You Could Make a Life

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  Sarah laughs herself sick when she finds out he's reading Camus in his spare time.

  *

  It's good, it's all good—Marc sprints out of the gate and streaks forward in the race for the Calder, nets his first goal in his second game and doesn't slow down from there. Dan's pace is a little more sedate, but he's playing. Whether it's four minutes or seven, it doesn't matter as much as the fact his blades hit the ice every game. Marc's minutes climb, and the guys get more and more disgruntled by the weirdo in their midst, rambling about separatism and the overemphasis on Proust by English scholars, and who knows what, the kid who chipped a tooth in his sixth game and started on about beauty standards the second he got it capped.

  Marc ignores it like he always does, becomes willfully and obnoxiously Francophone whenever someone gets disgruntled loud enough for him to hear, but Dan can't ignore it, and it pisses him off. Inviting Marc over is a standing date now, the norm, along with staying in on the road, because Dan would rather be bored to death by some experimental French film than buy a fake ID just to watch Pazuhniak pick up and expect Dan to be right there with him.

  Marc seems fine with the ostracism, just like he was from the start, and Dan's fine with just hanging out with Marc, who is simultaneously more and less demanding than everyone on the team, and who fits Dan. It's better than anyone could expect or deserve, a solid, if undistinguished rookie season, a best friend who's contractually obligated to stay on the same team with him for at least a few more years, a locker room full of guys who like him.

  It's better than anyone could expect or deserve, so Dan guesses that's where Marc's freckles fit in.

  *

  The trip to California is the first road trip Dan's ever seen the vets actually excited for, what with Christmas coming and Toronto hovering around zero. It's like the scheduling guys did it just for them, two games with a day between, Oakland and San Jose, and then a two day break before a game against Los Angeles. A vacation, pretty much. Everyone packs at least two bathing suits, and sunscreen gets pulled out of the back of medicine cabinets. Stevens even went to a tanning salon for a 'base coat'.

  The team is collectively pretending they don't know Stevens.

  The enthusiasm catches, until even Marc, who has repeatedly informed Dan of how overrated beaches, beach vacations, sand, sun, and water were (Dan agrees, except maybe on the last two), is practically wriggling beside Dan in his seat. Dan packed Marc sunglasses along with the reading glasses, because Dan is an excellent person, if he may say so himself.

  The enthusiasm is dampened a little when they lose in blowout fashion against the Golden Seals, a 6-1 loss that Dan and Marc both go minus two on, despite being on different—but apparently equally terrible—lines. Marc sticks his nose in a book the second they get back to their room, sulking, and Dan does his own sulking on the balcony attached to their room, thankful that he can sulk without a coat on, at least. It's a small comfort.

  The loss doesn't stop the rest of the guys from making the most of the trip, Colborne banging on every door in the hall way too early the next morning so that there can be breakfast and sun tanning and practice, and maybe a swim.

  Dan wants to pretend he doesn't know his entire team.

  But they eat, and they practice, and Marc marches out to the pool with sunglasses and three books, like maybe the sun supercharges his reading speed or something, and Dan trails after him with the copy of The Stranger he hasn't even managed to get halfway through, despite Marc's prodding. He falls asleep in the sun instead, and is frankly amazed dicks haven't been drawn all over his face when he wakes up, but then, Marc's sitting beside him, and the guys tend to act like Marc's got his own force field around him. Marc hasn't been pranked once, and Dan's impressed that generally unobservant guys seem to have picked up on the fact his revenge would be swift, creative, and brutal.

  They're all a little more tan and way more relaxed against San Jose, and they manage to squeak by 2-1 in overtime, which the team decides requires celebration. They shut down a club that has no idea who any of them are, and thankfully practice isn't until the following afternoon. Dan doesn't think anyone wakes up before noon, and then it's a practice that leaves half of them seasick, or whatever you'd call a hangover on ice, and the rest of the day is spent taking over the hotel pool en masse.

  The last day Dan spends soaking in as much sun as he can get before they have to return, and Marc disappears to do who knows what, comes back just in time for the pre-game, pink and freckled and grinning, and Dan looks at him, heart in his throat, and realises he's totally fucked.

