Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chris won’t pretend that he was surprised to see the NHL scouts at Samwell’s games. Samwell won the NCAA championship in his junior year with Bitty as their captain, and now they’re back in the Frozen Four again, and he’s not going to pretend that he’s surprised that there are NHL scouts there. 

Chris is surprised that the guy sitting in the crowd has a Falconers hat on. The Falconers. The team that drafted Jack Zimmermann . 

Chris is so stunned for a moment that he almost lets a goal in when the defense lets some ridiculously massive guy through their blue line. The guy lines up a shot. 

Chris catches it cleanly in his glove. 

Chris won’t pretend he wasn’t surprised to see an email in his inbox from the Falconers. It was— god , it was a dream. He had to have one of his teammates look at it, just to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. 

He goes to the Falcs camp in a daze, living out of a hotel room and the trunk of an SUV that used to be his mom’s and barely managed the cross-country drive from San Francisco to Samwell. Sue him, he likes road trips. 

It doesn’t really sink in until the last couple of days of training camp, when he’s called up to the assistant GM’s office. He's either in or he’s out. Absolute worst case, he makes it on their AHL team. He’s gonna be a professional hockey player. 

There’s one other-- prospect sitting in a chair outside Georgia’s office (it’s too weird to think of himself as an NHL prospect, so he usually doesn’t). He recognizes him, of course: Derek Nurse, the best defender in the camp. The forwards had all been pretty run of the mill as far as undrafted players go, but Derek had been a show to watch. And watch him Chris did, hopefully from the other end of the ice. Nurse can score like no defenseman should be able to. 

Nurse looks up from his phone and smiles a little when he sees Chris. He does that cool “what’s up” nod that Chris could never pick up despite being on sports teams his entire life. He thinks it might be a goalie thing. 

“Hey,” Nurse says, then he leans forward and holds out his hand for Chris to shake. Chris shakes it. “I’m Nursey.” 

Chris smiles widely at him. “Chris Chow. Or-- Chowder. Just Chowder works.” 

Nursey leans back in his chair and smiles at him. He’s handsome in that roguish way; he embodies tall, dark, and handsome. The stubble that clings to his jaw is clearly a five-o’clock shadow despite the fact that it’s not even one in the afternoon yet, but he wears it well. He’s wearing a gray henley and obscenely tight jeans-- he clearly cleans up a lot better straight after practice than most guys do. 

“So, um,” Chris starts, abruptly very nervous, “how long have you been waiting here?” 

“Just a few minutes,” Nursey replies. He looks Chris up and down for a brief second. “You need the seat?” 

“Nah,” Chris smiles. “Goalie legs.” 

The door to Georgia’s office opens with a soft click, and she pokes her head out. She glances between the two of them, then opens her door wide and gestures for them to follow. They do, and then they settle into the chairs in front of her desk. 

“Sorry about that,” Georgia says, flipping through papers on her desk, “bit behind on paperwork with everyone this year. We’re usually better about this, but.” She shrugs, then settles her papers into two neat piles and looks up at them. She steeples her fingers on the desk. “I wanted to get both of you at once.” 

She clears her throat. “The Falconers would like to extend a one-year preliminary contract to both of you, up here with us. We’ve gotten through camp by now, and even though the coaches had their eyes on you from the first few days, you’ve definitely proven yourselves in these past few weeks.” 

Chris’s jaw drops, and Georgia grins. “We’d like to have you on the third line with Poindexter,” she says pointedly at Nursey, “and you as the backup goaltender.” She looks straight at Chris then, and he makes the conscious effort to close his mouth. 

“I know this might be a lot,” she continues after neither of them speaks up, “so you’ll have a few days to get back to us. It’s only Wednesday, and we don’t need a decision until Sunday. So, please, just call me whenever and we can work things out.” 

“I’m in,” Chris says. He has to think very hard about inhaling and exhaling. He looks to Nursey in the chair beside him. “Yeah, I’m-- that sounds very, very okay to me. Thank you.” 

“Yes, of course,” Nursey echoes. 

“Well, then, I guess I’ve got some contracts to draw up,” George says with a smile. She leans back in her chair and looks at them appraisingly. “Welcome to the team, boys.” 

Chris knew going in that the rookies get placed with a veteran player for their first year, but he didn’t expect to get roomed with Snowy , the actual starting Falcs goalie . He figured he’d get put with some fourth-stringer, or, like, maybe Jack Zimmermann, in his wildest dreams. But he hadn’t even entertained the idea of getting to room with Snowy. Snowy. Dustin goddamn Snow. He was the guy who -- not single-handedly, but pretty damn close -- got the Falcs to the playoffs three years in a row. Chris isn’t even a massive stats guy, but he knows for a fact that Dustin goddamn Snow was a .934 at the end of last season. Which is, like, insane . 

And now Chris is rooming with him . Chris is his backup . 

Technically, he’s taking the spare room in Snowy’s apartment. And, technically, he’s basically neighbors with, like, a third of the team, considering most of them live in either the same apartment building or in the one across the street. 

He was jealous of Nursey for getting roomed with his d-partner Poindexter -- who's got his own entire condo ten minutes from the rink -- for about ten seconds before he found out he’d be living with Dustin goddamn Snow. 

He actually meets Snowy two days later at his apartment building. Chris gets out of his mom’s beat up SUV and tries not to literally run to where he sees Snowy leaning up against the building. 

“Um, Snowy?” Chris says, and to his absolute fucking delight, Snowy turns to him with a grin and an outstretched hand. Chris shakes it, and tries not to yelp when he’s hauled into a bro hug. 

“Hey! Chris, right?” Snowy’s wearing a Falcs baseball cap -- is it a baseball cap if it’s got a hockey team’s logo on it? -- backwards, a little bit of brown hair poking through it, and a shirt that’s Falcs blue even though it doesn’t have the logo on it. He’s got a nice beard growing in, and Chris is instantly jealous that he’ll never be that cool, beard or not. 

“Yeah,” Chris grins. “Chris Chow-- or, Chowder, since I guess we’re teammates now.” 

Snowy huffs a little laugh. He gestures over towards Chris’s car, so they walk back to it. “That’s kind of wild. You’re, what, half my age?” 

“I’m twenty-three, I swear,” Chris says, trying not to whine. He’s had a baby face since he was a baby, and apparently it’s still working.The fact that he just cannot grow facial hair doesn’t help. Or the fact that he’s just barely six foot, and Snowy’s one of those giants. Well, Chris’ll still have his knees in his forties, so he’s really the winner here. 

“Okay, well. Actually, you being ten years younger than me does not make me feel better at all. At least Jack looks old.” Snowy picks up one of Chris’s boxes, labeled ‘BEDROOM’ in black marker, and looks down at him appraisingly. “It’s the beard, I think.” 

Chris snorts with a grin. “Yeah, that’s not happening.” 

All in all, it’s fairly simple to get all of Chris’s things up to the apartment; he’s been living out of boxes for the last few years because of college and hockey and everything. He’s gotten very good at living out of boxes and his mom’s SUV. 

He plans to buy himself a car that is not an eleven-year-old SUV with all the hockey money eventually, but he’s never actually bought his own car and is not overly excited about the prospect, even if the signing bonus was definitely enough to cover the cost. He’s a big fan of not looking like an absolute loser driving up to the rink every day. 

Snowy’s apartment -- home , at least for now -- is a very nice three bedroom, two bath place, and Chris is beyond delighted to place his boxes in his room. His room . His room in Dustin Snow’s apartment . 

The first team practice isn’t for another week, so Chris goes running. He’s not exactly an overachiever, but it would be nice to get to know the city he’s going to be living in for the better part of the next year at the very least. 

So he goes on runs. 

He tells Snowy what his plans are, and Snowy responds, “Yeah, have fun with that.” So he goes without Snowy. 

He does think to text Nursey and his roommate Dex -- whose numbers he got through George, and then through Nursey -- and ask if they would like to come with him. He gets a ‘ yes, thanks’ from Nursey and a ‘ how did you get my number’ from Dex, so he’s one for three. 

On Thursday, he wakes up at six in the morning, and he’s not even tired . Years of early morning practice have definitely trained him for this. 

He makes an omelette and two pieces of toast for breakfast in Snowy’s kitchen and puts his dishes in Snowy’s dishwasher and ties up his shoelaces in front of Snowy’s front door. The novelty of it all has not worn off. 

He meets Derek in the lobby of the building at six-thirty, and Derek still looks half asleep when he stumbles out of the elevator. Chris jumps up from where he’d been stretching out and walks up to him with a grin. 

“You’re insane for getting up this early,” Nursey complains. “I barely got in a cup of coffee. I thought Dex was gonna kill me for running his loud-ass coffee machine that early.” 

Chris raises an eyebrow. “Hasn’t he been playing for, like, four years already?” Derek nods. “I figured he’d been used to the schedule by now.” 

Nursey shrugs and shoulders the building’s door open, then holds it open a little for Chris to follow after him. “He’s a little,” he waves his hand around in a so-so gesture, “temperamental.” 

Everything kind of fades away when they’re running. Chris has always loved a good jog or run or cardio or whatever. If he hadn't fallen in love with hockey as a little kid, he definitely would have played soccer. The youth soccer clubs all had their seasons overlap with hockey, though, and there was no chance he would have abandoned hockey. 

“You run really well for someone who just stands around all the time when we play,” Nursey points out when they’re waiting for the crossing sign at a light. He’s a little out of breath, but he’s clearly kept up with his conditioning after training camp. 

Chris shrugs. The pedestrian light turns on, so they start up jogging again. “I like running,” is all he gets out before he has to focus on breathing. 

At their next stop, he turns to Nursey and says, “For what it’s worth, you’re pretty fast for a bulky guy.” He does not look Nursey up and down, even though he is tempted to remind himself just how long those legs are. 

Nursey grins like he’s reading Chris’s mind. “Only pretty fast?” 

Chris shrugs again. “You can’t be perfect at everything , it’s only fair. You’re a good shot and a hard shot and good on defense and you’re pretty. You can’t be really fast on top of all that.” 

Nursey’s face does something complicated. “You think I’m pretty?” 

“Same way I know Sidney Crosby has a massive ass. It’s just an observable fact.” 

Nursey scrunches up his face and shoves at Chris’s shoulder. The light turns, and they both start at their jog again. “You’re chirping now, but you’re the one who’s gonna be facing all my shots in practice next week.” 

Chris groans and throws his head back, but he’s smiling. “Don’t remind me.” 

Chris likes routines. He really likes them. It’s not in a superstitious way, exactly, it’s just that he can handle everything easier if he’s got a plan for it. 

In the week between moving in with Snowy and practice officially starting, Chris falls into a routine that he really, really likes. He might like it more than he liked all of college, which is kind of saying something, considering how much he loved Samwell. 

Chris wakes up at seven for breakfast and a run with Nursey -- Derek literally begged him after the first day to push their run back an hour, and Chris is disciplined , not a sadist. They sometimes go for brunch or maybe second breakfast or something, because running around the city burns about a million calories that they’re going to wish they had when the season starts up, and sometimes they don’t, but it’s fine because Chris doesn’t have any plans until noon, when he Skypes with his parents and then with Caitlin. 

The day before the season starts is his birthday, and Nursey decides that means mandatory rookie bonding time, so they go out for a brunch of fancy-cooked eggs and pastries that would truly horrify Nate the team nutritionist. Apparently Nursey tells the staff that it’s Chris’s birthday, so their poor, wonderful waitress comes out with a blueberry muffin with a single, tiny candle in it, and Chris decides that Nursey’s going to be his best friend in Providence. 

He thinks, for one long moment, that he thinks he and Nursey are going to be best friends even if they aren’t playing together. The thought makes his chest go a little tight, even though they’ve only been on the same ice since July. Some day they probably won’t be on the same ice together, and that’ll be okay, because Nursey is the kind of guy who’s probably going to be his friend for the rest of forever. 

He’s fully prepared for Snowy to chirp him to smithereens when he walks in on him and Caitlin talking after he’s freshly showered from his successful run and birthday brunch with Nursey. Snowy just peeks at the screen, gives a tiny smile and wave to Cait on Chris’s laptop, and says, “Hi. Chowder never shuts up about you.” 

Chris feels his entire face go entirely red and doesn’t look back at the screen. “Did you want something?” 

Snowy looks at Chris, and his smile is more real. “I wanted to invite some of the guys over for dinner, if that’s okay? Just a few of ‘em.” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

Cait is the one who chirps him to smithereens, then. 

“I haven’t seen you look that embarrassed since the first time you kissed me,” she says, obviously delighted. “ Oh my god, you went so red! I wish I got a screenshot, holy shit.” 

“You are so annoying,” Chris replies, muffled from where he has his hands over his face. His cheeks still burn. “You are annoying and I am so glad you’re in California right now.” 

“Actually, you miss me and you love me very much.” 

Chris takes his face out of his hands, resting his chin on them instead to look at Cait. She’s so goddamn beautiful that he has to bury his face in his hands again. 

“Yeah, I love you and miss you very much.” 

Cait’s smile could honestly bring about world peace. “I gotta get all of this out of you before you’re off on the big scary NHL schedule. How many times do you guys play the Sharks this season again?” 

“Three,” Chris replies from behind his hands. He’s been both delighted by and dreading those three games; Caitlin can drive down to see him really actually play in the actual NHL against his favorite NHL team, but he has to play against the Sharks. The Sharks . 

“Can’t wait until November.” 

“I wish I could come down for Christmas.” He tries not to pout, but he does a very poor job and Cait grins at him. 

“Chris,” she says, like she’s talking to either a small child or an overexcitable dog. “You play in the NHL. We’ve spent, like, four Christmas breaks together. Plus,” she adds with a wicked smile, “I can finally watch one of your games with my family.” 

Chris sighs heavily and leans back in his chair. After thinking about Cait watching one of his games with, like, her grandma or whoever, he covers his face with his hands again. “What if I fuck it up?” 

“You’re not gonna fuck it up.” 

“What if I let in, like, seven goals, and your grandma hates me forever because I couldn’t beat the Islanders. The Islanders , Caitlin. For Christmas . I think I might die.” 

Because she is a traitor, Cait throws her head back and laughs. “Just buy me something nice for Christmas from New York and I’ll put in a good word with my grandma.” 

Chris sighs again, for a completely different reason this time. He is absolutely sure he’s making one of those stupidly-in-love faces Whiskey would always chirp him for. There’s no one here to fine him now. “I love you.” 

“I love you, too. Happy birthday, Chris.” She makes her own stupidly-in-love face back at him. “Now tell me about Snowy. No, actually, tell me about Nursey .” 

Chris makes his NHL debut in the fourth game of the season, and it’s against the Penguins. He’s so nervous he actually throws up in the guest bathroom in Snowy’s apartment. 

“I’m gonna die,” he says as he gets in Snowy’s car -- neither of them trust his car, and he hasn’t had the chance to buy a new one yet. Snowy claps a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“You’re going to do great, Chowder.” 

“I’m gonna die and Sidney Crosby is gonna kill me.” 

He has a sort of pregame routine from Samwell, but everything is so different on the Falconers that he’s kind of reinventing everything. He’s…unmoored. In the locker room, he straps his pads on and shrugs on his jersey almost in a daze. 

“Hey,” someone says, and when Chris jerks his head up, it’s Nursey. “You alright?” 

Chris swallows. He looks at the clock; six minutes until they’re on the ice for warmups, and then they’ll be back in the locker room for a few minutes until the game actually starts, and then he’s gonna be playing in an NHL game. 

He looks back up at Nursey and shrugs. 

“Look,” Nursey says with a little grin, “if everything goes well, you’re not even gonna be blocking that many shots, alright? It’s my job to keep them off you, and if they score, you can blame me.” He looks around and spots Dex’s red hair across the room. He raises his voice: “Or you can blame Poindexter!” 

