legs, gave him something to rock up into, rub against as he ducked his head to kiss him.

Brandon wasn't going to complain about that; he was wired enough to want to do something with the left over energy still thrumming along his nerves, but tired and responsible enough to equally want to actually get to bed sometime soon. Or…to sleep, at least. If the way Boone was kissing him was any indication, they were heading to bed regardless.

"How'd you wanna to do this?" Boone asked, pulling back just enough that he could look at Brandon, although the hand that had started at his hip and then drifted back around to grab his ass suggested that Boone had some ideas.

"Mmmm," Brandon said, considering. "Fast sounds good. You on top of me sounds even better." He quirked a grin at Boone. "We should've just brought robes downstairs or something, would've been faster than getting dressed and getting naked again five minutes later."

"Make a note of that for next time," Boone said, joking just as easily back, but he wasn't wasting any time in starting to tug his clothes off again, letting Brandon take care of his own. It was easier than trying to undress each other, although there was a time and a place for that, Brandon thought, with a fleeting and hot memory of the bare hour he and Leds had managed to claw for themselves the afternoon before that last game in Columbus, frantic and desperate and over all too quickly. And that reminded him of what he'd been meaning to bring up with Boone all week, although this was probably not the time.

He must have made some kind of a sound though, because Boone's hands stilled where they were unbuttoning the very bottom of his shirt and he tilted his head to one side, asking, "Saader?"

Brandon hadn't intended to be naked for this conversation either, but apparently that was just going to be a theme for his week. He did wish briefly and passionately for pockets, though; acutely aware of having nowhere to put his hands.

"I, uh, wanted to talk to you," Brandon started. "About, um. Nick. Leddy."

Boone stepped back and sat down on the end of the bed. Patted the bedspread beside him in a mute invitation to Brandon to follow suit.

"You know we, uh." Brandon said, and bit his lip. Of course Boone knew; Boone had known Brandon was meeting Nick and been fine with that, there was nothing there he hadn't known about going into this, whatever it was they were doing. "When we caught up last week."

"Pretty sure it wasn't just catching up, Saader," Boone teased, but he seemed to realize Brandon was actually trying to say something important and shut up after that, his hand gentle and reassuring as he reached over to pat Brandon's thigh, knuckles dragging across the tense muscles. "Sorry. Do you—did he have a problem with this?" Boone was trying to sound unaffected, like it would be fine with him if Brandon was about to call this whole thing off, but Brandon had known him long enough by then to see that he was just as tense as Brandon was. For entirely the opposite reason, of course.

"Uh, kind of the opposite," Brandon admitted.

"Oh?" Boone said, raising his eyebrows.

"He thinks you're cute," Brandon said, rushed. "And good for me, but that's not. Anyway. He wanted to ask if you, um. Would be interested. In him."

"Saader," Boone said, his eyes widening fractionally as he digested that. "Is this an invitation to a threesome?"

"Maybe?" Brandon said. Cleared his throat and then corrected himself. "Yes. Actually. If you want."

"I think it's fair to say I'd give it a shot," Boone said, and gave Brandon a heated look. "I think I can see some of what you see in him. And he smells good."

Brandon raised an eyebrow.

Boone shrugged. "Hey, just because your nose doesn't work so well out of wolf shape."

Brandon thought about the locker room for a moment. "I think that's usually a good thing."

Boone snorted laughter, probably guessing what Brandon was thinking about. It wasn't like it hadn't come up before, usually when he was yelling at Hartsy and at Jack about how bad their feet smelled.

"Anyway," Brandon said. "I just wanted to check how you, uh, felt about that."

"Positively," Boone said, and gave Brandon a roguish grin. "Now, am I gonna get lucky tonight too, or are we just going to sleep?"

"Definitely the first one," Brandon said, and Boone let himself get pushed flat on his back before Brandon climbed on top of him and leaned in for another kiss.

They could work out the details later, he figured.

December rolled into January, and the Jackets kept winning, sometimes by the skin of their teeth, sometimes by ridiculous and thoroughly enjoyable margins. Christmas had been fun, if all too short a break to get home and see his family, but almost before he felt like he had a handle on things again it was New Year's, and then the Oilers, and singular possession of the second longest win streak in NHL history. Brandon kind of wanted to pinch himself sometimes, almost couldn't believe this was happening, but he was damn well going to enjoy it as long as he could.

And then they ran face-first into the Washington Capitals and the win streak was over, and they'd been shut out for the second time that season, and neither of those things felt good at all.

Brandon kept his head down in the locker room afterward, feeling partially responsible, the same way he figured everyone else did. He might not have the most sensitive nose when human shaped, but the frustration coming off Dubi especially in waves was just about visible. Boone wasn't much better; he and Cam had been out there with Dubi for… more than a couple of those goals against. Brandon wasn't counting, he figured they'd get enough of that later in video review.

It stung to have let it end like that, especially since it felt like they hadn't even played poorly, just—every bounce that could've gone wrong, had.

The kids had sort of congregated over on their side of the room, huddled together like it would ward off having to accept the end of the streak, and as Brandon walked past to get to his own stall he overheard a snatch of conversation, Sedsy rubbing at his wrist ruefully as Josh said, indignantly, "Wait, he slashed you right at the end there? Next time we play, I'm gonna go right back and drop the gloves with Ovech—" "Nah," Lukas said, shaking his head firmly, "you should not do that, is not like I lost my hand, eh?" and Josh had subsided, but still looked vaguely mutinous about it.

There was still plenty of time to shake it off, though, and they were going to have to, in the middle of five in eight, so Brandon just gave Dubi a consolatory punch in the arm as he stepped past him, and then knocked his shoulder gently against Boone's, leaning in to him while he stood in front of his stall, staring at the name plate like it had some answers for him.

"Hey," Brandon said quietly, pretty sure that his words were going to get lost in the general hubbub as they all changed and the trainers started packing up around them, ready for the late night flight back home. "Come back to mine?"

Boone turned his head to look at Brandon, his expression self-contained and far away at first, but he seemed to shake it off and then gave Brandon the world's tiniest smile and said, "Okay, yeah."

Brandon was pretty sure he wasn't imagining the approving look Fliggy gave him when he went back to his own stall to finish getting changed himself.

Some people's ears were too sharp.

He imagined saying that to Fliggy and had to grin. Okay, so they'd lost. It sucked, but it wasn't the end of the world.

Brandon was okay with finding a silver lining there.

[]

They seemed to have trouble setting back into a rhythm after that loss to the Caps, despite the best efforts of both players and coaching staff.

Brandon couldn't quite work out exactly what had gone out of sync; they were playing almost every other day, and only short road trips, too, but by the time they clawed the win out of an overtime game against the Sens Brandon still wasn't sure they were back on an even keel. He got the impression Boone was finding it even more frustrating than he was, but Boone didn't want to talk about it, and Brandon didn't like pushing. At least, not for that kind of conversation.

He was looking forward to the All Star break, sure, they probably all were, even if it was a little bittersweet to know he wasn't going to make it again himself, but more than that was the knowledge that the closer they got to the All Star break, the closer they were to their next game against the Isles.

And Brandon wasn't the only one looking forward to that.

Not that they'd really talked about that any more yet, either.

Getting through customs and then the flight from Ottawa to New York meant that they didn't get to their beds in the hotel until well after midnight, and Brandon pretty much crawled under the covers and fell asleep instantly, too glad to finally be in bed to do anything like worry about how the next day was going to work out.

Breakfast was as much of a shitshow as it usually was with a full hockey team's worth of guys and the kind of punch-drunkness that tended to follow a late night. Brandon just kept his head down in the corner and tried to ignore the fact that he was pretty sure guys were flicking pieces of breakfast sausage at each other over the table. And making bad jokes about sausages of course, too. Sometimes they collectively regressed to about fourteen years old, he thought, and stole a piece of turkey bacon off Boone's plate before cheerfully setting up Cam to take the fall for it.

He wasn't that much older than most of the rest of them, really.

Team meetings took up most of the morning, but they were free after that, with nothing planned until curfew.

A bunch of the guys were going out sight-seeing, or at least that was what they claimed, but Brandon and Boone were able to make a relatively low key exit without copping too much chirping. Not much more than usual, anyhow. And Brandon figured the point where his teammates stopped giving him shit for that kind of thing was probably the point where he'd have to worry about it being an actual problem. Besides, it turned out under sustained teasing about just what he and Brandon were going off to do, Boone went hilariously red in a way that Brandon was kind of into.

They managed to get a car easily enough, and headed out of Manhattan towards Long Island, Brandon giving Nick's address from memory without even thinking twice. He was very conscious of Boone's hand beside him on the seat, and after a moment of second-guessing himself, reached that tiny bit further to take it, squeezing gently.

"You're still okay with this, right?" Brandon asked softly, not wanting to say more than that where the driver could hear them, but incapable of not asking.

"Yeah," Boone replied, and his chin came up, stubborn as ever, so Brandon let it go for the moment.

Nick met them at the door of his building, coat buttoned up but with his scarf loose around his neck, and Brandon was struck frozen for a second, overwhelmed by how much he missed him, how good he looked.

"Lunch?" Nick said, after hugging Brandon and, a vaguely awkward pause later, hugging Boone, too. "I figured you guys would wanna eat, and there's a good place just up the block."

"Sounds good to me," Boone said, and Brandon chimed in with a, "Yeah."

Lunch broke the tension between them a little, or just enough at the very least. Brandon tried to keep his pleasure at seeing Nick and Boone hit it off well hidden, or at least not obnoxiously obvious, but it seemed like a good sign. He hadn't expected they'd just… fall into bed, or anything like that, as nice as that might be, but this definitely felt like a good start. He made a mental note to say as much to Nick later, although he wasn't sure where he'd get a word in since Boone and Nick had been talking easily and just about nonstop from the point they'd sat down until their food arrived.

Lucky Brandon was used to being the quiet one.

"We could head back to my place now," Nick said carefully, after Brandon snatched the bill from his hands and fixed him with a look that dared him to argue about it. "Or, I mean, if you guys want to head back to your hotel or whatever, that's fine. But, uh. I'd like to spend some more time with you. Both of you, if you like."

Brandon glanced at Boone, happy enough to leave that decision with him. Boone had said earlier that week that he was more than fine with it if Brandon wanted some alone time with Nick for himself, so that question really was up to him.

"Sounds good to me," Boone said, with a grin that bordered on a smirk, and Brandon swallowed hard, because he knew the look on Boone's face and—

Well, it looked like he was going to have a very interesting afternoon.

Brandon found himself walking faster on the way back, his pace quickening almost without his conscious intent, but he wasn't the only one; Boone and Nick were both doing much the same.

Nick stepped around Brandon when they got back to his place, dug keys out of his coat pocket to let them in, and directed them up to his apartment, pointing the coat rack out as he closed the door behind them. It shut with a finality that sent Brandon's heart rate spiking up, anticipation bleeding into arousal.

It was cool and almost dark in the entry way; Nick's A/C set low like usual, and Brandon blinked hard for a couple of seconds when Nick reached over to flip the light switch, flooding the room with light, illuminating the back of the couch in the living room just a few steps away.

"Hey," Nick said quietly, and this time his eyes were solely on Brandon, the hot look for him alone. Brandon swallowed hard.

"Uh, do you mind if I—?" Nick asked, turning to check in with Boone.

Boone shrugged, making an effort to look relaxed, and gave them both a grin that was all teeth. "Go right ahead."

Nick didn't need more of an invitation than that, just stepped right into Brandon's space and murmured, "Missed you," before leaning in to kiss him.

Brandon let his eyes close, opened his mouth for Nick and kissed him back, hard, arms wrapping around him tightly. God, he'd missed this. He was lucky, so lucky to have Boone almost all of the time, but Nick was important too, and god, he hoped this worked out, because it might've only been a few weeks—a few months—so far, but he wasn't sure he could give either of them up.

They kissed for a few seconds, or at least that was what Brandon had meant to do, but the time stretched out, and he struggled more than usual with finding the willpower to step back, to break the kiss.

Nick was grinning by the time Brandon opened his eyes again, impossibly fond as ever. Brandon smiled back at him, and then heard Boone shift his weight from one foot to another, still standing right there next to them. Brandon took a deep breath and then turned to look at him, not sure what he was going to see.

Boone looked—interested.

There was a light in his eyes, a fierceness to his expression that Brandon usually only saw just before they went wolf-shape, or before a game against the Pens or the Rangers or the Caps, any of their division rivals who were the toughest to beat but the most satisfying to take the points from. He looked—

Hungry.

That was probably a good sign, Brandon figured.

"That was hot," Boone said, licking his lips, and Brandon's stomach flipped, arousal winding tighter around his backbone, his pants suddenly feeling much, much too tight.

Nick gave Brandon a little push, palm pressed to the middle of his chest. "Go on, Saader," he said, and glanced back at Boone.

Brandon suddenly got the impression that the two of them might just have been communicating without him, too.

Still, he liked kissing Boone, and he liked doing what Nick wanted him to, so it was easy enough to take the step over towards Boone, to tilt his head the right way to press their mouths together, kissing him just like he'd been kissing Nick.

Boone got his hands up, wrapped his arms around Brandon to anchor him in place, and sank into a heated kiss, his fingers pushing up into Brandon's hair, his palm warm on the nape of Brandon's neck. It felt a little different to how they usually kissed, and Brandon couldn't place it at first, wasn't sure if it was just him being a little off balance, or the fact that they had an audience that wasn't just Murrs throwing carrot sticks at them and telling them to get a room already. And then as Boone's teeth scraped over Brandon's lip he realized what it was; Boone was pushing back as hard as Brandon had ever known him to, tasting Nick on his lips, against his teeth, on his tongue.

Brandon made a tiny noise in the back of his throat, caught somewhere between turned on and embarrassed, maybe, if that was the right word. But whatever it was, Boone seemed to be enjoying it; there was no envy obvious in the lines of his body, in the way he held Brandon tight and close. There was only the heat of his mouth and the pressure of his touch, and the extremely clear evidence that Boone was just as turned on as Brandon was.

They broke apart eventually, and Brandon had to gulp for air, his head spinning a little, breathing too fast. Boone was still grinning at him, with that delicate edge of ferocity that Brandon was beginning to understand as where his wolf side and the man crossed over, where they bled into each other, and both of them wanted Brandon. And Nick.

He caught Boone's eyes jumping back to Nick then, reading his body language, monitoring his reactions. Brandon swallowed hard, and then spoke up.

"I think, uh. You and Nick should kiss now," he said, and bit the inside of his mouth with the effort of trying to stay cool while he asked for that. Trying not to give away the nerves about whether this was about to go terribly badly for them. And worse, or maybe better, trying not to give away just how badly it he wanted it to work out. How much he wanted to watch.

"I think that can happen, sure," Nick said, sounding confident enough for both of them.

Boone—smirked at him, really. It was the only word for that expression. There was a tense moment where none of them moved, and Brandon could feel the subtle pressure building, the imminent potential where this could go either way. And then Boone inclined his head, ever so slightly, the gradation so faint that Brandon didn't think he'd even have registered it if he was just plain human. Even if he'd had a camera on the moment, Brandon couldn't pick which one of them moved first, just that they both took a step in, and then Nick's hands were at Boone's hips, and Boone's were cupping Nick's jaw, and Brandon didn't think he took a breath in the time it took for them to come together, dipping in to a surprisingly gentle kiss.

Boone being Boone, he had to follow that up by nipping at Nick's bottom lip as he started to draw back, and Brandon's breath whistled back into his lungs as he relaxed at last.

"You better not be promising something you're not going to deliver," Nick warned Boone, his tongue prodding experimentally at the part of his lip Boone had caught between his teeth, his feet spread shoulders width apart, bracing him. Holding him steady as ever. His tone was as even as ever, soft and all the more ruthlessly promising for that.

Boone visibly swallowed hard and shifted his weight. Brandon just grinned. Yeah, this felt like it was going to work out just fine.

Brandon stepped closer to both of them, reached out to take Boone's hand in one of his, and Nick's in the other. He squeezed them both, brought his hands together to join theirs, too.

"This is going to be fun," Brandon said, letting his renewed confidence in that fact infuse his voice, filling him up with the same reckless urge to run he got every full moon. Except this was late afternoon, with just the barest crescent of moon hanging over the horizon, not even visible yet. But still inextricably a part of what drew them together.

Nick raised his free hand to Boone's face, brushed his thumb along the scruffy excuse for a beard that lined his jaw, and then looked to Brandon as if he was waiting for some other instructions.

"We can just—go to bed now, right?" Boone said, his gaze heated as he glanced between Brandon and Nick, turning his face ever so fractionally into Nick's palm.

"Sounds good to me," Nick said. "We're good, right Boone?" He didn't even stumble over the first name, said it as smoothly as if they'd known each other for months and not just in passing and on the ice, like Brandon wasn't absolutely certain that until this sparked between them all Nick had probably only ever thought of him by his last name, or, more likely, a series of not-entirely-flattering adjectives about an opposing power forward Nick's played against for most of their respective careers.

"Mmm," Boone said, mostly teasing, but with enough of an edge to make it feel better, teetering on the boundary between two opposing forces, enjoying the friction.

"Don't worry," Brandon said, not sure which one of them he was talking to. Both of them, really. "His bark is much worse than his bite."

Brandon's turn to smirk.

Boone sighed heavily, and rolled his eyes dramatically, and then looked at Leds long enough to have a silent conversation that Brandon didn't follow.

Unsurprisingly, the one getting chirped in the dressing room before their game the next day for all the obvious love bites clustered at his hips and high on his ass ended up being Brandon.

[]

They seemed to have trouble setting back into a rhythm after that loss to the Caps, despite the best efforts of both players and coaching staff.

Brandon couldn't quite work out exactly what had gone out of sync; they were playing almost every other day, and only short road trips, too, but by the time they clawed the win out of an overtime game against the Sens Brandon still wasn't sure they were back on an even keel. He got the impression Boone was finding it even more frustrating than he was, but Boone didn't want to talk about it, and Brandon didn't like pushing. At least, not for that kind of conversation.

He was looking forward to the All Star break, sure, they probably all were, even if it was a little bittersweet to know he wasn't going to make it again himself, but more than that was the knowledge that the closer they got to the All Star break, the closer they were to their next game against the Isles.

And Brandon wasn't the only one looking forward to that.

Not that they'd really talked about that any more yet, either.

Getting through customs and then the flight from Ottawa to New York meant that they didn't get to their beds in the hotel until well after midnight, and Brandon pretty much crawled under the covers and fell asleep instantly, too glad to finally be in bed to do anything like worry about how the next day was going to work out.

Breakfast was as much of a shitshow as it usually was with a full hockey team's worth of guys and the kind of punch-drunkness that tended to follow a late night. Brandon just kept his head down in the corner and tried to ignore the fact that he was pretty sure guys were flicking pieces of breakfast sausage at each other over the table. And making bad jokes about sausages of course, too. Sometimes they collectively regressed to about fourteen years old, he thought, and stole a piece of turkey bacon off Boone's plate before cheerfully setting up Cam to take the fall for it.

He wasn't that much older than most of the rest of them, really.

Team meetings took up most of the morning, but they were free after that, with nothing planned until curfew.

A bunch of the guys were going out sight-seeing, or at least that was what they claimed, but Brandon and Boone were able to make a relatively low key exit without copping too much chirping. Not much more than usual, anyhow. And Brandon figured the point where his teammates stopped giving him shit for that kind of thing was probably the point where he'd have to worry about it being an actual problem. Besides, it turned out under sustained teasing about just what he and Brandon were going off to do, Boone went hilariously red in a way that Brandon was kind of into.

They managed to get a car easily enough, and headed out of Manhattan towards Long Island, Brandon giving Nick's address from memory without even thinking twice. He was very conscious of Boone's hand beside him on the seat, and after a moment of second-guessing himself, reached that tiny bit further to take it, squeezing gently.

"You're still okay with this, right?" Brandon asked softly, not wanting to say more than that where the driver could hear them, but incapable of not asking.

"Yeah," Boone replied, and his chin came up, stubborn as ever, so Brandon let it go for the moment.

Nick met them at the door of his building, coat buttoned up but with his scarf loose around his neck, and Brandon was struck frozen for a second, overwhelmed by how much he missed him, how good he looked.

"Lunch?" Nick said, after hugging Brandon and, a vaguely awkward pause later, hugging Boone, too. "I figured you guys would wanna eat, and there's a good place just up the block."

"Sounds good to me," Boone said, and Brandon chimed in with a, "Yeah."

Lunch broke the tension between them a little, or just enough at the very least. Brandon tried to keep his pleasure at seeing Nick and Boone hit it off well hidden, or at least not obnoxiously obvious, but it seemed like a good sign. He hadn't expected they'd just… fall into bed, or anything like that, as nice as that might be, but this definitely felt like a good start. He made a mental note to say as much to Nick later, although he wasn't sure where he'd get a word in since Boone and Nick had been talking easily and just about nonstop from the point they'd sat down until their food arrived.

Lucky Brandon was used to being the quiet one.

"We could head back to my place now," Nick said carefully, after Brandon snatched the bill from his hands and fixed him with a look that dared him to argue about it. "Or, I mean, if you guys want to head back to your hotel or whatever, that's fine. But, uh. I'd like to spend some more time with you. Both of you, if you like."

Brandon glanced at Boone, happy enough to leave that decision with him. Boone had said earlier that week that he was more than fine with it if Brandon wanted some alone time with Nick for himself, so that question really was up to him.

"Sounds good to me," Boone said, with a grin that bordered on a smirk, and Brandon swallowed hard, because he knew the look on Boone's face and—

Well, it looked like he was going to have a very interesting afternoon.

Brandon found himself walking faster on the way back, his pace quickening almost without his conscious intent, but he wasn't the only one; Boone and Nick were both doing much the same.

Nick stepped around Brandon when they got back to his place, dug keys out of his coat pocket to let them in, and directed them up to his apartment, pointing the coat rack out as he closed the door behind them. It shut with a finality that sent Brandon's heart rate spiking up, anticipation bleeding into arousal.

It was cool and almost dark in the entry way; Nick's A/C set low like usual, and Brandon blinked hard for a couple of seconds when Nick reached over to flip the light switch, flooding the room with light, illuminating the back of the couch in the living room just a few steps away.

"Hey," Nick said quietly, and this time his eyes were solely on Brandon, the hot look for him alone. Brandon swallowed hard.

"Uh, do you mind if I—?" Nick asked, turning to check in with Boone.

Boone shrugged, making an effort to look relaxed, and gave them both a grin that was all teeth. "Go right ahead."

Nick didn't need more of an invitation than that, just stepped right into Brandon's space and murmured, "Missed you," before leaning in to kiss him.

Brandon let his eyes close, opened his mouth for Nick and kissed him back, hard, arms wrapping around him tightly. God, he'd missed this. He was lucky, so lucky to have Boone almost all of the time, but Nick was important too, and god, he hoped this worked out, because it might've only been a few weeks—a few months—so far, but he wasn't sure he could give either of them up.

They kissed for a few seconds, or at least that was what Brandon had meant to do, but the time stretched out, and he struggled more than usual with finding the willpower to step back, to break the kiss.

Nick was grinning by the time Brandon opened his eyes again, impossibly fond as ever. Brandon smiled back at him, and then heard Boone shift his weight from one foot to another, still standing right there next to them. Brandon took a deep breath and then turned to look at him, not sure what he was going to see.

Boone looked—interested.

There was a light in his eyes, a fierceness to his expression that Brandon usually only saw when he was really fired up, before a game against the Pens or the Rangers or the Caps, any of their division rivals who were the toughest to beat but the most satisfying to take the points from. He looked—

Hungry.

That was probably a good sign, Brandon figured.

"That was hot," Boone said, licking his lips, and Brandon's stomach flipped, arousal winding tighter around his backbone, his pants suddenly feeling much, much too tight.

Nick gave Brandon a little push, palm pressed to the middle of his chest. "Go on, Saader," he said, and glanced back at Boone.

Brandon suddenly got the impression that the two of them might just have been communicating without him, too.

Still, he liked kissing Boone, and he liked doing what Nick wanted him to, so it was easy enough to take the step over towards Boone, to tilt his head the right way to press their mouths together, kissing him just like he'd been kissing Nick.

Boone got his hands up, wrapped his arms around Brandon to anchor him in place, and sank into a heated kiss, his fingers pushing up into Brandon's hair, his palm warm on the nape of Brandon's neck. It felt a little different to how they usually kissed, and Brandon couldn't place it at first, wasn't sure if it was just him being a little off balance, or the fact that they had an audience that wasn't just Murrs throwing carrot sticks at them and telling them to get a room already. And then as Boone's teeth scraped over Brandon's lip he realized what it was; Boone was pushing back as hard as Brandon had ever known him to, tasting Nick on his lips, against his teeth, on his tongue.

Brandon made a tiny noise in the back of his throat, caught somewhere between turned on and embarrassed, maybe, if that was the right word. But whatever it was, Boone seemed to be enjoying it; there was no envy obvious in the lines of his body, in the way he held Brandon tight and close. There was only the heat of his mouth and the pressure of his touch, and the extremely clear evidence that Boone was just as turned on as Brandon was.

They broke apart eventually, and Brandon had to gulp for air, his head spinning a little, breathing too fast. Boone was still grinning at him, with that delicate edge of ferocity that Brandon was beginning to understand meant that he saw something he wanted, something he needed desperately. An indication of just how much he wanted Brandon. And Nick.

He caught Boone's eyes jumping back to Nick then, reading his body language, monitoring his reactions. Brandon swallowed hard, and then spoke up.

"I think, uh. You and Nick should kiss now," he said, and bit the inside of his mouth with the effort of trying to stay cool while he asked for that. Trying not to give away the nerves about whether this was about to go terribly badly for them. And worse, or maybe better, trying not to give away just how badly it he wanted it to work out. How much he wanted to watch.

"I think that can happen, sure," Nick said, sounding confident enough for both of them.

Boone—smirked at him, really. It was the only word for that expression. There was a tense moment where none of them moved, and Brandon could feel the subtle pressure building, the imminent potential where this could go either way. And then Boone inclined his head, ever so slightly, the gradation so faint that Brandon didn't think he'd even have registered it if he hadn't been staring so fixedly. Even if he'd had a camera on the moment, Brandon couldn't pick which one of them moved first, just that they both took a step in, and then Nick's hands were at Boone's hips, and Boone's were cupping Nick's jaw, and Brandon didn't think he took a breath in the time it took for them to come together, dipping in to a surprisingly gentle kiss.

Boone being Boone, he had to follow that up by nipping at Nick's bottom lip as he started to draw back, and Brandon's breath whistled back into his lungs as he relaxed at last.

"You better not be promising something you're not going to deliver," Nick warned Boone, his tongue prodding experimentally at the part of his lip Boone had caught between his teeth, his feet spread shoulders width apart, bracing him. Holding him steady as ever. His tone was as even as ever, soft and all the more ruthlessly promising for that.

Boone visibly swallowed hard and shifted his weight. Brandon just grinned. Yeah, this felt like it was going to work out just fine.

Brandon stepped closer to both of them, reached out to take Boone's hand in one of his, and Nick's in the other. He squeezed them both, brought his hands together to join theirs, too.

"This is going to be fun," Brandon said, letting his renewed confidence in that fact infuse his voice, filling him up with the same fierce joy he'd felt the first time Nick had kissed him back, when they'd won the Cup, when he'd been on the ice and set loose on a breakaway he knew he couldn't help but score on, the perfect dream.

Nick raised his free hand to Boone's face, brushed his thumb along the scruffy excuse for a beard that lined his jaw, and then looked to Brandon as if he was waiting for some other instructions.

"We can just—go to bed now, right?" Boone said, his gaze heated as he glanced between Brandon and Nick, turning his face ever so fractionally into Nick's palm.

"Sounds good to me," Nick said. "We're good, right Boone?" He didn't even stumble over the first name, said it as smoothly as if they'd known each other for months and not just in passing and on the ice, like Brandon wasn't absolutely certain that until this sparked between them all Nick had probably only ever thought of him by his last name, or, more likely, a series of not-entirely-flattering adjectives about an opposing power forward Nick's played against for most of their respective careers.

"Mmm," Boone said, mostly teasing, but with enough of an edge to make it feel better, teetering on the boundary between two opposing forces, enjoying the friction.

"I'm taking that as a yes," Nick said, twisting his hand from Brandon's grip and using that to tug both him and Boone in the direction of his bedroom. His other hand fell back to his side, fingertips rubbing against the seam of his pants like he was trying to settle himself again, pushing back what it had to have felt like to touch Boone like that.

"Good, because it was," Boone said, following along just as eagerly, his shoulder bumping against Brandon's as they stepped through the doorway, too impatient not to rush it.

Nick's bed, thank god, was big enough for the three of them, albeit just barely. Despite his best efforts—admittedly hampered by the fact that everything felt so good that it was hard to put more than a thought or two together sensibly—Brandon wound up in the middle, Nick and Boone stretched out beside him and their hands roaming easily over both familiar and unfamiliar terrain with equal ease.

They shed more clothing in fits and starts, interrupting themselves each time with more kisses, with careful touches, attuning to each other as individuals and as a whole, figuring out what worked.

It was also not terribly shocking, Brandon thought, that he was the first one pushed beyond his limits, crying out and coming hard with Boone's mouth on him. Nick's teeth worried at his hip as he watched Boone from up close, his fingers tangled in Boone's hair and tugging hard like Brandon would have wanted to if he'd had enough coordination left to do it. They both knew what he liked, how to get him off, this was the most familiar territory for all three of them. He had to lie there and pant helplessly for long minutes afterward, trying to get trembling muscles working again before rolling over and, after catching Nick's eyes to agree silently on their next steps, teaming up to get Boone to follow suit.

By the time it was Nick's turn, all three of them were sweaty and wrecked, pleasantly aching and worn out in the best possible way. Brandon let his eyes close for just a moment and wondered if he'd ever get to see anything hotter than Boone's fingers pressing into Nick's body and making him arch up and shout, dick jerking helplessly against his belly as Brandon kissed him and then Boone, his mouth moving from lips to jaw to neck, covering them both in marks that would almost certainly show up later, red-purple and livid.

"Okay, yeah, that worked," Boone said eventually, shoving at Brandon a little to get him to share the pillow his head was on. "We don't have to move again any time this century right?"

"Nope," Nick said, his arm slung possessively over both Brandon and Boone, low on their hips as he curled closer to Brandon. "Stay here, I could definitely get used to this."

"Curfew," Brandon reminded them both, not that he really wanted to move any more than they did.

"I have a plan," Boone said, mumbling half into the pillow. "At dawn, we sneak back in and pretend we were there all night."

Brandon couldn't deny he was tempted, although it wasn't like any of them were young and dumb enough to try and actually pull something like that off. "Like you could get up that early," he said instead.

"Hey, hypocrite much," Boone said, sounding indignant and a little more awake.

"Oh, I see you've tried to get him up in the morning too," Nick said, with the faint touch of smugness that came with being one of nature's morning people. Brandon mostly tried not to hold that against him.

"Alternately, nap and round two?" Brandon suggested. He'd probably be able to come up with a better plan after a nap, that was for sure. And he definitely wanted to do all of this some more before they had to head back to Columbus again.

"Definitely a fan of round two," Nick said. "Now stop hogging the pillows," and he jabbed Brandon in the ribs long enough to get him and Boone both to move around enough that they could all stretch out comfortably.

It was going to be a wrench to leave, Brandon knew, and difficult as always to look across the ice the next evening and see Nick there, to know that for the next two and a half hours they were committed to opposing needs, battling it out for the points and the bragging rights at stake. But they'd started building something good that night, something he thought might actually last well beyond the season, something that was going to be well worth whatever vicious mockery he and Boone eventually got for completely failing to be subtle about what they'd been doing all day.

Brandon was, quietly, suddenly and inexplicably convinced that they'd done exactly the right thing, that this was absolutely where they were all meant to be, how it was meant to go. It was like a glimpse of what was yet to come, a snapshot into the most reassuring of futures, letting him know they were on the right path. That this was something that was worth everything it took to build.

[]

He frowned a little, brows drawn together as he noticed Cam with his head down, staring intently at his phone.

Cam perfectly still and not making any noise or any kind of animated expression was enough of a rarity to draw his attention; was usually a sign that something was up.

In this case, though, after Nick applied a whole ten seconds worth of thought to it, it was probably pretty understandable. They might not be on a line together much these days, but Cam and Matty always spent a lot of time together, approaching Bill-and-Wenny level inseparable at times. It’d been just over a week since Matty had taken that puck to the face and gotten himself the kind of gruesome scar that was going to get him bought a lot of drinks. To say nothing of the goal after. But the scar wasn’t the problem, of course—Nick frowned in sympathy—the associated knock to the head that still had him out of the lineup was the real problem, and Nick didn’t need to have been there himself to know how much that sucked.

And if he knew Cam—and he did, thanks—then that look was definitely one that was Matty related.

Cam tucked his phone away again, his head coming up, a bright grin stretching over his lips, and then he went to tackle Andy like that was his job. Well, that and putting the puck in the net so consistently that Nick privately suspected he was going to wind up not just leading the Jackets but somewhere at the top of the league this year. It seemed as sincere an act as ever, and it probably was, but Nick couldn’t help but feel like he was covering something up with that.

Andy just ruffled his hair like every annoying taller younger brother ever—Nick definitely knew that feeling, too—and held Cam off him, arm stretched out just enough that Cam couldn’t do much more than make an exaggerated scowl. Cam had enough brothers he had to be used to that one .

“I just wanted to reward you,” Cam said, aiming for plaintive.

“Why do I feel like a shaving cream pie might be involved here?” Josh said, and Cam tried not to look guilty, and succeeded only in looking extra guilty.

“You don’t know, it could’ve been a lap dance,” Cam protested.

Andy gave him a slow look, head to toe, deliberately trying to make him uncomfortable. Yeah, good luck with that, Nick thought. “Yeah, you’re not my type, Cameron.”

There was a stifled round of snickering coming from the collective defensive corps at that, or at least from the four younger guys, clustered together on one side of the dressing room.

That had all the hallmarks of something that could potentially escalate, and normally Nick would let stuff like that shake itself out in the wash, but he figured he could make an exception this time. There was letting the room take care of itself, and then there was being careful not to disturb the equilibrium they were finding which had them putting up points in four straight. Nick was going to pick the latter option there, this time.

Not out of any obligation to save Cam from himself, of course, just—it seemed like a good idea.

And it was one he didn’t have to follow through on, in the end; a brief and quickly muffled commotion by the door heralded Matty coming in, blinking a little faster than usual, but wearing his usual broad grin as he looked around the room and started dishing out chirps and compliments in about equal measures.

Something in Nick’s shoulders relaxed at that.

It was clear they’d all immediately made a conscious effort to drop the volume level—Matty was doing better, sure, but a ton of noise was no fun for anyone dealing with the effects of a concussion—and the initial wince he’d tried to hide on walking in was enough of a clue there.

It was easy to be this pleased after such a good win, though, and having Matty down there with them seemed to be leveling out the mood of the room, too; all their pieces in place even when they weren’t in play, and not for the first time, Nick looked around the room and felt a gut-deep satisfaction with the people around him, with what they were building.

“How’s it going, Fliggy?” Cam poked at his shoulder, beamed at him with the full wattage of his usual smile, and Nick let the tiny weird feeling he’d been getting about Cam go to the back of his mind, too. He was clearly fine, everything was obviously fine, Nick was just being too suspicious and borrowing trouble, he should definitely just let it go and enjoy this.

Nick grinned back at him.

“Jackets are hot, baby!” he crowed, doing his best impression of Cam in the process, and Cam barked out a laugh, socked him one on the shoulder again and went to go harass Dubi instead.

Cam was pretty sure he was doing a good job of hiding it—Fliggy might’ve seen something but he’d backed off as soon as Cam got in his face, at least—but at the back of his mind, part of him was still in absolute free-fall panicked mode.

He'd seen Matty come into the locker room over Josh's shoulder—okay, technically from under his elbow when he was trying to shove Cam away, but details schmetails—and hadn't been able to hide his initial, instinctive reaction.

[]

That first reaction, of course, had been relief. Something in his heart was always going to light up and lift when he saw Matty; they'd been through, well, everything together, and Cam loved him to pieces and would totally fight a man for him if he had to. Even though generally speaking that was probably more Matty's style, but whatever.

So of course, it sucked that he was up in the pressbox, or half the time stuck at home and not even allowed to watch the game on TV, and Cam was definitely in favor of him not messing up his brain any more, so yeah, follow those doctor's orders, Matty.

The problem was that Cam had volunteered to drive him home after the game he'd gotten hurt—no one wanted him driving with a giant cut on his head and god only knew how much of a shake to the contents of his skull—and he'd been so hyped up on the emotion of seeing Matty go down like that and then been so glad that he'd come back, that they'd won, that they'd won on that goal that he'd totally left any good sense he'd ever had back at Nationwide.

It was the only thing that would explain the way he'd dug out Matty's spare key, walked him inside, grabbed water and Gatorade and painkillers for him, set them up on the nightstand for him and then grinned at him, told he'd done awesome, and then ducked in and kissed him.

The worst thing was Cam couldn't even remember if it had been a good kiss or even what kissing Matty was like, for however long he'd done it. Sheer blind panic when he realized what he was doing had overridden every other memory, and he'd dropped everything and basically run before Matty could even shove him away or ask what the hell he thought he was doing.

Cam had guiltily kept checking his phone for a day or two after that, half-expecting a 'wtf was that??' text, but apparently Matty was doing what he'd been told and staying away from screens, period.

Or he just didn't want to talk to Cam at all, which was also horribly plausible.

Cam was pursuing an aggressive policy of Not Thinking About It and Not Referencing It and preferably Never Having It Come Up Again, Ever, although he was also going to have to hope that Matty could get on the same page instinctively, since Cam really didn't want to discuss it with him or anyone else.

And that meant Cam had to spend a lot of time trying to remember how to look like he was acting normal, because if he didn't someone would want to know what was up, and Cam's team were the nosiest bunch of fuckers he'd ever met. Which normally he kind of liked about them, sure, but right then and there it wasn't exactly convenient.

[]

Thankfully, whatever else was going on in the locker room—Josh and Z and a bunch of the younger guys were making none-too-quiet plans about going out, it seemed like—seemed to be keeping anyone else from looking at Cam and noticing any expression he might've been making.

He let himself stare at Matty for a couple seconds longer—he was talking to Dubi and Fligs, and thus distracted enough to not notice, Cam hoped—and then turned decisively back to his own stall, starting to button up his shirt. It was fine. He could… eventually get over all of this, and hopefully Matty would still be speaking to him by the time he got back into the lineup. Piece of cake.

Cam bent over to set out his shoes, and tried to jam his feet back into them without bothering to sit down. He was a hockey player, he wasn't going to lose his balance standing on one foot for a cool ten seconds, it wasn't like it was advanced acrobatics or anything.

At least, it shouldn't have been, but then someone's elbow landed somewhere about his rib cage and he lurched alarmingly to one side, had to grab onto Saader to keep from falling flat on his face. Now that would have been an embarrassing way to wind up on IR.

"Whoops, sorry," Matty said, sounding not sorry in the slightest, and Cam's own apologies—to Saader, because his parents raised him right, thank you very much, he had manners—trailed off to nothing.

Cam couldn't think of a single thing he could say, looking over at Matt. He never felt tongue-tied like this normally, and even leaving aside all the awkward shitty parts like how he couldn't look at Matty without remembering kissing him and wanting to try and do it again, Cam hated not talking.

"It's fine," Saader said absently, patting Cam on the shoulder before wandering away to talk to Wenny, his suit jacket hanging over his arm, swinging gently in tune with whatever piece of probably-older-than-he-was rock music he was humming absently.

He hadn't even looked at Cam, which was probably a plus, but that wasn't helping him get out of this conversation with Matt at all either.

"Cat got your tongue?" Matt asked, and Cam steeled himself to make eye contact at that, more indignant than anything else, but that faded almost instantly as soon as he saw Matt's expression. He didn't actually look mad. Or disappointed, or anything else that Cam's worst nightmares had been painting behind his eyelids for the past couple days. He looked—curious, more than anything. Cautious, not disgusted.

Cam swallowed hard and wished that he was anywhere but there. And then inspiration struck: he could totally do that. He was dressed, he didn't have any more interviews to do, the beats had all long since filed out of the room and scurried off to whereever they posted their articles from, it was just the team around and that meant that Cam could book it out of there with zero shame.

"You wanna go grab a drink somewhere?" Cam asked, before he could chicken out again. If he got a drink, then maybe he'd feel better about life, and he'd have something to do with his hands while Matty inevitably let him down gently, and also if they were in public then no one was going to be able to do anything more than be vague about it all, which Cam figured had to be a plus.

"Yeah," Matt said. "We can go back to my place, c'mon. You can drive, I'm not supposed to still."

Fuck, Cam thought, with a rueful acknowledgment to how well he'd just been played. Of course he couldn't go out somewhere with Matty, anywhere public was probably going to be too noisy, too much light or sound or both even if he was doing a lot better. And now he had no way of getting out of this.

Cam lifted his chin, firmed up his shoulders and reminded himself he totally had this all under control still.

He just wasn't sure he believed that.

Neither of them said much in the car. Cam drove, without the need for directions or any real input from Matt, because it was, oh, probably about the three hundredth time he'd made that drive, if not more. They had so much history together, and the worst part about that was how it was still also one of the best parts of Cam's life.

Matty unlocked the front door and ushered Cam in, the two of them shedding coats and scarves in the hall like it was any other day, trying not to trip over the dogs who were ecstatic at having not just one but two humans to pet them. He'd only flipped on about half as many of the lights as usual, but followed that up by skirting the living room entirely and distracting the dogs with a few treats by their bowls in the kitchen, before pulling out a chair and sitting down.

So they were doing this in the kitchen Cam thought, somewhat fatalistically, and he went to sit as well, pulled out the chair opposite Matty and sat down, trying not to lean his elbows on the table or get distracted by the centerpiece that had probably been sitting there since Christmas last year. He'd much rather look at Matty, but that seemed like a bad idea right then.

"Cam," Matty said gently, and then he must have stretched out, because his socked foot nudged against Cam's ankle, firm and undeniable, and Cam's head flew up in shock to make eye contact because wait, what?

"Uh," Cam said cleverly, and then bit his lip, before saying, more pitifully than he liked to admit. "What?"

"Something you wanna tell me, eh bud?" Matty said, and Cam felt his cheeks go a hectic red, was aware all over again how ridiculous he had to look, all curls and blushes and not being able to stop making an idiot of himself in front of one of his favorite people in the world.

"Can't we just, you know, never speak of it again or whatever?" Cam asked. "I didn't mean to, you know. Drop that on you then." Or ever, really; he'd been set on denying his feelings for Matty to himself and everyone else as long as humanly possible, really, and if he hadn't been so freaked out and high on adrenaline and worry at the same time he probably could have kept avoiding that for at least a few years. He'd gotten away with it until now, hadn't he?

"Cam," Matty said again, pointedly. "Can you stop freaking out and listen? I'm not going to say no."

Cam blinked. Great, now he was hearing things.

"Run that by me again?" Cam asked.

Matty rolled his eyes dramatically, and okay, that was normal for them, at least. Cam felt marginally less awkward as a result. "You tried to kiss me, and then ran the fuck away," he said, and Cam held his breath. Matty didn't sound pissed off about it. Or at least, he didn't sound mad so much as he did frustrated. And that wasn't the same thing at all. "You never even waited around to see what I wanted!" he added accusingly.

"I figured you wanted some space and also to forget it ever happened?" Cam said slowly. Sure, he hadn't texted Matty or anything, but he wasn't supposed to be looking at his phone and also Cam had been doing some very important drinking to forget or at least hardcore napping while complaining to Easton about how his love life was not just nonexistent but actively useless. But Matty could have said something sooner if he wasn't actually mad, right?

"I had a concussion," Matty said. "It made it kind of hard to figure out how to react when you went all Disney Prince Charming on me."

That was probably a good sign, Cam thought, as despite himself hope kept blooming in his chest, his heart racing with nerves and breathless excitement. Disney princes usually got the—uh, he probably shouldn't try to call Matt a princess, he figured, thankfully without saying any of that out loud. There was only room for one princess on their team and Z had that nickname locked up, however much he might protest every time they'd gone ten pin bowling.

"So what you're saying is, uh, not no?" Cam asked, trying to figure out what he could do if Matty was about to crush him anyway after all of this. They were flying out to Denver in like sixteen hours, he probably couldn't do a whole lot of anything. Maybe cry into his pillow and go sulk at Boone and Murrs, if nothing else.

"Yes," Matty said, and then when Cam just blinked at him and opened his mouth to demand he say it less confusingly. "I mean, I would've said yes, if you hadn't fucking run off and my head wasn't killing me at the time too much to really think about much more than not puking."

"Oh," Cam said. That was—somehow better than his best case scenario. That hardly ever happened off the ice.

"I'm pretty much past that whole puking-headache-generally feeling like shit part now," Matty said, pointedly.

Cam stared for a microsecond and then picked up what he was putting down. "Why the fuck are we in here if we could be, like, making out on the couch instead?" he asked.

"I had to feed the dogs first!" Matty said, a trifle defensively. "Also I was worried you'd run out on me again, and it's a lot harder to get to the front door from here.

That was—probably fair, Cam figured.

"Can we go make out on the couch now instead, then?" Cam asked, crossing his fingers behind his back. Soph came over to butt her head against his hand and Cam scritched behind her ears automatically. Okay, so maybe he did spend a lot of time over here and should have figured out that this whole thing wasn't as one-sided as he'd thought a lot sooner.

Matty grinned at him, and Cam felt his heart flip-flop in his chest all over again, rising hope and deep affection coming right back into alignment, feeling like he was full to the brim with good fortune.

"Yeah, I think we can do that," Matty said, and Cam grinned right back at him, and then fist-pumped, because hell yeah, looked like luck was in their favor after all.

[]

Cam was pretty sure he was getting away with it.

It had been like a week now, and no one had noticed or started chirping him about anything out of the ordinary. The short jokes were entirely ordinary and also not particularly fresh: some of the guys needed new material badly, he figured, but that was their problem and not his.

Matty was starting to get back to off-ice workouts, and the guys were saying he'd be back in a non-contact jersey in the next couple of days probably too, so overall, things were going back to normal.

It was good, it was what Cam wanted.

He just wished it felt better, if that was the case.

They kept winning, and kept winning, and Cam kept scoring, and it would in almost every respect count as some of the most fun games he'd had since entering the NHL, except—

He kept missing Matty.

Missing him in the locker room, where they could double-team anyone who'd been woefully under-pranked of late, and Torts had to be about the only person they'd mutually decided to not mess with. Fliggy usually didn't react, but when you got him going it was so, so worth it.

Missing him on the ice, and on his wing, because sure, he was putting up points like never before, and Dubi and Boone were a big part of that, but there was a little part of him that still expected to look across the ice and see Matty there, barreling towards the net no matter who was in the way.

Missing him just in fucking general, since he couldn't remember the last time they'd got lunch, or dinner, or even just gone downtown for a drink.

And part of that was Matty being out, sure; Cam didn't exactly want to go deal with noise and people when he'd had a concussion, but… part of it was Matty avoiding him, and even if that was exactly what Cam had wanted to happen, it still kinda sucked.

At least Matty was gonna be on the road with them; the trainers hoping he could get back in some time on the road trip, if not necessarily the first game. That had to be good news, so long as he was actually doing better. And he couldn't avoid Cam the whole time.

Or so Cam had hoped, but Matty was doing a little better than he would have liked on the whole avoiding him front. Cam tried not to let his face fall a little when they filed onto the charter and Dubi sat next to him instead of leaving the seat for Matty, who was up front talking to Saader and Jack, and Cam wasn't jealous, nope, not him.

"It'll work out," Dubi said to him, voice low, but not unkind. "Gotta get the rats back together sometime soon, huh?"

"Ha, yeah," Cam said, and hoped he actually sounded like he believed that, and was just laughing it off. At least Dubi didn't know why Matty was avoiding him.

Cam snuck a glance at Dubi's expression, a little more serious than he usually was off the ice when they weren't doing much of anything important and revised that down to 'hopefully didn't know'.

It made Cam want to curl up in shamed misery, imagining if he did know. And that had nothing to do with Cam liking guys—he wasn't ashamed of that, and Dubi would probably have been the second person on the team he told after Matty, if this hadn't all gone horribly wrong for him. It had everything to do with hating the idea of anyone knowing just how badly he'd screwed this up. Cam didn't have a whole lot of chances for anything like this, and he didn't want to think about ruining one of the most important friendships he had just because he wanted to stick his tongue down Matty's throat. Let alone more exciting places.

Dubi looked like he was going to say something else, but seemed to change his mind, instead just patting Cam's knee and saying, "Trust me," before picking up his phone to go back to his solitaire game or whatever else he had going on there.

Cam hoped like hell he was right about that.

The Avs game went pretty well, in the end, although it was maybe closer than any of them would've liked. No one liked giving up a two goal lead, that was for damn sure, but Boone picked up his rebound in the third and somehow jammed it past Varlamov, and that was enough, in the end.

With just a day between that and their next game, no one was going to go out and get fucked up after the game, especially not when it felt like they were on thin ice with Torts after that second period, that was for sure. But they did wind up with half the team drifting into the hotel bar after they got back, and Cam made sure he bought Boone a drink at least, even though Boone protested and claimed he should be getting Cam one, for getting the monkey off his back.

That was all in good fun, and Cam felt himself cheering up, too; the good moods of everyone else rubbing off on him, picking up the vibe of the room and letting it carry him some. He'd always been prone to that, and with the full moon coming up soon too, well. He was more open than usual, letting the confidence and camaraderie buoy him back towards his room.

And there was a thought that made him stop dead in the hotel corridor, the keycard blinking green and then yellow as he froze up and failed to pull it out again as fast as the mechanism wanted.

Full moon.

There was no way Matty was gonna be able to avoid him, then.

Cam just wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

They finished up the mini road trip in just about the same fashion they'd started it; scraping out a win with guts and nerve by the skin of their teeth. It wasn't the prettiest win they'd had, that was for sure, but putting together three in a row—and then four, and then five, as they turned around and stepped decisively on the Yotes and Wings—well, that was satisfying.

It was enough to keep Cam's mind mostly focused on the game, enough to keep him distracted away from trying to watch Matty in his peripheral vision and wishing he'd picked any other time to do something as stupid as kissing him.

It was almost easier, with Matt back in the lineup; he was busy with his linemates, almost never on the ice with Cam, the two of them separated on the bench by a couple of bodies pretty much all the time. Cam had tried not to make eye contact, skating by the bench after Sammy scored, and after he'd scored and Boone scored, because the one time he had met Matt's eyes he'd promptly nearly tripped over his own feet. And there were only so many times you wanted to totally eat it on the ice considering that it'd inevitably get turned into a gif and retweeted by half of the internet. Cam was only interested in doing that if he'd done something that was really funny, thanks.

The flight to Edmonton felt like it took forever, time dragging out and weighing on them all. Some of the guys got card games under way up the front, and Hartsy and Savvy were both buried in whatever books they were reading, but Cam was impatient, feeling the itch under his skin that came from getting closer and closer to the full moon. It was something like being turned to stone and at the same time shaking out of your skin, and he'd never been able to just ignore it when that feeling set in.

He wasn't the only one—Sedsy was uncharacteristically cranky, which Cam thought might actually be a first, he didn't think any of them had seen him without a smile before then—but he was the only one that both Jenns and Jonesy threatened to sit on if he didn't stop fidgeting and kicking the back of their seats.

Cam was willing to call Jonesy's bluff on that one, because Seth was a nice dude and also way more talk than action, but there was a glint in Boone's eye that suggested Cam shouldn't push his luck.

"I'm gonna go talk to Saader," he said hurriedly, and got up to do just that.

Saader at least let him ramble for a good five minutes before even trying to reply with anything more than a nod and the occasional mumbled "Yeah," which at that point made him one of Cam's favorite people. He appreciated it, at least, finally managed to get himself to stop jiggling his knee compulsively. And only a little bit because Saader had laid a hand over his knee and hummed soothingly at him while continuing to listen to him complain about how there were no good movies out to watch on his iPad. Saader was a good dude, Cam thought, and finally relaxed enough to actually nap instead of just focusing on how bored he was.

That vague calmness that had overlaid Cam's nerves actually stuck around through deplaning, finding their way to the hotel and getting up the next morning. He could still feel the lingering effects through the game itself, which made it easier to breathe through the Oilers scoring first. The twitchiness started coming back in the second period, but then they tied it up, and then Cam scored; eleven on the year and it was only December, holy shit. That buzz wasn't anything like the pre-full moon one, that was all human and entirely intoxicating all the same, and when Matty scored as well to ice it, Cam forgot entirely that they were sort of avoiding each other and tackled him halfway down the corridor back to the locker room.

Matty seemed to have forgotten as well, if the way he beamed back at Cam before mussing his hair—and knocking his helmet off—was any indication.

Cam hummed quietly under his breath and then made his way to his stall, flipped through his phone for their current victory jam and then bumped up the volume. That was seven in a row, in sniffing distance of the franchise record, not that any of them were going to actually mention that out loud. Not until and unless it happened; even the least superstitious guys in the team weren't going to consider jinxing things like that.

It let Cam hope that maybe they could just… move past it without ever talking about it, so he held his breath before pausing beside Matty on the bus as they filed out of Roger's Place, headed straight to the airport.

Matty didn't say anything, but he did shoot Cam a fleeting grin, so Cam took that as permission and finally, finally relaxed, dropping into the seat beside him and rejoicing in the fact that they were back to normal.

It was only after they'd all congregated in the specially designed foyer of their Banff hotel the next evening that Cam realized that he might've actually been speaking too soon, so to speak. All the wolves on the team—a much higher percentage of them these days than when Cam had been starting out; Jarmo clearly had no qualms about signing guys who went wolfy a day or two every month—had gotten dinner together in the hotel restaurant and then filed downstairs to change out of their clothes and drop down onto four paws, all rustling coats and swishing tails.

Cam had barely hit his wolf form before he was bowled over by Andy, bounding past on his way to tackle Z or Sedsy or maybe both, and he huffed out a laugh, feeling just a little old for once. That knocked him straight into Matty though, and despite the fact it was actively difficult to feel stressed in wolf shape—that was one of Cam's favorite things about it, actually—he tensed up for a moment, knew that the stress was showing up in his scent and his body language.

Apparently his hind brain wasn't quite ready to believe that he and Matty were okay again.

Matt just licked his face enthusiastically, as affectionate as he had ever been, and wagged his tail, knocking his shoulder into Cam like he was herding him towards the door and the outside.

Cam took the hint and trotted out, waiting impatiently for the rest of the team to join them all, trying not to wriggle out of his skin at all the new scents and sounds that flooded in to suddenly sharper senses, underscored by the crystalline cold that pricked at his nose and paws and reminded him to keep moving.

It wasn't dangerously cold out, not for them, but it was deep enough into winter already up in the Rockies that Cam knew they'd all want to get moving, that they'd run as long as they could until moonset, before heading back to the hotel and a well-earned rest.

He kept close to Matty as Fligs led them off through a meadow and into some of the woodland behind the hotel, was aware the entire time of his presence both as the shape in the corner of his eye and the warmth that marked him as Matty, as pack and closer-than-pack to his nose and his wolf brain.

It was a good run; a deer and some ground squirrels giving them a good chase, although it was more an excuse to run than any serious kind of hunt, not in a national park. Cam was feeling more settled in his own skin than he'd felt in weeks by the time they all spilled back through the reinforced doorway and into the hotel, letting paws turn into hands and feet as he lazily pulled back on the bare minimum of clothing to get from the cloak room up to his actual hotel room.

"Hey, can I come up for a bit?" Matty asked him, shrugging his jacket back over his shoulders, stuffing the tie he'd worn to dinner into the pocket without a qualm.

"Yeah," Cam said automatically, with the force of long habit and deep affection. He ignored the look that Boone was definitely giving him—what did Boone know, honestly—and grinned at Matt, knowing full well that his teeth were still a little elongated, the last part of him to go back to regular human shape after they'd changed.

By the time the elevator made it down to the ground floor, most of the team were dressed and ready to head to bed, or finish off their full moon rituals, whatever they were. As a consequence, the first elevator full of them was very definitely full, eight fully grown and well built men jammed into a space that would comfortably have held, well, four or maybe five of them. Cam had wound up at the back, his hip pressed into the completely useless guard rail along the side, and Matty's back pressed right up against his front, so that Cam was basically breathing on the back of his neck. It wouldn't normally have been a big deal in the slightest; doing dumb shit with hotel elevators was practically as key a part of hockey as pranks and icings, or at least certainly a common feature from college athletics and, given stories Cam had heard over the years, junior hockey as well.

But right then, all he could think was how good Matty smelled, with Cam's nose so acutely sensitive this soon after changing; the way his hair looked so soft and made Cam want to bury his face in the side of his neck, made him want to push closer and demand it. It was supremely unfair, especially since he wasn't sure if Matty's senses were going to give away whatever useless pheromone reaction Cam was having to him right then. Cam was always hypersensitive for a day or two after the moon, but that wasn't necessarily universal.

He wanted to wish that he could ditch Matty even after Boone and Saader got off on one floor, and Fligs and Bob on the next one, just leaving a few of them in there, now with significantly more breathing room. But he had to be honest enough with himself to admit that he wanted Matty in his room anyway, to hang out and talk to even if he couldn't ever have anything else.

And despite the fact there was a ton of room now, Matty hadn't exactly moved away from Cam yet.

He felt his heartbeat kick up a little, and tried not to jump to any conclusions.

Cam's room was only two doors down from the elevator when they finally got up to the seventh floor; far enough from the ice machine that he probably wouldn't get woken up by anyone using it, and also far enough from the fire escape down the end that he'd crowed "not a murder room!" at Jack when they'd gotten their keycards after checking in. Not that any of them watched too much CSI and Criminal Minds and basically every other crime procedural on TV, or anything.

Matty followed him in quietly, still sticking a little too close to him, the opposite of the way he'd been around Cam for most of the past couple of weeks, and even though he knew he might not like the answer, Cam had to ask.

"We're okay, right?" he asked, turning to face Matty.

It was dark in the room, just the one standing lamp over by the window lit, and the shades were drawn to block out any other lights that might've been outside, leaving Matt almost backlit, his eyes eerily pale and huge this soon after switching back to human form.

"Yeah," Matty said, and then he took a deeper breath—anticipation he couldn't quite explain prickled along Cam's nerves—and corrected himself. "No, we're not. But we could be?"

Cam bit his lip, felt a sharper flash of pain for a second before forcing himself to calm down, and to focus on getting his human teeth back before he bit his tongue for real. "Could be?" he repeated, waiting for Matt to take the lead. Cam didn't want to be misreading this situation, and that meant he had to let Matty say his piece first. They'd always been good at tag-teaming, at switching off who was following and who was setting the pace, whether it was breaking into the offensive zone or into a teammate's hotel room.

"Last month," Matty said, "when I took that puck to the head?"

"Yeah," Cam said cautiously, still not quite able to make himself sit down, or move any further away from Matty.

"You took me home," Matty said, like he was only 80% sure about that. Cam hid a wince.

"Yeah," he said.

"So it wasn't just wishful thinking that you kissed me, right?" Matty asked, and Cam's eyes widened as he just—went for it, no euphemisms or further delays at all.

So apparently they were going to talk about it after all. Cam could deal with that, even if he'd also wish someone else could've given him a manual for dealing with this.

"Nooo," Cam said slowly. "I mean, yeah, I did, just—wait, wishful thinking?"

"Uh," Matty said, looking squirrelly for a second, and then he seemed to catch up to what Cam had said. "I mean, yeah."

Cam stared at him, feeling affection flood through him, all the history they had together and the possibilities of how they could make that even better, of how great it could be if he just reached out and took what Matty seemed to be offering. "Wow," Cam said after a moment, lips twitching. "So you weren't avoiding me because I'm a terrible kisser, huh?"

"I was sort of worried I'd imagined it," Matty admitted. "Or said something stupid that made you avoid me."

"Shit, Dubi was right," Cam said, not that he was ever going to tell Dubi that. "I should've talked to you sooner." He paused. "We're idiots."

"Yep," Matty agreed, grinning like his face was going to break. Cam was pretty sure he was doing the same.

"Wanna stop being idiots?" Cam asked, fairly sure he knew what the answer was going to be.

Matty taking one step forward and then kissing him was as good as a yes, he figured, and wrapped his arms around him and made sure that this kiss was definitely the one that counted.

[]

First and foremost, Cam couldn't quite avoid the surge of worry about Matty being down there with the rest of them with all the bright lights and the noise. His head was doing better, at least so far as the docs could figure, so it wasn't terrible, but—

Cam worried.

Which was probably his job as the boyfriend, no matter how much Matty tried to reassure him that everything was fine.

And that was the worst part of all of it, because Matty could tell Cam that he was feeling better ten times an hour, and Cam would still be reeling a little because the fact he couldn't tell that for himself made him feel half-blind, made him feel like half of his senses were misfiring, and not just the connection he had with Matty.

They'd been bonded pretty much from the moment they'd met, and it had been a little confusing at first, sure, having someone else in his head sometimes, but they'd clicked, and Cam hadn't realized just how accustomed he was to having that sense of Matt's emotions, to picking up the thoughts he wanted to share without any effort on his part.

It turned out that getting used to your bond-partner not being in your head was actually somehow even more disorienting than getting used to it in the first place.

He was trying not to panic about it too much, and most of the time it wasn't at the forefront of his mind. He hadn't had any trouble focusing during the game, that was for sure. But every time there was a quiet moment, where Cam would usually reach out to Matty for reassurance, for connection, or even just to make a dumb joke or silently plan a way to try and prank Boone—

Well, there was nothing there, not even static, and it made Cam want to run and scream.

And the fact he had to wait till he could see Matty come into the room instead of just knowing where he was—not well enough to cheat on passing, unfortunately, but they were usually pretty good within fifteen feet or so—well, it wasn't exaggerating to say that Cam was not dealing with that well at all.

Matty hadn't hung around in the locker room for too long. Cam couldn't blame him; see all his previous comments about how loud it was in there, especially after a win, but he definitely felt himself relax a little by the time he got back to his car in the player's lot, found Matty leaning against the passenger side door, eyes half-closed, lost in thought.

"Hey," Cam said softly, and Matty mustn't have heard him coming because he startled a little, and then tried to hide it.

Cam fought the urge to just crawl under the car and die, pushing the misery down so that he didn't make Matty worry about him, too. He had enough on his mind. At least, so Cam was guessing. Fuck, he hated this.

"Good game," Matty said after a moment. At least he wasn't squinting now, which Cam had learned was generally a sign that his head was feeling a little better.

"Miss you out there," Cam said, before he could quite think the better of it.

He winced, and looked back over at Matty again, ready to apologize for hitting a sore spot.

Matty didn't give him the same look he had last time Cam slipped up and said something like that, which was an improvement, but—yeah, this wasn't getting them anywhere. And it was kind of harshing Cam's 5-1 win buzz.

"We should head home, yeah?" Cam said, hitting the button to unlock the car, and waiting for Matty to get in before sliding into the driver's seat. They'd taken his car since Matty was also not technically meant to be driving, and he'd promised that if he felt worse he'd have someone call him a car, so it wasn't like he'd been trapped there waiting for Cam to cool down and finish changing and all that, but it'd still made Cam hurry.

"Nice assist in the third, anyway," Matty said absently as they drove out of the garage, and Cam's stomach somehow managed to sink and implode in on itself simultaneously. That was—okay, maybe Matty just hadn't been looking properly, had seen Sam's number and thought it was a 1 and not an 8. That could happen to anyone, it didn't mean his concussion was making him hallucinate.

"Uh," Cam said, after the silence had stretched out a beat too long. "I uh. No points for me tonight, bud. That one was all Sammy."

Cam didn't take his eyes off the road, but he could see in his peripheral vision when Matty turned to frown at him, the half-healed scar twisting as his brows drew together.

"No," Matty said stubbornly. "I know the difference between you and Gags—", and this had to be serious, because Cam was pretty sure normally there'd be some kind of short joke there, even though Gags wasn't exactly all that tall himself, "—and that was you. I was gonna say, Boone has to be relieved to finally get one, yeah?"

Cam strongly considered turning around right then and there, and dragging Matty back to the team docs.

"Matty," he said slowly, "Boone hasn't scored in ages. I didn't get a point. If you don't believe me, uh—" he stumbles, because he can't exactly tell Matty to check the NHL app right now, since he's not meant to be looking at his phone, either. "I'm not messing with you, I swear."

"…oh," Matty said, after a moment. Cam could feel the weight of his gaze, the measuring quality to it. "You're not fucking with me. That's—fuck, that's so weird. I could swear I saw you, maybe I zoned out for a bit."

Cam's pretty sure not even the most tired person in the world could sleep through the Nationwide crowd when they get going, and they were that night—and especially not the cannon, so it's probably not the world's most boring and semi-flattering dream. And if Cam's boyfriend is going to dream about him playing hockey he should at least be scoring the goals, thanks, but that's still a thousand times less terrifying than any other explanation Cam can come up with. Maybe there was an old highlight on the video board or something.

Matty's gone quiet again, fingers picking at the knee of his suit pants, the rough skin of his fingertips rasping over the wool, and Cam keeps driving on autopilot, checking his mirrors, using his turn signals, doing everything he got taught in high school about safe driving. Like that was going to be enough to fix whatever was messing with their bond, whatever was wrong in Matty's head.

"I guess," Cam said, and then they were both silent the rest of the drive home.

Neither of them talked much as they went through all their usual end-of-day routines, and Cam stayed out in the kitchen a little later than he usually would, messing around on his phone and telling himself he was keeping the backlit screen away from Matty and not kind of avoiding him.

By the time he made his way into their bedroom, the lights were all out—not that Cam needed them, he could find his way to the bed just fine and they were both neat enough that he didn't have to worry about tripping on anything—and Matty was stretched out on his side of the bed, to all observation fast asleep.

Cam breathed out soundlessly, and told himself to relax already. Matty would get some more sleep and he'd keep getting better and they could go back to normal.

Better than normal, even, since the team was playing well and that was fun as hell, and he wanted to be able to enjoy it properly.

"Stop thinking and come to bed already," Matty said softly, and Cam felt himself blush, even though he knew that all Matty could see was his outline in the doorway.

"Yeah yeah," Cam said, reaching for his usual easy, teasing kind of answer. It felt like more of a stretch than usual.

He shed his suit carefully, hung up the jacket after trying not to make too much of a clatter finding an empty hanger in the wardrobe, and crawled into bed.

He didn't let himself stop to second-guess things too much before he rolled closer to Matty, seeking out his warmth, the familiarity of a body he knew almost as well as his own.

Matty reached out too, and unerringly managed to link his hand with Cam's. So they hadn't entirely lost all of their connection, that way.

"It's gonna be fine, Cam," he said softly, and Cam swallowed around the lump in his throat and let himself press his face to Matty's shoulder, hugging him carefully, hiding his face.

"I know," he told Matty's biceps, voice muffled against skin, and Matty pulled the covers up a little higher, so that it wasn't slipping half down Cam's back anymore.

"Let's just go to sleep," Matty said. "You don't have to move, though, I'm sure it'll be fine if I turn up to the docs tomorrow with a dent in my shoulder where your chin was."

"Fuck off," Cam mumbled, but he also barked out an instinctive laugh, and he couldn't deny he felt a little better about life for that, too.

"Love you, night," he added after a moment, and Matty rolled onto his side long enough to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth before replying, "You too, babe. Night."

Cam thought he might wind up awake for a while, dwelling on things, but it felt like he dropped off to sleep almost immediately, and if he dreamed, he didn't remember it the next morning.

Matty seemed closer to normal again the next morning, although there was still a distressing hollow in the part of Cam's mind where he usually 'felt' their connection.

He was up before Cam, and when Cam came out to the kitchen, half awake and in search of his breakfast—and hopefully some form of caffeine to help him wake up more—Matt blinked and gave him an obvious double take.

"Weren't you—? I could've sworn you were meant to be in Colorado," Matty said. "But it's not Thursday yet, is it?"

"No," Cam said slowly. "We're flying out tonight, it's— It's still Wednesday. Matty, you were kind of off yesterday too, I think we should go talk to the docs again, yeah?"

Matty made a face at him, one that perfectly illustrated his reluctance to do so and his feelings about the fact he knew full well he needed to.

"Ugh," Matty said, and then, "let's eat first, at least? I do—it's not all the time, I think I'm mostly fine now, really."

There was still a fine line creased between his brows, though, and the tightness around the corners of his eyes that made him look almost his actual age instead of inexplicably younger was still there, had been for weeks. It made Cam want to press his fingertips to it, to wipe it away, massage it out. He knew that wouldn't help, not really, but it didn't really quell the urge.

The docs ran Matty through the whole barrage of tests all over again, and they'd been clearly concerned when he admitted he'd lost track of time a bit recently, that he'd gotten confused during the game the night before, although he did doggedly argue that he remembered Sam's goal and the actual final score.

Cam wasn't surprised, and he didn't think Matty was either when they said that they couldn't see any major changes, but that he shouldn't even try the press box for the next couple of games.

"Give yourself a chance to heal up some more," Dr J said bracingly, and she patted him on the shoulder. "And we'll get you in to run a few more tests later this week, okay?"

"Sure," Matty said evenly, not even arguing this time.

There wasn't much of anything else they could do at that point, and Cam didn't have to be anywhere until they were flying out later in the day to Denver anyway, so without much further discussion they just went back home again.

"I'm gonna lay down for a bit," Matty said, not looking directly at Cam, and Cam felt his chest tighten again, felt the ache swell up. He didn't even want to imagine how much worse it had to feel for Matty, and it made him wish futilely that he could actually help, that he could at least share it. It hadn't been any fun at all when Matty had sprained his thumb a few years back, but at least they'd just made a lot of tasteless jokes about jerking off and Cam had mostly been able to ignore the ghost of the ache when he was stick-handling.

"I'm—uh, is it okay if I do too?" Cam asked. They didn't usually need to ask each other this kind of stuff, and that seemed to make it feel even more strange, putting words to the moments where they'd always been able to just go on instinct before. But Cam was about to be on the road for four days, and there was no way they'd let Matty come after that appointment, so—he was going to make sure they had some time together, first.

Matty looked up, gave him a tired grin, and Cam noted with guarded relief that he looked a little less strained, now.

"Yeah, we can nap. When do you have to leave again?" he asked.

"I've got a couple hours," Cam hedged, and set an alarm on his phone, because it was maybe closer to barely two, and he technically still had to pack. But he could do that without waking Matty up, probably, and it wasn't like packing wasn't something he couldn't practically do with his eyes closed these days. It was more a reflex than anything else after six seasons in the NHL.

The curtains in their room were still pulled closed; Cam had stopped opening them in the morning when they realized how light-sensitive Matty was, although that, at least, was getting better. Cam found his way to the bed in the low light easily enough, stripped down enough that he'd be comfortable napping—Matty was practically a human furnace, and Cam was never cold when they were sharing.

He could hear Matty's breathing, slow and even, and that was comforting, even though Cam was pretty sure he wasn't asleep yet, either. He didn't need to be able to feel Matty's thoughts to know that; that was just the sheer personal knowledge, of being so comfortable and so familiar with each other by then that Cam could read his mood in the arch of his eyebrow, could tell a thousand words from the shape of his mouth, the speed of his breathing, the slow rise and fall of his shoulders.

"Go to sleep, Cam," Matty said eventually, and he rolled over to rub his palm lightly over Cam's hip, sliding up until it was resting on his sternum, hovering over his heart. "I'll be fine. Sleep, and I'll pretend not to notice when you steal my shoes this afternoon.

Cam tensed up fractionally—torn, because on the one hand he hadn't actually planned to keep up their ongoing prank war while Matty was hurt, feeling vaguely that it wouldn't be fair, but then Matty had said it was okay—and Cam was honest enough to admit that that was almost worse; there was no fun in having permission for this kind of thing. Then again, they really were great shoes, and it wasn't Cam's fault that Matty had somehow found the last pair in the store in their size.

Anyway, they'd been together for almost five years now, that was basically the "what's yours is mine" point, or at least, that was going to be Cam's argument the next time he got caught.

[]

Matt woke up just long enough to kiss Cam goodbye, and he dozed through the familiar sound of claws skittering on wooden floors as he said goodbye to Easton and Soph as well, heard the dull thud of his bags thumping against the back of his leg and then against the side of the door frame before he closed it behind him. Cam never remembered to swing his bag out so it wouldn't smack the side of the door; sometimes Matt thought he did it just for the way it always got a rise out of him, but he was pretty sure it was just one of those habits that was all Cam. For a guy who always played bigger than he was, walked like he was six feet tall with balls to match, well. It was kind of funny sometimes to see how he was just a little awkward when he was off skates. Mostly Matt found it endearing, though.

What was slightly less endearing was the fact that he noticed almost as soon as he dragged himself out of bed again, opening the fridge door to peer at his options and squinting against the light, that there was a very noticeable gap on their shoe rack. Matt's favorite boots—which were, not incidentally, also Cam's favorites, and which he sometimes darkly suspected he might need to specify the inheritance of in his will—were gone.

Well, Matt thought ruefully, he had pretty much dared Cam to take them. He'd told him it would be fine, even, so what had he expected to happen?

He wasn't really upset, anyway; it was just going to be fun to keep pretending to bicker over them, another one of the little habits that they'd fallen into while they built their life together.

And Matt would've done almost anything to get that sick, worried look off Cam's face. He'd looked pinched, when they got home, after Matt got yet another round of "nope not yet" from the docs, and Matt had felt guilt flush through him, even though it wasn't like he'd gotten hurt on purpose, of course, but he was out of the line up, and Cam was out of his head, and he couldn't feel Cam right now either and it just—

It just sucked.

There wasn't much point in staying in bed any longer than that, he was definitely wide awake by then, and mostly feeling better enough that shifting to the living room and lying down on the couch instead was a pleasant change of scenery. At least it meant he could give the dogs some attention. They still got walked regularly because he and Cam had a service to do that when they were out of town, and they'd just upped their schedule when Matt couldn't handle the noise or the walk to the dog park, and Cam didn't want to leave him unless he had to—which was sweet, if unhelpful.

Despite the fact he knew damn well he shouldn't, Matt dug his phone out of the pile of cords and remotes and other crap on the coffee table, and plugged it in just to check if Cam had messaged him. There was a quick message, as he'd expected, and pretty much all it said was "we're safe in Denver, why is the airport so fucking far out of town?" which Cam had bitched about every time they'd ever flown into Colorado, and then, "stop looking at your phone!!!" with multiple exclamation points so that Matt would know he was serious.

They really did know each other well, Matt thought with a rueful grin, and he dropped the phone back onto the table and put his feet up beside it. He wasn't exactly going to watch TV, but he could listen to something and doze some more, probably. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

[]

Matt had woken up the next morning feeling a little better again, and with his heart racing like he'd just run two miles, which at first had seemed weird and like something he should possibly be worrying about, before he realized that what he'd actually felt, half-awake and surfacing from dreams, was Cam.

The sensation was mostly gone again by the time he identified it, but he knew he hadn't been imagining it; he'd almost got Cam back, tucked into the corner of his brain where Matt was used to him, getting emotions and sensation and occasionally just about full sentences from him. It was so close to normal without being a proper taste of it that Matt wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry or throw something. Instead, he made himself lie down still and quiet until his heart stopped racing, and he thought, "Cam, Cam, Cam" over and over in what he hoped was a westward sort of direction just on the off chance that at least one side of their connection had settled back into place again.

They'd go their own separate ways in summer sometimes, to see family or friends or both, because there weren't enough days in the year to do everything they were committed to together, as nice as that would've been, but from the point where they'd realized what they were going to be to each other, well. Matt had never been particularly happy to have Cam go far from him.

Two day road trips definitely fell into that category, however necessary.

