Work Text:
January 17th, approx. 1am
I feel bad for the Claude thing. Like, really bad. I hung up on him and five minutes later I realize I ditched him.
I’m confused.
Not like that…confused on how I feel about him, how he feels about me. It’s not like we can just sit down and hash it out like we used to. We’re apart now. But I wish we weren’t.
I’ll invite Claude up here for the Olympic break. Genius.
So I call him. Voicemail of course, but I leave him something decently informative. Still counts.
“Hey…so if you’re not busy you should come up to my place in Montreal over the Olympic break. We can make fun of Crosby when he’s in Sochi.” I awkwardly hang up after that. We’re on the bus to wherever, CA. We just won against Ottawa, Saturday we’re in Toronto. I put my forehead against the cool glass of the bus window and Gally scoots into the seat beside me.
“Quoi de neuf?”
I shrug. “Moyennment…”
“Danny, talk to me.” He puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Claude. Il est…” I sigh and lean towards Gally. “Il est difficile. I’m getting mixed signals.”
“Hey, shut up, I’m trying to fucking sleep.”
“You have enough on your plate, don’t worry about boys now.” Gally laughs and pulls me in for a hug. I breathe in his scent and I finally relax. Finally.
“Merci.” I close my eyes and fall asleep.
~~
January 17th, 6am
I slowly wake up whenever the bus stops abruptly. We’re in Toronto at a hotel and everyone is being slow at getting up. I nudge Gally awake and he smiles whenever he awakens.
“Bonjour!” He says softly as he stretches. I push him out of the seat and tell him to get off the fucking bus. He just laughs at me.
We all get our rooms in the hotel and almost everyone goes to bed. My room has two double beds, looks like I’m not alone this time. I lay in my bed trying to decide whether or not I want to sleep whenever the door opens.
It’s Gally again. He drops his shit on the floor and runs to the bathroom. I can’t help but laugh.
“I really had to shit, don’t even laugh at me.” Gally shouts. I turn the TV on to the weather channel and check my phone. Still no text. Dammit. Gally comes out with no pants on and sits next to me on my bed.
“Excuse you.” I say starkly. He grins at me and pulls a bag of trail mix out of his hoodie pocket. “I’d like to sleep soon.” I say once more.
“I’m not stopping you.” He replies with a mouth full of trail mix. I roll my eyes and sleep somewhere thereafter.
~~
In my dream, we’re running together again. We’re racing on the rack together. My legs begin to burn and ache and Clo just laughs at me.
“C’mon, old man, run faster!” He shouts at me and I take bigger strides. We cross the finish line and I finish one stride behind him. We stop and he bends over at the waist, his hands on his knees. He’s panting.
“I forgot how fast you were.” I say softly. He stands up and twists around a little, loosening himself up. He walks towards me and puts his hand on my chest.
“Your heart is racing.” He states. I put my hand on his hand and smile. He smiles back.
“Feel my heart, Danny.”
He guides my hand to his chest. His heart is racing and warm. He puts his hand on my hand and lets his fingers fall between my fingers. We step closer to each other and I can feel his hot breath on my face.
What a beautiful dream.
It begins downpouring and he takes my face in his hands. I can feel all of him around me. And he kisses me tenderly.
“I have to go, Danny.”
“No, stay.”
“I have to.”
He slips out of my arms, but I keep my hand on his heart.
I wake up with my hand on Gally’s chest and his arm is around my shoulders.
~~
January 21st, late at night
We’re handed a 5-3 decision on Saturday and Gally is avoiding me like the plague.
I don’t know what happened but I’m scared to know. But all that matters is the next game: Pittsburgh and moving up through the lines. I need to get my charm back. Claude’s really messing with my head and I need to figure out what I’m doing with myself first. I consider texting him right before we catch the flight and tell him to forget about our plans but I figured I’d better wait.
We spend the night in Pittsburgh and Gally is my roommate again, but I think he’s hanging out with someone else for the night, because I’m alone in the room. It’s refreshing—I can finally be alone with my thoughts.
Ever since we shot that stupid commercial in the fall, Gally has been sticking to me like glue. I never really noticed how bad it was until now. But I have a feeling that Gally knows about me and Claude. Gally is nice, but not that nice. He’s super awkward, I’m fifteen years his senior, and he’s just not my type. But I’m ten years senior to Claude…and he’s also awkward.
I order some room service—nothing too fancy, just some soup and a soda. The attendant is really nice, she’s obviously tired as hell but somehow hanging on.
“Hey.” I say when I open the door. She smiles at me and hands me a receipt to sign and then she hands me my food.
“You play for the Habs, right?” She asks.
“Yeah.” I laugh a little and set the food down on a table near the door. “Who do you play for?”
“Oh, no one anymore.” She laughs. “Now I’m just studying athletic training at Pitt. I did play soccer though.”
“Nice, nice. Maybe you’ll be stitching up my face someday.” We both laugh.
“How’d you get that scar on your jaw?”
I try thinking back, far. It feels like a blur but all I can remember is Claude asking me the same question, and how his fingers skipped over the tender skin where the scar began. How he would always comment on it, especially when I would say I hated it, he would tell me how much he loved it.
“I can’t remember. AHL days way back when.” I sputter out. We laugh again, and the light catches her face and I see a scar on the outside edge of her eye, and it stretches up to her forehead. “What about the scar by your eye?”
“Went up for a 50/50 ball and knocked heads. It bled so much that they had to stop the game to clean my blood off the field.” She grins, obviously really proud. “I gotta get back to delivering food and stuff. Nice talking to you.” She waves to me and pushes her cart away. I close the door and dig into my food. The soup has a bunch of garlic in it, but it’s good shit. Chicken soup for the soul.
I doze in and out until midnight and Gally comes in as I’m about to fall asleep. He’s especially noisy as he uses the restroom and gets settled in his bed.
“Hey Danny?” He calls out.
“Oui?” I reply.
“Do you like me?”
I pause for a moment. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. “Of course I do. You’re my teammat—“
“Not like that.”
I breathe in. Fuck.
“Then how.”
“Like how you were with Claude.”
I furrow my brow. “How do you know about that?”
“Who didn’t know?” He laughs out of sarcasm.
“We were just roommates.”
“Just.”
I roll over in my bed, towards Gally. He’s on the edge of the bed, his arm hanging over.
“You were moaning about him last night and you kept cuddling against me.” He says finally.
“I’m sorry, that was incredibly unprofessional of me.”
“I liked it.” He admits without pausing. There’s a beat and I speak again.
“It was a mistake, Gally.”
“So be it.” He rolls back over and falls back asleep.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck