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There are plenty of shitty things about being injured during the season - Jeff could make a list of them as long as he is tall, easy. But the worst thing - and he for abso-fucking sure has the experience to know - is the boredom. Previous bouts on IR have seen him practicing his drinking, his channel-changing, his trash-can basketball shot, and his complaining about the pain, and boredom, and goddamn loneliness (once he was drunk enough to not feel like a complete idiot saying any of that). This go-round there's nobody around he's willing to complain to, though, so he's decided to use the time not spent in rehab and doctors' appointments and all the rest of that shit acting like a fucking adult and doing something more productive with it. In theory.
To whit: he's surfing YouTube looking for video tutorials covering new and exciting ways to cook team nutritionist-approved protein, because at this point in his life he can grill steaks and (marinated) chicken breasts without pretty much ever thinking about it, but he's been told to eat more fish as, like, an encouraging his body to heal more quickly thing, and he needs a place to start.
Jeff's almost at the point of giving up looking - there are more videos about cooking fish than he'd ever imagined, and after a while they all start to blend together - when he spots it. It's no surprise the thumbnail catches his attention. In a sea of cooks standing in their kitchens and artistically-presented plates of food, it stands out like a hockey player in the middle of an ice show. Because mostly it shows water, framed by the side of a boat at the bottom and a distant tree-lined shore at the top. It makes him think of, well, things he's decided not to think about.
And, okay, Jeff doesn't actually need to know how to cook lake trout in a tin-foil packet with ramps and fiddleheads - what even is a ramp? or a fiddlehead? - but he clicks anyway.
The lake doesn't turn out to be false advertising, though, because the video opens with an extended shot of the view in the thumbnail. It's not silent, entirely. The audio picks up birds calling in the distance, wind sighing through the trees - and water slapping the sides of the boat, lightly, lapping against a nearby shore. There isn't a person in sight.
And then a voice cuts in, says, this time of year, the best places to look for lake trout are at the edges of sandbars, shoals, and shallow bays...like this one. They come to feed on minnows - and we come to feed on them.
"What the hell, you asshole - this is what you've been up to?" And Jeff just about drops his laptop, he's so viscerally surprised. Because he knows that voice, would know that fucking voice anywhere, and just about the last place he expected to hear it was, well, here. Anywhere around LA might be even more of a long-shot, but that's a toss-up.
There's no way he's not getting the full experience - not now he's heard it - though.
When he turns his attention back to the screen, the camera angle has changed a little, to frame a hand (which Jeff is also far too familiar with) holding a fishing lure - attached to the end of a line - from above and to the side. The narration continues, a spinner, like this one, is a good choice of lure, before the camera angle shifts again to catch the action of the cast out over the lake. That segues into a fishing montage. A couple good-sized fish later, the action shifts onto dry land, to cover identifying and gathering fiddleheads and ramps, cleaning and filleting the fish, and cooking them in a campfire, along with potatoes in their skins. And just about the only part of the guy that's ever on camera is his hands.
Jeff doesn't need much more than that - and the voice, and the complaints about what the fuck the Jays think they're doing this season, losing nine of their first ten games - to ID Mike, who's apparently calling himself thefishmancometh.
And that should be a more than good enough reason to click back out of this video and choose something safer to focus on instead. Like the next link down, which had been claiming that it would show him how to cook salmon in the dishwasher. Instead, he tells the video player, yes, please do play me the next video in this playlist.
Jeff has never claimed to make particularly good decisions when it came to this one subject, even if he has been trying harder recently.
***
It's nearly a week before he takes another stab at finding recipes to try via YouTube. The amount of rehab he's allowed to do has increased a little, and the team's back from their latest roadie, so they've gone out a few times. The morning after the most recent night out, he woke up to discover he'd ordered 11 pounds of frozen lake trout fillets, to be shipped express, packed in dry ice. Which, to be honest, is not even close to being the weirdest thing he's done under the influence.
Also, drunk him is maybe a little clearer about what he wants than sober him, even if sober him has sworn he's going to ignore the whole thing.
It's the wrong season for fiddleheads, it turns out, but the guy at the vegetable market says that he can use asparagus, instead, and leeks or scallions in the place of ramps. So he fires up the grill, out on the deck, and makes up a pound of the trout into packets with asparagus tips and trimmed down scallions. And when it comes off the grill, he sits outside with a beer and inhales the entire pound of fish and all the veg, and finds himself wishing he'd brought some bread out to mop up the juices.
He gives in and goes hunting more recipes as soon as he's finished cleaning up.
And when he finds himself lingering at the thumbnail for the recipe he'd just tried, he sighs, clicks the link again, and waits for the video to load - and taps on the comment box to say, not bad. Couldn't get fiddleheads, but asparagus tips worked okay. Because that's true, but he doesn't want to come off like he's blowing smoke up his ass. Anyway, the vid's been up for almost a year, so probably nothing will even come of it.
***
It turns out, having the channel on in the background, while Jeff does other stuff, is weirdly comforting. Not that Jeff needs comforting about anything. It's just, there isn't much talking, and he would get so much shit for wanting to listen to all this shit about fishing all the time, but whatever. Those sounds in the background, they're...nice.
***
Jeff makes literal millions every year - he could probably eat lobster every day if he wanted to - so why is he intentionally cooking something called 'Poor Man's Lobster'. And for some of his teammates, for American Thanksgiving, no less. The best he can say is that the vid for it was, well, persuasive. It's delicious poached, served with jerusalem artichokes and a combination of sorrel and dandelion greens, combined with watching those hands - those hands - as they dip chunks of pike into glistening, golden melted butter - plus the satisfied noises, which kinda sound like other noises he's familiar with. He never stood a chance.
For Thanksgiving, he's expanded on the original suggested menu by adding venison steaks, plus a thing with wild rice, and dessert, of course.
His victims for the purpose are Toffs and Pears, because inviting them seems like the kind of thing a good older linemate should do - and subjecting them to his experiments seems like the potentially assholish kind of thing an older hockey player should subject not-quite-rookies to. Fortunately, steak, venison or otherwise, is a pretty universal selling point among hockey players. And the run of good recipes courtesy of thefishmancometh holds.
Toffs is a city boy, who maybe occasionally fishes for fun in the summer, at his family's cottage - but Pears comes from Kitchener, so he apparently has the context to blurt, "this is pike??" after only a bite. "Shit, dude - I know what I'm making my girl next summer. But, like, how did you get it to be like this?"
And Jeff finds that he doesn't want to share the videos with anybody yet - even though he was hardly the first person to view them to begin with - like, they've been around the Kings long enough, and they'd probably see what Jeff saw. Maybe not about the hands, but the voice… so he says, "all you gotta do is cook it briefly in a pot of boiling water seasoned with salt and sugar," and "I'll text you the amounts."
And even though this isn't really Jeff's usual kind of thing, neither of them seems at all curious about where he might've learned the recipe - even though he could say, entirely truthfully (or mostly, anyway), from a friend back home. Pears just says, "thanks," and continues stuffing his face. Toffs never stopped, because, well, he's a hockey player, and eating all the food is generally one of pros' top priorities.
Jeff's right there with him.
***
Maybe it shouldn't actually be a surprise that his freezer now contains 10 pounds of crappie - what, Jeff's a sucker for bacon-wrapped anything - in addition to the remaining 8 pounds of pike and 5 pounds of lake trout. Really, the question should be: what's he going to buy next., all because thefishmancometh suggested it would taste good? He's been right so far, but Jeff would probably still be going for it even if it had been more miss than hit. That's what history would suggest, anyway.
***
The first time thefishmancometh replies to one of Jeff's comments, he nearly closes his email and shuts the computer down right then and there - because this isn't how it's supposed to work. Jeff's supposed to get to have this little thing, all to himself, while thefishmancometh sticks to making the videos and not noticing him. So what if he's left a comment on every recipe he's tried?
More to the point, why're the replies coming now, weeks after Jeff left the first one?
If you get a chance in the spring, you should try it the real way the first notification says, followed by butter is the key, yep. Makes everything better. and then gotta admit I chose it because of the bacon, too. None of which is particularly earth-shattering. Like, Jeff could've predicted those opinions if he'd felt like it, and he can't bring himself to regret that. There's been plenty of shit gone down between them, but it wasn't ever all bad before now.
And in the spirit of that, he clicks through to the comment threads and starts typing dunno if we have ramps or fiddleheads locally - I'm in LA - but I bet one of the fancy grocery stores gets them shipped in if we don't…
***
The fact that thefishmancometh never mentions hockey is pretty conspicuous if you know that he's Mike. So when he posts a video, in mid-December, of him ice-fishing for walleye, and cooking them on sticks over a fire in an oil barrel after - and he says, all casual, while skewering the fish, of course the Kings could beat the Flyers, when they couldn't take down the Isles, Rangers or Devils, Jeff isn't entirely sure he heard right. Like, Mike sounds so much like his old self talking about hockey, when Jeff wasn't entirely sure that guy still existed. And he just generally seems happy, fishing amidst the snow and ice, bitching about the cold the entire time. But, still, happy.