And after lying there for another fifteen minutes or so marinating in self-pity, Matt told himself to get the fuck over it and get up to make breakfast already.

Easton and Soph whining at the bedroom door probably helped there, too.

Matt took the dogs out for a while in the afternoon, and then spent some time doing the exercises their physio guys had told him he could do—should do—before going back to milling around the apartment not entirely sure what to do with himself. There was no doubt he felt a lot better, and so he caught up on a couple of the little things that always seemed to fall by the wayside in the middle of the season, running some of the more basic errands and making a couple of phone calls since he was, for once, home in the middle of the day and could actually kill some time on hold if he needed to.

"living the glamorous lifestyle here" he messaged to Cam, and stuck a picture with it, of his socked feet up on the coffee table and the pile of Constellation bills that he'd dug out to figure out what their account number was anyway. There was a reason they'd switched everything to direct debit as soon as they could. Matt loved direct debit, it meant that usually he didn't have to do any of this shit.

"hott" Cam sent back, with two ts, even, so he was not only awake from his pregame nap already, but making terrible decisions while he was unsupervised, apparently.

"Really using that college education" Matt sent back, and he wasn't terribly surprised to just receive a cheerful middle finger emoji in response. It was comfortingly familiar, anyway. And the echo of fond-amused-teasing that he got from the part of his mind that Cam usually occupied was even better, almost.

He checked the time again and figured he had more than enough time to get dinner before the game would start in Colorado; he definitely didn't miss all the central and mountain time starts now they were in the East, that was for sure.

What with one thing and another, it got close to puck drop before Matt actually got around to stretching out on the couch again, but it was with the satisfaction of having gotten more done than he'd quite expected, and without triggering another headache, too. All things considered he was pretty happy with the way his day had gone.

The guys seemed to be on his level as well, racing ahead to an early lead as Saader and Fligs both put the puck in, and Matt grinned, scratching Easton's head as he flopped down in front of the couch. The dogs had him and Cam both well trained, Matt thought ruefully, and snuck them both a treat as Fliggy finished off a real pretty 3-on-1.

The second period was less satisfying, and Matt felt the frustration rise again, watching his team falter just a little, wished he was out there with them. It was never fun to watch the guys play without you, however it was going, but it hurt more when they gave up chances, when a puck trickled past the goalie and made you think that maybe you could've gotten a stick on it, if you were there.

That frustration didn't lift much as the Jackets pushed back after the Avs tied it, but Matt felt an entirely different emotion start to fill him as the third period started. He felt—nervous, in a way he hadn't since his first year in the show, and underneath that was a growing certainty that they had this game too, that somehow they were gonna get the lead back.

It should have been comforting—winning was great, it was what they needed to do—but it was unsettling more than anything else, and Matt felt cold dread pool in his stomach as he saw Dubi break into the Avs zone, saw the Avs defenders pick the puck off before Dubi stole it right back, digging it out of the corner and sending it to Cam. And he watched, feeling dizzy in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with a concussion, as Cam sent a wild pass right onto Boone's tape, and watched with a growing sense of inevitability as the puck went past Varlamov and the goal light went off, as Nuti and Cam and Murrs piled in on Boone to hug him. He'd seen the goal coming the second that Dubi got over the blue line, but it wasn't from any inherent sense of how the game was going, nothing like that.

It was because he'd seen it before.

He'd seen that exact same thing play out the other night, leaning over the rail of the press box to watch his team play without him.

It was probably for the best, Matt thought, still stunned, and completely unaware of whatever else was still happening on the TV, that he hadn't actually realized until then that the assist he'd automatically praised Cam for had been in a white jersey and not their home blues. That should have been the first thing he'd noticed, but he'd been tired, and his head hurt, and it had been such a crazy pass—but of course Cam would be the one to make that work.

So at least now he knew what he'd seen, but that didn't in any way help answer what was probably a much more important question: how?

Because as far as Matt knew, shit like that just… didn't happen. And it really didn't happen to him.

Matt wasn't sure how to even bring it up with Cam later. What was he going to say, 'hey, I hit my head the other week and now I can see the future?'

That sounded insane, and Cam would think he was even more concussed than he actually was, and probably tell the docs as well. Which, okay, whatever, Matt could live with that, it would just be proof he cared enough to not hide a potentially dangerous situation, but more than anything else—he didn't want to worry Cam. And he could already see Cam worrying about him, and it made him feel, well, small. No pun intended.

He let himself lean forward, elbows resting on his knees and head in his hands while he tried to think his way through it, thumbs rubbing at his temples for whatever benefit that might give him.

He didn't feel sick anymore, not quite. His head didn't hurt, and right then he wasn't seeing anything he shouldn't be; no ghosts, no fuzzy outlines around things, and nothing that looked brighter than it should, either, which in his experience had been more of a sign. When things started looking like he was in a really high def video game, then he was either high on pain meds or more fucked up than he wanted to contemplate.

So maybe it had just been a one-off. A weird moment, like maybe a play that Dubi and Cam and Boone had been working on in practice, something his subconscious mind remembered and saw the beginnings of in the game the other night. It could just be a coincidence.

Matt wasn't sure he was even convincing himself, there. But it wasn't as if there was anything else he could do.

In the end, he didn't need to tell Cam, because Cam was the one who brought it up.

Matt should've seen that coming probably; he knew Cam's mind was the proverbial steel trap for things like that, his memory for all things hockey was extensive even by their standards. So of course Cam remembered what Matt had said, thoughtless and hurting and miserable after their home game, and of course he fucking recognized it when it happened.

The team still had another couple days on the road when Cam called him, the day after the game in Denver. They wouldn't be back until Sunday, just the travel day between their back-to-back with the Yotes, and Matt had somehow just not expected it to even come up till Cam was home again, if then. But it did; his phone rang around breakfast time the next day, and he picked up, ready to tell Cam that he was fine, he was resting, and they were out of milk, so did he want Matt to order anything else if he was getting groceries delivered anyway?

The words died unsaid on his tongue as Cam, dogged as ever, barely even got more than a greeting out before saying, "Matty, what the fuck?"

"Excuse me?" Matt said, honestly perplexed for a moment.

It was early enough that he wouldn't have been firing on all cylinders even if he wasn't recovering from a head wound.

"Boone's goal," Cam said, with emphasis.

"That was a pretty sick move—" Matt started trying to say, but Cam rode roughshod right over him.

"—that was the play you mentioned, wasn't it?" Cam asked. It was apparently a rhetorical question, because he kept going. "The other night, against the Bolts—you were so psyched on my pass, but I didn't—what the fuck, Matty, did you and Dubi draw this up or something?"

That answered one of Matt's questions, but it also opened up a couple more.

"I—no," Matt admitted. There wasn't much point in lying about it, and maybe Cam would know something, would have something else to suggest to make him feel better about all of this. "I didn't realize then, Cam, but—I swear, I saw it on the video board, just like this. Except I didn't realize you were all in away colors, and I didn't even look at the goalie, I just saw the puck hit the net and thought 'fuck yeah'."

"You—what, you like had a vision?" Cam asked. His voice was lower than usual, like he didn't like what he was suggesting any more than Matt wanted to hear it. "That's—that doesn't happen, Matty, that's, like. Midnight advertisements for fucking Miss Cleo shit."

"I don't know what to tell you," Matt said. "I just—it was like watching a replay, last night. Every step looked like I'd seen it before, so I just figured it was something you guys were working on in practice."

Cam barked out a laugh. "I don't even know how Boone got it on his tape," he admitted. "That's definitely not a play we've tried before."

"Right," Matt said, after the silence stretched out for a few beats too long. He wasn't sure what else to say.

Cam made a thoughtful noise. "I mean, now that it worked we might try it on purpose," he said thoughtfully, and Matt laughed, like Cam had clearly meant him to, and agreed that it was probably worth a shot.

They let the topic drop there, just went on to talking about what they'd been up to—'not a fucking lot,' Matt said bitterly—and what kinds of ridiculous post-game shit had gone on, since Cam clearly felt like he needed to feel like he wasn't missing out on whatever was going on in the room when he wasn't there.

"Bill and Wenny vanished for, like, twenty minutes," Cam added, on the tail end of something about the ongoing poker match up the front of the plane. "I did not want to ask questions."

"Oh please," Matt said, finally feeling like he was on steadier ground with that comment. "Like either of them could keep a straight face if they were fooling around on the plane. They were probably just being all, you know, Swedish."

"Mmm," Cam said dubiously, but Matt felt pretty confident in that prediction. Just because him and Cam might have—just a little! Hardly anything that really counted!—fooled around on the plane in the past didn't mean everyone who had the opportunity would. Cam was surprisingly shameless for a dude from Connecticut, and Matt was easy-going enough to roll with it more often than not, so, yeah, there might've been the odd handy over the years. Under the light throws the charter provided them with, of course. He was pretty sure no one had ever noticed, at least.

"Anyway, I guess you've got to get to lunch or something, right?" Matt asked. He didn't normally have trouble finding things to talk to Cam about, but this situation didn't seem to fall under the 'normal' umbrella anyway.

"Tryin' to get rid of me?" Cam asked, but with enough of a laugh in his voice that Matt didn't worry about it. "Nah, but I've got some stuff I should do before then." He paused, and then when he spoke again, his voice was serious, the way that he rarely needed to be, but in the way that always made Matt—and anyone else in earshot—sit up and listen. "Get some rest, yeah?" he said. "Don't push it, and we can swing by the docs again once we're back home. See you in two days, okay?"

"You bet," Matt said, and he and Cam said their goodbyes, hung up the phone.

He had every intention of resting as much as possible, and while he didn't love the idea of having to go and get his head examined yet a-fucking-gain, he could at least understand why Cam though it was a good idea. At least he wasn't calling Janelle or someone else who was still in Columbus to drag him to Urgent Care or anything like that.

And besides all that, if Matt just kept quiet and kept getting better, well, there probably wouldn't be any reason to go see the docs.

He fixed himself lunch, took the dogs out on a short walk—the weather was a little warmer at least—and then kicked his jeans off into a corner of the bedroom and crawled back into bed in just his shirt and shorts. It was probably a good idea to keep his regular schedule, and that meant an afternoon nap about the same time that the guys would be trying to fit them in in Colorado or Arizona or wherever they were. He hadn't remembered to ask Cam when they were traveling, so for all he knew they could be on the plane then. He kinda figured not, though; Cam tended to send texts right before he got on the plane, out of something that he insisted wasn't superstition, and Matt only chirped him a little for.

One last check of his phone—no messages, no calls—and Matt stretched out and closed his eyes, hoping for a deep and dreamless sleep.

Deep, he got, but the other half of his wish, well. Not so much.

Matt blinked in the early dusk, and wished for a moment he'd remembered to close the curtains before going to nap. He had a moment of wondering why Cam hadn't done it, before remembering that Cam was on the road still, in Phoenix with the rest of the team while Matty was stuck at home. When he checked the time he could tell he'd been asleep for almost two hours, a little longer than usual but probably good for him. He felt fuzzier than usual all the same, though.

It was probably the extra sleep making him feel off and not actually anything wrong with his head, but he still made sure to leave the TV off until the last possible minute, planning to limit the amount of screen time he was dealing with. And he was definitely going to tell Cam he'd done that, too, because he would insist on worrying when he couldn't be there to mother-hen him properly.

Besides, it wasn't like he was going to miss anything important from the pre-game. Matt knew who was scratched for his team and he knew why, and he didn't care about the Yotes so long as the Jackets could get two points from them, so. Resting his eyes it was.

Boone got them on the board early, and Matt's yell and accompanying fist-pump got him sorrowful looks of judgment from both dogs, but he was letting them on the couch when they weren't normally allowed, so he figured they didn't exactly have a lot of room to judge him. The Yotes clawing their way out a lead after that was less enjoyable, and Smith was playing out of his skin keeping the Jackets from tying it up again.

Matt found himself holding his breath every time Sammy got the puck, expecting it to go in. He'd been tearing it up lately, so that was probably reasonable to expect, it wasn't like anything else was going on.

The guys tied it up, finally, at practically the last minute, and then managed to steal it in the shootout to boot. Matty cheered when Cam's shot went past Smith, fucking finally, and again when Gags iced it for them. Seeing the shootout goal go in should've felt more like what Matt had been picking to happen all evening, but it didn't quite feel… finished, he thought, hitting the remote to turn the TV off and stretching back out on the couch in silence again. He'd really thought Gags was gonna score in regulation but hey, maybe next game.

And maybe next game Matt would get back in the lineup. He'd been headache free for a couple of days, that had to count for something.

Cam got home late, the flight long enough that Matt must have been deeply asleep by the time he stumbled in and dumped his bag at the end of the bed, not bothering to do more than just peel off every item of clothing he was wearing before crawling under the covers and snuggling up to him.

Matt woke up just long enough to grumble about how cold his feet were—it was like being dumped in the ice bath without even a second to brace for it, fuck—but he also just slung his arm over Cam and tugged him closer, letting him press his equally cold nose against Matt's shoulder.

"Wear a hat next time," he mumbled, closing his eyes and shifting to get more comfortable on the pillow. Sure, he'd sleep better with Cam there, but resettling after being deep in a REM cycle was never fun.

"Yes mom," Cam replied, although he was probably too tired himself to pair that with the eye-roll it would normally have. When Matt didn't dignify that with a response Cam just sighed in satisfaction—Matt was letting him be the little spoon and he'd gotten the last word, two of his favorite things—and went straight to sleep himself.

If Matt dreamed anything, he didn't remember it.

They moved around each other as easily as ever the next morning in the kitchen, both of them used to doing specific parts of their morning routine, one they'd developed over the years and honed to a fine art—Cam's term—or figured was within their first-thing-in-the-morning skill set—Matt's slightly more candid description.

Either way, it worked, and by the time they sat down to eat breakfast together, Matt was feeling wide awake and significantly better than he had done for a while.

"Nice one last night," he said, after reaching past Cam for the salt. "You and Gags were on fire, eh?"

"Better late than never," Cam agreed, and that was about as ambitious as either of them got conversationally when it was still that early, so the discussion kind of died there.

They picked it up again in the car on the way back to the rink, Matt trying not to get too cocky about the fact that he'd had a couple of good days in a row, and really did feel like he was getting better.

"Hopefully it won't take as many shots to score tomorrow," he said wryly, although he was pretty sure they were going to see Domingue or whoever the backup in Arizona was these days, and not Smith, so hopefully—well.

"What, you're telling me you didn't see how this one's gonna end up?" Cam joked, and Matt would have laughed, but—a chill ran along his spine and stopped the breath in his lungs for a split-second.

"…Matty?" Cam asked, glancing quickly at him and then—before Matt could say anything—looking back at the road. "You didn't, right? Like, that was just a weird one-off we can joke about later and not—some fucked up hallucination or whatever. Right?"

"I don't think so," Matt said slowly, picking his way through what he wanted to say. "I mean, I figured Gags was gonna score all game, but he didn't till the shootout, so obviously it's not like I'm suddenly psychic or whatever, he was just feeling it out there. Anyone could see that."

"You're not wrong," Cam said, but he looked unsettled still, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel entirely off-beat to the radio.

Matt didn't say anything.

He got dragged off by the trainers again pretty much the moment they walked into the players lounge, and ran through the whole cycle of tests again for what felt like the thousandth time, and he could tell from the tone of voice and the looks being exchanged over his head that this time he was passing them.

He tried not to act too excited; they hadn't cleared him yet.

"One more game, just to be safe," they told him. "And you can skate tomorrow, no-contact. Just to see."

And maybe it wasn't entirely what he wanted to hear but it was still far better than the alternative, so Matt said thanks and tried to wrap all of that up as soon as he could. He was so close, and fuck, he couldn't wait to get back out there.

By the time all of that wrapped up the rest of the guys were pretty much done too, so he didn't have to wait all that long until Cam came back in with his hair still wet from the shower and dropped heavily onto the couch beside him, leaning into him—practically burrowing in—and asking, "How'd it go?"

Matt grinned at him, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Cam always got extra touchy after they'd been separated for a while, and he guessed that even a barely four day long road trip counted.

"Non-contact tomorrow and I'm sitting that one out too, but then we'll see," he said, sounding gleeful even to his own ears.

"Awesome," Cam said, and then he jumped to his feet again, waiting impatiently for Matt to follow. "C'mon, we should go get lunch."

"Alright" Matt said, and followed him out the door.

They had a quiet night in at home, just about the same as any other night since he'd been out of the lineup, but it felt different, now that his head wasn't pounding all the time, although that weird sense of pressure hadn't quite gone away yet. Not that he'd told the docs about that.

It didn't seem to hurt, and light—or the lack of it—didn't seem to make a difference to how it felt, either. He just didn't feel quite the same as usual. Maybe it was the scar healing or something, like that, he hadn't exactly given himself that kind of cut before so who knew. It wasn't bothering him, and he didn't even think of it most of the time, just a subtle change that he was only conscious of when he was really concentrating on it. No biggie. And Cam was back in his head almost all of the time, which was even better; it made Matt feel that much steadier, to have that presence as well as Cam tucked up against him on the couch.

They took the dogs out one last time after dinner and then curled up on the couch together again, knees and shoulders pressed together.

Cam looked at him and said, diffidently, "You wanna watch a movie? If you're up to it?"

He was juggling the remote in his free hand, but Matt had known him long enough—had been dating him long enough—to know that Cam wasn't just talking about TV.

"Or we could just go to bed early," Matt said, and let a hint of how bad he wanted to do that curl through his smile, heating up his expression. Let that insinuation spill warmly into the part of his mind that felt like Cam, and he shivered happily as the brightening feel of Cam in his mind told him that Cam was, once again, reading him perfectly.

They went to bed, but it wasn't to sleep, and Matt almost couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this close to perfect, everything starting to go right again. He'd be back in the lineup soon, they were winning, and soon Matt could actually be out there contributing instead of reminding himself he was too old and more importantly, too professional to obviously cheer from the press box. Though he'd definitely high-fived Harry and Prouter when Cam scored, but that didn't count.

This time, Matt's dreams came closely on the heels of the moment where he dropped off to sleep, fast enough that this time he knew he was dreaming as it happened, although he couldn't seem to do anything more than just watch, the images unspooling in front of his eyes like he wasn't even there, nothing more than a vague wisp of thought and observation.

They felt almost like memories more than visions; watching Cam shoot puck after puck at Mike Smith while none of them went in, although that was a familiar enough outcome that Matt would almost think it was just a run of the mill nightmare. Almost, if it wasn't for the peculiarly sour taste at the back of his mouth, the weird shimmer around the edges of his vision that somehow made it clear to him he wasn't only dreaming this. The part that did feel like a dream was the terrible b-movie sound effect going along with every shot that glanced off Smith's pads and blocker, every shot that got saved, the clown-car you-suck whoop from a carnival side show. Even in his sleep, Matt felt a shiver run down his spine.

The background shimmered and slid out of view and Matt thought, finally, now maybe he'd be able to get some sleep, but then he was watching hockey again, but his time it wasn't the Coyotes, it was the Penguins.

He blinked, and more details came into focus; the familiar shape of Nationwide around them, his teammates in their home jerseys, the Pens in away whites, and as if there was a hand under his chin, fingers tilting his jaw up, Matt looked away from the action on the ice—Jonesy battling a Penguin along the boards for a puck, another guy that Matt didn't quite recognize in front of Bob to keep his crease clear—and up at the scoreboard.

Cool dread trickled along his spine as he caught "Game 4", and realized with a fresh dismay that this was the playoffs. The playoffs, and they'd drawn Pittsburgh again, and were on the verge of being swept. Matt tried to take a deep breath, to calm down the buzzing horror at that prospect, the need to wade in and start fixing it, and couldn't. Panic rose up in his throat, all metal salt and the cold bite of an artificially frozen ice rink, and Matt thrashed around, trying to force himself away from the sight and back to the safety of reality, even as he saw Boone raising his arms above his head in celebration of a shot that Matt knew, somehow, was going to be the game-winner. The last thing he saw was a man pounding on the glass behind the Pens net, some random guy that Matt didn't recognize but wondered if maybe he should, with dark hair trimmed short, a puckish grin, and inexplicably wearing not a jersey—Jackets or Pens—but a t-shirt that was emblazoned with an image of someone with a black eye, a wad of cotton stuffed up their nose, and a livid bruise and swollen cheek.

"Zach?" Matt said, blinking disbelief as he worked out at last just who it was, and then the familiar outlines of their bedroom came back into focus around him, and he realized he was sitting up, the blankets twisted around him and Cam, breathing like he'd just done Tort's nightmare preseason camp run all over again.

"Wow," Cam said sleepily, reaching out to pat his shoulder blindly without even opening his eyes. "If you're gonna leave me for him or something just wait to tell me in the morning, eh?"

"Shut up," Matt said, too shaky to joke right back with Cam right away. "I mean, sorry, that was. Bad dream."

Cam made a grumbling noise that Matt knew from experience meant he was still only about fifty percent awake, but he did shuffle closer and wrap an arm around Matt when he stretched out again, patting his chest soothingly, and that did help.

Despite all of that, Matt did manage to fall asleep again relatively quickly, but the next morning, both dreams still felt all too close, alarmingly real in a way almost nothing he'd ever experienced before was.

That curious sense of pressure that had been in his head even yesterday was gone too, though, and Matt wondered—in a way he knew he'd never be able to prove one way or another, but was convinced of all the same—that he was going to be okay now. That whatever had been going on with him was definitively over, even if he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with the information he'd gained.

Like, he could tell someone that he had a weird feeling that Zach was gonna break his face somehow, but first of all probably no one but Cam would believe him, and secondly, he wasn't sure that knowing that was going to be any use in trying to stop it. Matt had done his fair share of trying to force the inevitable to stop happening over the years, and this felt like that too. Something that he was going to have to bear witness to and work with, rather than anything he could change.

"Come on," Cam said to him, interrupting the thoughts that were threatening to turn into something more like morose dwelling. "We gotta head to the rink, you're getting back out there today, don't wanna be late."

He was right, Matt thought, and grabbed his wallet and keys, straightening his shoulders before following Cam out the door. No matter what he thought he might know, they had the whole season ahead of them.

And who knew what was going to happen after that. At least Matt knew, right down deep to his bones, that Nationwide was gonna see at least one more playoff win sometime soon.

[]

Matt woke up just long enough to kiss Cam goodbye, and he dozed through the familiar sound of claws skittering on wooden floors as he said goodbye to Easton and Soph as well, heard the dull thud of his bags thumping against the back of his leg and then against the side of the door frame before he closed it behind him. Cam never remembered to swing his bag out so it wouldn't smack the side of the door; sometimes Matt thought he did it just for the way it always got a rise out of him, but he was pretty sure it was just one of those habits that was all Cam. For a guy who always played bigger than he was, walked like he was six feet tall with balls to match, well. It was kind of funny sometimes to see how he was just a little awkward when he was off skates. Mostly Matt found it endearing, though.

And that reminded him; the benefit of being home alone—just about the only benefit, really, and so what if him and Cam were practically co-dependent; it worked for them—was that he had a chance to pull a really elaborate prank on Cam.

Well, medium-elaborate. Matt wasn't going to spend a lot of time on it, and it wasn't like he had the energy for that, either. But it was a classic for a reason, and so despite the sense of pressure that still hadn't shifted from the back of his head, despite the hollow that was missing Cam, Matt rolled out of bed and made his way into their guest room, the one they'd done up to serve as an office space as well.

The roll of bubble wrap was still exactly where he'd stashed it, in the back of the closet and well out of reach of the dogs, and it was the work of only a minute or two to stuff long strips into every single pair of shoes that Cam had left at home.

It wasn't going to take him long to discover or to undo, but if nothing else Matt would laugh the first time Cam tried to shove his feet back into his shoes without breaking stride on his way out the door, and he was pretty sure Cam would laugh, too. And Matt would've done almost anything to get that sick, worried look off Cam's face. He'd looked pinched, when they got home, after Matt got yet another round of "nope not yet" from the docs, and Matt had felt guilt flush through him, even though it wasn't like he'd gotten hurt on purpose, of course, but he was out of the line up, and Cam was out of his head, and he couldn't feel Cam right now either and it just—

It just sucked.

There wasn't much point in staying in bed any longer than that, he was definitely wide awake by then, and mostly feeling better enough that shifting to the living room and lying down on the couch instead was a pleasant change of scenery. At least it meant he could give the dogs some attention. They still got walked regularly because he and Cam had a service to do that when they were out of town, and they'd just upped their schedule when Matt couldn't handle the noise or the walk to the dog park, and Cam didn't want to leave him unless he had to—which was sweet, if unhelpful.

Despite the fact he knew damn well he shouldn't, Matt dug his phone out of the pile of cords and remotes and other crap on the coffee table, and plugged it in just to check if Cam had messaged him. There was a quick message, as he'd expected, and pretty much all it said was "we're safe in Denver, why is the airport so fucking far out of town?" which Cam had bitched about every time they'd ever flown into Colorado, and then, "stop looking at your phone!!!" with multiple exclamation points so that Matt would know he was serious.

They really did know each other well, Matt thought with a rueful grin, and he dropped the phone back onto the table and put his feet up beside it. He wasn't exactly going to watch TV, but he could listen to something and doze some more, probably. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

[]

Matt had woken up the next morning feeling a little better again, and with his heart racing like he'd just run two miles, which at first had seemed weird and like something he should possibly be worrying about, before he realized that what he'd actually felt, half-awake and surfacing from dreams, was Cam.

The sensation was mostly gone again by the time he identified it, but he knew he hadn't been imagining it; he'd almost got Cam back, tucked into the corner of his brain where Matt was used to him, getting emotions and sensation and occasionally just about full sentences from him. It was so close to normal without being a proper taste of it that Matt wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry or throw something. Instead, he made himself lie down still and quiet until his heart stopped racing, and he thought, "Cam, Cam, Cam" over and over in what he hoped was a westward sort of direction just on the off chance that at least one side of their connection had settled back into place again.

They'd go their own separate ways in summer sometimes, to see family or friends or both, because there weren't enough days in the year to do everything they were committed to together, as nice as that would've been, but from the point where they'd realized what they were going to be to each other, well. Matt had never been particularly happy to have Cam go far from him.

Two game road trips definitely fell into that category, however necessary.

And after lying there for another fifteen minutes or so marinating in self-pity, Matt told himself to get the fuck over it and get up to make breakfast already.

Easton and Soph whining at the bedroom door probably helped there, too.

Matt took the dogs out for a while in the afternoon, and then spent some time doing the exercises their physio guys had told him he could do—should do—before going back to milling around the apartment not entirely sure what to do with himself. There was no doubt he felt a lot better, and so he caught up on a couple of the little things that always seemed to fall by the wayside in the middle of the season, running some of the more basic errands and making a couple of phone calls since he was, for once, home in the middle of the day and could actually kill some time on hold if he needed to.

"living the glamorous lifestyle here" he messaged to Cam, and stuck a picture with it, of his socked feet up on the coffee table and the pile of Constellation bills that he'd dug out to figure out what their account number was anyway. There was a reason they'd switched everything to direct debit as soon as they could. Matt loved direct debit, it meant that usually he didn't have to do any of this shit.

"hott" Cam sent back, with two ts, even, so he was not only awake from his pregame nap already, but making terrible decisions while he was unsupervised, apparently.

"Really using that college education" Matt sent back, and he wasn't terribly surprised to just receive a cheerful middle finger emoji in response. It was comfortingly familiar, anyway. And the echo of fond-amused-teasing that he got from the part of his mind that Cam usually occupied was even better, almost.

He checked the time again and figured he had more than enough time to get dinner before the game would start in Colorado; he definitely didn't miss all the central and mountain time starts now they were in the East, that was for sure.

What with one thing and another, it got close to puck drop before Matt actually got around to stretching out on the couch again, but it was with the satisfaction of having gotten more done than he'd quite expected, and without triggering another headache, too. All things considered he was pretty happy with the way his day had gone.

The guys seemed to be on his level as well, racing ahead to an early lead as Saader and Fligs both put the puck in, and Matt grinned, scratching Easton's head as he flopped down in front of the couch. The dogs had him and Cam both well trained, Matt thought ruefully, and snuck them both a treat as Fliggy finished off a real pretty 3-on-1.

The second period was less satisfying, and Matt felt the frustration rise again, watching his team falter just a little, wished he was out there with them. It was never fun to watch the guys play without you, however it was going, but it hurt more when they gave up chances, when a puck trickled past the goalie and made you think that maybe you could've gotten a stick on it, if you were there.

That frustration didn't lift much as the Jackets pushed back after the Avs tied it, but Matt felt an entirely different emotion start to fill him as the third period started. He felt—nervous, in a way he hadn't since his first year in the show, and underneath that was a growing certainty that they had this game too, that somehow they were gonna get the lead back.

It should have been comforting—winning was great, it was what they needed to do—but it was unsettling more than anything else, and Matt felt cold dread pool in his stomach as he saw Dubi break into the Avs zone, saw the Avs defenders pick the puck off before Dubi stole it right back, digging it out of the corner and sending it to Cam. And he watched, feeling dizzy in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with a concussion, as Cam sent a wild pass right onto Boone's tape, and watched with a growing sense of inevitability as the puck went past Varlamov and the goal light went off, as Nuti and Cam and Murrs piled in on Boone to hug him. He'd seen the goal coming the second that Dubi got over the blue line, but it wasn't from any inherent sense of how the game was going, nothing like that.

It was because he'd seen it before.

He'd seen that exact same thing play out the other night, leaning over the rail of the press box to watch his team play without him.

It was probably for the best, Matt thought, still stunned, and completely unaware of whatever else was still happening on the TV, that he hadn't actually realized until then that the assist he'd automatically praised Cam for had been in a white jersey and not their home blues. That should have been the first thing he'd noticed, but he'd been tired, and his head hurt, and it had been such a crazy pass—but of course Cam would be the one to make that work.

So at least now he knew what he'd seen, but that didn't in any way help answer what was probably a much more important question: how?

Because as far as Matt knew, shit like that just… didn't happen. And it really didn't happen to him.

Matt wasn't sure how to even bring it up with Cam later. What was he going to say, 'hey, I hit my head the other week and now I can see the future?'

That sounded insane, and Cam would think he was even more concussed than he actually was, and probably tell the docs as well. Which, okay, whatever, Matt could live with that, it would just be proof he cared enough to not hide a potentially dangerous situation, but more than anything else—he didn't want to worry Cam. And he could already see Cam worrying about him, and it made him feel, well, small. No pun intended.

He let himself lean forward, elbows resting on his knees and head in his hands while he tried to think his way through it, thumbs rubbing at his temples for whatever benefit that might give him.

He didn't feel sick anymore, not quite. His head didn't hurt, and right then he wasn't seeing anything he shouldn't be; no ghosts, no fuzzy outlines around things, and nothing that looked brighter than it should, either, which in his experience had been more of a sign. When things started looking like he was in a really high def video game, then he was either high on pain meds or more fucked up than he wanted to contemplate.

So maybe it had just been a one-off. A weird moment, like maybe a play that Dubi and Cam and Boone had been working on in practice, something his subconscious mind remembered and saw the beginnings of in the game the other night. It could just be a coincidence.

Matt wasn't sure he was even convincing himself, there. But it wasn't as if there was anything else he could do.

In the end, he didn't need to tell Cam, because Cam was the one who brought it up.

Matt should've seen that coming probably; he knew Cam's mind was the proverbial steel trap for things like that, his memory for all things hockey was extensive even by their standards. So of course Cam remembered what Matt had said, thoughtless and hurting and miserable after their home game, and of course he fucking recognized it when it happened.

The team still had another couple days on the road when Cam called him, the day after the game in Denver. They wouldn't be back until Sunday, just the travel day between their back-to-back with the Yotes, and Matt had somehow just not expected it to even come up till Cam was home again, if then. But it did; his phone rang around breakfast time the next day, and he picked up, ready to tell Cam that he was fine, he was resting, and they were out of milk, so did he want Matt to order anything else if he was getting groceries delivered anyway?

The words died unsaid on his tongue as Cam, dogged as ever, barely even got more than a greeting out before saying, "Matty, what the fuck?"

"Excuse me?" Matt said, honestly perplexed for a moment.

It was early enough that he wouldn't have been firing on all cylinders even if he wasn't recovering from a head wound.

"Boone's goal," Cam said, with emphasis.

"That was a pretty sick move—" Matt started trying to say, but Cam rode roughshod right over him.

"—that was the play you mentioned, wasn't it?" Cam asked. It was apparently a rhetorical question, because he kept going. "The other night, against the Bolts—you were so psyched on my pass, but I didn't—what the fuck, Matty, did you and Dubi draw this up or something?"

That answered one of Matt's questions, but it also opened up a couple more.

"I—no," Matt admitted. There wasn't much point in lying about it, and maybe Cam would know something, would have something else to suggest to make him feel better about all of this. "I didn't realize then, Cam, but—I swear, I saw it on the video board, just like this. Except I didn't realize you were all in away colors, and I didn't even look at the goalie, I just saw the puck hit the net and thought 'fuck yeah'."

"You—what, you like had a vision?" Cam asked. His voice was lower than usual, like he didn't like what he was suggesting any more than Matt wanted to hear it. "That's—that doesn't happen, Matty, that's, like. Midnight advertisements for fucking Miss Cleo shit."

"I don't know what to tell you," Matt said. "I just—it was like watching a replay, last night. Every step looked like I'd seen it before, so I just figured it was something you guys were working on in practice."

Cam barked out a laugh. "I don't even know how Boone got it on his tape," he admitted. "That's definitely not a play we've tried before."

"Right," Matt said, after the silence stretched out for a few beats too long. He wasn't sure what else to say.

Cam made a thoughtful noise. "I mean, now that it worked we might try it on purpose," he said thoughtfully, and Matt laughed, like Cam had clearly meant him to, and agreed that it was probably worth a shot.

They let the topic drop there, just went on to talking about what they'd been up to—'not a fucking lot,' Matt said bitterly—and what kinds of ridiculous post-game shit had gone on, since Cam clearly felt like he needed to feel like he wasn't missing out on whatever was going on in the room when he wasn't there.

"Bill and Wenny vanished for, like, twenty minutes," Cam added, on the tail end of something about the ongoing poker match up the front of the plane. "I did not want to ask questions."

"Oh please," Matt said, finally feeling like he was on steadier ground with that comment. "Like either of them could keep a straight face if they were fooling around on the plane. They were probably just being all, you know, Swedish."

"Mmm," Cam said dubiously, but Matt felt pretty confident in that prediction. Just because him and Cam might have—just a little! Hardly anything that really counted!—fooled around on the plane in the past didn't mean everyone who had the opportunity would. Cam was surprisingly shameless for a dude from Connecticut, and Matt was easy-going enough to roll with it more often than not, so, yeah, there might've been the odd handy over the years. Under the light throws the charter provided them with, of course. He was pretty sure no one had ever noticed, at least.

"Anyway, I guess you've got to get to lunch or something, right?" Matt asked. He didn't normally have trouble finding things to talk to Cam about, but this situation didn't seem to fall under the 'normal' umbrella anyway.

"Tryin' to get rid of me?" Cam asked, but with enough of a laugh in his voice that Matt didn't worry about it. "Nah, but I've got some stuff I should do before then." He paused, and then when he spoke again, his voice was serious, the way that he rarely needed to be, but in the way that always made Matt—and anyone else in earshot—sit up and listen. "Get some rest, yeah?" he said. "Don't push it, and we can swing by the docs again once we're back home. See you in two days, okay?"

"You bet," Matt said, and he and Cam said their goodbyes, hung up the phone.

He had every intention of resting as much as possible, and while he didn't love the idea of having to go and get his head examined yet a-fucking-gain, he could at least understand why Cam though it was a good idea. At least he wasn't calling Janelle or someone else who was still in Columbus to drag him to Urgent Care or anything like that.

And besides all that, if Matt just kept quiet and kept getting better, well, there probably wouldn't be any reason to go see the docs.

He fixed himself lunch, took the dogs out on a short walk—the weather was a little warmer at least—and then kicked his jeans off into a corner of the bedroom and crawled back into bed in just his shirt and shorts. It was probably a good idea to keep his regular schedule, and that meant an afternoon nap about the same time that the guys would be trying to fit them in in Colorado or Arizona or wherever they were. He hadn't remembered to ask Cam when they were traveling, so for all he knew they could be on the plane then. He kinda figured not, though; Cam tended to send texts right before he got on the plane, out of something that he insisted wasn't superstition, and Matt only chirped him a little for.

One last check of his phone—no messages, no calls—and Matt stretched out and closed his eyes, hoping for a deep and dreamless sleep.

Deep, he got, but the other half of his wish, well. Not so much.

Matt blinked in the early dusk, and wished for a moment he'd remembered to close the curtains before going to nap. He had a moment of wondering why Cam hadn't done it, before remembering that Cam was on the road still, in Phoenix with the rest of the team while Matty was stuck at home. When he checked the time he could tell he'd been asleep for almost two hours, a little longer than usual but probably good for him. He felt fuzzier than usual all the same, though.

It was probably the extra sleep making him feel off and not actually anything wrong with his head, but he still made sure to leave the TV off until the last possible minute, planning to limit the amount of screen time he was dealing with. And he was definitely going to tell Cam he'd done that, too, because he would insist on worrying when he couldn't be there to mother-hen him properly.

Besides, it wasn't like he was going to miss anything important from the pre-game. Matt knew who was scratched for his team and he knew why, and he didn't care about the Yotes so long as the Jackets could get two points from them, so. Resting his eyes it was.

Boone got them on the board early, and Matt's yell and accompanying fist-pump got him sorrowful looks of judgment from both dogs, but he was letting them on the couch when they weren't normally allowed, so he figured they didn't exactly have a lot of room to judge him. The Yotes clawing their way out to a lead after that was less enjoyable, and Smith was playing out of his skin to keep the Jackets from tying it up again.

Matt found himself holding his breath every time Sammy got the puck, expecting it to go in. He'd been tearing it up lately, so that was probably reasonable to expect, it wasn't like anything else was going on.

The guys tied it up, finally, at practically the last minute, and then managed to steal it in the shootout to boot. Matty cheered when Cam's shot went past Smith, fucking finally, and again when Gags iced it for them. Seeing the shootout goal go in should've felt more like what Matt had been picking to happen all evening, but it didn't quite feel… finished, he thought, hitting the remote to turn the TV off and stretching back out on the couch in silence again. He'd really thought Gags was gonna score in regulation but hey, maybe next game.

And maybe next game Matt would get back in the lineup. He'd been headache free for a couple of days, that had to count for something.

Cam got home late, the flight long enough that Matt must have been deeply asleep by the time he stumbled in and dumped his bag at the end of the bed, not bothering to do more than just peel off every item of clothing he was wearing before crawling under the covers and snuggling up to him.

Matt woke up just long enough to grumble about how cold his feet were—it was like being dumped in the ice bath without even a second to brace for it, fuck—but he also just slung his arm over Cam and tugged him closer, letting him press his equally cold nose against Matt's shoulder.

"Wear a hat next time," he mumbled, closing his eyes and shifting to get more comfortable on the pillow. Sure, he'd sleep better with Cam there, but resettling after being deep in a REM cycle was never fun.

"Yes mom," Cam replied, although he was probably too tired himself to pair that with the eye-roll it would normally have. When Matt didn't dignify that with a response Cam just sighed in satisfaction—Matt was letting him be the little spoon and he'd gotten the last word, two of his favorite things—and went straight to sleep himself.

If Matt dreamed anything, he didn't remember it.

They moved around each other as easily as ever the next morning in the kitchen, both of them used to doing specific parts of their morning routine, one they'd developed over the years and honed to a fine art—Cam's term—or figured was within their first-thing-in-the-morning skill set—Matt's slightly more candid description.

Either way, it worked, and by the time they sat down to eat breakfast together, Matt was feeling wide awake and significantly better than he had done for a while.

"Nice one last night," he said, after reaching past Cam for the salt. "You and Gags were on fire, eh?"

"Better late than never," Cam agreed, and that was about as ambitious as either of them got conversationally when it was still that early, so the discussion kind of died there.

They picked it up again in the car on the way back to the rink, Matt trying not to get too cocky about the fact that he'd had a couple of good days in a row, and really did feel like he was getting better.

"Hopefully it won't take as many shots to score tomorrow," he said wryly, although he was pretty sure they were going to see Domingue or whoever the backup in Arizona was these days, and not Smith, so hopefully—well.

"What, you're telling me you didn't see how this one's gonna end up?" Cam joked, and Matt would have laughed, but—a chill ran along his spine and stopped the breath in his lungs for a split-second.

"…Matty?" Cam asked, glancing quickly at him and then—before Matt could say anything—looking back at the road. "You didn't, right? Like, that was just a weird one-off we can joke about later and not—some fucked up hallucination or whatever. Right?"

"I don't think so," Matt said slowly, picking his way through what he wanted to say. "I mean, I figured Gags was gonna score all game, but he didn't till the shootout, so obviously it's not like I'm suddenly psychic or whatever, he was just feeling it out there. Anyone could see that."

"You're not wrong," Cam said, but he looked unsettled still, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel entirely off-beat to the radio.

Matt didn't say anything.

He got dragged off by the trainers again pretty much the moment they walked into the players lounge, and ran through the whole cycle of tests again for what felt like the thousandth time, and he could tell from the tone of voice and the looks being exchanged over his head that this time he was passing them.

He tried not to act too excited; they hadn't cleared him yet.

"One more game, just to be safe," they told him. "And you can skate tomorrow, no-contact. Just to see."

And maybe it wasn't entirely what he wanted to hear but it was still far better than the alternative, so Matt said thanks and tried to wrap all of that up as soon as he could. He was so close, and fuck, he couldn't wait to get back out there.

By the time all of that wrapped up the rest of the guys were pretty much done too, so he didn't have to wait all that long until Cam came back in with his hair still wet from the shower and dropped heavily onto the couch beside him, leaning into him—practically burrowing in—and asking, "How'd it go?"

Matt grinned at him, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Cam always got extra touchy after they'd been separated for a while, and he guessed that even a barely four day long road trip counted.

"Non-contact tomorrow and I'm sitting that one out too, but then we'll see," he said, sounding gleeful even to his own ears.

"Awesome," Cam said, and then he jumped to his feet again, waiting impatiently for Matt to follow. "C'mon, we should go get lunch."

"Alright" Matt said, and followed him out the door.

They had a quiet night in at home, just about the same as any other night since he'd been out of the lineup, but it felt different, now that his head wasn't pounding all the time, although that weird sense of pressure hadn't quite gone away yet. Not that he'd told the docs about that.

It didn't seem to hurt, and light—or the lack of it—didn't seem to make a difference to how it felt, either. He just didn't feel quite the same as usual. Maybe it was the scar healing or something, like that, he hadn't exactly given himself that kind of cut before so who knew. It wasn't bothering him, and he didn't even think of it most of the time, just a subtle change that he was only conscious of when he was really concentrating on it. No biggie. And Cam was back in his head almost all of the time, which was even better; it made Matt feel that much steadier, to have that presence as well as Cam tucked up against him on the couch.

They took the dogs out one last time after dinner and then curled up on the couch together again, knees and shoulders pressed together.

Cam looked at him and said, diffidently, "You wanna watch a movie? If you're up to it?"

He was juggling the remote in his free hand, but Matt had known him long enough—had been dating him long enough—to know that Cam wasn't just talking about TV.

"Or we could just go to bed early," Matt said, and let a hint of how bad he wanted to do that curl through his smile, heating up his expression. Let that insinuation spill warmly into the part of his mind that felt like Cam, and he shivered happily as the brightening feel of Cam in his mind told him that Cam was, once again, reading him perfectly.

They went to bed, but it wasn't to sleep, and Matt almost couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this close to perfect, everything starting to go right again. He'd be back in the lineup soon, they were winning, and soon Matt could actually be out there contributing instead of reminding himself he was too old and more importantly, too professional to obviously cheer from the press box. Though he'd definitely high-fived Harry and Prouter when Cam scored, but that didn't count.

This time, Matt's dreams came closely on the heels of the moment where he dropped off to sleep, fast enough that this time he knew he was dreaming as it happened, although he couldn't seem to do anything more than just watch, the images unspooling in front of his eyes like he wasn't even there, nothing more than a vague wisp of thought and observation.

They felt almost like memories more than visions; watching Cam shoot puck after puck at Mike Smith while none of them went in, although that was a familiar enough outcome that Matt would almost think it was just a run of the mill nightmare. Almost, if it wasn't for the peculiarly sour taste at the back of his mouth, the weird shimmer around the edges of his vision that somehow made it clear to him he wasn't only dreaming this. The part that did feel like a dream was the terrible b-movie sound effect going along with every shot that glanced off Smith's pads and blocker, every shot that got saved, the clown-car you-suck whoop from a carnival side show. Even in his sleep, Matt felt a shiver run down his spine.

The background shimmered and slid out of view and Matt thought, finally, now maybe he'd be able to get some sleep, but then he was watching hockey again, but his time it wasn't the Coyotes, it was the Penguins.

He blinked, and more details came into focus; the familiar shape of Nationwide around them, his teammates in their home jerseys, the Pens in away whites, and as if there was a hand under his chin, fingers tilting his jaw up, Matt looked away from the action on the ice—Jonesy battling a Penguin along the boards for a puck, another guy that Matt didn't quite recognize in front of Bob to keep his crease clear—and up at the scoreboard.

Cool dread trickled along his spine as he caught "Game 4", and realized with a fresh dismay that this was the playoffs. The playoffs, and they'd drawn Pittsburgh again, and were on the verge of being swept. Matt tried to take a deep breath, to calm down the buzzing horror at that prospect, the need to wade in and start fixing it, and couldn't. Panic rose up in his throat, all metal salt and the cold bite of an artificially frozen ice rink, and Matt thrashed around, trying to force himself away from the sight and back to the safety of reality, even as he saw Boone raising his arms above his head in celebration of a shot that Matt knew, somehow, was going to be the game-winner. The last thing he saw was a man pounding on the glass behind the Pens net, some random guy that Matt didn't recognize but wondered if maybe he should, with dark hair trimmed short, a puckish grin, and inexplicably wearing not a jersey—Jackets or Pens—but a t-shirt that was emblazoned with an image of someone with a black eye, a wad of cotton stuffed up their nose, and a livid bruise and swollen cheek.

"Zach?" Matt said, blinking disbelief as he worked out at last just who it was, and then the familiar outlines of their bedroom came back into focus around him, and he realized he was sitting up, the blankets twisted around him and Cam, breathing like he'd just done Tort's nightmare preseason camp run all over again.

"Wow," Cam said sleepily, reaching out to pat his shoulder blindly without even opening his eyes. "If you're gonna leave me for him or something just wait to tell me in the morning, eh?"

"Shut up," Matt said, too shaky to joke right back with Cam right away. "I mean, sorry, that was. Bad dream."

Cam made a grumbling noise that Matt knew from experience meant he was still only about fifty percent awake, but he did shuffle closer and wrap an arm around Matt when he stretched out again, patting his chest soothingly, and that did help.

Despite all of that, Matt did manage to fall asleep again relatively quickly, but the next morning, both dreams still felt all too close, alarmingly real in a way almost nothing he'd ever experienced before was.

That curious sense of pressure that had been in his head even yesterday was gone too, though, and Matt wondered—in a way he knew he'd never be able to prove one way or another, but was convinced of all the same—that he was going to be okay now. That whatever had been going on with him was definitively over, even if he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with the information he'd gained.

Like, he could tell someone that he had a weird feeling that Zach was gonna break his face somehow, but first of all probably no one but Cam would believe him, and secondly, he wasn't sure that knowing that was going to be any use in trying to stop it. Matt had done his fair share of trying to force the inevitable to stop happening over the years, and this felt like that too. Something that he was going to have to bear witness to and work with, rather than anything he could change.

"Come on," Cam said to him, interrupting the thoughts that were threatening to turn into something more like morose dwelling. "We gotta head to the rink, you're getting back out there today, don't wanna be late."

He was right, Matt thought, and grabbed his wallet and keys, straightening his shoulders before following Cam out the door. No matter what he thought he might know, they had the whole season ahead of them.

And who knew what was going to happen after that. At least Matt knew, right down deep to his bones, that Nationwide was gonna see at least one more playoff win sometime soon.

[]

Matt woke up just long enough to kiss Cam goodbye, and he dozed through the familiar sound of claws skittering on wooden floors as he said goodbye to Easton and Soph as well, heard the dull thud of his bags thumping against the back of his leg and then against the side of the door frame before he closed it behind him. Cam never remembered to swing his bag out so it wouldn't smack the side of the door; sometimes Matt thought he did it just for the way it always got a rise out of him, but he was pretty sure it was just one of those habits that was all Cam. For a guy who always played bigger than he was, walked like he was six feet tall with balls to match, well. It was kind of funny sometimes to see how he was just a little awkward when he was off skates. Mostly Matt found it endearing, though.

And that reminded him; the benefit of being home alone—just about the only benefit, really, and so what if him and Cam were practically co-dependent; it worked for them—was that he had a chance to pull a really elaborate prank on Cam.

Well, medium-elaborate. Matt wasn't going to spend a lot of time on it, and it wasn't like he had the energy for that, either. But it was a classic for a reason, and so despite the sense of pressure that still hadn't shifted from the back of his head, despite the hollow that was missing Cam, Matt rolled out of bed and made his way into their guest room, the one they'd done up to serve as an office space as well.

The roll of bubble wrap was still exactly where he'd stashed it, in the back of the closet and well out of reach of the dogs, and it was the work of only a minute or two to stuff long strips into every single pair of shoes that Cam had left at home.

It wasn't going to take him long to discover or to undo, but if nothing else Matt would laugh the first time Cam tried to shove his feet back into his shoes without breaking stride on his way out the door, and he was pretty sure Cam would laugh, too. And Matt would've done almost anything to get that sick, worried look off Cam's face. He'd looked pinched, when they got home, after Matt got yet another round of "nope not yet" from the docs, and Matt had felt guilt flush through him, even though it wasn't like he'd gotten hurt on purpose, of course, but he was out of the line up, and Cam was out of his head, and he couldn't feel Cam right now either and it just—

It just sucked.

There wasn't much point in staying in bed any longer than that, he was definitely wide awake by then, and mostly feeling better enough that shifting to the living room and lying down on the couch instead was a pleasant change of scenery. At least it meant he could give the dogs some attention. They still got walked regularly because he and Cam had a service to do that when they were out of town, and they'd just upped their schedule when Matt couldn't handle the noise or the walk to the dog park, and Cam didn't want to leave him unless he had to—which was sweet, if unhelpful.

Despite the fact he knew damn well he shouldn't, Matt dug his phone out of the pile of cords and remotes and other crap on the coffee table, and plugged it in just to check if Cam had messaged him. There was a quick message, as he'd expected, and pretty much all it said was "we're safe in Denver, why is the airport so fucking far out of town?" which Cam had bitched about every time they'd ever flown into Colorado, and then, "stop looking at your phone!!!" with multiple exclamation points so that Matt would know he was serious.

They really did know each other well, Matt thought with a rueful grin, and he dropped the phone back onto the table and put his feet up beside it. He wasn't exactly going to watch TV, but he could listen to something and doze some more, probably. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

[]

He frowned a little, brows drawn together as he noticed Zach digging through his bag with an uncharacteristic lack of cool, looking genuinely more worried than Nick thought he'd seen him before his first NHL game, for crying out loud.

He paused for a moment, nearly went over to ask just what was wrong, but then Andy leaned in from his own stall and said something quiet to Z, which took the tension right out of his shoulders, and made him crack an equally rare grin.

Yeah, Nick thought. He could safely leave the kids to their own devices, they were doing more than okay as it was. No need for him to stick his nose into their business unless it looked like they needed it. Or they asked. Not that they'd want to.

Anyway, it was probably a lot more important if he kept an eye on whatever it was that was making Cam snicker and Matty outright cackle. He knew where his frequent locker room troublemakers were, thank you very much.

And while they were also often found on scooters, it really wasn't any of the rookies.

"I can't believe you lost your keys again, Z," Andy said, nudging him with his elbow in an all-too-pointed fashion. "Were you this bad in college? Did you even have keys in college or did they have, like, those cards like hotels?"

"At least I learned not to turn my laundry gray in college," Zach pointed out with dignity, because offense really was the best defense.

Andy didn't take offense, unfortunately, just shrugged at him. "It was like two shirts, and at least they didn't shrink."

Zach imagined him for a moment in a shirt that was more than a little too small, straining over his shoulders and chest and then made himself change mental topics before his blush could go from theoretical to actual. Everyone always told Zach he had a good poker face, but he'd never thought he was all that great at deception. Better to just think about their plans for after the road trip at the end of the week. Or on the road trip, even. Speaking of poker.

"Anyhow, you guys coming out tonight?" Boone asked, eyebrow raised. Zach being technically under age was also being technically ignored whenever the team felt they could get away with it, but Zach didn't like to push his luck. Although at least being the only one meant he could sort of vanish into a crowd sometimes.

"Nah, I think we're going home," he said. "I mean, Andy might want to?"

"Someone's got a hot Call of Duty date," Andy teased, right on schedule, and Zach rolled his eyes because kicking Auston's ass wasn't exactly difficult.

Or a date, thanks.

"You should go if you want, though," he said to Andy, instead of picking that battle.

Andy gave him a look Zach couldn't quite read, and then glanced back at Boone, and at Wenny and Bill and Nuti who were lurking behind him with expectant expressions, and then said, "Okay, yeah, I'll come out."

He paused for a second. "Anything you wanna ask before we head out, Z?"

Zach blinked and then remembered the whole thing they'd been discussing a cool sixty or so seconds ago. He sighed.

"Can I borrow your keys, Josh?" He tried to copy Dylan's peer-up-through-your-eyebrows look, because fuck knew it always worked on him, even when he knew Dylan was playing him with it, but he must have been doing it wrong, because Sedsy burst into giggles and then had to hide his grin in Nuti's shoulder.

Zach sighed again, but Josh handed him his keyring, so who was laughing now, huh?

"You better still be up to let me in though," Josh warned. "Charge your phone at least, eh?"

"Yes, dad," Zach said, and Josh flinched, which meant Zach won, although mostly he just tried not to notice how Fliggy, Dubi and Matty all looked over automatically when he said 'dad'.

It wasn't like Zach wasn't used to being the youngest guy on a team, even if it wasn't quite so pronounced in comparison to the Monsters, and it wasn't like he had a problem with that, but—

Well, it just made him think, sometimes. That was all.

At least he wasn't the only rookie. He'd had a conversation with Saader about that one plane ride in the preseason, and reassured him that him and Josh were doing fine as roommates and no, Saader didn't have to turn up at some point to make sure they both knew how to feed themselves. Not that Saader was even that much older than Zach, not really. But he seemed to feel like he was.

"Later guys," Zach said, waving vaguely at them all before heading out of the locker room and back towards home. Where, despite what Josh was implying, he did charge his phone, and left his headset half off his ear so he could hear if Josh forgot he had a phone and wound up banging on the door anyway.

Of course, then that just meant Auston spent half their game time chirping him about Josh, but that was situation normal, and Zach was used to not reacting to that one. Easy as pie.

They didn't get a lot of time to enjoy the comforts of home to start out the month, with a short roadie out west for the Avs and then the Yotes, and then the Yotes following them right back home again. At least they'd won all three, Zach figured, stretching out on the couch and gleefully considering the prospect of three whole days without a game. It'd been a while since they'd had that much of a break, and as stupid as it sounded—it wasn't like he hadn't been paying attention to the NHL schedule since he could read, pretty much—he just hadn't really realized, in the most fundamental ways, what it was like to play that much. Like, living the dream, hell fucking yeah, but he definitely understood a lot better now why Dylan had spent half his first year telling Zach he was too tired to do, like, anything. Zach totally got it now.

Even if Josh did subject him to some attempted-to-be cutting words about how much time he spent gaming or napping in his room or whatever.

Josh could suck it, though, because Zach was definitely way better than him at CoD for a reason.

"You wanna get dinner with the guys?" Josh asked, late in the afternoon of their first day off, a complete day off for a change, not even any team meetings or practices.

He was lurking in the doorway of Zach's room, just sticking his head in and not actually stepping inside. It was the exact sort of considerate move that Zach had never actually gotten from Brad, and that just made Zach wonder fleetingly if he was doing that because he had brothers too, or because he didn't. He should ask that some day, he figured. That was probably something he should know.

"Sure," Zach said. "The usual place?"

"Yep," Josh replied. "Meeting at like 7, so, I dunno, get dressed in like an hour or whatever?"

"You saying you'd be ashamed to go out with me wearing this?" Zach said, deadpan, gesturing down at his chilling-at-home uniform of basketball shorts, mismatched socks, and a Monsters shirt that was surprisingly ratty for all that it was maybe six months old. He should definitely send out laundry again some time soon, that was for sure.

"Yes, actually," Josh said, and he ducked out of the doorway again just before Zach could nail him with some balled up socks that hadn't made it as far as his laundry hamper the night before.

Zach would wonder what the fact Josh was clearly hesitant to come into his room actually meant, but it was also convenient, so. Whatever, it was probably meaningless. No big deal. Probably.

He wandered out of his room about a minute before they would have had to leave if they were going to worry about turning up dead on seven, trying to get his hair to behave and shrugging into a coat in the hall.

"Keys?" he said to Josh, who was digging through the closet looking for another coat, or maybe different shoes, Zach wasn't exactly sure.

"Yeah, cool," Josh replied, emerging from the depths of their closet with a hat and boots in hand.

"Awesome," Zach said, and he pushed the door open, stepping out and then holding it open behind him for Josh to follow, hopping as he tried to finish putting his other boot on without bothering to stop long enough to do it. Zach was going to laugh if he fell on his face, although he'd probably feel a tiny bit bad about it.

Josh pulled the door shut behind him, and then followed Zach out.

They were actually the first people at the restaurant for a change, which was so unprecedented Zach nearly tweeted about it. He settled for making Josh pose with him in the goofiest possible insta selfie and tagged it #waitin', which would probably get him a like from Cam if no one else.

The rest of the guys—their usual crowd, Sedsy and Seth and Nuti and Scotty, and pretty much whoever else happened to be up from Cleveland at the time—turned up in their own sweet time, and Zach figured they had more than earned the faint edge of sarcasm in the host's voice when he asked if they'd gathered their whole party yet.

Dinner was about the same as it ever was, although at least with most of them still on their entry levels there weren't the same kinds of shenanigans that tended to happen with full team meals, and Zach was pleasantly full and looking forward to his bed by the time they finished fist-bumping and bro-hugging and all that and actually said good night to each other on the street outside. It was just a short walk back to their place, and not all that cold really, sharp enough to wake him up again all the way, but definitely not the sort of bitter cold they'd be getting closer to Christmas, Zach figured.

[]

Zach followed Josh inside and reached past him to hang his coat up in the closet as well, their shoulders brushing. Zach bit his lip and wished, briefly, that he had taken Sedsy up on his offer of a beer with dinner. It wouldn't have gotten him buzzed or anything, but it would've given him a good excuse to stumble 'accidentally' into Josh once or twice. Or made him brave enough to try and make a pass outside of his imagination, maybe.

"Well, night," Zach said, after a moment, feeling dumb just standing there and not saying anything.

"You going to bed already?" Josh asked. "Well, say hi to Matthews, I guess."

Zach rolled his eyes. "I do other things than play CoD with him, you know."

"Yeah, and you can spare me the details," Josh said, with a little bite in his tone that Zach didn't think he'd ever heard before and he blinked, trying to figure out what he'd missed. The look was gone almost as fast as it had shown up, Josh just looking like his usual self again when Zach's eyes went back up to meet his. The smile he gave Zach looked the same as ever, too, so he wasn't sure if he was just imagining it or not. "Night, Z."

"Yeah, good night," Zach said, and when he went to bed he laid there for longer than usual before managing to fall asleep. That had been—

Weird.

By the time they left for the Western Canada road swing, Zach was buzzing, riding high on six wins in a row, and more than a little giddy about getting to play at the Joe as an NHLer, just like he'd been dreaming of for like his entire life. Sure, it wasn't in a Red Wings sweater, so it wasn't exactly what he'd been imagining as a kid, but it still felt pretty fucking awesome.

Dylan scoring while Zach was in the box wasn't perfect, either, but they'd won the game so whatever, Zach could be the bigger person there.

"Jackets are hotttt," Cam sang under his breath, pushing past Zach as they all filed onto the charter, and knocking his elbow as he went to sit with Matty in the row right behind him.

Zach hid a snort behind his hand and tried to look like he was totally absorbed in the group text he had open on his phone. Sedsy was giggling too, catching Zach's eye from across the aisle, and Josh was busy trying to get comfortable with his head leaning against the wall by the window, his little airplane pillow bunched up in what he claimed was the superior shape to not leave him with a stiff neck by the time they landed, which mostly worked even if it meant he wound up sprawling into Zach's space with his legs stretched out while he napped. Zach didn't mind, mostly.

Yeah, he had a good feeling about this trip.

[]

He followed Josh up the stairs and leaned against the wall, waiting for him to let them in. And waiting. And waiting.

Josh was just looking at him, for some reason.

"Uh," Zach said, because c'mon, he just wanted to go crash out on the couch and watch TV for a while or something. It wasn't quite late enough to just go to bed, not unless he wanted to get called a 70-year-old again, anyway.

"Dude, you have the keys," Josh said, too patiently, and Zach blinked at him.

"No I don't, you do," he argued. He'd asked, he was sure of it. All he'd bothered picking up was his wallet and his phone, ie, the essentials.

"I thought you—" Josh started to say, and then his jaw snapped shut. "Ah, fuck," he said, under his breath. "You really didn't pick up your keys at all?"

"I really didn't," Zach agreed. "I thought you did. You always do!"

"And it turns out there's a reason for that," Josh grumbled, and dug his phone out of his pocket. "Who did we give the other spare to again?"

"Uh," Zach said, with a vivid picture forming in his mind of the other spare key, the one they were going to give to Seth or Cam or someone who lived nearby, the next time they thought of it. The spare key sitting in their junk drawer in the kitchen on the other side of the locked door. "Shit."

"We really suck at this," Josh said glumly. "How much even are locksmiths, huh?"

"We're about to find out," Zach agreed, with a sigh. Hopefully they could deal with this quickly, and also without anyone else finding out, because Zach really didn't need to start hearing it about how him and Josh had both lost a fight with a door. Actually, Josh probably could punch it open, but then they'd just need to get it fixed anyway and that was probably more expensive than the locksmith. Plus, Josh could get hurt. They were definitely dealing with this in the most grown up way possible, Zach thought.

The locksmith, when she arrived, was a petite white woman with dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, wearing a sleeveless vest in apparent defiance of the temperature. Zach had to respect that.

"So we're kind of idiots," Josh said, and attempted a winning smile.

She laughed, not unkindly, and said, "don't worry, you wouldn't believe how often people do this," and pulled out a bunch of tools that looked more like stuff Zach had seen in heist movies and started doing mysterious locksmith things to their door with them.

Zach leaned against the wall and pretended to play with his phone while he tried to surreptitiously watch what she was doing. Lock picking could be a cool hobby, maybe. Although he vaguely thought it might also be illegal unless you were, like, a professional or whatever. He could look it up later, maybe.

There was a tiny click and the door popped open, and Zach couldn't help a muted "Whoo!" in response to that. It wasn't late enough to make their neighbors mad, anyway.

"That's awesome, thank you," Josh said, and Zach said, "Yeah, thanks," and then handed over his credit card, because the silent battle he'd been waging with Josh over that with facial expressions alone had not exactly ended in his favor. He'd considered arguing that it wasn't fair of Josh to think he would have keys when he'd already forgotten them, like, four times since they moved in together, but long experience with Brad suggested that argument would be more like a self-own and Zach was just going to skip that, thanks.

"Have a good night," she said with a quick grin, packing her tools up, and then over her shoulder as she jogged back towards where her van was parked on the street, "Go Jackets!"

Zach and Josh exchanged a look.

"So this is probably going to wind up on the internet, huh?" Josh said, deeply resigned.

"I just hope she's not on reddit," Zach said. "Maybe next time we should pick a locksmith with, like OSU stickers all over their van."

"Maybe next time we should just remember the keys," Josh said pointedly, and shoved Zach inside their apartment, pulling the door closed behind him again to punctuate that.

"Yeah, okay," Zach said.

By the time they left for the Western Canada road swing, Zach was buzzing, riding high on six wins in a row, and more than a little giddy about getting to play at the Joe as an NHLer, just like he'd been dreaming of for like his entire life. Sure, it wasn't in a Red Wings sweater, so it wasn't exactly what he'd been imagining as a kid, but it still felt pretty fucking awesome.

Dylan scoring while Zach was in the box wasn't perfect, either, but they'd won the game so whatever, Zach could be the bigger person there.

"Jackets are hotttt," Cam sang under his breath, pushing past Zach as they all filed onto the charter, and knocking his elbow as he went to sit with Matty in the row right behind him.

Zach hid a snort behind his hand and tried to look like he was totally absorbed in the group text he had open on his phone. Sedsy was giggling too, catching Zach's eye from across the aisle, and Josh was busy trying to get comfortable with his head leaning against the wall by the window, his little airplane pillow bunched up in what he claimed was the superior shape to not leave him with a stiff neck by the time they landed, which mostly worked even if it meant he wound up sprawling into Zach's space with his legs stretched out while he napped. Zach didn't mind, mostly.

Yeah, he had a good feeling about this trip.

[]

They got through the road trip, and they kept winning, and they kept winning. Some of the wins were eked out, sure; overtimes they scraped through and a shootout against the Kings, and then they absolutely annihilated the Pens, 7-1 in front of the screaming fans at Nationwide; eleven wins in a row.

Admittedly, it was no 10-0 against Montreal, but Zach wasn't sure you got more than one game like that in a career, if you were lucky. And it still felt amazing; felt even better to come right back out the next day and beat the Habs again, and that made twelve.

Zach could feel the exhaustion creeping in around the edges then, although a few days in a row off in Canada had helped, but he kept pushing it back, letting the adrenaline of playing and playing that well carry him through it all. He was pretty sure the other guys were doing much the same.

It felt like they were living some kind of charmed life, like this was something bigger than them, and Zach wasn't sure whether he was happy they were getting a break for the holidays or not. He was glad his family was close enough that he could go home, that it was easy enough for him to get there and not just simpler to stick around Columbus like it was for guys like Nuti, although Zach figured that even if his parents couldn't make it over after all he'd be just fine with Korpi. The Swedes were all doing some kind of Christmas thing together as well, which Zach hadn't quite been brave or foolish enough to ask for more details about. He was pretty sure Dylan had been yanking his chain on what he'd said Zetterberg did over Christmas, anyway.

Getting that time with his folks helped him start to feel steadier again, though.

It helped even more that they got right back to work after Christmas, one more win at home, and then solid performances on the road. He felt like he'd hardly blinked and all of a sudden it was New Year's Eve, and they'd had a perfect month, and with two days off as soon as they got home—

Well, that just meant it was time to enjoy themselves.

The time change meant that midnight—at least, midnight as in Columbus midnight, if he was going to get technical about it—hit some time while the charter was in the air. There was a little yelling, mostly restrained, but all in good humor, good cheer and good will to all men for sure. Zach 'toasted' Josh and Sedsy and Saader with his half full gatorade and tried very hard not to think too much about having no one to kiss at midnight.

It was very hard to ignore the warmth of Josh's knee, pressed right against his. Or Sedsy, on his other side, although he was always a lot quieter than almost anyone else. It made him easy to overlook sometimes, but Zach was never going to do that. It was nice to have so many of the guys up still, all the guys he'd gotten to know and got close to on their Calder Cup run, and it felt like that was spilling over with them into the big club, just one long and mostly joyous addendum to the playoffs. Zach was going to ride that as long as he could, and in the intervening time, he'd be glad of the company. It felt sometimes like he'd been with the Monsters longer than essentially just the playoffs, but, well.

They'd had kind of a lot happen in a short space of time.

Zach was just hoping their luck would hold for this next step.

It wasn't too far past midnight by the time they landed, and while half the team were clearly ready to head straight home and to bed—or at least, to family dinners and maybe some private celebrations—the rest of them exchanged looks and started planning. They could spare a few hours to celebrate, especially with a couple days off before they were going to play again.

Piece of cake.

Zach wasn't sure where things had gone off the rails, when he thought about it later.

It wasn't the first bar, and it probably wasn't even the second one, but some time around their third change of venues it became clear that they'd lost half of their party; Alex and Will had vanished and if the past was any kind of precedent, they wouldn't surface again until they were good and ready, and Zach was way too drunk for someone who could theoretically get in a shitload of trouble with his hockey team if he got caught underage drinking.

"The trick is to not get caught," Sedsy assured him, with the calm sobriety of a man who was just as smashed as Zach was, but hiding it better.

Josh snickered, and let his head fall onto Zach's shoulder. He was warm, and Zach almost never got to be the one who was holding people up, so he figured he'd allow it. Nuti was giggling as well, his eyes bright and hair sticking on end like he'd been running his hands through it. Or like someone else had. Zach was a little jealous.

And definitely at the too drunk to properly regulate himself stage if he was getting kind of turned on just looking at other guys. Especially the ones he saw, like, every day. That was bad news bears, and sober Zach had really good reasons for not going there. Drunk Zach kind of thought sober Zach needed to loosen the fuck up, but at least he wasn't so drunk that he couldn't have that argument with himself entirely silently and inside his own head. Phew.

"Guys," he said, and hoped he wasn't slurring as badly as he sort of thought he was. "Guys, I gotta go, I'm going home, I'm done."

There was a pause while those words landed, and were digested.

"Good idea," Josh said, "I think. I mean, me too."

"I lost my keys," Nuti said, very sadly. "I think I left them with Seth and Ryan? But we haven't seen them in forever."

"You can crash at our place," Zach offered. They had a spare couch, and also it wasn't like they didn't both have king size beds, too. It wouldn't be the first time he'd bunked in with a drunk teammate. No big deal.

"We should all go back," Sedsy agreed, and Zach couldn't remember if he'd offered or if they'd been talking about something else as well. If the worst came to the worst then they could just play drunk Mario Kart in the living room until people sobered up, and he'd made worse decisions than that in college, so. Good plan.

"Let's go," he announced, and stood up, weaving just the slightest bit as he made his way to the door, the other guys a heavily-muscled and louder than they needed to be trail of ducklings behind him.

The shock of the cold air outside helped speed up the sobering-up process, and he was just about to pull out his phone to call for a car, or maybe flag down a cab if he could, although New Years sucked for that, when he heard raised voices from the alley beside the bar.

There were four of them, and even if they were all various degrees of drunk they could still handle themselves—okay, Zach mostly meant Josh could, but it was basically the same thing overall—so Zach had no qualms about walking over to check it out, just wanting to make sure that no one needed help or something.

He exchanged a look with Josh, and he was definitely sober enough to know that Josh was on his level there, awesome, so they turned and went back that way, coming around the corner of the brickwork front to see that there were indeed people having an argument there.

It was just that the people having the argument were Will and Alex, in Swedish, and that Alex's way of trying to win an argument apparently involved sticking his tongue down Will's throat.

Zach's eyebrows tried to escape up into his hair.

"Um," he said, very quietly, and did not look at Josh, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with him watching the same drama play out.

Will appeared to be more than happy to kiss Alex back at first, but then he yanked himself away and shook his fist, like an angry dad in a sitcom, and yelled, in English that time, "And that's exactly what I was talking about, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" Alex yelled back. "What's wrong with you—" and then either Zach or Josh must have moved enough to register in his peripheral vision, because he whipped his head around to stare at them, eyes wide.

"Uh, what—?" he started to ask, so clearly trying to think of how to ask how long they'd been standing there, and Zach froze like a deer in headlights.

Josh, thankfully, didn't have that problem. "We were looking for Sedsy," he said, voice a little higher than usual. "And he's not here, so we're going to go. Find him."

"Right," Alex said, looking like he wasn't sure he believed them but was going to accept the lie for all of their peace of mind. "Uh, do you want our help?"

"I think we're good," Josh said, tugging at Zach's arm to get him moving, and he muttered under his breath just loud enough for Zach to hear, "unless it's help finding a room that's so soundproof we don't have to hear anyone else's drama." Zach snorted laughter and then tried to regain a straight face, glancing guiltily at Will, who was just staring fixedly at Alex. Okay, they were probably… going to be fine, whenever they got sick of yelling. Zach was cool leaving them to it.

"Bye," Zach said, his lips numb and buzzing, and he and Josh nearly tripped over each other in their haste to get out of there.

"Thank fuck you think fast," Zach said, because that seemed much safer than discussing how they'd seen Wenny and Wild Bill kissing, and looking like it was not the first time. Shit, Zach was kind of jealous. Fuck his life, honestly.

"Did you find out what was going on?" Sedsy asked, by the time they got back to him. He had Nuti wrapped around him like a tangled vine, still grinning broadly, his cheeks pink with the combined effect of the cold and his blood alcohol level.

"Uh, yeah," Zach said. "There, um. It looked like everyone was okay."

"Let's just go back to our place," Josh said, and the four of them piled into the next cab that stopped, managed to scrape together enough cash to cover it, and then poured into their apartment not all that much later.

"Video games?" Zach suggested, out of habit.

"Cool," Sedsy said, and Nuti yawned, and slid closer to Zach on the couch, noticeably drooping. He wasn't as bony as Dylan was or Brad liked to pretend he was, so Zach didn't mind. He wasn't totally tracking whatever Josh was doing with the XBox by then, either, but he and Sedsy sounded happy enough, so Zach decided he could just close his eyes for a minute, and then find the energy to go crawl into bed or whatever.

On reflection, as he woke up later that morning, his eyes gummy and mouth tasting like he'd licked the tiles in the locker room, he probably should have remembered those were always famous last words.

Then again, he sure hadn't been the only one.

Snoring was coming from the other end of the room, where Josh was slumped down in the arm chair, his mouth open and a blanket half over his lap; Sedsy was sprawled out full length on the couch with his feet in Zach's lap, and Nuti had clearly rolled off the couch and made a bed on the floor with the discarded cushions, and was rolled like a burrito in the throw rug. Thank god they kept the heat pretty high, or Zach would've woken up freezing a lot earlier. As it was, he didn't think he was going to puke, and that was about as good as it would get. They all had to be looking a little rough, he figured.

The TV was showing the main menu for the XBox, with the volume muted and the graphics shedding faintly blue light over Nuti's features, enough that Zach could see his eyelids twitching a little as he dreamed. So someone had been awake long enough to get about halfway through turning shit off, but not enough to get anyone to an actual bed.

They were probably all going to regret that, later.

Even with the creeping edges of the hangover he'd well and truly earned starting to clamor in his head, though, Zach decided he was pretty okay with this, actually. They'd had a good night. A good time. A good year. So now they just had to keep working and make the New Year just as good, or even better.

[]

The apartment was quiet as Ryan let himself back in, no sound to indicate whether anyone else was still there or not, although Boone's keys were still hanging on their sideboard, which seemed to suggest he hadn't gone out at all.

The pair of shoes tucked neatly beside the coat rack that didn't belong to Ryan or Boone was another hint, not that Ryan was surprised at all that Saader was still there. He wasn't sure whether he was about to find them both sacked out in the living room napping in front of the TV or… elsewhere, though.

He glanced into the living room briefly, just put his head through the doorway long enough to scope out the lay of the land and found the couch deserted, the cushions neatly stacked down one end and the remote left on the coffee table.

That answered most of Ryan's questions, since if they were in the kitchen he'd have heard them talking by now, and if they were anywhere else in the apartment—

Well, then they were in Boone's room. And there was only one thing that meant.

"Get it, Boone," Ryan thought to himself, a little impressed and more than a little relieved.

Saader and Boone had been dancing around each other for a couple weeks now, and Ryan was honestly shocked nothing much had happened before, since it was clear to anyone with eyes and a functioning brain that they were into each other. And he'd picked up enough cautious little looks from Saader than he figured Boone had to have reassured him by now that Ryan wasn't an issue if they were going to pursue anything more than just flirting whenever they didn't think anyone was watching.

