#bad game

Remus bit down on the fingertip of his glove as he balanced his phone against the boards; Sirius didn’t have any glass surrounding his rink, making the task rather difficult. He wrinkled his nose slightly at the smell of sweat—not his, just whoever’s armpit his hand had collided with over the past week—and leaned back. The phone stayed upright. “Alright,” he murmured under his breath as he tapped the ‘play’ button.

“—takes it up the left, and it looks like Black is going for a coast to coast—oh, a quick pass to Lupin! Lupin misses the pass by an inch—the whistle blows—”

Remus stopped the video and skated backwards a few feet. He didn’t need a reminder of the bullshit call that stuck him in the box for absolutely no reason. Arthur had been spitting with rage; the refs may as well have been pulling penalties out of a hat for the whole team.

His jaw still ached from getting his bell rung five hours prior and he worked it for a moment before snagging a stray puck, clicking it back and forth in a calming blur. One-two-three, two-two-three, three-two-three, four-two-three, fuck-ing-refs, I-hate-this, why-the-Canes, pen-al-ty.

The familiar sound of the puck sliding home eased the bubbling frustration in his gut. Nothing but net, he thought as he pushed off and made a wide loop, tapping a few more in before lining up at the opposite end with a slow exhale. There were no goal horns; no fluorescent lights. A cool blue cast covered everything, stretching his shadow long and thin over the artificial ice that held nobody but him.

Remus took another breath and let the chilly air bite at his lungs before snatching another puck out of the corner and taking off. Sirius had started his pass three-quarters of the way up; Remus snapped it toward the opposite wall and caught the rebound in the middle of his stick, feeling the impact reverberate all the way to his hands. Perfect. Now do it again.

He had only gotten good in college by practicing on his roller blades in the parking lot after the rink shut down for the night—he thanked his lucky stars for Sirius’ inability to live in a space that didn’t drip hockey, because he’d have to be a lot better than good to make it in the NHL.

Biased refs be damned, those missed passes rested heavy on Remus’ shoulders.

He ran it back again, and again, and again, snapping the puck back and forth between the wall and his stick until his calluses began to ache and his quads groaned in protest. His body was tired after already playing a full game that night, but Remus was willing to beat it into submission for a bit longer. Whatever it took to eke out that little advantage for next time.

Next time we won’t lose, he thought as the puck bounced off the far wall and came hurtling toward him. Next time it won’t be my fault.

Anxiety clawed at his burning lungs as he looped around the goal and dug his skates in, sprinting up the ice. Maybe his speed was the problem. Maybe it wasn’t his lack of muscle tone at all, but the thing that had bought him his seat on the team in the first place. If he had been a little faster, he could have had time to get ready for the pass instead of leaving Sirius out to dry, no matter how many spots decorated his vision from that hard check. The final score had been a loss by one lousy point. Remus couldn’t help but take the blame.

He swiped sweat off his forehead and blindly sprayed water into his mouth, then slid right back to center ice and bent his knees again, ignoring the shaking of his exhausted thighs. His ankles screamed in protest. Remus gritted his teeth and played back the tape in his head to map out his path.

“Re?”

The map disappeared. “One sec,” he said absently, breathing out through his nose to pull his brain back. You took four steps to get halfway up, he reminded himself. Get there in three, pass the puck at two and a half—

The puck bounced off the wall and went skittering behind him. “Shit,” he muttered as he swept back to grab it before it ran off.

“Remus.” The voice was less curious than before. He glanced up; Sirius was looking back at him from the bottom of the stairs in a mix of exasperation and concern. “What are you doing?”

“Practicing,” he said with a quick quirk of his lips that hardly qualified as a smile.

“It’s past midnight.” Remus hummed noncommittally. He had stayed up later before. Sirius’ quiet footsteps drew closer. “Come back to bed, mon loup.”

“Can’t go back if I was never there in the first place,” Remus said as he lined up again.

Sirius sighed. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Nope.”

“You’re shaking.”

“No, I’m not.” He steadfastly ignored the tremors shuddering from his hips to his ankles, as well as the spasms in his abdomen sending stabs of pain to his lungs. If I don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t true. His body was exhausted, but his brain was running on high speed. There were so many small movements to account for; maybe if he had avoided that hit from number 18…

“Viens ici.” Sirius sounded tired.

Remus glanced back at him. He looked tired, leaning on the boards with rumpled bedhead. Tired and kissable. “I’m here.”