Dex turns around and glares at Nursey. The look he gives Chris is less murderous and more calculating. 

Nursey’s grin at Chris is wide and pleased. “He loves me, by the way.” He steals the stick tape from Poots, whose stall is right next to Chris’s. “How’s it going, living with Snowy?” 

Chris lived with Bitty for long enough to be able to recognize when people are trying to distract him, or make him feel better, or deflecting from their own problems. But Chris kind of really needs a distraction. 

“It’s been weird. Not, like-- Snowy’s awesome, obviously. But everything’s so new and weird, like. I don’t even know, man.” He knocks his skate against the butt end of Nursey’s stick on the ground. “I mean, you’re a rookie, too. You get it. Everything’s just new and-- weird.” 

Nursey smiles and taps his newly taped stick on Chris’s shoulders like he’s knighting him. “Yeah, I get it.” 

Chris saves thirty-seven shots and lets in three goals, one of which is actually by Sidney Crosby, and the Falconers win. Chris doesn’t know if he remembers a single save he made during the game, but everyone crowds around him near the goal when the final buzzer sounds, and he almost cries before he remembers he’ll probably have to do, like, six interviews. 

He does three interviews between stripping off his massive pads and taking a shower, so he’s sure Cait just watched him talk on tv for about fifteen minutes with sweaty hair, and he can’t even bring himself to care. 

He’s still riding the high when Tater announces, very loudly and while holding Chris in a headlock, that they’re all going out tonight to celebrate Chowder’s first win. Chris is about to beg off, because all he really wants is to Skype Caitlin and sleep very, very thoroughly, but even Jack Zimmermann is grinning at the announcement. So he goes out with the team. 

Snowy is usually one of the last ones to leave the locker room, and since Chris is riding with him, he takes his opportunity to call Caitlin. 

The phone barely rings once before she picks up. 

“CHRIS! OH MY GOD!” 

He winces and holds his phone away from his ear a bit, but he’s smiling like a madman. “Hi, Cait.” 

“YOU WON!” 

“We won!” 

“YOU SAVED SO MANY SHOTS!” 

“I mean, they still scored three times.” 

“I’M SO PROUD OF YOU! CHRIS! HOLY SHIT!”

Chris can’t help but laugh, so he does. “I love you.” 

“I love you, too! 

Chris bites down on his lip. “So you had fun watching?” 

“SO much fun, oh my god. I invited over, like, four people from work so I could flex that I knew you. Like, Jenny from accounting definitely makes more money than me, but is her boyfriend the Falconers starting goalie?” Cait sighs, and it’s almost dreamy. “You were so good. And oh! You have to introduce me to Jack Zimmermann when you play here. And Snowy, obviously. And definitely Derek. He already followed me on instagram so we’re basically best friends.” 

Chris startles.  “He- he followed you on instagram?” 

“Yeah, so we can gossip about you and stuff. Is-- is that a problem?” Cait pauses. He doesn’t say anything. “Chris, are you jealous? ” 

Chris can feel his face go bright red. “He doesn’t follow me on instagram,” he mutters. 

“Well, fine, I can tell him to follow you, too. He’s more of a twitter guy, I think.” Cait rolls her eyes so hard that Chris can tell through the phone. 

Snowy comes out of the locker room then, game day suit jacket thrown over his shoulder. He nods his head towards the exit at the end of the hallway, and Chris nods. 

“Hey, all the guys are going out to celebrate the win, so I gotta go.” Chris chews on his lip. 

“Oh, okay. Have fun! And tell Derek I said hi!” 

Chris rolls his eyes and grins. “I love you. Skype tomorrow?” 

“Love you, too,” Cait replies, and Chris’s chest aches with how fondly she says it. “See you tomorrow!” 

When Chris meets Snowy at his car, he’s already got it running and is fiddling with the radio. Snowy doesn’t look up until he’s pulled out of the parking spot and on his way to…whatever bar they’re going to. 

“That your girl?” 

Chris tries not to jump. Snowy is nice, really nice, but he’s so quiet that he startles Chris all the goddamn time. 

“Yeah, that was Caitlin. She was just saying congrats. We would usually Skype or something, but-- I just called her since we’re all going out tonight.” 

Snowy puts on his turn signal, smiles toothily. “Do any of the guys know?” 

Chris takes a breath. He’s not-- he’s not ashamed, or embarrassed of her, or whatever. He loves Caitlin very, very much and he’s known since at least sophomore year that they’ll probably get married and retire to California and annoy all their friends with how in love they are. 

He’s not embarrassed of her. He’s just-- he knows how locker rooms are. He’s okay with being chirped about a lot of things -- his height, his weight, the fact that he’s a goalie, how much he loves the Sharks -- but Cait is the only person he’s ever really, truly been in love with like this, and he’s not ready to be teased about this. Even if it’s lighthearted, even if they don’t really mean it. 

“Um,” he says, instead of all of that. He tries not to freeze up, so he shakes his head. “No, I haven’t-- I haven’t really talked about her. Nursey follows her on instagram.” 

Snowy chuckles. “Nursey follows everyone on instagram. That man needs a hobby.” 

“You didn’t go to college, right?” 

“Thought about it, but no.” Snowy shrugs. 

“Well, trust me,” Chris says with a grin that’s a little rueful, “I doubt he had the time.” 

Snowy’s returning smile is a little tight, too. “Well, he’s not getting any more free time now.” 

