Check What? Deeze Pucks!

At the beginning of the weekend they had both gotten dressed in the locker room, someone shoving a flask into everybody’s face, Shane’s jaw tensing and eyes resigned when it came around to him.

“Actually, this is mine.” Kent had said and stolen the flask out of Shane’s hand, too fast for Shane to drink or have to turn it down, be a buzzkill. The liquor burned like gasoline as he finished the flask, no leftovers, all the boys in the room hooting and hollering.

Shane had found him right before they were headed into the tunnel, bumping against him carefully, four inches and twenty pounds on him. “Hey, thanks for earlier.”

“Thank me when I’ve scored.”

“I will.” Shane said, seriously, “but also thanks for, y’know. I don’t--- I don’t really like drinking. Especially when I’m going to play.”

Kent loves drinking, everyone knows it, a Vegas party boy through and through. He has a reputation for holding his liquor when actually he’s always had less than people think. “I just wanted a drink, man.”

“Oh.” Shane said, face shuttering. “I thought-- sorry. I thought you were being nice to me.”

Suddenly, Kent can’t breathe around the lump in his throat. “No, you were right. I mean, I was.”

“You were.” Shane tilts his head. “Then why?”

“Why be nice?”

“Why not say it?”

“I don’t know.” Kent pretends to fiddle with his glove. He wishes he was wearing a snapback. “Isn’t it easier for you? To not have to say it.” To pretend it didn’t happen. To pretend you never needed help.

Shane chews on that for approximately a hundred thousand years. Kent mentally vows to never, ever do anything nice for Hollander ever again.

“Thank you,” Shane says after an interminable amount of time. “And fuck ‘easy.’” The fullness of his gaze swallows Kent whole. Then Shane is waddling away, the inevitable awkward gait of walking on skates. Kent has only a moment to collect himself before heading down the hall.

It’s been good hooking up with Rozanov, knowing what he was in for, that he was going to get what he deserved, tossed about and put in his place by a cocky asshole.

There’s no good reason to flirt with Shane Hollander, other than the mold for Kent’s type cast and set at sixteen, all he knows how to want are intense stares from nice Canadian boys guaranteed to break his heart.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter that Kent’s flirting with Shane Hollander. Even though Kent is eventually able to draw Shane out into shy pleasure from the attention, Kent gets no return interest from his blatant flirtation.

It's foolhardy to attempt to seduce Canada’s remaining untarnished golden boy in front of the ever-present a cheering crowd and bug eyed cameras. The spotlight is too familiar to be noticeable. What’s new is the burn of liquid courage and the absence of his teammates. It gives the illusion that now is the time that’s worth to take risks.

Kent miscalculates. Shane is too much of a straight guy to realize he’s being flirted with, but Ilya isn’t.

Kent isn’t actually planning on alienating Ilya, especially when Rozanov represents his only realistic chance of getting laid this weekend. Kent thought they understood each other well enough that Ilya wouldn’t get pissed at him for trying to sleep with the enemy, or whatever crazy thoughts he’s having that are making him crash into Kent like it’s the playoffs and not the fucking All Star Games.

At least it gets him Shane, coming over to haul him up from where he’s lying flat on the ice, looking him over, tucking him under one arm while they sit on the bench between shifts.

“Parser! What the fuck did you say to him?” Shane’s close to be heard over the crowd. Kent can feel the heat of his breath over his face.

“I didn’t say shit! No idea what his fucking problem is.”

If Rozanov is going to be like this, though, Kent’s going to try and give as good as he’s getting.

“I asked Shane for tips on how to beat you. You know, since all you do is play him and lose.”

“He tell you, I’m too good. And that you are too awful and short.” Kent rolls his eyes. Guys have been going after his height since before he was even in the league. Kent has gotten chirped worse from Rozanov with the man’s cock still inside him.

“No, I asked him about beating Rozanov. And he said, ‘who?’”

Rozanov fucking slashes him for that, even in the third period with the score tied. The Bears are going to need get the captain’s head checked out when he gets home to Boston. Shane gets Kent the puck and Kent hammers it home on the power play, Shane hugging him into the boards and screaming something Kent can’t hear.

“What?”

“I said, ‘thank you!’”

Now, the rumble of the engine and the biting cold of late December help Dex breathe again. Big and bright Christmas decorations of Santas on sleighs, reindeer, and beyond life-size snowmen on people’s lawns pass by him that make him wonder how high those people’s power bills must be as listlessly takes road after mostly empty road in town. After a few more turns, driving past the ice rink he learned to skate on and the movie theater and businesses closed for the holidays, he finds himself turning onto the road out of town, en route to the fields past Falmouth; the street lights grow less frequent and roads snowier by the mile.