  *

  The sole saving grace of Dan's big idiotic realisation is timing. They only have two home games before they break up for four straight days of Christmas bliss, and Marc fucks off to Montreal for the break, which is a vacation for Dan and the terrible excuses he's been making to avoid Marc since they touched back down in Toronto.

  Other than that, it sucks. His mother decides she's going to be festive because he's going to be home on Christmas day, baking an array of really unappetizing cookies, and his sister ropes him into a Stupid Christmas Sweater party by sheer will and threats. It's going to involve all her friends, who jump on anything ironic, and the only thing that Dan can find that fits over his shoulders is a pink reindeer cardigan clearly made for a very overweight woman.

  It's times like these he wishes he was drafted by a team clear across the country. Maybe Vancouver would want him.

  It's Christmas Eve when he gets dragged out for the party. He really wonders why no one seems to have better things to do on Christmas Eve, but it's probably not ironic to spend it with family. Sarah's managed to find something suitably form-fitting and only decorated by snowflakes, which Dan finds kind of against the spirit of things. He knows a few people there, but only through quick introductions while they were hanging out with his sister, so he lingers at the edges, breaks his diet for alcoholic eggnog, and tries to blend in at the edges, probably unsuccessfully considering he's 6'3" and wearing a giant pink reindeer cardigan.

  So perhaps it's inevitable when Alex finds him. Alex, who Dan hasn't seen since he broke things off, almost eighteen, looking into the looming future of the draft and not willing to risk it all for the guy he'd been discovering the magic of sex with. Alex who looks good, who always looks good, who ignored the spirit of the thing just as much as Dan's sister, and makes the jingle bells on his sweater practically glow. It's enough to give Dan a twinge of regret, looking at him, a twinge of guilt, too, because he'd liked Alex a lot, and he knows it had been mutual, but it was too big a risk to keep things going, especially because Alex was the kind of guy who was all about the community part of being gay, disappointed whenever Dan ducked something that he considered important.

  Alex pretends to be startled when he sees him, but Dan isn't fooled; see: 6'3", giant pink reindeer cardigan. There's awkward small talk at first; Alex's classes, his life, Dan's 'career', bullshit they never really discussed because they have about zero things in common when their pants are on, and Dan's suddenly remembering that.

  "You look good," Dan says, when the conversation dries up, because he does, he looks great, actually, and Dan hasn't fucked around with anyone since he broke things off with Alex, went from Alex to zero to falling flat on his face in love, and there hasn't been anything else.

  "You too," Alex says, which Dan knows is a flat out lie, because he is never forgetting this cardigan, and never forgiving the humiliation Sarah's heaped on him.

  Somehow that graduates to them ducking out of the main area, finding a small, messy room with an unmade twin, and it's so familiar, the messy room, the twin bed, Alex looking up at him, six inches shorter, his chin jutting up in a way that always looks determined.

  It looks like something's going to happen. Dan wants something, anything to get Dan off and make everything stop for a minute, all the hyper hetero bullshit he's surrounded by every day, the mere fact of Marc's fucking face, but then Alex is ducking away, say
s "I have a boyfriend," quick and quiet like he doesn't want to be heard.

  Dan pulls back, because he's not an asshole. "Congrats," he says. Sarah hadn't given him that news during her weekly update of everything going on in her life, in which Alex is often pointedly mentioned because they're still buds, but his sister doesn't know everything, despite what she may think.

  "Yeah," Alex says. "It's fine. I mean, it's good, but, you know." He looks frustrated. "You? I mean, it's not like you can—but you know what I mean."

  Dan does, sort of, and he doesn't know if it's the booze or the sexual frustration or just the fact that Alex is the first person he's talked to in forever who knows he's gay and isn't related to him by blood, but it comes spilling out. Dan's idiocy about Marc. The fucking freckles.

  Alex just listens until Dan's run through it. "Is he gay?"

  "What?" Dan asks. It's weirdly something he's never considered, even hypothetically. He presumes Marc has actually done stuff with another human being at some point, but he hasn't since Dan's met him, or if he has, he's kept silent. "I don't think so. I don't know. It's not something you just ask."

  Alex sighs. "Right, because you're in a super macho, super hetero sport, sorry for asking. Look, can I give you some advice, with all the wisdom of my twenty years?"