Dinner and drinks with the guys is fun until someone makes Chris go get the next round of drinks and he gets carded. He sits squished against Nursey, their arms pressed warmly together. Dex is on Nursey’s other side, shoved against the wall and shockingly not scowling at anyone despite the fact that he looks very uncomfortable. 

The guys on the other side of the booth -- they’re all kind of shoved off to the side, where the rest of the team is at a couple of tables pushed together a few feet away -- are the sophomores on the team, the rookies from last year. Chris feels kind of bad for Dex, considering he’s been on the team for quite a bit longer than anyone else at the table, but then Chris hears him laugh for the first time. 

Chris has been in the locker room and on the bench for four games and several weeks of practice and all of training camp, and the first time he hears Will Poindexter laugh is smushed between Nursey and the wall in a stuffy bar with a shitty beer in his hand. 

“You’re an asshole, Forty,” he says to Jacob Fourtier across from them. Chris does not stare at him, even though Forty was the runner up for the Calder last year, and Chris isn’t gonna say anything like that to the Calder runner up. 

“Come on, you know you love me!” Forty bares his teeth in something almost like a smile. It still manages to be charming. “I thought I was your rookie !” 

Dex rolls his eyes. He takes another swig of his beer, and grimaces at the taste. That’s what they get for making Chris buy the round; he’s really just got his signing bonus, and he still needs a car. 

“This asshole’s my rookie, now.” Dex shoves at Nursey’s shoulder, and Chris nearly falls out of the booth. Nursey winds his arm around Chris’s shoulders to keep him steady. He leaves it there, warm and heavy. “You are officially old news.” 

Forty groans and sets his head on Carter Pham’s shoulder. “At least I still have you.” 

Carter -- they call him ‘Birdie’, and no one has explained to Chris why -- shoves him off with a bright laugh. “You are literally my least favorite person.” He makes eye contact with Chris and shrugs. “If Dex gets Nursey, then I get Chowder. At least he didn’t make that horrible giveaway in the third.” 

“I stopped the shot they got off it, too,” Chris adds, and Birdie holds his fist out for him to bump. It’s cool. Chris is way out of his depth, but it’s very cool. He kind of hasn’t stopped smiling the entire night. Except when he got carded. 

Nursey tightens his arm around Chris’s shoulders. “I think Snowy has dibs already.” He smiles in a loose, goofy way that means he’s well on his way to properly drunk. Chris is kind of a lightweight even after four years of college, so he nurses his first and probably only beer, but Nursey’s already got two beers and a round of shots in him. “Or maybe Caitlin. You’re not her rookie, but she definitely has dibs.” 

Chris’s stomach sinks just a little bit. So much for not getting chirped. 

Birdie and Forty’s eyebrows go directly up, like they’ve smelled blood in the water. Forty leans forward, chin in his hand on the table. It is nothing if not intimidating. “Who’s Caitlin?” 

Chris feels his face go red. Way out of his depth. 

“She’s my girlfriend.” He can’t pretend he’s not proud of her. 

Their eyebrows go up even higher, if possible. “And why have we not met her? Are you hiding her somewhere?” 

Chris lets out something between a laugh and a sigh of relief. Okay, so they don’t hate him. It’s cool, they’re cool. Way out of his depth. 

“No, she, uh. She lives in California. We met in college, but we’re both from San Francisco, actually.” He feels himself smiling despite himself. Talking about Cait is easy; he loves her. 

“Oh, god,” Birdie groans, and when Chris sends him a questioning look, he elaborates: “That’s the look that Marty gives his wife. You’re so gone on her, jesus . I thought you would be one of the cool young guys but ugh , you’re already basically married.” 

Chris flushes, but he’s still smiling and pleased. 

“Ugh,” Birdie repeats, more dramatically this time. He throws his arm over Forty’s shoulder again. “Maybe you’re my favorite again, I guess. You might be a fucking idiot but at least we can be single together.” 

Chris leans back into Nursey’s warm shoulder and lets it all sink in. 

Chris knows that he’s the backup goalie, okay. He knows that. He knows that when Snowy pulls something in his leg in practice, it means that he gets upgraded to the starting goalie. Maybe for a game or two, he’s-- the Falconers starting goalie.  

Snowy stumbles off to the locker room, and Coach Reese skates up to him. “Congrats, Chow,” he says, clapping Chris on the shoulder. “You’re starting tonight.” 

The Falcs bring up the starter from the minors, and Chris doesn’t really know his name but everyone calls him Cookie, so Chris does, too. They put him up in Snowy’s stall in the locker room, which is right next to Chris’s, and he kind of wants to hate Cookie, but he can’t bring himself to. Mostly, he misses driving to the rink with Snowy in the mornings. 

Between showering after practice, and cooking something for lunch for him and Snowy -- Snowy’s kind of limping between the couch and his bed, so Chris takes pity on him and announces that he’s making food for the both of them, what would he like to eat, no it’s really no problem -- Chris is kind of very wiped. He throws their dishes in the dishwasher and flops onto his bed. He’s barely awake long enough to set his pregame alarm. 

Chris is groggy the entire time between waking up, downing a protein shake, and picking up his coat and keys on the way out the door. Snowy gives a sad little wave from the couch. He’s buried under two blankets with his tweaked leg propped up on a throw pillow on the coffee table. The Netflix 'Are you still watching?’ screen pops up right as Chris shoves his keys in his pocket.

