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Jared doesn’t have much time to sulk. He basically blocks out the rest of the WHL playoffs — you couldn’t pay him to watch those — catches bits and pieces of the NHL playoffs between cram sessions. He does okay in his exams, he thinks. Like, he’s maybe a worrier — maybe — but he did the math with his grades up to that point: even if he flunked every single exam, he’d still be graduating, and he’s pretty damn sure he didn’t flunk any of them.
As soon as the exams are over, school becomes a waste of time — all their grades are pretty much decided, so it’s basically become publicly funded babysitting until they’re let loose on the world — and Jared starts to freak out about the combine. He hadn’t had a chance, not with the season, the playoffs, school crashing down on him after that, but his scores in the combine could make or break his future.
“After the season you had, scores aren’t going to change much,” Bryce says, running his fingers through Jared’s hair as he worries aloud. Usually this would be enough to keep him calm, his head in Bryce’s lap, Bryce’s thumb stroking over his temple, but the combine’s in less than a week, and he’s too worked up to let Bryce bring him back down. “You’re going to get drafted high. The fact they even invited you to the combine is a sign you’re going to get drafted high.”
“What if I’m like, dead last in everything?” Jared says.
“You’re not going to be dead last in everything,” Bryce says.
“But what if I am?” Jared says. “What my shitty scores dump me right out of the draft?”
“Have you ever heard of someone supposed to go in the second round going undrafted?” Bryce asks.
“No,” Jared says, and then makes a mental note to look that up. “But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Or I could be the first—”
“Jared,” Bryce says, fingers stilling in his hair.
“I’m not being ridiculous,” Jared says, maybe too loudly, because he knows he’s being ridiculous, that it’s only some infinitesimal chance, but what if it happens?
“Would it help if we did like a training session before you head to Buffalo?” Bryce asks. “On the stuff you’d do in the combine. Or like, a pre-test, or whatever you’d call it.”
“I don’t want to be a—” Jared starts.
“Would it help?” Bryce interrupts him.
“Yeah,” Jared admits.
“Okay,” Bryce says. “Then we’re going to do that, okay?”
“Okay,” Jared agrees.
The next day after dinner Bryce drives him out to this tiny little gym Jared didn’t even know existed. Jared’s pretty it’s closed for the night, judging by the times on the window, and they just let Bryce take it over, kept someone around just for them, which is kind of — Jared’s not going to think about it. Probably Bryce’s name alone got him in the door.
Bryce brought along a hockey bag, which Jared thought was kind of weird, right up until he’s pulling out like, measuring tape and a metre ruler and a fucking whistle Jared is pretty sure is the one from camp, a whole sheaf of printouts with the exercises and places to put Jared’s score.
“You’re a nerd,” Jared says, but very, very fondly.
“Don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before,” Bryce says. “And I’m pretty sure of the two of us, you’re the nerd.”
“You’re definitely a hockey nerd,” Jared says.
“I’ll take that as a compliment?” Bryce says.
“You should,” Jared confirms.
Bryce does the exercises with him, and Jared would be kind of dismayed to be competing against one of the dudes who kicked the combine out of the fucking park, but he can’t be too depressed that Bryce is like, benching better than him, because Bryce is benching better than seventeen year old Bryce too, what with the difference of four years and some extra muscle. Jared actually beats Bryce at the standing long jump, so that’s cool. He doesn’t want to talk about pull-ups, though. Fuck pull-ups. What kind of person leads the pack with fourteen every year? A monster, that’s who.
Bryce, dusting himself off after eleven, is annoyingly unruffled when Jared extends the monster status to him as well. Stupid Bryce and his stupid, beautiful biceps.
There’s some stuff they can’t really do without some serious equipment — Bryce didn’t bring along one of those weird looking masks to test Jared’s oxygen consumption or anything — but Bryce has him do some crazy intense reps on the exercise bike, Jared’s legs feeling like jelly by the time he gets off it. He can’t exactly compare how he did with past combine results without said weirdo mask, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t good.
“Your scores will be higher the day of,” Bryce says. “Everyone’s scores are better. So I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Right,” Jared says sceptically.
“Seriously,” Bryce says. “The pressure? Someone’s going to be yelling in your face to go harder, so that’s — pretty motivating.”
“I thought you were supposed to be making me feel better about this,” Jared says.
“It’s really not that bad,” Bryce says. “You’ve got it, easy.”
Jared gets home late that night — his parents waived school night curfew for him once he explained Bryce was running through combine stuff with him — still a little nervous, but not the bundle of nerves he was before. He thinks he might have it. Well, at least enough not to be dead last, he hopes.
*
Bryce fucking lied about the Wingate.
Jared is calling that fucker, and he is yelling at him. Well. Maybe not yelling. Yelling sounds exhausting right now.
“You said it was not that bad!” Jared hisses at him after he like…oozes his way to his hotel room after the combine. None of it was easy, even the non-physical exertion stuff — there’s nothing weirder than standing around shirtless in front of photographers snapping your picture while someone fucking measures how fat your chest is with calipers — but the Wingate was brutal. Though Bryce didn’t lie about someone yelling in his face the whole time. That definitely happened.
“I lied,” Bryce says, sounding completely unapologetic about it. “You would have gotten all freaked out. More freaked out.”
“I can’t believe you,” Jared says.