  Dan rolls his eyes at him.

  "Don't waste your time on some straight kid," Alex says. "It's really not worth it."

  Dan raises his eyebrows. "And you know this how, oh wise one? Last I checked you weren't a gay guru." Hell, Alex had lost his blowjob virginity—or whatever you would call it—to Dan, and neither of them had really gotten much game since, unless Dan's been wildly misinformed. He seems to have been with this boyfriend business, but still.

  Alex's mouth quirks. "Straight," he shrugs. "Or a gay kid who turns his rink into his closet. Whatever."

  "I didn't—" Dan starts, suddenly at a loss.

  "Whatever," Alex repeats. "I'm over you, don't worry. And I'm sure you'll get over Jean-Claude or whoever—"

  "Marc," Dan corrects, quiet, and there must be something in the way he says it, because Alex settles, reaches out to squeeze Dan's shoulder.

  "I'm sure you'll find some other freckles," he says gently.

  Dan snorts, bitter, because at the rate he's fallen, he doesn't even want to.

  *

  Christmas day comes and goes and Dan's still upset, unlaid, and hopelessly in love. With the addition of some good presents—the two versions of another Camus novel, English and French, that Sarah sweetly remarks he and Marc can read together are a notable exception. That's just rude. She looks sort of chastened when she finds out Dan's present is paying for her next semester's books, but there's still an evil glint in her eye.

  Dan doesn't know why he expected everything would reset to a preseason clean slate when he returns to Boxing Day practice, but somehow he wasn't expecting the punch low in the gut when Marc comes in, looking completely normal, completely unremarkable, and completely like something Dan's missed desperately.

  They're all awkward after Christmas, as a team, like Dan wasn't the only one ignoring his diet for eggnog and roast—tourtière, in Marc's case, which he describes with a vaguely orgasmic expression on his face that's slightly uncomfortable. In a hot way. But also a plain uncomfortable way. They're in public, for god's sake. But after a terrible, embarrassing loss against Buffalo, they pull themselves together, and that involves Dan no longer acting like Marc has cooties, because Marc keeps sending him vaguely hurt looks, which hit Dan as hard as someone else crying at him.

  They kick Boston's ass, everyone back in the zone, Marc throwing out a goal and an assist and almost getting a Gordie Howe hat trick, up in the face of someone twice his size. Dan's pretty thankful the refs came in when they did. He likes Marc's face. He'd prefer it intact.

  And that's fine, it's all back to fine, Dan acknowledging the fact that he's totally in love with his best friend, capable of jostling him in the locker room and checking him in practice and bumping knees with him while they watch some movie Dan has tuned out, attention focused on where they're touching through their jeans. Dan's fine, and Marc's fine, and it's fine.

  And then Stevens fucks it up because he's fucking Stevens.

  *

  They've made it weeks into the new year without a loss marring them, six straight and getting cocky with it, everyone smirking at each other like this year's the year they make the playoffs. It's a little early for that—it's a lot early for that—but Dan can't help getting caught up in it alongside everyone else.

  So it's with that vaguely jubilant spirit they prepare for a practice between home games, and it's with that jubilant spirit that Stevens and Gratz get into a conversation of how to best take down Washington's best, brightest, and most recently injured. Dan tunes it out, because he hates that part of strategy, taking advantage of the weak spots, the cracks in the armour and cracks in the bone, but he's tugged back in when Stevens is Stevens.

  "But we can't go after Dumois," Stevens argues, loud, "he'll run to the refs like a fucking faggot."

  Dan keeps doing his laces up, slow, pretends he hasn't heard.

  "Watch your mouth," Marc says, quietly enough that it's probably only Dan, and Stevens, on Marc's other side, who hear.

  Stevens turns. "Seriously Poindexter? I know Frenchies bend over easy, but I didn't think you were that kind of girl."

  And that pulls the Quebecois into the conversation, quick enough, and then the Russians, when someone defends the French and suggests Russia as the faggiest place, and it escalates, fast, everyone ignoring Buchanan's repeated "Shut the fuck up," practically a brawl when Coach comes in, half the team yelling while Dan unlaces and re-laces his skates, tight and then tighter, eyes on the sticky floor.

  "What the fuck is going on here?" Coach yells, but it doesn't penetrate the melee until he picks up his whistle, blowing loud and shrill.

  "Sit down," he shouts, and it might just be that they're conditioned to respond to that tone by now, but everyone does.

  "You guys are pathetic," Coach says. "You're supposed to be fucking professionals and you're acting like a bunch of children."

  "Coach—" someone both brave and stupid says.

  "I don't want to hear it. When practice is over you boys are going to be running suicides until you're too fucking tired to act like assholes. Get out there."

  Coach keeps his word, and the dressing room is silent after practice beyond the ragged pull of breath.

  *

  Dan's wiped when they get out, wiped and quietly pissed, and the last thing he wants is Marc catching up with him, mooching the usual ride because he still hasn't bought a car despite his signing bonus and he's usually too lazy to take the subway. But Dan unlocks the passenger door anyway, lets Marc stack his smelly bag in the back because Dan's smelly bag takes up the trunk, lets him clamber in, pulling out of the parking lot with his jaw still set.

  Marc in turn lets him be silent, is silent himself, a weird lack of communication that usually only happens if Marc's reading, but then Marc, incapable of extended silence, breaks it in the worst way.

  "You did not say anything," Marc says.

  "It's none of my business," Dan says.

  Marc rolls his eyes and looks out the window.

  "What, like it's yours?" Dan asks, jaw clenched, hands fisting around the steering wheel.

  From the corner of his eye he sees Marc roll his eyes again, and that's just such bullshit, Marc going around being so evolved, so much better than anyone else, because he understands, and Dan can't say 'yeah, it's my business since I'm probably the only guy here who's had a dick in his mouth,' so instead he says, "grow up," harsh, and the rest of the ride is made in tense silence.

  ii. i battle with it well

  Something breaks inside Dan. He doesn't know what it is, couldn't describe it, but he knows he's eighteen years old, making six figures, and hiding in the closet, has fucked one guy in his entire life and fallen in love wit
h another, and that, by all rights, that's pretty pathetic. He's young, single, and a professional athlete. The least he could manage is a hand other than his own on his dick.

  He gets home that night, still furious, silently furious, skipping dinner and imagining all the ways he could come out, wiping that smug look off Marc's face, and then goes down for leftovers because what was he thinking, skipping dinner?

  He texts Sarah to find out if she knows how to get him a fake ID. She doesn't, but to her credit, just hooks him up with someone who can. He does his research, looks up the basics of the gay scenes in every city they play in—outside of Canada, that is, because the chance of exposure's too high. He writes it down, studious, in a notebook that could probably be replaced by print-outs, but Dan sort of likes the idea of a big gay notebook as a giant fuck you to pretty much everyone he shares a shower with and ignores because gross, and an even bigger fuck you to Marc, who he shares a shower with and ignores because it's creepy and a whole different kind of gross to take advantage of that fact.

  Dan starts going out. He can't do it at home—for starters, he lives with his parents, and even if he didn't, it'd just be asking for trouble in Toronto, where hockey is religion, and he's not only a Leaf but a hometown boy. He's underage pretty much everywhere, and definitely everywhere that doesn't give two shits about his name, but he manages to get a decent fake from Sarah's sketchy contact, and he's a big enough guy that no one is really going to question it. He starts slow, looking for somewhere feasible on a day off in Philadelphia, and leaves Marc in the middle of a video game tournament with some teammates he's undertaken in a distinctly half-hearted mission to bond—he's pathetically bad, which is, at least, one thing he sucks at—and finds the place he'd looked up days before, dim, kind of skeevy.

  A guy comes up to pick him up after twenty minutes. He says something about Dan looking lost, some stupid line that Dan is pretty sure generally doesn't work, but Dan is about as far from picky as possible right now. He's broader than Dan is, even though his muscles look gym manufactured and untested. Dan grins at him, a wide one girls say is adorable, and half an hour and two drinks later, he's in a bathroom stall, the guy's hands fisted hard in his hair, holding him down. It should be claustrophobic, and it is, but it's satisfying, even more so than the perfunctory handjob he gives Dan after.