He would, in fact, be happy for the both of them more than anything else.

Sure, Ryan had been hooking up with Boone on and off pretty much since they both made the team. Since before they'd spent half a season on IR together, even. He should probably have guessed that that would strain their relationship in some ways as well deepening it, that much time together feeling kind of cut off from the world and even from the team, watching time go by and hoping they'd be able to catch up to it again.

That year had mostly sucked, but if nothing else, after getting through it Ryan also had complete confidence—in that if not necessarily in a whole lot of other things—that the two of them could maintain their friendship and closeness through just about everything. Boone hooking up with a different teammate wasn't going to damage that at all.

Ryan liked having Boone in his bed, and he was never going to be sad to come home to him, as a partner or just as a good friend, but he didn't need a romantic partner to be the most important person in his life. Or, maybe it was more accurate to say that he didn't need to be sleeping with Boone for the two of them to work together as a team just fine. It had taken a little more working out than Ryan had expected, shifting back from sleeping together regularly to something more platonic, but he was happier this way, and Boone seemed to be doing okay too, which was all that either of them could ask for, really.

It didn't hurt that he and Jonesy had slid into an easy, no-strings-attached just buddies helping each other out type of arrangement practically since the trade had gone down.

Ryan had wanted to help Seth feel more at home in Columbus, and the two of them had clicked immediately, so it had just felt… right. And Ryan liked sex, he just—didn't necessarily want it to go along with a relationship. Boone might've cracked jokes at the time about wanting to watch—Ryan sympathized, Seth was fucking hot and he'd want to watch too if he wasn't getting that already—but hadn't pushed it when Jonesy had looked a little uncomfortable and started deflecting the conversation back towards hockey.

Ryan sure didn't have any complaints; he was getting laid when he felt like it and any time him and Boone felt like they needed to reconnect they could just hole up in their living room with a movie and ignore the rest of the world. And Seth was getting laid any time he didn't want to make the effort of going out to pick up, and he didn't seem to want any more commitment from Ryan than the courtesy of leaving a toothbrush in his bathroom and a change of clothes in the dresser for if he wound up sleeping over without planning to.

Their system might be a little weird but it worked; it worked for all of them so far, and hopefully whatever Boone and Saader were going to have between them wasn't going to change that at all. It was all good.

Boone had been hot for Saader since practically the moment that trade had been announced; Ryan had given him shit for it at first, asked him if he'd been thinking dirty things about him even when he was still a Hawk, and the way Boone had blushed before claiming that Ryan was seeing things had been incredibly funny as well as gratifying. He hadn't been sure Saader would look back, though, and the fact it'd taken well over a year for them to get on the same page was kind of flooring.

So, really, Ryan was kind of thrilled to get home and find Saader barefoot and a little bleary in the kitchen, his hair standing on end like someone had been running their hands through it. There was a faint mark on his neck just covered by the collar of his shirt, and he was wearing the sheer helpless, mildly glazed and entirely happy look of a man who'd just rolled out of bed after getting well fucked.

Or whatever it was he and Boone had been doing; Ryan wasn't going to ask or speculate on the exact details. But whatever had happened, Saader had gotten off. Good for him, Ryan thought, although he couldn't quite resist the urge to let him twist in the wind for a moment or two first. Ryan didn't chirp people much, but that wasn't the same as 'never' and that really was just too good an opportunity to miss.

Saader was a good sport about it, at least.

By the time Boone wandered out to join them—looking more awake than Saader had, but also wearing a lot less clothing, not that Ryan wasn't used to him prowling the apartment closer to naked than not—Ryan had almost forgotten the undercurrent to the evening. He and Saader had thrown together a decent dinner for all three of them, something a little fancier than they'd usually bother with, which Ryan figured was appropriate enough, but easy to handle with just two of them in the kitchen.

"Smells good," Boone said easily, swatting at Ryan's ass as he walked past, before following that up by pressing up against Saader's back, chin hooked over his shoulder so he could look down at the pot Brandon was stirring.

"Yeah, it'll be done soon," Ryan said. "You could set the table, since we did all the actual work."

"You could've woken me up earlier," Boone complained, mostly putting it on, but Ryan could see the traces of concern around the edges of his expression, the tension around his brow, the way he bit his lip before realizing and making himself stop.

"You were probably more use in there," Saader said, somehow managing to keep a straight face, teasing Boone with considerably more aplomb than Ryan would have quite expected.

"It's okay," Ryan couldn't resist adding, "You can admit Saader wore you out."

Boone gave him a betrayed look that lost nothing in intensity for all that Ryan knew they both knew he was chirping him just for the sake of it.

Brandon just looked smug, and Ryan thought again that yeah, he and Boone probably were a good match. And Saader needed someone to shake him up a little, to lighten things up before he got all quiet and broody again. He'd never given less than a hundred percent, Ryan wouldn't dream of thinking that Brandon let things off the ice affect how he played; he was too professional for that. But there'd been some rough moments the year before for all of them, and the way Boone and Saader seemed to bounce off each other seemed like it could only improve things for all of them.

"Well," Ryan said, after Boone spent a good minute or two trying to look annoyed but mostly looking like he was thinking more about how Saader had worn him out and how soon he could do it again. Boone was not hard to read. "I'm gonna leave you guys to it. Uh, remember to turn off the lights in the living room after you leave this time, huh?"

"We're not going to—" Brandon started to say, before thinking the better of it. "I mean, you can hang out for a bit, Murrs."

Ryan noted that Brandon wasn't actually denying that he wanted Boone to himself later there. They really were well attuned.

"Eh, I figure you guys might still need to talk," Ryan said. "You can probably do that better without an audience."

It was Boone's turn to look sheepish then, and Ryan privately congratulated himself for reading that accurately.

"Yeah, probably true," Boone said. "Night, Murrs."

Ryan dropped his plate in the sink—Boone could also damn well load the dishwasher later, Ryan wasn't at all ditching them both to avoid extra chores—and headed back to his own room, half-turning and waving good night to both of them from the door way.

Behind him, he could hear Boone start talking, the low bass rumble of his voice carrying and giving away tone and emotion if not necessarily every individual word. It sounded like he was starting by explaining what his relationship with Ryan these days was, which was probably smart. Ryan knew they still came across kind of—well, not Wild Bill-and-Wenny level codependent, but not that far off, but it was going to be important for Saader to know where he stood with Boone, and with Ryan himself. And Ryan trusted him, didn't worry at all about Brandon knowing these things. He had a feeling Brandon was going to fit in to their lives in this new role just fine. He was kind of a natural.

Chapter Text

[]

Saader was hunched over in his stall, completely separate from the rest of the guys who were fooling around and laughing over something, closed off in a way Nick didn't remember seeing him be since, well.

Since he'd gotten traded there in the first place.

He'd looked normal a few minutes ago, enough that Nick had hardly noticed him. Hadn't worried about him in the slightest, because generally speaking—even with the way Torts had been giving him a hard time at the start of the season—you didn't need to worry about Saader. Saader was a good kid, no, a good adult, who knew how to handle himself and what he was doing.

Or at least, that's what Nick had always figured, and maybe he'd been rushing to some conclusions there.

It sure looked like Saader needed something right then.

"Hey, Saader," he said, walking back over and giving his shoulder a nudge to get his attention. He was pretty sure he could've said anything and it wouldn't have gotten through to Brandon without that little bit of extra connection, grounding him back into the moment. "Good game, eh?"

"Yeah, not bad," Brandon said, although if Nick had a guess he'd say that was on autopilot more than anything else. God knew they all had a rolodex in their heads of comments that would always work, always sound right even if they weren’t fully engaged in the moment. He was almost surprised Brandon hadn’t added something about getting pucks deep.

"Okay there?" Nick asked, keeping his voice light, casual.

Giving Brandon some deniability if he needed it.

Nick had only been a captain for a year—god, and it had felt like ten, some days—but he knew his room well enough to know when that was the kind of thing that was called for, and this felt like it.

He thought back through the game, couldn't think of anything he'd seen or heard that would've put Brandon so deeply into his own head like this, didn't remember him looking odd on the bench or anything like that.

He'd just seemed normal; the same quiet, determined, steady as ever Saader, sliding down the bench beside Nick and Wenny, jumping over the boards whenever Torts gave them the go ahead. It had been a good win, and yeah, that felt good, but there wasn't anything else he could point to.

"Kind of a weird day," Brandon said eventually, almost quieter than usual, too. "It's fine, man, don't worry."

His eyes flicked away for just a second to his phone, sticking out the edge of his pile of clothes, and Nick didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to put that one together.

But it didn't look like Brandon wanted to talk about it, whatever it was, so he could at least do him the courtesy of letting him be. And if this dragged on past a day or two, well. Nick could intervene a bit more determinedly then. But for the moment, he needed to get Saader out of his head, or at least back on track in a different way, so distraction was probably the best option.

Luckily he had a whole lot of that at his disposal.

"Okay," Nick said, pumping a little more positivity into his tone than he actually felt.

He was kind of glad once again that Saader lived next door, and not just for the occasional babysitting services and the more occasional—albeit more often than he was going to admit to their nutritionists—afternoon cookie deliveries that happened whenever Brandon decided to stress-bake.

They had a day or so before their next game, so yeah, Nick'd keep an eye on him, maybe pop over and ask him to come by for dinner or something like that. Just in case.

[]

Brandon forced a smile—it wasn't as hard as it could've been, because they'd won.

It helped that he could tell that Fliggy was checking up on him out of a genuine sense of concern, which was nice, if also kind of embarrassing, so mostly Brandon just hoped he could play the moment off.

"Seriously, don't worry about it. Hey, how're the kids doing anyway? I feel like it's been a while since I've visited you guys. Is Milana taller than Sonny yet?"

"Fuck you," Sonny yelled cheerfully from the other side of the room, his sharp ears picking out his name just like Brandon had pitched it for him to do, and just like that, the subject changed to a five-way chirp fest.

Brandon figured he was doing well enough to get out of that one mostly unscathed, really.

With just over a day off between games, it was harder to avoid his own thoughts the next morning.

Not, of course, that Brandon was dwelling or anything like that, but he'd been fighting a low-level sense of vague sadness for a week or two now, one that was entirely at odds with what was going on in his life.

Because considered in isolation, things were going pretty fucking great for him, really.

Admittedly, not getting much time on the powerplay these days wasn't ideal, and he wasn't stacking up the points as fast as he had done last year, but on a personal level he was still doing okay, and the team was doing okay too, winning more than they lost, and not looking too shabby at all.

And he fit in with the team now, in a way that he hadn't the year before, feeling like he was all sharp edges, all broken teeth and hurt and disappointment.

It hadn't been just him then, and he knew that, but at the time it'd felt like that had spilled over to the rest of the team too, cloying hopelessness that threatened to drag them all down until it seemed like nothing would go right when it really mattered.

But dwelling on the past wasn't going to help—they were winning games now, clicking in a way that Brandon hadn't experienced for a couple years now, not since the first Cup, the team that had felt like a cohesive whole, like more than the sum of their parts; felt like they were destined for something greater.

He kept getting tastes of that sensation again, feeling it wriggle in deep into his nerves: like a glimpse out of the corner of his eye or a certainty that settled deep in his belly and nestled up against his backbone, but it was so frustratingly intermittent that he couldn’t settle into it or trust it.

And it was hard not to get distracted sometimes.

So once again, Brandon caught himself sitting in a corner of the dressing room, half-ignoring his linemates, poking at the feeling like it was a sore tooth, a quiet ache underlying the rush of joy.

Messages from ex-teammates—no matter how friendly—didn't help that feeling, either; they made the sense of being off-balance even more acute.

Worse than that, he’d started to suspect it was holding him back a little, whatever was weighing on him. It kept springing to mind at odd moments when he'd never really had trouble keeping his focus on the ice before when things were going okay.

But ever since the World Cup, he'd felt like something was off, like they'd taken a wrong turn, and everything was just ever so slightly out of place. Missing the first full moon of the NHL season hadn't helped, probably.

That whole tournament should have been unalloyed fun, even if they hadn't made the semifinals—and Brandon had wanted to, badly.

It would've been a hell of a ride to go up against Team Canada with the rest of those guys, and he still thinks they would have surprised a few people, but even playing with Tro again for the first time in years hadn't quite scratched the itch.

And that was the thing that gave him a few hints about what his actual problem was, enough so that he kept avoiding the subject even inside the privacy of his own head, because playing with Tro was the next best thing to playing with Leds, and—

And Brandon really had to stop letting his imagination take him there.

Every game now it seemed to take an effort to get his focus mostly back on track: to stick to working hard and then enjoying the ways that was working out for all of them. It helped to let himself lean in to the way the team was gelling, all of them pulling in the same direction, even if sometimes it was scrappy and wild and a runaway tear that only just barely stayed on course.

Sometimes those wild, could've gone any way games were almost more fun than the ones where it didn't feel like the outcome was ever in doubt.

What could Brandon say, he liked to work for what he got.

But it felt too good not to wallow a little in the good feelings as they started putting more than a couple of wins together; Tampa bleeding into the Avs and the Yotes and the Red Wings, and by the time the Isles rolled into town, the Jackets had won five in a row for the first time in—Brandon didn't like to think how long.

Last season was definitely still a little too fresh.

The schedule for once wasn't kind, though; they got in late after the game in Detroit, with the Isles on the second half of their own back to back. And Brandon could come up with as many half-baked ideas as he liked, sitting on the plane and trying to work out ways to at least snatch enough time to grab coffee or something, but there was no denying reality; no matter how he sliced it there wasn't going to be any time to meet up with friends or ex-teammates before or after that.

No matter how much he wanted to.

It was just Brandon, looking up from the bench to see Leddy on the other side of the ice, game face on, the combination of his visor and the beard hiding most of his expression.

"This is stupid," Brandon told himself silently, but he wasn't very convincing at it, and he definitely fumbled the puck a few times in the first before he could quite get his head back in the game.

The rest of the team seemed to be in similar straits; slowly shaking off the late night the day before and a tough game at the Joe. The Isles tied it in the second, their bench hollering in relief, and it felt like the whole game—and the streak—hung in the balance.

Brandon didn't think he was imagining the sharp look he got from Fligs in the intermission, or the one that the whole team got, the one that made it obvious he was weighing up whether he needed to say something to the room. He seemed to come down on the side of not, and it was a clear enough message in his body language that even that hint seemed to do the trick, to Brandon's surprise and delight.

Something about that look shook enough of the cobwebs and doubt out of his head that he put his jersey and pads back on before heading out in something that was the opposite of a daze, everything looking sharp and high definition, clearer than his mind or his heart had been in days.

Brandon sat down on the bench when they came out for the third, hummed along with the music on the PA and thought to himself, "We're winning this game," and it came with a certainty that he couldn’t even pretend to deny, a clarity he hadn't felt for a long time.

And then he looked up to catch Leddy looking right over at him, and not at whoever he was supposed to be covering on the wing.

Brandon froze for a second, once again feeling all the things that look inspired, all the things they’d never talked about crowding up his throat—and then he tore his gaze away and focused back on the game.

Just in time, too, to jump up with everyone else as Andy scored six seconds later, a beauty off an egregious giveaway by the Isles.

Brandon wasn't going to feel responsible for that; if he could throw Nick off that easily then he should be using it for the game. It probably had nothing to do with him anyway, everyone fucked up sometimes.

He knew that well enough.

He did stare at his phone in the locker room afterward for a good five minutes waiting to see if Nick had messaged him, even just to say hi before they headed for their bus or whatever. But it wasn't like Brandon could blame him for not wanting to stick around longer after losing 6-2.

And it wasn't like Brandon in any way regretted his own goal, either. But at least that one hadn't been at Nick's expense, almost single-handedly.

They had a few days at home after that game at least, time to run errands and catch their breath and get in some actual practice that wasn’t just reviewing tape and trying to get the powerplay sparking more consistently.

[]

Brandon appreciated what Fligs was trying to do, he really did. And it wasn’t at all that he was moping, or at least he sure didn’t want to call it that, he’d just—

Been feeling more and more unsettled, as their season went on.

It was good that they were doing so much better this year; things had been clicking like they really hadn’t last year, or at least not since the pre-season. Blowing out an Original Six team 10-0 had been a hell of a good time, and watching the fans celebrate in the stands had made that even better. And now they were sitting pretty in the standings, winning more than they were losing, picking up OT points even if they did lose; it was hard not to feel positive.

Brandon felt like they were on the verge of something big, something important, like they had the next step just tantalizingly within reach.

And all of that was great, it was exactly what he’d been working for, except the more that they found success on the ice, the hollower it made it feel going home to an empty house, to a quiet life that meant he was almost always the fifth wheel at dinner with friends.

It wasn’t that he necessarily needed to come home to someone every single night, but—the option would be nice.

He was self-aware enough to know that it wasn’t really a coincidence that he always seemed to wind up back in this mood—a little sad and regretful—whenever they had the Isles coming up soon. Whenever Leds messaged him, whether it was a general ‘hey how are ya?’ or the messages they exchanged figuring out plans to meet up whenever they were in the same place. It was pretty much any time he thought about Nick for more than a second, the helpless yearning born of knowing that they’d been close for so many years and nothing more than that had ever happened. Brandon wasn’t sure if it would have, or maybe more importantly if it would’ve been a good idea, but he’d certainly wanted it.

He’d wanted Nick practically since the moment they’d met, and spending two years on the same team—winning a Cup together and then coming heartbreakingly close to a second—had been amazing and more than a little torturous at times.

So yeah, maybe it meant he got a little quiet sometimes if he was talking to Nick, vanished inside his own head even in the noise and tumult of a happy locker room, but at least no one other than Fligs seemed to have noticed.

And Brandon could grab a drink or something with Leds after they played the Isles in a couple weeks, could push down his too-raw feelings and just enjoy the fact he got to see him, and that would have to be enough.

As it turned out, someone other than Fliggy had, in fact, noticed.

Wenny didn’t say anything in so many words, but he did make a point of inviting Brandon to dinner with him and Wild Bill the next day, and then every other day when they were on the road, eating their bodyweight in sushi in Colorado and again in Arizona, however weird it felt to do that in the desert. It was good, though, and the company was even better, and Brandon felt himself start to relax and unwind in the sunshine, the break—however brief—from the depths of winter.

Dinner after their shootout win in Glendale turned into at least one more drink than had been particularly wise at the hotel bar afterwards, and Brandon was absolutely going to blame that for what happened next.

The three of them had wound up back in Wenny’s room, just watching an episode of some sitcom that Will insisted was hilarious, and Brandon had said goodnight and headed towards his own room after realizing that he was definitely too drunk to follow something in Swedish even with subtitles.

And then he’d got to the door, felt his back pocket, and realized that his keycard must have fallen out when they’d been sitting on the bed.

He weighed up going back to reception to get a new one, but Alex’s room was only two doors down, and Brandon was tired.

The door hadn’t fully closed behind him, he realized, and so didn’t think twice about just pushing it open again, starting to say, “Hey, did I leave—”

He’d stopped then, about one step and four words too late, coming around the corner of the room to see Alex in Will’s lap, leaning back and looking more than a little flushed, his hands still on Will’s shoulders.

It was obvious what he’d interrupted, would’ve been even if Brandon had been a lot drunker or a lot straighter. He was lost for words for a second, fumbling for the right ones, for a way to say ‘it’s okay’ and ‘me too’ without either freaking them out or making it sound like he was hitting on them.

He’d enjoyed hanging out with them both more; they were both fun, low stress, low key guys who were easy to talk to, and he’d enjoyed getting closer to both of them. It wasn’t like there weren’t jokes about how close they were, how they were essentially attached at the hip, and they’d both made enough of those jokes about themselves that Brandon had thought that meant it was just a close friendship, that everything was just easy.

It was disorienting to see, from this perspective, that maybe all of that had been self-protection rather than anything else.

And he’d waited a moment too long to speak, because Alex scrambled out of Will’s lap and started to say, “Saader, uh—” holding both hands out in wordless request, a faint panic in his eyes.

Shame at what he’d made them think—even if only for a second—helped Brandon find his words, and the alcohol made it easy to be all too honest in them.

“Hey, congrats,” Brandon said, keeping his voice low, and very glad he’d heard the door click closed behind him. “I’m happy for you guys, I just, uh, think I left my room key here?”

Alex blinked at him, and now that he’d moved, Brandon could see Will as well, his expression tight, teeth digging into his lip.

“Saader, are you—? Do you want to talk first? We, uh.” Will trailed off, and sent Alex a look that Brandon couldn’t read.

“God, I miss that,” Brandon blurted out, and he winced as both Alex and Will pinned him with identical looks. Those ones, he could read.

“You don’t seem terribly surprised?” Alex said, feeling his way cautiously into the conversation.

Brandon shrugged.

“I’d wondered, but, like. It’s your life, I’m not gonna be a dick and speculate in front of anyone, or, uh. Tell anyone else. I get it, you know?”

“You get it?” Will was a little scary when he focused that hard, and Brandon had never been fond of being the center of attention, not really. He wanted to be good enough, wanted to be the best, but he didn’t want to talk about it or have to look back at all the people looking at him. And he’d quite happily spend time telling his teammates they were kind of adorable, and apparently dealing really well with hooking up or maybe actually being boyfriends, and Brandon could deal with his envy on his own time goddammit, but he really wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about anything to do with himself then or maybe ever.

Of course, his traitorous mouth never got that message from his brain, or maybe it’d just gotten lost somewhere in amongst all the sparkling wine.

“Being worried what people think, if you’re with a teammate,” Brandon said. “I mean, I’ve never actually—but I thought about it.”

He could see both of them relax as his words sank in, and that was something nice, at least. Something not mortifying and not about him really, he just wanted to reassure them it was fine.

“I bet the rest of the team would be cool too,” he added. “But I would never tell anyone, okay?”

“Thank you,” Alex said, and Will felt around on the bed beside him—Brandon tried not to notice how messed up the covers were, and how had he never stopped to think about the fact they shared a room and one of the beds always looked perfectly made up, and apparently it wasn’t just because Alex was a neat freak who made his own bed every time—and came up with Brandon’s room key, with a triumphant little “hah!”

“Anyway, uh, thanks, good night,” Brandon said, all in a rush, and plucked the card out of Will’s hand before retreating to his own room, his thoughts all topsy-turvy.

The fact that he knew seemed to loosen up whatever last barrier there had been in their friendship, and Brandon found himself with a standing invite for dinner at their place, counted himself privileged that they apparently felt safe around him. The quick thoughtless touches he’d been used to seeing them exchange turned into more intimate glimpses; the way Alex dropped a kiss on Will’s lips in apology whenever he beat him at FIFA, Will’s hand on Alex’s bare back as he walked around him in the kitchen to make lunch one day, and god, was Alex allergic to clothing or something, because Brandon had spent a year and a bit on the same team and never realized he was practically a nudist in his off time?

Not that they weren’t both easy on the eyes, of course.

But as much as Brandon appreciated their openness with him, it pushed into stark relief that he didn’t have anything like this, and god, god did he want it.

He sighed as he ran through that same set of thoughts for the umpteenth time, and then startled as Will poked at his biceps with his index finger and demanded, “What’s going on, Saader?”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “We fed you lunch and gave you coffee and you still look sad. Again, like you keep doing.”

“Hey,” Brandon tried to deflect. “It’s nothing, I appreciate that you guys keep letting me third wheel or whatever—” and apparently they were both way too smart for his brand of bullshit, because they had another one of those silent couple conversations with their eyebrows and then Will said, painfully gently, “Who are you missing, Saader?”

“Nick,” he sighed, and then at their vaguely scandalized expressions—Jesus, he didn’t mean Fliggy, and he was going to knock that idea right on the head immediately—he added, “Leddy.”

“Aha,” Alex said, illuminated, and “Hrm,” Will said.

Brandon blinked.

They were taking that a little more calmly than he’d quite expected. And for all that he’d been trying to reassure them that he was cool, that he knew where they were coming from, that it was okay—

It was also the first time he’d clearly, explicitly mentioned another man that he was interested in to them.

“You know, this explains a lot,” Will said.

Brandon felt his eyebrows reach practically to his hair line.

“Excuse me?”

“He looks at you,” Alex said, just as Will added, “You’re always weird when we play the Isles.”

Brandon’s throat was dry all of a sudden.

“I—what?”

“You get all quiet and mopey and then you vanish for hours when we are in New York,” Will said.

Alex let him finish and said, “And he looks at you, even when you’re not his guy to cover, and I know he turned the puck over at least twice last time we played them when our line was on the ice, which I just thought was, uh—” he stopped dead there, probably realizing it wasn’t exactly polite to point out the potential defensive shortcomings of the object of Brandon’s affections.

And then Brandon’s brain screeched to a halt as it finished putting all of that together the way Alex had intended it to be heard, too.

“He looks at me?”

Alex gave him a look like he was a cute, but very slow child, and said, “Well, I don’t think he was looking at Fliggy.”

Brandon swallowed hard, his mouth dry. He wanted to believe Wenny, he really did, he just wasn’t sure he could let himself. It would be too crushing to be wrong.

Will was giving him a similar look, but with a bit more visible sympathy, and Brandon tried not to look too pathetically grateful about that.

“You gotta tell him, Saader. One of you has to be the first person to say something.”

“Easy for you to say,” Brandon grumbled, and then felt ashamed as Alex and Will exchanged a look before Wenny said, a little too gently, “It wasn’t, actually. But it was worth it,” and the expression on his face as he looked at Will had his whole heart in his eyes, right there on offer.

Brandon wasn’t sure whether he was more uncomfortable or jealous.

Whichever option it was, he knew that he didn’t need to hang around while they were looking at each other like that, so he mumbled goodbyes and beat a hasty retreat, heading home to stretch out on the couch and stare at the ceiling, contemplating risks, rewards and the irrationality of leaping before you’d really taken a good look around.

Brandon had always been cautious, careful, ready to back himself but not necessarily to wholly seize the initiative unless he knew it was what was wanted.

So maybe this was one of those times, he thought, and fell into an uneasy sleep, still wrestling with the idea.

Almost before he knew it, the Islanders game was upon them.

They finished up in Detroit—got Zach a win at home and kept their streak alive, getting to respectable numbers on both fronts now—and then Brandon couldn’t actually pretend anymore like he was going to make a plan and work things out, he was just going to have to wing it.

Sitting in the players lounge, he just stared at his phone, the text open on it, Nick’s invitation to grab lunch with him before the game. He’d said yes, but he still wasn’t sure if he should give Nick a heads up that anything else was going to be on the table, or if he should beg off, or—what.

He managed to sit there long enough for someone else to notice, which would’ve been worse if it had been anyone other than Will.

For once, he was without his shadow, Wenny off somewhere else; Brandon didn’t quite want to ask, even if it would’ve bought him a couple of seconds of distraction.

“Going to see your boy?” Will asked, nudging at Brandon’s ankle with the toe of his shoe.

“He’s not my boy,” Brandon said automatically and Will barked a laugh and shook his head.

“He kinda is.”

“You want to ask him about that?” Brandon asked, a little testy. He didn’t actually want that, and in fact the idea of anyone talking to Nick about this made him want to crawl under the stands at Nationwide and never make eye contact with anyone ever again, but a lifetime of being the little brother and the frequent target of chirping meant that it was hard to let anyone else have the last word sometimes.

“Think that one’s all on you, Brandon,” Will said, and somehow the fact he was using Brandon’s actual name made it all seem so much more real.

“Ughhh,” Brandon said and put his head down on the table, hoping no one had spilled anything gross on there recently.

“That’s the spirit,” Will said, and wandered off again.

With friends like that, Brandon wasn’t sure why he needed—well, he didn’t exactly have enemies, but still. It wasn’t exactly helpful.

He met Nick for lunch, still undecided on how he was going to play any of this after all. They got through two courses while Brandon was still turning over in his mind the way it felt when they were together, versus how much it would suck to never get even that much again, versus how happy Will and Wenny looked together, and god, Brandon wanted that. He really, really did.

And so maybe it had to be worth the risk, after all.

“Saader?” Nick said, kicking him lightly under the table. Not nearly so hard as any of his teammates or the other ex-Hawks would have, Brandon noted with a rueful grin. “You’re a million miles away today, what gives?”

Nick sounded sincere, concerned, but there was a little flicker of something in his expression—something like fear, or something like hope, and Brandon was pretty sure he recognized that from his own mirror, and that gave him the kick in the ass he’d needed all day.

“It’s—not nothing,” he allowed. “But not here. You got time to swing past my place for a few minutes before heading back to the hotel?”

“Of course,” Nick said, not even looking at his watch, like he was going to just say yes whenever Brandon needed him to, and that—

That was also pretty reassuring, Brandon had to admit.

They didn’t talk much in the car, just commented on the weather, the inability of other drivers to navigate the one way streets—”I don’t even live here and I know you can’t turn there,” Nick said with disgust, and Brandon snorted—and very carefully didn’t mention the game that was now only about six hours away. It was always easier not to talk about that part until after it’d happened.

Nick followed Brandon into the house, right on his heels; kicked off his shoes in the hall and hung his coat up, but he didn’t let Brandon keep moving to get settled in the kitchen or in the living room before reaching out to grab his elbow, keeping him right there.

“You wanna tell me what’s up?” Nick said softly, his brows creased, like Brandon was worrying him, and Brandon felt all of two feet tall.

“I need to tell you something. Ask you something,” he corrected, and found that he couldn’t look away all of a sudden. He was caught in the direct gaze of Nick’s warm hazel eyes, pinned in place, and the only thing he could think to do was to be wholly, entirely honest.

“I don’t want to just get dinner or whatever whenever we play each other,” he said.

“You don’t—?” Nick prompted. He hadn’t gotten what Brandon was trying to say, and god, Brandon wished he was better with words, but that wasn’t his forte, and Nick knew that at least, so hopefully he’d forgive him for being so clumsy with them.

“I want more, I want—what we were maybe leading up to, in Chicago. In Rockford. Like the way I thought you maybe wanted to, after the Cup, before Shawzy came in to throw himself and his beer onto us. I want the conversation we never had, that we should have. Uh, if you want that, of course. If you don’t—” and he never did get a chance to give Nick the option of an easy out, to say that of course he’d accept a no and never mention it again, because Nick didn’t even let him finish speaking before he’d launched himself at Brandon and pressed their mouths together, kissing him hard.

“I really hope that you were about to ask me out,” Nick said a couple seconds later, trying for deadpan but grinning too hard to really pull it off. “Because otherwise that was probably kinda inappropriate.”

“Nah, you read it right. You know," Brandon went on, the words coming short as his heartbeat echoed in his ears, feeling giddy and unmoored, like he was floating under water, "I almost convinced myself you didn't want this. Didn't want me."

Nick gaped at him, satisfyingly shocked, and Brandon felt so warm; overheated and flushed with affection and arousal and possibility. "You—I mean, I tried to hide it," he explained. "Because I didn't want to make things weird, or, you know, whatever. But I never didn't want you."

"Well," Brandon said, "Now we know."

"Yeah," Nick said, and they both stared at each other for a couple of seconds, grinning dumbly, closer than they'd been in years.

"Uh, so are we—doing something about this, maybe?" Nick quirked an eyebrow at him, and Brandon wouldn't have hesitated in the slightest to label what what was in his eyes as 'hope'. "Since that kinda seems like this is where this might be going."

Brandon felt weightless, free, buoyed by possibilities. "I think so?"

"Gonna let me kiss you properly, Saader?" Nick said, grinning even more broadly, his fingers light and so gentle as they hovered over Brandon's jawline, his other hand settling at Brandon's hip and tugging him closer, firm and easy.

"Sounds good to me," Brandon said, turning his face into Nick's hand, licking his lips and feeling heat building in his stomach, licking along his nerves and turning his spine to jelly. He could see the way Nick's gaze darted down to his mouth, too, appreciative and hot, and that was satisfying too, reassuring.

"Well here goes," Nick said, almost too quietly for him to hear, and Brandon started to smile, opened his mouth to agree with him, but then Nick's lips were pressed against his again, warm and solid, asking nothing more from him than what he'd always wanted.

Brandon made a noise he wasn't sure he could even describe, let alone repeat, and grabbed at Nick, dragging him closer, lips parted as his tongue pressed hesitantly against Nick's, pushed into his mouth.

It worked; something about it worked exactly right, the right chords in the right place, the right fit, an entire symphony of yes as Brandon clutched at Nick and kissed him with everything he had.

It stayed just kissing for longer than Brandon might have expected, thinking about it before.

Neither of them was new at this; kissing had been both a sign of affection and a prelude to more for years now for Brandon, and probably much the same for Nick. Sex wasn't new, but sex with each other was, or at least it was going to be, and even if maybe Brandon had imagined it; tipping into bed with Nick, patient and sweet and strong, proving his feelings with his hands and his mouth… well, it didn't quite happen, not then.

Which wasn't to say they stayed chaste and sweet, either.

Brandon got his hands on Nick's ass, thumbs digging into the muscle, feeling the way he moved against Brandon's palm, the rough way he exhaled into Brandon's mouth, the tiny whine of appreciation as Brandon leaned harder into him. And Nick got his hands right under Brandon's shirt, finding skin like he was laser-guided to it, his thumbs rough and nails biting ever so slightly into Brandon's back, thumping down the measure of his spine like he was counting his way back.

By the time they broke apart, slow and reluctant, it was with buzzing lips that felt a little swollen from pressure and time, and Brandon had a phantom ache in his jaw from finally releasing all the tension that he'd been holding onto for so, so long.

He very carefully didn't think too long about the other things he could do, eventually, to make his jaw ache instead.

"Yeah," Nick said, words burbling out of him. "I think we can say that worked, eh?"

"Uh, yeah," Brandon agreed, almost light-headed at how fast things were moving, and not complaining in the slightest.

Brandon missed the streak when it was over.

Obviously, of course he did: the more points you could rack up during the year the easier your path to the playoffs. And it was fun to win and fun to put up points, fun to get the attention and finally start getting the respect that they felt was due.

But no streak could last forever, and Brandon knew that.

Brandon and Nick had both learned that back in 2013; miles away and years ago, a streak that was impossibly even longer and more attention-getting, and one that had ended well enough for them, in the end. At the time, Brandon had thought the streak ended in Denver; gasping for breath as the time ticked off the clock and the elevation crushed them down and the score got worse and worse.

At least if they'd had to lose, he'd thought then, it should've been narrower, or flukier, anything but a complete blowout that set their teeth on edge as they stomped back into the dressing room after.

Then again, it wasn't like that experience hadn't prepared them for the playoffs, in the end. Coming crushingly close to the most disappointing crash out in the second round and then somehow, impossibly fighting through it, before swooping through California and past the Kings. And then before they could blink they’d been in Boston facing the Bruins and doing the impossible, so in comparison, just about anything else had to be possible, too.

Twenty four games in a row without losing in regulation had seemed crazy at the time. Sixteen in a row without losing full stop was a thing that Brandon wasn't sure he'd have even believed the Hawks could do, back when they were all at the top of their games and clicking like a well-oiled machine. It beggared comprehension.

And the Jackets had done that.

Sure, people were bitching them and saying it didn't count when they'd faced a few backup goalies and all, but it wasn't like there was any benefit to not taking advantage when people underestimated you. So yeah: they might've crashed out on a 4-0 shutout loss, and that fucking sucked, even if the score didn't really reflect the game no matter how grim Dubi had looked, blaming himself, but—they'd still had the streak to start with.

And if they could do that, then what else could they do if they believed in themselves?

They didn't get to see each other as often as they'd like: even in the same division there were only four games a year, and they’d run out most of the time they had in Columbus in that first rush of heady, overwhelming joy. They got lucky again the next time they were playing in New York; the Jackets getting in early while the Isles had the day off, the timing almost couldn't have been more perfect if they'd designed it.

So they were lucky, and then Brandon got lucky and it sounded like the worst kind of cliche, but as he rolled onto his back, sweaty and flushed, the sheets sticking to his back and so very gloriously, wonderfully tired, he thought that he couldn’t imagine anything he'd want more than this. Anything more than Nick sprawled out beside him, equally tired and sticky and honestly kind of gross, but also the best thing Brandon had ever seen, all at the same time.

They could have had it sooner, and Brandon was always going to be a little sorry they hadn't, but that got washed out by how glad and how grateful he was to have it then. How tremendously reassuring it was to know that this was what they had moving forward; moments like that, and ones even better; that they'd get to have each other, to have and to hold, to kiss and to just—be with, to sit by and talk to and be the plus-ones to each other's events as long as they were together.

There were so many ways still that it might get hard and it might be awkward, and that wasn’t even counting all the ones that came up only because Nick was Nick; because he wasn’t just another hockey player but also another man, but no matter what happened it was going to be worth it for Brandon.

Because Nick was Nick, and that really was all he needed.

[]

By the time they were about ready to head out on the road again, Brandon couldn't deny that he was starting to feel the surge of energy ahead of the full moon, itchy with it, wanting to claw off his own skin almost.

They'd be celebrating that—sort of—in Canada in a day or so, and he could tell himself that as many times as he liked, but his subconscious didn't seem to be getting the message at all, and Brandon was antsy in a way he couldn't remember having been for a couple of years now.

Maybe not even since he'd been a kid in Saginaw, changing with his team for the first time.

It felt like something that had been building up was reaching the point of over-saturation, like whatever was going on inside his head was starting to crystallize out of it, clear and obvious and unable to be ignored any more, no matter how hard he tried. And he couldn't tell if his conviction that he wasn't going to be able to get away with any of this for much longer was one born of necessity or something a little more ineffable.

Sometimes Brandon really, deeply, desperately wished that he could've been a werewolf or just a little bit psychic, rather than both.

There were some parts of living like that which didn't exactly promote a whole lot of synergy.

Back when they'd been in Rockford still, Shawzy had just looked at him silently for a few minutes after Brandon had told him, blinking owlishly, more serious than he tried to look anywhere that wasn't at home or in private, and said, "so you're all about the instincts, then, huh? That's cool, man."

Brandon hadn't ever thought of any of his whole deal as 'cool', but he'd also never been the type of guy who just rolled on merrily into the camp of 'following his instincts' blindly, so either Andy had been giving him too much credit or had been subtly needling him about the fact he didn't have his shit together anywhere near so much as the Hawks beat writers seemed to think.

Then again, it was Shawzy; it could've been both those options at the same time.

Brandon compromised somewhere between his sense of responsibility and the itch under his skin and drove out to the rink in the morning, did his usual workout and caught up with the trainers a bit, but by the time he was done with all of that he was still tapping his heel against the baseboard of his stall as he sat there chatting with Cam and Matty, beating out the kick drum part to the Stranger against the wood while his fingers shaped the chords on his knee.

"Oh my god, go for a run or go home and—and something," Cam said, looking pointedly at Brandon's fidgeting. "You're making me twitchy just looking at you, Saader, and you know that only goes one way."

"So you can dish it out but you can't take it, eh?" Brandon joked.

Cam threw a tape ball at him.

Brandon had probably deserved that, and he didn't think that going for a run was really going to help, not until they could get outdoors and run for real, and maybe even hunt—and god Brandon was grateful these days to be on a team that was almost all wolves, to feel that connection and that bond between them all so strong that he could almost taste it even when they were walking around on two feet.

"Full moon jitters, you know what it's like," Brandon said, like that excused it, like he was a rookie working up to his first couple of changes around the rest of the team and not a guy who'd been in the league for almost five years and a Blue Jacket for at least one blue moon.

"Hey," Cam said, very seriously, "if you need to come around and chase Easton around the yard for a while until you work this off, just let me know."

Brandon snorted. "Fuck off, Cam, I'm not exercising your dog for you. Go wolf and do it yourself if you wanna stay out of the snow or keep your feet dry."

Cam ducked his head in acknowledgment of the lost cause, and said, "Can't blame me for trying!", his tone bright and cheerful, and this time Brandon grinned right along with him.

Cam was an everlasting warm spot in the team dynamic, all presence and charisma that punched way above its weight class, both literally and figuratively; Brandon had been able to feel where Cam fit with the team from the second he'd walked in the door.

Finding his own spot had taken a little longer.

"You could always get Zach or Josh to do it," Brandon pointed out. "Or, wait. Do you think that counts as hazing?"

"Gonna go out on a limb here and say that the PA guide doesn't cover that one," Hartsy joked.

"We have plans," Josh yelled over his shoulder without even looking at them, and Brandon didn't need to be a psychic to mouth "video games" at Cam and be absolutely certain he was right.

"Maybe next time," Zach said, pitched a lot quieter, in his usual monotone, but Brandon got the impression he was being very subtly chirped all the same.

Zach was hard to read even as a wolf; they'd found that out the first full moon the team had had together after the season started.

Josh was easy to pick out of a crowd—big, brindled, full of boundless puppy enthusiasm, but Zach was just solidly there, quiet, and he hardly even flicked an ear when Josh tried to chase him around Fliggy's backyard or when Milana had tried to climb on him despite being reminded by her dad that she still needed to ask first, whether it was a doggy or a wolf she wanted to say hello to.

"Guess I'll just have to do my own dirty work then," Cam said, not sounding particularly worried about it. "Are you guys still playing COD or what?"

"Like you could keep up with them anyway," Brandon said, feeling like he should at least make the effort to chirp back and not too picky about his victims.

"Saader, how could you?" Cam said, all big eyes and wounded look, clutching his chest. "Us vets gotta stick together!"

"Yeah well, later guys," Brandon said, making an escape now that he had an opening, and giving them a wave over his shoulder as he headed out, the rest of the day stretching ahead of him, and Cam yelling something indistinct behind him.

They weren't due to leave for Edmonton until later that afternoon, riding the advantage of crossing a couple time zones and the fact they'd had a good practice the day before and weren't planning on a morning skate.

Brandon liked to keep his routines as much as anyone, but by December no one was complaining in the slightest about a little more time to recuperate off the ice, and he couldn't deny he was looking forward to the extra sleep. Plus whatever he got on the plane. It had been bad enough heading out for the Western Canada road swing from Chicago; add another hour and that made for a long plane ride. Especially if they were all going to be cooped up that close to the full moon.

On further thought, Brandon was pretty sure Torts had made the exact right move in trying to sweep every other possible distraction between them and the game out of their way: they'd all have so much energy pent up by the time they hit the ice that there were almost certainly going to be fireworks.

Brandon was right, although not quite in the way he had expected to be.

At least, if you'd asked him before the game which one of his linemates was going to get a fighting major, he would've confidently put his money on Fliggy.

Wenny being the one to drop the gloves and tackle Tkachuk was definitely not something even Brandon would have seen coming.

Sure, Brandon had at least gotten away with a stick swing in Tkachuk's direction on his way off the ice, venting his feelings that way because that had been a dick move on the kid's part and he didn't appreciate it. But he also almost missed the fight starting—and admittedly ending moments later, but still—while he was still working on getting back on the bench himself, trying to make sure they didn't get dinged for too many men as well.

Wenny looked positively wild as he skated across to the penalty box, stick and gloves both in his hands still, teeth bared in something that was more like a snarl than a grin. Brandon just exchanged a half-shocked, half-impressed look with Fliggy while they waited for the refs to sort it all out, communicating wordlessly like they'd been able to ever since Torts had put them together earlier in the season.

“Where the fuck did that come from?” Brandon asked with just his eyebrows, and “Fuck if I know” was the most succinct explanation for the look Fligs gave him in response.

Fligs was also grinning in a way that looked more than a little unhinged, broad and dangerous, but at least that was slightly more familiar; Fligs always got into it in this kind of game, and if this was how it was going to go, then Brandon could step back and settle into a chippy game.

If you weren’t already helplessly behind, and no one was hurting, then this was where it could start to get really good. There was an almost hectic type of joy in playing that close to the edge, the kind of thing none of them really talked about outside of cliches. But Brandon could feel it all the same, the hum in his blood, the pull of the moon, the way the tension on the ice pulled a few notches tighter. And it was fun.

The powerplay goal they got a few minutes later also felt pretty good.

"Let's gooooo boys," Dubi caroled as they headed into the visitor's locker room at the Saddledome after what felt like a particularly satisfying win.

Notch up another one on the streak boys, Brandon added silently, and it still felt like they were well in the swing of things, like they weren’t in danger of running this ride out any time soon.

They were spending the night in Calgary, heading out to Vancouver next, and Brandon had legitimately lost count of what number the streak was even up to, a luxury that he hadn't gotten to enjoy since what felt like a whole other life.

It was definitely past time to head out and celebrate, especially since they'd hardly stopped to process after beating the Oilers a few days earlier. They hadn’t even gone out for dinner, let alone drinks or partying or anything like that.

Instead, they’d been all too eager to just get out to Lake Louise already, to have a couple days away from the grind of the season. And almost more importantly—or so it had felt like—to get the privacy and open space required for them to spend time together as a pack as well as a team.

Now that it was in the past, bookended by two satisfyingly decisive victories, Brandon could see how that little side trip been exactly what everyone needed to shake loose—the mountain air, the snow, weather that was just on the painful side of crisp for everyone on two feet, and absolutely perfect for those of them with the option of going to four.

No one had gotten a lot of sleep in Lake Louise, that was for sure; even the couple of guys who didn't wolf out had picked up some of the energy from the rest of the team. Everyone was amped up, loud, and maybe even a little bit raucous as they tromped out of the hotel to change and run around in the woods. And they were maybe even noisier than that later when they trailed back in just before the sun came up, shaking snow off their shoulders and letting the night settle back into memory, sharing stories of what they'd smelled and seen and done.

Brandon appreciated that the team had the whole wing of their hotel more or less to themselves. None of the coaches were wolves—and he'd never dealt with that, actually, wondered idly how the teams where that was relevant handled it—but there had been light shining under Torts' door when they came back in.

Brandon padded down the hallway to his own room, and wondered about that some more.

It had to be a little awkward for coaches who were wolves, especially the ones who used to play, who were used to running with the team at the full moon. Maybe they spent their moons with family and friends instead of the team? That was definitely a question for some of the other guys at some point. Sharpy would probably know, after Dallas.

But Torts was apparently staying up till they'd all made it back to the hotel safe and sound, and it didn't feel like distrust or anything else, just—a kind of cautious respect. Maybe even a little concern, but in a way that was kind of nice. Brandon could certainly deal with that, anyhow.

It had been good to see how this year's pack fit together when they were outside in the wilderness proper, too.

They'd been at home for the November moon, and while it was nice to be able to drive himself home and crawl into his own bed after a night of roaming the golf course by Hartsy's place, or further afield when they felt like it, there was something about the fresh mountain air and the crunch of snow that wasn't already grayed by hundreds of cars driving past that felt so much more comforting.

Brandon was a city boy and always would be, but he never felt more at home in his own skin than after spending time outdoors. And whether that was the lake in summer or the woods in winter, it didn't seem to matter, it just—worked.

Vancouver was crisp, just above freezing, the sun peeking out from behind the clouds as they piled out of the bus and into Rogers Arena, the hum of the train clicking along the tracks above echoing off the walls of the loading bay.

Brandon couldn't see the ocean, quite, but he could certainly smell it, could feel the way the sea washed in and out of the life of the city, intrinsic and inextricable. And he didn't think that was just the wolf side talking; there was something about the Pacific Northwest that always felt different, the mountains leaning in to what the sea had on offer.

It felt welcoming, familiar, and Brandon felt that little hum along his veins before the game, the zing that said they could do this, they could add another one. It was a confidence booster, not that they really needed one, but it was nice to have the certainty.

They needed overtime to win that game, but they won it all the same.

No one needed the reporters in the room to tell them it would be number five hundred for coach, and nine in a row, electric on the bench and in the locker room after. Brandon had picked up a pair in regulation, and despite a third period none of them was going to be in any hurry to relive on video review later, Jonesy finished it for them, the building holding its breath as the puck tipped off his stick and past Hutton's skate.

The home fans deflated, an audible groan rising, but even as he piled off the bench to jump on Cam and Jonesy and Bob in celebration, Brandon could see spots of darker blue, Jackets fans dotted through the crowd on their feet and cheering, another taste of home while they were far from it.

A few of the guys had friends and family who'd made it to the game, so they disappeared as soon as the media were done with them, Boone hollering cheerfully as he went in a way that echoed wildly off the hallway walls. Not having any obligations of his own, Brandon trailed out after Wild Bill and Wenny, agreeing easily enough to join them on a hunt for a good sushi place by the hotel.

Not having to fly back home until the next day was a luxury none of them were going to take for granted, although Brandon was equally sure that they weren't going to be the only ones taking the excuse for a drink or three, to celebrate the win and the streak and the milestone.

They didn’t stay out all that late in the end, but Brandon had been happy to head back to his room earlier than usual, because dinner had been… odd.

He was used to hanging out with Wenny and Bill, the fifth wheel more often than not, and he’d never been sure if that was because they liked his company that much more than others or if it was something else. If it was because he’d never even blinked to see the easy way they had with each other, the tiny touches that suggested the depth of their friendship and reminded you of how you never did see one of them without the other being less than ten feet away, it seemed like.

If they’d figured, somehow, that if anyone was going to suspect that they were more than just friends—and Brandon didn’t want to speculate, but he wouldn’t have been surprised—then at least he wasn’t going to make a fuss about it.

Brandon’s not that much of a hypocrite, anyway.

But instead of the usual comfortable conversation, teasing and laughing and trying to learn a few more words of Swedish, Alex and Will had spent half of the time having silent conversations with their eyes, and Brandon hadn’t felt so wildly out of place since oh-and-eight.

He’d opened his mouth to say something—not even sure what, but anything to break the silence—but whatever argument they were having, Will had won, and he reached across to grab the soy sauce from in front of Brandon and gave him a brilliant and entirely hollow smile.

“So, what Christmas plans do you have, Saader?” he asked, and Brandon just filed it away as another weird moment in a season full of them, and answered his question.

There were just three home games between them and the Christmas break, and as they all filed sleepily onto the plane the next morning—some more hungover than others—Brandon let himself start to look forward to it, not just to sleeping in his own bed but also being able to keep his own hours, his own company, to have things just exactly how he liked them. His parents were coming up for the holiday, so he didn't even have to travel this year, it was going to be nice.

Unbidden, an image flashed into his head: his bed, the sheets and comforter he'd pulled over it before leaving for Edmonton, but instead of neatly straightened like he'd left them, they were rumpled and tangled, a dark-haired body sprawled under them, face-down on the pillow. Brandon's breath caught in his throat and he raised his hand involuntarily as if he could reach out and touch, and then snatched it back, hoping he wasn't blushing obviously.

Hoping no one had seen him acting ten times weirder than usual.

Because he'd known instantly who that was in his bed, and his imagination was not playing fair in the slightest to dump that on him, to tease him with what he couldn't let himself hope for.

And he had to keep telling himself it was just his imagination, because if that was an actual vision, a true precognition…he didn’t even know what to do with that information.

Or, he did, but he couldn’t begin to let himself hope that just because it would hurt too much to be wrong.

He thought he'd gotten away with the weird lapse in his control, too, no one batting an eyelid at him while they all finished getting settled for take-off, pulling out books and iPads and music to listen to, and he got to persist in that illusion all the way up until after they'd brought lunch out, at which point Jack dropped into the empty seat by Brandon, raised one eyebrow, and said, "So, when are you going to let someone help?"

"Excuse me?" Brandon said, pushing aside several other, much less polite options.

Jack was a good enough friend that Brandon wasn't going to outright be a dick to him, no matter how nosy he was being.

Jack kicked at his ankle gently and hummed.

Brandon wasn't even trying to be obtuse about this, he had no idea what Jack meant by that.

"Jack," he said warningly, and Jack just said, "Saader," right back to him in exactly the same tone.

"Don't use your dad powers on me," Brandon said, slouching back into the seat.

Cam snorted from the seat in front of them, but Brandon wasn't a hundred percent sure that was actually related, so he'd give him a pass on eavesdropping, for now.

Jack just raised an eyebrow at him, still waiting, and there was something amazingly powerful about a vaguely guilty conscience—about knowing he was spending far too much time thinking about things he shouldn't be thinking about at all—that made Brandon's resolve to keep it to himself start to crumble. Goddammit, he thought, whatever Jack was doing was working.

"I'm just trying to be a good friend here," Jack said.

Brandon felt his face do something that he would prefer it hadn't done in front of witnesses and bit his lip.

"Yeah, that, whatever's making you make that face," Jack said. "That's what I'm talking about."

Brandon sighed again. "It's dumb," he said, and Jack made an "a-ha" face that Brandon was absolutely going to mock him for later, when he wasn't so busy feeling sorry for himself.

"Go on."

"It's nothing, it's just," Brandon looked down at his phone, turning it over in his hands and fidgeting, wishing he'd remembered to bring something to read or do to kill time. Until Jack had gotten on his case he'd just been planning to nap on the plane like always, so this was really throwing him off. Especially since he was pretty sure that even if they wrapped up this conversation soon he was going to be too wound up to sleep after.

"I just realized that I, uh, might be interested in someone?" Brandon offered, after Jack just let him sit and twist in the wind a little longer. It was pretty clear he wasn’t going to be able to lie his way out of the conversation, and that Jack had way more patience than he did. Fuck.

"And this person is… not available?" Jack asked, more delicate than Brandon would have expected.

Brandon ordered himself not to blush, but couldn't meet Jack's eyes either.

At least Jack wasn't pushing him on the cryptic pronouns, although from what Brandon had heard about him and Crosby back in the day, well, maybe that was more than just common courtesy.

"No, I mean, yeah, kind of, but—uh. It's complicated."

Jack did laugh at him then, which Brandon probably deserved. He was some kind of stereotype, that was for sure.

Brandon sighed, and Jack's expression evened out again, looking more serious.

"Look, Saader," he said. "Just—uncomplicate it a little. Actually talk to them and see what happens."

There was a weird sort of certainty in Jack's voice then, and Brandon narrowed his eyes, wondering if Jack was working off anything more than just a hunch. Come to think of it, maybe Brandon wasn't the only one who had more than just wolves mixed in his family tree.

"I guess," he said, meaning he was going to think about it and not that he was necessarily going to actually follow through and do it.

But maybe putting his thoughts in order about the whole situation would help him get more of a handle on it, even if it was just the 'pine away silently and never mention it' road that he ended up taking after doing the pros and cons thing.

Jack clapped him on the shoulder and stood up again. "Good talk, Saader. Buy some extra tea when you go to the store tomorrow, eh?" and on that cryptic note, he was gone, heading back to Dubi and Josh and Cam's ever-evolving card game, leaving Brandon to his thoughts.

Okay, Brandon thought. So maybe when he got home he'd take a nap and order food, and after that he could sit on his couch and really let himself think it all through.

What was the worst that could happen?

The worst, it turned out, was that in his rush out of the house the week before, Brandon had completely failed to remember to take out the kitchen trash or make sure his fridge was empty, with the inevitable consequences in both cases.

Standing in front of the open door of the fridge staring at the sadly wilted lettuce and the completely unappetizing lump that he thought might have been mushroom pasta, Brandon decided that dealing with all of that could be tomorrow's problem, blithely ignoring the fact they had the first of three games in four days then.

He sacked out on the couch and grabbed his laptop to make a grocery order—he probably wasn't going to have time to go out tomorrow before the game, and he didn’t need to be psychic to have a sudden vision of just how bad it would be to try and get everything in one epic grocery run the day before Christmas.

Nor did he particularly want to have to admit to his parents that he wasn’t totally prepared to host them for the holiday, for the first time. His own house, his turn to play host, and try to repay something for all the things they’d done for him, growing up. And even if the groceries only showed up a couple hours before they did, that was more than enough time for Brandon to put everything away and finish obsessively cleaning the kitchen in time for a nap.

So, making a substantial order online seemed like the best compromise.

He found everything he thought he was likely to need quickly enough, well practiced by this point in shopping for himself or a few guests, and then, without pausing to let himself think about it too much, added a few boxes of his favorite tea. It wasn't anything to do with what Jack had said, he told himself. He was getting low, so he might as well order some more.

The fact it was his favorite tea since he'd started drinking it at Nick's place in Rockford was… not totally relevant.

Brandon stretched out, shoved the laptop back under the coffee table and swung his feet on top of it, and settled into the couch to catch up on his TiVo.

Three days later, the knock on his door woke Brandon out of a dead sleep, and he had to stop a second to get his feet under himself properly, to stop himself from stumbling as he leapt up off the couch and headed to the door.

He checked his watch as he went, and it’d been maybe fifteen minutes since he’d fallen asleep, his pregame nap shifted to the couch for once. His parents were apparently really, really early, even with knowing they’d want to be there in time for their last game before Christmas, and so he congratulated himself once again on having finished getting the kitchen set up for guests in the nick of time.

Brandon swung the door open, good morning and great to see you on his lips, and froze part way through the greeting, because that wasn’t his parents.

That was Nick Leddy, a sheepish grin on his face, wearing a shirt and tie and nicer slacks than Brandon would have thought an off-day called for, and standing on his doorstep in Columbus, a six-pack of Brandon’s favorite beer in his hand, like they’d traveled back in time and it was any random off-day in Chicago.

“Leds, hi, wow, come in,” he said, midwestern politeness covering for the complete shock of it all. Nick, here. Nick, in his house. Nick, when he wasn’t expecting him in the slightest. And god, Brandon was happy to see him.

Nick quirked a grin at him, shrugged one shoulder as if to belay the warmth of Brandon’s welcome. “I was, uh, in the neighborhood so I figured, I should stop by.”

“Of course,” Brandon said, thinking, ‘in the neighborhood’? What did Nick have to do anywhere near Ohio?

On autopilot, he walked back to the kitchen instead of the living room, his hands going to start making tea for the both of them, a habit too deep to even question.

“Oh, thanks,” Nick said, equally polite, but the surprised and delighted grin he gave Brandon after taking a sip was wholly sincere and all too warming.

“So, what, uh—brings you here?” Brandon asked at last, after they’d exhausted every other avenue of light easy conversation, when they’d covered how all their mutual friends are doing and whose baby pictures were the cutest and who needed to get some new chirps because it’s been a while, Shawzy, c’mon. “I thought you had a game.”

“I’ll be back in time,” Nick said, neglecting to explain how. Brandon knew it was an hour long flight and there were only a couple a day, because he’d looked it up, in one of his weaker moments.

“So when you said you were in the neighborhood,” Brandon started, looking down at his hand on the table, right next to Nick’s. Where he could just reach out and touch him, take his hand, curl his fingers around Nick’s wrist, which was right there, all pale and vulnerable, faintly blue veins running up his forearm and down into his hands, belying the strength he knew Nick had in them. “You just meant that… you were in Columbus?”

It was a calculated risk, he was pretty sure that Nick couldn’t say anything else.

Nick sighed.

“I meant, I uh. Realized I had to be in Columbus.”

“Right,” Brandon said slowly. His brain was racing in the background, wondering if someone had said something to Nick, if anyone could have—it wasn’t like he’d ever even said a name, he thought, despairing.

Although then again, it wasn’t like it would be terribly hard to guess, either.

Brandon went out to ‘meet friends’ every time he was in New York and only about half the time they were anyone else. And he’d always known it was hard for anyone to look at them, back when they were still in Chicago, and not see something there. Shawzy had, and he’d teased them about it, and so had Bicks, and so had half the rest of the Hawks, really.

Brandon still wasn’t entirely sure why they’d never just owned it and done something about it.

Well, he knew why.

But the older he got, the more settled he got, the more he found out about life in general, and how he wanted to live his in particular… the less Brandon found himself caring about what everyone else thought might be a good idea or not.

“No one said anything,” Nick said hurriedly, and Brandon blinked.

Somehow he’d forgotten, in all this time, just how much he and Nick were on the same wavelength, how their thoughts tracked together more often than not. He was pretty sure Nick wasn’t reading minds, anyway. He didn’t think anyone could do that, and sure as hell not without reacting visibly to some of the more outrageous involuntary thoughts Brandon’d had over the years.

Testing, he built a quick mental image of Nick wearing a suit that even Don Cherry would have been ashamed to be seen in, juggling fish. Nick didn’t even blink, so Brandon set that momentary concern aside, assuaged.

“At least,” Nick went on, “no one you know said anything.”

Brandon raised an eyebrow and waited for Nick to actually start making sense again.

“I’ve uh, been distracted lately, I guess?”

“Right,” Brandon said, nodding, and hoping desperately that this was actually going where he thought it was going.

“So what I’m saying is, uh.” Nick looked at him, desperate, floundering, and Brandon wanted so much to reach out, to offer him support and safe harbor for whatever was going on, even if it wasn’t what Brandon wanted in his most secret heart.

But if it was anything else in the world, well, that was the last thing he should do, the worst thing he could do, and Brandon was brave but he wasn’t reckless, and he just couldn’t take that leap. Not without more information.

“Hey, man, I have your back no matter what,” Brandon said, very carefully, picking his words out and running them back and forth in his head before speaking them aloud.

Nick laughed, short and sharp, almost hectic. “So that’s the thing,” he said. “I believe you, but I’m still fucking terrified.”

Brandon snapped.

He reached out, took Nick’s hands in his and held him, tight. His heart was beating so hard, so fast, echoing in his ears, and he felt almost dizzy with it, overwhelmed, because every word out of Nick’s mouth felt more and more like he was on the right track, like his feelings mirrored Brandon’s, like—

Like Brandon had heard them before.

“The thing is,” Brandon started to say, just as Nick opened his mouth to say the same thing.

They both ground to a halt and stared at each other, waiting for someone else to go first.

Brandon could feel Nick’s pulse pounding too, beating so fast, like he’d been cornered, like he was up against something he couldn’t avoid any longer, and he was about to gather up his courage in both hands and throw himself bodily at it, self-preservation be damned.

Brandon took a shaky breath in.

“—the thing is I might be kind of in love with you,” Nick finished off, all in a rush, and the world went silent around Brandon.

“Oh,” Brandon said, his mouth filling in some of the words while he cast about wildly for exactly what to say, the best way to make the wild rush of joy that suffused his body at hearing those words clear to Nick.

And he was clearly taking too long picking the right words, because the tentative hope in Nick’s face fled, replaced by a split-second grimace that Brandon could only describe as ‘crushed’, before he managed to pull a more neutral expression back on.

“No, don’t,” Brandon said, and as the words came out of his mouth he realized how much worse that sounded, rushing to correct himself. “Don’t look like that, please, I—it’s good, I promise, I want this.” He took another deep breath, exhaled, and reached for honesty. “I want you.”

Nick’s expression cleared almost instantly, his chin coming up, finally looking Brandon in the eyes again, and what Brandon saw there nearly took his breath away. God, he’d nearly—he’d been second-guessing himself about this for so long, and never stopped to talk to Nick. Never let himself wonder if it was both of them feeling like this, too afraid to damage the status quo and held in stasis ever after.

“Oh, well that’s. Better.” Nick said, his words halting.

Brandon tightened his grip on Nick’s hands, could feel the way he was shaking ever so slightly, tension running in high vibrato through him, starting to calm as Brandon rubbed slow circles over the pulse-point of his wrists while he spoke.

“I never said because, uh. I kind of—I didn’t want to make things uncomfortable for you.”

“Well, I sure know that feeling,” Nick said, rueful. “I didn’t want to lose you as a friend—”

“You couldn’t,” Brandon interjected, but Nick didn’t break stride.

“—and so I kept trying to think, well, this is good enough. It’s enough. And then it wasn’t.”

“I nearly said something last time,” Brandon said. “When we were hanging out, and I thought—and then I thought I was just seeing what I wanted to see.”

“Be careful what you wish for?” Nick suggested. “Yeah, that was kind of—fuck, I wish I’d said something sooner.” He turned his hands in Brandon’s grip, clasped his forearms in turn and looked intent. “This isn’t, um. New for me. I wanted to do this for… a while.”

“Same here,” Brandon said, the words bubbling over, giddy and hopeful. “I kept almost—and then I’d chicken out. I nearly kissed you after the Cup, you know?”

Nick blinked at him, eyes wide, and going distant for a second as he thought back. “You—wow, I really thought I was just drunk as hell.”

“I mean, we were both really drunk,” Brandon admitted. “But I guess it would’ve been the best bad decision I ever made, if I’d said something then.”

“Maybe,” Nick said, and his hands felt so good on Brandon’s skin, points of warmth, the affection clear in every line of his body, every touch of his fingertips. “But maybe we would’ve fucked it up back then, what with one thing and another.”

What with one trade and then another, Brandon translated without much difficulty at all.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t try now, though,” Nick said.

Brandon beamed at him. “I—yeah. I’d like that. And I think my teammates might be happier if they don’t have to keep giving me, uh, the ‘get your head out of your ass already’ lectures, too.”

Nick snorted. “You too, huh?”

Brandon wondered, not for the first time, about whatever information might be flowing through less than official channels between Columbus and Long Island. It wasn’t like they didn’t know know how long Gags and Tavares had been friends, if nothing else.

“Mmm,” he said. “They got a little, uh, more pointed after the last time we played.”

Brandon felt Nick wince at that, and wondered if he shouldn’t have mentioned that again. It wasn’t like the Islanders hadn’t been handing them their asses for almost the entirety of Brandon’s career as a Blue Jacket, but that one also clearly still stung for Nick.

“Yeah, I sure heard about it after that game too.”

Brandon tilted his head, waiting for Nick to go on, feeling like there was something else he was waiting to say.

“Cappy didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to, you know? The guys keep threatening to put money on the board about keeping you off the scoresheet next time.”

That made something warm kindle in Brandon’s belly. It wasn’t just the idea that the Isles saw him as a scoring threat, or even that they could apparently tell how Nick felt about him, but a combination of both, an appreciation of the fact that the Isles could tell that Nick got just as distracted by Brandon as he did by Nick, and that their reaction was to tease and encourage him to do something about it instead of anything uglier. And the idea of Nick having guys who were there for him, ready to support him in any way he needed… that was something Brandon hadn’t even realized he cared about as deeply as he did.

“Well, I can’t promise I won’t try to make them eat those words,” Brandon said. “But I’m glad, you know. That they seem to be good guys.”

“They really are,” Nick said. “And your team—?”

“Probably would’ve done the exact same thing if that play had gone the other way,” Brandon admitted. “I got a talk from Jack on the plane back, you know, after our west coast swing? He didn’t say it in so many words—”

“—but you got the message,” Nick finished, and Brandon nodded.

“Well I guess that’s one thing I don’t need to worry about longer,” Brandon said. “Since you’re, you know. Here, and all. How long are you here?”

Nick shrugged at him, non-committal. “I’ve gotta fly back tonight, but I might, uh. Have another plane ticket for tomorrow, if I need it. So… do I need it?”

Brandon felt his heart leap again at that. “My folks are coming here for the holidays, but I, uh. I guess they maybe won’t be all that surprised if you’re here, too. You can really stay a couple days, when you get back?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, grinning back at him, open and easy and so, so warm. “Game tonight, but after that I’m all yours, if you’ll have me.”

“Well in that case,” Brandon said, “I guess it’s a good thing I planned for extra company.”

Nick raised an eyebrow in silent question.

Brandon gestured at the tea in front of them, still steaming gently, the mugs untouched. “Got your favorite, got enough food to feed an army on Christmas, and, well. I don’t think I need to make up the guest room this time for you, do I?”

He waited for Nick to translate that invitation, eyes widening almost imperceptibly before he grinned broadly, his eyes hot, and a possessive curl to the edges of his smile as he looked back at Brandon.

“I think it’s safe to say that, yeah.”

Nick looked so relaxed and happy, so exactly the best of himself that Brandon almost didn’t know what to do or say next, and then he realized it was obvious, just as obvious and necessary as keeping a stock of Nick’s favorite tea, as obvious as his feelings had apparently been to everyone who knew him.

“So when do you have to leave today,” Brandon asked.

Nick let go of him long enough to push his shirt sleeve up, to glance at his watch and frown, mentally calculating.

“I’ve got two hours,” he said.

Brandon pushed his chair back from the kitchen table and tugged Nick to his feet as well, wrapping his arms around him, stepping decisively into his personal space, until Nick was all he could see and hear and feel.

“I’ve got some ideas for how to fill in that time, then,” Brandon said, and he leaned in to kiss Nick properly, at long last.

[]

Brandon woke up with too much energy and a bubbling sense of discontent to fuel it the second day they had at home, the kind of day when it felt imperative to do something, but where you couldn’t figure out exactly what, and so you had to just vibrate on the spot and feel acid crawl along your nerves, indigestion tangling up fiercely with boredom and unhappiness.

He couldn’t seem to shake the mood even after putting in a decent chunk of time in the gym, so he decided to try to burn some of it off around the house, maybe take care of some things he’d been putting off.

He paid a service to come in and cover the basics every week, sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do some cleaning on his own, just for the satisfaction of it.

Scrubbing behind the fridge and clearing out all the protein bars that had been accumulating—and maybe breeding?—in the back of his kitchen cupboards somehow turned into starting to rearrange the kitchen the way he’d been itching to do ever since he’d first gotten settled in, before he’d figured out what worked for him and what he didn’t like.

It wasn’t the same as his parents kitchen back home, but he had just as much space, even if it was laid out a little differently.

Rearranging all of his baking supplies somewhat inevitably turned into baking cookies, a few trays of his favorite chocolate chip recipe and then a few more experimental things. A couple hours after that, Brandon surfaced from his baking haze to realize he didn’t have nearly enough cookie tins for all of this, and also that he’d probably just solved half of his hard-to-buy-for Christmas present issues.

He considered running out to the store to get tins, at least, but hadn’t even gotten as far as finding his keys or his wallet before remembering that it was two weeks before Christmas and he didn’t have a death wish. Or at the very least, didn’t want to deal with the parking lots at the shops, and definitely not if he was by himself and couldn’t just send someone in to grab what they needed.

Wondering if any of the malls nearby would have essentially reinvented the cellphone lot for situations like that distracted him for a minute or so longer, but it was a brief respite. Once he’d articulated the thought to himself well enough, he couldn’t really deny anymore what part of the whole thing was still eating at him—and it was the part where he didn’t have someone.

Obviously, most of his teammates would be happy enough to run errands if it meant they were getting fed afterward, or even just to hang out, although maybe that was mostly just Jack being too nice for his own good, but it wasn’t the theoretical person to run errands with that Brandon missed having.

It was the whole thing: a partner, someone to share almost everything with, someone to support and be supported by. And he hadn’t had that in a long while, had barely been starting to think that maybe he might before everyone started getting traded away from each other.

And there he was, right back into the gloom and doom he’d been cleaning and baking to distract himself from, except at least this time he could sulk with cranberry chocolate cookies, so there was one very minor improvement on where he’d been heading first thing in the morning.

“This is stupid,” Brandon said to himself, in the hopes that hearing it out loud might be more impactful than just yelling at himself inside his own head, but he wasn’t too sure it was going to work.

He’d been doing pretty well while he was distracted, Brandon figured, so he grabbed one of the tins he had unearthed in all his cleaning efforts, filled it up with the cookies that were cool enough to transport, and walked next door to visit the Folignos.

Nick looked annoyingly unsurprised to see Brandon; just opened the door at his knock and said, “C’mon in, Saader. You want some tea?”

Brandon agreed maybe a little too fast, but then again, he was over often enough that Nick and Janelle knew which teas he preferred and how he took them, and at least he wasn’t empty-handed.

“Cranberry?” Nick asked, when they made it into the kitchen, his eyes fixed on the tin, making grabby-hands like he was six years old himself, and Brandon laughed and handed it over with a, “Got it in one.”

“You know what we like,” Nick allowed, and set a mug in front of Brandon at the table.

“So are Janelle and the kids home as well, or are you hogging these ones yourself?” Brandon asked, mostly teasing, but a little curious. Three year olds might be a lot to handle, although at least Milana wasn’t quite into the incessant questions stage, but he always felt a bit more like an adult who knew what he was doing with his life after helping out with kids for a while.

It wasn’t the main reason he was pretty much always happy to babysit for Fliggy or for his cousins back home or for some of the guys in Chicago, even, but it sure helped.

“Just me,” Nick said lightly. “I had, you know. A feeling.”

Brandon tried not to tense up at that, but was pretty sure that even Nick could see the way he’d frozen automatically for a moment.

No one talked about it much, of course, but they all knew that Nick had a touch of precognition, just enough to make him very, very good with people, and not nearly helpful enough on the ice to constitute anything the NHL or the PA would consider an unfair magical advantage.

He’d told Brandon the first day they’d met; scrupulously fair and open about it in a way that Brandon would come to recognize was just how Fligs was. And Brandon had been a little disconcerted, but not more than that: he’d played with a lot of guys over the years with much more obvious—and much more intrusive—talents.

Of course, he’d never quite expected to be sat down by his captain and given a mug of tea while he got pressed on his non-existent love life. That wasn’t the sort of thing you saw coming—unless, of course, you were Nick Foligno, apparently.

“Ugh,” Brandon said. “I’m not—I don’t really need to talk about this?”

“So there’s a this,” Nick said, and Brandon suddenly did not envy anyone who tried to look him in the eye and wiggle out of a difficult conversation, whether that was as a parent, a partner or a another hockey player.

“I just,” Brandon started to say, hoping he sounded more confident than he suspected he did, awash on a sea of uncertainty and barely managing to tread water. “Uh, there was someone in Chicago, and we never—nothing ever happened, but I kind of wanted it to? And that hasn’t gone away.”

It was hard to keep the whine out of his voice on that last part; difficult not to pout. And the habit was too hard to break without forcing it, but Brandon didn’t think it was lost on Nick that he was playing pronoun games with his explanation. Sure, maybe it’d pass without comment, but the eyebrow flicker in response to Brandon’s words suggested that it had been noted and filed away for later.

“So you’re still… into them?” Nick asked, delicately enough that Brandon knew whatever hope of subtlety he had been clinging to had gone right out the window.

"Is there any chance you'll just take the cookies and let me get over this quietly?" Brandon asked, not exactly holding his breath.

"Nope," Nick said cheerfully. "Take it from an old married guy, okay, you'll—either figure it out, or you won't."

"You're not that old," Brandon said, wondering if he wanted to point out that Nick was also hedging his advice enough that he was going to be right no matter what happened. Then again, maybe that was the point.

"Thank you, don't think I'm not gonna use that next time Dubi tries to say I'm ancient."

"…isn't he older than you?" Brandon asked. He hadn't exactly sat down with the press guide since right after he got traded, but he was pretty sure he was remembering that right.

Brandon was pretty sure he had, in fact, at least once told the Jackets TV guys that he remembered watching Dubi and Fligs play while he was growing up, which had made Dubi throw balled up socks at him while Nick demanded someone bring him a cane.

It probably would've made an even funnier segment with all of that if Wild Bill hadn't walked into frame butt-naked and then asked why they were all still dressed.

…pretty much everyone but the TV guys had found that funny. And even they'd been hiding some snickers, although it was clear the bit was totally unusable by then.

"Details," Nick said, waving that away with a flick of his wrist. "Anyway, I know it doesn't help a whole lot now, but you'll feel better if you keep busy till you work out what you're doing."

"It's not like we don't have a pretty demanding job, Fligs."

Nick narrowed his eyes at him and let Brandon marinate in the silence for an awfully long minute.

"Right, okay, yeah, I know," Brandon said. "I—I'll go, uh, do something else for a bit."

"Since we don't have practice again till tomorrow."

"Since we don't have practice till tomorrow," Brandon echoed. "Uh, enjoy the cookies?"

"Thank you, Saader," Nick said, and it was as clear a dismissal as anything Torts had ever said to finish up their on-ice sessions, so Brandon turned around and headed back home, chewing over that conversation—however brief it had been—as he went.

He pretended not to hear Fliggy laughing as Brandon nearly tripped on a pile of Jenga blocks the kids must have been playing with right by the front door that he could have sworn were not there when he'd come in, too.

Staring at the ceiling of his living room turned out to be just as boring as staring at the ceiling of his kitchen—or worse, the baseboards, which were somehow grimy despite the fact Brandon was hardly even home half the year and definitely had cleaned them at least once himself, in a fit of efficiency and panic sparked by a last-minute visit from his parents when he hadn’t been expecting them.

Brandon sighed and turned the TV remote over in his hands a few times, tossing up whether he actually felt like watching anything.

He had no doubt he could find something distracting, but something about what Nick had said earlier was still nagging at him, the sensation that he'd dropped some kind of big, meaningful hint, and Brandon had just breezed right past it without noticing.

He caught himself fidgeting some more, picking at the seams on his pants, and tapping his fingers over his knee, and abruptly lost patience with himself.

Maybe he should get in some practice on the piano, give his hands something to do, or maybe—he glanced outside, where it was a surprisingly nice day for December in Ohio. It hadn't been that cold at all when he'd walked over to Fliggy's place, the snow crunching under his feet and starting to melt.

Or maybe he should go spend some time outdoors.

That felt right, like it was what he should be doing, and a moment of further thought gave him an even better idea.

He pulled out his phone, dialled Cam's number.

"Hey, any chance I can borrow Easton for the afternoon?"

Cam laughed in his ear, free and easy with it. "Why, you wanna go pick up some hotties at the dog park? Figured you needed the cutest possible dog to do it?"

"No, you dick," Brandon said. "I just feel like going for a run or whatever and thought I'd save you the walk."

Cam paused, and had a conversation with someone—Brandon was gonna go out on a limb and assume it was Nat—with his hand over the phone, muffled enough that Brandon couldn't quite make out his words, although judging by the tone maybe that was for the best.

"Yeah, I'm not gonna say no," Cam said. "You wanna come over now?"

"Yeah," Brandon said, and then because they'd been friends and teammates long enough by now, "You better still have pants on by the time I get there."

"You should be so lucky," Cam said, letting the leer bleed through into his tone, and Brandon was laughing as he hung up.

Cam lived close enough that Brandon didn't have time to second guess his plan, parking out front and heading up to the door only a few minutes later. Cam didn't keep him waiting, opening the door a couple seconds after Brandon had knocked, with Easton dancing around his feet and his leash looped over Cam's wrist.

"I accidentally said the 'w' word," Cam said, grinning with the least sincere sympathy Brandon had ever seen him display, "So he's kinda over-excited."

He pressed the leash into Brandon's hand and clicked his tongue. Easton barked once, and then bounded through the door to sniff at Brandon's ankles and whine.

[]

Brandon had figured he'd just run—well, walk briskly, really; Easton wasn't exactly speedy, although he made up in energy what he lacked in size, and wow was Brandon ever going to keep that one in his back pocket for the next time he needed to chirp Cam.

Dogs resembling their owners indeed.

As if he could read Brandon's mind, Easton ran in a tight circle right under Brandon's feet and nearly succeeded in hog-tying him with the leash.

Well, it was probably still an okay metaphor, Brandon thought, standing on one foot and trying to untangle himself without yanking at Easton's collar. Cam pretty much did the same thing to guys in the offensive zone every other game.

Easton yipped at him, and then dashed off down the sidewalk, and to Brandon's horror, looked like he was about to slip out of his collar as the leash pulled taut. Brandon was a grown adult with good balance who played hockey for a living, so even on slightly icy pavement he wasn't going to get yanked around by a comparatively small dog—but he had a moment where he was worried that maybe he might.

The adrenaline spike got him moving fast, though, chasing after Easton enough to get some slack in the lead and the collar slid back down to where it was supposed to be.

Brandon made a mental note to tell Cam that maybe they needed a harness for voluntary dog walkers instead in future, but when Easton didn't obey either the terse "heel!" or the slightly more desperate, "stay!" and instead speeded up, Brandon mentally shrugged and figured that okay, they were running.

He was pretty sure Easton would get tired out way before he would, anyway.

They covered the better part of a block before Easton slowed down, and Brandon laughed involuntarily as the sidewalk broadened in front of the gates of a dog park.

The sign—wooden, hand-carved, and set in a raised bed filled with shiny white stones, pretentious as anything in this area, and somehow compeletely untouched by the snow—was overgrown with plants that hadn't been pruned back in a while, and icy besides, but he could make out a fancy calligraphed 'Br' at the beginning and '-woods' on the right hand side, which was an optimistic description for what looked like about fifteen trees and a slushy open area that was probably green in the summer but just looked dark and a little depressing in the midst of winter.

"Okay, puppy," Brandon said; he'd never gotten out of the habit of talking to dogs like they were people when he was growing up, and he didn't see any reason to change that now. "Now what?"

Brandon didn't really want to sit down—even if the benches hadn't been half covered in snow and lichen, he knew sitting down would start to leach all the warmth from his body—but he also didn't particularly want to run around on uneven ground and risk turning an ankle. "You're right," he said, "I should've brought a ball or something."

He wandered over towards one of the trees and crossed his fingers there'd be a stick on the ground or something he could throw for Easton and let him work off the last bits of over-excitement.

He found one that looked promising—not too wet from the snow, and not covered in any of the sort of slimy lichen that it could've been, and it was about the right size that Easton would be able to pick it up, at least. Brandon didn't think he was giving him too much credit there.

He ducked down to unclip the leash from Easton's collar and held out the stick for him to sniff. Easton looked a little unimpressed, parked on his haunches and looking up at Brandon like he was expecting something—maybe Brandon should have remembered to grab some treats or something from Cam, whoops.

"Okay, fetch," Brandon said, and tossed the stick about fifteen feet away, under hand, letting it drop into the crust of snow under one of the trees. It was close enough that neither Brandon nor Easton was going to get covered in snow retrieving it, at any rate.

This wasn't Brandon's first rodeo by any meaning of the metaphor.

Easton gave Brandon what he could've sworn was an eyeroll, but trotted over, picked up the stick and brought it back. He was pretty good about letting Brandon take the stick from him, too, which was a nice change; he'd been used to having to wrestle it away from Tro's family's dopey big chocolate lab when they were younger, and Shawzy's dogs hadn't been much better. Nick's two were much politer about that sort of thing.

And the other nice thing about Easton being relatively small, Brandon thought, forcing himself to change that mental subject again in a hurry, was there really wasn't a whole lot of drool on the stick. Brandon was getting off lightly.

"Right, let's try this again," Brandon said, mostly to himself, and this time he actually threw the stick as far as he could, picking the most open and least snowy looking direction, further back into the park and away from the street. It looked pretty safe.

Easton hardly hesitated before dashing off this time, bounding through the slush enthusiastically and yipping in excitement. Brandon grinned involuntarily and thought, yeah, this was definitely the right idea.

At least, he thought that right up until the point where Easton pounced on a shadowed patch of snow under the furtherest tree, and didn't come back again.

Brandon waited for a second, half holding his breath, but Easton didn't come running back with or without the stick, not even when Brandon whistled.

The vaguely unsettled feeling Brandon had been trying to ignore all morning was back in full force, and he could feel a pit of worry form in his stomach, dragging at him.

He couldn't have lost Cam's dog in this tiny dog park. That just—wasn't possible.

Without thinking it through too deeply, Brandon walked towards the trees, confidently expecting to see Easton any second.

And he didn't.

The area under the trees was dimly lit, dappled with the shadows of the winter-bare branches and the weight of snow and ice collected on them. The place where Easton had—Brandon was trying very hard not to think the word 'vanished'—where Easton had last been was the very darkest of them.

In fact, it wasn't getting much brighter even as Brandon trudged closer, snow sticking to his boots and crunching underneath them. He tugged his phone out of his pocket and flicked the torch on, angling it under the trees.

The light vanished like it'd been sucked into a tube or a forcefield, like some of the deeply questionable CGI in the terrible sci-fi movies Nick liked.

The pit in Brandon's stomach solidified into cold dread, but for some reason his feet kept taking him closer and closer, until he could see the pawprints in the snow from where Easton had bounded over, and he could see the point where they—

Vanished.

"Fuck," Brandon said, with feeling.

And then he nearly screamed as a dry voice with an accent he couldn't identify said, "Yes, quite," right next to his ear, close enough he felt the passage of their breath on his neck, setting his hair prickling and on end, goosebumps rippling up and down his arms.

Brandon spun around—how had he not realized someone else was there, and that close to him?—and got just enough of a glimpse of the park to see there was absolutely no one there. He opened his mouth the yell, and then there was an enormous sense of pressure for a heartbeat, freezing his words in his throat, and he felt himself start falling backwards, and then the world went pitch black around him.

As Brandon came to consciousness, two things were immediately clear:

Firstly, wherever he was now, it wasn't a dog park—it wasn't even outside anymore. This was definitely a room indoors, with candles flickering and no overhead lighting and a rock-hard bed underneath him. As he sat up and looked around more carefully, that description seemed seemed even more appropriate, as he took in the stone walls, dark and forboding and seeming to loom over top of him, making him want to shrink back into the slab he was lying on. It didn’t give at all, even when he cautiously pressed the heel of his hand against it. Actual rock, then. Brandon coughed, trying to clear his throat of the dry, musty smell permeating the room. It made him want to think of mothballs, or the powder scrub his mom used in the bathroom when he was a kid, but there was something a little less chemical-y about it, the faintest foul hint of herbs.

And secondly, he hadn't lost Easton after all, because the warm mass on his feet that stirred, circled, and then flopped right back down to go back to sleep was either Easton or his doggy identical twin, so Brandon was going to go with Occam's razor on that one.

"Well, that's something," Brandon said quietly, too in the habit of talking to himself at home to catch himself before doing it there, still bleary from whatever had knocked him out.

And—what had knocked him out? He wasn't tied up—a good sign, probably, he hoped—and when he felt cautiously around his head there were no sore spots or tender parts, nothing that felt like he'd taken a knock to the head any time recently that would have made him pass out. It couldn't have been bad air, either, not outside in the middle of winter in Ohio.

Brandon twisted to look around the room more carefully. The shapes of the few items in there resolved a little better now he was used to the low light, and he belatedly spotted the squared corners of a window just above and behind the bed, right where he could look outside if he shuffled around about ninety degrees and then craned his neck hard.

And then Brandon sat back down heavily on the stone slab he'd been using as a bed, completely pole-axed, and too thrown to even think about doing anything else.

Because hovering in the deep green-blue sky outside were two moons, one full and the other waxing into an unmistakable crescent, both of them reflecting warmly in a way that Brandon knew immediately—although he wasn't sure how—was as real as he was, and not some horribly elaborate prank.

"Easton," he said. "I don't think we're in Ohio anymore."

Easton hadn't had any response for him, and Brandon wasn't entirely sure he'd have handled it well if he did.

Two moons, he could kind of handle. An actual dog talking to him? Probably not.

Although that was probably something of an oversimplification. He'd sat back down on the bed again, his back to the window, because at least looking at that didn't make him feel seasick, queasy on dry land. It was absolutely making him feel antsy, caught between two competing attractors, the moon higher in the sky pulling him in one direction and the other just a few degrees off it. He grimaced, and felt his teeth try to lengthen, the huff of breath he exhaled in a near-panic coming out more like a growl.

Focus, he told himself. You're not new, you've done this before, stay on two legs and use your fucking brain.

Brandon took a couple of slow, deep breaths, found his courage and, heartened, stood up again.

Instead of letting himself get flustered, this time he kept his back to the window, and moved over to try the door.

There was no handle as such, just a keyhole, and a thin line of light around the edges, suggesting that whatever was on the other side of it, it was better lit than where he was.

[]

He felt around the keyhole carefully, letting the tips of his fingers trace out the bumps in the wood, the rough patches where it hadn’t been sanded down right. He pressed against the outline of the metal key hole, wishing he had a pocket knife, or his own keys, or anything to try and force it, but his pockets were empty; no phone, no keys, and nothing to help him.

Tugging at the metal face of the lock got him nothing but a torn fingernail, one that bled sluggishly, and Brandon stuck it inside his mouth absently, sucking on it until it clotted up enough to stop.

He shifted his weight from one side to the other, hoping that maybe he’d see something different on a slightly different angle. It had sounded foolish even inside his head as he’d thought that, but luck was with him, it seemed: the light of one of the moons caught and glittered in the corner of his eye as he did so, and this time he saw the hinges of the door as well.

Inside the room.

Brandon hadn’t pulled a lot of pranks in his time—he’d done the classics, of course, but he’d left anything more ambitious to other guys, preferring to slide under suspicion and not be noticed, to not make himself a target. But he remembered well enough the way the guys in Saginaw had tried to lock Mouts into the basement with Patty, yelling through the door about how there were maybe snakes and rats down there, as well as the beer fridge which was what they’d actually gone down for.

Brandon had thought at the time that being on the other side of the door to where the beer actually was probably meant this one wasn’t going down in the prank hall of fame, and he’d been right about that. Partly because Paterson and Moutrey had done their best to drink all of the beer that had been down there first, and then had cheerfully let themselves out of the locked basement door without even budging the padlock that Tro had found somewhere.

“How the fuck did you do that?” someone had asked them; probably Oleksiak if Brandon’s memory of having to look up to see the speaker was right.

Mouts had just shrugged, grinned toothily, and brandished his pocket knife. “If I told ya, I’d have to kill ya,” he intoned, and then went back to the kitchen to grab another drink from the improvised bar in there.

He’d earned a rep then for being able to pick locks, which he’d bragged about drunkenly to at least three different, unimpressed girls, but Brandon had been mostly sober and kind of bored, and he’d wandered back towards the basement later in the night, just to see if he could work it out.

He’d flicked on the overhead light, leaning around the doorjamb to reach the cord for it, with absolutely no desire to test the rickety stairs further, especially after half the team had tramped up and down them a couple times already. And it had taken a second, but then he’d figured it out: the hinges were on the inside of the door, and clearly all Mouts had done was undo them with his pocketknife, the screws still leaning drunkenly out of the brackets on the doorframe from where he’d shoved them back in to try and hide the evidence.

Brandon looked at the door in his cold stone cell, and thought: okay. I can work with this.

He’d checked his pockets, and his shoes and belt and everything else he’d been wearing a second time, more carefully, looking for anything he could use as a lever. Easton yawned and shifted position, trying to shuffle closer to Brandon’s hip, his collar jingling, and Brandon’s eyes went to it like they’d been magnetised.

He breathed out a “Ha” of satisfaction, and then set himself to disassembling part of Easton’s collar.

He ripped another fingernail and wore some new calluses into his fingertips in the effort, but eventually Brandon had something that he thought he’d be able to get enough purchase with.

Trying to breathe as slowly and quietly as possible, and to move without making any obvious sounds, Brandon slunk over to the door again, crouched down and started to work at the hinges.

He nearly dropped the first one as it finally came loose, the last stubborn screw giving up all at once, and had to set his shoulder against the door so it didn’t creak with half its support gone, twisting to keep working on the other hinge.

It took longer than the first one had, and he was on edge the entire time, ears pricked for the slightest sound, hypersensitive enough that he felt like he’d notice if even the faintest draught of air came in, but at last it slipped out of its mooring and into his waiting hand.

Easton sat quietly by his foot, obedient now as he hadn’t been earlier, panting a little but not barking or whining. Brandon looped one end of the leash around his wrist and trusted that Easton would stay, giving himself both hands free again, even as he could feel his heart hammering in his chest, feel tension thick in his throat.

He couldn’t hear anything else on the other side of the door, and there’d been no obvious movement in the shadows he could barely make out underneath it or along the side. Brandon gathered his courage together, breathing fast, poised to react as soon as he got a chance: ready to run or fight or hide. And then he dug his fingertips into the side of the door, lifted so that it wouldn’t drag over the lintel, and pulled it towards himself, opening up a big enough gap that he could slip through.

He’d never regretted the broadness of his shoulders before, he thought with a wry, self-conscious grimace, twisting sideways to get out rather than try to force the lock any further.

Next.

[]

Stepping back over to the bed, Brandon nudged Easton to his feet, hoping he wouldn’t start barking now. Thankfully, he just followed obediently, letting Brandon loop the end of the leash over his wrist and then sitting patiently beside the door as Brandon examined it.

Brandon ran his hands carefully over the keyhole, felt his fingernail catch just inside the metal, the claws he was trying to keep under control forming for a split-second. It was like his instincts knew something he didn't, though; there was a quiet 'tink' and something shifted inside the mechanism.

He held his breath, dug fully human fingernails into the wood, and pulled the door towards himself.

Next.

[]

"Oh, you're awake," a voice said, and Brandon jumped, wished he hadn't, and tried to school his face back into a semblance of calm.

He could at least fake it, right?

"Hi?"

Brandon’s words were cautious, which he thought was fucking fair enough considering he’d woken up locked in a cell. Looking around the room, it took him a second or two to pick out the shape of a person in a chair by the fire, their outline hazy and backlit by the flickering flames, so that all he could see was that they were about as tall as he was, willowy thin and subtly wrong around the face.

Or maybe that was just the way the fire light caught and glinted in their eyes. And their nails.

Brandon swallowed hard, and let his hands start to shift again, just in case. It felt so close to the surface, the change; easier than it'd ever been back home to just lean into the urge, to let himself be not one thing or the other but both and neither at the same time.

He wasn't going to kid himself about how good he really thought he'd be in a fight—Brandon had lost a fight with his comforter once back in Chicago, and Andy had laughed till he cried over that—but having some kind of weapon, especially one that most people wouldn't expect him to have made him feel just a tiny bit more in control.

"Hush, little wolf," the voice said, the accent foreign and old, like someone from one of the made-up countries in Europe, like in the Princess Bride or the Princess Diaries, and god, Brandon wished he was safely at home on his couch watching movies that he wasn't going to admit to having seen more times than he could count.

He couldn't tell anything more about the figure from the voice, either, just had a sense of great power leashed tight, something that set his teeth on edge and made his fur stand on end.

His hair, he corrected quickly; the hairs on his arms and legs were all standing to attention, goose-pimpled, and despite the control he'd worked so hard to gain, his body was trying very hard to go full wolf.

Brandon opened his mouth to ask what was going on, to demand more information, and then snapped it closed again. Something in the voice suggested that he really should do what it said, and if that meant shutting up for a few seconds, well, he could try.

He took a few steps closer, regardless.

Frustratingly, the figure in the chair didn't resolve into anything clearer, the shape just as blurred and fuzzy around the edges even when he was only a couple feet away.

Brandon didn't know where he was, and he didn't know what was going on, and he didn't like any of this one little bit.

"Good," the voice said, and Brandon tried not to react visibly to the perfunctory praise. There was a bite to it, an undercurrent that made him think that he shouldn't argue but he also shouldn't trust it. "Now, the rules for our little game: you came into my territory, on your own four feet, of your own will. So you have a choice: you can die here, or you can run."

Brandon's stomach flipped, and he inhaled sharply, feeling the air prick at his throat like ice, even though it was perfectly temperate in the room, that close to the fire.

It sounded overdramatic, and silly, like something in a movie.

It sounded ridiculous, but Brandon didn't doubt at all that he was in very, very big trouble.

"What do you choose, little wolf?" the voice asked, and its head turned towards him, cocked as if waiting for his answer. Brandon wasn't sure if he was more scared or relieved that there was no face visible then, either.

"Run," he said, the word coming out in a croak. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard, and tried again. "Run," he said, injecting the word with confidence he wasn't sure he felt.

The door behind him swung open with a creak of rusty hinges, and Brandon spun on his heel, looked down at Easton—who was yanking at the leash in the direction of freedom as if he was just as keen as Brandon to get the fuck out of there already—and after taking one big, deep breath:

Brandon ran.

He and Easton pelted out of the door like they were being chased. Brandon supposed they were, in a way. At least, it seemed very much like that had to be the case, because the only other option was the sort of prank that took both a budget and commitment to the bit that not even a cable network version of Jackass or whatever would have.

There was no way to fake everything he could see and smell and hear, and that meant that the only thing Brandon could do was to apply Occam's Razor and believe what he was being told.

So he ran.

Easton kept up with him, which Brandon was relieved about, quietly, in the back of his mind. He didn't want to get home—if he could even get out of this, and fuck, how was he going to get home when he didn't know where he was?—and have to explain to Cam that he'd lost his dog.

Once the first flood of adrenaline started to wear off, Brandon's pace slowed, and he started taking in his surroundings more than he had in that first, blindly panicked dash.

He was out in the country somewhere, running across knee-high grasslands, a wooded area in front of him and rising up along the hills, tiny glints at the top of them that suggested to Brandon that there was snow up there, somewhere above the treeline.

It smelled like late winter, not quite what he'd left but close enough, and he could hear running water nearby, a brook or a stream. The two moons—Brandon resolutely was not going to have a screaming breakdown about that, although he couldn't help also thinking about how Nick would find it kind of awesome—provided some light, but not a lot.

Brandon could see well enough, his eyes adjusted once he was away from the firelight, his dark vision as sharp as it was when he was a wolf, although he had a feeling a regular human would not be faring so well.

Then again, that—creature, whatever they were… it had known what he was, too. So Brandon was going to have to be alert.

He twitched reflexively at a flutter of sound high up in the trees behind him, what sounded like bats, their wings buffeting the air and their cries just at the edges of his hearing, close enough that he could feel the fingernails on a chalkboard pitch of it without being able to hear it clearly. There were some things that a wolf’s hearing put you at a disadvantage for.

Brandon felt something else in the air pressure change, and realized with creeping dread that it felt exactly the same as knowing someone was looking at you but not being able to see where it was coming from. Just the warning signals from his unconscious mind that were screaming to get moving and get out of there.

He took a deep breath, looked at the rough-beaten path to his left, one that wound down into a pasture, more grass waving in the night-time breeze, took a step that way—and then spun on his heel, dashing at double speed towards the trees, towards the sound of water, hoping against hope that he could lose himself in there.

It was going to be rougher ground, uphill, harder to run on than the inviting track of well-worn rock heading down the slope, but Brandon listened to his instincts, and what they were doing was screaming 'trap'. So uphill it was.

He could feel rather than hear a hiss of frustration at his choice, curling into his ears and sending another chill down his spine. He'd watched enough crappy action movies—and seen enough spy shows on TV—to know that any time your opponent had picked the ground it meant they knew more than you did, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice in the matter.

All he could do was try to be unpredictable, to keep moving, and to keep himself in one piece.

And on that front: Brandon crouched behind a tree, lifted his hand to his mouth and bit down hard on the loop of Easton's leash. He reached inside himself to twist and pull, and six seconds later he relaxed into his wolf form, shaking out each leg in turn, feeling instantly a hundred times more comfortable.

Easton looked at him and whined, but it at least wasn't the first time he'd been in wolf form around him, and he wasn't trying to run away. Brandon was definitely going to tell everyone back home that getting their dogs used to chilling with them as wolves was a very, very good idea.

The feeling he was being observed was not quite so strong once he was under the canopy, evergreens stretching high above him and dappling shadow across the undergrowth.

He followed his nose towards the stream, with some vague idea that crossing running water might help—it'd never done anything particularly supernatural for him, or even anything mundane other than maybe making him more acutely aware of how badly he might need to pee on a long road trip—and the sound of water tumbling over the river stones, clear and cold and only a few inches deep, was still calming even if it didn’t do anything more.

He had to work not to get the leash tangled in some shrubs; Easton was smart but he was still just a dog, and this wasn't exactly an ideal hiking method, but Brandon trotted into the stream, let the chill of the water soothe the pads of his paws and slow down his racing thoughts. He stood in the middle of the stream for a long minute, carefully surveying his surroundings, listening as hard as he could to see if any unnatural noises stood out to him, but it was just the typical sound of insects at dusk, a few nocturnal birds, and the odd small animal making their own way through the forest.

Nothing that seemed out of place to him at all.

Brandon took a couple of steps forward, heading upstream, against the current. Even with such shallow water it splashed a little, a fractionally different trill in the melody of the stream, and he froze again, ears straining to make out if there were any signs that someone or something had heard that.

Reassuringly, nothing he could hear changed, and he didn't feel like he was being actively stared at, so Brandon dropped his head a little to start trudging up the hill in the stream, keeping careful attention to his peripheral vision as he went.

Maybe this would work, and if nothing else at least spending time in the stream before getting out again would make it harder to pick up their scent. If that was even how the creature hunted, and fuck did Brandon ever wish he knew more about where he was or what was after him.

Brandon and Easton trudged onwards.

About the time that it felt like his paws were starting to go numb, rather than just cold, Brandon stopped to look around carefully, and seeing nothing untoward, carefully climbed out of the stream and up onto the banks. He shook himself instinctively, water droplets flying off his coat, and Easton sneezed disgustedly at him and then followed suit. Brandon felt a moment of guilt—Easton was a lot lower to the ground than he was—but he seemed okay, and since Brandon had a sneaking suspicion that what they were trying to get away from was the prospect of being someone's dinner, all things considered he figured that if he brought Easton back with a bit of a chill it was still a better outcome than it could've been.

There wasn't any obvious wide trail where they were, just the marks of a few animals making their way to the water and back out again, too jumbled and spread out to stick to just the one path, and Brandon couldn't help but notice that most of the tracks and scents he could identify belonged to fairly small creatures.

They came to a ridge where the ground leveled off again for a few feet, and Brandon did a slow circle around, checking out the full three-sixty. The sky was dark above them, speckled with stars, the two moons providing just enough light that Brandon could see the rounded outlines of boulders under the trees, see the patchy grass waving in the wind.

Brandon's hackles raised and he took a step back almost without conscious thought.

What wind?

It was remarkably calm, and the leaves on the evergreens weren't moving at all, nor were the clouds high up in the sky scudding along at anything more than the most gentle of paces.

Brandon felt a growl building up behind his teeth.

He backed up against one of the tree trunks, hoping its bulk would hide him in at least a little shadow, and stared hard at the grass.

The grass stubbornly did not move, perfectly still again as if nothing had been happening whatsoever, and Brandon was about ready to tell himself he was seeing things, stressed and wound up and nervous.

And then there was a rustle in the tree above him and something heavy and dark plummeted towards him, getting bigger as it fell.

He leapt sideways, hurling himself out of the way, and got a flash of a leathery wing—or was it a swirling cloak? And then, clear as day and an equally clear and present danger, the glint of sharp white teeth slashing through the air towards his shoulder.

Brandon rolled sideways and got tangled up in Easton's leash, which he hadn't thought to drop, his jaw clenched around the leather, and that saved him, turned his predictable dodge into a wild flailing tumble that landed just out of reach of—

Well, Brandon wasn't going to have any doubts about calling it a vampire, now.

It scrambled onto all fours and then stretched up onto two legs, hissing at him, its eyes a solid silver, its teeth and the saliva coating them glinting in the moonlight. It smelled like the grave, like it had crawled out of one, old blood and new wounds and a hunger that beat at the edges of Brandon's mind.

He scrambled back onto his paws and backed up, too scared to take his eyes off it, to let it move towards him. It didn't seem to want to attack while he was looking right at it, and that would have been a lot more comforting if Brandon hadn't also seen Jurassic Park about a hundred times.

God, he hoped there was only one of them.

"Surrender, little wolf," it hissed, the words dripping like cold dread right into Brandon's brain and making him shudder. He could see its teeth, could see its mouth and that wasn't moving, and somehow knowing that vile thing was touching his thoughts—feeling it skim along the surface of his mind like some kind of oily intrusion—made him want to dive into the deepest glacier-fed lake he could find and not come up again until he felt cleaner.

"No, I don't think so," someone else said, and then an innocuous clink of metal on rock was followed by a blinding flash of light.

The whole world was washed in golden-yellow, warming Brandon right down to his bones, even as he flinched away from it, his eyes closed tightly and tearing up from the intensity all the same.

There was an otherworldly squawk—and of course it was otherworldly, the calm part at the back of Brandon's mind observed, somewhere underneath where he just wanted to curl up screaming—and he could feel the touch on his mind retreating.

There was just enough presence there for him to catch "How dare you—", in a bitten-off, indignant screech before it let go, but somehow he didn't think that comment had been addressed to him.

There was a mumble from what sounded like only a few feet away from Brandon, soft-spoken words that in any other circumstance he would have heard as the speaker inviting someone to kiss his ass, and that couldn't be right, could it?

And then that intense warming light flashed again, a lance in front of Brandon's eyelids. He couldn't have said why, but some instinctive part of him just knew that it was okay, that he was—that they were alone again now, the danger was past and if not vanquished, then certainly weakened enough that they wouldn't have to worry about it for a little while at least.

The ambient light he could feel against his fur seemed gentler, friendly now, and he could hear Easton panting beside him, also sounding much less distressed. Daringly, Brandon opened his eyes, blinking in what looked like early twilight, or maybe late dawn, much more light than there should have been even with the twin moons above.

And then his mouth dropped open in complete shock, as he stared at Nick Leddy, his hands wreathed in fire, the shadows of it dancing on his face as he waited patiently for Brandon to respond.

Brandon shifted back abruptly, landing on his hands and knees on cold wet ground, feeling the knees of his pants start going damp and the warmth leaching out of his body. Fuck it was cold there, especially without fur.

"Fuck," he said out loud, and then looked up again at Nick, half-sick with fear about what he was going to say. Although, what could Nick say, standing there with clear supernatural abilities of his own.

"Hey Saader," Nick said, sounding completely unsurprised and almost as cool and quiet as if Brandon was standing in his kitchen helping him make dinner and not on some whole other planet or something, trying not to get eaten by fucking vampires.

Brandon really missed his boring, ordinary life, honestly.

"What happened?" Brandon asked. He didn't wait for Nick to even start answering before firing off more questions as they came to him. "What was that? Was it a vampire? How did you get rid of it? How did you even get here?"

"Uh, can we go over most of that later?" Nick asked, once it was clear Brandon had run out of words and wasn't just pausing to inhale. "I wanna get out of here before that thing finds a friend and comes back for round two."

Brandon scrambled to his feet, brushing mud and leaf litter off himself, and ducking back down quickly to grab Easton's leash. Easton, thank god, was just sitting there like this was any other walk. Well, Cam sure couldn't say Brandon hadn't tired him out this time.

"Please," Brandon said. "I do not want to repeat this any time soon." He paused for a second. "Okay, the knight in shining armor routine where you turn up in the nick of time is pretty impressive though."

Nick raised an eyebrow at him, and Brandon caught the pun then, grinned reflexively.

Brandon just looked at him for a moment longer, unsure, and rooted to the spot with it. Should he—they'd hug, normally, if they hadn't seen each other for a while, and Brandon wanted to, and it was only about sixty percent to do with his whole near death experience thing, but also this was maybe not the time…?

"Escape now, talk about it later," Nick said, decisively, and Brandon nodded. They did watch all the same movies, after all, and Brandon had probably yelled that at the TV more than once, and heard Nick do the same.

He did his best not to think about how, usually, on TV, the people not running away fast enough weren’t doing so because they were kissing.

"Uh, how do we do that?"

Nick blinked at him. "The usua-oh, right, uh. Come back this way."

Brandon followed him, Easton trotting along obediently at his side. This could all be a trick, he thought, some kind of horrible double-cross to lure him into a false sense of security, giving him someone he recognized, someone he trusted.

But he couldn't see any kind of benefit to that; if Nick hadn't shown up when he did Brandon was probably about two seconds away from being some asshole's dinner, and that was that.

Brandon couldn't think of any creature that would take playing with its food to this extreme, anyway.

So he followed Nick, and believed in him.

Nick wasn't following a trail either, picking his way through the woods with occasional glances up at the moons and stars, or down at something on his wrist, and he changed direction abruptly a few times.

It wasn't clear if that was him finding his way, or avoiding some other trouble; Brandon's senses were on overdrive, even in human form, every crackle of leaf litter underfoot or tiny animal sound around them felt like it was magnified tenfold in his ears.

"Ah," Nick said softly, triumphantly, and he turned sharply at a pile of rocks that—Brandon hadn't even seen until they were right in front of it. He couldn't tell if that was shock, or if they truly hadn't been there a moment ago.

Normally, Brandon prided himself on his perception, on paying attention to the things people were and weren't saying, on seeing all the little clues around the corners of things, the tiny details that went largely unnoticed.

Then again, wherever they were, it was clearly somewhere that the normal rules of nature didn't entirely apply, so maybe it was exactly what he thought but that was perfectly normal for this place. And it wasn't as if he'd seen any hints that something was wrong right up to the point where he'd gotten knocked out somehow and woken up there.

"Where are we, even?" Brandon started to ask, and then he ran face first into Nick's back as Nick stopped dead on the very edges of a large circular space, runes burned deeply into the turf.

"Sorry," Nick said, and turned on the spot to face Brandon. He was pink around the cheeks and at the tips of his ears, and he didn't seem to want to meet Brandon's eyes.

Brandon tried not to feel too bad about that.

If Nick was kind of weirded out by watching him change out of his wolf form, well, that—sucked, mostly, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it other than give him some space or whatever. Preferably when they were back home safe and sound, of course.

"We're still fine," Nick assured him, and Brandon's heart stuttered for a second until he realized that of course, obviously, Nick meant they weren't in any immediate danger, and not anything else. "I just have to do this carefully, normally it's just me, you know?"

"Sure," Brandon agreed, completely lost but unwilling to admit it.

"I really will explain this, uh, later," Nick said, and then put his hands on Brandon's hips just for a moment to hold him in place as he stepped past him and began to pace around the clearing.

There was a sense of ceremony to whatever Nick was doing, a substance that Brandon could feel if not see, and it felt like a ritual that he maybe wasn't supposed to be looking at.

He couldn't look away, though.

Partly it was because it was Nick, because it was always Nick, drawing Brandon's eye and his attention and affections. And partly because his hands were glowing again, more brightly than they had been earlier, and this time they were leaving ghostly trails in the air as Nick made precise looking gestures at certain points, as he murmured words that Brandon didn't understand under his breath.

It would have been almost inaudible if Brandon just had ordinary human hearing, but he didn't, so he watched, fascinated, as Nick wove concepts and shapes together out of the air, something shimmering and immense held just behind them, a hairsbreadth away from them.

Brandon found himself holding his breath.

Nick was almost the whole way back to Brandon—maybe a foot or two away, moving at a steady pace—when Easton barked, sharply, and Nick's head turned just as sharply, right back to face them.

"What—" Brandon started to say, but Nick reached for his elbow and hauled him into the middle of the clearing with a strength Brandon didn't realize he had, and Easton leapt forward to follow as Nick jumped sideways, said, very clearly, "Yeah, fuck that, we are leaving," and added a couple of syllables that Brandon heard with crystal clarity and yet could not have reproduced if Jaromir Jagr himself was standing in front of him and asking.

There was a crack like thunder, except it was the sky itself splitting into pieces above them, peeling away in streamers as paper-thin flames whirled around them and above them, spinning around like a globe.

There was another crack, muffled, and Brandon caught a glimpse for just a second of a wide open mouth, sharp teeth, an ageless and featureless face screaming in frustration as it ran right up against whatever barrier Nick had built around them, and couldn't get through it.

Nick laid his palm flat against the protective wall and said, every consonant crisp and perfectly distinct, "Do not hunt from that place ever again, or you'll be hearing from me." He paused, and something in his face darkened, a shadow in his eyes that made chills run down Brandon's spine, made the hair on his arms stand on end even more so than it had been. "Or my godmother."

There was no response, but Brandon didn't get the impression Nick was waiting for one.

"Right," Nick said, turning back to face Brandon as if he hadn't just delivered a terrifying if largely incomprehensible threat to a supernatural creature that Brandon hadn't even known existed when he woke up this morning, and wow, yeah, Brandon was definitely scheduling in some personal time to freak the fuck out about all of this soon.

Nick dusted off his hands, like all of this was all in a day's work for him. "Let's get home," and he spoke a few more syllables that Brandon couldn't understand.

They built to a pitched whine almost too high for him to hear, and the world outside swirled around like they were in the middle of some kind of amusement park ride that was meant to make you dizzy, so you'd stumble out and almost puke. The pressure built and built, until Brandon was almost afraid to breathe, and then just like that it popped, fresh air rushing back in to fill the space between them, cold and dirty and wonderfully familiar.

Brandon took a deep breath and grinned helplessly. This was definitely home, this was—he was in Ohio, and that meant home now, which was kind of a weird thing to discover about himself considering everything else that he'd experienced through the day, but he was sitting in a snow drift somewhere down the block from Cam's place, Easton a heavy weight on his chest, and everything was cold and damp and he felt exhausted and more than a little shaky but he was home and everything smelled right.

"You're going to catch your death down there," Nick said, cheerfully, and before Brandon had even fully realized that he was still there, he'd reached down and pulled Brandon back to his feet.

Brandon was newly aware of just how much snow had been melting through his pants while he tried to get his brain together, and also of how close to him Nick was standing, and how good he smelled, and he was just going to blame it on his wolf if Nick objected, because the overwhelming everything of it all was suddenly too much for him, and Brandon closed his eyes again and threw himself at the nearest steady point.

Which was Nick, of course.

Brandon buried his face in the side of his throat, wrapped his arms around him and held on tight, only letting himself notice the very smallest part of how Nick's beard was scratchy against his cheek, of how Nick smelled warm and spicy and good, like home, and how Nick's pulse was pounding, far too fast as it thrummed against Brandon's lips where they were pressed against the thin, vulnerable skin of his throat.

Nick seemed so calm, on the outside.

But here was more evidence for Brandon that he wasn't, entirely.

"We're back," Nick said, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Yep," Brandon said, but his fingers weren't getting the message that he could let go now.

He considered the situation for a second longer and decided his subconscious was correct, he did need to make sure Nick didn't go anywhere before they had a chance to talk. And judging by what had just happened, Nick probably didn't actually need to cram his six foot frame into an airplane seat to get back to New York, so all things considered, Brandon was just—not gonna let go until he had to.

"Saader," Nick said, still gentle, like he thought Brandon was going to fall apart or lose it or something.

And, well, maybe, but not necessarily for the reasons Nick might expect.

"I know," Brandon said, the words mumbled, muffled against Nick's skin, and he could feel Nick twitch reflexively against him when Brandon's lips brushed his skin as he spoke. "I know, just—gimme a second."

"Okay," Nick said, and Brandon was close enough to hear the slight wobble in his voice, the tiny chink of vulnerability that he knew Nick went out of his way to keep away from absolutely everyone, even the people he knew best.

Nick's arms around him were steady enough, though.

Something yanked at Brandon's arm and he jumped, fingers twisting into the fabric of Nick's jacket so he couldn't let go of him entirely even as he spun on his heel to see what was going on. He relaxed almost immediately, flushing a little with sheepish resignation; it was just Easton yanking at his leash, dancing on the spot and eager to just go home already himself.

"I guess, uh, we should take him back?" Brandon said, and the words turned into a question despite his better judgment.

"Whose dog is it anyway?" Nick asked. "I thought—I was worried it was George's at first, until I got closer."

"Cam's—Atkinson's," Brandon corrected himself.

"Right," Nick said slowly.

"I walk him sometimes," Brandon said. "You know those days where you just kind of need to run away but you can't, so you… take a dog out and play for a while until it sort of wears off."

"Mmmhmm."

Brandon couldn't quite read Nick's expression, and found himself chattering on in the absence of anything to actually stop him.

"I'm pretty sure him and his wife appreciate it, too, can't hurt to have someone owe you a favor, huh?"

Brandon was definitely rambling.

Nick had relaxed, though; he felt less tense almost immediately, and it was sudden enough that Brandon started to feel a little bit stupid about how he was still hanging on to him with something like a death grip.

"Well, let's take their dog back, then," Nick said. He shoved his sleeve back to look at his watch and then gave Brandon a sunny, easy smile that didn't quite go all the way to reassuring him yet. "I think we got back fast enough that they wouldn't have worried yet."

"Oh fuck, I hadn't even thought of that."

Brandon wasn't sure how long he'd been unconscious, subjective or not, and he'd definitely run for… hours, so there was no way the sun should still be up in Columbus. Fucking—teleportation was one thing, time travel was a whole other kettle of fish.

"How did that even—?" he asked, not even sure of the right words to use.

Nick sighed. "I'll try to explain better when we get back to your place, but it's not—it's not like we skipped time, exactly, more that things go a lot faster where you, um, were."

"Okay," Brandon said, taking some comfort from Nick saying he'd come back to Brandon's place at least. "Oh, it's across the street here, c'mon," and he led Nick and Easton back up to Cam and Natalie's place.

Cam looked a little flustered when he opened the door, from which Brandon surmised he probably hadn’t been gone as long as normal, but he also didn’t ask Brandon any pointed questions out loud about why one of their division rivals was suddenly hanging out with him, so on the balance of things, Brandon was gonna take that. He had a funny feeling Cam was going to have a lot more to say later, after some time to think it over and workshop some truly awful chirping material.

Putting that prospect aside for the time being, Brandon just provided his half of the expected conversation, reassuring Cam that Easton had behaved and that it’d been—Brandon’s voice stumbled there, and he knew Cam had noticed—fun.

They said their goodbyes then, Easton clearly happy to go curl up in front of the fireplace and go straight to sleep, and Brandon could honestly have joined him quite happily, if only he wasn’t also bubbling over with the combination of lingering nerves and intense curiosity.

Brandon led Nick out and started back towards his house, only then starting to catalogue the various aches and pains he’d collected, running headlong through the forest in moonlight.

“I guess I should maybe have left you outside, huh,” Brandon said, giving Nick a rueful grin as soon as they were out of earshot. At the very least, they should have come up with some kind of story first for why Nick was there instead of in New York or wherever he was supposed to be. Fuck, where was he supposed to be? Brandon hoped this whole thing hadn’t happened on a game day; he was pretty sure you didn’t get a pass on an a mystery absence just because you were rescuing an ex-teammate from a fucking vampire.

…Brandon’s life was definitely too exciting, and he wasn’t just talking about the streak.

Nick looked at him, making direct eye contact this time, which made Brandon feel warm all over, his toes curling a little, and crooked a grin right back at him.

“Uh, maybe. And I should probably have told you you have leaves in your hair before we saw, uh, anyone else you know.”

Brandon’s hand flew up to his head, to find there were indeed crumbling fallen leaves tangled in his hair, and he probably should have expected that, but he’d been too flustered to get even partway into his normal post-change routine of checking for that kind of thing.

He was definitely blushing now.

Nick took pity on him.

“He knows you’re a wolf, right? I’m sure he figured you and Easton just got a little too involved playing fetch or whatever.”

It was a nice, easy answer, and Brandon wanted to take it, but as ever his compulsive honesty bit him in the ass.

“I mean, yeah, he does, but I don’t often—uh, he might be jumping to some conclusions right now.” Brandon shrugged, hoped the expression on his face didn’t look too weird. “Sorry?”

He was sorry; sorry that he hadn’t actually gotten to do whatever the wickedly gleeful light in Cam’s eyes thought he and Nick had been doing, and sorry that he was definitely going to hear about that in the locker room later, for all that, otherwise, he trusted Cam not to spread anything he was speculating about.

Mostly the first one, though.

Brandon’s eyes dropped to Nick’s mouth, again, tracing the curve of his lips, the glimpse of crooked teeth as he grinned. And then guiltily, back up again to see—Nick noticing him.

Fuck.

Busted.

Brandon tried to start walking faster, but Nick was too quick for him, grabbing his elbow and holding him in place as he gave him a searching look.

Brandon’s mouth was too dry, throat tight.

“I don’t mind,” Nick said softly, and Brandon wanted to scrunch up and hide; being seen was bad enough, getting Nick being nice to him about it was somehow almost more galling. Nick’s brows drew together and his hand tightened on Brandon’s arm. “I don’t mind if he jumps to conclusions,” he clarified.

Brandon blinked.

“I would like those conclusions to be accurate,” Nick went on, and Brandon’s ears were roaring like the teleportation spell was starting up all over again. “I—fuck, Brandon, you think I notice when just anyone gets yanked off this plane?”

“I assumed it was a teammate thing?” Brandon said weakly. He couldn’t look away from Nick, the intent in his eyes, darker green than usual, like the color and intensity of everything about him was dialed all the way up, almost too real to fit in an Ohio winter.

“Not so much,” Nick said, voice tight. “I mean, it’s kind of—a violation of your privacy, maybe, but—” “I do not mind,” Brandon interrupted to assure him.

“—but, um, I kind of. Had an eye on you. Uh, not literally, just. In case you got in trouble. In case you needed someone.”

“Well, you were right about that,” Brandon said. “Um, and thanks again, for that, I just.” He floundered around for the words, and couldn’t find them.

They were talking in circles, too, like neither of them wanted to be the one who actually came out and said it, just in case the other was reading everything all the way wrong.

And Brandon, thinking again, about how he’d nearly missed out on the chance to have even this barely satisfying, watered down half-confession of a conversation, well.

Brandon figured that maybe this time it was up to him to take the initiative.

“You’re not just an ex-teammate to me,” he said, picking his words carefully.

Nick raised an eyebrow, a little punchy, like maybe he believed this could be going somewhere good but he wasn’t going to let himself depend on it. Brandon could definitely do better for him on that count.

“You sure about that?”

“Well, I definitely don’t want to do this to Smitty,” Brandon said, and before his nerve could fail him he leaned in closer and kissed Nick; quick and hot and closed-mouthed, something definite with a promise of more for when they had more privacy.

Brandon leaned back, licked his lips nervously, watching Nick for his reaction.

Nick raised one hand to his mouth slowly, index finger rubbing over his bottom lip, right where Brandon wanted to bite him, and he made a brief, complex gesture.

Snow and copper bloomed along with it, a phantom kiss pressed against his lips, the taste like a memory given weight, the warmth of a mug of tea in your hands in the middle of winter, and Brandon thought, very clearly, of a day back in Rockford, curled up on Nick’s couch watching Survivor, warm and happy and perfectly content.

It took a second longer for him to realize that was entirely deliberate; that Nick was giving him that gift, that kiss, that memory; returning the gesture Brandon had made to him in the most unique way possible.

“Oh,” Brandon said softly. “I guess… we have a lot to talk about.”

Nick smiled at him again, free and deliriously happy, his hand sliding down Brandon’s muddy sleeve from the elbow and over his forearm, until he could tangle his fingers with Brandon’s and they could walk the last bit of the way back to the house arm in arm.

“That and some,” he agreed, and snapped his fingers.

Brandon half-expected that they’d be inside the house instantly or something, but instead they kept walking, and it wasn’t until he was dropping the spare key he’d stashed in his garden into the dish by the door that he’d just locked behind them that he caught his reflection in the mirror and realized his hair was smoothed down again and free of debris, the streak of mud he’d felt on his ear was gone, and—he glanced down—his coat was clean again, too.

“Well that’s useful,” Brandon said, in sincere, if involuntary appreciation.

“Figured I could help you skip a few steps,” Nick said.

“Oh?” Brandon stepped closer, his socks sliding a little on the polished wood, eyes fixed on Nick’s.

“So if you didn’t figure it out yet,” Nick said, words tumbling out in a rush. “I’m a sorceror. There are some perks.”

“Noted.”

“…so can I kiss you for real now?” Nick asked, a little plaintive.

“You’re not gonna turn into a frog or something on me, are you?”

Nick laughed, breathless, giddy with it.

“The only one turning into animals around here’s you, Saader. But it’d be worth it even if I did.”

“Fuck, how did you make that sound kind of romantic?” Brandon asked, rhetorically; he was already getting his hands up to frame Nick’s face, leaning in to kiss him again.

Nick mumbled something against Brandon’s mouth, but it couldn’t have been all that important if he just met every push, every advance Brandon made.

By the time Brandon’s brain started functioning properly again his coat was half off, sliding down his arms and caught between them, and Nick’s shirt was untucked and twisted out of shape where Brandon had gotten his hands on him.

“We should, uh, maybe take this somewhere more comfortable,” Brandon gasped, and shuddered as Nick’s teeth scraped along the side of his neck. It could have been awkward, after what they’d just escaped, but it turned out when it was Nick with his teeth so close to Brandon’s jugular that it was just indescribably hot, and Brandon’s head was spinning from the whiplash of the last couple hours.

“We could, yeah,” Nick said, his hands still rubbing slow circles over Brandon’s back, sending warm ripples of pleasure through him. Brandon wasn’t sure if it was magic of some kind or just Nick, but he was enjoying it, regardless.

Of course, with a pitched sense of comic timing and truly cruel luck, that was when Brandon’s stomach growled, loudly.

Nick broke away, muffled a laugh into the meat of Brandon’s shoulder. “Or maybe we should feed you first.”

“I guess it has been a while,” Brandon admitted. And he had done a lot of work. And fuck, so had Nick, probably; if his magic worked anything like Brandon’s wild shapeshifter thing, then everything he’d done to save Brandon’s ass had to have taken it out of him, too.

“Pizza?” Brandon said, falling back on the tradition, and Nick nodded, fist-bumped him, and agreed, “Pizza.”

By silent agreement, they didn’t talk about much of anything while waiting for the pizza to turn up, and when it did, Nick fell on it with the same degree of ravenous enthusiasm that Brandon was feeling, so call that some convincing evidence for his theory about how Nick’s abilities worked.

“So is it always a wolf?” Nick asked, still with his mouth half full, but it was clear enough for Brandon to pick up the words.

Brandon picked up his beer bottle and took a long drink from it, getting his words in order before actually replying.

“So far, yeah.” Brandon shrugged. “I mean, it’s a classic for a reason, right?”

He’d never thought all that closely about it, to be honest. Guys he played with turned into wolves, and so when Brandon felt that tug of the moon, the wrench inside his bones that crystallized into the sheer need to run, to be something else… he’d never even begun to think that there was any other shape he could be.

Nick shrugged. “I’ve met a few wolves, but, you know. One of the guys back in New York goes, uh, stag. Or bison, sometimes.”

Brandon blinked, and said, “Huh.” That was… certainly something to consider later.

“Anyway, that’s not the important thing. You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Yeah, sure,” Brandon said, “I guess I didn’t stop to think in time that I’d never seen that dog park before, but we just—went in,” and he explained everything that he’d seen, that he’d thought, right up until Nick showed up like a literal fucking knight in shining armor. “Or shining hands, anyway,” Brandon finished. “How does that even work, by the way?”

Nick shrugged at him. “It just—does. I learn things, and then I remember the shape of them, and then they happen. I mean, not during games, obviously, that would be cheating.”

“And I think people would notice if you threw a fireball at someone on your way to the net,” Brandon added.

“I mean, I can’t say I’m not tempted sometimes,” Nick joked, putting on a wistful tone, but his expression sobered almost immediately. “But, really, uh, you can probably appreciate why it’s not common knowledge, huh?”

Brandon nodded slowly. He—was less surprised than he could have been, but something about finding out this other side of Nick, this other part of his life made sense, it just fit right in. And he didn’t feel slighted for not having known before; it wasn’t like he’d come right out and told Nick he turned into a wolf sometimes either, was it?

“Yeah, I get it.”

Nick relaxed, and it was by an infinitesimal amount, but enough that Brandon could see it, could feel warmed by it. It was obvious enough that Nick cared what he thought, what happened to him, and it wasn’t as if Brandon was going to stop thinking about kissing him again any time soon—especially when it was that good, especially when it appeared to be very much mutual—but seeing even more evidence that Brandon’s good opinion mattered to him was buoying.

“How did you find me, anyway?” Brandon asked, the curiosity finally outweighing his desire not to push Nick on it until he was ready to talk. The comparative privacy of Brandon’s house was hopefully going to help there.

“Uh,” Nick said, and Brandon was delighted to note the tips of his ears going red, his face flushing, cheeks pink above the dark beard. “I, um.”

Brandon couldn’t help but lean forward, intent; he wanted to push but it looked like Nick would get there on his own, he just had to wait.

And watching him like that; flustered and almost unsure, a complete contrast to his usually calm and reliable self was… interesting. It wasn’t like Brandon wasn’t attracted to him pretty much all of the time anyway, but seeing him like this just made Brandon want to fluster him some more, to see what it would be like when Nick wasn’t so cautious and so wholly in control of his words and his voice and his actions. Brandon had been having guilty fantasies about that for… longer than he wanted to admit, really.

“I maybe, uh.” Nick reached over and rubbed his thumb over the nape of Brandon’s neck, the pressure against his skin sending shivers down Brandon’s spine, making him want to sprawl out and purr approval. It felt good, warm and light and liquid; made him remember how Nick used to do that every time they hugged, on or off the ice.

And then Nick drew back, thumb and forefinger pinched together, a tiny mote of pure blue-white light held between his fingers, throwing shadows crazily around the room, and Brandon could feel the warmth coming off it against his face, his chest, like he was sitting in front of a roaring fire; heat and comfort and safety all tangled into one.

“I woke up from my nap and this was missing,” Nick said, like that made sense, and after a minute, it started to. Brandon sat up straighter. “And it scared the shit out of me, I was so worried something had happened to you, and then I got here and looked around the last place you’d been, and it wasn’t there anymore, which was how I realized something had.”

“You were—tracking me?” Brandon asked, carefully neutral, and Nick shook his head, denying it with a desperation in his face that Brandon couldn’t help but be swayed by.

“It’s not, not exactly. Just—it was a protection spell, to let me know if you needed me. Just in case.”

“Oh,” Brandon said. That seemed less creepy, or at least less like something he wanted to yell at Nick about, especially when he couldn’t deny that it had paid off. “You could have told me about it.”

Nick quirked a grin at him. “You could have told me some stuff too, Saader.”

Brandon opened his mouth and then shut it again, fast. He didn’t really have an argument for that.

Nick chewed on his lip, and Brandon got distracted again, staring at Nick’s mouth.

Nick cleared his throat, swallowed—Brandon watched his throat move and felt his thoughts start sliding back in a much dirtier direction—and said, almost diffidently, “Uh, do you mind if I—put this back?”

Brandon’s gaze flew back up to meet his, thinking it over while Nick waited, a faint anxiety visible in the creases at the corners of his eyes, the tight set of his jaw.

“Yeah,” he said eventually. “You can—that would be okay.”

Nick relaxed, gave him a brighter smile and said, “Thank you,” softly as he reached over again, the mote of light still glowing between his fingers. He curled his fingers around Brandon’s neck, palm warm at the side of his throat as he rubbed his fingertips up over his nape and into his hair, nails scratching pleasantly.

Brandon fancied he could feel that extra spot of warmth as it sank back into his skin, as it ceased shedding light into the room, but he felt like he could almost feel it throbbing just under his skin, heat and affection and the tiniest piece of Nick’s attention, ever-watchful, always devoted.

He maybe liked that feeling a little too much.

Brandon kept looking at Nick, and Nick kept touching him right back, brought his other hand up to cradle Brandon’s jaw—slowly enough that Brandon could have said something if he didn’t want that, that it was blindingly obvious what Nick was doing, and what he was doing was exactly what Brandon wanted him to do.

“This is okay, right?” Nick said, words barely audible in the quiet room.

“Nick,” Brandon said, barely restraining the urge to roll his eyes, impatience matched only by desire and hardly tempered by it, “Just—fucking kiss me again, will you?”

“Any time,” Nick said, and he did.

[]

"Hey boy," Brandon said, leaning down to let Easton sniff his hand and give him a lick that felt approving in some way. Brandon had hung out with Cam and Easton enough times that he probably didn't feel like a total stranger, but it was nice to see the way that Easton immediately sat back on his haunches when Brandon told him to.

Brandon gave him the first uncomplicated smile he felt like he'd had all day when Easton's jaw dropped open in a doggy grin as he stared up at Brandon and waited for the humans to decide what was going on.

"Have fun," Cam said, and started to close the door.

Brandon opened his mouth to say "you too" automatically before thinking the better of it, and just waving over his shoulder as he walked away.

Whatever route they were taking was probably the same one Cam and Nat took Easton on all the time, if the way that he automatically headed in one direction—and paused at every corner to wait for Brandon to realize which way they were supposed to be going—was any indication.

Brandon was maybe not doing the best job of reinforcing his training, but he figured ‘why not’ and let Easton guide him in the right direction, just enjoying being outside and moving with no pressure and no expectations.

It was easy to kind of just let his mind drift then, without getting hung up on expectations and priorities and problems, just putting one foot after the other and letting his body work.

Brandon walked, and walked, and then realized with a start that he wasn't entirely sure where he was.

Which should have been impossible, because they were maybe three blocks from Cam's house, and therefore like a mile from Nationwide, if that, and Brandon knew this whole area back to front. Like, ‘could get from Cam's place to his own with his eyes closed’ well.

Except he had his eyes wide open now and what he was seeing wasn't—

It wasn't Columbus.

"What the fuck," Brandon hissed, not sure who he was even talking to; it was just him and Easton and a sidewalk that was starting to crumble into pieces under their feet.

The air somehow seemed warmer, too, sweat springing up on Brandon's neck under his scarf, and the snow wasn't nearly as thick as it had been a few moments ago.

At least, Brandon thought it was a few moments ago, and he'd have thought he would have noticed all this stuff the second it started to become apparent but—maybe it had just started? Maybe he'd walked into a film set or something by accident, that would explain it. He just had to turn around and get Easton and himself out of there, and then they go could home and he could google it and tell the guys he was going be an accidental extra on, like, the Avengers or whatever.

Except when he turned around—and he knew they'd just walked past that striped montrosity that everyone in the neighborhood complained about, even though they'd probably miss it if the owner ever gave in and did repaint it after all—it wasn't Columbus behind him, either.

Just a long trail of his footprints and Easton's pawprints in the melting snow, and a meadow with a thick hedge of brushy trees, pine needles weighted down with melting snow just barely visible on the other side of the stone wall the trail followed in parallel.

The stone wall was why he hadn't noticed at first, Brandon thought. It was rough and grey and looked kind of like concrete, the fancy kind with the fake texturing, so out of the corner of his eye it had just looked like another set of expensive row houses.

He looked down at Easton. Easton looked up at him, tail wagging.

Well, that was… probably a good sign, Brandon thought. Weren't dogs supposed to sense danger or something? So maybe if he just kept walking this would just be fine. Somehow.

He couldn't think of anything else to do, really.

Easton cocked his head on the side and twitched an ear, like he was waiting for Brandon to give him some kind of instruction.

"Well, Easton," Brandon said slowly, a little glad that at least there was no one else there to witness him silently freaking out, and well aware that he was absolutely a cliche. "It looks like we're not in Ohio anymore."

Easton didn't laugh at him, so that was one point in favor of this not being some kind of mind-meltingly horrifying situation. Brandon wasn't sure what he'd do if the dog started talking back.

[]

"I guess we just keep walking," Brandon said, after the universe declined to respond to his admittedly terrible joke by either dropping farmhouses out of the sky or doing anything more than sending a light wind rustling through the trees.

So Brandon picked up the lead, whistled between his teeth for Easton to walk along with him, and kept walking.

The landscape wasn’t totally unfamiliar; it was rural Ohio with a twist, rolling hills and fields, albeit with a complete lack of pasture animals. If there’d been a road, Brandon could’ve been driving home to his parents in Pittsburgh. But instead, there was the graveled path under his feet, the stone wall at his side, and the slowly thawing earth around them.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed—he didn't feel tired, but that was a lot easier in the warmer climate, without cold air dragging at his lungs—but what felt like only a short time later Brandon caught a flash of color out of the corner of his eye and stopped dead. The field to his right had at some point fallen away, earth tumbling into smooth rocks, and now the stone wall bordered a slow-moving wide river, water almost too blue to believe chattering over pebbles.

It was charming, and pretty, and almost too picture-perfect, and Brandon was suddenly convinced both that he wanted to step into it, to paddle his feet like he was a little kid again, and equally strongly, that he shouldn't trust it at all.

He watched the water run over the stones for a minute, perfectly clear and looking maybe a foot deep, burbling cheerfully. It looked safe, it should be safe, and hell, it might even be safe to drink, let alone touch, if this place was as untouched and far from civilization as it seemed.

Brandon shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wrestling with temptation.

His feet were a little sore after this much walking, and it could be kind of the old fashioned version of an ice bath—but then again, he’d also watched enough documentaries on the Discovery channel to know just how many extremely gross parasites or bacteria could be hiding in what looked like clean water.

But—it really did look fine, pure and untouched, nothing like the farm streams he’d seen. There was no run-off heading into the water except from the melting snow, and the banks were clear of weeds, bare dirt that was somehow not even muddy, no hoof or boot prints to be seen. It wasn’t like he was in some kind of factory-farming area.

And yet… the niggling feeling at the back of his head that had told him to just keep walking was still giving him the same instructions; keep moving forward, no distractions.

Which also sounded kind of like something Torts would say, barked out with the bone-deep belief that he was going to be obeyed come hell or high water, and god, if he suddenly had Torts stuck in his head, then maybe Brandon would consider taking his chances with that stream after all.

He snorted, shook his head to try and push that alarming notion right back out of his brain again. No wading, no stopping, and definitely no way that he was psychically connected to his coach. If Brandon had to have anyone else in his brain, he’d—

Well, there was a pretty long list before Torts showed up, suffice to say.

Brandon took one last lingering look at the stream, but told himself it was safest not to take the chance, with some regret. As he turned his back on the water, he was swamped with a nearly overwhelming urge to toe off his boots and just walk in anyway, good sense bedamned.

“No,” Brandon said aloud, stepping firmly on that notion, and putting every ounce of his will behind it.

He might not be particularly clear on what was happening to him, but given what he remembered from fairy tales and stories, he knew that intent mattered and so did consent, however trickily and sideways a contract it might be framed in. And now he knew for a fact that there was something otherworldly about that water. So… yeah, not a hope in hell, he thought, and set his feet right back on the path forward.

Easton was still tugging at his leash too, his nose pointed unerringly in a direction that Brandon was just going to call north for lack of any better idea, so Brandon mentally flipped off whatever was in the water and trying to charm him, and kept walking.

With a slightly more careful eye on his surroundings, this time.

Next.

[]

"I guess we just keep walking," Brandon said, after the universe declined to respond to his admittedly terrible joke by either dropping farmhouses out of the clear blue sky or doing anything more than sending a light wind rustling through the trees.

So Brandon picked up the lead, whistled between his teeth for Easton to walk along with him, and kept on walking.

The stone wall beside the path looked like it continued for almost a mile; a little more broken down in places than others, but never lower than Brandon's hip, and always broken up into empty fields, the other sides of them bordered by equally low stone walls, or neatly trimmed hedges, in some sort of pattern that Brandon couldn't quite make out. There were rolling hills behind the pastures, and to his other side, low fields, with outcroppings of some kind of rock-greyish white and sparkling through the light dusting of snow. Brandon stopped and stared at one for quite a while, wondering if he should approach, just to see, but some sense at the back of his mind seemed to be strongly suggesting that he needed to keep moving, that what he was looking for was somewhere ahead and not behind him.

And with no other guidance but his own intuition, well. Brandon hummed quietly to himself, just to make it seem a little less alien, and kept walking.

The temperature picked up as he kept walking, in a way that was not just the exertion warming him up. The snow got thinner and more patchy, until it was more a dusting—light and crystalline and perfectly clean—as opposed to the greyish sludge and half-iced over mounds that Brandon was used to trudging past on the sidewalks at home. He tried to imagine for a minute what it’d be like to get any kind of snowplough along this path, how totally incongruous it would look, to say nothing of how there was no way even the smallest one would fit, and then he remembered that of course horse-drawn ploughs had existed, and probably it’d be something like that.

Or this path was so deserted and foreign that in winter it just iced up entirely and no one knew or cared. That thought sent a shiver down his spine, and Brandon found himself walking faster, just to make sure he was definitely heading to warmer climes.

He heard the river before he saw it; the unmistakable sound of water rushing over rocks, racing along merrily.

The path took a dogleg, curving back towards the distant mountains for a moment, and the water hurtled down from the slope, crystal clear and that faintly eye-hurting shade of blue that suggested it was glacier fed. It was familiar enough from the number of times Brandon had been up in the mountains in Canada, looked like it would've fit right in somewhere in the Rockies, maybe Alberta or BC.

And—he frowned and looked more closely at it—it sounded like a river in full flood, thick with snow-melt and boasting a roaring current, but from where he was standing, it just looked like a little stream, like it was only a few inches deep and narrow enough that even he should be able to jump over it if he tried.

Brandon blinked again, stepped closer, putting his hand on the top of the stone wall to balance as he craned his neck for a closer look. He was getting thirsty, walking in the sun like this.

But he was also used to looking before he leapt, these days.

Not much had come easy for Brandon over the past few years off the ice; whether it was making the CHL in the first place, or getting drafted to the show. Whether it was keeping his grades high enough to keep his parents happy without taking too much time away from hockey in high school, or trying, desperately, to get back to the level he knew he could play at when everyone was doubting him, when he was hurting and scared of how far there was to fall. He’d kept almost everyone he’d ever been interested in—everyone he’d had a chance of it working out with—at arms length, never sure enough that it was safe to let them in, to ask them out.

And just when he’d thought he had everything—a Cup and a team that loved him and a guy that might’ve been starting to do the same—it’d been yanked away, piece by piece. Stan Bowman had looked him in the eye and told him he was a Hawk forever and a week later Brandon had been in Ohio.

So yeah: if this was a gift horse, then Brandon was checking its teeth.

Nothing had come easy for him lately, and he didn’t trust anything that looked like it might.

He leaned in harder, trying to see whatever reflection had sparkled along the edge of the water, catching his eye, and then something on top of the wall bit into his palm, a sudden line of pain. He jerked back, yanking his hand away and swearing.

When he looked down at it, there was no cut or mark, just the rapidly fading imprint from where the uneven rock had pressed against his hand, a few crumbs of gravel stuck in the lines on his hand, the skin white but going pink again as blood rushed back. He looked down at the wall but there was nothing there, either; he must have just caught a sharp edge or something, and pulled back before it broke the skin.

More cautiously this time, he looked back at the river, and this time saw a curious doubling of his vision; the tiny little stream he’d seen the first time trickling along innocently, and underlying it, a broad river, whitecaps tipping the rollicking water, sharp white rocks peeking out at intervals.

It was like one of those Magic Eye paintings, or some kind of illusion; so obviously there as soon as you knew how to look for it, but hidden away on first glance. Everything about it screamed danger, and no matter how sore Brandon’s feet were starting to get or how dry his throat was, there was no way he was getting any closer to the weirdass magical river thing.

“No thank you very much,” he said, under his breath, and whistled for Easton to come along as they kept walking, blinking as the midday sun came out from behind the clouds and into his eyeline.

Next.

[]

No matter how fast or slow he walked, the hills in the distance didn't seem to be coming any closer as he kept moving, and eventually the river meandered away again, and it was just Brandon, walking down a dusty path, coat now over his arm, bundled with his scarf, and Easton trotting in front of him with his ears pricked up.

An indeterminate amount of time later, all of the snow around them had melted away, and Brandon was wishing that his boots weren't quite so warm, his shirtsleeves shoved up to his elbows and sweat trickling down the back of his neck. It felt like it was now past early spring and edging into actual summer, and the dark green buds unfurling from the occasional tree in the corner of a paddock seemed to support that idea. Brandon turned around, and could see glimmers of snow on the mountains behind him, but they were dark, and fuzzy around the edges, and trying to retrace his steps seemed like a very bad idea.

He wasn't sure that they'd still all be there, for one.

Slowly, he began to realize the other part of this whole experience that was making his skin crawl, the unreality of it all crackling over his nerves whenever he let himself try to think about the situation instead of just going where he was ever-so-obviously being guided, and it was that despite all these sights and sounds of nature—the burbling water, the crunch of gravel under his feet, the wind quivering through the hedgerows… there were no animal sounds. No cows or sheep, no goats; no birdsong and no insects, and even after living in the middle of a city for the last few years… that felt more disconcerting than anything else.

The sun at least looked like it always did, and Brandon had to blink hard, the after-image still shimmering red in front of his eyes for a few seconds after looking right at it just to check.

He wasn’t sure exactly what else he would have expected. It should have been comforting—it wasn't dark out, nor was there a full moon or any other sort of typical horror movie setting, but even though everything around him looked pitch perfect, something about the quality of the light was infinitesimally wrong. Or—not quite wrong, but just not entirely right, not fully trustworthy, like looking at a piece from a master painter and seeing the beauty, comprehending the skill and the effort… but unable to forget that it was art, not reality or its reflection.

It was like a kids movie, or a theme park, all of the surface and no substance behind it. And it was giving him a headache trying to figure it all out.

Brandon wondered, again, why this was happening to him.

He hadn't picked up any mysterious lamps, or gotten involved in anything shadier than Dubi's completely ridiculous low-stakes poker games on the plane; he hadn't made any wishes or been rude to a little old lady who'd turned around to curse him or anything like that—

Well, okay, he'd kind of wished for a few things.

But not to anyone he thought could have been listening.

His pace slowing a little, Brandon wondered what people on unexpected vaguely magical journeys who didn't remember to stuff a granola bar or something in their pockets first actually ate when they got hungry, and on cue, his stomach growled.

And like that was a cue, Brandon's foot skidded in the gravel, yanking his attention right back to the immediate moment. He looked down instinctively to see what he'd stepped on, and just managed to keep his balance without straining anything, although he did also crankily decide that there weren't enough twisted ankles in movies about this kind of thing. He couldn't see anything obvious that he’d slipped on, just the same loose gravel he'd been walking on for… maybe a couple of hours, now?

And then when he looked up again, it was to see the stark lines of a building backlit at the top of the trail, the sun only just now starting to sink behind it, maybe a mile away. He could've sworn that it'd just been another of the endless hills a moment ago, but maybe he just hadn't been able to see till then.

The sun had been in his eyes, after all.

Regardless of whether it was a good idea or not, Brandon picked up his pace, clicking his tongue at Easton to encourage him to keep up as well. At least Easton still seemed to be running on some boundless energy source; Brandon could have carried him if he'd had to, but he'd rather not unless it was an actual emergency.

The incline picked up some more then too, and despite the fact he was in good shape and knew it, Brandon was more than a little winded by the time he got close enough to really see the building properly, his breath coming too fast, and sweat rolling uncomfortably down his back, collecting at his temples and starting to drip into his eyes.

He was going to make a great first impression, he thought ruefully.

As he got closer, he could make out thick, rough-cut plank walls, and a sign dangling above the door with a stylized setting sun, the rays falling onto some kind of—well, goblet was the only word he had for it.

It looked like something out of one of the Indiana Jones movies, for fuckssake.

There was no one else in view, and no sounds coming from inside to give any hint as to what lay within, although it was so obviously a tavern of some kind that Brandon couldn't imagine anything more than, perhaps, a quiet bunch of farmers drinking their ales. At the very least, anywhere there were people he could probably find out something about where he was. And maybe he could trade something for a drink, it wasn’t as if his phone or anything else in his wallet were doing him any good right then.

Taking a breath and steeling himself—and hoping this wasn't the kind of place that would mind him bringing Easton in, because if Brandon was lost somewhere that hopefully wasn't a hypothermia dream after all, then like hell was he running the risk of losing Cam's dog—Brandon pushed the doors open and walked inside.

The doors parted in the middle and swung easily, well-oiled, looking like something out of a western or Back to the Future or, okay, maybe an old Pizza Hut ad, and—

Brandon clearly needed to rehydrate or eat something or both, because as he stepped inside—blinking while his eyes adjusted to the lower level of light peeking in through dusty windows, only slightly assisted by flickering lamplight—he could have sworn that the man behind the bar was Matt Martin.

He opened his mouth to say something, and in the second it took for those neurons to fire he got a better look and realized that of course, it wasn't. The resemblance was there, though; easy enough to see how he'd make that mistake, although it was more a very similar haircut than a complete facial resemblance. Either way, it threw him for a critical second, and he felt like he was off-balance already before he'd even managed to say hello.

"Greetings, wanderer," said the barkeep, his voice low and drawling, with a bass rumble that Brandon could almost feel vibrating in the air.

Brandon cleared his throat, mouth suddenly dry.

"Uh, hi," he said. "I was wondering if you could tell me, um, where I am?"

The barkeep was carefully drying a mug, something that looked solid and earthy and not at all like anything you'd get at Target, and Brandon fought back another surge of panic at this reminder of just how out of his depth he was.

Just pretend it's some really hipster-y bar,he told himself, and tried to look less visibly tense. He probably wasn't going to get robbed, at least. And not least of all because he really doubted this pub or anything else nearby took American Express.

"Well now, that's an interesting question," the barkeep said, the words coming up from somewhere subterranean, and Brandon couldn't help the agonized whine that he gave in instinctive response. The guy cracked then, gave him a grin that looked a lot less pasted on, and leaned against the bar, looking at him with considering, dark brown eyes. His timbre changed noticeably as he added, "I don't think you're from around here, are you…?"

He was angling for it, and Brandon had been raised to have good manners, so he filled in the silent question. "I'm Brandon."

And because he'd also been raised with enough stories about not giving your name to people—or things that might not actually be people, in the end—he didn't share the rest of it.

"Well Brandon," the barkeep said, "I could tell you whose lands you were in, but I can't imagine as it'd mean much of anything to you, so suffice to say that you've found your way to the Sunkissed Inn and Tavern, and if you'd like an ale it'll be four coppers, and if you don't have that, I'll trade you for a song." He jerked his chin in a gesture to the corner of the room, and Brandon's eyes followed to light on a piano, or at least something recognizably similar.

Brandon tested the shape of that bargain on his tongue and in the back of his mind and felt that, on the balance, it was probably okay.

"And regardless, here's a bowl of water for your wee howler there," the barkeep added, passing a roughly glazed bowl brimming with water over the bar for Easton.

That consideration sealed it for Brandon, and he nodded, gave the man a quick grin, and said, "Thank you, I think I'll take you up on that."

Brandon led Easton over to the corner where the piano was, set the bowl down for him to lap at, and the speed with which he did so made Brandon think, guiltily, that he should have tried to get some water for him sooner. He didn't trust that river, but he could have melted some snow or something, while they were still in colder places.

Not that it mattered now, it wasn't like he could go back and change any of that.

The barkeep hummed something, his head turning like he'd heard a sound from outside, but when Brandon flicked his gaze to the door he couldn't see or hear anything out there, and no one came in.

"You'd be surprised," the barkeep said softly, and then cleared his throat, instantly getting more gruff again. "Well, go on then."

Brandon stretched his hands out carefully and rested them on the keys. They were old, a little worn, but felt well-loved and cared for. He played a couple of chords, testing, and the notes were true, quiet but well-rounded, and the sound echoed in the still air for a moment, like it was waiting to be dismissed.

It was—well, it was odd, but in a way that Brandon found he kind of liked, and definitely one that he could work with.

He thought for a moment, but it was obvious, really, and his hands didn't falter as he moved to the opening chords to Falling of the Rain.

Most days, it would've been too fast, too complex—or at least, to start with—but somehow this time his hands could keep pace with his mind, and his heart lurched in his chest as the music unspooled through him, feeling almost out of his control. He let his eyes close as he kept moving his hands, sinking into the melody and floating along with it. It wasn't his favorite, or even something he played all that often, just a couple times when he'd been testing himself, when he'd been practicing a lot and thought that maybe he'd gotten good enough to do it.

Or, he thought, ruefully, stretching to reach the next couple of chords as the chorus rippled through, what he’d learned when he'd been hiding out in his too-empty house with nothing much more to do than play piano and wallow in his hurt feelings. The accompanying ache in his jaw from one mis-aimed puck had functioned like nothing so much as the inevitable manifestation of how much it had hurt to have the future he'd been told to expect ripped away without warning.

Brandon raised a hand to rub briefly at his jaw at the memory, worked it for a few seconds, enough to enjoy the absence of pain.

He'd gotten over it all pretty fast, of course. He was never going to be the guy that sulked his way through a season, and his new teammates were great; he'd always figured he'd fit in again after enough time. But it hadn't been easy, and then every time he'd thought he'd found his footing again, something else would come along and knock him off-balance.

Literally, even, when they played the Islanders.

And Brandon was tired of not fully admitting it to anyone, let alone himself, but he missed Nick, and the ache of not getting to see him even in passing was sharper than it had any right to be.

Of course—his hands stilled as the song ended—considering where he was right now, there was every chance he was never going to see Nick or anyone else he knew ever again, and wasn't that just fucking great.

The silence hung, looming, and Brandon found himself holding his breath before looking up to see the barkeep watching him thoughtfully, face carefully blank, although the strands of hair that kept falling into his eyes covered a little of his expression.

"Not bad," the man allowed, and gave Brandon a smile that seemed a lot more natural, and infinitely more comforting. "There's a good meal in it for you as well, if you'd care to play another. Been a while since we've had good music here.”

Brandon, looking around at this well kept room—spick and span and not the least dusty, for all that the outside looked rather disreputable—wondered why this place was empty.

Then again, it had seemed like it was only the afternoon still, the sun still up, working time for farmers; perhaps the regular crowd wandered in closer to dinner time.

He’d find out eventually, he figured; it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be. Especially not if he could parlay some time at the piano into a meal and maybe even some place to sleep, if he couldn’t find his way home again sooner somehow.

"I can do that," Brandon said after a moment’s consideration. He glanced down at Easton, who had clearly already made his own judgment about the character of the barkeep and had curled up into a ball and gone to sleep, the bowl of water right beside him. He was snoring ever so faintly, and Brandon grinned reflexively before turning back to the piano.

He put his hands the keys again, noting with a nod of thanks when the barkeep put a mug of beer on the bench beside him, and let himself drift off with the music. When he tried it, the beer was cool and yeasty, not quite chilled—this place didn’t exactly seem to have a refrigerator, if nothing else—but refreshing, with enough bite to it to remind you it was alcoholic. Brandon let one hand carry the melody for a few measures and drank some more, felt his stomach and his nerves settle at last.

He wasn't sure quite how much time had passed by the time he let the music come to a close, leaning back and feeling the faint ache in his shoulders that suggested it had been longer than he'd played in one sitting for a while. Maybe he should get some more regular practice in at home even during the season, he thought, and then stiffened, remembering.

The piano was nice—and this was a sweet one, almost as friendly as his own—but he really needed to figure out what was happening and how to get home already.

And he was pretty sure it wasn't going to involve clicking his heels together.

…although he might surreptitiously try that later just in case.

[]

He must have been even more absorbed in his playing than he'd realized at first, because it was no longer just the two—well, three counting Easton—of them in the room. As Brandon looked around—taking a large draught from his mug as he did—it was to see a few other folk were now sitting quietly at the bar, most with drinks in front of them, although one pale woman was eating a hunk of bread with quick, economical motions and about the same level of intensity that he was used to seeing on hockey players carbo-loading to get ready for a game.

There was also, and Brandon tried not to react visibly as he noticed, a large sword hanging casually at her hip. His eyes drifted down to the sensible leather boots and road-stained leggings, and then back up to what had to be some kind of chain mail, and Brandon was somewhere between wildly intrigued and more than a little alarmed.

He and Easton were definitely going to have to make sure they stayed out of trouble.

Brandon hadn't gotten in any kind of fight more serious than some over-enthusiastic crosschecking since he'd grown up enough to stop fighting with George, and no matter how much time he spent in the gym he had a feeling that it wasn't going to count for a lot once you started bringing edged weapons into the picture.

Next.

[]

People trickled into the pub as the sun sank lower, just a few who looked like farmhands at first, sweaty and a little dusty, cheerfully calling greetings to each other and to the barkeep. And then more and more people showed up, pouring into the relatively small room, until Brandon was starting to wonder if there was a mine or a barn or, hell, even some kind of clowncar nearby that was feeding people in. He wouldn’t have guessed there were this many people inside a five mile radius earlier, given how quiet and peaceful everything had seemed.

Brandon shifted towards slower, quieter songs on the piano as the sound of half a hundred people around him started to drown the music out, not interested in trying to get above the growing volume of conversation. As he picked his way through some pieces he was less sure of, he started to notice a little more of what was going on, although his quick glances were nothing to the sidelong looks he was getting in return from the locals.

The doors creaked open again and again as the temperature inside the room rose as more people packed in. Quarters got even closer, until Brandon felt like he had other people's elbows at about kidney height any time he shifted his weight on the stool.

He did, admittedly, get a little more room when he turned back to the piano for a second round, and he picked up tips from a few of the locals in addition to the mugs of ale from the barkeep.

Brandon picked up one of the coins curiously, a round of copper with some marks stamped into it that he couldn't read, and rubbed his thumb over it thoughtfully. Part of him wanted to tuck it deep in his pocket to see if it would still be there in the morning, or if it'd vanish like fool’s gold and hallucinations.

He still wasn't at all sure of himself, or of what was going on, but the keys under his fingers felt real, and the beer was cold and hoppy, with more of a bite of alcohol than he quite expected, and the bread crumbs sticking to the table and dropping onto his lap seemed like a level of detail he didn't think a dream would have. And he didn’t remember any dream he’d ever had go on for quite this long, especially considering he was well aware of just how long he’d been walking in near silence. So he was going to just keep going along with it, and see what happened.

Novelty only lasted so long; Brandon ran out of both pieces he knew well enough to play with any kind of fluidity, and the energy to do it eventually, and the crowd taking their own mugs and tankards of ale to the tables scattered around the room had their own irresistible draw. The volume of conversation rose once the music stopped, which was about the most normal thing that had happened all night, Brandon thought, hiding a rueful grin as he lifted his mug.

A young woman showed up by the time the room was about half full, waving at a crowd of young men and women who had to be about Brandon’s age as she let the door swing closed behind her.

“About time,” the barkeep growled, but he favored her with a heartfelt grin as well, which had the look of a well-worn reference, a running joke between them that excluded everyone else in proximity.

Brandon had always liked getting to see those small private moments between people, to see the depths of affection between them and to feel trusted in being able to witness them. This felt like that, like it was any one of his friends back home with a loved one, and it was another moment of curious familiarity that he tucked away close to his heart.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, grabbing an apron from under the bar as she slipped easily through a miniscule gap between two guys who Brandon thought had to be Byfuglien-sized at the very least and behind the bar, reaching out already to pick up a mug and starting to fill it for the next customer without another word.

And then Brandon froze for a moment, as what he’d just seen sunk in.

She was beautiful, which he couldn’t help noticing; big dark eyes and defined cheekbones with a dramatic swoop of long red hair swinging over her shoulder, wearing close-fitting pants—the word ‘breeches’ came to mind—and a shirt that looked like it was straight out of a RenFaire. And when she’d ducked her head to pull the apron strings over it, the lamplight had caught the polished sheen of—antlers? Brandon surreptitiously rubbed his eyes, and took another look.

There were—whatever it was, they looked like horns; curling and textured, just shiny enough to glint through her hair, but looking somehow like they belonged there, like they were just a part of her and not some kind of incredibly elaborate hairpiece. Brandon would wonder if he’d wandered into some kind of costume party, but his experience with the river earlier in the afternoon suggested that it had to be all too real.

Brandon felt a shiver that was part fascination and part slow-building fear ripple down his spine, and the brazen wink that she threw him a moment later—leaning over the bar to hand a pint to a guy who was, yep, slightly green all over—didn’t exactly help him figure out which of those two emotions was primary.

He sat up a little straighter and turned his attention back to his beer, because at least that wasn’t going to flirt or offer to eat him, possibly. At least, he sure hoped not.

It keeping feeling almost like any typical night out, at a normal bar, and the only difference was that instead of his teammates crowded around a booth or trying to pick up girls, there were—well, Brandon was trying not to stare, but he was pretty sure the person who'd just walked into the pub—their head almost brushing the exposed beams of the ceiling, ducking to get in through the door-was an orge, or at least closely related to one. Or maybe they were a very short giant, and boy did that ever open a lot of potential doors that Brandon was more than a little alarmed by.

He seemed to be hemmed in pretty well right beside the bar, an island surrounded by people in their own little worlds, but Brandon didn’t mind just quietly sitting there to watch until something better to do suggested itself. And the people watching really was spectacular, now that he had the opportunity to do so without distraction.

Along one wall were a few dart boards and targets, and it was dim enough in that corner that Brandon wasn't sure that they weren't throwing knives as well as darts, nor was he entirely sure that the bearded man with—yup, that was definitely an ax—was actually, well. Human. Brandon hadn’t seen Lord of the Rings since he was in middle school, but he was pretty sure he could recognize a dwarf when he saw one.

He winced in unison with half the room when the ax thudded into the wall beside the target—and a hairs-breadth away from one of the heavily muscled women who’d downed at least three drinks since Brandon had been watching. And then exhaled relief at the loud conversation, complete with mildly offensive gestures and what were clearly friendly insults that followed it. That dynamic was almost as familiar as stepping out onto the ice, ha.

And then he gave up entirely on trying not to stare as one of the women at a table near the stairs burst into laughter, her head thrown back, butterflies bursting from her fingertips as she gestured.

So—magic, okay. Maybe Brandon had run out of rationalizations and explanations, because short of a full CGI suite being installed in his brain, he just could not explain that one at all, especially after one of the butterflies fluttered over to him, and perched on the rim of his cup for a second, antenna twitching, before it dissolved into glitter at the curious touch of his fingertip.

He wasn’t imagining that he’d felt something there; the faintest impression of silken-soft skin, and there was a smear of iridescent dust on his finger, too.

Brandon wasn’t sure if this all made him want another ten drinks to cope or if he’d be better off sobering the whole way up again immediately. He split the difference by accepting a third drink, taking this one slower.

Somehow, it was almost more startling when one of the ethereal-looking women sitting just down the bar from him reached over and casually lit a candle by brushing her thumb over the wick, and Brandon's gaze jumped guiltily back to the bar in front of him when the barkeep cleared his throat pointedly.

That made sense, people in a place like this probably didn't appreciate the staring.

Besides, he hadn't exactly missed just how many of the people around him were sitting there openly wearing weapons; slim bladed daggers and thick ornately hilted swords, plus any number of crossbows that had been set carefully against the wall or the table legs. Those, at least, you could see were unloaded.

He kept his gaze moving around the room, careful not to stare at anyone, and took in a group of what looked like gnomes, making filthy jokes that even Brandon blushed to overhear, as well as a few more people who were awful pale and rather pointy in the ears. His eyes were caught for a second by a long-haired person who'd sat silently by the door with only a nod to the barkeep before receiving a mug of ale the size of Brandon's head, anonymous in their cloak and seemingly ignoring the rest of the tavern's occupants with perfect equanimity. They also had a sword slung over their back that Brandon wasn't sure he'd be able to lift, and it looked a lot more dangerous than anything he'd ever seen in a movie. Brandon filed that thought away, and kept on looking in between sips of his beer.

Next.

[]

"Thank you for the music," the barkeep said, handing Brandon another mug of beer, and a rough-sanded wooden board with some kind of hard cheese and rustic-looking bread. He hadn’t realized quite how hungry he was, but looking at the food was enough to remind his body that it had some demands of its own. "Now, best be eating this, I think you'll be too busy for your dinner soon."

Brandon blinked, not sure he wanted to ask what that was supposed to mean.

"Thank you..?" he started, and then realizing his manners belatedly, added, "You never mentioned your name."

"No, I didn't, did I?" the barkeep said and gave him a wide smile. Brandon's stomach twisted, although it wasn't in fear so much as with a kind of anticipation he didn't quite know how to name. "By the by, there's a room upstairs for you, whenever you're wanting it. I'll get some meat for your friend down there, too," and he disappeared under the bar for a minute or so and then came back up with a wooden bowl and what looked like some beef kidneys, rough-chopped.

At least, Brandon hoped they were beef. He didn't really want to ask.

There was also, as if by magic, a large iron key with the number 2 engraved on it beside his board, and Brandon picked it up carefully, like he was expecting it to shock him, or something.

It was reassuringly solid and cool and heavy, the metal comfortingly mundane in his hand. Brandon slipped it into his pocket almost automatically, and wondered what else he should be doing. He wasn't tired enough for sleep just yet, and maybe he could talk to some of the other locals, see if any of them were more forthcoming than the barkeep.

He was just scraping together the nerve to go up to a tall white woman with long, pale hair and ears that were pointier than Brandon had seen anywhere but on Star Trek when the low hush of conversation around him stuttered to a pause, before picking up again. A faint breath of air touched the back of Brandon's neck and he thought, Oh, the door opened again before turning around to look.

And his heart hammered in his chest, breath frozen with instant recognition. Standing stock-still in the doorway, backlit by the setting sun and staring right back at him, was the tall, solid frame of Nick Leddy.

Brandon inhaled sharply, and tried to find words, or even the ability to move, but instead he was stuck like he'd been glued to his stool. Maybe—well, he'd walked in and thought the barkeep looked like one of Nick's teammates, so maybe he was just imagining this, seeing familiar faces where he wanted to. But on some deep and undeniable level, Brandon had no doubts whatsoever.

He knew Nick, and he knew he'd always know Nick, and part of that was the conviction that he was always going to know when he was looking at Nick. Whether it was in the middle of a scrum when all he could truly see was blue and orange and white, or the half-tentative footfalls of Nick trying to make his way across a room without making a fuss, or the flash of a shoulder, the curve of his ear, the sound of his breath—

Brandon knew him. Brandon knew it was him.

Hell, Brandon was pretty convinced that you could drop him blindfolded into Times Square and he'd be able to find Nick Leddy. That was the one thing he'd never doubted about them.

And that meant that it was Nick, really and truly, and as the door closed behind him and lamplight washed over his face, Brandon could see that Nick had seen him too. His stride broke for a second, a hesitation that seemed born out of something more than uncertainty before he came to some kind of inner conclusion and sped up again. He rushed over to Brandon, eyes wide, relief clear in his expression.

"What the fuck," Nick started to say, and Brandon said, half-desperately, and not entirely sure his voice wasn't going to wobble as he spoke, "I am so glad to see you."

"…same," Nick said, with emphasis, and there was no hesitation at all in the way he threw himself at Brandon, who'd found himself on his feet with no memory of getting up, and then Nick's arms were around him, and Brandon was clutching him just as tightly.

Nick was warm, overdressed for the weather the same as Brandon was, and he could feel the strength of his muscles and the tension in them, could feel Nick's breath hot against the side of his neck. It felt exactly like hugging Nick always had, and he smelled right, and that—Brandon didn't think someone could fake that, even if they'd studied a hundred pictures of him, had video and audio and everything like that. And in lieu of any other and more compelling explanation, Brandon was going to believe that it was Nick, he was there, and Brandon wasn't stuck on his own any more.

The two of them hugged for—a lot longer than Brandon would have let himself, usually; but these were definitely strange and maybe a slightly desperate times, and desperate measures were not out of bounds.

The slosh and thump of another mug full of liquid being placed firmly on the bar by Brandon's elbow brought them both back to their senses, and Brandon let go of Nick, let him take a half step sideways so they could look at each other properly, although he was still close enough that Brandon could feel the warmth of his body. Reluctantly, Brandon sat back on the bench, slid over to make room for Nick to settle beside him. Space was at a premium in the tavern by then, and he'd carved out that little spot for himself, the least he could do was invite Nick to share it. And anything else he needed.

"You can thank yer man there for the drink," the barkeep said, his accent drifting distinctly more Irish all of a sudden, and Brandon frowned, but let it go.

He didn't have any complaints about the hospitality so far, and if this was some kind of bizarre Hotel California situation, well, it was already too late.

He might not have been quite so cavalier about that if it was still just him—or rather, just him and Easton, but as good company as a dog was, Brandon was so relieved to see another person that he knew and could talk to normally that he almost thought he was going to cry, his throat choked up and voice thick.

Nick cocked his head and gave Brandon a long look before reaching over to pick up the mug, dark foamy liquid splashing against the rim before he shrugged—Brandon had no trouble reading that feeling—and drank.

Nick set the mug back down on the bar when it was near empty and then reached out to take Brandon's arm, hand cupped around his elbow as he tugged him closer. "I guess we, uh, should sit down and compare notes or something?"

Brandon forbore to point out that they were technically already sitting down.

"Not that I'm not—happy to see you," Brandon said, the words 'pathetically grateful' also feeling appropriate, if a bit more than he wanted to admit to. "But how did, uh. What happened?"

Nick shrugged, and now that Brandon was looking at him from closer up, he could see there was still a lot of tension in his posture, that his shoulders hadn't totally relaxed again even after hugging Brandon.

"I was taking a walk and I guess I got distracted, because I started out on Long Island, and then I dunno, I blinked and suddenly it was a lot warmer out and it wasn't New York anymore." Nick paused, and then gave him a flash of a grin that was gone almost as quickly as it showed up. "I'm pretty sure this isn't even Jersey."

"Yeah," Brandon said, the corner of his mouth tugging up despite himself. "I had a pretty similar experience. No flying houses or monkeys so far, at least."

"I see you have your own version of Toto," Nick said, crouching down to let Easton sniff his hand before scratching behind his ears and then rubbing his belly when Easton flopped over in a spell of complete doggy delight. "You pick him up along the way or something?"

"Uh, no," Brandon said, and now the conversation felt awkward in addition to all the other ways in which the whole situation was deeply weird and unsettling. "This is Easton, Cam's dog. Uh, Atkinson."

Nick just looked at him, an expression Brandon wasn't entirely sure how to read superimposed over his features. "I know who your teammates are, Brandon." There was a question that wasn't entirely a question there.

"I miss having a dog around," Brandon admitted, looking down at his feet, incapable of spilling this while still looking at Nick. He was a little afraid of what Nick might see in his face if he did. "I was having, uh, kind of a shitty day. Week. So sometimes Cam lets me take Easton out for a bit, you know, gets him some free time and helps me out too. I hope he's not freaking out right now."

Brandon shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Fuck, Cam would have to be worrying, about both him and Easton, and it wasn't like anyone Cam could call was likely to be able to find Brandon. This was so fucking messed up.

"Well, you can always help walk mine in New York," Nick said, and Brandon believed he meant it, but there was—something in his voice that told him Nick wasn't taking this all as lightly as he was trying to pretend he was.

It wasn't as if Brandon wasn't used to walking a dog with Nick; they'd taken Andy's dogs out often enough over the years, and, now that Brandon was thinking about it, pretty much all the dogs he'd been looking after since leaving home had been—

Nick's, or Andy's, and Nick and Andy had lived together for most of that time so even before Nick had brought his dogs over from Minnesota, it had always kind of felt like he was—

Helping Nick.

And it wasn't like Brandon was under any illusions about how he felt about Nick generally, but this extra piece of self-awareness was something he hadn't anticipated, and certainly nothing he'd thought would be landing on him while he was wandering through some crazy magical land with no clue on how to get home.

The cheese and bread sat heavily in Brandon's stomach the more he thought about it all, and abruptly he just wanted to get some time where they were by themselves, where they could talk easily without having to worry about anyone overhearing them or interrupting or somehow getting themselves into even more trouble than they were in as it was.

Like it had been cued, Brandon felt the metal key in his pocket warm up, little electrical sparks making the hair on his arms stand on end as it made a point of heat against his thigh. When he looked up, the barkeep was pointedly not looking at them at all, and the windows rattled in their frames as the fire in the hearth flared up, like there was a presence and a pressure suddenly focused in on them, and Brandon could take a hint when he was given one, okay.

"Let's go upstairs, if you're done with that," he said, and hardly waited long enough for Nick to nod before heading to the rough-hewn wooden stairs leading up from the corner of the inn.

He could hear Nick's footsteps behind him, the creak of the stairs as he followed Brandon up, and fancied he could almost feel the heat of Nick's body, so close that if Brandon stopped he'd run right into him. He didn't stop, although he was a little tempted.

The upper level was lit by candles, a few placed in sconces along the hall, with the last rays of light from the setting sun leaning in through the window at the end of the corridor, but not really doing a whole lot of illumination.

Brandon pulled the key out of his pocket to see if it had any room numbers or markings on it, but it just looked like a regular old-fashioned iron key now. He could’ve sworn there had been a marking on it earlier, but it was blank now, and just body-temperature warm, too, with no trace of that weird burst of heat he'd felt from it downstairs.

"Well, I guess there's one way to find out?" Brandon said, and tried it in the lock of the first door on his right.

The key wouldn't turn in either direction when he tried, so he gave up on that one and crossed to the door a couple feet further down on the opposite side of the hall. This one opened obediently with a turn of the key, the door swinging open easily and soundlessly, to show a small room. In other circumstances, Brandon would have laughed at himself and made a joke about how he was still somehow kind of expecting to see a TV in there, but there was just a simple washstand beside the door, a bucket that he didn't want to investigate too closely, and not a whole lot else.

And of course, there was only one bed.

"You wanna sit down?" Brandon said, walking over to the bed, and making himself comfortable on the rough woolen blanket covering it. It gave underneath him, like there were wooden slats or something, and considering he'd been having some vague expectations of, like, hay or straw, that definitely counted as an improvement.

"Sure," Nick said slowly, but he followed Brandon all the same, sat right next to him, their shoulders touching—

It really wasn't a very big bed at all, Brandon thought, half giddy and half terrified. And he had to stop letting his thoughts obsessively circle that point. Nick needed him to be functional, and that meant talking about all of this like a rational human being. Or at least, as rational as possible under the circumstances.

"So, uh… are you okay?" Brandon asked. It wasn't the only thing he wanted to know, but it seemed like a good place to start.

Nick paused for a second, choosing his words, cautious in his personal life the way he rarely was on the ice, where he was so firmly in his own element. Nick was always around water, frozen or not, and Brandon couldn't help but think of him the same way: still waters that ran deep, steady as a lake frozen right down to the solid ground underneath in the middle of winter, but playful enough to not look out of place in a pile of twenty-something-year-old guys, racing jet-skis and wake-boarding.

"I think so?" Nick said at last. "I mean, part of me isn't sure that this is real, or maybe this is, but you're not—" Brandon felt obscurely hurt at that, and tried to keep it off his face, although Nick wasn't exactly looking at him either. "Like, did I just take one of Chara's shots off the back of my head and this is all a long and confusing ride to the hospital, or… I don't even know. This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen, not really."

"Yeah, I was kind of wondering the same things," Brandon admitted "But something about it—feels real. Feels right and slightly wrong all at the same time, which sounds insane but—that's how I feel."

"See, and that's the kind of thing that makes me pretty sure you're real, at least," Nick said. "If I was making you up then this would be, uh. Different." Unaccountably, the tips of his ears went pink, and Brandon stared, fascinated. Forgot to pretend like he wasn’t doing that.

Nick rushed on, his words tumbling over themselves. "How did you—no, you said you were walking the dog, we did this bit already, uh, so what else happened for you? Other than making friends with the bartender."

"I don't know that I'd call it friends," Brandon said, shrugging, and feeling Nick's weight lean against him as the mattress shifted with his motion. "He offered me a trade—"

"Uhhh—"

"—just for me to play some music," Brandon reassured Nick, whose parents appeared to have read him a lot of the same fairytales that Brandon's did, going off his reaction. "He traded me a meal and some drinks for a couple of songs, that's all." Brandon paused, thinking through the ramifications. "I guess even if that means he, like, owns the songs or whatever then probably it's fine. I can't see lawyers turning up here to complain about it, anyway."

Nick laughed softly. "Look at you, merrily infringing on Billy Joel's copyright."

Brandon narrowed his eyes at him. "How do you know—?"

Nick laughed more openly, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. "Saader, I'm not gonna call you a one-trick pony but, uh, we all know what you like."

Brandon sighed dramatically but couldn't really argue that one.

"Anyway, basically I… walked a bunch and then found this inn and I'm—" he set his shoulders and bulled on through with it; it wasn't like the evidence wasn't right in front of Nick's face, too, "—pretty sure it's, uh, magic or something, because I'm sure it wasn't there until I started thinking about how thirsty I was."

"Me too," Nick said, not directly touching the part about magic. Brandon didn't blame him. "I was walking through a forest, and there was a lake, kind of like home but just not quite, and then I could smell woodsmoke and started wishing I had fishing lines or something. And then I blinked and there was a clearing and the inn."

There was a sound outside the door of their room just then, low words murmured, although not clearly enough for Brandon to make them out or to hear if there was more than one person out there. Probably shouldn't be too surprising an old fashioned inn was just as bad as a regular modern hotel in terms of noise traveling.

Although he couldn't really hear anything from the pub downstairs, which had been getting steadily louder around him as he'd eaten, before Nick showed up and whited out every other sense Brandon had functioning. And focusing on that wasn't getting him out of the conversation or through it, so he shook that off and followed up on what Nick had actually been saying instead of what Brandon wished he could have been.

"Are you still hungry?" Brandon asked, ready to offer to go back downstairs to see if there was any other food on offer. Just because they didn't want a ton of weird magical farmer types staring at them was no reason for Nick to go hungry.

Nick shook his head. "I don't know how long I actually walked but I had just eaten, back in New York. I'm good for a bit, I just—wanted something to do that wasn't walking."

"Well, you've got that now."

"Do I?" Nick asked, a little cryptically, and Brandon lost the battle this time, looked away from him. "Why are we here, Brandon? I have no fucking idea, and I'm really hoping that you do."

"I don't, I know I should, I guess, I mean I got here first? But I don't remember anything that would explain this."

Nick's shoulders slumped a little as Brandon admitted that, as he didn't even have to add the corollary that not knowing how they'd gotten there meant, equally, that he didn't know how to get them home again.

"I'm sorry," Brandon said, voice barely above a whisper, and he looked down at his hands, fidgeting helplessly.

"Why would you—" Nick started to say, and then he shook his head, decisively. Brandon tried not to look at him too much. He'd gotten Nick into enough trouble already. "You said you didn't do anything, Saader, so you don't need to apologize."

"I feel like this is my fault somehow though," Brandon argued. "I mean, I—"

"You what?" Nick asked, painfully gentle, when Brandon had frozen, catching the words right at the tip of his tongue before he could say them and give everything away.

"I, uh." Brandon reached for the easy lie, and found, all of a sudden, that he didn't have the stomach for it. Couldn't bring himself to say anything but the truth, no matter how much more complicated that was going to make things. "I wished you were here. After I was, I mean. I wished I could get myself home first, but that didn't seem to do anything, and I just—didn't want to be here by myself."

"Well, I guess I can understand why you didn't wish for Shawzy to turn up," Nick said, making a joke of it, and Brandon clenched his teeth, because Nick wasn't getting it and he didn't know if that was willfully ignoring it or just—something else.

"I wanted you," Brandon said, and kept looking right at Nick, refusing to drop eye contact. Telling himself to suck it up and be brave about this, for once. Especially if it was the only chance he was going to get. "I want you."

"Oh," Nick breathed, just staring right back at Brandon, not pulling away, not running away, and despite the kernel of dread just waiting to unfold in his chest, Brandon let himself start to hope that maybe, maybe this wasn't all him. Maybe he hadn't been indulging in quite so much wishful thinking as he feared.

"So… yeah," Brandon said, kind of stuck on ideas of what to do next. "That's, uh. That's the thing. I never imagined telling you somewhere like this, though," and he gestured broadly around the room, the rough furnishings, the blanket that looked like it was a whole lot closer to the original sheep that had grown the wool than, well, any bedding Brandon had ever used before.

"I never imagined you'd tell me at all. I mean, I didn’t think I could be so lucky," Nick said, and it took Brandon a second to get it, to parse what he meant, and then the whole thing fucking detonated in his mind, half-wiped out from sheer, slack disbelief, tinged with joy and incredulity.

But Brandon had never been able to do anything he wasn't sure of, and he had to be sure of Nick before he said anything else. Before he did anything else.

"You mean, that, uh, you—? You too?" Brandon wasn't going to be winning any awards for speechifying, but he could see that Nick knew what he meant, which was the important part.

Nick didn't answer, directly. He looked away for a second, chewed on his lip, and then said, very deliberately, "I did nearly tell you once. When we were in Cancun, the day after we got in, and we'd been drinking all day and you kicked off your shoes and then starfished onto my bed and just—looked at me."

Brandon's throat ached, thrown back in time to that moment, one that he'd thought he remembered so clearly, and where it was now obvious that he’d been missing things, even then.

"It was sort of an accident, but… sort of not," he admitted. "I told myself that it didn't count, because it was a vacation and there was so much tequila and maybe hooking up drunk would get you out of my system. Except then you just got in my bed instead, so I figured, okay, he's not into it, so just—let it go."

"I wanted to," Nick said. "I nearly—god, it took me hours to fall asleep because I kept imagining it. What if I was braver. What if you'd taken your shirt off and just kept going. What if—" he shrugged again, rueful. "What if."

"I… had no idea," Brandon admitted. "If I had been sure, I would have—but you know exactly why I couldn't, right? Why I never said anything till now?"

"Yeah, I know," Nick said. He squirmed a little, like he was trying to fight the way the sag of the mattress underneath them kept tilting him into Brandon's side. "It doesn't seem that important right now, though."

"Yeah, I guess we have bigger problems to deal with at the moment," Brandon said. He could put a pin in this whole discussion if Nick needed to. Although he still had no idea what they could do to get out of there, other than maybe just heading back outside and walking until the landscape got familiar again. That seemed… even more unappealing than it had before Nick had arrived.

Nick blinked and then elbowed him in the ribs, hard. Brandon wheezed a little and threw a betrayed look at him.

"What??"

"I meant," Nick said, rolling his eyes, and wow, Brandon hadn't seen him hit that tone since the last time Shawzy had been ragging on them both for a little too long. "That I have no idea what's going on or how to fix it and instead of freaking out about that for a couple of hours I'd rather just go ahead and—you know."

Brandon opened his mouth to say he did not, in fact, know what 'you know' was referring to.

And that was all too convenient, because about one point five seconds later Nick was on his feet and pivoting, and before Brandon had quite caught up on that change of orientation, he had Nick bowling right into him, half climbing, half hurling himself into Brandon's lap, so that momentum knocked Brandon back onto the bed with Nick lying heavy on top of him, grinning victoriously, and Nick just said, "This," and kissed him.

Brandon hadn't truly doubted any of it was happening until that moment, and even then it was only a for a split-second, only because it felt so much like wishful thinking.

But he didn't think he'd be making up the way that Nick's elbow was digging into his collar in a way that was more painful than it was arousing, or the faintly sour taste of Nick's mouth, or the way that Brandon was certain that the mattress of the bed was straw after all, because half of it was now digging into his back and making him itch.

And he didn't give a shit about any of those things, because he was kissing Nick, at last, after all this time, and it was so fucking worth it.

They kissed desperately, rough and awkward with it for long minutes, until Brandon finally thought that maybe they'd gotten enough of a taste to pause for a moment, maybe rearrange themselves into a more comfortable position. Nick must have been having similar thoughts, because the second Brandon started pulling back he did the same, rolling off Brandon to lie on his back, legs dangling off the bed, their shoulders pressed together, both of them staring up at the thick wooden beams of the roof above them.

"So that happened," Brandon said, compelled by a force beyond his ability to resist it, and Nick snorted and didn't dignify it with even a half-hearted chirp.

"In case it wasn't obvious," Brandon added, thinking about it a little more clearly. "I wanted that too."

"Pretty sure I got that memo," Nick said. His voice sounded odd, and Brandon turned his head to look at him, found that Nick was grinning fit to split his face, all triumph and fierce joy. "You know, when you stuck your tongue down my throat, and all."

Brandon took a second to think it over and then decided; fuck it, he was all in.

"We don't have anywhere to be right now, huh? Wanna find out where else I can stick my tongue?"

"Jesus," Nick said, eyes widening. "I mean, yes. Wait, do you think this bed is, uh. Hygienic enough?"

"Don't care," Brandon said, finding that he didn't, and he rolled onto Nick this time, feeling the firm lines of his muscles underneath him, the places where his body yielded and where it did not. "Tell me what you like."

"Uh, everything?" Nick said, shoving a hand down the back of Brandon's pants to get a firm grip on his ass, encouraging him to rock down against Nick, rub off against him. "This is good, more of this, fewer clothes, let's do this already."

"Okay, I'm gonna take your pants off," Brandon said, shoving his hand between them to yank at the button on Nick's jeans, trying to be careful as he tugged the zipper down. Nick was pretty clearly getting hard, and Brandon was already there, so there was a certain amount of fine motor skill required, but he got Nick's pants open, at least, and then after a moment to consider it, yanked his own jeans undone with considerably less caution.

He let his palm drift down just low enough that it was pressed over the front of Nick's underwear, cupping him through it, and Nick let out a groan that went right through Brandon and made him shudder helplessly.

"So this is, uh, probably not gonna take very long," Brandon warned him.

Maybe that didn't say good things about him—or about how long it had been, or, more importantly, how long he'd wanted this—but it was honest, and Brandon always wanted to be honest with Nick, especially after lying by omission for the last couple years.

"Mmmm, not a problem, just—let me touch you too, Brandon, fuck," and Nick yanked at Brandon's underwear as well, trying to shove the rest of his clothing down and off and away. He got about half way through and seemed to decide that was good enough. It wasn't as if Brandon had been all that much more successful with Nick's.

Nick groaned again as Brandon's hand moved over his bare dick, cautious and exploring, the slide of skin on skin eased by sweat and the slow leak of precome against the pressure of his palm. It didn't take long for Nick to follow suit, either; curling his fingers around Brandon's dick, tugging up, tightening at the head in a way that made Brandon swear and grind down.

It was slick and fast and messy, for both of them, and Brandon reached up desperately to slot his mouth against Nick's to swallow the sounds that both of them were making, panting harshly against his lips and shivering hard.

Brandon went still as his orgasm rolled through him, building and gathering before freezing for a split second, all that potential hanging in the air and burning like ozone, like the calm before the storm, and then the sky shattered and Brandon came, hard, spilling all over Nick's hand and his own belly and Nick beneath him. That was enough to push Nick over the edge too, his back arching as he shuddered through it, his free hand clutching at Brandon, arm wrapped tight around him, holding him so close they might as well have become one person.

They lay there for a while afterward, quiet, and Brandon let his eyes close, rested his head on Nick's chest and let himself zone out to the comforting steady thump of his heartbeat. Nick's hands were still in motion, ever so slightly, smoothing over Brandon's back, down his sides, a reassuring constant connection.

The faint sounds from downstairs started registering in Brandon's hearing again after a while, conversation and laughter and occasional thuds that might've been over-enthusiastic thumps of mugs back onto the polished top of the bar, or could've been a bar fight or anything in between. He wasn't terribly interested in going back down to find out, though.

"So what now," Nick murmured, his breath warm against Brandon's scalp, still making no move to pull away from him or separate in any way, even though Brandon was pretty sure the longer they left it, the grosser they were going to be. And it wasn't as if they had an attached bathroom or anything, either.

Brandon made himself at least try to start thinking again at that point, to do something more than drift along on the tide of good feelings and warm, heady distraction. He rolled off Nick and onto his side, shuffling far enough up the mattress that they were eye level again. He thought for a second, and then squirmed around enough to kick his pants all the way off and onto the floor, before tucking himself back into his underwear. It seemed somehow kind of politer to not just be lying there all disheveled, and after a moment of observation Nick followed suit. Brandon wasn't exactly using it as a break to think very carefully about what to say in response, but he wasn't not doing that, either.

"I honestly don't know," Brandon said. "I mean, now that I know—all of this, I guess—I want to ask you out properly, but that doesn't really solve the, um, larger problem."

Nick nodded, and then yawned, covering his mouth at the last second.

"I don't really know either, maybe, I dunno, maybe we should just sleep on it and then try to find out more from the guy downstairs?"

"He did seem like maybe he was… less confused than me," Brandon allowed.

He was pretty tired, too; there had been a lot of walking and it had been a stressful and confusing day even before Nick had shown up, walking right out of his best dreams and dragging this away from full blown nightmare potential. Maybe they'd be able to work out what to do tomorrow. He certainly didn't have any better ideas at that point.

"Cool, it's a plan then," Nick said, and tightened his arm around Brandon's shoulders, before freezing like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Not that Brandon was entirely happy with that metaphor, or at least at what it implied about him. Nick was allowed; Nick had always been allowed to touch him, even if Brandon hadn’t been all that clear in telling him that.

Brandon snuggled right back into him, figuring that he could at least wordlessly reassure Nick that way that he was quite happy to curl up and sleep next to him. "Yeah," he said, "Sleep and then we can… figure all of this out." If part of 'this' also involved figuring out a more specific definition of just what, exactly, he and Nick were going to be to each other, then that was all to the good, but Brandon had to admit he was mostly just worried about getting home.

Nick was warm and solid beside him, and even with the scratchy wool blankets, Brandon felt remarkably comfortable and certainly far more content than he would ever have dreamed he could. If Nick said anything else after that, Brandon didn't hear it, as sleep rose up to swamp him, putting all the questions and worries he still had circling around the back of his mind aside.

As Brandon came to consciousness the next morning, he found himself remarkably cheerful, with vague memories of pleasant dreams but nothing more specific. He rolled over onto his back without bothering to open his eyes, enjoying the softness of his pillow and the warmth of his comforter, and then adrenaline spiked and he sat bolt upright, all his memories of the day before flooding back in one overwhelming deluge.

He turned to wake Nick up as well—they might as well get moving—and then froze, one hand outstretched towards the pillow on the other side of his bed.

His bed.

His own, actual bed, in his house in Columbus, and not at all some weird rural fantasy land type of place, and not one where Nick was right beside him, wrapped up with him, everything Brandon had hoped for and feared for so long.

Brandon took a deep breath and tried not to feel vaguely nauseated.

So, great, now his idle fantasies had upgraded to dreams, and not even the fun ones. Because sure, he'd slept with Nick in it, and maybe that hadn’t exactly been the first time, but it hadn't been the shallow easy kind of thing that sex dreams for him had been before.

It had felt all too real, grounded, right down to the warmth of Nick's skin against his fingertips and the smell of sweat, all the little awkward moments of getting used to someone else in bed, like the way that Nick's heels had been rough against Brandon's calf while they were tangled together, and the way they'd had to shift and adjust to touch each other without getting in their own way, the way sweat had dripped into Brandon's eyes and burned a little, and he'd blinked furiously but hadn't wanted to miss a second of the way that Nick's face twisted and tensed as he came all over Brandon's fingers.

Brandon was—in way deeper trouble than he'd thought, maybe.

He gave a rueful grin to the empty air in his bedroom, and then reached up to scratch his jaw, itchy with the new growth of his beard coming in.

And then froze again, because his hand unmistakably still smelled like sex. And he hadn't exactly looked under the covers, but he could feel the cotton of his shorts against his thighs and ass, and none of that felt sticky, so—

"What the fuck," Brandon said, and rolled over to grab his phone, hoping it would still be beside him on the night stand like always.

One point in favor of whatever was going on: his hand landed on the phone right away, and possibly even more miraculously, it had enough charge left for him to see two missed calls.

Brandon sat up, sheets tumbling around his waist, and looked down at the phone in his hand, psyching himself up. It could be nothing. It probably was nothing, or telemarketers, or spam phone calls or maybe even his mom reminding him that he hadn't called last weekend and he's in the same time zone now so he really has no excuse.

The first call, weirdly enough, was Cam.

"Hey Saader," Cam had said, cheerful as ever, "Thanks for walking Easton, he basically conked out on the couch all night, you must've really worn him out. And Natalie says thanks for locking up behind yourself but feel free to at least say hi and bye next time." There was a slight commotion after that, and some mysterious noises, and then Cam's voice was replaced with Nat's, chirpily informing him that Cam was putting words in her mouth, and she appreciated his good manners and commitment to other people's privacy.

Brandon laughed, a little shocky with it, but figured he could take the win there.

He didn't remember seeing Easton after he'd curled up in the corner of the room last night. At least, Brandon felt like it had been last night, and his phone had confirmed for him, more or less, that it was indeed the day after. So either he'd had some really bizarre hallucination and managed to drive home, undress and get into bed without any memory of how he'd spent his afternoon and evening, or he really had been somewhere entirely else and had just woken up at home like Dorothy after clicking her ruby slippers together.

And then the second voicemail was Nick, inevitable as sunrise, and Brandon felt certainty lock into place.

He couldn't explain it, no, not in the slightest.

But no matter that, he believed it, and with Nick's voice—tight with strain and hope and too many emotions choked back one time more than he must have thought he'd have to—just saying, "Brandon, call me when you get—home, uh, I hope you are, anyway, fuck," and then the message cut off like Nick was second-guessing himself, but Brandon practically strained his thumb hitting 'redial'.

"Hi," Nick said, answering so fast that Brandon thought his phone must have been in his hand. That also seemed like a good sign; Brandon had never known Nick to run away from his problems, but if he'd decided that Brandon was one—if he'd woken up and decided that it was a mistake, something they should pretend never happened—then he wouldn't have called Brandon.

He wouldn't have been waiting for Brandon to get back to him.

"I wanted to wake up with you," Brandon said, in lieu of a greeting or anything more normal, and only belatedly realizing that he should, perhaps, have checked Nick didn't have him on speakerphone or something like that.

"Next time," Nick promised him, joining Brandon about six steps further down the conversation tree than they should maybe have started with.

And hell, Brandon felt like he could run halfway to New York with the fizzing expectation those words set building in him, the way his chest felt too tight and like he could breathe in forever all at the same time. So who cared if they were doing all of this in the wrong order, at least now they were on the same page and everything was out in the open.

"I'm gonna hold you to that," Brandon said, grinning stupidly, his cheeks almost hurting with it. "Do you know what happened—?"

"I told you," Nick said, his voice softer now, considering. "I have no idea how it happened, there's no clues here either."

"I meant how we got home, I just—woke up."

"Yeah," Nick said, "I can tell, you sound like you're still half asleep."

Brandon sniffed, but couldn't help the tiny fond smile in response. Nick knew him so well, was so familiar with him. Nick just… knew him, the way so few people did. So maybe it wasn't much of a surprise that Brandon's feelings were returned after all, although he didn't think he'd ever be able to stop being delighted that it was the case.

"I'm awake enough," Brandon protested after a moment.

"You could've gotten tea first or something, at least."

Brandon rolled his eyes automatically. "You said to call you, and I didn't know. What if you were, I don't know, stuck at the bottom of your basement stairs with a head wound or something?"

"Then I would've called Johnny," Nick said, matter-of-factly. "Brandon. C'mon."

"Right, right, you're right."

Brandon fought back a yawn again, rolled his shoulders. He didn't feel like he'd spent half a day walking and then a—very reasonable amount of time having quite athletic sex with Nick, but his brain absolutely remembered every second of both of those things and was quite ready to make plans to repeat the latter at the very least.

"I'm glad you're home safe too, anyway," Nick said, after they'd just listened to each other breathe for a couple of seconds, like complete dorks. "Did you—was Atkinson's dog really there, too?"

"Yeah," Brandon said. "He called as well, but I didn't wake up, apparently he showed up at home just fine but really tired."

"That makes three of us—" and Brandon and Nick both snorted at that, biting back the helpless chuckle of laughter.

"But yeah, really, I have no idea what happened or how or why—" "I think we can probably guess why," Nick interrupted him, and Brandon had been working his way up to that thought, sure, but he hadn't quite put it together for himself yet, or at least he wasn't sure he wanted to believe it. It was the only thing that made sense, though.

"Fairytale logic?" Brandon suggested.

Not that Nick hadn't been perfectly handsome before Brandon kissed him anyway, but it seemed as good an answer as any.

"Something like that," Nick said. "But seriously, just, um, just checking here, because I'm kind of stupid in love with you, we're really doing this now, right?"

Brandon's phone slid a little, in suddenly nerveless and sweaty fingers, his heart climbing up into his throat and singing. "Yes, yeah—I mean, same here, yes. Fuck, I didn't ever think I could have this."

"We'll figure it out together," Nick told him, his voice low and serious, and Brandon believed him, just as much as he had when he'd been a nervous rookie and Nick had told him it'd be just fine, it was just another game, and then set Brandon up with his first point in the NHL a cool two and a half periods later. The same way he had, going into the third in Boston, staring down a game seven, too caught up in his own head to hear a word Q was saying until Nick had nudged him with his elbow and murmured, “Fuck it, we got this, Saader.”

The same way he'd felt it the second Nick walked in the door of that inn and looked right at him.

"Sounds good to me," Brandon said.

They couldn't linger in that moment too long—all kinds of weird shit aside, Brandon actually had places to be and he didn't think 'important relationship talk' was the sort of thing that counted as an excused absence by Torts' standards, that was for sure—so Brandon took a deep breath and said, "I, uh. Probably should go soon," and Nick said "Right, yeah," and that was the other thing that Brandon had never really thought might be the benefit of dating another player and yet clearly was going to be: at least he knew that Nick understood that feeling and those pressures too.

"But I'll see you again soon," Brandon added, the image of their schedule for the next couple of games swimming up to the surface of his mind, along with the way he'd kind of had the date of the Islanders game mentally circled even before any of this had happened.

Maybe it wasn't going to be money on the board, exactly, but they were always the games he was aware were coming up soon.

"You will," Nick said, "And then I'll make it up to you when we beat you," and there was a dark promise in that which made Brandon shiver and got his dick even more interested in the conversation than it had already been, since he was apparently just that easy for Nick.

Not enough to not chirp right back, though.

"Nah, I'll be making it up to you," he said. "I don't know if you heard, we've sort of got this thing going on over here, it's a pretty good winning streak."

"Yeah, well, maybe if you guys get really lucky," Nick said, still teasing.

"You don’t need luck if you’re good enough,” Brandon retorted. “Besides, I think I used up all my luck for the day already."

Nick snorted, "On what?" and Brandon had to laugh, almost disbelieving. Wasn't it obvious? But of course Nick wouldn't think of it that way.

"On this working out, dumbass," he said. "On you."

"Oh," Nick said, and there was silence from his end of the phone for a couple of seconds. "I mean, I don't think you needed the luck since I was always going to say yes to you anyway, but I appreciate it."

"I really can't wait to see you," Brandon said, still a little nervous about all of this even with the evidence of how well they worked together stored safely in his memory, in sight and sound and touch, the phantom pressure of Nick's hands on his skin still crystal clear. "Like, properly. When we're not freaked out and—somewhere else, fuck."

"I wanna see your new house," Nick said, pushing gently. Brandon hadn't quite felt up to inviting him or anyone over last year, not when everything had felt so new and raw and uncertain.

"I wanna see you in my house," Brandon said without thinking too hard about it, and the mental image was right there, too; Nick spread out on the crisp sheets of his bed, Nick making tea in the morning, Nick sitting at the kitchen counter while Brandon made them breakfast.

"Whenever I can get there," Nick promised, and that was enough for Brandon.

That was more than enough for him, enough to know they were making the right choices and that things were going to work out just fine.

But in the mean time, they could keep on exactly the way they were and that was going to be good, too.

[]

Nick snuck another look over at Brandon, noting for the first time—and with increasing suspicion—the dark smudges under his eyes, the tight lines at the corner of his mouth—and thought, yeah. There were pretty good odds there were going to be some fudge chocolate chip cookies in his immediate future.

So Nick could identify a silver-lining if the situation called for one, nothing wrong with that.

His attempt to pump Saader up again backfired a little, though—or maybe it was improved—because something about his tone caught Dubi's attention too, got him sitting up and looking between Nick and Saader, frowning hard.

"Wow Dubi, you know if the wind changes your face'll stay like that?" Nick asked him tartly, before he could think better of it. Maybe that'd make Saader laugh, at least.

"You were less weird before you had kids," Dubi said, and then corrected himself, as if he even had a leg to stand on when it came to that front, "At least, you were less gross."

"Like you're any better," Nick said with perfect equanimity, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Saader grinning, however unwillingly, so… mission accomplished.

Brandon had been trying to keep it together, acting normal and keeping his mind on the game, but despite his best efforts, something about the current season was wearing on him.

Maybe it was that it'd been so long since he'd seen Nick—his Nick, not his captain, obviously, and Brandon wasn’t too embarrassed to admit that he'd had a couple of momentarily discomfiting double-take moments over that occasionally. Too many people in his life with the same names, really, although Tro would be first in line to point out that at least he was one of a kind. In more ways than one, even.

Brandon's Nick lived in New York these days, too far away even if they did get to play four times a season now, and when it was coming up on the third month of the season and they still hadn't seen the Islanders—well, Brandon was more than ready for it.

He never slept so well as he did beside Nick.

So as much as it was nice that they were winning—and god, what a change from last year—he still found it maybe easier than he should have done to get a little mopey about it all sometimes. He was part of the room now, part of the team in a way he hadn't been last year, so Brandon figured that gave him some leeway at least.

Of course, he was figuring that without taking into account the fact that he had two of the nosiest teammates in the history of hockey sitting either side of him. That fact was brought into sharp relief by Fliggy dropping down into his own stall again—after having wandered away the second they’d gotten off the ice to tease Bob, situation normal there—before elbowing Brandon sharply to ask whether he was okay.

It was a little embarrassing to be caught like that, really.

Brandon had answered him as quickly and quietly as he could, not wanting to volunteer too much information, not wanting to look too pathetic, before trying to lean back further, like he could merge with his chest protector and avoid this conversation if he was just quiet and small enough that Fligs and Dubi both could forget he was there and go off into round eighteen thousand of their comfortable bickering.

Brandon was used to it, that part wasn't the problem at all; he was used to it from a season of being there already and from the similar tone and content of half a hundred other locker rooms, all the teammates who'd moved into that amorphous space between friends and family, knowing each other better than any normal coworkers would.

Of course, Brandon also knew better than to think his plan to just silently blend into the scenery was going to work, especially around guys who kept that close an eye on the pulse of the room.

Fliggy shoved Dubi one more time and then turned his focus back on Brandon. For a barely-thirty year old guy he sure could look intense when he wanted to. Brandon felt himself sitting up a little straighter in response, and the truth came more readily to his tongue than he necessarily wanted it to.

"Seriously, though, Saader. You need us to buy you ice cream or beat someone up or something?" he suggested, head cocked to one side.

"Oh my god no," Brandon said, horrified out of his moping. "No, this is not—I do not need a breakup intervention, it's fine."

Dubi and Fliggy were both still just looking at him so Brandon sighed and offered up a little more information. "I just, you know. Miss him."

It wasn't like Brandon's relationship was totally a secret; he'd gotten tired of that long before he'd had to relocate his whole life all over again without any warning.

But he didn't talk about it in the room a whole lot, less because he didn't trust all of the guys to be cool about it and more because the less it got talked about, the lesser the chance there was that someone who shouldn't know would overhear.

And Brandon just plain preferred the privacy. He'd been just as reticent when he dated women as he'd been since he and Nick stopped flirting breathlessly and actually started letting themselves touch the way they'd both wanted to.

He just liked keeping that sort of thing to himself, most of the time.

Of course, now that they'd brought up ice cream he was kind of thinking about that too, but there was no sense in trying to distract the two of them by bringing up Jeni's. That approach would work on Zach and Josh, or maybe even Calvy and Cam, but Fliggy at the very least was a little too focused on his responsibilities. Brandon figured it was the team dad thing, and being a real dad, too, but either way, he wasn't going to get out of this conversation that easily.

"Distance sucks," Fliggy said sympathetically, and when Brandon raised an eyebrow—he was married and lived with his wife, what did he know about it?—he added, "First couple months down here I was flying solo. Didn't love that part."

"You loved us though," Dubi said with complete confidence, shit-eating grin firmly in place as he switched his chirping and his attention back from Brandon to Fligs, and that Brandon could take advantage of.

"Only because you were too cute and pitiful not to," Fligs started to say, and Brandon managed to sidestep right past Dubi and legged it for the door before either of them could say something else.

He heard Sedsy laugh behind him, but that didn't necessarily mean anything much.

And if nothing else, the conversation had done a lot more to take Brandon's mind off missing Nick than he had expected it would.

Not that he was going to tell Dubi or Fliggy that. He didn't need a repeat of it any time he started looking a little down, that was for sure. It wasn't like this season was going anything like the previous one—and thank fuck for that, Brandon wasn't sure even his nerves could've taken it—but as much as he prided himself on being calm and unflappable and generally cheerful, his default expression did tend to be a little more on the mopey side of neutral.

[]

Adding a few more wins to their stash after that went a great way towards improving Brandon's mood; putting a nice little streak together made everyone feel better, even when they knew that they'd also had a few lucky bounces going their way.

And of course, knowing they'd be coming home to the Isles after Detroit felt pretty good too.

Even after a couple years of doing it, Brandon still found it kind of weird to be looking forward to facing a particular opponent as much as he did when it was the Isles. And having not managed to beat them any time he'd faced Nick since he first got traded, well. That should've left him wanting to avoid them, no matter how good it felt to see Nick before or after the game, instead of during, when he had to see him as nothing other than a guy on the other team, a number and a set of habits and tendencies, a left-hand shot who was all too good a skater when he wasn't on your side.

Brandon could manage not seeing Nick for two and a half hours, mostly, but every now and then he'd have a couple of seconds where he slipped up, where he held back a little, held off. And then he'd shake it off and go right back to trying to plaster him to the boards, so all things being equal, it could be worse.

All things being equal, he knew damn well that it was much the same for Nick, and that helped, too. It had always been easier when it was both of them.

Brandon didn't like to do too much before a game; he liked to stick to his routine and stay close to home-or hotel room, as the case may be—but for whatever reason, that Friday in Detroit he kept finding himself a little too wound up before the game, anxious and jittery in a way that he usually wasn't.

With the hotel room to himself at least he didn't have to worry about disturbing anyone else when he found himself blinking awake again half an hour after lying down to nap, but even with that quiet and privacy, he gave up on trying to fall asleep again after a while.

The TV didn't appeal either, and after pulling the curtains back to check outside—neither snow nor rain—Brandon put his coat back on and went for a walk.

That cleared his head the way neither that morning's workout nor the nap had, and by the time the bus pulled into the Joe Brandon was feeling settled, relaxed, ready to get out there and play.

The locker room was humming before the game, everyone with their own usual routines, and Brandon even joined in with the others in ribbing Zach a little about how his family were all there to watch, and his friends and, if Brandon's impression of skating past the glass behind their goal was any indication, pretty much every other person he'd ever met had to be there wearing Michigan State gear or Jackets jerseys or even both. Zach was going to be a popular interview after the game no matter how it went, but with that little extra bit of expectation on the line Brandon was determined they'd make it a win for him, even more than usual.

He turned his attention back to checking his laces, only half listening to whatever Dubi was yelling over to Jack over top of him, although he did catch the way Zach went hilariously red at one point, which might have had something to do with whoever had been yelling to ask where Larkin was planning to take him out after losing their bet. None of them had questioned that there was a bet; it wasn’t even particularly mercenary, just—that was what you did with your buddies, you gave them shit on the ice and off it, and tried to just leave the rivalries out there, and you knew if you got a good contract, you were on the hook for dinner until further notice.

They were all pretending there wasn't money on the board officially too, but as much they wanted to win this one and keep the streak going, no one could deny they also wanted to do it for Zach.

And it wasn't like anyone was looking at the record books yet—doing that too much just meant you were perfectly positioned to trip over your own skates while you were distracted—but it was hard not to know what they were approaching, and Brandon for one couldn't help feeling a little more fired up just at the possibilities.

It was one thing for the rest of the league to finally be taking them seriously, or so it felt; it was another to see their numbers stacking up with teams Brandon had watched as a kid, teams he'd admired and looked up to.

So yeah, he was more than ready for the game.

It was satisfying as hell to see Zach flushed and grinning—what probably would have counted as a beaming smile from anyone less reserved—and the locker room was rowdy and somehow even louder than usual by the time they were cooling down and changing after the game, another two points in the back and another 'W' in the streak.

Brandon couldn't help but grin in response; he'd been that guy the first time they played the Penguins, as weird as it had been to be doing that after playing a year, to come in as the defending champions even. At least Zach was getting the full experience right away, and winning at home was just that little bit sweeter.

Admittedly, they’d scraped that one by the skin of their teeth; 4-1 was flattering to how they’d played and Brandon wasn’t too proud to admit that, but they’d won it all the same. Sedsy was over the moon at finally getting his first, and the younger guys—and when had Brandon stopped considering himself as part of that group?—were torn between congratulating him and roasting Zach for being the reason that Larkin’d scored in the first place.

Larkin was probably the only person who was going to chirp him more about that, Brandon figured, and he didn’t envy him; he’d heard about it at length every time Shawzy had scored against him, whether he was on the ice or the bench.

No one was going to collect on any bets that night after the game, though. The back to back meant that their equipment managers were practically grabbing the gear off them the second they’d made it back to the cramped dressing room, stuffing everything into bags and trying to get packed up as fast as possible.

At least it was only a short flight, but Brandon was already looking forward to his own bed, to getting to see Nick, to a couple days at home before they were on the road again, the Western Canada road swing calling.

It stung a little, landing in Columbus and knowing the Isles had beaten them there, that Nick was probably fast asleep in a hotel room not all that far from Brandon’s house, but as good as it would’ve felt to have him stay over, Brandon knew that neither of them was likely to get away with that much of a breach of protocol. Instead, he set his alarm for just a little later than usual, and checked his phone to make sure that Nick was still set for a lunch date, the easiest scrap of time for both of them to carve out of the day before they had to be on opposing sides again.

He must not have checked it properly after the game, he realized, stretching out under the covers and starting to drift towards sleep, anyway, because as well as a message confirming their plans, Nick had also sent him a quick “good game :) pity you’re gonna lose tomorrow” that was timestamped somewhere about the time Brandon had been lurking outside the tunnel, listening to the Michiganders cheer for Zach in the three stars.

“See you then,” Brandon texted back, and put his phone down, letting himself drop off to sleep, buoyed with the satisfaction of a good day.

In what was equal parts a nod to an actually romantic date and also somewhere that Brandon figured they were very unlikely to be recognized, he and Nick spent a quiet hour or two wandering the botanical gardens at the conservatory. It was too cold even with all their winter gear on to spend long outdoors, but the indoor gardens were warmer, and relatively private, and if the two of them ducked behind convenient plants to kiss a few times, well, that was between them and the conifers.

The restaurant meal was a close enough approximation to what they would’ve been eating at the team meal that Brandon refused to worry about it, and while the glass of wine was probably less trainer approved, he couldn’t deny that it added a very satisfying date-like atmosphere.

Especially considering they were about five hours from the point where Brandon would cheerfully plaster Nick into the glass and not remotely in a sexy way.

“Our lives are kind of weird sometimes,” he said, giving Nick a wry grin.

“I don’t disagree,” Nick said, “but what brought this on?”

Brandon shrugged. “Just—it was easier when you were on my team, that’s all.”

“Well, any time you wanna ask Kekalainen for a trade—” Nick said, letting the words trail off invitingly, and Brandon snorted and threw a piece of bread at him.

Okay, so sometimes they were still a little immature. Brandon could live with that.

They got a scrap of true privacy when Brandon followed Nick up to his hotel room, ducking in for just a few minutes. There wasn’t time to do much, but by the time that Brandon reluctantly peeled himself away they were both flushed and breathing hard, and Brandon was pretty sure he had not just beard burn but also a few bruises starting to pop along his collarbone.

“Worth it,” he said, squeezing Nick’s hand tight before stepping back, towards the door.

Nick adjusted himself, blatantly pressing the heel of his hand over his dick as he did so and Brandon made a low, broken noise and only just stopped himself from following suit. Thank god his coat went well past his hips, otherwise he didn’t like his odds of getting out of the hotel without embarrassing himself.

“Any time,” Nick said, husky. “Now go nap before your teammates accuse us of kidnapping you or something.”

“They’d still beat you,” Brandon said automatically, but he darted back over to kiss Nick one last time, fast and close-mouthed, and the two of them just grinned at each other for a moment before Brandon finally took his leave.

The game felt almost like an after-thought by the time they got there.

The Jackets winning felt almost inevitable, even if it was largely the fruits of a monster third period, and some particularly bad choices by the Isles, and Brandon didn’t feel a moment’s guilt for his own goal, or for celebrating the win just as much as he normally would have.

The image of Nick’s face stuck with him, though, was a sour note for all that Brandon wouldn’t have changed a single second of the game if he could. He’d made the mistake of catching Nick’s eye on a face-off late in the third, and even then Nick had looked frustrated and resigned, rather than mad, and Brandon had nearly clipped Murr’s skates when he tried to get into position afterward, distracted enough to throw himself off just a bit.

Not all that distracted of course; Bjorky had gotten the puck to him a few seconds later and Brandon had unloaded two seasons worth of frustration onto Halak and been rewarded with the red light and the cannon, but the moment stuck with him afterward, even into the next week.

Brandon drifted through the next few games they had feeling almost half-asleep every time he wasn’t actually on the ice, and even a few times when he was. It felt like he just blinked and they were in Edmonton, a shiver of time later and they were in Calgary, and then he was stumbling towards the boards with his shoulder stinging from a cross-check. He heard the bench yell that they had a minor and dashed for it, hoping someone could get on during the delayed call, but the sudden roar that rose up—from both benches and the stands—had him spinning before he could get his balance properly, just in time to see Wenny diving for Tkachuk, shaking his gloves off and snarling.

“Ahh, liney love,” Dubi said, with a smirk that said he knew exactly what he was saying, and Brandon had no compunctions about elbowing him in the ribs hard and mumbling, “shut up, Dubi.”

Brandon hadn’t been under any illusions that Wenny had been doing more than sticking up for a linemate, but if he had been, the proprietary hand that Wild Bill had in Alex’s back pocket as they headed out for their post game meal would’ve clued him in fast.

He thought he said something about that, made a quiet joke to Fliggy, but things got vague again, and Brandon realized all he could be certain of was that he was going through the motions, doing what was expected and little more than that.

He tuned back in during the Canucks game, and again in their hotel afterwards, hanging out with Jack and splitting the layer cake neither of them had been able to resist from the room service menu.

“Legendary,” Jack said, toasting Brandon with his fork, and Brandon grinned back and said, “Right on,” even though he was starting to realize the unsettled feeling in his stomach still hadn’t gone away, stirring back to life and blurring everything around the edges the harder he tried to focus on it.

He napped most of the way back to Columbus after that, blinking awake and confused when he looked out the windows of the plane and could’ve sworn he saw dragons, red and green and black, pacing the airplane.

When he sat up, startled, and rubbed his eyes, they’d gone again, and it was just the rough peaks of the Rockies underneath them, packed snow above the treeline and their shadows racing away from the setting sun.

The Kings met them in Columbus, and Brandon felt fully alive and viciously glad of it, the ice shredding underneath his skates as they fought their way to a tie and then the win, no less meaningful for all it was in OT. Brandon threw his arms around Sammy and hugged him tight, hollering along with the rest of the team as they congratulated him, and for a split second he could feel another pair of arms around him, thought, “I miss—” but then they were filing off the ice and the thought was gone, torn into pieces like the confetti that exploded from the eaves of Nationwide, again and again as they won and won and kept winning.

Brandon half sleep-walked through the next couple of days, picking up his phone when his mother called, but he couldn’t have said what they talked about, even though the call log had at least an hour on it.

He snuck a look at his phone between periods against the Pens; normally he wouldn’t have, it never paid to get distracted during a game, but some sixth sense was telling him to look.

“CALL ME” said a text from an unknown number, and Brandon blinked and there was a name there, and he was about to read it—and then Dubi jostled him, getting his attention as Torts came back into the room to say a few words before the third; they were up but this was Pittsburgh, and none of that came with a guarantee.

“So fuckin get it done,” Torts finished, and Brandon nodded, clapped his hand on the wooden bench beside him, before hissing and pulling his hand back in a hurry.

There was a tiny splinter in his palm, natural wood that didn’t match the locker room paint scheme at all, and he thought with an intense clarity that had been entirely lacking for the last week or two, “Wait, what?”

“Let’s go, Saader,” Nick said beside him—Fliggy said beside him, and Brandon got to his feet on automatic, moving to follow him down the tunnel to the ice, his mind racing.

“Good to see you back,” Bob said solemnly, clapping Brandon on the back with his blocker, and Brandon wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that fey look in his eye before, but goalies were always weird, everyone knew that.

He felt like he was buzzing, practically vibrating on the bench, the elated fans in the stands feeding energy to the team on the ice and vice versa, a feedback loop that felt incredible when it was humming along as well as it was then, well and truly on their way to a blow out win, and it felt like all the pieces were falling into place when Brandon stole the puck by the Pens bench, bulled his way into the zone and let Wenny feed him a perfect one-timer.

The puck rang off the bar and fell behind the line and Brandon yelled, triumphant, as his linemates skated over to throw themselves into the hug.

“Well that was a wild one,” Torts said, keeping a stone-faced expression for all of about two seconds in the dressing room. “Good work, no practice tomorrow, you earned this one,” and he left them to it as the room erupted in cheers again, even drowning out Cam’s mp3 player.

Brandon showered and got dressed again with haste, hardly bothering to dry off completely before throwing his clothes back on. The need to get home and call Nick—his Nick, Nick who he somehow hadn’t spoken to in weeks—was humming under his skin, driving him on inexorably.

“Saader, you wanna come out—?” Andy asked him genially, reaching out to catch his elbow as Brandon shoved past him and Zach and Sedsy, the three of them trying to sort out the gear they’d managed to mix up while tussling in front of their stalls.

“Got a very important date, sorry,” Brandon said, letting his words carry behind him as he kept moving, and he was pretty sure at least three different people leapt to chirp him for that one, but the door slammed shut behind him, and then a minute later he was in the garage and on his way home.

“Leds, what the fuck,” he said, as Nick picked up the phone, so prompt that Brandon thought it’d maybe only made it to half a ring.

“Oh thank fuck,” Nick said, extremely unhelpfully in Brandon’s opinion. “I thought I was gonna have to get JT to get Sammy to get—fuck, I don’t even know who to help.”

“Did—have we really not talked since you were here?” Brandon asked. It seemed inconceivable. He didn’t want to wish any kind of head injury on himself or anyone else, but it beggared comprehension that he’d gone almost two weeks without speaking to Nick, when even before they’d been dating it’d been tough to go more than a day or two without some kind of conversation.

“Not really, no,” Nick said. “It took me like a week to get out of it, and then even when I did, you didn’t answer your phone or emails or—anything.”

“I didn’t—I don’t understand what happened,” Brandon said, feeling sick and guilty anyway. Nick sounded frantic, like he’d been panicking, and that was the last thing he’d ever want to do to him.

“Right, of course, you wouldn’t,” Nick said.

“Nicholas,” Brandon said tightly, and he was more than willing to unload all seven syllables of Nick’s full name if he had to. “Answer the question, please.” He’d interrupted, but Brandon was too tense to worry about being rude, not when it was clear that something fucking crazy had been going on and he didn’t understand it at all.

“Okay, give me a sec,” Nick said. “It’s a lot, just—wait till you hear it all before you say anything else, okay?”

“Okay,” Brandon said, his wrist aching a little from how tightly he was holding his phone.

“So we kind of outsmarted ourselves,” Nick said, and that wasn’t what Brandon was expecting at all. “Remember our date at the gardens?”

Brandon did, mostly, or at least he thought he did, but the very end of it was hazy too, hazier than it should’ve been, even with a glass of wine in the mix. Brandon hadn’t been that much of a lightweight even when he was a teenager.

“We clearly went somewhere we weren’t supposed to, or there was something that wasn’t where it was supposed to be, I don’t know, Jaro was a bit vague about that part, although I think he called someone who was gonna call someone else and yell at the people there, uh, anyway, we sort of—wandered, after that.”

“What do you mean ‘wandered’,” Brandon asked, the words pushing past his teeth even though he really had intended to let Nick get the whole explanation out first.

“Uh, you see some weird stuff in the last week or so?” Nick asked, and Brandon’s mind flashed back immediately to the glint of sunlight off a dragon wing, and he felt abruptly cold all over. That couldn’t—he’d just been off, or getting sick, or something normal. Something ordinary.

Nick didn’t wait for Brandon to answer.

“So if I understand it correctly, we’ve been kind of—drifting in the borderlands since then. Uh, magically speaking. Sort of one foot in and one foot out, and what that does—Jaro was surer about this part, and Johnny reckoned it happened to a guy he played with in the Dub too—is you forget things.”

Brandon tried to digest all of that.

Nick’s voice was smaller, unsure as he kept talking. “And, uh, what you kept forgetting was—me.”

Brandon felt ill.

“Nick—Leds, I would never, not on purpose. You know that, right?”

Nick sighed, loud enough in Brandon’s ear that he felt a shiver race down his spine, felt it almost like Nick’s breath on the back of his neck. “I mean, I hoped you wouldn’t, but—fuck, that really sucked.”

“I felt like something was missing the whole time,” Brandon told him, urgent, needing Nick to hear and understand him. “It was—like, we’ve been winning, it was fun, but I hardly remember any of it now, and I do remember feeling like something was wrong, that I could never put my finger on. I guess—I guess that explains it. But fuck, what the—I can’t believe this. I mean, I believe you, just—what the fuck.”

“Yeah, I spent about a day saying the same things,” Nick said, his voice more controlled again, sounding closer to his normal self. Brandon relaxed just a trifle at that. “How’d—do you know how you got out of it? I really thought I was gonna have to come out there or something, just to check you weren’t just trying to ghost me with the worst timing in the world.”

“I’m not sure,” Brandon admitted, “maybe Bob noticed something? He said something, but it was, you know. Vague. Goalies, eh? But something felt different today, and I realized—I missed you so much.”

“Yeah, I miss you too.”

“Let’s… steer clear of nature next time we have a date, huh?” Brandon said after a few seconds silence, when it became clear neither of them really knew how to go on from there. “We can be traditionalists instead; you, me, a clean set of sheets and takeout.”

“I don’t even rate netflix and chill?” Nick joked, and Brandon was so glad to hear him sounding normal again that he could’ve cried.

“Please, my sheets cost way more than netflix,” Brandon pointed out, and joined in Nick’s laughter as he had to concede that it was probably very true.

“This has been the weirdest fucking year,” Brandon said, once they’d calmed down again. “But hey, just a couple weeks till the All-Stars break, huh?”

“I cannot wait to lie on a beach with you and drink way too much beer and not use enough sunscreen,” Nick said, and Brandon luxuriated in that image for a second: Nick’s broad shoulders, freckling in the sun, damp with salt water, ready for Brandon to wrap himself around him again.

“Same here,” Brandon said. “I just hope we don’t see any dragons on the flight there, eh?”

“Wait, what?” Nick said, like he hadn’t seen anything half as wild as that, and Brandon sat back and told him as much as he could remember.

[]

That feeling of subtle wrongness that had been bugging him persisted for another day or two, a base melancholy that Brandon wasn't sure he'd earned, and couldn't explain. It seemed ridiculous on the face of it to be so unsettled and ungrateful when they were putting wins together, finally playing consistently the way they'd been expected to for the last year, but however many times Brandon told himself to get over it, the feeling still lingered.

It only started to lift when he told himself he was being an idiot and to stop putting off just calling Nick, checking in with him the way he'd been wanting to for a few days.

Nick's voice was warm and familiar down the phone line, and Brandon felt tension go out of his shoulders at last, feeling something snap back into place, a rightness in his own personal world.

It should have been a relief, and it was, mostly, but he also felt a little knee-jerk resentment of that fact.

He should be able to take care of himself, to be just fine doing his own thing. So he hadn't spoken to Nick in a few days, that didn't mean anything more than the fact they were both busy people, with schedules that didn't always line up. And moping about that didn't sit well with Brandon at all. They'd been on different teams now for almost as long as they'd been on the same one, he should be used to it.

And yet, all the pep talks in the world didn't seem to add up to anything more than white noise in the back of his head, and Brandon found himself grinning helplessly, stupidly; content to just listen to Nick talk.

"…it's so stupid though," Nick said, almost echoing Brandon's earlier thought, and he made an inquiring noise, encouraging him to expand further on whatever it was Brandon had only half-heard him say.

"I don't think it's anything really," Nick said, guarded in a way that made Brandon sit up and pay close attention. That wasn't normal at all. "I was just, you know, still a little stiff after the game last night."

"Did you get anyone to look at it yet?" Brandon asked, pretty sure he could guess the answer. If Nick was talking about it like this he was just soldiering on through whatever niggling pain in his hand he was getting and hoping to keep away from the docs long enough for it to go away on its own.

Brandon wasn't exactly innocent of pulling the same tricks himself on occasion, but it still made him worry. "Say something if it still hurts tomorrow," he said, massaging circles over his wrist, digging his thumb in between the bones for the relief of pressure right where it hurt. "You need those soft hands, huh?"

There was an expectant pause on the other end of the phone line.

"How did you—?" Nick started to ask, and then cleared his throat, starting over. "I guess you watched our last game, but I didn't think it was affecting me enough you'd see it on the tape. Maybe I should go get it checked out."

"Huh?" Brandon asked, feeling as confused as Nick had sounded.

"I didn't actually get as far as saying it was my hand that was weird," Nick said. "But you'd already figured it out, I guess. Way to be too fucking observant, eh, Saader?"

"I—oh," Brandon said, blinking. He'd thought Nick had said, it had seemed so obvious. And then he looked down at the way he was massaging his own wrist and froze. He hadn't done anything to his wrist or hand in practice, had felt just fine other than a couple bruises from where Savvy had taken him into the boards.

And now that he was really focusing on it, the slow dull ache behind his wrist didn't feel like it really belonged to him.

"Saader?" Nick said, more sharply this time. He wasn't exactly unobservant himself, Brandon thought, not that this was the time to point that out.

"You didn't say," Brandon said. "And I didn't see it on the tape, either."

He pretended not to hear the mumbled "good" that Nick gave in response to that, and chewed on his lip for a moment, thinking hard. He could just drop this, but that seemed dishonest, and what if something worse happened to Nick? What if something worse happened to him, and it went the other way?

In the end, Brandon was too used to being completely honest with Nick, and he couldn't bring himself to change that. Better safe than sorry, and all that.

"My wrist has been bothering me a little today," he said eventually. "Except I didn't, you know. Do anything to it."

There was a much longer pause on the other end of the phone line, and Nick's breathing was the only sound that was even remotely audible before he cleared his throat and asked, "This isn't a joke about jerking off too much or something, is it?"

Brandon shook out his hands, flexed his fingers a few times and tried to force himself to work faster at being okay with the fact he was apparently picking up extra sensations from Nick. At least now that he'd realized it wasn't his own wrists that were hurting he could sort of push the pain away somewhere that it didn't really register as much. Figuring out how that worked might be important sooner rather than later, but they needed to talk this over first.

"Nope," he said, and wished they were having this conversation in person. He was so much better at reading Nick when he could look at him, catch the tiny clues in his expression, the way he held himself, guess the words he was about to say just by watching him carefully. "I think I'm getting some spillover? I mean, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and figure you didn't actually want me to feel that."

They've never really picked up sensations like that from each other before, on purpose or not.

Brandon always knew it was a possibility, but it had never happened before, so he'd kind of figured their relationship wasn't like that. That they couldn't. When he was a kid, he'd thought it sounded kind of romantic, in a way: being able to know what your partner was doing, or where they were, or sometimes even picking up on their thoughts. It sounded like a fairy tale, and the fact he hadn't known anyone who did have that connection, well. It made it easier to just think of it as something that only happened to other people.

As an adult, Brandon was starting to figure out quite a lot of reasons why 'romantic' wasn't even in the top ten responses to transferred emotional connections, and the unexpectedly vulnerable feeling of knowing he could feel exactly what Nick did—that Nick could maybe feel exactly what he felt—was definitely racing its way to the top.

"Uh… nope, yeah," Nick said. "That's not—I didn't realize that was happening."

Brandon weighed up his options for a second, and decided that he wanted to know more than he didn't. "Has this, um, ever happened to you before?"

"First time for me," Nick said, and Brandon could see the wry smile he had to be wearing in his mind's eye, could almost hear the couch creak as Nick shifted his weight, swung his feet up onto his coffee table, brow creasing in thought.

And considering how clear that picture was, and how sure Brandon was that it was entirely accurate, well, maybe they should have expected some kind of transference to happen. Now that he was thinking about it, it had probably been happening for longer than they'd realized.

"Same for me," Brandon admitted. "This is—it's weird, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Nick said. "I guess that means that weird spot on my ribs that hurts but didn't bruise is probably yours, huh?"

Brandon caught himself rubbing at his wrist again and forced himself to stop, and then, a moment later, more than a little sheepishly, shoved his hand under his leg so he couldn't do it even by accident. Although by that point he was more inclined to rub at the extremely obvious bruise on his side where one of Jonesy's shots had caught him in front of the crease earlier in the week. It was just past the edge of where his chest protector came down to, and going green-yellow by this point in the healing process, only smarting now when Brandon forgot about it and put pressure on the spot.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "Sorry about that one."