“Did you throw up?” Bryce asks.
“What?” Jared says.
“I threw up after, so if you didn’t, you did better than me,” Bryce says.
Jared feels dimly pleased by that, except like, Bryce obviously did better, because he placed in the top ten for it. Jared — did not.
“I didn’t throw up, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have legs anymore,” Jared says.
“I feel you,” Bryce says. “It’s over though, hey? And I bet you weren’t dead last in everything.”
“No,” Jared says. “But—”
“Totally over,” Bryce says. “Did you kill it?”
“No, I—”
“You killed it,” Bryce says, with confidence Jared doesn’t really deserve.
Jared didn’t exactly kill it, and some of his scores were probably cause for concern — fucking pull-ups — but when he maybe…obsessively checks all the rankings after he gets back to Calgary, he doesn’t slip right out of the draft or anything. He’s holding pretty solid as a second round pick, and there isn’t anything to really change that anymore, the Memorial Cup delivered (fucking Wheat Kings didn’t even win it, so Jared feels robbed), the combine done. He’s going to get drafted in less than a month. He’s going to be an NHLer — well, no, but a prospect, someone with the potential to be an NHLer. Someone whose rights belong to an NHL team, even if he’s not on their roster right away.
Jared’s kind of petrified. He spends his time in useless classes trying to calculate where he’s most likely to go. It’s hard, though, because some sites just rank North Americans, some separate it by position, some cover the entire draft class, and he ranges in the rankings too. He can’t figure out any way to narrow it past basically ‘literally anywhere’. ‘Literally anywhere’ is not an acceptable answer.
When he isn’t in school, he’s either at Bryce’s or the gym, even though the combine’s over, and no one’s really going to be evaluating his fitness until prospect camp. It helps, at least, to get rid of some of the anxious energy. Bryce joins him a few times, mentions in between sets that he’s starting training in two weeks, same trainer as last year, and starts the next set before Jared can do anything more than blink down at him.
Jared waits for Bryce to finish his set. “He’s not like, relocating to Vancouver is he?” he asks.
“Nope,” Bryce says, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
“You’re staying in Calgary for the summer?” Jared asks.
“Yeah,” Bryce says.
Jared tries to bite down a grin. “Cool,” he says. He’d love to be doing the same thing, train with someone like that, but he has a bit of an idea how much that’d cost him, and he’s not making NHL salary yet. Not even close. Even if he was, the guys Bryce trains with are leagues ahead of him, and the trainer’s probably paid comparably to their multi-million dollar salaries.
Bryce is the exception there, but he’s at the start of negotatiating multi-million dollar salary right now — he hasn’t said much about it, weirdly tense, but Jared knows he’s in talks with the Flames about it now that he’s become an RFA, and people are saying he’s looking at six million a year minimum. Which is — a lot. Obviously. Jared can barely comprehend it. Bryce already has three cars: is he going to buy a fleet? Is he going to buy a plane?
Jared should google how much planes cost.
“You’re not going to buy a plane, right?” Jared asks.
“Why would I buy a plane?” Bryce asks, looking confused, but that is unsettlingly not an answer.
Jared’s definitely going to google how much planes cost.
*
“Hey,” Bryce says, six days, twenty-two hours, and twelve minutes before the draft. Jared maybe has a countdown timer. “Draft’s in a week.”
“Really?” Jared says. “I totally forgot about it.”
Bryce nudges his knee. “Did you want me to come down?”
“What?” Jared asks. “To the draft?”
“Yeah,” Bryce says.
“You can’t come to the draft,” Jared says.
“Why not?” Bryce asks.
“Because it’s suspicious as fuck for you to be there?” Jared says.
“I don’t mean like, sitting in the stands with you,” Bryce says. “I can just get a hotel in Tampa. It’s not weird to go on vacation in Florida. That’s like, what Florida’s for.”
“In June?” Jared asks sceptically, because he’s totally judging whoever thought humid as fuck mid-thirties heat would be a great idea for a bunch of guys obligated to wear suits. At least it isn’t in Dallas or something? “And come on, if you’re recognised by anyone it’ll seem super weird, you just happening to be in Tampa right around draft time.”
“Well—” Bryce says.
“Go visit your mom or something,” Jared says. “She’s got to be disappointed you’re not coming back to Vancouver for the summer.”
He wonders if Elaine’s mad at him, because it’s pretty clearly his fault Bryce is sticking around. He hopes not.
“Yeah, a little,” Bryce says. “Would it be okay if she came for a week in July? Maybe August? Sometime around my birthday.”
“It’s your mom, dude,” Jared says. “And your birthday.”
“So—” Bryce says.
“So duh,” Jared says. “Obviously.”
“She’d be staying in the guest room, though,” Bryce says.
“I can handle not having sex for a week, Bryce,” Jared says. And he can, even though that has…literally never been a thing when they’re in the same city. “Invite your mom.”
Bryce does, for the week before his birthday, and books a flight to Vancouver for a few days while he’s at it, which is a relief, not having to worry about Bryce skulking around the draft like a university student at a high school party. Raf’s already headed down there with his parents when Jared’s family starts getting ready to go down, and Jared scopes out the most important thing: Weather Network says it’s thirty two in Tampa but what does it feel like? he asks.
death Raf responds almost immediately, and Jared packs appropriately.