Eventually, Dex stops the truck in the middle of a snow-covered dirt road between the naked trees. He takes a deep breath, feeling the chilly air move in through his nose, and then kills the engine before he gets out with the slam of the truck door.

It’s probably past nine at this point, so Dex leans against the truck as he lets his eyes adjust more, lets the cold air comfort him and the chill nipping at his cheeks ground him. If someone else was here, someone who didn’t grow up around these fields, they’d probably find the near darkness and the silence eerie. Someone. Nursey. Dex shakes his head, pushes the thought of Nursey here with him back into the depths of his mind. To be dealt with later. Or maybe never.

Out here, in this random field, he isn’t Will. He isn’t Jakey when his brother feels particularly annoying that day. He isn’t Jimmy’s Poindexter’s son, the one that went to that liberal school down near Boston. He isn’t even Dex, number 24, captain of the Samwell Men’s Hockey team, with a nation's worth of scouts’ and sports journalists’ eyes on him. Out here, he can just be. He can breathe without any expectations.

Once his eyes have gotten used to the dark, he picks himself off the truck and goes around it until he reaches the empty bed. He opens the hatch like he’s done countless times, pushes snow away to both sides with his arm—a motion not unlike a stupid windshield wiper that Nursey would probably find a stupid chirp about—and hops in to lie down in the gap he just made.

Above him, there’s no cloud in sight and he can make out an insane amount of stars that he’s sure would make Nursey’s head spin. Nursey again. Nursey always. He swallows around the mental image of Nursey pressed close to him in his dad’s truck bed and tears his focus back to the clear sky. Being at Samwell, it’s so easy to forget how brilliant the night sky can look when you manage to get far enough away from the city’s lights. It’s beautiful, breathtaking, really. Something about a cold, clear winter’s night makes Dex feel like he can see even more stars than on a sweltering one in August. He scans for familiar patterns, looks for constellations, finds them like old trusty friends just where he left them. Cassiopeia. The Big Dipper. Orion.

These stars, Dex realizes, are so incredibly old he can’t even truly comprehend it. They’re so far away that the light Dex sees now is already millions of years old. Some of these stars are probably long burnt out and Dex will not live nearly long enough to see their light disappear or to see new ones pop up. Nursey could probably write a poem about it. He inhales sharply, pushing the thought away again on his exhale.

Generally, Dex doesn’t consider himself nihilistic, but it hits him, then, that his life is so incredibly and truly insignificant. In the grand scheme of the entire universe and whatever may or may not lie beyond it, he’s nothing more than a blip. His life, the ninety-odd years he hopes to get, are nothing compared to how old the stars above him are. How many lifetimes they’ve shone through before Dex, how many more they’ll bear witness to after he’s long gone. It all makes Dex’s head swim. He doesn’t matter to the universe, the stars don’t care, his anxieties and worries won’t leave even the faintest impression on the fabric of space or time. He finds it feels kind of comforting, knowing that.

His life is so short compared to that of the stars above, his own existence is so indescribably small. So why, Dex realizes suddenly, should he spend an hour, a minute, a second of it doing something he doesn’t want to do? Why should he waste the little precious time given to him by holding himself back from going for what he wants?

He knows what he wants, knows who he wants.

Nursey. Always.

They’ve kissed twice. Okay, they’ve made out twice, once at Farmer’s birthday party and once at the themed Kegster Nursey was elated to throw before they went off for break. But that doesn’t have to mean anything, doesn’t have to mean that Nursey feels the same gooey feelings that Dex has been trying and failing to ignore since halfway through summer break, even more so since they first gave into each other’s gravity at the volleyball house and collided, lips on teasing lips. Even now, he's itching to talk to Nursey again, despite the fact that they texted only a few hours ago. And still, Dex finds himself craving Nursey’s voice, the smile Dex can picture vividly when Nursey picks up and greets him with a yo that Dex wants so badly to interpret as fond, the the grin he can hear so clearly anytime he tries to chirp Dex, the warm laugh after Dex makes a joke.

The universe does not concern itself with Dex’s hangups, so why should he keep tying his hands behind his back?

Dex breathes in deep one more time before he sits up resolutely. When something starts to scratch on the inside of his ribcage again, something suspiciously Nursey-shaped, he doesn’t push it down, lets it in, lets it curl up in his chest instead.