Nick made a considering noise down the phone line, and said, "If it hurt me that much it must be one hell of a bruise."

"Jonesy got me pretty good," Brandon said, and grinned reflexively at Nick's immediate, appreciative hissed intake of breath. One thing about sharing a division these days was that at least they were pretty familiar with each other's current teammates.

"Yeah, I bet he did," Nick said, before seeming to run into the same issue Brandon was having with not really having anything else to say right then and there.

Usually, they'd either say goodbye and go do whatever else they had going on for the day when they got to those almost awkward silence moments, or they'd get distracted by something entirely unrelated—usually sex, Brandon had to admit, because they were both prone to getting more than a little one-track minded, and getting off was one way to at least redirect that a little, make it something more positive. It didn't seem to be the time to suggest that, though. He figured they were probably both going to need some time to digest this new information, this new twist in their relationship.

"I, uh—" Brandon started to say, just as Nick cleared his throat and said, "So do you—" and they both broke off mid-sentence.

"You first," Nick said, and Brandon wished he'd thought to say that himself a little quicker.

"I was gonna say, um. I think I'm gonna go try get an early nap, maybe?" Brandon paused, and wondered if this counted as some kind of cowardice. "Unless you want to talk more right now."

Nick seemed to sound more than a little relieved himself, if Brandon was any judge. Or maybe he was just projecting really successfully. "Yeah, that actually sounds good to me too," he said. "I'll talk to you later?"

"Yeah, we should have a free day later this week," Brandon said. "I don't think it's a travel day but we can figure that out, right?"

"You bet," Nick said, and that seemed to be that; they said their goodbyes and went back to their respective afternoons.

It was, Brandon thought, stretching out on his bed and shifting around until he could find a more comfortable position, maybe not a terrible thing that could have happened. And now that he was feeling sleepy and more relaxed, well, a few very interesting possibilities were presenting themselves to him. And they were all much more pleasant than imagining himself tripping over his own skates if Nick blocked a shot somewhere painful or something like that.

Lucky Nick hadn't been in his head when either of them had taken pucks to the face in the last few months, Brandon thought, and reached out from under the covers to rap his knuckles against the nightstand just in case. It was probably good enough to count as touching wood, anyhow. And if not, well, IKEA was going to have to do some fast talking about their truth in advertising status.

He rolled over and swallowed the instinctive snicker as his brain automatically made the dirty joke, too. If he was finding things to laugh about then this was definitely going to be okay, he figured.

And actually, maybe he should spend some quality time jerking off after his nap. That sounded good too, even if there was no way it was going to be as nice as when Nick was right there with him for it.

Brandon wondered, sleepily, whether that meant Nick would be also able to feel it if he felt really, really good.

That was something they could definitely explore later, he figured, and let himself slide down into sleep.

Despite the fact they'd talked about it enough to know that, well, it was happening, Brandon woke up the next morning feeling none the worse for wear, on his own account or on Nick's. Either they'd figured out much faster than he'd expected how to only let through the things they couldn't manage alone or the ones they wanted to share, or, well, they were both just feeling fine that morning.

Brandon hoped that last one was it, anyway.

In a weird way, if Nick was banged up, he kind of…wanted to feel it. At least that way he'd know, he'd be able to judge how he was doing, whether he needed anything, what he could maybe do to help him feel better. Not that Brandon was looking forward to whatever the next bad hit he took would be or anything like that—pain like that wasn't fun, even muted and at a remove—but it would kind of be better to not have to wait for the call.

He still remembered the way Nick'd gone white and headed straight off the ice in a game against the Leafs a few years back, right after he was traded, while Brandon was still a Hawk. He hadn't been watching, hadn't known about it till later, and he certainly hadn't felt it, but the surge of panic that had crawled up his throat when he saw Nick's number flash up on his missed calls just after midnight… that hadn't been fun.

Especially since Brandon knew full well if it had been one of the good calls, the ones about new career highs and scoring records and things like that, those you heard about while they were happening. Those came across your phone alerts or in conversation.

The quiet crunch of an awkward hit and the silence between leaving the ice and being allowed away from the trainers to get your phone and call your boyfriend to let him know you were going to be okay, but you were gonna be out for a bit… well, that wasn't fun at all.

So yeah, as much as there were downsides, Brandon couldn't entirely bring himself to be sorry it was happening. He'd rather know.

That said, there would probably be more questions than Brandon particularly wanted to deal with if something did happen to Nick during a game, especially given how often their games were at the same time nowadays. He was going to have to figure out how to handle that in advance—winging it didn't seem like a good plan at all, and Brandon knew himself well enough to know he would always rather have a plan, even if the wheels came off it six seconds into the play.

The divisional rival thing got you coming and going, really. The good part was that they got to see each other much more often than they would've done when Brandon was still in Chicago, the bad part was, well. They didn't get to watch a whole lot of each other's games, or even to catch up all that much, because they were usually playing at the same time, or traveling at the same time, or just plain away from home for half the season. Although Brandon's scoring had cooled off enough that he was pretty sure he wasn't going to the All-Star Game this year, so they'd have that weekend together at least.

And he was—very much distracting himself from the point at hand, which was that as much as he'd been thinking about Nick—missing Nick, wishing he got to see more of Nick… he was about to see quite a lot of him, with just a couple more days to go before they'd finally have the Isles in town.

And that meant Brandon needed to actually stop lying in bed dwelling on the unknowns and start using the free morning he had to run some errands, tidy his place up enough for visitors, maybe even get really wild and crazy and do his laundry in advance instead of in a tearing hurry at the last minute.

If he'd forgotten, well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd had to put a pause on getting laid long enough to put new sheets on the bed that he'd stripped in a fit of optimism earlier, and it probably wouldn't be the last either. At least Nick wasn't a whole lot better than Brandon when it came to that kind of thing.

As it happened, they didn't have any other notable flareups in the time between discovering their connection and the next time they got to actually see each other in person.

Part of that was luck and Brandon knew it; he'd just evaded a tipped shot behind the net, had felt and heard it whistle past his ear and ring off the glass before falling back down to the ice, and while he'd been too busy focusing on his forecheck at the time, he'd had the moment replay behind his eyelids a few times later that night while he was supposed to be sleeping. It would've hurt like hell if he hadn't ducked just in time; Brandon had taken enough shots off the back or off his helmet to have earned that knowledge in pain ten times over. And it was worth it, to him, to play, but the idea of making someone else feel that as well—that was disquieting.

It was Nick's choice too, and Nick's right to accept the risk; Brandon knew if either of them was worried enough for it to make them change how they played then that would be a quick road to an early retirement, and they both knew it. That wasn't in the cards for either of them, not yet by any count, but Brandon figured he should probably at least let the Jackets front office know the vaguest outline of what was going on, if only so that no one panicked if he did end up having some kind of reaction on the ice, in practice or in a game.

It was probably going to be an easier conversation than the one where he'd given them his emergency contacts, but not by a whole lot. They might be accepting in practice as well as in theory, but Brandon was well aware he was winding up the test case by default for a lot of policies and procedures. Most of the time he was okay with that, liked the idea of making it easier for anyone else.

And sometimes it was just a pain in the ass and the last thing he wanted to think about.

He finished his cup of tea and told himself to stop delaying the inevitable, but the internal pep talk didn't quite kick in until after he'd made himself start the dishwasher, clean off the kitchen table and stood in front of the open pantry considering rearranging everything before admitting he was being ridiculous.

He picked up his keys but diverted at the last second from the garage. It wasn't procrastination, he decided, it was just smart to get another potential ally on board first, if he needed them, so he loped over to Fliggy's front door and knocked.

He couldn't see movement through the frosted glass window, or hear any obvious kid noises—yelling or laughter or the ubiquitous Paw Patrol theme song were all common contenders there—but a minute or so later the door opened, Nick standing there with Landon on his hip.

"C'mon in, Saader," Nick said, gesturing with his free hand. "Just watch out for the lego," he added, and Brandon grinned before doing as instructed.

As Nick had implied, the large colorful blocks were scattered across the floor of the living room, interspersed with some wooden blocks, and Milana was hard at work constructing a tower of some kind with a combination of both, so intent that she didn't look up as her dad or Brandon picked their way through to sit down on the couch.

"You want coffee or anything?" Nick offered, like he was perfectly ready to get back up again and juggle children and mugs if need be, but it really wasn't necessary. Brandon wasn't expecting this conversation would take long, at any rate.

"It's fine," Brandon said. "How are things over here?"

"Busy," Nick said, rueful. "Landon's having a rough day so we're getting in some quality time while Janelle gets to nap for a change, but it's all good. What's up with you, Saader?"

He looked, Brandon thought, a little stressed but also satisfied; the proud dad of two with another on the way, and if that pride was tempered with too-close knowledge of how easy it might be to lose some of that… well, Brandon didn't envy him those fears or experiences. But the way he and Janelle worked as a smoothly oiled machine, a partnership that seemed to be more than the sum of their individual parts, and a family that was so filled with warmth and love that Brandon couldn't have spent more than thirty seconds in their home without noticing it—Brandon envied that for sure.

And telling himself that eventually he and his Nick could probably get there too only took him so far.

But that wasn't at all the issue in the forefront of his mind, and with an effort he forced himself to refocus, to actually get what he needed to do done.

"I just wanted to talk to you real quick," Brandon said, squirming a little. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but this did still feel a little like being called into the coach’s office to get yelled at for something dumb. “I’m gonna go talk to the front office next, I guess, but I wanted to give you a heads up too.”

Brandon snuck a look at Fligs. His eyebrows were making a noble effort to make for his hairline, but he didn’t speak, just waited for Brandon to keep explaining.

“It’s nothing bad, at least I hope—uh, just. You remember how I was feeling kind of off about Nick—Leds, uh, the other day?”

Nick nodded slowly.

“Well it turns out that we were both feeling weird because there’s some kind of, uh.” Brandon stopped to clear his throat. He hadn’t realized quite how strange it was going to feel to try and say any of this out loud. “Soul bond thing?”

“Oh,” Nick said, somewhat involuntarily.

Brandon waited for a second to see if he was going to say anything else, but after Nick gestured for him to just keep going, he did.

“So, um. Yeah. It shouldn’t affect the team really, just—I wanted you guys to know what the deal was if, like, something happens to him when we’re on the ice and I react to it.”

“Right,” Nick said slowly, when they’d both taken a few moments to digest that. “So you’re—not asking for a trade, or anything like that, and you didn’t, I dunno, accidentally tweet out porn or something, okay. Good.”

“I wouldn’t!” Brandon protested hotly, a little pissed that Fligs would think he would ask to be traded, or that he’d do anything like that.

“Hey, you never know,” Nick said, “It’s always the quiet ones, right?”

Brandon paused for a second. “You’re a di—” and then glanced at Milana and hurriedly substituted, “—a jerk.”

“Made you laugh, though,” Nick pointed out. “Hey, Saader. Brandon. It’s fine. I mean, obviously I hope this is all academic and it never affects either of you like that, but I appreciate the warning. We’ll keep an eye out for both of you, eh?”

Brandon felt some of the tension go out of his back at just how calm and matter of fact Nick was being about this. “Thanks,” he said softly. “I get that—I know it’s not an easy situation.”

He knew a few guys who dated inside the league, or usually inside their own teams, but it didn’t happen a lot, and it sure didn’t happen often enough that he’d have expected his team—especially a new one, one that he hadn’t built up a lot of time and credit with, that hadn’t drafted him or known him for years—to just roll with it, for the most part. But to their credit, they had so far, and it was good to hear that as far as the team was concerned—and with Nick leading them, they’d follow his example for sure—that this didn’t change anything for them.

Nick reached over and gave Brandon a light punch to the upper arm, gave him another quick grin.

“It is what it is,” he said. “And you’re handling it about as well as anyone could, so stop worrying like we’re going to stick a ‘return to sender’ label on you and ship you back or something.”

Brandon let that settle for a moment and then nodded. “Thanks,” he said again.

“I mean it,” Nick said. “We’re glad to have you, and the fact that you have the poor taste to be pretty much married to an Islander, well, no one’s perfect, eh?”

“That ‘eh’ is sounding pretty Canadian for someone with a Team USA sweater hanging above the fireplace,” Brandon said, which wasn’t really a comeback but was about the best he could do under the circumstances, with the words ‘practically married’ echoing in his ears so loudly that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Nick somehow picked up on the echo too.

Fligs gave him the eyeroll that was about all that attempt at a chirp deserved and changed the subject adeptly, asking Brandon what he thought of the new restaurant near the arena that Boone had been raving about. He kept the conversation solely on light, easy things until Brandon had unwound enough to feel like he could extricate himself from that conversation and head on to the next, slightly harder one, and it wasn't anything that would ever get written up in the Sporting News, but that was just another reason why Brandon appreciated his captain.

Fliggy walked him out when Brandon did make his excuses in the end, and shifted his sleepy toddler to the other arm before reaching out to clasp Brandon’s forearm gently to say, “Hey, just—give us a call if you need anything, okay? And you can tell whoever in PR or legal that the team don’t have any problems with it, too, if they get shi—” he paused for a split second as the parental habit took over, “—shirty about anything. Go get em, Saader. And then rest up, we gotta kick your boy’s ass day after tomorrow, and then you can go kiss it better.”

“Fliggy,” Brandon protested, but Nick closed the door in his face, chuckling to himself, and Brandon turned to trudge back to his place and his car, sighing but overwhelmingly glad that if he’d had to leave one team that he’d loved, at least he’d landed here, with good people who cared about him too.

The conversation—or, as it turned out, three conversations, since Brandon had had to go over it with multiple people who kept deciding that, actually, someone else needed to be read in as well or was going to have to sign off on whatever legal and or medical things this affected—wasn’t quite as bad as he’d been worried it would be, in the end.

He started out with the coaching staff, got bumped up to management and then they’d decided that legal and HR should sit in on the meeting just in case as well, so by the time the tall, slender red-headed woman he remembered dealing with last year walked in, Brandon had his story down to an efficient three and a half sentences to explain the issue.

“Thanks for letting us know,” she started, and Brandon appreciated that she’d said that, even if it was just a courtesy. It felt sincere. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to make a big production out of this, it’s just going to be a confidential note in your medical file, and we’ll make sure anyone likely to treat you is aware they’ll need to check for secondary issues if something does happen.”

“Right,” Brandon said, nodding slowly; that was about what he had expected, and if he didn’t have to sign new paperwork or change anything then that was actually better than expected.

She closed the folder in front of her, shuffling the papers back into it and shoving the cuffs of her shift back up her forearms in a gesture that looked habitual. Brandon’s gaze was caught for a second by the glimpse of a tattoo, a couple of small circles in parallel lines just below her wrist.

He looked back up to see she was waiting for his attention, but before he could feel embarrassed at all she just gave him a quick smile, reassuring and sincere. “Hey, don’t stress about it,” she said, and Brandon got the impression she meant that on a couple of levels. “It’s not life or death. And the involuntary transference side of things really does calm down after a year or two, so if you both try not to step in front of slapshots in the mean time you’ll be fine.”

Brandon raised an eyebrow—she sounded so certain about that, and even the medical staff had been kind of unsure of how the whole thing was going to work out. And they had, in theory at least, gone over some of this stuff in medical school, or at least so he hoped.

“Broke my ankle last year,” she said, “jumping off a climbing wall. Scared the shit out of my husband, but a day later he felt fine again. And if you want to talk to more people who’ve bonded, or see what other resources are out there, there’s a couple groups around the city, or online. I can point you in the right direction if you want. Just stop by my office later,” she added, and stood up to leave.

“Thank you,” Brandon said, surprising himself with the intensity of that. It was somehow reassuring to be able to put a face and a name to someone else who’d been in—a similar situation at least. And it sounded like he’d be able to pass some of that along to Nick, too, which was even better.

As if that thought had conjured him up, Brandon could feel a tug in his chest, a quick burst of sensation that he could immediately identify as Nick, feeling some kind of strong emotion that spilled over enough to show up in their bond, a giddy elation that made Brandon sit up straighter and warmed him through.

“Ah, I think I need to make a phone call,” Brandon s aid, trying to sound more together than he felt, and maybe he was a better actor than he’d thought because none of the other suits in the room even blinked, they just thanked him for his time and waved him off home again.

Brandon held out long enough to get back to his car, but didn’t turn the engine on or wait till he could get home; the intensity of whatever he was feeling from Nick had abated a little, but it hadn’t gone away fully, even if he couldn’t quite make out words or images, just sensation.

At least, he thought ruefully, his wrist had stopped hurting. That was an improvement for sure.

“Hey Saader,” Nick said warmly as he answered the phone, before Brandon could even get a word out. He had a feeling Nick would have known it was him calling even without the benefit of caller ID.

“Hey yourself,” Brandon said. “How’d things go for you? I assume good?” He’d figured Nick would also let his team know as soon as possible, too well trained and professional to do anything else.

“Yeah, good,” Nick said. “Uh, Matty and JT spent like half the conversation chirping me for not realizing sooner since apparently they’d just been assuming all along that we were bonded,” and he laughed, the same giddy joy in his voice that Brandon could feel bubbling along his nerves still. “The team were fine too, said it wasn’t the first time,” and Brandon made a mental note about that, wondering idly who else around the league was secretly bonded, or if they’d just meant back in the day, because god knew there’d been rumors about Jagr and some of his linemates.

“And,” Nick went on, “the best part, apparently our docs have been going over some of the recent studies that said it’s better for a new bond to settle with proximity, so I’m under doctors orders to fly out early and to stay with you instead of at the hotel.”

“Oh,” Brandon said, his stomach twisting with anticipation. That was good news. Nick, here, soon. Nick, in his bed and in his arms for as long as possible, instead of just whatever moments they could steal away from curfew and team meetings. Nick. “Fuck, that’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “We have practice tomorrow, but under the circumstances everyone agreed I can take a maintenance day, so I’m just booking a flight now. You feel up to an airport run tonight?”

“Always, whenever,” Brandon said, beaming helplessly. He wasn’t sure how much of his excitement was his and how much was Nick’s, but it didn’t matter; they were getting this. Getting each other, and even if life was going to keep them apart far more than he’d prefer, this was a moment of grace, a gift he’d never expected to be handed on top of everything else.

“Yeah, I’ll send you my confirmation,” Nick said. “Fuck, I can’t wait to see you.”

“Same here,” Brandon said, already racing ahead of himself as he thought. Nick, walking off the plane and towards him; Nick, a reassuring and soft-spoken presence in the front seat beside him; Nick, walking through his house and teasing Brandon gently about his failure to do more than the bare minimum of interior decorating even after a year and a half. Nick, sliding under the sheets and touching Brandon—

“Brandon,” Nick interjected, his voice strained in a way that Brandon was only used to hearing in different circumstances, “please give me at least half an hour to get home before you starting thinking that loudly about, uh, that. There are people here!”

“Oh, oops,” Brandon said, torn between laughter and arousal, the faintest urge to just push back to see how Nick would react. It wouldn’t be fair, not without Nick asking him to, so Brandon squelched that desire, but oh, he was looking forward to getting home. To getting Nick at home, and privacy and time and everything that would mean for them.

“That’s only slightly better,” Nick told him tartly. “I’m gonna go, just—hold those thoughts for a couple hours, okay? Love you.”

“Love you too,” Brandon said, and he made damn sure to try and send that feeling to Nick along their bond too, before hanging up his phone and starting the car.

He had a few things he should probably take care of before Nick was over, but the idea of getting to see him so soon was absolutely wiping out all the fears and worries and strain that Brandon felt like he’d been hanging onto for weeks. Maybe he’d had completely the wrong end of the stick, worried about being too reliant on Nick, about whether they’d be enough for each other even on different teams. The bond sure as hell suggested it was the exact opposite, that they were good for each other, enough for each other, and that distance could suck sometimes, but it wasn’t enough to hold them back, not really.

He had a funny feeling that the Jackets recent luck against the Isles was going to reverse itself in a few days, which was possibly a legitimate hunch or maybe just the certainty of how much better they’d been playing of late, but until someone came along to stop them, Brandon was going to let himself enjoy the ride, on and off the ice.

And while he couldn’t say exactly what the future was going to hold—success or failure, those were just a roll of the dice, when it came down to it—he knew that whatever happened, Nick was going to be there with him and for him, and that was kind of winning streak that Brandon could really get behind.

[]

Getting a day off before they needed to be anywhere else—and more importantly, a day where Brandon could sleep in, with no errands to run or practices to be ready for—helped him get back into a much better frame of mind before they headed out on their next road trip.

"I guess it's the lead up to Christmas," Brandon said, after talking around it for a little while before deciding that this was probably the sort of thing you were supposed to talk to your significant other about.

And yeah, okay, the chance to call Nick and touch base with him was doing a lot to help Brandon's mood too.

So sue him, he liked people, and he missed his people when he wasn't around them. It was why he kept getting lunch with Smitty whenever they were in the same place—Toronto had been a big improvement on that front—and Shawzy in Montreal and Nick, whenever and wherever they could steal a moment together, whether it was in person or over the phone.

Brandon had snuck away for more than a couple of long weekends—or midweek getaways, whenever the schedule allowed—over the past year and change; it wasn't something he talked about a lot to anyone else, but Fliggy knew, because Brandon had him come over to water his plants.

That was, admittedly, more because Brandon was very particular about his plants and prone to taking his responsibilities too seriously on occasion—he knew what people said about him—but he did appreciate it. And Fligs seemed to appreciate the semi-regular cookie deliveries Brandon made in turn. And that fact that he had people in Columbus as well, who'd worry about him and look out for him and who knew where he was going to be, well. That just helped him feel all the more at home there, too.

"Mmm?" Nick said, his tone soft, enquiring.

Brandon tried to put his thoughts back in order again.

"I just, you know. You feel further away right now." Brandon trailed off, tapping his fingers on his thigh and staring unseeingly out his kitchen window. "I know, it's stupid, New York is so close, I just—"

"It's not stupid," Nick said promptly. "I mean, well. I think I know what you mean, anyway."

Brandon sighed. "I miss you."

"Same," Nick said, and they both paused for a few moments, the silence stretching out in a way that wasn't at all awkward, was just familiar and safe.

"I'll be there in a couple weeks," Nick reminded him, as if Brandon didn't have it circled on his calendar. As if he didn't know that half his team were probably also looking forward to the chance to chirp him mercilessly about it, too.

"You're staying, right?" Brandon asked, because they hadn't actually figured that part out yet. It always seemed to much like tempting fate to plan out too much ahead of time, but this was probably close enough.

"Yeah," Nick said. "I'm gonna get a flight back late Sunday, unless Dougie pulls a last minute practice on us or something."

It wasn't entirely unprecedented, and Brandon would understand if it happened, but god he hoped the Isles would come into Nationwide on a winning streak.

And he'd hope that they'd break it there, too, of course.

The Jackets streak was starting to go past respectable and into substantial territory, and he loved Nick, of course, but that didn’t mean he liked the fact that his team had only been on the winning side of those games once, and Nick hadn’t even been on the ice for that one.

Brandon was more than ready to start evening out that score.

But getting Nick to himself for the better part of a day sounded like the best reward Brandon could imagine for getting through the next couple of weeks. Even if that visit was going to be the only time they saw each other until the New Year.

"We'll do Christmas properly next year, right?" Nick asked, a little wistful, a tone that went some way to reassuring Brandon that he was just as sad about the fact they had separate plans for the holidays as Brandon.

It was only three days off, the only time they'd get to see their families in even longer time than they got to see each other, but Brandon still felt it smarting a little.

So he was letting himself indulge in a touch of greed, that was probably understandable. At least his parents knew—and more importantly, liked—Nick, so he knew he'd be able to get away for a while on the day to call him or Skype or whatever they wound up doing.

"Yeah," Nick promised. "I think it's my turn to come out to Pittsburgh, huh?"

"Probably," Brandon said. "At least this time we can probably avoid accidentally winding up at a Penguins bar?"

Nick laughed.

"It wasn't that they were Pens fans," he said, apparently compelled to be fair about it. "It was that they wanted you to get traded there instead."

Brandon's lips quirked into a smile almost despite himself.

"What, you don't wanna see me with Sid and the rest of them?"

Nick's silence spoke volumes.

"Nah," Brandon went on. "I'm good with things how they are."

It wasn't as if Brandon didn't feel that rivalry on Columbus's behalf just as strongly as the Islanders seemed to, but there was a small part of him that still remembered being a kid and looking up to Mario and Jagr and dreaming of wearing that jersey when he grew up. Although he wasn't exactly disappointed with the direction his life had actually taken, of course.

After all, he wouldn't have met Nick—or won two Cups—otherwise.

"Oh good," Nick said, mock-relieved, although maybe slightly less ‘mock’ than he might like to admit. It wasn't like Brandon hadn't learned how to read him by now.

"Anyway," Brandon said, "I didn't just call you to mope, what're you doing this afternoon?"

"Do you want to know what my plans are or are you angling for phone sex?"

Nick could be very straight-forward, sometimes.

"I can't do both?" Brandon replied.

"I don't know Saader, you're not that great at multi-tasking," Nick pointed out, the warmth in his voice suddenly infinitely more promising and Brandon felt a shiver curl along his spine. He was never going to get used to that: the way Nick sounded when he was turned on, when Brandon got him hot like that.

"Oh please," Brandon replied automatically, trying to get at least a pity point out of the conversation before surrendering to the inevitable—although his free hand sure was already toying with the button of his jeans. "You would burn a tray of cookies if I distracted you with a blow job too, that one was not my fault."

"Keep telling yourself that," Nick said. "We both know how it went down."

"I remember very clearly who went down," Brandon muttered, torn between continuing to argue—because, honestly—and moving onto the much more satisfying next item on the menu.

"Yeah," Nick said blandly, not letting himself be drawn on it. Which was probably fair, Brandon figured. "Speaking of—"

"There it is," Brandon said, and popped the button on his jeans, dragging the zip down. He only had so much patience.

"You really wanna argue about cookies or do you wanna get off already?" Nick asked.

And it wasn't like that was even a contest, really.

"C'mon then, talk dirty to me," Brandon said, and Nick laughed, and then did just that.

After dragging for weeks on end, the last few days before Nick—and the Islanders—were in town seemed to pass in a flash, leaving Brandon a little stunned, half-unready for it.

Part of it was the heady whirl of win after win, of matching their last season's win streak and then obliterating it, even if some of those games had still been nail-bitingly close. None of them were going to admit it, but Brandon knew he wasn't the only one who'd checked what their franchise record was, or who'd realized how tantalizingly within reach it was.

Of course, thinking like that was the quickest route to getting blown out embarrassingly in your own barn—instead of getting blown after the game, flush with victory and pretending like you weren't going to rub it in just a little—and Brandon knew exactly which one of those two options he preferred, thank you very much.

His mind did keep drifting to those thoughts when they were all sitting down for the team lunch in Detroit, keeping him even more quiet over his meal than he might normally be.

Of course, his all-too-observant when you least preferred them to be teammates noticed that, too, and had to comment on it.

Brandon figured he could probably be forgiven for just kicking Cam and Zach under the table as they tried to tag-team on chirping him, and he ignored the fact that even Jack was openly laughing at him with, he thought, commendable dignity.

It was probably true that he should be focusing more on the opponent immediately ahead of them—even in a down year the Red Wings were nothing to take for granted, God knew that Brandon had learned that the hard way, more than once, even, and especially back in 2013.

…and of course, thinking about that made him just think about Nick again, so it really was one of those 'all roads lead to Rome' scenarios.

None of that was going to keep him awake when he headed back up to his room for his pregame nap, though.

[]

That faint nagging sense of disquiet that Brandon had felt prickling at the edges of his consciousness before his nap seemed to have dissipated while he slept, made it easy to go through the rest of his pregame routine. And that routine made it easier to put aside all the distraction of seeing Nick soon, let him just sink into familiar sounds and smells and sights.

Zach being a ball of nerves—in his own, quiet, reserved and almost stone-faced way—helped on the distraction front, too.

It wasn't like it was his first time playing in the Joe, even; but the first as an NHLer, well. It might be old and creaky and halfway to worn out, but beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and all that, and Zach was nothing if not a good Michigan kid who’d grown up with the Wings dynasty holding court in Joe Louis, and sometimes it was hard to forget that kind of thing.

Brandon couldn't deny he'd had some of the same sorts of jitters that first time in Pittsburgh.

The fact that a large proportion of the crowd seemed to be wearing Jackets or UMich gear with Werenski printed somewhere on it was definitely noticeable. Seeing that seemed to steady Zach even more, another piece of evidence—as if Brandon had needed it—that he was the type that thrived on pressure, that stood tall to it and was fueled by it. They were going to need that down the line, because as much fun as a four—and then, sixty minutes later, five—game win streak was, well. Brandon knew this fairytale run wasn't going to last forever, there was still a whole lot of hockey to play before they could even think about getting to the playoffs.

And after last year, he was damn sure they were going to the playoffs. They were going to do it, even if every one of them had to skate through fire and sand to drag themselves up the standings. They didn’t need the President’s Trophy, they just had to make it in. And after that, anything could happen.

Brandon knew that well enough.

As for the game in Detroit, well. Despite the PK not quite managing to get the job done, their offense had been able to push back, to cover them more than adequately, and that was two points and another win for their stash. Like every asshole on the internet liked to remind them, you couldn't make the playoffs in the December. But you could sure as hell lose them then.

And none of them needed reminding of that.

It was late by the time they got back to Columbus; Detroit was a quick flight, and in the same time zone, and there was no need for customs or any of the things that so often made post-game travel seem to drag on for an eternity, but even in the best possible situation it still took time to get all of them through the post game, cooled down properly and then onto a bus. It took time to get all their gear packed away and stowed and transported from the rink to the air field and then onward from there.

Everything took time, and every one of those minutes added up.

It was getting on towards 2am by the time Brandon parked out front, let himself into his house and dropped his bag right by the door. It was out of the way enough he wasn't going to trip over it, not that he'd be the first guy to wind up on IR for that or any other equally ignominious reason, and he could deal with it in the morning, after he'd slept.

The one grace of a back-to-back was unless they'd had an absolute stinker the first night, there wasn't going to be any kind of morning skate. So he'd have to be at the rink eventually, but not nearly as early as usual. Brandon was quite desperately looking forward to sleeping in.

Floorboards creaked ahead of him, the wash of light spilling into the hall from the kitchen and Brandon tensed up for a split second before remembering—and after how distracted he'd been before the game it was hilarious that he'd somehow forgotten—that Nick had keys, that Nick would be waiting here for him.

Waiting up for him.

Brandon's exhaustion melted away like the last snow of spring, gone in a flash, replaced by budding heat.

It was hard to see Nick's face as he turned around the corner, backlit and washed out into angles and shadow, but it took less time than Brandon needed to inhale for Nick to meet him, hands dropping automatically to his hips, the two of them fitting together as perfectly as ever.

"Hey," Brandon murmured, his voice feeling thick all of a sudden, throat tight with emotion. God, he'd missed Nick. He thought he'd known how much, but somehow this seemed to get both better and worse every time they got to reunite like this.

"Hi," Nick said, his thumbs pushing under Brandon's waistband, stroking softly over the skin that got him access to, such a tiny touch that still made Brandon's breath come faster, made him yearn for so much more.

"Been waiting long?" Brandon asked.

"Nah," Nick said, and Brandon hoped that meant he'd had time for a nap or something. Just because he was getting in late and going to be a little short on sleep didn't mean that Nick should be doing the same.

He'd tried, last year, to tell Nick not to worry about waiting up for him, to remind him that they had the next morning at least, but Brandon's not a morning person, and Nick is a very stubborn one, and Brandon had to admit, in the end, that it wasn't as if he didn't want Nick there to greet him, wherever they were. Whatever time it was.

They were never going to get to do this every day again any time soon, not until one or both of them retired, and, well. Brandon'd never been one to waste time, if he could help it.

"You wanna do anything right now?" Brandon asked, wondering if Nick had eaten, if he wanted a snack or something before they went to bed, but Nick just rolled his eyes—Brandon was close enough now to see him clearly, to see the tiredness darkening the skin underneath his eyes, the faint tension in his jaw—and said, pointedly, "Yeah, I want to go to bed."

Brandon wasn't going to argue with that.

The alarm went off all too early the next morning, prompting Brandon to groan and try to bury his head under the pillow, and, when the pillow made sounds of protest, had him mumbling apologies to Nick instead.

When Brandon sat up, rubbing his eyes as the sheet slid down to pool in his lap, it was to see that as usual, the two of them had gravitated together, sharing one pillow. And that they were taking up maybe half of the bed, the blankets trailing drunkenly off to the side from where one or both of them had shoved them when they'd started to overheat. Brandon kept his place warm, and Nick was a regular space-heater in his own right, always running hot, so it wasn't like either of them had had a chance to get cold.

Nick's hair was hilariously flat on one side and sticking up on the other, and Brandon felt the usual rush of fondness steal through him as he noted that. He didn't even bother to quell the urge to reach out and try to even it out.

That turned, somewhat inevitably, into mussing it further, and Nick making adorably grumpy noises at him before grabbing at Brandon's hand and pinning it to the mattress.

Brandon bit his lip, inhaled—glanced over Nick's shoulder at the time on his alarm clock and made a quick internal calculation—and just grinned at him before saying, "Oh, is that what you want to start the morning off with?"

Nick blinked at him. He might be a morning person, or at least significantly more of one than Brandon, but he wasn't always the quickest on the uptake immediately after being woken out of a sound sleep.

"Mmm?" he said, sitting up in turn and twisting to face Brandon. Without letting go of his wrist.

Brandon flexed, pointedly.

To his delight, Nick blushed.

"Wow," Brandon said, unable to hide the grin, or to keep from peeking over to see just how awake Nick was. If the state of the sheets over his lap was any indication, he was awake enough for sure. "Smooth, Leds."

"Takes one to know one," Nick mumbled, kind of on automatic, Brandon figured, since that had to be about the weakest chirp he'd ever heard, but more importantly Nick followed it up by leaning into his space, getting close enough to nudge him back down onto the mattress, sliding half off the pillow.

"Come on," Brandon said, "we don't have all morning."

He gave Nick a significant look. "I have to shower in like a half hour," he added, and reached for Nick's hip, intending to get a hand on him to get things really going.

There was quite a lot they could do in that amount of time, and Brandon didn't want to miss out on any of it.

"Uh-uh," Nick said, grabbing his hand before it could get anywhere more fun and pushing that wrist down against the mattress as well, mirroring the other.

Brandon stilled, swallowed hard and looked up at him. This was—newish, building on some of what they'd talked about, sure, but it wasn't something they'd done before.

Nick looked momentarily uncertain, hovering just over Brandon, close enough to see the way his eyes were huge in the early morning light, just the thinnest ring of hazel around the pupil while he stared down at Brandon and swallowed hard.

"Is this okay?" he asked, thumb grazing lightly over the vein in Brandon's wrist, enough that he had to be able to feel the way it made his heart-rate spike as the implications trickled through Brandon's sleep-hazed mind and unfolded.

"Yeah," Brandon said hoarsely, the word sticking in his throat for a moment until he cleared it and tried again. "I mean, yeah. This is—very okay."

He liked Nick's weight on him, liked the steady promise in the way that he was holding his wrists down, liked the glimmer of potential he could see in Nick's eyes as he scanned Brandon's expression, trying to figure out just how into it he was.

Brandon was… very into it.

Nick shifted his weight fractionally but didn't let up on the pressure he was putting on Brandon, still had him effectively grappled, as much as Brandon was starting to squirm underneath him, more and more cognizant with every waking moment of how turned on he was, how badly he wanted to get off.

"Okay," Nick echoed. "That's—good, yeah."

Nick leaned in some more—not enough to hurt Brandon, definitely not enough to bruise, just enough that he could feel it, really feel it, all the way through his body. It felt like his skin was too tight, his reactions a beat slow, almost like he was floating, and Nick was the only thing keeping him grounded.

Brandon closed his eyes for a second, inhaling slowly, and that only sharpened the sensation. He felt like he was suspended between Nick's hands, heat and pressure on his wrists and the weight of him over his chest and lower body. He could feel the scrape of Nick's body hair against his, his thighs firm with muscle, warm, a little sweaty from sleeping all tangled together.

Brandon hummed appreciatively and pushed back, tried to sit up, wanting to see just what Nick would do.

Nick froze for a moment, before inspiration seemed to strike. Instead of lifting off him or shoving back Nick just got his knee between Brandon's legs, pressed up until Brandon's encouraging hum turned into a slow, desperate hissing exhalation. His dick was tucked warmly along the line of Brandon's hip, dripping slow and sticky as Nick worked them both over. Brandon's dick was caught between them too, Nick's knee just brushing his balls as he squirmed on top of him. It could have felt like a threat, it could have hurt; it did neither, because all it was was potential, and Brandon knew Nick; knew he wouldn't hurt him unless that was what Brandon was asking for, knew that he had enough control over his body to bring them right up to the edge without stepping over it, knew that all Nick was doing was lining them up so they could both rub off against each other.

And fuck was it good.

Brandon shifted under Nick, spreading his legs more, and in response Nick stretched out a little, his knee sliding back along the inside of Brandon's thigh until he was sprawled out flat, his weight spread more evenly.

"Fuck, please," Brandon said, almost choking on the words.

He was so turned on that he was shaking with it, trembling in time with the way his vision was going a little hazy around the edges, the intensity amped all the way up, and he was pretty sure he was going to come the second Nick touched him. And if he didn't, well, two more minutes of grinding up against his thigh was probably going to do the trick just as well. Or maybe longer, Brandon wasn't exactly sure, about the only thing he was sure was that there was not exactly a whole lot of blood going in the direction of his brain right then.

"I got you," Nick murmured, before leaning in to kiss him again, and that was so distracting that Brandon somehow didn't notice immediately that one of his hands was suddenly free again, not until Nick's hand pushed between them to curl around his dick, and Brandon arched up and swore and grabbed, automatically, at Nick, his palm sliding down to grab his ass and try to hold him there, pull him closer, his fingers digging into the muscle as Nick awkwardly jerked him off.

Nick didn't have a whole lot of range of motion, the way they were lying, and it would probably have been easier if he'd rolled off first, or if they'd moved somehow, but Brandon didn't want to take the extra time, and more importantly he wanted Nick to stay right there, warm and familiar and comforting, like a person-shaped security blanket wrapped around him.

Mostly, Brandon just didn't want to stop touching long enough to do anything else, and besides, it turned out he was right about just how little additional impetus it was going to take to get him there, because he only had time for a couple of ragged breaths before groaning low in the back of his throat and coming all over Nick's hand.

He wanted to go limp and melt back into the bed, and maybe to go back to sleep, although that was a terrible idea, then he really would be late, but also Nick was still waiting and Brandon didn't want to leave him hanging.

"Wow," Brandon said softly, and hoped the signals from his brain to actually move would start getting through to his limbs sooner rather than later. "That, um."

Nick just laughed softly, grinning down at him, his cheeks red, hair mussed. Brandon was so stupid fucking in love with him that it was hard to breathe, for a moment. He loved Nick and he loved doing this and he hated, hated that they didn't get to have this all the time.

But he loved hockey, too, and they both knew that this was what it took, what it cost, what they had to do right then. And maybe that'd change in the future, and maybe it wouldn't; Brandon had no idea. All he could do was keep dealing with life as it happened.

“You gonna let me help you out now?” Brandon asked, once he was surer of his ability to actually function. He let his hand trail lightly down Nick’s spine, felt him shudder at the slow brush of fingertips over the bumps of his vertebrae, curling familiarly over the curve of his ass as he moved lower and lower.

Nick made a vaguely incoherent noise, arching up under Brandon’s hands, and that made them move together in a way that felt good but almost too much for Brandon. Not enough for him to want to stop, though, and he pressed a kiss to the side of Nick’s throat, kept his hands moving over his backside.

Nick shivered, panting into Brandon’s shoulder, his mouth open against Brandon’s skin, and the noise he made when Brandon dug his fingers into the muscle of his ass was a revelation.

Abruptly, Brandon wanted more, wanted to see, wanted something more than just letting Nick rub off against him, not that he’d ever really complain about that. But they hardly ever got to see each other, and they didn’t get to do this often at all, and he just—wanted.

“Roll over a sec,” Brandon prompted, his voice slow and lazy, thick with arousal.

Nick didn’t make him wait; he was always so incredibly obliging, clambering off Brandon as soon as he let go, and sprawling out on his back, head turned to watch Brandon’s next move, whatever it was going to be. Considering Nick had just been giving all of the orders, it was kind of gratifying how easily the dynamic could reverse—although, Brandon mused, it wasn’t as if it wasn’t in his best interests either.

“This work?” Nick asked, and Brandon blinked for a second, before realizing that of course he hadn’t actually told Nick what he wanted, and it wasn’t like he was actually psychic. Just… on Brandon’s level so effectively that most of the time it seemed kind of like they were.

“Yeah, that’s good,” Brandon agreed, and then tilted his head to the side, considering. “Actually, scoot this way a little—yeah, like that.” He paused for effect, and then tapped Nick’s thigh with the back of his knuckles. “Okay, and spread ‘em.”

“Brandon,” Nick gritted out, squirming on the spot, his face flushed and voice tight. “Come on already.”

“I thought I just did,” Brandon said with a grin, and Nick groaned and rolled his eyes but he also laughed, so Brandon was taking that as a win.

And he stopped laughing gratifyingly quickly as Brandon got himself moving, scrambling into position and swallowing his dick down with no preamble.

“Fuck,” Nick hissed, and grabbed at Brandon’s head, his fingers slipping and pulling his hair a little. It made tears spring to the corners of his eyes, but it wasn’t bad, it was—focusing, clarifying, and Brandon closed his eyes and curled his tongue around the crown of Nick’s cock, feeling him twitch and swell in his mouth.

Brandon was just about together enough after coming that hard himself to manage to pay adequate attention to what he was doing, and he was certainly more than awake enough to enjoy it. He liked giving head more than a few of the other guys he’d known who, well, did guys, and Nick was always an enthusiastic recipient; vocal and energetic and very clear in both his somatic and verbal responses, spelling out exactly what was working for him when Brandon went down.

They had to have done it a hundred times by then, Brandon thought, falling into an easy rhythm, a familiar set of action and responses.

He knew exactly how to get Nick off super fast because he’d always known how to get Nick off, because doing this was as easy and familiar as—Brandon tried to come up with a metaphor that wasn’t taping his stick, because that was almost too on the nose, even if it was just in front of an audience of himself inside his own head and not fit to share, but nothing else was exactly springing to mind, and Brandon mentally shook himself to get his mind back on the job because Nick was close to coming.

The other benefit to how often they’d done this—how much of a routine it was, albeit one that had never felt the slightest bit ordinary—was absolutely that Brandon could read Nick’s responses close enough to register subconsciously all the clues that said he was about to blow, all the reflexes writ large that indicated all-consuming, inevitable release.

And even in the midst of early-morning meanderings through his own head, it meant that whatever good sense he had retained after twenty plus years of playing hockey was enough to kick him in the pants so he could focus entirely on Nick, falling apart under his hands and mouth.

Nick, shaking and tense, teeth dug into his own lip, crying out inarticulately.

Nick, entirely his, body and mind, whether or not they’d gotten around to making a legal pact of it or not.

They were tied together by all the bonds that counted most, in Brandon’s opinion; the rest was just details.

Brandon swallowed hard, licking around his lips to try and clean his face off a bit. They were going to have to shower soon, so it wasn’t a big deal, but Nick liked to mess him up, and Brandon loved to let him, and while the immediate result was gratifying, after a while it got…sticky.

And so sue him, Brandon had a good enough sense of how much time had passed to know they could linger in bed a little longer and still make it out of the house on time.

Not quite enough time for another round—he curled himself up against Nick’s side with a silent tinge of regret about that, and let himself sulk for exactly six seconds about it—but more than enough time to spend a minute or ten in bed just enjoying each other’s company.

“So, hey, good morning,” Brandon said, pitching his voice low enough that it didn’t feel like it was going to break the fragile silence of the morning.

"That was really hot," Nick replied, just as softly as Brandon, his voice low and hoarse from sleep, a little croaky with the beginning or the end of a cold, too, or maybe it was just the amount of time they all spent in too-dry rinks where you could never fully warm up.

And that was another reason Brandon liked being able to wake up with him, because there was nothing like the feeling of actually being warm enough for once, and two in a bed was an easy way to achieve that.

He could almost forget, sometimes, that they'd been sharing a bed for longer than they'd been dating, and longer than they'd been fooling around, even. It had started out just as friends, close enough to be intimate, the motel rooms in Rockford just chilly enough to give them an excuse to cuddle, and neither of them was too uptight to turn down the idea of sharing. It just felt good to be warm, let alone close to someone else, someone all too attractive.

And then Brandon had caught Nick's eye one day as they lay there waking up, just talking quietly about nothing in particular, and he'd thought to himself, "yes, this one," conviction unfolding into belief, all before he could catch himself and push the thoughts away unexamined. And however easy and inevitable that initial thought had felt, it had also been overwhelming and huge and more than a little scary to feel, but thank god he was terrible at holding a poker face because Nick had just looked right back at him and said, "Oh, really?" and beamed, going soft and warm all over with what Brandon later realized had been sheer relief before adding, "Thank god, I thought it was just me."

They'd kissed then, and kissed some more for weeks after that.

And then a little while after that they'd won the Cup, and then they didn't stop at kissing anymore.

He'd never tell anyone else except maybe Nick, someday when it didn't seem so much like tempting fate, but Brandon had seen it coming.

Not, admittedly, all that far in advance, but all the same… he'd swear he knew.

They'd laid down for pre-game naps before game six, and even the vets had been jittery; up three in the series and all of them well aware they had a chance to win it that evening.

It had seemed like a tough ask, though, given the way the series had started out and the way they'd struggled at times during the run. Brandon didn't think one whole game the year before counted as anything like experience when it came to the playoffs, especially since he hadn't managed to start scoring until the Final anyway. So he was all too aware of just how much of a rookie he was, how little experience he had to judge how they were actually doing in the series overall. Even Nick wasn't much better off, with two first round exits in his back pocket and nothing else of note to go with them.

Brandon had tried not to feel a little pleased that their first playoff series win was one they'd gotten to share, even if Nick had one hell of a head start on him, career wise.

So he'd been hopeful, but nothing like convinced, trying not to think about the possibility of going back to Chicago and having to play one final game with everything on the line. Better to win it now, when they could, he thought. And then he'd kissed Nick and Nick had run his fingers through Brandon's hair, helplessly fond, and said, "Go to sleep, Saader, you gotta be on top of your game tonight."

And they'd both drifted right off to sleep like that, easy as anything, like they didn't have the biggest game of their lives ahead of them.

Brandon had never had much trouble sleeping, that was a blessing.

And he'd never remembered exactly what he saw afterward, his dream self had just seen the light behind Rask flash red and felt a surge of adrenaline, euphoric joy and disbelief and the raw echo in his ears of the bench yelling their heads off with delight while the home fans roared their dismay.

There'd been time left on the board, though, and Brandon had looked up and thought very deliberately, that they just had to hang on and not screw it up. The dream had cut away then, and maybe that should have made him doubt it, but the very next thing he'd seen had been a flash of the Cup wrapped in a makeshift lifejacket, Nick's big capable hands wrapped around it as he lifted it into a boat, and then it had dissolved into dream nonsense, a spray of words and colors Brandon didn't recognize or remember, but he'd woken up with an overwhelming sense of certainty, that even if they didn't get it then, they were going to.

Halfway through the third period in Boston, he could've been forgiven for assuming that even if it had been a real premonition, it must've been a few days early. But then Bicks scored, and Bolly, his incredulous joy a beacon across the ice, hope turned to triumph, their fortunes reversed in the span of a few heartbeats, and the next thing Brandon knew he was hurling himself over the boards to tackle Crow, to celebrate with his team.

It had seemed so perfect, then, and he'd been sure a year later that they were poised to repeat, too.

Right up till the moment the puck ricocheted off Nick's stick and right past Crow, the deflection none of them had a chance on, and just like that their playoffs were over, and so was Nick's career was a Hawk.

He'd written that dream off as nerves and rookie cockiness, and maybe also the product of a few too many drinks, but he'd been so convinced they were going to win again, so sure of it that losing to LA and then losing Nick had felt like two hammer blows only inches apart.

Missing Nick after that season had been the hardest, had been the most strain their relationship had ever felt. They'd been so new still, back then; new and unsure of themselves and hardly capable of communicating well when they were seeing each other every day, let alone when they were half the country apart and barely getting to catch up even when they were in the same state.

It had been hard, and Brandon had thought, at times, that maybe they wouldn't make it after all, but in the end they'd kept trying and it kept working, just, however much it ached sometimes. And he hadn't regretted it.

He didn't think Nick had, either.

He'd worried for a moment as the clock ticked down in the UC in their last game against the Bolts, whether it would bother Nick.

He wasn't sure he liked the idea of watching someone else win the Cup—he definitely hadn't liked it in 2014—but if it was someone he cared about like he did for Nick, he could probably find a way to get over it, right?

He'd known, eventually, that the Cup would be coming close to them again, but he hadn't seen anyone with it, or even the uniforms, just caught the glint of it sitting in its case, the familiar face of the attendant as he polished off nonexistent fingerprints.

He’d seen it the morning Bowman called to tell him he was a Blue Jacket now, and Brandon wondered if that had been a sign in its own way.

Eight games into the regular season, he was pretty sure it wasn't.

But they'd come through that hell season in the end, and things were so much better, and even if Nick hadn't had much more success—he'd been wondering, as the Isles got past Florida, if it was that he’d been seeing instead—and Brandon was holding out hope, still.

For both of them.

And hell, who knew, nothing was a given in the National Hockey League; one or both of them could get traded anywhere else still, whether they liked it or not. Brandon wasn't ready to give up on the idea of playing with Nick again, even if they had to wait a few years and try to do the Suter-and-Parise thing.

They had options, was what he tried to remind himself; every time he got stuck in a mental rut and started wondering if they could stick it out, wondering if it was all going to be worth it in the end. It'd been worth it so far, and it'd keep being so, they just had to keep the faith. And Brandon not letting himself start worrying about whether putting that kind of expectation on the future might hex it was, well, another step he could take in doing the smart things.

“Where’d you go?” Nick asked him sleepily, back in the present.

Brandon shook his head, shook the memories away. “Just thinking,” he said, and kissed Nick again.

“I miss you,” he said to Nick, the next time they spoke.

It felt stupid the moment the words were out of his mouth; there was nothing new and nothing different going on, this was the same situation they’d been in for going on three years now. The only difference was that this time Brandon’s team was winning again, and he was starting to feel the itch under his skin, the tingles that suggested this time it meant something, too.

It was awfully hard to mope about missing your boyfriend when your team was making a serious run at not just a franchise record, but an NHL one. No one had said much of anything in the room, of course, but they all knew how many games they’d won so far, and it wasn’t like any of them didn’t know how to Google. No matter how much Fliggy pretended like he was too old for that kind of thing sometimes.

“What, no dirty talk first?” Nick joked, but he sobered up again almost immediately. “You know I miss you too, Saader. It’s just a couple weeks, right?”

They hadn’t spoken as much in the previous week, the western Canada road swing and the shifts to Pacific and Mountain time throwing them out of kilter, but at least they’d been able to text. So however much Brandon felt like it’d been a thousand years since he’d last gotten to see Nick, it was really closer to two weeks. And less than a month until the next time, too, except—

“Back to back, though,” Brandon said, uselessly, like they weren’t both well aware of that. “All-Star break can’t come soon enough.”

“What, you don’t think you’re going this year?” Nick said, and it grated for some reason, niggled at Brandon and made him feel itchy and short-tempered. He tugged at the collar of his shirt and shifted on the couch, trying to find a more comfortable position.

“Why would I? It’s gonna be Cam or Z, it’s not like they’re having any trouble scoring.”

“Brandon,” Nick said, too gently, and that got Brandon’s back up too. “You got a goal, like. Two games ago.”

“It’s not enough, though.”

Brandon picked at the seam of the couch cushion, shifted again. It wasn’t enough; he wasn’t doing enough, successful enough, not like he could be. Not like they were expecting him to be.

“Saader,” Nick said, and there was a warning in his tone, a sharpness that Brandon almost never heard in his direction. He and Nick were gentle with each other, always had been, and everyone who knew about them had given them endless amounts of shit for it, but normally, Brandon didn’t mind being called soft.

Normally, Brandon would laugh it off without a second thought, or he’d embrace it enthusiastically; it was so easy to be delighted by Nick, why wouldn’t he be soft on him?

Brandon opened his mouth to argue some more with Nick—and fuck, why was he picking a fight?—and remembered, abruptly, that maybe he hadn’t been scoring a whole lot of late, but it wasn’t like Nick was either.

And maybe Nick was feeling a little sensitive about that himself.

He knew he should apologize, or say something to smooth it over, but Brandon couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He was too unsettled, too wound up, prickly in all the wrong directions, and not fast enough to do anything about it.

Or, at least, to do anything to make it better.

There was silence for a few seconds, neither of them willing to say much of anything, and then Nick said, very carefully, “Yeah, I think—I’m gonna go. I’ve got stuff, you know. Later, Saader.”

“Bye, Leds,” Brandon said, half on automatic, half in disbelief that he was just going to let this happen. He’d fought with Nick before, but they’d never—

It had always been in person, before, and there was only so far you could walk away from the person you were sharing a house with before one of you would come back to bed, or to the kitchen table to talk, if nothing else.

Brandon didn’t even know how to start a conversation after their last one had ended so unceremoniously.

And when they weren’t even going to see each other again for a couple of weeks, that meant that one of them was going to have to suck it up and say something. Brandon just hoped Nick would, because as much as he knew that he hadn’t exactly been a great person there, it wasn’t like Nick was entirely blameless.

Regardless, it wasn’t going to be solved today, he told himself, and got up off the couch to go make a start on cleaning up the kitchen. If nothing else, he could make Janelle and the kids some cookies. He might as well do something productive with this mood.

Brandon was, if anything, even crankier the next morning.

He’d thought he’d worked out most of his frustrations with a double batch of snickerdoodles, he’d hung out with the Folignos long enough to get invited to stay for dinner, and he’d laughed himself silly at the kids during that, enough that he’d walked home again and gone to bed quite cheerfully.

Despite falling asleep pretty fast, he’d tossed and turned all night, too hot and then too cold, getting caught up in his blankets until he startled himself awake because he couldn’t move his arm, and the whole time, dream after dream of Nick walking away from him, Nick yelling at him, Brandon watching the ice recede further and further away from his mind’s eye, watching Nick skate around, until with a pop his center ice seats had turned into watching a game on TV. And then his subconscious had dug up some sound effects from the Nineties and flipped the TV off, the picture shrinking into the center before vanishing, and half awake, Brandon had caught himself wanting to throw the remote through the TV.

He wasn’t a violent guy, and he was usually fairly even tempered, but his mood had felt mercurial all morning, after that, and Brandon was ready to snap at the slightest provocation.

He’d prided himself for years on being a good guy in the room, not making waves, just getting the job done and not fucking around, but where Brandon could normally have just quietly faded into the background and had no one notice anything at all was going on with him, a riotously happy locker room full of guys who were starting to believe that they could in fact make a serious run at the playoffs was not the place to take an embarrassing case of the sulks.

Brandon hadn’t even gotten into his Underarmour, let alone his pads before he’d had three different guys ask him what was up, or if he was okay, or slightly more European variations on the question.

He’d deflected a couple times, but Wenny’s well-meaning check in was a bridge too far, or a straw too far, and before Brandon could get a grip on his temper he was snapping, “I’m fine,” into a suddenly silent room.

He stared down at his skates, feeling the looks being exchanged around him as if they were a physical weight, dragging him down, making his shoulders ache.

“Sorry,” he said, without looking at Wenny, or without making eye contact with anyone else either, and he yanked his jersey over his head and strode off towards the ice at a rapid clip that would have challenged anyone else to keep up with him.

Not even pretending to take a few minutes to settle into the day like everyone else was meant he was the first guy on the ice after all of that, and Brandon took a couple of slow laps, just focusing on his breathing, and telling himself to chill the fuck out already. He wasn’t sure how the other guys were going to handle this, if it had even registered as more than a blip for anyone. He didn’t particularly want to get chirped over any of this, but if he had to shut up and take it, well, Brandon had heard worse over the years. And this time he’d deserve it, at least.

The rest of the team filed slowly onto the ice, chatting and joking like normal, the coaching staff mixed in with them and giving back as many comments as they were getting. It was supposed to be fun, Brandon told himself, gliding back towards the bench. This was a job, sure, but it was also playing a game, and he was supposed to be having fun.

Everyone else was.

“Gatorade?” Wenny asked, by his shoulder before Brandon had even registered him moving. He was holding a bottle of red Gatorade, and it wasn’t Brandon’s favorite but he didn’t hate it either, so he said, “Sure,” and Wenny handed him the bottle before skating over to harass Will some more, and… that was apparently going to be that, then.

Brandon could live with that.

As practice went on he managed to get himself mostly out of the funk he’d been in, and by the time he got back to the locker room to get changed, he was almost ready to consider willingly spending more time with other people, saying “yes” to Jack’s lunch invitation without even letting himself second-guess it.

They went to one of Brandon’s favorite places downtown, and maybe this was a subtle way of cheering him up, but he had to admit it was working. It was working right up until they ordered, and Brandon dug his phone out of his pocket just to check, reflexively, since they had nothing else to do right then, and he realized he was looking at a grand total of absolutely no missed messages.

No missed calls, nothing sitting in his group texts or the private chat with Nick, nothing in his email but a link to a piece in the paper back home that his mom thought he might find interesting, about one of the girls he vaguely remembered from middle school.

Normally, him and Nick weren’t attached at the hip or anything—they were at least less codependent than certain Swedes he could name—but normally they also talked every day, touching base every now and then, just sending each other a quick thought or a comment, or joining forces to chirp Smitty about his team of babies up in Toronto.

Brandon wasn’t used to this much silence.

“…Wow,” Jack said, utterly deadpan, and Brandon’s head shot up, and he fumbled his phone with a clatter against the table before shoving it back into his pocket.

“What?” Brandon said, hoping against hope their meals would turn up soon. He wasn’t that lucky.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Jack asked, one eyebrow raised.

Brandon was… tempted.

“No,” he said, automatically, because he’d made it this long without having to talk to anyone but Nick about Nick, and he’d been in this relationship almost three years, he should know what he was doing by now.

Except he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do right now, and Jack was married, with a kid, and had been with Kelly for even longer than Brandon had been with Nick, and maybe he’d know what Brandon should do.

“Yes,” he said, and let his head hit the table with a dull thunk. “I don’t know, it’s not—help.”

“Girl problems?” Jack said, and Brandon didn’t even have to open his mouth before Jack corrected himself, “Boy problems? Sorry, uh, habit.”

“Yeah,” Brandon sighed. “We’re… not talking. I might have been kind of a dick.”

“You?” Jack looked skeptical, and it should have been gratifying—Brandon liked having friends, and he liked being the good guy, the nice one, the one everyone liked, but it sort of niggled under his skin to think that people thought he was always like that, like it was something he did automatically, that didn’t take time and energy and effort.

“Yeah, we were, uh. Talking about the season,” Brandon said, and Jack just whistled low and said, “Oh no,” in the tones of a man who had been there and done that.

“You get a little frustrated, Saader?”

“Kinda,” Brandon admitted. “I just—I went to Nashville last year, and he’s so good, he’s better than people give him credit for, but no one expects him to score a ton, I mean, he’s a defenseman—”

Brandon trailed off. He was going two and oh on sticking his foot directly into his mouth this week, apparently.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he finished up weakly.

“I mean, I don’t know that I blame him,” Jack said, blunt as ever, and Brandon winced. He couldn’t really disagree, but it would’ve been nice to get some sympathy. “What’d he say when you apologized?”

Brandon’s plate, empty as it was, got ten times more interesting all of a sudden.

“Saader,” Jack said. “Man, come on. I expect this from the kids, but you—”

“Should have my shit together better, I know,” Brandon said. “I just—I don’t know how, he wouldn’t even let me say sorry.”

When he did look up again, Jack was frowning, his expression far away and he was tapping his fingers on the edge of the table as he thought. Brandon couldn’t really do anything but wait for him; they were trapped there until their food was ready, and it wasn’t like Brandon was going to walk out of there without a ride. Wasn’t like Brandon couldn’t just take the dressing down he knew he deserved.

…and that was probably something that was applicable to more than just this conversation, Brandon thought, somewhat belatedly. Fuck, he had played this whole thing entirely wrong.

“Is this the first big fight you two have had?” Jack asked. “Because I’m thinking about it, and you never—you’ve always seemed very chill, when you’re talking about him.”

“I mean, we’ve fought,” Brandon said, although most of those had been meaningless scuffles, the kind of petty niggling that had you pushing each other’s buttons when you’d been in the same place too long without many distractions. It’d be similar to the kind of fights Brandon had had with George growing up more than anything else, except of course the making up part afterwards was… very different. “But not, you know. Over the phone. When we’re this far apart. We don’t even play them again until January,” he added plaintively, and all too aware that January was only a couple weeks away. It just felt like longer, when it was what was keeping him and Nick apart.

It felt like eternity.

“I have some advice, if you want it,” Jack said, after digesting that for a moment.

Brandon itched to tell him he didn’t want it, that he could metaphorically shove it, but he could feel his mom silently disapproving of his behavior all the way from Pittsburgh at even imagining that, and when it came down to it, Brandon just wasn’t wired that way. He’d stick up for people if they needed it, but he just wasn’t confrontational. He’d heard about it all through his junior days, too; coaches and scouts wondering if he was motivated enough, if he could speak up more, if he cared enough. He’d always wanted to argue that he cared just as much as the other guys, he just didn’t yell about it, or throw things, he was just—quieter.

And maybe that wasn’t just a hockey thing.

Brandon was going to have to think about that one some more.

He and Nick had always kind of prided themselves on being good at communicating, at talking a lot, at not having all the little relationship fights that half their friends seemed to have. And maybe that was earned, or maybe they’d just been real lucky up till now, and maybe they were just two relatively non-confrontational people who liked to live quiet lives.

But if what Nick was sitting there in New York and thinking—hell, worrying about—was whether he meant as much to Brandon, whether his goals and needs and his life were as important as Brandon’s… well, of course they were, but maybe Brandon needed to make sure that Nick knew that.

And maybe Jack had something else to add, Brandon thought, realizing he’d kind of been leaving him hanging.

“Okay, sure,” Brandon said, trying to fake some enthusiasm. Being the sensible friend wasn’t exactly fun either, he was going to have to do something nice for Jack to say thanks later, too. Although that could most likely be weekend Brandon’s problem.

“Talk to him,” Jack repeated, and this time Brandon did let his head fall forward to thump off the table.

“I know,” Brandon grumbled, into his folded arms, without sitting up again. “Don’t you have different advice?”

“Nope,” Jack said. “It’s a classic for a reason.”

“Ugh,” Brandon said, but he was also feeling a little self-conscious about the fact they were in public, so he sat up properly and pouted directly at Jack. It was about as effective as trying that on Nick, which was to say that Jack snorted back laughter and didn’t give in at all.

“Tell him you miss him and you’re sorry for being a jackass and that we’re gonna beat his team but then you can kiss and make up after.”

“I don’t know how well that message is gonna go down,” Brandon said. “I mean, obviously we’re gonna beat them, but I don’t think he wants to hear that.”

“Then tell him he has a cute butt and distract him into losing,” Jack said, straight-faced.

“I—why are you looking at my boyfriend’s ass, Jack?”

Brandon was asking the tough questions and not just seizing any opportunity to change the subject at all, nope, not him.

Jack shrugged. “I wasn’t, but he plays hockey too, so.”

“I guess.”

Brandon couldn’t really argue with that theory.

“Seriously though,” Jack went on. “Call him. Stop stewing over it and making sad faces at me and the rest of the boys, just suck it up and make up already. Please get to Nationwide tomorrow and tell me you’re back on disgustingly happy practically newlywed land, okay?”

“I have never done that,” Brandon said, wildly indignant. “We’re very discreet.”

He was pretty sure Jack’s coughing fit then was just a coincidence.

Brandon was still digesting that conversation at home later that afternoon, and it was very much in the forefront of his mind when he crawled into bed for a nap. Hopefully his subconscious could work out what he should do, and then he could just wake up and get his life back together. That sounded reasonable, right?

He dropped off to sleep as easily as ever, deep and dreamless to start, but then found himself drifting, half-aware, into dreams.

He could usually tell when he was dreaming, enough to wake himself up when it got frustrating or when he hit a rare nightmare, but when the dream started and Brandon woke up at home in Pittsburgh, he didn’t think anything of it. He was at home, his bedroom decorated the way it had been before he moved out to the billet in Saginaw, and he woke up warm, happy, contented.

They were in the playoffs, he knew that, could feel the shape of the true memory in the back of his mind, too, but it felt so current, so obvious that he just rolled with it, the world as it was supposed to be.

And everything was where it was supposed to be, he thought, rolling over to find himself not alone in his bed, but it wasn’t Vince there, not like it had been, not that it’d been for years now; it was Nick, his features flickering in and out of focus, the Spirit shirt one that he’d never worn in real life. His clothing was Brandon’s past but his face and his person were one hundred percent Brandon’s present. Brandon’s future. Just Nick, curled up in bed with him, making incredibly cute grumbling noises as Brandon sat up and started to get ready for the day.

“Where are you going?” Nick mumbled, eyes still closed as he made grabby-hands for Brandon, one hand landing on Brandon’s shirt and curling in, pulling the fabric out of shape to hold him there.

“We gotta get moving,” Brandon told him, feeling urgency thrumming along his bones. They were late, they were—he wasn’t sure what they were late for, but they had to be somewhere, and Nick had to get moving.

“Not until you say good morning properly,” Nick said, and Brandon wavered, knowing exactly what he wanted.

“You’re getting up, though, right?” Brandon asked, leaning back towards Nick anyway, unable to resist his gravitational pull. It couldn’t hurt to fool around a little, right?

“Mmm, in a second,” Nick said. “Not giving up.”

Brandon grinned back at him, relieved. “Well that’s okay then,” he said, and leaned in, pressing his mouth to Nick’s.

Nick’s mouth was warm and firm against his, and Brandon waited for a second, aware his mouth was probably sour with sleep, and his breath couldn’t be much better, but Nick didn’t seem to notice, and he felt just fine too. It was just like kissing him always was; tender and intense, the faintest promise of teeth scraping against Brandon’s lip, against his tongue, the soft wet push of Nick’s tongue moving against his. It felt good, but in a distant way, almost more like a memory than a real moment, and Brandon’s hands tightened on Nick.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he mumbled, half into Nick’s mouth, the words seeming more substantial after a moment.

“I won’t,” Nick promised, and he seemed to re-solidify against Brandon, his hands tight on him, hands looped behind his neck, holding him close.

They kissed for a while longer, and Brandon was just starting to wonder if maybe this was going to turn into something else—they were very bad at getting out of bed if they let themselves linger and touch like this, it wasn’t exactly a new problem—when the thought drifted back to the front of his mind:

This wasn’t real.

He kissed Nick harder, not wanting to believe that, but—

Wanting couldn’t do a whole lot, not when Brandon knew that this was only a pale shadow of reality, that he was dreaming and not actually in bed with Nick, not like he should be.

And then, abruptly, the dream was something else, and the Nick who looked at him was Nick, his Nick, in every essence right down to the bones.

“I’m not going anywhere, Saader,” Nick said to him, low and serious. “We might be on the road sometimes but you’re always home for me.”

“You’re always home for me too,” Brandon said, his throat feeling thick, and voice shaking a little. “I’m sorry I was an asshole.”

“Well,” Nick said, with a shrug. “I didn’t exactly help. You know, you’re usually wearing less when I dream about you.”

Brandon raised an eyebrow. “Define less.”

Nick tilted his head, and then snapped his fingers. Brandon looked down and was more than a little surprised to see he was now wearing the swimming trunks he’d worn on that memorable vacation in Cancun. Except they were now about three inches shorter, and—he shifted his weight—a little tighter.

“I can’t believe that worked for you,” Brandon said, and Nick just gave him a lewd wink and a long once over.

“Look, I’ll apologize to you properly later,” Nick said, reaching out for him, “but I miss you, okay?”

“Yeah, same,” Brandon said, and turned his face up to kiss Nick.

He couldn’t have said how long that went on for, but he’d drifted back into sleep eventually, was fathoms deep by the time his phone rang right in his ear, the volume almost a personal affront as he clawed his way back to consciousness.

Brandon reached out without even opening his eyes, stabbed at roughly the point on his screen that he was pretty sure would answer the call, and brought the phone nominally closer to his face.

“Hey Nick,” he said, and sat up like he’d been doused with ice-water when what greeted him was his mother’s voice, sounding a little remorseful.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry, were you expecting him? It’s not urgent, I can call back later.”

Brandon swallowed hard and let his voice steady. “No, it’s fine, what’s up?” he asked, and let his mom distract him with all the latest family gossip.

Brandon had let himself mope for an hour or so after all of that, but worrying about if he was fucking up his future had to take a back seat to making sure he did things that wouldn’t mess it up, which meant he stuck doggedly to his usual game day routine. Through force of effort, he kept his mind on the game and away from New York and a certain bearded defenseman, and they were rewarded by gritting out a shootout win over the Kings.

That was ten in a row, and Brandon was hollering in the dressing room with the rest of the boys afterward, relishing the taste of victory, the double digits, the fact that the rest of the league was fucking finally starting to maybe take them seriously. Brandon knew what they had in their room, and it was a helluva lot better than anyone wanted to give them credit for.

There were still a few games left before Christmas, so no one was particularly excited to go out to celebrate, but Torts came in to announce they were going to skip practice and have an entire free day, and that was also something well worth cheering for.

Brandon thought, initially, that maybe this would be a good chance to go shopping, catch up the last few gifts he hadn’t quite finished ordering yet, but the silent weight of Fliggy’s eyes on him, carefully reading his mood—apparently not everyone had already forgotten his little fit of temper the other day—persuaded him otherwise.

He finished getting dressed again, quieter, his hands moving carefully and steadily to set things away in his stall how he liked them, and thought: yeah. This was the right time to do it, to talk to Nick again and sort themselves out once and for all.

It was too late to call Nick then, he mused. Plus, Brandon wasn’t entirely sure if he had a game or not, and that was disconcerting in its own way; when had he ever not known what Nick was doing before? But he knew the Isles were at home at least in the run up to Christmas, and having settled on a plan for what he could control at least, Brandon told himself to stop worrying over it and just go home to bed.

Decision made and his conscience about as clear as it was going to be, Brandon fell asleep fast and easily, and if he dreamed anything, this time he didn’t remember it.

Brandon woke up feeling remarkably calm, like he’d worked through all the stress and worry and everything earlier, and now all that was left was this sense of stillness, a certainty that went right down to the bone.

He went about his early routine, worked out, lingered in the kitchen afterward with a cup of tea, and then when the timing felt right—when he knew Nick well enough to know exactly where he’d be in his own morning routine, and that it was a time he wouldn’t mind being interrupted—Brandon picked up his phone to call him.

Nick answered gratifyingly quickly.

A part of Brandon that he hadn’t wanted to give credence to relaxed at that. He hadn’t really thought that Nick would outright ignore him, that he’d leave his texts on read and let the phone ring out, but it had been a concern. He’d certainly hurt both Nick’s pride and his heart badly enough that it wouldn’t have been out of the realms of possibility.

“Hi,” Nick said, sounding reassuringly close, but alarmingly cautious, a whole world of things unsaid in the too-even tone.

Nick did not actually have the benefit of knowing that the last thing Brandon was ever going to do was call to break up with him, Brandon reminded himself, and that was something he needed to deal with first off.

“How are, uh, you?” Brandon asked, wincing at how stilted his own words sounded, making a face at himself for being just that fucking awkward.

“I’m…fine,” Nick said. “Um, what’s up with you?”

“So it’s been a while,” Brandon said, and of course it’s fucking dumb that, like, a week counted as ‘a while’, but at the same time: for them, it is. Brandon had heard all about how emotionally mature he is and all that kind of thing over the years, but he’d always had to work harder at not being too attached than at being too distant. It was one of the things about their relationship that usually helped more than it hurt, honestly. “I, uh. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

The note of caution in Nick’s voice hadn’t gone away yet, and Brandon just wasn’t getting this out the way he wanted to. He didn’t want to relive the last time they had this conversation, he wanted this one to go better than that.

“I’m—” the words stuck in his throat for a second, conditioned to silence, but Brandon set his shoulders and made himself actually front up and say it. “—sorry, I fucked up last time, you, um. You deserve better.”

“Brandon,” Nick said, urgently and with audible horror, “are you—is this a break up call?”

“No,” Brandon blurted out immediately, feeling the chill run through him, his fingers feeling suddenly numb where he’s holding the phone. “Did you want it to be?”

“No, fuck,” Nick said, and Brandon let out the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding.

Giddy relief chased that, made the next thing had had to say easier somehow, because at least it wasn’t that.

“Okay, good, good, um. God, we’re so bad at this.”

“Speak for yourself,” and Brandon could hear the relief in Nick’s voice too.

“I miss you, and I’m so sorry I was a dick about it last time we spoke, it’s not—you didn’t need that. I want you to feel better after we talk and not, you know. That.”

“Thanks,” Nick said slowly. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, too, it was—things have been rough, over here. You know what that’s like.”

Brandon had, indeed, watched his own coach on the hot seat, although not for as long as Nick had been; ownership’s patience with Richards had run out fast, under the circumstances, and so far it seemed like Cappy was hanging on okay over on the Island. But that many losses piling up that fast took it out of you, in a way Brandon didn’t think he’d ever understood as acutely back in Chicago.

“Yeah, I do, I’m sorry you do.”

Nick made a low, diffident noise of agreement, appreciation, and Brandon didn’t need to be able to see him to be able to picture the way he was shrugging, accepting the comment and not having anything of his own to say back to it.

Brandon sighed, and shifted his weight on the couch, swapping the ear the phone was held up to.

“I just—I can’t wait to see you, you know? It’s been too long.”

“We’ve made it through worse,” Nick said, and this time Brandon could hear the unspoken ‘so we’ll do this, too’ in his voice, comforting rather than aggravating.

“Are we good now?” Brandon asked.

Nick was just as direct, his answer of “I think so, yeah,” gratifyingly immediate.

“I was talking to Boych,” Nick went on, and Brandon let himself sink into the cushions, letting Nick’s words wrap around him, warm and familiar. “And once he was done giving me shit about it, he said, you know. That maybe we needed to just get our shit together a little more purposefully, and actually talk about shit instead of just assuming everything’s always going to be the same.”

Brandon digested that for a moment. “So, like, actually talk instead of doing the boyfriend equivalent of giving it 110% and getting pucks deep?”

Nick snorted, and Brandon grinned, helplessly fond.

“He actually said ‘feel your feelings’—” Brandon made a mildly agonized noise at that mental image, as Nick went on, “—and no, I haven’t entirely recovered from hearing that one from him either.”

“He’s a good friend,” Brandon said. “I’m glad you’ve got good guys there.”

“Glad you do too,” Nick replied, and not for the first time, Brandon wondered a little about which channels were relaying exactly what sorts of information between the Jackets and the Isles. He did forget, sometimes, that Gags was such good friends with Nick’s captain, and boy was that maybe something to bear in mind more often.

“Yeah, Jack had some, uh, comments, too,” Brandon admitted. “I think they’re all very ready for me to stop moping around.”

“Awww,” Nick said, and it was something of a miracle that Brandon could hear that exactly as appreciatively as Nick had meant it and not convince himself there’d been a touch of mockery after all. This whole complete honesty thing had some perks. Or at least, when he was making himself be totally honest with himself, it did. That was more under his aegis than Nick’s, anyway.

“Anyway,” Brandon said, “I missed you, it sucked, and next time I feel like we haven’t really talked properly in a while I’ll say that instead of, uh, hinting around and getting mad.”

“Same for me,” Nick said. “I actually yelled at Tito the other day, I don’t know who was more surprised, me or him or JT.” He paused for a second. “It was definitely JT, probably because I didn’t sneak him ice cream later because I felt like an asshole about it.”

It was Brandon’s turn to aww then; if the Isles were having a tough season it was at least ameliorated somewhat by some of the kids they had coming up through the system, and it was no secret that Anthony Beauvillier was settling in well. Or that of all the guys on the island, it was Nick who he’d kind of latched onto, enough that him and Nick had both copped more than a little chirping for it. But Nick had never really had a rookie on the Hawks, not as much as some of the other guys had; not unless he counted the way Brandon had attached himself to him, and this was very different.

Or at least, it was mostly different.

It’d been clear from things Nick had said that there was a little hero worship there, maybe more than a little of a crush, but for all that Brandon had been stressed and worried over his relationship for the last couple weeks, he’d never once thought that Nick would do anything like cheat. And Brandon had only exchanged a couple words with the kid in passing, but he’d been sweet, and shyly tried to say something supportive to Brandon as well, just to make it clear that he didn’t have a problem with him or Nick.

“So, really, that’s pretty much all you’ve missed with me,” Nick finished up.

It had—despite all his nerves going into it—been one of the easiest conversations Brandon had had with him in a while, and it was in that spirit that Brandon just let himself go with the flow, let himself respond like he would have any other time in the last couple of years, letting his tone go husky and suggestive.

“I mean, I missed a lot else,” he said, and let Nick autofill in the eyebrow waggle and bit of a leer that went with it. “What are you wearing, anyway?”

It was only half-serious; Brandon was happy and relaxed but even so he didn’t quite think either of them was up for phone sex just yet, they’d both be better to take a little time to get themselves re-settled into the swing of being a functional couple again first.

As ever, Nick picked up what he was putting down and just laughed softly before answering, “Sweats and an old t-shirt, probably the same as you.”

Brandon looked down at his faded Jackets sweats—there’d been a slight laundry mishap a while ago, so these ones only got worn when he was at home with nothing to do—and the USA hockey shirt he was wearing, and couldn’t fight the grin.

“I might not be,” he argued gently, “Maybe I called you buck naked, this isn’t facetime.”

Nick snorted again, and said, “Not that I don’t appreciate the mental image, but I doubt that.”

He paused for a second and then went on, a little distracted. “This conversation is giving me the weirdest kind of, I don’t know, déjà vu?”

That was exactly what Brandon had been trying to put his finger on too, and he sat up straighter at Nick’s words, feeling the truth in them. “Yeah, same. Weird.” He couldn’t quite place it, but it would probably come back to him later. Or, more likely, at three in the morning when he was supposed to be fast asleep.

Reminded, he glanced over at the clock on his mantelpiece and thought, yeah, it was definitely time for lunch. His stomach grumbled almost on command, so with a little regret—it was never easy to say goodbye to Nick, however short a time it was going to be for—he said, “Hey, I should probably get going. But I’m really glad we talked.”

“Yeah, I should too.”

There was a pause while they both—Brandon was certain of it—just grinned dumbly at their phones, and then Brandon cleared his throat.

“Okay, catch you later. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Nick said back, without even a second’s hesitation, and then they were done, back in their own separate worlds again for a little while, but with the reassurance that—for the time being, anyhow—all was right with those worlds again.

Clearing the air with Nick seemed to have brightened up more than just Brandon’s mood.

They went out the day after and absolutely destroyed the Penguins, an intensely satisfying 7-1 romp that had the crowd rocking, the bench yelling, and hats flying over the glass for Hartsy while the Pens just glared at them.

Brandon only had the one goal, but he was on the ice for a couple of others, and it was one of the more joyous games he could remember playing recently. Maybe even more so than beating Montreal, because as unprecedented—and unexpected—as that had been; this was one of their rivals, one of the teams they always got up for, and Brandon wasn’t too proud to admit it was satisfying to get one over his hometown team on occasion.

And speaking of Montreal; they knew they had the Habs coming in hot next, spoiling for a fight after being embarrassed earlier in the season and certainly more motivated to play spoiler now that the Jackets were riding high. If Brandon had been on the other side, he knew he’d have been salivating to be the ones that broke the streak.

It meant that there was no chance of going out to pour shots into Hartsy after his hattie right then and there, but he’d yelled a cheerful invitation to the locker room at large to just go out after the next game anyway and celebrate it then, and Brandon could feel that joy and elation firing him up all the more. He had a feeling this mood was going to carry over to the next game for sure, and maybe even the one after that, and then who knew. They’d all gotten a meal together at least, just enough to fuel up and even themselves out after the game, without lingering over it the way they might have if it hadn’t been the middle of a back to back.

He’d headed home after that more cheerful than he’d been for ages, feeling the good kind of bone-deep weariness that came from working hard and winning, and had barely managed to get his suit hung up again before face-planting onto his bed and falling fast asleep.

He knew he was dreaming this time, watching skaters whiz past the bench in front of him, almost too fast to catch more than a blur of blue and red, and then the dream shifted and this time it was orange and blue, and a lot of white; the glint of steel blades reflecting the colors off the ice and onto the dasher. Brandon’s view kept shifting; sometimes he was on the ice and sometimes he was watching; sometimes it was from the bench and other times from up high in the corners, one of the suites or even the TV, but it all felt easy, natural; the passage of immutable time.

And then he felt it before he saw it, the silver of the Cup, the phantom weight of it in his hands; no less memorable for all the time that had passed in between then and the last time he’d held it, and it felt real and true and inevitable, it felt like home.

As if the thought had summoned him, Nick was beside him, his arm slung easily around Brandon’s waist; tall and solid and satisfied, and he’d leaned over to kiss Brandon, a quick press of their lips while no one was watching or waiting for them, and Brandon smiled in his sleep, and shifted under his blankets.

He couldn’t say for sure, of course; wouldn’t want to admit it out loud to anyone but Nick, probably, but it felt like another one of those dreams, the ones that cut close to the bone and came to life later, maybe when you least expected it.

He couldn’t be sure of the future; couldn’t say whose future that definitely was. But he sure hoped it was theirs.

[]

Brandon fell asleep just as easily as ever, his body so used to his regular game day routines that it felt like all he had to do was lie down and close his eyes and he’d be down for the count.

When the world swam back into focus again almost immediately, he knew he was still asleep; that somewhere in Michigan his body was resting, breathing in slow and deep, but his mind had slipped free, untethered and wandering.

He didn’t have those kinds of dreams often; just often enough that every time he’d think he’d grown out of the knack of it they’d come back to shake him up a little.

They didn’t presage every big event in his life, but they’d signaled enough of them, enough for him to pay attention and work to remember whenever they did happen. His normal dreams, like the ones about weird monsters from the SyFy channel with too many arms or heads, or the ones where he was just eternally late to practice, those ones faded fast, fell out of his head somewhere between dreaming and fully awakening, leaving vague impressions and hazy memories.

The ones that came true sometimes… those just felt different, right off the hop.

The first time he’d had one had been right before being drafted, and he doubted it at the time, going back to their hotel in St Paul the Friday night, raw and furious and sick over not being picked, over every single team passing him up. He’d wondered why he’d been so convinced he’d be taken by a good team, that everything was about to change in the best possible way for him, and at first, he hadn’t been able to see how.

Of course, the next day he’d met Shawzy, and not all that much later he’d met Nick, and while getting sent back to Saginaw that first year hadn’t been ideal, he certainly couldn’t argue that it hadn’t all worked out in the end.

He hadn’t seen the first Cup coming, though. He’d known they were going to come back against Detroit, had kept that faith all the way through the series, even when it looked like they were sunk, but he’d never had the same pure certainty about the Final. He’d known they were good enough to do it, sure, but teams that were good enough got eliminated in the first round every year, so it wasn’t like that was any kind of guarantee. Brandon hadn’t played hockey for this long without developing a healthy respect for luck and for chance, and he was acutely aware that they were not exactly the same thing, either.

The second Cup, though; that one he had seen.

He’d seen himself with it, Nick’s arm looped through his, the two of them grinning together at a party, and he’d been sure they were going to repeat, sure they were going back to back, and had rejoiced—quietly, inside his own head, always aware of the danger of jinxing things—at the knowledge that not only were things going to go well on the ice, but the relationship he and Nick had slowly been building together was also going to stick around for the long haul.

He’d been sure of it, right up to game seven. And then Alec Martinez’s shot had tipped off Nick’s stick and past Crow and they were done, all hope of the repeat extinguished immediately. 

Brandon had thought he must have been wrong, then, had resolutely shoved the salmon shorts he could have sworn he’d seen himself wearing—the Cup cradled in his hands above them—right into the back of his dresser and tried not to think about it.

It was bittersweet, the year after, to find that they did get to win again after all. That Brandon had been right, had seen the Cup pass from hand to hand to his.

He just hadn’t realized originally that it meant anything that he hadn’t seen himself pass it to Nick, or vice versa. Hadn’t realized that by the time his day with the Cup rolled around he wouldn’t be a Hawk any more either.

For a gift that had little to no use except in hindsight, precognition was a real pain in the ass.

If only Brandon had ever been given a choice about it.

But in Detroit, he felt himself asleep but not dreaming, walking through the endless wastes of a place that was only real when he was there, and he looked around and wondered why this time, why now.

There wasn’t even much to see, this time.

Brandon was used to big events, world-shattering things, or at the very least things that rocked his world on its axis, and it was bizarre to see something so small and ordinary.

That felt like hubris, and he crossed his fingers behind his back quickly, fought the urge to spit over his shoulder to ward off bad luck; little habits he wasn’t totally sure he believed in but wasn’t willing to go without.

But this time there was just a glimpse of his living room, the back of his couch and the tv, and two heads bent close together, that he could see over the back of it.

He drifted closer—it was rare he wasn’t in his own head for these kinds of dreams, usually he just saw through his own eyes, but sometimes he got this outside view, the kick in the pants from the rest of the universe to look at something from someone else’s side, and this was one of those, apparently.

There was no real surprise as he got closer to recognize the people as himself and Nick, looking much like they did at the moment, not noticeably older. They were talking, soft, gentle with each other, and Brandon felt his stomach flip a little in envy and appreciation as his not-quite-a-dream self leaned in and kissed Nick, quick and sweet.

He looked up again to see the room had changed around them while he’d been watching that; no longer his place but Nick’s now, the couch a slightly different shade but much the same shape, the two of them still sat like that, curved into each other, locked in a quiet careful conversation.

Brandon watched himself on the couch raise a hand to brush along Nick’s jaw, and there was a change; Nick’s beard was gone, his face bare like Brandon hadn’t seen it in he couldn’t remember how long.

There were no noticeable bruises or anything like that, so it probably wasn’t due to an injury, and Brandon forced himself to relax, to back off instead of jittering on high alert.

He blinked and Nick was bearded again, him and Brandon both in different clothes, still in—Brandon took a quick glance at where the doorways were, at the shape of the mantel and the windows—still in Nick’s apartment in New York, but clearly a different time.

“Sixteen wins,” he heard himself say, half disbelieving, half rueful, and he couldn’t help the way that made his heart leap in his chest, the way he immediately jumped to the obvious conclusion, before trying to talk himself back down again.

It didn’t necessarily mean… that, he thought, and blinked again, to see the walls of his hotel room in Detroit coming back into focus, his alarm blaring in his ear.

It didn’t necessarily mean much of anything at all.

But god, Brandon hoped it did.

They got back to Columbus late, but with a win in their back pockets, keeping the streak alive.

And while it wasn’t like anyone expected rookies to put serious money on the board, Brandon figured it had to have been a little sweeter for Zach than for the rest of them; taking that win in the Joe, in front of his whole family and at least a full section worth of his friends and ex-teammates.

It had been satisfying as hell to see Zach flushed and grinning—what probably would have counted as a beaming smile from anyone less reserved—and the locker room had been rowdy and somehow even louder than usual by the time they were cooling down and changing after the game, music blasting as Torts stuck his head in for a post-game comment and tried to pretend like he wasn’t just as pleased as the rest of them were.

Brandon couldn't help but grin in response; he'd been that guy the first time they played the Penguins, as weird as it had been to be doing that after playing a year, as the defending champions even. At least Zach was getting the full experience right away, and winning at home was just that little bit sweeter.

“Islanders tomorrow,” he reminded them, “no morning skate, but let’s not take it easy on them either,” and Brandon joined in the general chorus of whooping and cheering that followed.

He copped some extra chirping on the plane, too; reminders that he needed to get ‘enough’ sleep and not to take it too easy on ‘em tomorrow, and lasted through at least three variations of people making jokes about how it’d be hard instead before pointedly putting his noise-canceling headphones on and closing his eyes.

Brandon was pretty sure that Jack’s elbow in the ribs right before they landed wasn’t an accident either, but he was an adult, he could extend a generous benefit of the doubt there.

And then he was pulling into his own driveway, could see the light on in the front room, the clearest indication that this time, he had someone at home waiting for him.

“This day owes me nothing,” he murmured against the side of Nick’s throat, hugging him close and feeling almost overwhelmed by how good and how right it all felt.

“What’s that?” Nick asked, leaning back to look at him, and not waiting for an answer before stealing a quick kiss. “Saader?”

“Just something I heard somewhere,” he said, “It’s been a good day, let’s go to bed.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Nick said, with a friendly leer, and they did just that.

Brandon slept deeply and dreamlessly, afterwards, still and perfectly content.

Beating the Islanders at last was just as gratifying as Brandon would have guessed it would be, and Brandon had been happy to pour off the bench at the end of the game to hug Bob, to celebrate with his teammates, all of them missing Fliggy but happy to have finally redeemed one more part of everything that’d gone wrong a season ago.

It felt good, although not so good that Brandon didn’t duck away for a few seconds, just long enough to send Nick a quick message. He’d winced on the bench at that turnover, but he’d been on his feet cheering for Andy’s goal a second later without a qualm; that was just the way things went sometimes.

It was probably for the best that the Isles were clearing out in a hurry and didn’t have time to linger after the game, though; Brandon had a feeling he wouldn’t have been popular waiting outside the dressing room after this one, even if Nick’s teammates had been cordial enough every other time he’d met them.

Best to let them be, Brandon thought, and let himself just celebrate with his own team, enjoying the moment.

After all, Nick’d done the same for him more than once.

He didn’t see it coming when they finally did lose.

And maybe he wouldn’t have expected them to be able to run the streak up to seventeen, however confident he was in his team, but it burned all the same. Because he was confident: they were good, they were good and they knew it, but shit happened, bounces didn’t go your way, and there was no way to spin a streak that long together without some luck in the mix as well.

And if there was anything Brandon had learned last year, it was that just when you needed it most, sometimes luck would flat out desert you.

Lady Luck left them high and dry in Washington DC, and Brandon wasn’t sure whether he was more disappointed or impotently furious about how bad things had been, about going from sixteen wins to five unanswered goals against, getting blown out and embarrassed right when they’d been on the verge of making league history.

He tried to settle on resigned, to just let it wash off the same way as any other loss in the season, something to learn from and move on, but for whatever reason something about the loss settled in, got its hooks under their skin, and Brandon looked around the room, a week or two later, and had to admit that they were more than a little rattled.

There was no need for it, no reason, they were still playing okay, if not—admittedly—nearly as successfully as they had been, but something definitely felt off.

He didn’t dream anything else about that specifically, either, but there was something about the depths of winter, about sliding into a slump, something about that made it easier to stay bundled up at home not doing a whole lot outside of what was necessary. The days were supposed to be getting longer but Brandon wasn’t sure it felt that way yet; the world was cold and grey and snowy, and his mood kept tipping lower as well.

He didn’t realize quite how much it was weighing on him until Nick sent him a message, sounding understandably tetchy, asking, “Hey, you gonna answer my calls any time soon?”

Brandon started, guiltily, and and looked at the list of missed calls, only a few of them, over a couple of days, but adding up to not calling back, to hiding away, for no good reason. It wasn’t like he didn’t know damn well talking to Nick always made things better.

"I'm free now," he messaged him. "You wanna call?"

"Give me five minutes," Nick replied, and Brandon grinned, and felt a little of the cloud start to lift again for real.

“You done moping now?” Nick asked him, teasing, mostly gentle, but with a little bite to it, and undertone that made Brandon wince but that he had to admit he deserved.

“Yeah, I—sorry,” Brandon said. “How are you, we haven’t talked in, um.”

“A while,” Nick finished. “Yeah, it’s been rough over here, I don’t know if you heard, but we got our fucking coach fired.”

Brandon winced again, felt guilt surge up his throat, hot and acid on his tongue. “I—I know, yeah, sorry. It fucking sucks. I should have called sooner.”

“I guess you know what it’s like,” Nick allowed. “But… yeah. Didn’t really expect you to go MIA on me, Saader.”

“I, uh. Fuck,” Brandon said, and struggled for something more eloquent, something good enough to explain why he’d left Nick hanging. He didn’t really have anything, other than a slow creeping wave of shame that made him pretty certain he wasn’t going to get that wrapped up in his own head again any time soon, not now that he’d realized what was happening. It didn’t help a whole lot, but maybe that’d mean something to Leds.

“I mean, it’s—fine, it is what it is,” Nick went on, “and would you believe it seems like we’re playing better now? Like, it’s probably too late to matter, but isn’t that a fucking joke and a half.”

“You never know,” Brandon said, compelled to be fair; he wasn’t totally sure he wanted to face Nick in the playoffs ever, but he wanted the chance to, that was for damn sure. Although he wasn’t sure this was the time to express that feeling; the Jackets might have been all over the map in the last week or two but at least they were solidly on track to make the playoffs, and New York wasn't even really in the picture.

Nick made a grumbling noise of dissent but didn’t argue further; Brandon chose to take that as a win. He’d take them where he could get them, frankly.

“I really am sorry,” Brandon said, picking his way carefully through the conversation. “I got a little stuck in my own head, and didn’t kick my own ass about it half as quick as I should’ve.”

“You’re allowed to live your own life, Saader,” Nick pointed out, and Brandon cracked a grin.

“Are you arguing with me when I’m trying to apologize to you?”

“Well, I guess not,” Nick said, and he sounded more even keeled already, like he’d just needed to blow off steam as much as Brandon had, just in a slightly different fashion. “But I coulda called too, you know. Guess you’re not the only one moping a little, eh?”

“Oh, so we’re both jackasses now,” Brandon said, relaxing back into the couch, grinning at his phone like he had Nick there in person. Like he was going to again soon, and fuck, that was the best thing about the inevitable on-rush of time; that win or lose, every game took them closer to not just the playoffs but also to seeing the Isles again, to more time with Nick. And he was never going to complain about that.

“Sounds about right to me,” Nick said. “So, other than the moping, which we’ve agreed is over now, what else is news up in the frozen north?”

“Hey, it’s not that cold here,” Brandon protested, falling back into the slow, soft, teasing rhythm of conversation, and after some more jibes about New York and the relative softness of people living there instead of in the midwest, with real weather, he got around to telling him.

And just like that, it felt like everything was on the right track again.

Brandon had one of those dreams again that night, the kind he recognized the taste of even if he couldn’t have described it to anyone else and been confident it made sense or that they believed him.

The Cup wasn’t there, which—didn’t mean anything, necessarily. But he saw Fligs hugging Bob, over and over again, and it felt so near, even as his mind flipped through rinks he half recognized and uniforms, away to away to home and on the road again, his captain throwing his arms around their goalie with exuberance, joy, near desperation. It was an unbroken line, other than a fleeting glimpse of Korpi, and even he was getting wildly congratulated by Fligs.

Brandon wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that, but he had to admit it had felt pretty good.

[]

After the last week or so had seemed to drag at half speed, Brandon appreciated how the next few games seemed to pass in a blur, accelerating them inevitably towards the match-up with the Isles. Winning helped; winning helped a lot, and it felt good to rack up five wins-more than they'd had in a row last year—and then six. To be within grasping distance of the franchise record, even, not that any of them were going to admit they'd looked it up or that they were thinking about it. That way lay madness, or at least far too many superstitions for Brandon to want to mess with.

And he wasn't the only one.

The moon waxing ever closer to full had all of the wolves on the team on edge, too; caught in the swell of it, but without enough to let them focus fully on being on two legs instead of four. The constant adrenaline as they kept putting the puck in the net, snatching victory from the jaws of every possible defeat somehow heightened that, made them all by turns cocky and wary, trying to maintain the ideal balance between expecting that they could win every game and assuming that they would.

It was exhilarating and exhausting, and Brandon wouldn't have changed it for the world.

Detroit gave them a scare—and wasn’t Brandon familiar with that feeling—but they pulled together and got the points in the end, spending almost as much time chirping Z for the way he'd been a little distracted as they did celebrating the win. Things were clicking, things felt good, and Brandon felt like he could run or skate forever.

They got into New York later than expected, and Brandon threw caution to the winds, just shouldered his bag and waved goodbye to his teammates before hurling himself into the first cab that stopped. Technically, he didn’t know what hotel room he was supposed to be in, and that wasn’t ideal, but—

Well, if he was being honest with himself, he knew full well he wasn’t going to be coming back to the hotel that night. It was breaking curfew, technically, but Nick’s place felt like home and pretty much was home, in all the ways that counted. And he didn’t think anyone would hold it against him; it wasn’t like he and Nick were going to keep each other up too late to be any use for the game tomorrow. If nothing else, Brandon knew that they could both depend on being too competitive for that.

He was pretty sure the coaches would turn a blind eye this once, especially since they were playing so well and Brandon was having a good year, too. Although if he was a minus tomorrow or wound up responsible for a howler of a turnover, well, then this was probably the one time he’d get away with this, and that just made it even more imperative that he not waste the opportunity.

Nick must have been lurking in his own foyer if the speed with which he answered the door when Brandon buzzed in was any indication.

They behaved themselves in public—limited themselves to just one hug, tight and lengthy, with Nick’s face buried in the side of Brandon’s neck, nose crushed up against his throat. Brandon didn’t have to ask to know that Nick was breathing him in, catching his scent again, because he was doing the exact same thing.

“Missed you,” Nick mumbled, and then pulled back just long enough to drag Brandon upstairs, hand tight on his forearm like he needed to be led, as if he didn’t know exactly where they were going.

Where they were going was, apparently, straight to bed, and it wasn’t like Brandon was going to complain about that. It was what he wanted too; a part of what he needed and missed just like everything else Nick was to him.

Brandon’s bag and coat were abandoned by their shoes as Nick closed his door behind them. The rest of his clothing followed suit practically within seconds of them making it to Nick’s bedroom, followed rapidly by all of Nick’s clothing—what little he was wearing, anyway; sweats and a t-shirt and a zip-up hoodie which had to have been a concession to whatever cold air made it inside from the the front door, all jumbled together by the foot of Nick's bed.

“Missed you,” Brandon mumbled into Nick’s collarbone, working his way from the hollow of his throat to the point of his shoulder, lips dragging wetly over his skin. He nuzzled his way down Nick’s chest without waiting for a response, let his own long day’s worth of stubble drag against Nick’s chest hair, paused to scrape his teeth ever so lightly over one flat nipple, teasing it to a point.

“Mmm,” Nick said, fingers digging into Brandon’s sides, clutching him tight and holding him close. “Missed you too.”

He freed a hand to run his thumb along Brandon’s jaw, tugging suggestively until Brandon took the hint and worked his way back up again, sank back into a kiss that went on and on and on. Nick let him do that for a while before reaching up and twisting, rolling them both over so that Brandon was stretched out underneath him in turn, wrapping himself around him like he had no intention of ever letting go.

“Gonna give me something to remember this with tomorrow?” Brandon asked, when Nick finally pulled back, braced above him on his elbows, looking down at him with such naked affection that it still shook him to his core.

Nick’s eyes flashed, going a deeper green for a moment, pulled away from their usual familiar hazel by the strength of his response. Rather than trying to find words he just let himself drop, his full weight landing on Brandon all at once as he buried his face in the curve of Brandon’s neck, his teeth going inevitably and inescapably towards the sensitive spot along his clavicle, leaving a momentary imprint that burned its way along Brandon’s veins for a lot longer than he knew it would show for.

That was for their wolves; Nick’s claim and Brandon’s welcoming of it, but Nick set his teeth gently around the same spot afterward, too, sucked hard until the skin went red and then purple, blood rushing to the spot, quickened and heated between them. That was just for them, for Brandon to look at tomorrow and the day after, and probably, Brandon thought, at least another day after that too. It was for him to look at in his mirror, human and wolf tangling together in one tender bruise, one that was tangible proof he was just as much Nick’s as Nick was wholeheartedly and undeniably his.

Brandon squirmed under him, trying to catch his breath, to catch a single one of the fleeting thoughts bouncing through his mind. Nick didn’t make that any easier on him, either. He sank right back down, mouth pressed to Brandon’s, open and demanding, kissing him hot and dirty.

Nick was heavy on him, and so warm. He’d always run hot, and it sparked something in Brandon’s blood too, got him fired up, feeling suddenly like they could do this outside—god, if only they could do this outside—and even with the snow on the ground Brandon wouldn’t feel a chill. Nick ran hot and fiery in bed the way he never did on the ice, like he saved all of his heat for when he was with Brandon, and having the full supernova of that affection and need all pointed straight at him… well, Brandon was sweating.

And enjoying every second of it, of course.

Brandon might be from somewhere it snowed, even if it was maybe not so cold as Minnesota—although he’ll see Nick’s lakes and raise him a river and a lot of hills—but he’d always liked to be warm, bundled up, never liked the cold as anything more than an accent, a necessary part of his job, a contrast to make the warmth even sweeter.

There was something about working up an honest sweat, too, that got Brandon going. Knowing he’d earned this by the passage of his hands on Nick’s body, the fruits of his labors, the gifts earned and unasked for, but freely welcomed. Nick didn’t offer a whole lot unless Brandon prompted him, but what he gave was wholehearted and sincere and it was everything Brandon needed. It was everything he wanted, most often. The moon didn’t call a lot from him, but it made some demands, and Brandon had always been happy to surrender those.

However distracting and almost intoxicating the first rush of reunion was, they didn't have a whole lot of time that night, and they both knew it. Brandon might be able to get away with spending the night, but he was going to need to be at the hotel the next morning for breakfast, for whatever team meetings wound up being required, and then for all the rest of their regular game day activities.

And as much as he missed it, Nick wasn't a part of his game day routine any more.

"Mmm, c'mon," Brandon said, half-mumbled into Nick's mouth. "You feel good."

Nick squirmed some more, rubbing off on Brandon in a way that, frankly, was going to be enough to get him there even if they didn't do anything else.

Brandon was tired, and wound up after the game and the travel, and having Nick right there was enough to get him on a hair-trigger at the best of times.

"Missed you," Nick said softly, and kissed Brandon again, shifting up to get their mouths lined up better, his tongue pressing into Brandon's mouth, confident and competent, melting Brandon from the inside out.

Nick's hand on his dick helped a lot, too.

Nick rolled half off him, tugging so that Brandon rolled onto his side as well, hooking his ankle over top of Nick's to keep them lined up, and it gave him room to work as Nick got his free hand between them, nipping at Brandon's lower lip right as his thumb rubbed over the crown of his dick.

Brandon would normally ask how Nick wanted to do this; allowing him room for as much creativity as he liked, just so long as whatever it was he needed didn't take more time they had, but it was pretty fucking clear that Nick just wanted to get them both off as quickly as possible, and that sounded good to Brandon too.

He didn't even need to say as much, in the end; groaned low as Nick moved his hand just right and Brandon's hips jolted forward as he came. He had half a breath to float in the immediate afterglow, to start to feel overheated and maybe too sensitive, and then Nick came too, spilling all over the hand Brandon had just started to move, aiming to do him the same favor.

"Oops," Nick said, not sounding sorry at all. He wiped his hand off on the sheet behind him and then nudged Brandon onto his back again, curling close so his head was almost on Brandon's shoulder.

If the past was any indication, he'd probably wake up in a few hours with Nick's head on his chest, or half-buried in the curve of his biceps, or even tucked under his arm, breathing hot and humid against his side. Nick was affectionate awake, not a casual toucher but a deliberate one, and the two of them had been comfortable enough for years by then to gravitate together whenever they could, to renew their bond and reinforce it whenever they could.

Long distance wasn't ideal, but it was doable. And sometimes it made the reunions feel a little sweeter just for their rarity.

Brandon was acutely conscious of how messy they were, how strongly the room smelled now that they were both there and cooling off again; sex and sweat and Pack, all mingled, familiar and reassuring. There'd be time to shower in the morning, and maybe for a little more than that, but this was just one short stolen night and they both knew it.

"I set an alarm," Brandon said softly, letting his eyes close, reaching over to run his hand lightly up and down Nick's back, just trailing idly over his skin. That felt good whatever shapes they were wearing.

"Me too," Nick replied, a little rueful.

The other part of being bonded this long seemed to be that they tended to think alike, could judge each other's reactions even more accurately than most people in intimate relationships could. Or maybe they were just finally learning a lesson from how many times they'd lost track of time and one or the other of them had had to hare out of whatever building they were in, bordering on late for a flight or a practice or a meeting.

They hadn't been caught out yet, but it had been closer than Brandon liked to remember, sometimes. And at least they weren't going to be in any danger of that tomorrow, by the look of things.

Brandon snickered a little to himself. It was funny; kind of stupid, sure, but one of those small things that didn't have to mean a lot but still seemed like reassurance that they were on the right track, they were both in this together even when they were apart.

Brandon laughing set Nick off in turn, too, and they both just lay there for a few minutes, laughing softly, shaking against each other before Nick inhaled deeply, calming himself and ready to settle into sleep.

"Well, go team," he said, and yawned so hard Brandon could hear his jaw crack. Their bones never did seem to settle right in between moons, always holding that potential to shift and reform. Stretching always felt good, though.

"Yeah, something like that," Brandon said, fighting the urge to yawn in turn, clenching his teeth until it passed. "I mean, go my team."

He smirked, and Nick's elbow dug into his ribs, just as he'd expected.

"Yeah, right," Nick murmured. "You never heard of home ice advantage?"

"Sounds fake," Brandon said, pitching his tone as smug as he could get it, although the slow, tender way his nails were carding through Nick's hair probably made it obvious he was just teasing.

"Hmm, well, maybe I'll just wear you out before the game, then," Nick said lazily, arching under Brandon's hands like a sun-warmed cat, eyes closed and breath slow and even.

"You can certainly try," Brandon said, and Nick huffed out a laugh before curling into him more emphatically and, to all observations, falling asleep.

And Brandon wasn't more than a breath or two behind.

Chapter Text

[]

He frowned a little, brows drawn together as he noticed Saader slowly turning red, sitting in his stall and talking to Jack, who was standing in front of him.

Nick couldn't work out what Jack could've said to get that reaction—he and Saader sat together on the charter half the time, and seemed to have found an enviable ease with each other, and the sort of chirping that might make a guy blush wasn't really in character for either of them. Wasn't really like Saader in general, either; Nick couldn't remember the last time he'd seemed embarrassed, or anything other than steady and level-headed. Maybe the time Nick had called him out in Cleveland and made him play piano on camera, but if anyone should've been embarrassed by that it was the rest of them and their collective inability to carry a tune in the proverbial bucket, so.

It was just…weird. Just a little. Nick resolved to keep an eye on it, but it wasn't like Saader or Jack were usually the guys he had to worry about for any reason. They'd probably be fine.

"I'm just saying," Jack said calmly, with the dogged sort of determination he usually saved for puck battles or getting opposing forwards out of Bob's face, and didn't usually level at Brandon at all, "you gotta get back out there, man. Go on a date. Hell, pick up someone and get laid, just—do something."

"I'm fine," Brandon protested, and hoped that no one was paying any attention to their conversation. He was fine, he didn't need to, like, start dating again or whatever it was that Jack thought. He wasn't lonely; he had plenty of friends and teammates and Columbus felt like home now, no longer like a city he wasn't sure how to fit himself into.

"Uh huh," Jack said skeptically, but because he was a good person, he let it drop and instead let Brandon tell him about the concert he had tickets to later in the month.

It wasn't that Brandon wasn't interested in dating, really. He just hadn't really had a chance to stop and think about anything like that for a while.

It wasn't like he'd been feeling much urge to go out and meet people his first season in Columbus, and then they'd gotten to the offseason and he'd gone home to Pittburgh for half of that anyway, which mostly just meant he caught up with all his old friends and again, didn't really meet anyone new. Although Tro had been threatening to set him up on a blind date, which Brandon was going to politely decline, thanks.

Almost before he'd been ready for it, they'd been looking at the start of the new season, and the World Cup before it that just meant that Brandon felt like he'd been in training camp and preseason games for weeks on end already. Along with feeling old. Very, very old, at the grand old age of 23. But that was what he got for winding up on the same team as half the first round draft picks of the last couple of years. Fuck, it'd been fun, though.

Even if he'd had to haul a couple of drunk teenagers back to the hotel after they'd gotten knocked out in the round robin. That part had been less fun, although it was going to make for some good chirping material whenever they played them next.

But he just—hadn't met anyone special, and he wasn't in any hurry. Brandon had always figured he'd meet the right person when it was the right time.

Brandon was well aware that Will and Wenny were—something. That they were dating, or at least hooking up, but no one had put a label on it in his hearing, and he wasn't about to ask. If they wanted to tell him, sure, but he wasn't going to be a dick about it.

And it really wasn't like he had to ask. Most of the guys had had at least one or two experiences of walking in on something they didn't particularly need to see, to the point it had become a running joke in the room, although Will just grinned when anyone tried to tease him about it, and Alex smirked, and other than the frequency with which they got fined for 'inappropriate' locker room behavior, well. Mostly they seemed very comfortable. Brandon was used to the fact you usually didn't see one of them without the other being maybe six feet away at most; Hartsy kept threatening to measure it just to find out for sure.

But all of that was to say that it shouldn't have been even the slightest bit surprising when Brandon got up from the booth they'd all been sitting at, tried to find the bar's bathroom and instead walked right into the corridor where Will had Alex pushed up against the wall and was apparently doing his best to see just how long they could make out without coming up for air. They'd just beaten the Yotes back-to-back and put together four wins in a row—four!—which seemed almost incomprehensible after how awful the season before had been, so it wasn't like Brandon couldn't understand why they were celebrating. He was feeling pretty fucking great, too.

But that wasn't a good enough reason for him to still be standing there frozen. He was staring, and he knew it, but—fuck, there was a difference between seeing two guys who were so comfortable with each other that personal space seemed to be all but nonexistent, and seeing them all over each other, not shy about expressing that in public in the slightest. Maybe Brandon really had only ever seen them when they were 'behaving' themselves, before. Because he didn't remember being struck dumb by how hot it was.

He must have moved or something, because Will pulled back, turned his head to see him and grinned easily, the same way he did any other time they were hanging out, and said, "Hey, Saader. You looking for us?"

"Well, I guess I found you," Brandon said, picking up the same joking tone automatically. "Nah, I mean. I think Cam was going to stand the next round, so if you actually want a drink you should probably go stand over him." He paused. "More literally than usual, even."

Alex snorted and rolled his eyes, but Will snickered at the joke and that was all Brandon needed, really. He gave them both a grin that felt a lot more natural, felt himself relax again as he shook off whatever weird moment that had just been, and said, "Anyway, I gotta piss, back in a minute," and walked past them, pushing the bathroom door open with the heel of his hand.

Yeah, Brandon was definitely enjoying being a Blue Jacket a lot more this year.

By the time Brandon got back to the table, Will and Alex were both there again, talking and laughing like nothing had happened, arguing cheerfully with Boone about something. Alex nodded at him and Will smiled, and Brandon felt himself relax further. He wasn't going to make it weird, and they weren't either, so it was all just fine.

Brandon almost didn't catch it when Bill leaned in to whisper something in Wenny's ear a little later; he'd been thinking about heading home soon and half-listening to Gags and Dubi talk about their Christmas plans. The motion caught his eye, though; Will's head bending close to Wenny's ear, his hair falling into his eyes and brushing against Alex's shoulder as he spoke. The easy, reflexive grin on Alex's face in response was harder to miss. It wasn't like he didn't earn a second look from just about anyone; Brandon had been on a team with Patrick Sharp and Victor Stalberg and Johnny Oduya; he knew what it was like to walk into a bar with a guy who was so good looking he made other people walk into walls. Alex definitely qualified. And he knew it, although at least he wasn't unbearable about it.

And he had the rest of them to keep him humble, of course.

But that smile lit up the room, and even Brandon wasn't unaffected. It wasn't like he didn't already know what Will saw in him, and Brandon had been on his line long enough to have a solid appreciation of how good his hands were, too.

Brandon bit his lip, tracked back over the thoughts he'd just been having and had to ruefully admit to himself that maybe Jack had a point.

He definitely needed to get out more if he was letting himself have those kinds of thoughts about a teammate. Especially a teammate who was already in a relationship of some kind with another teammate.

"Saader," Alex called, raising his voice enough to be heard over the bar noise. "You got plans tomorrow?"

Brandon raised an eyebrow at him, not sure where that was coming from. "No?"

"You should come shopping with us, Wenny wants another opinion," Will said, his tone serious, but there was enough of a glint in his eyes that Brandon was a tiny bit suspicious. Or maybe he was just a little drunk. Hell, maybe Brandon was a little drunk.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Matty asked, leaning in around Brandon to put his glass down, and reaching over to try to mess with Wenny's hair on his way back out.

Alex ducked away with the ease of long practice and said, "Because I want someone with taste, thanks."

Matty made an exaggeratedly wounded expression and held his hand up to his heart. "Brutal, Wenny," he said, and Brandon added, "Well, I think I'm flattered?" while giving Will and Alex a quizzical look.

"It's fine, Saader," Alex said easily.

"We'll pick you up at eleven," Will added, and Brandon could translate that with no trouble at all as Alex picking him up. He didn't think he'd seen Will actually drive more than maybe twice. Possibly only once, even. It was rare, anyhow.

"Okay," Brandon said, since there didn't seem to be much option to say anything else. He didn't mind, really; Alex and Will were fun to hang out with, and it sure wasn't like he had other plans. Other than getting a decent amount of sleep, which meant, "I'm gonna head out now, anyway. Goodnight guys," and he finished his glass in one long swallow, set it back down on the table and elbowed Boone to let him out of the booth.

The rest of the guys called back a chorus of farewells, and Matty and Dubi both followed his example, which meant Brandon didn't even have to try to get his own cab, cadging a ride off Matty who had been pulling sober driver duty due to some complicated wager system he and Cam had apparently been running for, like, their entire NHL careers. Brandon figured it was better not to ask, most of the time.

Standing awkwardly in the hall of the fitting room for one of Columbus' nicer menswear stores the next morning, clutching his takeaway cup of still-warm tea in a tighter grip than was probably good for its structural integrity, Brandon wished, deeply and desperately, that he had asked slightly more questions the night before.

He wasn't hungover, and he hadn't been drunk the night before either, not really, but this had not been what he was expecting.

Brandon had hung out with Wenny and Bill a fair amount the season before; they'd commiserated over how shit things had started out, and how not-that-much-better they'd gotten, and at least Will knew what the whole being traded mess felt like, too. But usually they hung out, maybe grabbed lunch or played video games or watched movies, or sometimes they'd watch football if there was a game on at a time that didn't entirely suck for their timezone.

This was—

Not that.

"What do you think?" Alex asked, his gaze darting between Will and Brandon. He turned slowly, giving them both an opportunity to get the full 360 on the shirt he was trying on. It stretched across his shoulders, was just the right side of too tight in the chest, and Brandon took a hasty swallow of his tea and nearly choked as it went down the wrong way.

"Looks good," Will said easily, and then he pounded Brandon on the back a few times until Brandon could catch his breath and say, "Yeah, it's… nice?"

Alex sighed, and muttered something under his breath that Brandon didn't try to hear.

"The green was better, I think," Will said, tapping his fingers on the side of his hip, head cocked thoughtfully to one side.

"You could get both," Brandon pointed out, since it was a nice shirt, sure, but it also wasn't like Alex couldn't afford it.

"I want to try one more thing," Alex said, and he vanished behind the curtain to change again.

"Be right back," Will said, and he went back out to into the store, leaving Brandon standing by the mirror awkwardly, entirely alone.

A few seconds later, Alex emerged again, this time in a shirt with a subtle pinstripe, one that wasn't quite so fitted—so tight, Brandon corrected—but that he had to admit looked very sharp on him. He didn't look the least bit surprised that Will had wandered off, either. Maybe that was why Alex wanted more company. Brandon could sympathize—with Will, that was—he had about an hour's worth of patience for clothes shopping at the best of times before he could feel himself starting to tune out. And they were maybe ten minutes in.

He definitely had not thought this through.

"I like that," Brandon admitted, not sure Alex had really brought him along for opinions. It wasn't like Alex wasn't sure of his own taste.

"Good," Alex said, licking his lips absently. "I'm going to change, there's—two more stores, I think? After this? You should try stuff on too."

Brandon could probably manage two stores. "Yeah, if I see anything I like, I will."

Will wandered back in then, a pair of pants over his arm, and a shirt draped over top. Brandon raised an eyebrow.

"The pants are for him," he said, and rather than waiting or calling out, he just pushed the curtain aside and stepped right into the changing room with Alex.

Definitely awkward, Brandon thought again.

Will's head popped out of the changing room a second later, saying, "Saader?"

"You need something?" Brandon asked. He actually didn't mind going back into the store proper to try and find a different size or whatever, at least that would be something to do.

"Need a second opinion," Will said, and his head vanished behind the curtain again.

Brandon wavered, his weight shifting on the balls of his feet.

"Saader," Will called again, sounding a little impatient, and not making any move to come out into the hall.

Great, Brandon thought, and he steeled himself and followed Will into the changing room.

It wasn't particularly small—less a cubicle like most stores and more like an actual room, with enough space that the three of them weren't even knocking elbows.

Will was shirtless, the new shirt one he was trying on for himself, apparently, hanging open from his shoulders, his head down as he watched himself start buttoning it, chewing on his lip in concentration as he worked his way up. It wasn't like Brandon didn't know how built he was—they got undressed in the same room just about every day, for crying out loud—but it seemed somehow emphasized like that; the flat plane of his stomach and defined abs framed by crisp cotton and steady hands. He liked how steady Will was, quick with a joke and a smile, but steadfast all the same, a solid presence in the locker room that Brandon had always appreciated.

Alex had his thumbs tucked under the waistband of the very expensive looking jeans that somehow fit him, emphasizing every curve of his thighs and ass, his head craned around as he tried to look in the mirror behind him.

"Uh," Brandon said. "Well, those fit."

Will looked up and gave Alex a look that frankly needed an adult content warning. "You could say that," he agreed. "Fuck, those look great."

"Saader?" Alex asked. "What do you think?"

"…they're good," Brandon said, knowing he sounded more than a little strangled, and not sure what else Alex was even looking for from him there. He was going to have to remember this place for the next time he needed jeans, if they could actually cope with hockey players' asses. And focusing on that meant he wasn't looking at Wenny's backside, or—almost worse, probably, in terms of wholly inappropriate things to do around a teammate—letting his eyes drift down to catch on the lovingly-outlined bulge in the front of the jeans. Brandon wouldn't go so far as to say 'painted on', but it was close enough. Close enough that if he hadn't seen Alex start changing earlier he'd doubt he was even wearing underwear.

"Right," Alex said, and exchanged a look with Will.

"I'm gonna go see if they have a darker denim," Brandon said, seizing the excuse as soon as it occurred to him, and he ducked away from Will and pushed his way out of the changing room.

That had been—odd. Maybe that was how guys went shopping in Sweden, but he had a feeling the weird vibe had a lot more to do with the fact that Will and Alex were together. Hard not to see the sparks between them, even in something as innocent as clothes shopping. Brandon could probably do a better job of not noticing that kind of thing, though.

Brandon did actually find a few things to try on himself, in the end, and at Wenny and Bill’s insistence, bought all of them. It had definitely been a productive morning, even if Brandon had to keep much tighter control than usual of where his eyes went.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been in locker rooms for basically his whole life, he knew how to not look, and frankly he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this bad at resisting the urge to. Maybe Rockford. Hell, maybe even Saginaw. It made him feel younger all over again, in a way he hadn’t for a while, and usually didn’t, in Columbus. But then again, Alex was his age and Will was actually older, so maybe that made sense.

Brandon had to tap out by the time Alex dragged them into a third store; he was starting to get decidedly shopped out—even if he had also managed to pick up a couple of gifts, which would save him some internet shopping at the very least—and the nearly interminable holiday music that was playing in every store was starting to wear on him.

“I’m gonna wait outside for a bit,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb.

“Cool,” Will said, exchanging a glance with Alex.

“This really won’t take long,” Alex promised.

“The important thing is you believe that,” Brandon joked, but he wasn’t opposed to standing outside for a bit, getting some fresh air, maybe fucking around on his phone for a bit.

He sat down gratefully on the bench by the front entrance and stretched out, reaching over his head until he could feel the pull down his shoulders, arching his back and flexing, shaking out the stiffness of the aftereffects of the game the day before, and what had probably been a little less sleep than he should really have gotten. Especially with the way that Crouse kid could lay a hit.

The bench shifted slightly under him and Brandon opened his eyes and sheepishly sat back a bit more normally, realizing he was now sharing the bench. The guy who’d just sat down was a tall, well-built white guy, who grinned easily at him, with rueful recognition.

“You get stuck shopping as well?” the guy asked, softening it with a grin.

“Yeah, I’m definitely done,” Brandon agreed. “Wanted to get some fresh air.”

“I know the feeling,” the guy said, and looked over his shoulder, back into the store. Brandon wasn’t sure who he was with at first, but the heavy sigh that followed a burst of giggling from a group of men and women gathered around one of the perfume counters by the front was a pretty good clue.

“Not your scene, huh?” he said to the guy.

“I would rather punch a bear,” he said, and sighed again.

“I think they’re all in hibernation,” Brandon said. “You might be out of luck there.”

“Well, I tried,” he said with a grin. “Guess I’ll have to stick to grabbing a beer as soon as that lot are done in there, then.”

“Good luck with that,” Brandon said easily, and then Will and Alex pushed the doors open and came outside.

If the lack of shopping bags in hand was any indication, they’d given up on whatever they’d been looking for in there.

“You good to go?” Alex asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah,” Brandon said, and then feeling politeness required something more, he turned back to the guy on the bench and added, “Nice talking to you.”

“You too,” he replied, and looked back into the store, sighing theatrically as the group he was with seemed to till be deep in conversation with a couple of the clerks. Brandon had a feeling he was the one who'd be making a lucky escape any time soon.

“Lunch?” Will suggested brightly, once they were back in the car, and Brandon agreed immediately. He was starving.

[]

“Seriously,” Brandon said, leaning forward between the seats so Alex and Will could hear him more clearly. “I don’t care what we get, just make sure it’s food.”

Alex snorted, and turned the car back towards their place. “We’ve got stuff at home, if you can wait ten minutes or so.”

Brandon pretended to think about that for a minute. “I guess,” he said, with a mock sigh.

“You better check he hasn’t wasted away to nothing already,” Alex said, checking his mirrors and pulling out to make a left.

Will twisted around in the front seat obediently to peer back over his shoulder and grin at Brandon. “He’s still there, but just barely,” he reported. “You should probably hurry.”

“You can pay my tickets, then,” Alex said mildly, and didn’t speed up at all. Brandon was pretty sure that, at least, was a conversation they had regularly. It had that kind of tone.

It took a little longer than ten minutes to get back to Alex’s place and put together a meal, but Brandon didn’t mind really; it was easy enough to move around Alex’s kitchen and do his share of the prep. They even sat at his table to eat, instead of balancing plates on their laps the way they tended to do when it was more of a team-bonding thing. Though Brandon had to admit having a bunch of guys over to play video games or watch movies wasn’t the worst excuse to have a couple drinks and cheat on their meal plans, it was just the most common one.

“Yours okay?” Will asked, as Brandon was finishing up clearing his plate and starting to think about whether he should head home or just accept the inevitable involuntary nap on Alex’s couch that was probably about half an hour in his future.

Will had an eyebrow raised in inquiry, brows creased, and seemed to be genuinely concerned. Brandon couldn’t think why. They were all eating the same food; smoked salmon that Alex had got from a deli in the German Village, and it was definitely good. Brandon wasn’t even going to have crumbs left on his plate.

“Yeah, great,” he said.

“Good,” Will said, sounding satisfied. “You wanna watch a movie or something after lunch?”

“Sure,” Brandon said slowly. He wasn’t one to intrude on other people’s time much if he could help it, and considering how much time they’d spent on the road or playing recently he couldn’t imagine that Will and Alex had had a whole lot of time alone recently, but if they weren’t trying to kick him out once he’d eaten then he was more than happy to stay a little longer.

Brandon regretted that decision more than a little as the afternoon stretched toward evening. It wasn’t that he felt unwelcome, necessarily, it was just—

He hadn’t been around a couple who were at that level of borderline sickening honeymoon-style affection for a while, and it was wearing more than he’d expected. It wasn’t that they were doing anything particularly inappropriate, either, there was just a lot of casual touching, and both times Brandon had left the room—to get another glass of water and then to take a piss, and if he’d realized it would happen again he wouldn’t have finished his water so damn fast—he’d walked back in on the two of them kissing, casually entwined on the couch.

Brandon had just cleared his throat from the doorway and theatrically rolled his eyes at them when they broke apart slowly, not even having the decency to look properly sheepish about it.

Alex had said, “Sorry, Saader,” the second time, but it had been slow and patently insincere, obvious enough from the way his hand was still inching below the waistband of Will’s jeans. And Will had just looked flushed and a little pink, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips as he grinned shamelessly at Brandon.

Brandon wasn’t sure, really, which one of them he was more jealous of. Maybe both. It’d kind of been a while, and he really didn’t need all of his teammates to be all loved-up and annoyingly cute about it when he was so terminally single.

Honestly, it was kind of annoying.

The way that Will snuggled against his side after Alex started the movie up again was nice, but it meant Brandon went home later that afternoon with a crick in his neck that he couldn’t entirely work out, stiff from the effort it had taken to not let himself lean back into Will’s side, from trying to be damn sure he wasn’t the one who did something inappropriate, who took their teasing too seriously and made it weird.

Brandon really didn’t want to make it weird.

As the month went on, Brandon tried to let himself relax a little and enjoy the fact they were still winning. They blew right past their best win streak from the season before, and started to get into the sort of heady territory that had been rare even for the Hawks: five and then six and then seven wins in a row, enough that people were starting to look at them differently, talking about the Blue Jackets in a way that Brandon couldn’t ever remember hearing before.

And it wasn’t just him, either; Boone said something on the bus one day that Brandon could translate without any real effort into him noticing the change as well.

It felt good; good to get wins at home, good to see the stands starting to fill up outside of the home opener, and good to take points off every team they’d faced for the past couple of weeks, fuck.

Admittedly, Brandon had possibly enjoyed beating the Islanders a little too much, though he’d felt for Leds on Josh’s goal, had winced automatically on the bench for a second before he caught himself. He was pretty sure no one had noticed that microsecond pause before he stood up to fistbump Andy and the rest of his line, yelling out his whole-hearted appreciation.

They’d gotten their nose bloodied—metaphorically if not necessarily literally—every game they’d played against the Isles last season, so Brandon was more than ready for a little payback. And Leds had never been a dick about it, but Brandon wasn’t going to complain about getting a few bragging rights of his own. He figured they’d both have forgotten the way the third period had been a complete blowout by the next time they actually caught up off the ice; they were still friends, at least.

All in all, though, it’d been a busy couple of weeks, with a couple back to backs, games fitting in wherever they could, and the Christmas break seemed like forever away. Close enough that he really had to get moving on doing some of his shopping for presents, sure, but not even remotely in reach. At least the western Canada road trip meant they had some down time scheduled, and Brandon was looking forward to that almost more than anything else.

The game against the Oilers went well, and that was never a given; Brandon had had enough bad nights back at Rexall over the years to never want to take the Oil for granted. And that had been true even before McDavid had been on the scene, so Brandon had been as pleased as any of the guys to see Sammy score against his old team.

They’d had a good couple of days off after that, working out in the Olympic training facilities, which had been pretty awesome, and Brandon had figured that meant things were back to normal. He’d hung out with Jack for most of their down time; they got on well and neither of them needed to hear themselves talk.

He watched TV with some of the younger guys one night, six or seven of them crammed into Olly and Z’s room, but it had felt a little weird to be around them. He wasn’t that much older than all of them—he wasn’t even sure if Sedsy was younger, come to think of it—but he’d felt out of place all the same. Most of them had been together up in Cleveland, and even Z had been with them for the playoffs, so as much as he knew he was welcome as a teammate, it had felt like he was out of step with half their jokes. They’d assimilated just fine into the locker room in general, but Brandon still felt like he was too old and maybe not enough fun to hang out with them more often.

That feeling had been enough to make him overrule his initial disquiet about catching a movie the night before they played the Flames with Bill and Wenny; at least he never felt like he was two steps away from needing a walking stick when he was hanging out with them.

It had been fine, mostly.

They’d both stretched on one bed, close enough together that there was probably room for at least one more beside them, or maybe even two if they were really trying to jam a ton of guys into one room. Brandon had definitely witnessed more than one hotel room bed give up and break under the weight of 5 or 6 fully-grown hockey players all trying to occupy the same mattress to watch a game or a fight or whatever. So Brandon just stretched out on the other bed, shoved a few more of the pillows behind his head, and tried not to notice whether or not Will was whispering things to Alex occasionally or whether he was just licking his neck.

Brandon had gotten pretty good at not noticing stuff like that, over the years.

They’d gone into the Saddledome fired up about the game, ready to get some payback after being shutout in their own barn a few weeks ago, wanting to at least split the series with the Flames if they could.

And they’d come out of the gate hard enough, getting a good shot on goal off their first shift before coming back to defend a shot against. Brandon had been racing for the puck at the blue line, focused mostly on getting it out of their end under control before going for a change when one of the Flames got a shoulder into him, getting just the right angle to put him down on the ice before he could duck out of the way.

The puck had gotten out at least, so Brandon had picked himself up and just headed to the bench. He wasn’t about to turn down the chance he got then to take a shot back at Tkachuk on the way, giving him enough of a shove that he’d feel it, but that nine times out of ten the refs weren’t going to bother calling. And he would’ve figured that’d be the end of it, unless the kid wanted to start running around for the rest of the game, except then Alex pushed past him and got in a cross-check of his own, and before Brandon could quite believe what he was seeing, Tkachuk’s gloves were off and so were Wenny’s.

Roll two D6 for damage, and follow the appropriate link:

2-7 points of damage

8-12 points of damage

[]

It wasn’t much of a fight; they’d both overbalanced fast enough that Brandon wasn’t sure either one of them had even thrown much of a punch, let alone landed one, but the refs sent them to the box for five each, so it had clearly been enough. Brandon just tapped his stick against the boards along with the rest of the team and tried not to let himself wonder what the fuck had just happened.

Boone got them on the board a couple minutes later, and Brandon added a goal of his own to keep the momentum going in the right direction, so all things considered it wasn’t like having Alex in the box for five minutes had wound up hurting them much.

His time up, Alex got out of the box accompanied by another round of stick taps, and Brandon didn’t need to turn and look behind him to know that Torts was grinning approval at him too. When Brandon scooted closer to him on the bench and raised an eyebrow, Alex just shrugged at him and then leaned forward to pay closer attention to whatever Will was doing out on the ice, not saying a word.

Brandon let it go, but it nagged at him a little for the rest of the game, the tiny voice at the back of his mind wondering why Wenny was the one who’d dropped the gloves in his defense, rather than Fligs or Jack or Savvy, and if Brandon was remembering correctly, at least two of them had been on the ice then, too. Talk about the guy least expected to…

4-1 was a decent margin to come out of the game with, and definitely felt all the sweeter after having been shut out by the Flames a few weeks ago, so Brandon was in a good mood when they wound up at the hotel bar after the game.

He didn’t say much of anything while a few of the other guys joked around, asking if Alex was going to go full goon on them all now. He got congratulations on his first career fight and earned a couple of shots which he demanded Will and Brandon both do with him, and what was Brandon going to do, say no?

So by the time they decided to call it a night he was flushed all over and warm through, and Alex was definitely not sober, and Will not a whole lot better, although it wasn’t like either of them were sloppy drunk. Alex seemed to be having trouble keeping his balance though, lacking the almost supernatural grace he had on the ice, leaning heavily onto Brandon, one arm slung around his neck.

“Which room?” Brandon asked, keeping his voice lower than usual.

He didn’t want to wake anyone else up, just because they were in hotels half the year didn’t mean they could be inconsiderate to everyone else staying there.

"Five twenty,” Will answered, from Alex’s other side, with his arm loosely around Alex’s waist, the backs of his fingers brushing Brandon’s hip occasionally as they walked.

Alex laughed, warm and low, and Brandon bit his lip, wondered if he had drunk too much after all. That would be embarrassing, he was supposed to be a veteran at all of this by now. But they'd had a good win, and eight in a row, one off the fucking franchise record, they were allowed to be happy and giddy and maybe a little stupid with it. No harm in enjoying the moment, as long as they didn’t take it for granted.

“Well, here we are,” Brandon said as they stopped in front of the door. He hip-checked Alex gently, getting him to lean against the wall so that Brandon could free a hand up, and then he paused, empty hand outstretched. “Uh. Keycard?”

Will slid his hand into Alex’s front pocket without a trace of hesitation, clearly felt him up a little if the smirk on Alex’s face was anything to go by, and then plucked the card out, brandishing it showily before handing it to Brandon.

“There you go,” Brandon said, as the LED went green and the lock clicked. He pushed the door open, reaching up to hold it so that Alex and Will—he had no illusion that it wasn’t going to be both of them in there—could walk under his arm.

Will reached up and traced the numbers on the door with his thumb, a tiny private smile on his face.

“Twenty, huh?” he said, and stepped inside.

Looked back at Brandon, one eyebrow raised.

Brandon did his best to hide his confusion, just smiled sort of vaguely at Will and then said “Good night,” hurriedly and fled.

He wasn’t sure how his life had gotten so much more confusing recently, but he was clearly going to have to figure something out.

Brandon stewed over it for a little while back in his own room, staring unseeingly at the terrible abstract art hanging beside the TV, before telling himself to just go to sleep already and stop dwelling on it.

It kept coming back to him, though, in the days afterward.

Will and Alex acted just the same as they always did, and were exactly the same around him as they’d been all year. The same as they’d always been as long as Brandon could remember, even, so he wasn’t sure why, precisely, it was bothering him still.

But it really was, even as they squeaked out an OT win in Vancouver, as they went home and eked out another over the Kings, and then finally as they absolutely rolled over the Pens, and fuck was that ever satisfying, Brandon thought, stretching out in bed afterward, kind of idly wishing they’d had a chance to go out and celebrate.

7-1, hell, how often did you get that kind of a score?

And it felt so fucking good to be on the right side of it, especially against a division rival. Especially after the season they’d had last year. But they were also in the middle of a back-to-back, so celebration had been limited to Dubi cranking the volume on the stereo in the room after, and a significant amount of fist-bumps and high fives before they all trooped off home again.

Will had been catching a ride with Alex, same as ever, and Brandon had watched them leave, paused for a second with his keys in his hand and wished he had someone to go home with.

It wasn’t even sex, not really. If Brandon wanted to get laid, he could probably manage that pretty easily. He was just—

Not picky, exactly.

But he wanted more than that. He wanted everything else that came along with having someone to go home to; not just a warm body in his bed but company, companionship, someone to find a rhythm with and work in partnership.

Although sex would also be nice, and with that in mind Brandon gave himself a metaphorical kick in the ass to get in his car and go home already. They were supposed to get a sensible amount of sleep and rest before the game tomorrow, that didn’t at all preclude his going straight to bed and jerking off at the very least.

He let it draw out for longer than he would normally; Brandon had lived with other people long enough to have mastered the quick hand job, to be able to sink into a fantasy and let himself get off as quickly as he needed to, but when he had the time and the privacy to let himself take a little longer it usually tended to feel better.

It felt just as good that time, stretched out naked on his bed, the sheets cool and smooth against his skin, his eyes closed as he let himself imagine what it could be like. He ran his palm up over his stomach, gliding over his chest and then back down again, fingers brushing through the hair around his dick to just, just barely skim the shaft. He imagined hands at his hips, holding him steady, while another hand curled around his dick, slick with lube, firm and familiar and heated. Imagined hands pinching at his nipples, playing with his balls, a thumb dragging firmly around his rim, fingers curled and digging in to leave tiny bruises over the muscles of his ass.

He imagined pushing inside someone, warm and tight around his dick, a mouth on his neck, scattering kisses and marks, someone licking inside him, wet and dirty and so hot he could hardly breathe with it. He came with an uneven moan, his orgasm almost surprising him, stealing up on him fast and hot and hard, leaving him shaking with the inevitability of it.

Okay, Brandon thought to himself. He’d gotten off, he could relax, and just focus on playing tomorrow, and deal with anything else as it came up. He’d be no good to anyone if he was just going to uselessly stew over his own thoughts every time he had a quiet moment.

Pep talk administered, he cleaned up and then slid back under the sheets, rolling over a few times while he tried to settle. He usually had no trouble sleeping—it was probably his greatest talent, according to George, and Shawzy, and pretty much everyone who’d ever had to get him out of bed in the morning—but that night sleep came late, and when he woke up the next morning he didn’t feel remotely as rested as he figured he should have done.

They still beat the Habs, though, and Brandon would definitely take that trade-off any day.

Despite his best intentions, the memory of that look Will had shot him that night in Calgary kept coming back to Brandon, usually at the worst and most inappropriate moments possible. Team lunch was not a great time to be thinking about what Alex and Will looked like when they were clearly seconds away from falling into bed together.

Trying to nap on the charter and getting distracted thinking about what that would sound like was also not one of his finer moments. Would Alex be loud, the way he was when he was indignantly protesting that Cam was cheating at their card game? Would Will giggle, almost soundlessly, the way he did when he was really amused, or just kind of tired and overexcited. Brandon had lost count of how many times he’d seen Will muffle laughter into the crook of his own arm, into the side of Alex’s neck.

He really, really had to stop thinking about it.

If nothing else, he needed to get better at hiding the fact he was thinking about something weird, or something in particular, because he’d gotten funny looks from Fligs and from Boone over the last week or so, and Brandon just did not want to deal with that. Not when everything else was going so well.

He found himself spilling some of that frustration out over lunch right before Christmas, sitting at the kitchen counter in Jack’s place, watching him set out plates and finish the last bits of prep, chopping vegetables and arranging them in a bowl even though it was just the two of them there, Jack’s wife out with friends for the morning, and Brandon taking advantage of a rare completely free day to just try and relax some more.

Jack had invited him, and Brandon hadn’t thought much of it; they got about as many meals together as they didn’t, and Brandon was comfortable around him, had found that same ease in both conversation and in quiet with him that he’d had with Smitty, with Tazer sometimes; knowing that they had more in common than they didn’t.

It made it easy to talk to him.

It made it a little too easy to talk to him.

“…and then he just gave me this look,” Brandon said, with a sigh. “And I don’t want to make it weird with either of them, and I don’t think they’re, like, mad or anything, it’s just. It’s just weird.”

[]

Jack just shrugged at him. “They’re kind of weirdos, sure. I don’t think they’re mad at you, though.”

Brandon looked down, watched his hands tapping restlessly over his knee for a second before he managed to get them to still. “I guess,” he said dubiously.

“They’re probably just being all, you know, Swedish,” Jack said. “Maybe you should go on an IKEA run or something. Or to a spa.”

Brandon wasn’t at all opposed to the idea of sitting around somewhere warm or of getting, like, massages or whatever else you did at a spa, but he had a feeling that wasn’t quite what Jack was getting at. And also, spending more of his time looking at Wenny or Bill while they were wearing just a towel—if not less—was probably also not terribly helpful if they already thought he was being weird about their relationship.

He really didn’t want to talk about it, though, so what else did that leave?

“Or you could, I dunno, talk about your ex or something,” Jack suggested, much more delicately, and he got up then to start putting things back in the fridge, and tidying the kitchen.

Brandon narrowed his eyes at his back. He got the feeling, belatedly, that Jack had maybe been building up to that comment. Especially if now he wasn’t looking at Brandon, either.

Jack was one of the few guys on the team who knew explicitly just who Brandon had broken up with the year before. They’d all known he was going through a breakup, but the fact they were out of the playoffs practically by Thanksgiving and were fighting just to keep their heads above water had been a more immediate concern for all of them, even Brandon.

It probably hadn’t helped, though.

And him and Leds were fine now, sure, but it had definitely been tricky at points. Jack had been sympathetic, in a way that made Brandon think he might have some history of his own there, although he was very obviously happily married to Kelly now. Brandon had appreciated both the sympathetic ear and the fact he was equally willing to sit in silence and not actually make Brandon talk about anything, anyhow.

"I don't know," Brandon equivocated, staring at the carrots in front of Jack like they had any answers for him.

"Up to you," Jack said with a shrug, and if Brandon hadn't known him as well as he did, he'd almost think Jack didn't actually care what Brandon did.

"Okay," Brandon said, meaning that he'd think about it, and not actually agreeing to anything, and Jack nodded in his direction, and went back to get something else from the fridge, and just like that the conversation was over, and the balls-metaphorically or not-were all back in Brandon's court.

Great.

[]

Jack gave him a look that Brandon couldn’t—didn’t want to, really—interpret. “So you’re saying,” he said, building it up slowly while Brandon drank his tea and pushed the last couple bites of sweet potato around on his plate. “That you went shopping with them, and watched Wenny try on jeans, in the changing room, and then you got lunch together. And then in Calgary, one of their kids takes a run at you and Wenny suddenly decides to kill a man, even though me and Fliggy were, you know. Right there. And then you wind up helping haul their drunk asses back up to their room after the game.”

“Yeah,” Brandon said, morosely. He was probably being a creep, or something. At least Jack would probably be nice about telling him that.

What Jack was actually doing was—

Snorting and trying not to laugh out loud?

Brandon blinked.

That wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting.

“Saader,” Jack said, when he’d got control of himself again, although the way he was biting at his lip suggested he was a hairs-breadth from cracking up again, and honestly, what the fuck was wrong with Brandon’s friends at the moment? “Has flirting changed in the last couple of years? I mean, I know it’s been a while since I’ve done it, but…”

Brandon stared at him, feeling deeply stupid for a moment. “You—what?”

Jack swallowed, and when he spoke again there was less laughter in his voice, his tone gentler. “They’re hitting on you, Saader. They’re trying to figure out if you’re interested in them.”

Brandon was pretty sure his face at that point was doing a whole bunch of things he didn’t necessarily want it to be doing, especially where anyone could see him.

Now that Jack put it that way, it did seem plausible. It wouldn’t have been his first guess, since apparently he was either slow on the uptake or just a lot more used to blatant flirting rather than anything more subtle. Although considering they were already together and were trying to get Brandon to—have a threesome? Fuck—he could probably see why they might want to keep that more low key than just trying to figure out if a guy was interested and asking him out.

“Do you think they just want, like. Uh.” Brandon wasn’t sure he’d ever had a conversation like this with Jack before. Usually they talked about, like, books and movies and what they’d been doing in their down time. Brandon hadn’t really had any kind of conversation about sex outside of locker room chirping for a while. That might be part of why he hadn’t actually twigged to what was apparently going on, he thought ruefully.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Sex? I don’t know if they’re, uh. Looking for something more long term, I guess. That’s a conversation you’re going to need to have with them. But you’re, um, interested?”

“Yeah,” Brandon said instantly, without stopping to think about it. Without stopping to second-guess it. He felt his cheeks go pink, his face hot, as he realized what he’d admitted to so readily. Even if he did trust Jack implicitly. “I mean. Uh. No, yeah, that’s what I mean.”

“I guess you could have worse taste,” Jack said, philosophically, and Brandon relaxed a little.

“I probably need to talk to them, huh,” Brandon said, not entirely loving that plan of action. It would be kind of mortifying if he was reading this situation wrong and they weren’t actually trying to gauge his interest. In whatever way.

“Yeah,” Jack said, and gave Brandon a ‘soldier on, bud’ type of pat to the biceps. “I don’t have to give you the talk about not letting it affect the team, right?”

Brandon decided not to be slightly insulted by that; he would’ve asked the same thing, probably. “No,” he said. “It’s not going to. I mean, that part, I can handle.”

“Good,” Jack said, and then he passed Brandon another glass of water, and turned the conversation right back to football.

Brandon could definitely cope with that instead of worrying more about his nonexistent-yet-apparently-under-discussion love life.

[]

"Saader!" Wenny said gleefully, before taking Brandon's elbow to drag him—well, it wasn't like Brandon was resisting, so maybe it was more like leading him—over to the corner of the room where Will was stretched out on the couch with his feet up, a drink by his hand on the side table, gleefully hogging most of the couch to himself. Not that it'd stop Alex from squishing right there beside him in whatever nonexistent space there was free, either. If Brandon hadn't watched Will play wrecking ball on the checking line for the last year and a half he'd have to start wondering if Will was part liquid. Or part cat. Definitely that one.

Brandon wasn't exactly in a position to complain about any of the ways they arranged themselves in the living room though, because the last time all three of them had hung out to watch a Man United game at some ungodly early hour on an off day he'd put his feet up on the coffee table and then fallen right back asleep again before they'd even played the first half.

He'd woken up with his head resting comfortably on Alex's shoulder, too, but apparently that was just another thing they weren't talking about. He'd mumbled something and then sat up straight, and then—according to Will—shamed his country by having to ask which team was winning.

Apparently he was supposed to be able to match up the score on screen with the colors of the jerseys, but soccer had never been Brandon's game, so it was still something of a learning curve.

"Hey," Brandon said with a grin, and started to make himself comfortable in the armchair by the couch.

Alex made a disapproving noise and grabby hands at him, and Brandon blinked, freezing in place.

"What?" he asked.

Alex nudged Will until he sat up straighter, opening up a whole half a foot of space. "Come sit with us."

Brandon gave him a dubious look. "I don't think there's space."

"We'll make room," Will said.

Brandon opened his mouth to reply—although he wasn't sure what with—and Wenny ran roughshod right over that.

"He means, this is stupid, and we've been waiting forever, so you should just sit down and kiss us already, thanks."

"I—oh." Brandon said. "Wait, we're talking about this now?"

"I'd rather talk about it after," Will muttered, and Brandon kind of agreed, if he was being honest.

Alex sighed, and shifted his weight, somehow making enough space that Brandon could in fact sit down beside them without—quite—being in Alex's lap.

"You like us, yes?" he said, and Brandon nodded, almost before the words were out of his mouth. "And this time no one's drunk so we should just—do this."

"Like it's that easy," Brandon said, a little skeptical. As much as he wanted it.

"It can be," Will said. "Doesn't have to be complicated, Saader."

Brandon took a deep breath, and steadied himself to say it. "What if I want it to be complicated?"

"What do you mean?" Will asked, and Alex had been saying the same thing, if the bitten off words Brandon had caught were going where he'd expected them to.

Brandon looked down at his hands and consciously tried to unclench his fists, imagined the nerves and tension draining out of him and into the floor, far away from all of them. "I like you. Both. A lot. Not just—fun sex or whatever like you."

"Oh," Alex said softly. "That's—that's perfect, really."

Brandon's head came up. "It is?"

Alex beamed at him, and Brandon felt like his chest had expanded three sizes, like joy was growing so fast inside him that he couldn't even begin to control where it spilled over and out of him, elation and hope and the beginnings of everything he wanted in his future. "We want to date you," he said. "Like, boyfriends."

"Oh, good," Brandon said, grinning right back at him, and at Will, feeling warm all over. "I—yes, sounds good to me."

Will shifted so that he was sitting sideways, his knee digging hard and bony into the side of Brandon's thigh, but he stopped noticing that almost immediately, because the next thing Will did was to lean in and kiss him, hot and sweet and entirely distracting.

"Perfect," Alex said, and Brandon wasn't sure whether that was his comment on Brandon agreeing to date them, or on kissing Will, because he'd frankly understand either, but he didn't have to wonder too long, because almost as soon as Will let him go Alex was leaning in, perched precariously right over Will's lap to reach, and kissing him just as hard, just as desperately.

Yeah, Brandon thought, they were going to be just fine.

"I told you," Will said, quite some time later, with the soccer game long forgotten in the living room, along with most of their clothing and the majority of whatever remaining shame Brandon had had left. "We should have just asked him sooner."

"Yeah, yeah," Alex said, trying to burrow deeper into the pillow that Brandon had shoved him off onto when they'd all gotten to the point of sweaty and overheated that no one quite wanted to keep touching, however good it felt. "You were right."

"What was he right about?" Brandon asked, fingers tapping idly over his ribcage, completely failing to wipe the satisfied smile off his own lips. God, he felt good.

"Making you go try on jeans with us," Will said. "As if you don't get to see his ass every day of the week already."

"Well," Brandon said, trying to be fair, and not to just get distracted by getting his hands right back on Alex's butt, now that he was thinking about it. "I have to admit it did help."

[]

"Alex," Will complained, a week or so later, somewhere over one of the Dakotas. "Are you ever going to say something to him?"

Alex looked up from where he was happily occupied in reading and ignoring the entire rest of the plane—and, by extension, Will, which was probably what he was complaining about.

"Sorry?" Alex said, folding his magazine to keep his place and turning to look at him.

As usual, they had the row to themselves, the rest of the team all taking their habitual spots, with regular seatmates outside of the slow but predictable shuffle that came from guys working their way in and out of the various card games that tended to happen while they were traveling.

Sometimes Saader sat with them, and they'd make a game of trying to teach him some more Swedish—mostly the dirty words, or at least the curses and the fun ones, as Will put it, although he'd already known some of those from Chicago.

That day, however, he was ensconced a few rows ahead, head bent together with Jack's while the two of them talked about something or other, voices murmuring low and none of the actual words traveling clear enough for Alex to make them out.

Not that he'd been trying to, or anything.

"Saader," Will hissed, and then when Brandon shifted his weight in the seat like he'd heard his name, his elbow moving noticeably where it had been poked out into the aisle, Will slumped down in his seat—not that that dropped his head much below the level of the headrest at all—and switched from English into Swedish.

"You know who," Will said. "Don't make him look, we need to talk about this more."

"Way to sound guilty," Alex observed, keeping his voice level even though his heart had skipped a beat when he realized what Will was asking him, and he could feel his face starting to go hot, trying not to blush.

"Wenny," Will complained, and then dug his elbow firmly into Alex's ribs. For a guy everyone thought was so nice, he was surprisingly—pointy.

"Fine," Alex said, caving. "What am I going to say, anyway? And why is it my job?"

Will shrugged, and favored him with a toothy grin. "You talked me into bed?"

"That wasn't difficult," Alex replied instantly, and this time he was braced for the elbow he got in return.

"You're better at it, though," Will insisted, and it was sweet that he thought that, but Alex wasn't entirely sure it was true.

Besides, it wasn't like Alex wanted to hook up with Saader—although, yeah, he wanted to do that too—but him and Will were a package deal, and he'd never had to actually deal with that situation before. It seemed a little more difficult than the already tricky 'hit on a teammate' thing was.

Will shrugged, and let his shoulder press against Alex's, warm and solid. "I think he'll be into it, and you do too," he pointed out, and this wasn't even remotely the first time they'd had this part of the conversation.

Alex didn't disagree with that fact. They'd been—flirting with Saader, for want of a better word, and most of the time he seemed like he was flirting right back, but he was also painfully polite, and sometimes those two things sounded the same.

Not that that had ever been a problem for Alex in the past, or anything.

But he didn't want to make a mistake this time, not when they also needed to worry about not screwing up anything with the team. Saader was probably too professional to be a jerk if Alex and Will made an unwanted pass at him, but it would sure make things awkward.

But they'd hung out together a lot, and even getting him to have opinions on how well their jeans fit hadn't quite turned into anything more. Saader was a stronger man than Alex, probably; he hadn't been able to take his eyes off Will's ass when they'd been out shopping, and his hands had also… wandered that way once they had a little privacy again.

It seemed like they were going to have to say something obvious, since it seemed like hints weren't working, and Alex wasn't quite ready to skate past the point of no return.

"Maybe when we get home again," Alex said, and reached over to take Will's hands, lacing their fingers together and squeezing gently.

"Yeah," Will said, and smiled at him, and sure, Alex wanted Saader too, but—

No matter what happened, he was glad to have Will.

They’d gone into the Saddledome a few days later fired up about the game, ready to get some payback after being shutout in their own barn a few weeks ago, wanting to at least split the series with the Flames if they could.

And they’d come out of the gate hard enough, getting a good shot on goal off their first shift before coming back to defend a shot against. Saader had been racing for the puck at the blue line, and Alex had taken a few strides to get open for the pass, eeling around the guy who was meant to be covering him for a split-second, just long enough for Saader to see the lane—and then before he could complete the pass, Saader was sprawling full-length on the ice, going down hard on a hit he hadn't seen coming.

And Alex saw red.

He had just long enough to get the guy's number—enough to make sure he was going for the right red jersey, and before anyone else on the ice even had a chance to get over there, Alex got right in his face, cross-checked him in a way he knew was going to earn him at least two minutes in the box and snarled something at him. And he listened for the reply exactly long enough to hear Tkachuk reply, "Oh yeah, you wanna go then?"

Alex dropped his gloves.

Next.

[]

Brandon thought it over for the next few days, letting himself play out a few scenarios in his head, trying to figure out what he wanted. What he needed to share, what he was happy to ask for.

It wasn't perfect, by the time he'd come up with the bare bones of a plan, but it was better than just sitting around hoping Will or Alex would make the first move and save him from having to do so. Brandon wasn't sure whether that counted as courage or just plain stubbornness, but if there was any chance of him getting to do more than just imagine hooking up with the two of them, then he was well and truly done waiting.

They'd all been waiting long enough.

"I want to ask something," Brandon said carefully, once they were done eating, and after they'd cleared the table at Alex's apartment off again, bare but for a scatter of torn open bills and a pile of mis-matched gloves that were probably accumulating any time he or Will left the house for anywhere other than Nationwide.

"Sure," Will said slowly, exchanging a glance with Wenny.

"Have you been hitting on me?" There was absolute silence for a few seconds after Brandon spoke, long enough for him to start feeling the nerves crawling their way back in again, no matter how much he'd told himself there was no other explanation for the way they'd been acting recently.

"Are you complaining?" Will asked, and Brandon didn't miss the way he reached out almost instinctively, laced his fingers through Alex's and squeezed his hand, a silent and almost subconscious reaffirmation of their connection, a reminder that whatever the answer was, he and Alex were in it together.

"No!" Brandon said, more stridently than he'd quite intended. He stopped, cleared his throat, and tried to say it again. "I mean, that would be okay. With me. If you were."

"Oh," Alex said, and Brandon tried not to squirm on the spot, because now of all times he had apparently lost the ability to understand Wenny almost without even trying. He couldn't read that tone at all, and it was making him worry.

"Should I—? Was I not supposed to ask?" Brandon asked, feeling smaller than he had done in years. This wasn't going according to plan at all.

"Oh god," Alex said hurriedly, eyebrows shooting up, and he let go of Will's hand to reach out to Brandon, beseeching. Apparently whatever communication issue they were having all of a sudden was one-way only, because he still seemed to be reading Brandon just fine. "No, it's okay, you're okay, I was. Not expecting this."

There didn't seem to be anything Brandon could say to that, so he just chewed on the inside of his lip and waited for Alex to find the words to explain better.

"We are hitting on you," he said. "I just wasn't sure you knew that."

"Why bother if you didn't know?" Brandon asked, despite himself. He couldn't imagine putting himself out there for someone he wasn't more than half-way sure about already. Although this conversation wasn't quite going as well as he might have liked, so what did he know?

"It's fun," Alex said, a little defensively, and Will leaned forward to add, "Have you seen you?"

Brandon felt his cheeks go hot, flushing more than a little red at that, at the open admiration in Will's tone. That felt—better, that was for sure.

"Well, I, um. I would like to hit on you back?" Brandon said, gaze flickering from Will to Alex. "If that's okay?"

"You understand we're—uh." Will stopped midsentence, and then started over, sounding more confident with every passing second. "It's both of us. If you want us, we want you, but it has to be all three."

Brandon nodded, butterflies crowding his stomach, finally starting to let himself hope this was actually going to work out. "That's what I want," he confirmed.

"You've done this before?" Alex asked, and he was not even the slightest bit flustered looking. If Brandon hadn't been so attracted to him he'd have almost been jealous; it was so unfair that he looked like that and that he seemed so unflappable all the time.

"Broke up with a guy last year," Brandon said, picking his way through that part of the conversation carefully. He wasn't entirely new to all of this. "He, uh. Plays for a different team."

"Ugh, straight guys," Will sighed sympathetically, and Brandon couldn't help himself, snorted with laughter.

"No," he said, "I mean, he, uh—"

"Oh," Will said, and he grinned at Brandon, unabashed and somehow sweet, despite the fact that he was looking at Brandon with clear and extremely graphic intent in his expression, promises that made Brandon want to shiver and sweat and lose all three layers of clothing he was somehow still wearing. "You mean he plays for a different team."

"Yeah," Brandon said, grinning helplessly. "We're friends now, it's fine, I just—well, I'd kind of like to play with you guys. Nowadays. If you know what I mean."

Alex shuffled closer, ignoring the way it made his chair legs scrape a little on the wooden floor, and let his shoulder bump into Brandon's, warm and suggestive. "Yes from me," he said, and on the other side of the table, Will pushed his chair back, stood up and came right to Brandon's other side.

"From me too," Will said, and reached out to lay a hand on Brandon's shoulder, his thumb rubbing gently over the bare skin at the nape of his neck, comforting and suggestive at the same time.

"You wanna go to bed?" Alex asked, after a quick glance at the clock over the stove top, and an even quicker glance between Will and Brandon.

"I thought you'd never ask," Brandon said, and he pushed his own chair back in a hurry, let Will drag him towards their bedroom, Alex right behind him.

Just the way Brandon had been hoping for.

[]

By the time January rolled around, they'd all settled into a new normal, one where—as far as Brandon could tell, anyway—they all just kept flirting like that was the goal and not the journey, constantly winding each other up but refusing to make the final move, the one that meant someone had to admit just what exactly they were doing.

Sometimes Brandon enjoyed it—flirting was fun, and Alex and Will were both hot, what wasn't to like? But other times it felt pointed in a way he didn't enjoy, made him all the more acutely aware of everything he was missing out on, on what they had together and he hadn't had for months.

It didn't help that, if anything, the frequency with which Brandon kept walking in on them went up, rather than down.

It was one thing to walk past them holding hands, or to realize Alex was rubbing his thumb over the inside of Will's wrist while they sat and talked to everyone, absently, like he didn't remember how not to touch him, like it was no big deal and he'd almost forgotten any of the rest of the team were around, could see it. It was so intimate it make Brandon's jaw ache, made his eyes sting for a moment until he could blink it away.

It was another thing altogether to let himself into Will's apartment when he'd been invited over for lunch, with Boone and Ryan right on his heels, and they'd both walked right into him when Brandon had stopped dead at the sight of Will with Alex pressed right up against the refrigerator, kissing him hard, one hand shoved right down the back of his pants.

"What?" Boone said, a little crankily, since he now had an unexpected face full of Brandon's ball cap, flipped backwards since he was, to quote Fliggy, trying to be one of the cool kids.

Ryan sidestepped them both neatly, took one look into the kitchen before saying, "Ah," and then redirected himself and the other two straight into the living room.

"…sorry," Brandon said, belatedly. "I just-Had a moment."

"It's fine," Boone said, but the silent conversation he and Ryan were having with their eyebrows seemed to suggest that wasn't all he wanted to say.

Brandon almost wanted to ask him to just come out and say it, but when it came down to it he couldn't quite force himself to be the one who actually broke the silence.

Or maybe he was just too much of a coward, he thought bitterly, staring into the cup of tea that Will had handed him, with a vaguely guilty-looking smile. Brandon had done his best not to accidentally let his hand brush against Will's, and he'd used Ryan as an intermediary for every item he needed passed down the table when they finally did sat down to lunch.

All he knew was that Alex's ears had been pink ever since he'd looked over Will's shoulder and made eye contact with Brandon, and Boone and Ryan both had to be feeling the same excruciating sense of awkwardness that was suffocating Brandon, especially if the speed with which they both made excuses and bailed on the planned gaming tournament was any indication.

"Yeaaaah, catch you later," Boone said, and now he wasn't making eye contact with Brandon, either, which wasn't fair. Brandon hadn't done anything. And Boone and Ryan were his ride, so wait just one minute there.

He started to stand up, opened his mouth to protest, or argue, or something, and Alex interrupted to say, "We'll take you home, Saader, it's okay."

Brandon shut his mouth again, his teeth clicking with the tension of his jaw, as he sat back down and tried not to let himself dwell on what Boone and Ryan abandoning him actually meant.

"So, uh," Will started to say, staring at his own shoes, and Brandon had abruptly had enough.

"—can you just stop?" he demanded, hoping that no one else could hear the plaintive note in his voice. It was embarrassing enough, really.

"Of course," Alex said, reaching over to lay a hand on his shoulder lightly, before pulling it back like he'd been burned. "Uh. Just checking, but stop what? Exactly?"

Brandon caught himself right before he could lean into Alex's touch, made himself sit still and as small as possible on the couch, trying not to look at either of them. It was probably too late now to even try to not make it awkward, but perhaps the only way out was through. It wasn't as if Brandon had any other lanes to retreat through, in any case.

"I—this," he said, tapping his knuckles against the back of Alex's hand, where it sat casually on his thigh, just close enough to Brandon that he could feel Alex's warmth radiating against his side to the left, and Will to his right. Why did they have to-? If they were just going to keep teasing him and not doing anything else, he'd prefer that they stopped surrounding him like this. "It's not fun anymore," he went on, trying to explain.

It wasn't their fault really that he'd gotten tired of playing this game, that being able to look and almost touch started feeling more like starving than a treat. Brandon was painfully aware that he was changing the rules on them and kind of unfairly mad at them just because he was hurt. Missing out. Jealous. And all of that meant he didn't have to be an asshole about any of this, however much the more stubborn and primitive parts of his brain wanted to be. They hadn't meant to hurt him—Brandon was certain of that much at least—and that meant he didn't get to hit back to even it out.

He looked up then, to see both Will and Alex wearing almost identically stricken expressions, and—great. How stupid was it that watching them be happy together upset him, but upsetting them also made him feel about two inches tall, made him want to take it back immediately and rewind the last day or so, to Alex looking at him with warmth, to Will teasing him about how quickly—or not—he ate his food.

"Saader," Will said, unhappily, his mouth twisting with it. "That's—that is the last thing we want."

"I just can't," Brandon said, wishing he could, more than he could even begin to say. "It's not really your fault, we never actually, well. Anything, really, but I can't keep wishing that we had."

Will shot a glance over Brandon's head to Alex that he couldn't quite parse, and then shifted his weight, turning to face Brandon properly, one knee folded up under him so that he fit without tipping off the couch or crowding Brandon even more.

"We should talk," he said eventually.

Brandon wondered why, for once, those words didn't actually make him feel worse than he had to start out with. It wasn't usually a good sign. Maybe that meant this was already as terrible as it could possibly be and could only get better?

"Okay," Brandon said carefully. He tried to make himself relax, forcing some of the tension out of his shoulders, but he wasn't particularly successful. He looked over at Will, and then back at Alex, and then back to Will again before admitting, "Uh, it's kind of hard to do this when I have to pick which one of you I'm looking at?"

It seemed rude to turn his back on Alex, but ruder still to let Will talk about—any of this stuff—and not actually be able to make eye contact with him.

"Oh!" Alex said, and without wasting a moment he got up, stepped around Brandon, who automatically appreciated the closeup view of his ass at eye level, before reminding himself he had to stop doing things like that, and dropped casually into Will's lap, one arm slung around his neck for balance.

"Warn me next time," Will grumbled, but he hadn't budged under Alex's weight, and the arm he slung around his waist to counterbalance him was easy and affectionate, his fingers pushing just under his shirt like they were magnetized, like he was used to this and anticipating the permission Alex would so easily and obviously give him.

God, Brandon was so fucking jealous.

"So," Will started. "We invited you over for a reason."

"Uh, yeah, lunch." Brandon hadn't exactly forgotten it, however exquisitely awkward an experience it had been and therefore however much he might like to.

"No, not that," Will said. "I mean, yes, that too, but we only meant to invite you."

"The other two was sort of by accident," Alex explained.

Brandon blinked, not sure he was following this. "Boone and Ryan?"

"Yes!" Alex said, sounding relieved. Brandon wasn't sure why. "They were—there, when I started to ask, and it was easier to just invite them for lunch than try to explain in the locker room."

"Okay?" Brandon said, dubiously.

"We want you for more than lunch," Will said, his tone a little too patient. He dug his fingers into Alex's side in a way that made him squawk most undignifiedly, shushing him before he kept talking. Apparently Alex wasn't explaining well enough for Will, either. "We want you," Will corrected, and Brandon couldn't possibly have heard that correctly.

There was a rushing in his ears, like all the air was trying to leave the room, and his heart was beating far too fast, and he kept forgetting to breathe through his nose without holding it, tiny black sparkles around the edges of his vision before he got himself under control again.

"Want me?" Brandon repeated dumbly, much more highly pitched than he would have preferred. Flirting, sure, he'd been pretty sure that was okay, but Will seemed to be suggesting that they wanted something more than that, and it was equal parts everything Brandon wanted and the worst idea in the world.

They'd been inching towards this for so long, but Brandon had never actually thought they were serious about it. And apparently he'd been underestimating them.

"Uh, yeah," Will said.

"If you want us too," Alex interrupted, and got an elbow of his own into Will's side this time. "Not just—all of this, that we've been doing this year. But properly."

"You want a threesome," Brandon said, and almost couldn't believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

Alex shrugged minutely, and gave him a sunny smile.

"We both like you," he said again. "And I think you like us."

"Well, yeah," Brandon said. It seemed somewhat inadequate, though, so he shifted his weight and made himself meet Alex's eyes. "I like—I mean, I'm interested. In both of you."

"Good," Will said. "Uh, we're not just going to, uh. This isn't just for sex. Unless you want it to be."

Brandon blinked. That was blunt, and yet—it seemed so inevitable, in a way. Of course this was how Will would put it.

And frankly, Brandon had to admire not just the fact that he'd managed to proposition someone in what wasn't remotely his native tongue, but that he'd done it that smoothly.

"That sounds good to me," he said, and grinned, helplessly, at both of them. "I-Is it weird that I didn't see this coming?"

Will shrugged at him, but continued to look as smug as a human could possibly look, and Alex wasn't exactly much better. "We weren't good enough at flirting?" he asked.

"You were too good," Brandon said promptly. "I didn't, uh. I wasn't sure you really meant it. Or, uh, that you'd follow through. I did know you meant it." He just hadn't thought this was any kind of possibility, not really, not for more than a yearning heartbeat.

"Well, then let's be very clear," Alex said. "We would like to date you, and sleep with you, and do all of those things."

Brandon thought the smile might be taking over his entire face, by that point. "I would like to date you and sleep with you and everything else, too," he replied.

"Great," Will said, "now can we go to bed?"

Brandon almost pointed out that it was barely mid-afternoon, but caught himself just in time, because obviously that wasn't what Will meant, and Brandon wasn't going to cut his nose off to spite his face, thank you very much.

And he really wanted to go to bed with them.

"Yeah," he said, "I would definitely like that."

When Brandon followed them back to the bedroom it was even more clear—as if it'd ever been in doubt—that it was occupied by two people, and not just Will. Thankfully, the bed also looked pretty big, enough that Brandon didn't have to worry about how all three of them were going to fit.

Logistically, it was obviously going to be just fine. On every other level… Brandon was less certain. As much as he wanted this, and as clear as it was becoming that Will and Alex did too, he knew that wasn't necessarily going to translate to it working out, in the end.

But he was damn well going to try.

Alex skinned out of his clothing in record time, lounging on top of the covers totally naked and obviously watching Brandon and Will as they followed suit at a slightly more sedate speed. Brandon couldn't deny that he was a little distracted by that, by being able to look, because Alex was gorgeous, that wasn't exactly news, but now he could actually look—and there was Will, just out of arm's reach, and equally distracting. Equally hot. If it hadn't been obvious and potentially embarrassing as fuck Brandon would have wanted to pinch himself just to make sure this was really happening and he wasn't just having the best dream ever.

"Come on," Alex said, impatiently.

"What, you don't want us to stop and appreciate you first?" Will said, with enough of a smirk that it was obvious he was teasing.

"Well, you can do that more effectively over here," Alex pointed out.

Brandon swallowed hard and shoved his pants off, stepping out of them fast enough that he almost could've tripped, if he wasn't careful. But Will and Alex were so distracting, all the more so now that he knew he was allowed to look.

"Saader, come on," Alex complained, and Brandon felt whatever remaining nerves he might've been feeling about this whole thing melt away. It was obvious how sincere Alex was, and the possessive way that Will immediately wrapped an arm around him as he climbed onto the mattress to join them merely reinforced that. This just felt right, and safe, and like it was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Alex followed that up by tugging him closer and kissing him oh-so-carefully, while Will's fingertips skidded along his spine and down to his ass, and Brandon pretty much stopped thinking, period.

Kissing Alex was even easier than Brandon had dared to hope it would be, and maybe all that time they'd been on the ice together was paying off in other ways too, because there was none of the awkwardness Brandon usually felt kissing someone for the first time, learning how they liked to move and be touched. It was just all heat and intensity and Alex's mouth, rich and warm and mobile.

And then Brandon yelped and pulled back, because Will was clearly not going to miss out on any of this, but instead of watching or waiting his turn—with Brandon or Alex, he wasn't picky about the order apparently—he'd just leaned in to follow the trail his hands had left down Brandon's back with his mouth. And if Brandon had thought Will's mouth felt good along the curve of his shoulder blade, and down his flanks, and then, daringly, along the curve of his ass, well.

He hadn't quite been expecting Will to put his lips anywhere further than that.

"What?" Alex murmured, brushing Brandon's hair back with one hand, easy affection in his face and voice. He got up on his knees just enough to look over Brandon's shoulder and then grinned in understanding. "Oh, yeah, I should've warned you Will likes to put his tongue exciting places."

Brandon tried to come up with a sensible-sounding response to that but it was basically impossible with Will doing—that. "Nghhh," was the best he could manage, and at least when Alex laughed at him it was with clear sympathy, the expression of a man who had been there and knew exactly how good it felt.

And, now that he was thinking about it, Brandon wanted to watch that, too. God, it'd be so hot, Alex spread out and probably moaning, slowly going pink as Will worked him over, but it was hard to focus his mind on that part of the fantasy when Will was doing such a good job driving Brandon out of it. His tongue was warm and wet and insistent, his lips dragging easily over Brandon's skin. He got his hands onto Brandon's ass as well, giving himself better leverage before licking firmly over Brandon's hole, thumbs digging into the muscle as he sent shivering bolts of sensation through Brandon, made it feel like his bones were turning to water, turned on even more, impossibly fast.

"Yeah, he's good at that," Alex said, and cupped a hand along the side of Brandon's face, looking searchingly at him.

Brandon wanted to go back to kissing him—at least, sometime soon, maybe whenever his brain was working properly again—but Alex seemed to get that he was too close to the edge to be good at anything that involved more than two braincells working in concert, and he just kept his hands on Brandon, supporting him and holding him close, drinking in everything that Will was doing to him.

"Let's maybe move a little," Alex suggested what felt like a few seconds later, and he scooted back, pulled Brandon with him, until Brandon was stretched out over top of him, Alex warm and naked and very obviously turned on underneath him. "This okay?" Alex asked, quickly, that comment very obviously directed more at Brandon and he nodded frantically, breathing hard.

"Yeah," Brandon said. "Yeah, I—fuck, it's good, please."

It was, it was somehow even better like that, sprawled out over top of Alex, breathing hot into the side of his neck while Will kept going, till Brandon thought he was going to catch fire and burn up from the inside out.

Alex was making soft encouraging noises, ones that didn't sound like English or Swedish, just sounded fond and turned on, at least a fraction of how overwhelmed Brandon was. He was running his hands up and down Brandon's sides, partly soothing, partly just keeping him mostly in one place. Brandon was squirming—hard not to, with Will's tongue dragging along the crease between his cheeks, getting him good and wet, enough that Brandon could feel it in the cool touch of air against his skin before it evaporated. Alex was squirming underneath him, too, and with an effort of will Brandon managed to line himself up a little better, so that Alex's dick was pushing up against the groove between hip and thigh, giving him something to rock up into. Brandon had to be leaking steadily by then, so close to coming, and every time he forgot himself enough to thrust forward his dick rubbed against Alex's belly, getting him closer and closer.

Will backed off for a couple of seconds, his hands still on Brandon, fingers softly implacable, and Brandon could hear him taking a couple of deep breaths before he flattened his palm on Brandon's ass and asked, a little roughly, "Still okay?"

"Fuck," Brandon said, the word almost a sob. "Yeah, that's good."

"Glad to hear it," Will said, smug and amused; he knew what he was doing to Brandon. "Can you get off like this?"

"Pretty sure," Brandon said, voice tight, and he knew Alex could feel it too, the way his dick tried to get even harder at that suggestion. It went hand in hand with the way that Brandon felt like if he just gave in to all of this feeling he'd be a shaking mess between them, half-blind with it, caught up and wild, not sure whether he wanted to collapse forward or push back. He wanted to do both, and there was a fairly obvious logical flaw with that plan.

"That's so fucking hot," Alex said, his voice more gravelly than usual, sending shivers through Brandon as well. God, Alex had to be just as turned on as he was, looking up to see the way that Will was taking Brandon to pieces, feeling every swipe of his tongue through the way Brandon's hips moved, pushing back uselessly while Will teased him, grinding down against Alex for a little relief for them both.

Brandon couldn't seem to get the words together to respond to that, too busy trying to remember how to breathe, but as the three of them found a rhythm together he did manage to shift a little more, braced over Alex so he could see his face. So he could watch the way Alex was panting, open-mouthed, his eyes huge and dark, face flushed with arousal. So he could nuzzle his way back up Alex's throat, find his mouth again and kiss him, hot and desperate and so fucking good.

Without even pausing to pull back or take a breath, Will ran his hand down the back of Brandon's thigh, nudged at the back of his knee for Brandon to spread his legs more. Brandon twitched reflexively, nearly bit Alex's tongue as well, a little too ticklish for Will to do that, especially with no warning. But he also hitched his knee up like Will so clearly wanted him too, because, well, following Will's directions was working out amazingly for him so far.

And that did too, it turned out.

It changed the way that Brandon was sprawled out over Alex, gave them both a little more leverage to rub off on each other, and it gave Will enough space to drag his thumb over slick, wet skin, pushing in just a little, enough to make Brandon whine high in the back of his throat.

It meant that when Will got his mouth right back on Brandon, licking firmly, he could also drag his fingertips down between his legs, rubbing over the delicate skin behind his balls, and, if the way Alex bucked and whined underneath him was any indication, also meant Will could reach Alex, too.

And it meant that it only took a minute or two longer for Brandon to realize that he couldn't hold out any longer, too close to the edge for any further self restraint.

He pulled away from Alex for a moment and got as far as, "Ohh, gonna come, Will—" before it swept over him, spilling hot against Alex's skin, eyes closed tight and muscles locked up, shaking apart under Will's hands and mouth.

Alex made an appreciative noise and swore, softly and under his breath, and by some miracle of willpower held off until Brandon could open his eyes again, shivering a little in the come down before managing to regain his scrambled wits. "So hot," he repeated, and bucked up under Brandon, tilting him to one side so that he slid off, rolling onto the mattress beside him, tangled up with Will who'd had the presence of mind to shift the same way. Brandon wasn't sure how they were communicating so well without even saying a word, but practice had to come into it.

And fuck was he ever glad to be a part of it.

Maybe a microsecond passed from the time Alex got Brandon's weight off his lower body and the point where he got his hand onto his own dick, jerking himself fast and rough. His hips pushed up into the clench of his fingers, and Brandon could only lie there blinking and appreciate the absolutely filthy and incredibly hot show he was getting. Alex whined, opened his mouth to say something and Will reached around Brandon to run his thumb over Alex's lower lip, pressing hard enough to drag it down, pushing back against his teeth. The next sound Alex made was much closer to a groan and he arched up, sucking Will's thumb into his mouth, tongue swiping lewdly around it. Brandon remembered, then, just where exactly Will's hands had just been and felt himself flush even more obviously, feeling too hot in the quiet room.

Alex had to be thinking along exactly the same lines because he shuddered and came all over himself, adding to the mess Brandon had left on his hip and belly, still sucking hard on Will's thumb.

"Fuck," Will swore softly, and Brandon didn't exactly have anything useful to add to that.

They all lay there for a few seconds, no other sound in the room but the three of them breathing hard, and the soft rustle of skin against cotton as Will shifted impatiently, as Brandon rolled over and then sat up, reaching back to him.

"Gonna let us get you?" Brandon asked softly, catching Alex's gaze significantly before looking back at Will, one eyebrow arched in query.

"Please," Will said, a little shakily, as he sat up again, shuffling closer to Brandon on the bed, until they were pressed hip to hip. There was a hectic flush to his cheeks, his eyes bright and very wide, and even if that hadn't been more than enough of a clue for Brandon to know just how turned on he was, well. Will had one hand in his lap, almost absently pressing his palm over his dick, and Brandon could see enough of him even so to be sure that he was still hard, his dick blood-dark and hard, leaking where it bobbed against his stomach.

Will leaned over to the nightstand and grabbed a handful of tissues, wiping his mouth off and rubbing his lips and teeth with them, stretching his jaw out like it ached. Brandon swallowed hard, unable to stop thinking about what they'd just done, where Will's mouth had just been.

It maybe should have made him pause, or at least give him some more time to recover, or brush his teeth first, or whatever—but Brandon wasn't that picky, and Will didn't look like he was all that worried, and, well. Fuck it, Brandon thought, and reached out. He got one hand over Will's, cupping his dick, enjoying the heat of his skin against his palm, the faint scrape of hair around it when he traced the length from tip to root. And Brandon got his other hand on Will's face, fingers laid alongside his jaw, tilting his face up, drawing him closer.

"That was amazing," Brandon said, the words feeling almost as raw as he did.

And it felt like the words were barely adequate, too. God, that had been so fucking good. And that was the first time they'd done it; how much better was it going to be when they were all comfortable with each other, totally familiar in their intimacy? He couldn't help but shiver, imagining. But that wasn't important right then; the only thing really on his mind was making sure that Will felt as good as he did. "Like, holy shit, wow."

"Worked for me too," Will said, his grin dirty, daring Brandon to push back, to match him.

"Fuck, come here," Brandon said, breathing him in, staring, willing him to come those last few inches closer.

Will did him one better; he rose up to his knees—Brandon's hands fell away, giving him space to move—and then he climbed into Brandon's lap, knees either side of his thighs, all his weight coming down onto Brandon, anchoring him in place. The mattress shifted under them as Alex moved as well, eeling in behind Brandon so that he wound up behind him, with Brandon and Will both in the vee of his legs, his chest warm against Brandon's back, support and encouragement all at once. Alex's hands landed on the outside of Brandon's thighs, slid up to rub over Will's quads as well, and Brandon couldn't have said which one of the three of them hissed in their breath sharply at that.

Or maybe it was just him, caught between them again, and no less eager even after coming that hard.

It was hard to think about anything more than the greedy present, nothing but what he wanted and how, and Will was right there, so bright and eager and needy. Brandon didn't need to stop longer than it took to say, "This okay?" as he licked his palm and then moved to curl it right back around Will's dick.

The low groan that was Will's only response was gratifying beyond all measure, superheating Brandon's nerves in a split second.

Brandon let his head fall forward, forehead braced on Will's shoulder as he watched his hand move, watched the way that Will twitched and swore and shivered against him, going liquid under his hands. It would've been easy to lose himself like that, but Alex was keeping him grounded as well, warm and solid behind him, his hands moving easily from Brandon to Will and back again. There was no hesitation to his touches, and he was—not indiscriminate, Brandon thought, hissing in a breath, trying to find his balance. But there was no difference in the way he touched Will than in how he touched Brandon, and that was almost the best part of all of this. Brandon wasn't entirely sure how he fit yet, didn't entirely know what he was doing or how it was all going to work out, but he was confident, absolutely, that he fit with them. That the three of them could be something good.

"Oh my god, Saader," Will moaned, his hips jerking forward, right before he came, getting all three of them even messier than they'd been to start with. "Fuck, Wenny, you were so right."

Brandon nudged Will, carefully, his brain feeling slow and sticky and five minutes behind the play. Will slid sideways, undignified, but it at least gave Brandon somewhere to move, and all three of them extricated themselves from each other, shifting around until they could all fit on the mattress, sprawled out and too tired to move, even though Brandon for one was definitely lying in a wet spot. He was planning to make that his future self's problem, though.

"What was Alex right about?" Brandon asked, once the haze had cleared a little, and he was starting to wonder about what else they'd skipped, falling straight into bed like this.

Will mumbled something, facedown in the pillow, his eyes firmly closed. And Brandon had thought that he was bad at staying awake after he got off.

Brandon kicked him in the shins, lightly, just enough to get his attention.

"Yeah, that's why he waited till after us," Alex said, smirking in a way that was just unfairly attractive. Brandon took a moment to appreciate it, although he wasn't going to admit it if he asked.

Apparently being chirped by Wenny was enough to get Will's attention even if Brandon kicking him wasn't, because Will rolled over, rolled his eyes dramatically at the inconvenience, and announced to the ceiling, "Your hands."

Brandon blinked.

"Sorry, what?"

Will sighed, and then rolled onto his side, getting right into Brandon's personal space again. His smile was sleepy, and entirely wicked as he reached over to curl his fingers around Brandon's wrist, thumb rubbing over his pulse point. "Soft hands," he said, and gave a little shrug. "I'm a big fan."

Brandon felt a smile tug at his lips and he gave in to the temptation to lean in and press a quick kiss to Will's lips, before twisting around to find Alex's mouth as well, lingering for a few seconds as each of them kissed him back in turn. "Glad to hear it," he said.

"Napping now?" Alex asked, curling closer to Brandon as well, his shoulder nudging against Brandon's, snug up against his side. Apparently he liked being the big spoon, and Brandon was absolutely not complaining.

"Yeah, sounds good," Brandon said, wriggling around just enough to get the pillow in a better position under his head, and to prompt a mumbled complaint from Will about being jostled in the process.

"You can stay, right?" Alex asked, half into the pillow.

He was tucked close enough that Brandon could feel the way he'd gotten slightly tense, like there was a lot more riding on the question than he wanted to admit. Considering how wrung out and relaxed he'd been five minutes ago after they'd all gotten off, it was a noticeable contrast, and Brandon could feel his own muscles twitch and lock up in sympathy. They were supposed to be past all this now, he thought, a trifle resentfully. It was meant to be easy after you agreed on what you wanted and slept together and everything. And—Brandon wasn't answering his question, and that wasn't going to help any of them.

"Yeah," he said, and Alex relaxed again instantly.

That had been easier than Brandon was expecting.

"Good," Alex said, and Will agreed before shuffling around to lie on his stomach, his arm slung low over Brandon's hips and resting on Alex's belly, possessive and comforting.

"I meant it," Brandon said quietly, hoping that it would be enough, for then. "You're stuck with me as long as you'll have me, you know?"

"We did say we'd take you home," Will said, and Alex picked up the other half of the sentence like they'd rehearsed it, or maybe they really were just that much in sync.

"We didn't say when we would," he finished.

Brandon thought for a moment.

It was probably moving too fast, but he found he didn't mind that, this time. "Or we could just call this home for now?" he suggested.

It wasn't like he was going to be moving any time soon, or demanding that they do, but it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to just… consolidate the time they spent together a little more officially. And Brandon had a funny feeling that no matter what any of them said, he was going to be spending a lot of time at their apartment, in their bed.

"That works too," Alex said, and Brandon didn't have to open his eyes again to know he was smiling, satisfied and happy. He'd put money on betting that he and Will were making identical expressions too.

Yeah, he thought. Despite everything he'd worried might happen… this really did seem like it was going to work out just fine.

[]

Brandon had been around enough fights in the O and in the NHL to know what to do then; he backed off out of the way, and felt his eyebrows climb halfway up his face as the linesmen just let them go at it.

Wenny wasn't the sort of guy who got physically aggressive on the ice or off it, as far as Brandon had seen, and if he'd been guessing he would've said it had to be his first career fight. He didn't remember a whole lot about Tkachuk—not being in the west anymore meant Brandon didn't wind up paying a ton of attention to or hearing about any of the younger guys not named Connor McDavid, but he had to guess he'd probably gotten more than a couple of tips from his dad.

Tkachuk landed a wild right on Alex's cheek, and Brandon hid a wince. Okay, he'd definitely gotten some tips.

Alex shifted his grip on Tkachuk's jersey and landed a couple of shots of his own, and then they went back and forth like that for another thirty seconds or so, until one of them overbalanced and they both went down onto the ice, sprawling awkwardly before the linesmen dove in to separate them, grabbing at flailing limbs and telling them they were done.

Alex leaned away from the official frog-marching him towards the box to mouth something at Tkachuk, and Brandon couldn't hear it, and couldn't see enough of his face to even make a good guess at lipreading it, but whatever he'd said, it had to have been inflammatory because Tkachuk tried to get at him one last time before seeming to remember it was a linesman and not a teammate or another player with a hold on his jersey and that taking any kind of liberties there was going to end very, very badly for him.

Brandon looked up at the scoreboard and thought: 59 more minutes of this.

Fuck.

This was probably going to turn into some kind of shit-show if they weren't all careful.

And then he leaned over to tap his stick against the boards in a salute as the door to the penalty box closed behind Alex, because he was a hockey player first and foremost, and he knew what he was supposed to be doing in that situation.

He was less sure of what to do in that situation after the game, later that night. It helped a lot that they'd won, adding another one to their streak, staying hot. It made it easy to enjoy themselves, out on the town with a day before their next game, and not a whole lot to worry about.

"Thanks," Brandon said to Wenny, handing him a drink. It seemed like the appropriate move, since he had technically been fighting for Brandon's sake. Not that Brandon was one to encourage violence, of course. But he appreciated the gesture.

Wenny gave him a surprisingly sweet smile, and Brandon noted absently that his lip was split where Tkachuk must have landed one, and if he wasn't getting a black eye he certainly had the ghost of a bruise along the side of his jaw.

"Any time," Alex said, and then reached out to grab Bill, who was on his way back to their table with a pitcher in his hand and a stack of glasses in the other.

Bill set them all down on the table and then slid into the booth next to Alex, curling close in the most natural way possible, tucked up against him like they were a matched set, like they had practiced it so often that it was second nature.

Brandon was only the tiniest bit jealous.

Which was stupid, of course; it wasn't like this was even remotely the most couple-y thing they'd done in front of him. He should be getting used to it, he should just tune it out the same way the rest of the team seemed to. Although as Brandon looked around the bar he could see that Z was practically in Josh's lap, and almost making a facial expression in response to whatever Sedsy and Nuti were saying to him, so maybe this team just had a higher bar to clear for something to look like more than just bros.

And it wasn't like he didn't remember what it was like to have someone like that himself. Maybe that was his problem, really. He was tight with Jack, sure, and with a few of the guys, but nothing like the way he'd been so close to Andy and Smitty in Chicago. Nothing like the way him and Leds had clicked; even before they were more than just friends. They'd always been in each others' pockets, all over each other, and it was only in watching Will and Alex now that he was starting to understand how that must have looked from the outside.

He'd always figured they weren't that obvious, that it was just like the way him and Tro used to spend every minute together up in Saginaw. And that—wasn't even close, not really.

Not if the way that Will and Alex were so immediately obvious was true for anyone else looking. No one else had seemed to blink at them around Nationwide in the time that Brandon had been with the team, though, and he was pretty sure Will had only gotten traded, like, a month before Brandon had, so it couldn't just be that. But either he was suddenly oversensitive about this whole thing, or everyone knew and no one cared.

Or maybe it was both.

He wasn't sure if that was a depressing thought or not. It was one he didn't need to dwell on though, so Brandon took the glass Will offered him and downed a few beers, hoping that if nothing else, it'd dull his ability to notice every time their arms brushed by the table.

As plans went, Brandon had probably made better ones.

He was closer to drunk than he'd been in a long while by the time they all got up to leave, and the floor slid around alarmingly in his peripheral vision as he got to his feet.

"Oh shit," he mouthed, not that anyone could've heard him over the pounding music, but Alex noticed, somehow, got a grip on his elbow and helped Brandon find his balance.

Apparently he and Will could communicate without words off the ice, too, because it felt like Brandon blinked and then Will was at his other side, the two of them steadying him as they crossed the sticky bar floor and headed for the bracingly cold outdoors, and home. Well, their home for the evening, anyhow.

The noise muffling conversation dropped away as soon as they were outside, felt like the cushioning to the blow that was the cold night air into his lungs, biting where he hadn't turned his coat collar up yet. They weren't anything like silent, though; Brandon could finally hear the rest of his teammates chattering around him, bitching about the cold, still gleeful about the win, audibly looking forward to their beds.

"Whoa," Dubi said, turning to stare at Brandon, and walking backwards as they headed to the curb to hail cabs or whatever Calgary offered in the way of Ubers. He narrowly avoided walking into a streetlight and Matty snickered, draped all over Cam and not even pretending to be sober. Brandon just stared at him, and wondered what was so interesting.

"Guys," Dubi said, like he'd made a great discovery, and Cam reached out to grab his sleeve and drag him closer to the rest of their group. "Guys, Saader is fucked up."

"I am not," Brandon protested, but his tongue felt too big for his mouth, and he was slurring a little, too, so okay, maybe Dubi had a slight point.

"You are a little," Will said, too precisely in a way that made Brandon think that he wasn't entirely sober either.

"'m not little," Brandon replied indignantly, squinting at Will. What was he even trying to say, seriously, Brandon was stumped.

Whatever it was, he wasn't the only one thinking it, because Alex honest-to-God giggled and buried his face in the side of Brandon's neck, his breath hot and beer-sour, damp against the skin his scarf wasn't covering. And Brandon froze, missed his step and nearly sprawled out full length on the icy sidewalk as he realized it wasn't just breathing, Alex had—licked his neck? What the hell? Had he forgotten who he was hanging onto?

Brandon made himself take a slow, deep breath in, the cold air helping clear his head and sober him up a little more. He looked over and no, Alex had his other hand tucked familiarly into Will's back pocket, cheerfully groping him while he pressed his lips against whatever parts of Brandon's throat he could find bare.

Brandon made a gurgling noise that probably wouldn't have been out of place in some kind of trashy B-grade horror movie and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now.

Well, other than wondering whether he should follow Will and Alex back to their hotel room once they made it back indoors, because he was absolutely already considering that anyway. Even though he knew he shouldn't.

"Yeah, we've lost them," Boone said with a sigh, and then as the walk signal changed, he and Jonesy both got a hand on Brandon and Alex's shoulders respectively and started steering them across the road. Brandon wasn't going to complain about letting someone else do the thinking for him at that point.

Alex was still attached limpet-like to him by the time they made it back to the hotel, into the foyer and up to the floor that all of their rooms were on, and Brandon had to admit that there wasn't even going to be a question. He was going to at least talk to Bill and Wenny, and if he had to crawl back to his own room in ignominy after that, at least he was probably going to be too hungover to feel too ashamed of that tomorrow.

"We're in here," Will said, and Brandon followed him in the door, sat down heavily on the end of the bed closest to the door. Alex climbed onto the bed beside him, but didn't—to Brandon's vague disappointment—make any further move on him.

Will vanished into the bathroom and came out with two bottles of water, draining half of one himself before handing the remainder to Alex, and giving the other one to Brandon.

He took it and followed suit, figuring he'd thank himself for that in the morning no matter what.

"So," Will said eventually, standing awkwardly in front of them, before swearing under his breath—Brandon had enough scraps of Swedish to get that, at least—and shuffling onto the mattress on Brandon's other side, his gaze darting between Alex and Brandon. "Do I need to spell this out?"

"Ugh," said Alex, and "Please," Brandon said, still feeling off-balance, and not just as a result of the alcohol and altitude.

"We like you," Will said simply.

"A lot," Alex said, although he was lying flat out on the mattress by then and staring up at the ceiling, not making eye contact with either of them. Brandon got the impression he was finding this almost as awkward as Brandon, which was ridiculous, because Alex was one of the most stupidly attractive people Brandon had ever seen, and surely he had to have a lot more practice than this at approaching people for threesomes, which Brandon was almost certain now was what was actually happening.

"Oh," Brandon said.

"And you like us, yes?" Alex went on, and then he did look at Brandon, straining his neck a little to keep the eye contact.

Brandon lay down to make that easier, and decided Alex was a genius. Lying down was awesome, almost as good as two hot guys hitting on him, and definitely more achievable than anything complicated like thinking too hard about this situation. He turned his head to smile at Alex, and got distracted by how pretty his eyes were.

"I definitely like you both," Brandon said, and rolled over to see if Will had decided to lie down as well. He didn't want Will feeling left out at all, that would suck. "And we should definitely make out. Um, if you're into that."

"We're into that," Will said, lips twitching. "You're cute, Saader."

Brandon preened a little, and wished he was sober enough to suggest doing more than just kissing. Then again, if he was more sober, he probably wouldn't have gotten to the point of needing to use Alex as a crutch, so this whole thing would probably have taken even longer to play out. On the balance, Brandon was happy to just take the win as presented.

"You too," Brandon said, and reached over to brush his lips over Will's, close-mouthed and almost chaste, if it hadn't been for the thrum of need that was making his heart beat twice as fast, that had his mind racing and body heating up all over again.

"Mmm," Will said, and kissed him back, slipping him some tongue as well, teeth grazing over Brandon's lower lip. Yeah, Brandon was definitely on board to do this some more.

"Hey," Alex said indignantly from Brandon's other side, and he felt a tug as Alex got his hand into the side of Brandon's shirt, tugged him back to face him again. "My turn," Alex said, and he leaned in for a kiss that was more than a little dirty, that took a beeline straight to Brandon's basest urges and lit up every nerve he had.

"Okay, yeah, that's hot," Will said, like he was continuing a conversation that Brandon hadn't been there for but kind of wished he had, and when Alex finally let Brandon go, it was only long enough for him to turn and kiss Will again.

Brandon could feel himself sinking into the soft hotel mattress as they kept lying there, exchanging careful kisses and quiet words, and blinked hard a few times before he had to admit to himself that as good as this was, he was seriously flagging.

"We can pick this up again in the morning, right?" he asked, trying not to sound too pitiful. If this was one night only then obviously he was still going to stay until they kicked him out, but if it wasn't—

Well, that was a path Brandon was finding himself eager to take.

"You bet," Alex said.

Will just kissed them both and then rolled over to turn the light off, fumbling with his phone long enough to set an alarm.

And that, Brandon thought muzzily, unable to wipe the grin off his face even then, was that.

[]

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “The usual?”

“Sounds good to me,” Brandon agreed.

Lunch felt a lot more like normal, like the way that hanging out with Wenny and Bill usually was, just talking easily and rolling his eyes at Will stealing food off Alex’s plate and, when that got him a sharp rap on the knuckles with a chopstick, turning right around and trying the same thing on Brandon.

Brandon let him take precisely one piece of sashimi before threatening to put the chopstick somewhere Will wouldn’t like if he tried that again, the threat coming to his lips easily after years of defending his plate from constantly-hungry hockey players with no manners.

“Oh, no, he’d probably enjoy that,” Alex said, smirking, and Brandon wasn’t sure why he was the only one blushing at that. Will just flicked a piece of preserved ginger at Alex and laughed when Alex had to pick it off the front of his shirt.

Yeah, they were definitely back to normal, Brandon thought, and pushed aside the vague sense of disquiet that kept trying to make itself known.

* * *

Things felt normal for a couple of weeks, enough that Brandon could mostly forget all about it. They won a few more games, Nationwide filling up more and more and getting progressively louder, and then they went on the road and picked up a few more points there, too.

They’d gone into the Saddledome fired up about the game, ready to get some payback after being shutout in their own barn a few weeks ago, wanting to at least split the series with the Flames if they could.

And they’d come out of the gate hard enough, getting a good shot on goal off their first shift before coming back to defend a shot against. Brandon had been racing for the puck at the blue line, focused mostly on getting it out of their end under control before going for a change and one of the Flames got a shoulder into him, getting just the right angle to put him down on the ice before he could duck out of the way.

The puck had gotten out at least, and Brandon had picked himself up and just headed to the bench. He wasn’t too proud to take the chance he got then to take a shot back at Tkachuk, giving him enough of a shove that he’d feel it, but that nine times out of ten the refs weren’t going to bother calling, and he would’ve figured that’d be the end of it, unless the kid wanted to start running around for the rest of the game, except then Alex pushed past him and got in a cross-check of his own, and before Brandon could quite believe what he was seeing, Tkachuk’s gloves were off and so were Wenny’s.

[]

Jack and Saader had their heads together, bent over an open book. That was a rare enough sight in the dressing room; a few of the guys would read on the plane or bus, but nothing usually came out of their bags in the dressing room, other than phones or wallets for the guys who had fines or bets to pay up on.

And those books were usually paperbacks, or occasionally a little larger, the kind that'd make half the team chirp the guys about needing glasses if the print was too small, but this book was a lot bigger.

"You just roll a new one," Will was explaining earnestly to Z, with a shrug. "It's fun."

Z looked like he was kind of concerned he'd gotten drafted to a team of helpless nerds instead of hockey players, not that those two were mutually exclusive, or so Nick would usually think, but then he caught a glimpse of the half-open bag spilling dice into Josh's stall, and put two and two together.

"…wait, you guys are playing D&D?" he said, a little more loudly maybe than he'd intended to, because conversations stopped all over the locker room.

"Um," Saader said, a little pink around the cheeks, as if Nick didn't know full well how big a dork he was, and like Nick hadn't already called him on it more than once, see here: that whole thing at the Rock Hall. But he couldn't believe anyone had been able to hide this for any amount of time considering the only people worse at secrets than hockey players were five year olds, and that was only because sometimes the hockey players remembered not to trade away their info for a chocolate chip cookie.

Well, sometimes; Saader had admittedly caught him and Janelle both out a few times with some well timed baking.

"So who's DMing?" Nick asked, because now that he knew it was going on, he wanted to know everything. "Who's playing?"

Hands went up around the room. A few more than Nick would have picked, actually. Interesting.

"Well I'm hurt no one invited me," he said, and managed to hold a straight face for all of about ten seconds before snickering. "Really though," he added. "I'm in if you guys have space for one more."

"We do need a cleric," Cam pointed out.

"He's playing a barbarian, isn't he," Nick said, to the room at large, and it really wasn't even a question.

"Dubi's a Ranger," Cam said, trying to deflect, although Nick noted that didn't actually mean he was wrong in any way.

"Cut the cord, man," Hartsy muttered, with an eye roll, but enough of a smirk to undercut it, too.

God, Nick's team were a bunch of nerds. Lucky he was down with that.

"Yeah, okay, I'm in," he said. "Bobs?"

"I will play too," Bob said, mostly solemnly, and Nick high-fived him.

"They're going to hug every time we defeat a bad guy, aren't they?" Josh whispered in Z's direction, not quietly enough, and Nick gave him a look that promised some appropriate form of payback. Nothing below his dignity as captain, of course.

"Oh, like Will and Wenny don't already do that anyway," Cam said with a shrug. "No, you know what's going to happen, right?"

Everyone shut up and looked at Cam. He seemed unperturbed by the attention, which was… probably typical.

"You know how bad Dubi is about dice rituals," Cam said, with heavy significance, and Dubi snapped a towel at him and didn't look the slightest bit cowed, but everyone else looked at Dubi, looked at Bob, and then back at Cam before groaning or agreeing or, in some cases, both.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bob said, looking like he was about to pretend his English wasn't up to following the rest of them closely enough, again.

With a sudden vision of just how many D20s Nick could see winding up in Officer Bob's Dice Jail, well. Nick couldn't entirely blame them.

"Where do you play, anyway?" Nick asked. He didn't think they'd been camping out in the players lounge or anything; someone would have noticed or said something. Hell, they would have wound up on the team Snapchat or something, he couldn't see the social media team letting an opportunity like that go by.

"Savvy's place," Will said. "He's got the biggest table."

"The cleanest table," Savvy muttered, not even trying to lower his voice much, and, well, Nick'd had glimpses of most of the guys' rooms when they were on the road and aside from Z and maybe Saader, yeah, they were kind of a bunch of slobs. He could see how that would be the case.

Gags was sitting in his stall shaking his head, a rueful grin on his face, and recalled to his captainly duties, Nick stopped pushing for more info from the wayward roleplayers, and wandered in his direction.

"What's up, Gags?"

Sam looked up at him, looking somewhere between confused and deeply, deeply amused.

"This is the weirdest team, Fliggy, I swear to god."

Nick raised an eyebrow, because on the one hand he couldn't argue, but on the other he felt like he should.

"I was in Edmonton and they weren't this weird," Gags went on. "I mean, okay, they were maybe more cursed, but still."

"Ix-nay on the urse-cay," Hartsy called. "Do you wanna skate a bunch of Herbies for bringing that up again or what?"

"Don't call them Herbies, you're Canadian," Gags said, but he didn't keep arguing.

Nick's habit of making everyone watch Miracle when they hosted the team for Thanksgiving was also bearing fruit, apparently. Even if Bob pretended to glare at him and the Canadians all complained every time. He was more than satisfied with that, actually. His team of nerdy-ass hockey players had picked up two points for the night and apparently had even more team bonding activities planned than he'd thought, and that wasn't including the escape rooms all the kids were apparently obsessed with. A day that anyone could be pleased with, he figured, and turned his attention back to the next step.

He glanced over at the schedule posted by the whiteboard to remind himself when their next game was going to be, and, okay. Next up was the Avs on the road, just a quick roadie to ease them into the month. Time to start a new campaign, he thought, and cleared his throat, waiting till everyone's attention was back on him.

"Good game, boys," he said, and turned back to his own locker, already impatient for the next one.

[]

—as he noticed there was a lot more noise than usual coming from outside in the bowl.

Usually, security had chased most of the fans out by then, and it was just staff and arena employees cleaning up and the media doing whatever it was they did before leaving after the game; Nick’d seen Tom and Alison and Portzy leaving about the same time the team did more than once.

But there were definitely a lot of noises that didn’t sound like the arena crew laying down a floor over the ice for a concert or whatever else was going on while they were on the road, and they didn’t sound like fans getting rowdy, they sounded—

Everyone in the dressing room went silent, heads turning towards the door as they exchanged uncomfortable looks with each other.

That sounded, Nick thought, forcing himself to stay calm and not start expecting the worst, like screaming. And roaring? And… things breaking?

Even though he knew it was potentially dangerous, he couldn’t just leave whoever was out there, he had to try and help, or at least find out what the fuck was going on so they could call the cops or something. Nick took off down the tunnel at a dead run, mostly glad he’d had time to shower and change already and wasn’t trying to do that in skates.

And from what he could hear behind him, it sounded like the entire rest of the team was following him.

That became clear very quickly when he came out of the tunnel and onto the bench, skidding to a halt so quickly that Savvy and Korpi both ran into him, mumbling apologies that trailed off into shocked silence as they looked around.

Initially things looked almost normal. Nick had been imagining horrors, in the minute or so it’d taken to get out there, but most of the seats were empty and quiet, like usual, and there weren’t really any signs of people still in the upper or lower bowls, except—

“Holy fucking shit,” Nick said, staring at the hole in the roof.

At the torn up flooring on the mezzanine level, where the cannon had lived the entire time he’d been a Blue Jacket.

At the fucking huge golden dragon that was flapping its wings and hovering, impossible and huge, right in the middle of the giant hole in the roof of their building, dangling the cannon from its claws like it was a hawk with prey.

“Uh,” Nick said, and looked around—the rest of the team had, in fact, all crammed into the bench and were, to a man, staring up dumbfounded.

A stray thought in the back of Nick’s mind prompted the thought that they should hope the dragon had a good grip on that thing, because the unbearable irony of half of them getting crushed under the cannon if it dropped it seemed like something they should be aware of.

“At least it has the cannon and not people,” Bob said, sounding way too calm even if Nick did agree with the sentiment. Fucking goalies.

“Yeah, it does now,” Boone said, grimly. “Maybe we shouldn’t tempt it.”

“We’re all seeing a fucking dragon, right?” Saader asked, and then added, weakly, “I just wanted to check no one put LSD in the Gatorade or whatever, okay?”

“What are we supposed to do?” Nick asked, mostly rhetorically, and he ducked instinctively as the dragon beat its wings and—thankfully, although probably the air traffic controllers at John Glenn would not agree—began to gain altitude, spiralling up into the dark winter sky.

“I’m so glad you asked,” said a smooth voice behind him, and Nick whirled to see a man—lounging was the only possible word—in the seats behind the bench, unselfconsciously clad in purple robes, and looking a lot more like someone who belonged in a ren faire than the Arena district.

Nick took a quick look around and couldn’t see anyone else in the building, no sign of movement, nothing. Suspicious amounts of nothing, really, because if they’d come running then security should have done the same thing, and that was concerning all on its own.

“Now, now,” the main said smoothly, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not actually responsible for any of this, I’m merely… offering some assistance.” He gave them a quick grin, his eyes warm and dark as they glanced from one person to the next, a look that made even Nick shiver a little, and shift uncomfortably, because he was very married and extremely monogamous but also—well, he couldn’t deny that the guy was hot. “It’s a favor for a friend,” he went on. “But your, ah, team has upset someone powerful, and so they’ve taken something that means a lot to you.”

“The cannon?” Seth said, sounding dubious, stepping up to stand shoulder by shoulder with Nick. “That’s—actually, no, that makes sense, everyone but us hates it.”

“Oh, like none of you ever jump sometimes too,” Jack said, not quite quietly enough, and all of them laughed because, well, it wasn’t like he was wrong. But all the same, it was their cannon, goddammit.

“If you want it back,” the man said, “You’ll need to make your way to the tavern, and the way forward will be clear from there.”

He made a complicated gesture with his fingers, and there was a sudden feeling of intensely increasing pressure—Nick’s ears popped—and then all of a sudden he was gone, and the doors all around the arena were flying open as security poured in, yelling and slightly frantic, and Nick turned to exchange glances with his team before saying, and he was fairly confident he was in fact speaking for all of them, “What the fuck?”

It didn’t look like anyone from the arena had any idea what had happened, the cameras having all apparently shorted out before the roof had peeled off. Nick had heard the words “freak tornado” from a couple people, and it sounded like as good an explanation as any, especially since he was pretty sure if any of them tried to mention the dragon they’d be on IR before they could get a second word out.

He’d looked up and down the bench after they’d reassured everyone official that no one was hurt, thanks, it’s all good here, and made a quick decision that they were apparently going to have to deal with this themselves, so it would be better if they didn’t have an audience.

Nick didn’t think any of the lectures on being a good captain that he’d gotten from his dad or from Torts over the years had actually covered this kind of thing, but the principles had to be the same, didn’t they?

“Player’s meeting,” he said firmly, and miracle of miracles, no one at all argued with him, so a few minutes later they were all ensconced in the locker room, with one of Korpi’s old sticks stuffed through the door handles just so that no one could walk in unexpectedly.

“Okay,” Nick said, looking around the room, and relieved that while everyone looked various degrees of startled still, they were all on board with keeping this in the room. “So, has anything like this… happened to you guys before?”

He felt a little bad about the fact he looked at Bob first, and the rest of the Europeans next; he’d heard all kinds of weird shit about what happened to hockey players in Russia or the Finnish league okay, it wasn’t like that was totally out of nowhere, but to his surprise, the person who spoke up was Savvy.

“I’ve never seen a dragon before,” Savvy said, shrugging expressively, “but there was definitely at least one kraken, uh, incident in the Q back when I was with the Wildcats.”

Nick raised an eyebrow. He’d heard some wild stories from Savvy and the rest of the D over the years, but somehow that had never come up before.

Then again, before that evening, Nick would’ve probably greeted any story about a kraken with concern about alcohol poisoning and the symptoms thereof, and not actually as a warning about something he might have to deal with some day.

“Do you know what we should do now, then?” Boone asked, getting them all back on task, and Nick was so, so grateful for his As.

The person who spoke up then, unexpectedly, was Bjorky.

“We go to the tavern,” he said, like it was obvious.

“Do you think he meant R Bar?” Murrs asked, and Nick opened his mouth to say—something, but it honestly wasn’t like he had any better ideas.

“I guess we can try that,” Nick said, and so they all grabbed their gear and headed down the street.

The snow had picked up in the last hour or so while they’d been indoors, and Nick hoped that someone would be able to figure out how to patch the roof or something, because his imagination was drawing a vivid picture of what a giant hole in the roof in bad weather would do to their barn, and he was not a fan.

When Nick pushed the door open and made his way inside the wave of sound hit him immediately, and that was nice and normal at least; it was always loud in there after a game. Miraculously no one in there seemed to have noticed anything wrong outside, so at least there weren’t any awkward questions they couldn’t answer.

Although—Nick glanced around again, more carefully, moving towards the bar so the rest of the team would have space to follow him—no one in the bar was paying attention to any of them, not even the younger guys who got hit on pretty much any time they were in a Columbus bar, and that wasn’t normal at all.

His gaze was arrested by a woman sitting alone in the corner. She looked tall, and almost regal, with long white hair and—fuck, were those horns? Nick had not signed up for any of this bullshit.

But she was clearly their contact, so with a sigh he walked over and introduced himself, and the rest of the team.

There wasn’t quite enough room for all of them to sit down, not even when the table next to hers got up and left without even making eye contact, but Nick grimly stood until everyone else had squashed in to the available room, and then sat down opposite her.

Up close, her eyes were an unsettling silvery color, and there was a reddish tint to her skin that he didn’t think was just from being in an overly warm room. She was beautiful, sure, but every instinct Nick had told him this woman was one of the most dangerous people he’d ever met, and Nick didn’t go against his gut on things like this.

“Hi,” he said. “Can you please tell us how to get our cannon back?”

“Direct,” she purred, “I like that.”

Nick took a slow, measured breath in, and didn’t bite on that.

“Ah,” she said after a long moment of silence, and Nick got the obscure sense they’d passed some kind of test there, too. “Well then. To retrieve your lost property, you’ll have to solve the following riddle:

A lion, a fist,
A tiger, a kiss
The grass you can walk on,
The turn-off you missed.

A cavern, a cannon, a bitten-off cry,
The item you seek, will be… up high.”

Nick repeated the words over in his head, and felt uncertainty yaw in the pit of his stomach. He thought he had it down, but he wasn’t totally sure—

“I got it, Cap,” Boone said quietly, turning his hand over to show his phone in his palm, recording away.

Nick relaxed just a little.

“Right,” he said, looking up again, “Thank—” and he cut off mid-sentence at the realization that the woman, whoever she was, had vanished.

“I wish people would stop doing that,” Josh grumbled, and Nick could not have agreed more.

They took some time at the table to go over the words she’d given them a few times, tossing around ideas of what they could possibly mean.

“The Dub did not prepare me for this at all,” Murr said with a sigh, and Calvy snorted and said, “Me either, man.”

“At the risk of it being too obvious,” Cam said, “she mentioned lions and a tiger. Why don’t we go check the Zoo?”

It was obvious, but it was also so obvious that all of them just stared at Cam for a few seconds before groaning because—of course.

“I can’t believe we have to go sneak into the Zoo,” Seth said. “Stuff like this never used to happen in Nashville.”

“That’s what you think,” Hartsy muttered, but Nick wasn’t sure if anyone else had heard him.

“Well, fuck, let’s go then,” Nick said, and that got them all moving, pulling coats and hats back on, and then heading outside. Without discussing it specifically, they split into a couple of groups to drive there in their own vehicles. Nick would’ve considered just grabbing a few Ubers, but that didn’t seem like the sort of thing that they could get away with not winding up in the Dispatch, even if they were lucky. And he had enough problems to deal with already without that.

What with season ticket holder events and trips with his family other times, Nick figured he’d been to the Zoo conservatively, oh, a good twenty times since he’d been traded to Columbus.

Normally, it just looked like a regular zoo—maybe a little bigger, or a little fancier, but it was just part of town, part of the life he’d been building.

And at some time around midnight, with a moon starting to wax towards full, and clouds scudding across the frigid sky as the wind whistled around their ears and Nick tugged his scarf closer around his neck, it was was creepy as fuck.

“Oh I do not like this,” Prouter muttered, winning the understatement of the year to Nick’s mind.

“C’mon guys, let’s get this done. I want to go home,” Cam said, and as a rallying cry it wasn’t exactly high theater, but what it lacked there, it made up in perfect objective truth, so they all followed him.

One of the doors by the entrance was casually ajar, and that more than anything convinced Nick they had to be on the right track, because there was no way that was supposed to be like that.

“Okay, here goes,” Nick said. “No one get eaten by a tiger or whatever, please, I don’t wanna explain that to Jarmo,” and he got a chorus of agreement to that at least.

They had to look all kinds of ridiculous, Nick figured; a group of twenty guys in their 20s and 30s bundled up against the cold, wandering around a giant park using their phones as torches, but it was what they had, so it was what they were gonna do.

“Now which way?” Nick asked, once they’d all made it inside, the ground spreading out in front of them.

“I guess we go look at the big cats?” Jack didn’t sound all that sure of himself, but no one else had any better ideas, so that was the way they headed.

Nick had watched too many horror movies in his teens to let them split up, even if the younger guys were clearly frustrated and keen to dash off and cover more ground quicker.

“I think this is the right path,” Nuti said, speaking up for the first time in a while, his voice thin in the cold night air, and when Nick trudged over to his side of their group, it was immediately obvious why:

There on the path in front of them were giant paw prints, glowing silver in the moonlight, and heading towards the Heart of Africa exhibit.

So they followed.

Distances seemed oddly stretched out, in the dark of night, and Nick felt like they’d been walking a lot longer than usual by the time they approached the lion enclosure. The big cats themselves appeared, thankfully, to be asleep, no sounds or motion in the large den on the other side of the fencing, although Nick also felt hyper aware of being watched, somehow, and kept turning quickly to try and spot whoever was doing it. He hadn’t seen anyone who wasn’t on his team, though.

The object they were after was also immediately obvious; just beside the big board explaining the habitat the lions were found in normally and when they ate and all that kind of thing, there was a small glowing cube, hovering in mid air.

Before anyone could suggest otherwise, Bob waved his hand over and under it, making a slow arc which made it clear there was nothing physically supporting it.

Nick really was not a fan of magic.

They all crowded round, jostling shoulder to shoulder to get a better look at it, but it was Korpi’s sharp eyes that spotted, “Hey, there’s a key inside it?”

Nick blinked and now that he knew what he was looking at, it was obvious: a small, black and gold key that floated inside the cube.

“How do you think we get it out?” he asked, jabbing his index finger against the side of the cube, ready to yank it back if it stung or shocked him.

It did neither; it just felt—oddly gelatinous, and faintly electrical, the sensation clinging to his fingertip for a second before he pulled it away again.

“Wow, you guys are dumb,” Dubi said cheerfully, and elbowed Nick aside before drawing his fist back and landing a solid hit on the cube.

Nick expected him to rebound, or curse, or get thrown backwards across the path, or something, but instead the cube gave way with a melodious crackle-pop, and the key bounced off Dubi’s knuckles and onto the gravel.

“Well that seemed… easy,” Saader said, looking worried, the blue light of his phone reflecting off his cheekbones, his brows drawn together, and Nick privately agreed with that assessment, but what where they going to do about it?

He pasted on a jovial smile and said, “Okay, one down, a… couple to go? Let’s go, boys,” and they followed the tracks onward.

Somewhat inevitably, they led to the tiger enclosure.

In much the same spot, there was another glowing cube, floating a little higher, its light a little pinker. The tigers seemed to be a little more active than the lions; Nick couldn’t see any of them, but he could hear them rustling around in the foliage, and just hoped like hell all of them were still on that side of the fence.

“I got this one,” Prouter said, and went to punch the cube.

He did bounce right off it, landing on his ass right at Boone’s feet, visibly disgruntled.

“How come that didn’t work?” he asked, and Nick thought, “Oh, shit.”

He looked at Cam. Cam looked back at him. Nick looked at Bob, who looked studiously blank. Nick narrowed his eyes and thought that he wasn’t sure that Bob was as surprised as the rest of them, which was just unfair. If Nick had to deal with magic bullshit he at least wanted to hear about some of it in advance instead of trying to learn everything on the fly.

“I mean, the riddle thing did say,” Seth said carefully, not making eye contact with any of them, and the careful way he was especially not looking at Boone and Ryan was—interesting, and Nick filed that away to maybe find out about later.

“Ugh, fine, you’re all cowards,” Cam said, and he reached up, dragged Dubi’s face down to his level, and planted a firm kiss on his mouth. Dubi squawked, first, one hand flailing out, but he did very clearly kiss Cam back, and Nick abruptly felt like this was something he really wasn’t supposed to be watching, and turned away, giving them privacy.

Behind him, Cam cleared his throat and said, “Guys, hey, we’ve got it,” and when Nick turned around, he was holding a second black and gold key in his hand, his expression completely blank and even, for all that his cheeks were flushed a deep crimson.

“We’re talking about this later,” Dubi muttered, but he also linked his arm through Cam’s elbow and walked with him as they followed the tracks onward.

Somewhere back around the globe by the entranceway, the tracks vanished again. Nick chewed on his lip, surveying the scene. At least everything had been straight forward so far, if not necessarily ‘easy’, so it should be obvious where they had to go next.

Should being the operative word there.

“What’s the next bit of the poem?” he asked, and at least three voices answered immediately, “the grass you can walk on.” Okay, so they’d listened to Boone’s recording a few times now.

Nick tapped his fingers on his thigh and turned on the spot in a slow circle again. There had to be something, they were just missing it—

Bob spoke up, next to him, and Nick leaned into his warmth gratefully, and didn’t let himself think too hard about why.

“I think—the Safari golf?” and fuck, of course, of course that was it.

And whatever kind of asshole was sending them on this overgrown scavenger hunt clearly knew hockey players, because if there was one place other than the rink that Nick felt comfortable and at home in, it was a golf course.

“Let’s go, boys,” he said, and they headed back in that direction.

“I just hope there’s nothing in one of the water traps,” he heard Wenny say as they walked. “Because I don’t think they’re melting again until spring, and I do not want to wait around that long.”

Amen to that, Nick thought, and walked a little faster.

The golf course was somehow even more empty and ten times creepier than the zoo had been; at least the zoo had paths and the very occasional light pole; the golf course was just an endlessly undulating sea of green, with far too many trees around the edges for anything to hide in.

Just as the damn riddle implied, the first time they walked past the correct path, every one of them missed it. They’d circled out from where the cart hire place normally was and hadn’t spotted anything out of the ordinary.

“Hey, back this way,” Cam called, and he was standing at the top of a path that Nick would put cash money on having not been there during daylight. He sure didn’t remember it, and it looked—fey.

It ran down beside the club house but split off towards a stand of trees, and there was a faint glimmer to the edges of the grass, a suggestion of dew and moonlight. Nick sighed heavily, and motioned for everyone to follow him again.

They walked for a while, the trees never seeming to get closer, and Nick couldn’t judge the distance that well while walking it, but he knew exactly how much time had passed, and they had certainly been walking long enough to get back to the carpark, or to hit one of the boundary walls by now.

Still, they walked.

Finally, the path kinked to the right, and then the left, and then rising up out of the darkness before them was a huge, dark cave, something glimmering in the far-off depths.

“Oh hell no,” Seth said, just as some comedian at the back of the group muttered, “Bats. Why’d it have to be bats?” and actually, Nick didn’t need to ask, because Hartsy was probably the only other guy out there old enough to even be making that reference. Nick sighed.

“Onward and… downward, I guess,” Nick said, trying to put a brave front on it, and kept walking.

The cave was more spacious than he might’ve feared from the outside; the roof felt high above his head, and it was a little warmer out of the wind, and not damp and musty like some of the caves he’d explored back in Ontario. At the very least, there wasn’t water dripping down the back of his neck every few seconds, and it was a small mercy but one he’d happily take.

They walked, and kept walking, and no matter how he craned his neck Nick couldn’t seem to see the roof of the cave, or anything above him, or get any idea who was watching them, although he could feel the skin-crawling sensation of being watched almost nonstop.

Bob kept pace with him, and as Nick looked back over his shoulder he could see the rest of the guys had pretty much paired off as well, walking in double file, sticking close together. Cam and Dubi along with Ryan and Boone were bringing up the rear, and that was probably wise; Nick trusted all four of them to keep their heads in an emergency, or at least to react appropriately in the moment. Dubi had a temper, sure, but this wasn’t the sort of situation that’d spark it. At least, not until and unless they found out who’d decided to steal their cannon.

Nick kept going until the tunnel they were in opened up into a huge open space, the ceiling cathedral like, huge and open to the night sky in one corner, the stars twinkling through the gap. It looked—

It looked a whole lot like standing in Nationwide a few hours ago had looked, and Nick suddenly had a very strong suspicion about where exactly they were.

It seemed like everyone else was doing the math at about the same speed as him, because something like half the team opened their mouths to hiss “is this its lair” or words to that effect before being shushed by the rest.

Well, Nick thought philosophically. If they’d had any chance at stealth before then they’d certainly just blown it.

“Ahh, Blue Jackets,” said a sonorous voice from way, way above them, and Nick looked up to see shining black eyes blinking open, brass sconces he hadn’t even seen around the walls flaring to life and illuminating a large golden dragon with sharp-looking bronzed claws, curled around an outcropping of rock halfway up the wall.

It made up a sinuous circle, one wing tucked under its tail and the other tucked between its body and the wall, and even so Nick knew there was no way they could run out of there fast enough to escape it, if it dove for them.

“Greetings,” Nick called, pitching his voice to be heard clearly. He’d spoken to an arena full of disappointed, heart-broken Jackets fans after the tire fire of the last season, he could do this. At least he didn’t feel like he’d disappointed the fucking dragon by not being good enough.

“Ah, you do have manners after all,” the dragon said, and Nick thought...approvingly?

“We would like to regain an item of ours that you,” Nick hurriedly exchanged out the word ‘stole’, “have. Your, uh, messenger suggested that we could possibly make a trade?”

He really hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those fairy tale type situations, because there was no way Nick was letting a mythical creature eat any of his teammates, but he was also seeing a distinct lack of swords around them, so it wasn’t like he could encourage any sort of violence in response, either.

“I suppose I can consider that,” the dragon said, shifting, and Nick spotted a familiar curve of metal and gleam of polished wood just under its paw; it was sleeping with the cannon like it was some kind of stuffed animal. There was a fairly distressing concept, Nick thought.

“You have solved my riddle,” the dragon went on, “and made your way here, so I offer you this exchange.”

Nick held his breath, and he could feel the rest of the team doing the same.

“In exchange for your cannon, I would like a barrel of the finest beverage delivered here to me each month. I would like the blue one.”

“The—blue one?” Nick repeated, thoroughly confused.

“The blue Gatorade,” the dragon confirmed, and Nick burst out laughing before he could even think better of it.

“You kidnapped the cannon because you want Gatorade?”

The dragon looked disgruntled, which was actually pretty scary with that many razor-tipped teeth. “Yes! Is this exchange not fair to you?”

“It’s just—” Nick trailed off, and then tried to sound slightly less unhinged himself. “Normally dragons ask for gold, or, uh, I don’t know, virgins—” and wow, Nick had never gotten a judgmental look from a dragon before but he definitely knew what it felt like to get one now, as the dragon flexed its claws against the rock with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.

“Why would I care about your human sexual choices?” the dragon said. “Utterly irrelevant. The Gatorade, however—”

“Why can’t you just go buy it?” Boone asked, honestly curious, and the dragon seemed to realize that as it sighed.

“None of your banks will deal with me in this modern age, and I cannot exactly stroll up to the local food store to purchase it with gold. And you appear to have stocks in great supply, so this seemed like the best option.”

“Right,” Boone said, poker-faced, and he faded back into the crowd, leaving Nick in front to finish negotiations.

And when it came down to it, that was an easy choice. He wasn’t sure how they were going to explain any of this to anyone, not without sounding completely crazy, and especially since he had a feeling half the places they’d been tonight didn’t exactly exist, normally, but if that was what was going to work, then Nick was going to roll with it.

“Deal,” he said. “Tell us where to leave the Gatorade, and we’ll do so.”

“Thank you kindly,” the dragon said, and it closed its eyes again, the sconces around them starting to dim automatically, and Nick felt the prickle along the short hairs of his arms that he was starting to associate with magic.

"Your keys will open a locker at the golf club. Leaving the Gatorade there will be sufficient."

“Uh, just—one last question,” Nick said. “How are we going to get the cannon back?”

“It will be returned by sun up,” the dragon said lazily, not even bothering to open its eyes again, although its tail lashed pointedly. “Good night, Blue Jackets, please do not disturb my sleep further,” and with that, they were dismissed.

No one said much of anything on the walk out of the cave, one that seemed remarkably faster now that they didn’t have anything hanging over them, no expectations and no worries. It was in fact maybe only the work of about ten minutes or so before they were back in the carpark by the zoo, their feet wet, their bodies cold and a little stiff, and not a whole lot less confused than they’d been to start with.

“This has been the weirdest night,” Zach said, with what Nick thought might have been his first few words since they’d come off the ice.

“You’re telling me,” Nick said fervently. “Come on, guys, let’s just—go home and get some sleep, and see what things look like in the morning.” He paused looking towards the horizon, where a thin red glimmer suggested that the sun would be rising soon, and that meant they had to have been gone even longer than it felt like, what the fuck.

“Later this morning,” he corrected, and they all tiredly split off and headed to their respective homes.

Two years later

“I really don’t understand why we’re out here,” Luc said, fidgeting with the band of his watch, sitting on the bumper of Savvy’s car as they sat in the carpark of the Columbus Zoo. He was leaning against a barrel of Gatorade that Savvy had just picked up from the equipment managers after the game without a word and stuffed into the trunk of his car before telling Luc to get in as well and buckle up.

“I mean, as rookie pranks go, this is kind of du—” he said, and then a giant shadow swept overhead, and Luc’s jaw dropped open as he looked up.

“That’s a dragon,” Luc said, too surprised to be anything but calm about it. “That’s—Savvy, that’s a fucking dragon.”

“And they like blue Gatorade,” Savvy said, before hoisting the barrel onto his shoulder and yelling up, “Hey, we’re down here. Come meet the new kid!”

Luc gave him a wide-eyed look. “Does everyone know we have a dragon?”

“I have a hockey team,” the dragon corrected, dust and small rocks and leaves swirling underneath them as they tucked their claws in to land beside the car. The dragon was maybe the size of a Ford Explorer, curled into the space beside Savvy’s car, but Luc got an impression of immense vastness, like they could be a whole lot bigger and were merely choosing not to, at that particularly moment in time.

“…cool,” Luc said. “I’m Pierre-Luc Dubois, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Thank you, Pierre-Luc,” the dragon said. “I have enjoyed watching you play.”

Luc’s eyes widened even more, and Savvy hid a grin behind his hand, letting the beard cover for the laughter he had to work to choke back.

“You watch us play?” Luc asked, starry-eyed.

The dragon blinked at him, and then bared their teeth in something that was as close to a grin as they could get. “Of course. Even dragons get the regional broadcast.”