“Shut ‘em out,” Snowy says, and Chris’s chest aches at the steel in his voice. Snowy really, truly believes he can do it. 

Chris gives him the most believable smile he can. He didn’t even throw up in the bathroom this time (though there’s still plenty of time for that in the locker room). 

“I’ll do my best.” 

Chris is still not entirely awake when he gets to the rink, but he gets there at the same time as Dex and Nursey and Birdie, and Birdie immediately gives him a noogie and drags him alongside them. 

“How’s my favorite STARTING GOALIE doing?” Birdie shouts into his ear, pretending that Chris is some tiny little kid when, really, he’s basically six feet tall. Like, basically. Chris manages to squirm his way out and slug Birdie in the shoulder. 

“I’m fucking fine, idiot,” he says with a wild grin. He already feels better, surrounded by these guys who are rooting for him. 

It’s one thing when Snowy thinks he’ll do well -- Snowy kind of has to, since Chris is his backup. If Snowy gets pulled, then Chris has to be up to snuff. But for the guys playing in front of him to believe in him? To trust him, to know that he’s got their backs? Well that’s kind of a different thing altogether. 

“Don’t break Snowy’s rookie, Birds,” Dex says, a little exasperated and looking down at his phone. He’s navigating shockingly well for someone who hasn’t looked up the whole time they’ve been navigating the halls. Chris has been playing here since July, and he still gets lost. 

“He’s my rookie now.” Birdie reaches forward and grabs Nursey by the shoulder. “I like Nursey, too. Can I have two rookies?” 

Nursey’s smiling like he’s in on some kind of joke, but he shrugs Birdie’s arm off anyway. “We’re literally older than you. We both went to college.” 

“And I was a first round pick,” Birdie shrugs. “You guys are ancient, but I still have seniority. Catch up!” 

“I still have to buy your beer.” Chris jabs Birdie in the ribs, and he flinches back and pulls his arms in to protect himself. 

“Why are you guys ganging up on me! I thought you were my beloved rookies!” 

“Snowy’s definitely got dibs on Chow,” Dex chirps, finally looking up from his phone with a wickedly sharp smile. 

He doesn’t remember to call Caitlin until after warmups. He hurries out of the locker room and down the hall. When she picks up, she briefly yells at him for not telling her anything, but she ends the call saying, “I’m so happy for you! Let me turn on the TV, hold on.” 

“It’s not even my first start,” he says, a little embarrassed and mostly very happy to hear her voice. 

“Maybe I want to watch for Derek.” 

“Ha, ha.” He can hear the Falconers game announcers talking to each other from the TV through the phone. “You can’t be mad at me if we don’t win.” 

“Chris,” she says, and just that is enough. She goes on anyway, “I wouldn’t be mad if you never won another game this season. You’re gonna do your best and your guys are gonna score, and that’s either gonna be enough or it’s not.” He can’t see her, but he can imagine her shrugging. “It is how it is. You’re not gonna be perfect, and no one is expecting you to be. Everyone’s still gonna love you.” 

Chris does not tear up. That would be ridiculous. 

“Thanks,” he says, and it’s not choked up, because that would be crazy. “I love you. So much.” 

“I love you, too. Now go out there and kick some ass.” 

Alicia Zimmermann is outside the locker room door when he makes his way back down the hall. She smiles at him, and his jaw drops. 

“Mrs. Zimmermann! Hi!” He says, like an idiot, because this was not something he had prepared for. It’s one thing to play with Jack, and an entirely different thing to meet his parents . His very famous parents . 

“Hi,” she says. “You’re…Chris, right? Chowder?” 

“Yeah!” He holds out his hand, and she looks a little amused as she shakes it. 

She pauses for a moment. “Could you get Jack for me? I didn’t want to--” She gestures to the locker room door. 

“Oh! Yeah, yeah, of course.” He gets his hand on the doorknob, then looks back at her for a second. “It’s nice to meet you! Have fun watching the game!” 

She waves a little at him, and he goes into the locker room. 

It’s loud inside, like it kind of always is; they’re 6-2-1 on the season, so everyone’s still excited instead of exhausted. Luckily for Chris, Jack is off in his stall just kind of observing everyone jumping all over each other while he tapes up his stick, so it’s easy enough to get his attention. Even if it’s still fucking intimidating to start a conversation with Jack Zimmermann. 

“Hey,” Jack says when he walks up and, okay, at least it’s easier like that. 

“Hey,” Chris says with a little smile that’s mostly forced and entirely anxious. Jack doesn’t look pissed at him for existing in front of him, though, so it could definitely be worse. Jack’s face is kind of…relaxed, actually. That’s what a six game point streak gets, apparently. “Um, your mom is here. She wanted me to come get you?” He points his thumb at the locker room door. “She didn’t want to come in.” 

Jack huffs out a laugh, clearly amused. “She’s been in plenty of locker rooms. Thanks, Chowder.” 

Chris smiles, wide with excitement. “Yeah, no problem! Your mom’s cool.” 

“I’ll tell her you said that.” He finishes the tape on his stick and smacks Chris on the shoulder before he sets it up against his stall and stands up. He’s-- he’s only, like, two inches taller than Chris, and they’re both in skates, but it feels like Jack is towering over him. He looks like he could crush Chris between his biceps, too. 