Sirius raised both eyebrows and beckoned to him, pushing up to rest on his palms as Remus abandoned his drill with no small amount of reluctance. His hands were warm as he cupped Remus’ face and gave it a light shake. “Bad. No.”

“Woof,” Remus answered dryly.

“Come to bed with me.”

“Five more minutes?”

Sirius narrowed his eyes and some of the playfulness faded away. “You’ve been down here for over an hour. You know better than anyone that five minutes is never five minutes.”

“I just need to run the play one more time.”

“You need rest.”

“I think we might have switched bodies—”

“Remus.” The earlier exasperation won out and Remus shut his mouth, pulling back until Sirius’ hands fell away. His heart was still beating fast, and the short break made the fatigue in every muscle even harder to ignore. He was dead tired, but the guilt still pulled at his heart like it was made of taffy. Sirius tugged gently on the fingertip of one thick glove. “What’s this about?”

“I’m just running some drills. Got in my head.”

“About what?”

“The game.” Tightness flickered by the edges of Sirius’ mouth. “See, you agree it was bad.”

“The refs were fucking idiots. You played well.”

Not well enough hung on the tip of his tongue. Sirius had quite nearly hit one of the referees after yet another baseless penalty on Logan; he had been boiling with anger the whole ride home while Remus picked through every error they had made in his sightline. “I wasn’t on form,” he said after a moment longer, internally wincing at the throbbing of his feet.

“Bullshit.”

“Hey!”

Sirius’ brows creased and he prodded Remus lightly on the sternum. “You. Played. Well.”

“I missed a million of your passes—”

“Two.”

“—and fucked up that shift change—”

“Pots literally fell on you.”

“—and we lost!” he finished, flustered. “We lost to the Canes!”

Sirius watched him for a few more seconds. “Are you done?”

“I—yeah.” Remus pulled on the velcro tab of his glove. He wanted to crash out until the weekend, but he’d rather be waterboarded than attempt to climb the stairs to their bedroom. The dull ache in his wrists pulsed all the way up to his elbows and he huffed. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“Will you come to bed with me now?” Sirius slipped his finger under the neckline of Remus’ shirt and gave it a teasing tug, pulling him closer to the boards. “Here, boy! Come on!”

“I can’t stand you,” Remus groaned as he took Sirius’ face between his palms and kissed his cold nose. Sirius nuzzled closer and he closed his eyes for a proper kiss, though it was little more than a whisper of warm skin on warm skin. Remus draped his arms over Sirius’ shoulders and rested his head on his shoulder, stepping fully off the ice to press as close as possible; in his skates, they were almost the same height.

A broad hand smoothed up and down his back as Sirius hugged him tight. “You okay?”

“I need sleep,” Remus answered honestly. “Real sleep.”

“Get your skates off and I’ll see what I can do.”

He fell more than sat on the nearest bench and began working at the laces of his left boot; even his fingers trembled with overuse, and every joint and knuckle ached. A snack didn’t sound too bad, either. Remus knew that he’d wake up starving in the middle of the night if he didn’t grab at least a granola bar and he was absolutely unwilling to sacrifice time that could be spent dead to the world.

“Loops.” Sirius’ voice was little more than a sigh as he knelt in front of Remus and started in on the right skate; Remus glanced up in surprise at the nickname. Sirius hadn’t called him that off the ice in a long while.

“What?” he asked.

“You—” He broke off with a muffled noise of frustration and waved his hand as he wiggled Remus’ foot free. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

“Do what?”

Sirius took his face again, though true concern shone and his thumbs traced gently under Remus’ eyes. “You work so hard and then you tell yourself it isn’t enough. There are so many things that aren’t your fault, mon amour. Stop telling yourself they are.”

Remus swallowed around the lump in his throat that used to be his voice, leaning into Sirius’ touch on instinct.

“I’ve done this,” Sirius continued. “All of this, I’ve already done it and I promise you it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if you skate until you can’t stand or—or until your hands are shaking, Jesus, Remus.”

“I’m sorry,” he croaked after a few seconds.

Sirius exhaled through his nose as he got the boot off and went to work on the one Remus had already halfway finished. “You don’t need to apologize. You were just on my ass about the same thing all the time when I first started and I won’t sit here and watch you fall into the same pattern. I won’t.”

Remus let his hands fall helplessly to his sides from where he had bee gripping the bench. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Fix what?”

Me. “All of it.”