Jeff almost leaves a comment, right then and there, suggesting he should come see the Kings play at home and check out the southern California weather, since it's so much nicer. Not that Jeff has had a chance to take advantage of it much, what with the whole still being injured thing. Also, he kinda misses snow, though not so much the part where he had to clear it off his car and shovel the driveway or the sidewalk. But in the end he doesn't know what to think about any of it, and all he posts is don't think I'm gonna get a chance to try doing that any time soon.
Because he definitely won't as long as he has a fucked up tendon - and anyway nothing freezes four feet deep around here.
***
The closer it gets to the holidays, and the more people talk about their plans, the more it hits Jeff that he's probably going to spend his entirely alone. His parents have decided to go somewhere warm and exotic. Everybody else has plans with their families. And then there's Jeff.
Who's living by himself in the house Mike was renting when Jeff miraculously got traded on to the Kings, back in 2012.
It's a nice house, in a good location, and what? He just likes it. Why should he move.? Just because Mike got sent down and bought out and spent a year with the Caps and ISN'T IN THE NHL ANY LONGER. None of that has to matter.
The point - and Jeff does have one - is that he needs something special to cook for himself for Christmas, and he's hoping thefishmancometh will have the perfect thing on offer. And, no, it doesn't mean anything that Jeff is centering his holiday menus on recipes suggested to the internet at large by Mike.
***
Perch in brown butter doesn't sound fancy, but it turns out to be exactly as delicious in its simplicity as advertised. Jeff tries maple roasted carrots with it, plus a reprise of the greens he made for American Thanksgiving. And since there isn't anybody else there to appreciate his efforts, he takes a picture. He means to post it to twitter, even though he'll probably get hell for not eating a more standard holiday meat - turkey or ham or a roast. Instead, he ends up posting it in the comments to the YouTube video that inspired it, because why not.
It doesn't occur to him that there's anything identifiable to the picture until, well, he checks his email later and sees the comment reply notification - which is a regular occurrence these days - and opens it to find thought you weren't talking to me. That comment is gone when he checks the site afterwards, so he opens the text thread he hasn't touched in over a year and a half and starts typing I thought YOU weren't talking to me, though true to form Jeff had done some sulking in the beginning.
Because apparently actually they are.
***
It's already dark when Jeff finally pulls up in his rental car. It's been a fucking long trip - a flight from LA to Vancouver yesterday morning, another from Vancouver to Winnipeg that afternoon, a night in a hotel near the Winnipeg airport, and then the final puddle-jumper leg of the trip into Kenora this afternoon. Which was, of course, delayed by weather.
But he's still here in time to celebrate the new year with Mike.
Mike, who's coming down the front steps towards him, saying "Dumbass, why didn't you wait for me to help you?" Because of course he's worried about Jeff reinjuring himself walking the ten meters from the car to the house.
"I've got a cane," Jeff says, but he doesn't object when Mike slings his arm under Jeff's and helps stabilize him for the rest of the trip across the snow. He's not about to say so, but he missed this. Though, to be fair, Mike seems like he might know, anyway.
"Still can't believe you were so bored being on IR you voluntarily chose to listen to me talk about fishing," he's saying, exactly the way Jeff had thought he might all the way back when he'd first discovered the videos.
Jeff half-shrugs, "there was food at the end."
"So you're a cliche, is what you're saying."
"I don't see you objecting."
And the way Mike smiles at him then, like he can't quite believe they're getting to have this conversation, right before he says, "you're going ice fishing while you're here - I have it in writing that you want to try it," is so perfectly what Jeff had spent months missing without ever understanding he was missing it.
All he can say is, "sure." Which is pretty much as good as saying I love you.
"You're not even going to argue, shit," Mike says, which is basically a guarantee that he didn't miss that trick. "Guess we're actually doing this."
And then they're kissing - Jeff isn't sure which of them moved first and doesn't really care - celebrating a new, and better, start, even if the new year is still a day away. They've got stuff to work out, still, for sure. That won't change anytime soon. But this kiss that isn't drunk or about to be misunderstood is a fucking amazing start.