Chris barely registers what Jack said. Jack is halfway to the door before he really hears it, I’ll tell her you said that , and he flushes hot. He’s so distracted he forgets to be nervous. 

He saves his first seventeen shots, which are all in the first period, because the Bruins are playing for fucking keeps, apparently. Jack scores on this fuckin’ beaut that slips right through Rask’s five-hole, and he’s 200 feet away from it, so he watches as it plays again and again on the jumbotron. 

Then, right off the faceoff, everything’s in the Falconers’ zone. Bergeron gets one under right over his shoulder, and he clips it with his stick, but it goes in right past him. He just kind of stands there after it’s in, even when Birdie skates past and bumps their shoulders together. 

Nursey and Dex sit next to each other on the bench, and they keep glancing over at him. He spends most of the two minutes left of the period watching them, even when they jump over the boards for their shift. 

The buzzer for the period ends, and bittersweet relief washes over Chris. He can’t fuck up during intermission. 

Coach gives a bit of a pep talk, and it’s shockingly calm for the way he’s seen this man yell his head off during practices. Then Jack gets up, says his usual schtick about playing end-to-end and getting pucks deep and all the things everyone’s heard a million times. 

“They’re good,” he says, down to his underarmor, already damp with sweat and water, “but we’re better.” Marty claps, and it’s mostly in a teasing way, but then Thirdy claps, too, and Jack actually smiles at them before he sits down. He stops at Chris’s stall, where he’s putting his torso padding back on. “You’re doing good,” Jack says, and he’s still kind of smiling, and Chris doesn’t really know what to do with that. 

“Um” he replies, and he looks down to his skates to collect himself for a second. “Thanks. Just-- trying to fill Snowy’s shoes, I guess. Or. His skates.” 

Jack smiles again, one where Chris can actually see his teeth. “I can see why my mom likes you.” He taps his stick against Chris’s skates. “You’re not playing like a rookie. You look good out there. I trust you in my net.” 

My net would sound arrogant from maybe anyone else, but from Jack it just sounds right. Like, of course that’s his net. The same way that Chris is his goalie, and this is his team. 

“Your goal looked great up on the screen,” Chris says, just before Jack turns away to go back to his stall. Jack’s eyes light up in a way that makes him look younger by years. “You should get a couple more of those, y’know, just to get them off my back.” 

“I’ll do my best.” 

Chowder’s still smiling to himself when the sets back up in front of the goal. 

The Falcs keep the Bruins to their own defensive zone for, honestly, most of the second period. They get six more shots on goal, but it’s because Poots takes a stupid slashing penalty halfway through and almost all of them are during that power play. 

The third period goes entirely normally, until Jack gets a gorgeous little goal that puts the Falcs up 2-1, and then Tater gets one that slides right under the goalie’s pads, and they’re up by two in the dying minutes of the game. The Bruins pull their goalie for an extra man, but they can’t pull anything together, and when Nursey gets the puck to clear it out to the other end, makes it into the net with seconds left. And it’s maybe not the most gorgeous first NHL goal, but it’s technically the game-winner, and Nursey’s smile is so wide it looks like it’s about to crack open. 

They do another faceoff at center ice, but the clock counts down the last couple of seconds, and then the final buzzer sounds. 

Nursey jumps right on Dex and almost crashes them both to the ice. Dex is smiling so hard his eyes are nearly closed in a squint. Nursey turns then, and he makes a fucking beeline towards Chris by the net. 

“My fucking goalie!” Nursey yells, and that’s all the warning Chris gets before he’s smothered by over 200 pounds of defenseman. 

If the locker room before the game was loud, it’s deafening off the heels of a fantastic regulation win. Jack got two goals, which weren’t so beautiful that they’ll be in highlight reels next week, but they’ll definitely be in highlight reels for a couple of days, and not even just because he’s Jack Zimmermann. The guys squirt Jack with their water bottles when he walks in -- last in the line as always -- just to be fucking annoying, and he doesn’t even glare at anybody. He’s smiling , actually, grinning through it all and just squinting against the water. 

Marty announces that they’re going out tonight to celebrate, but Chris begs off. 

“I want to Skype my girlfriend before the roadie,” he says when Marty slings an arm around his shoulders and looks at him expectantly. “Also, I don’t really drink, and it’s much less fun to be around you guys when you’re drunk and I’m not.” 

“Fair enough,” Marty replies, and Chris is never ready for the quebecois accent. “These guys are bad enough when we’re all sober.” 

Cookie apparently showers quick as hell, so he’s already gone by the time Chris is packing his things back away in his stall, leaving a perfect spot for Nursey to slide into and knock their knees together. They’re both still half-dressed and sweating from fast showers -- Nursey in shorts and sandals even though it’s October, Chris in his gameday suit pants and just starting to shake out his button-up that has gone a little wrinkly. 

“Not going out?” He asks, shifting to poke his bony-ass knee into Chris’s thigh. For a man with such incredible thighs, Nursey’s knees are weapons . 

Chris shrugs. “I have a girlfriend, so it’s not like I’m gonna pick up. And I don’t really drink.” 

“I think you might be living the most boring rookie year anyone ever has,” Nursey says, tone dead serious. Chris rolls his eyes, but Nursey continues, “I mean-- you’re already basically married to your girl, and you drink, like, one beer per night, and sometimes we can maybe get you to do a shot. Not that I’m into, like, peer pressure or anything, but come on , Chow.” He pulls some honestly impressive puppy-dog eyes. “Please tell me you’re at least having fun?” 

Chris gets to flash him his biggest, brightest smile, and it’s even better that he really actually means it. “The time of my life, Nurse. Promise.” 

Nursey sticks out his pinkie, like they’re ten years old instead of twenty-three, and Chris feels his grin widen. “Swear it. Swear it on…” His gaze goes distant and thoughtful, then brightens all at once. “Swear it on Caitlin .” 

Chris rolls his eyes. He links his pinkie finger with Nursey’s, and his whole body goes warm with contentment. He fucking loves these guys, all these guys, and Nursey in particular. 

“Yeah, okay. I swear on Caitlin. I’m having the time of my life, and if I stop having the time of my life, you’ll be the first one to know.” 

Nursey squeezes their pinkies together while maintaining some seriously intense eye contact, then pulls his hand away and slugs Chris right in the shoulder and pushes off to get back to his own stall. 

“Ow! Asshole! We were having a moment!” 

“I don’t have moments with anyone who skips team bonding! Especially not to have Skype sex with their girlfriend!” 

Chris buttons up his shirt, then gives Nursey a good face wash on his way to the door. 

Chris tells Caitlin about the game, partially because she asks and partially because she knows he wants to talk about it. She went to enough Samwell games that she at least knows what he’s talking about now. 

Cait seems a little… pointed when she asks, “So how’s Derek’s roommate doing? It’s…Will, right? Or, Dex, or whatever.” She waves her hand dismissively. “I forget. He’s 24, right?” 

“He’s the same age as us, I think?”  

“No, I mean, like. Like number 24. Like his jersey.” Cait has the little furrow between her brows that she always does when she’s focused. Chris watches her face with a normal amount of adoration. “It’s hard to pick out the guys on TV.” 

“Oh! Yeah, that’s Dex.” Chris pauses. “He’s cool, I think. He kind of…keeps to himself, I guess. Nursey says good stuff about him. I think he thinks I’m like…Snowy’s rookie, or whatever, so he doesn’t wanna…I don’t know. He’s kind of weird. But Nursey likes him, so I guess he’s cool.” 

“What does Derek say about him?” 

Chris snorts. Nursey has said a lot of things about Dex, and his passing abilities, and how he never picks up at bars and how he’s really possessive about his rookies even if he pretends he doesn’t like them, and how he has thighs that are maybe even as incredible as his aforementioned passing abilities. 

“Nursey says a lot,” he settles for, smirking a little at Cait on the screen. “Most of which should not be said in polite company.” 

“Oh, and I’m ‘polite company’ now?” 

Chris runs a hand over his face. “Please, Cait, I’ve already heard one too many Skype sex jokes today.” 

“Was it Derek? I bet it was Derek.” 

It takes approximately a million years for the next couple of weeks to pass. 

Chris is honestly really, really enjoying everything. He’s tired all the time, and sore, and he’s done the splits more times than he would like to count -- sometimes for Marty’s little baby’s entertainment, too, which doesn’t help, but she’s very cute and he’s helpless around babies -- but he is also definitely having the time of his life. 

They’re all playing really, really good hockey. Chris doesn’t like to look at his own stats very much, but he has absolutely no qualms about looking at his teammates stats. Jack’s got a eight game point streak, and Birdie on his wing has assisted on at least half of his goals. Nursey already has half of his total goals from his senior year of college and it’s only November. Chris has the lowest goals-against he’s ever had -- or at least that’s what Birdie tells him, and Chris cuts him off before he can tell him what the actual number is. 

Basically, they’re on fucking fire. They’re playing like they’re running for the playoffs right now, maybe three weeks into the season, and it feels good . It feels like it did that season leading up to the Frozen Four. It feels like they’re going to keep winning and never stop. 

Chris isn’t, like, the most competitive person out there. He’s definitely not the most competitive guy on the team. Chris just likes winning . He likes fighting and winning and he likes, most of all, earning the win. And, by god, he loves winning with his friends. 

The Falconers go to San Jose in early November, and Chris has literally never been more nervous in his life. 

The team is on a hot streak, but hot streaks end. He does not want his hot streak to end in front of his-- essentially his hometown, and his parents, and his girlfriend, and the Sharks . 

He takes the window seat on the plane, way in the back, because if anyone talks to him or looks at him or god forbid makes him move out of his seat, he’s going to start-- he doesn’t even know. He’s going to explode. He’s going to break into tears. 

He puts on his headphones and plays his loudest music and closes his eyes. He barely registers the warmth of Nursey’s arm next to his -- he doesn’t look, but he knows it’s Nursey -- or the jostling of the seat ahead of him that means Forty and Birdie have started fighting over what movie they’re going to watch. 

The plane ride is long, and he’d planned to kind of check out the entire time and maybe stare out the window, but he wakes up to the plane hitting the runway with his head on Nursey’s shoulder, and Nursey’s head leaning on his. 

“Tired?” Nursey chirps right when Chris yawns. Chris just shoves at his shoulder and tries not to, like, die. 

Since they’re sitting in the back and will leave the plane last, Chris texts his parents that they’ve landed, and then he texts Caitlin, and then he sends them all the picture that Nursey takes when he steals his phone to see who he’s texting. Chris shoves his shoulder then, too, probably smiling stupidly at him. 

Chris usually rooms with Snowy, but Snowy pulled his leg again , so he’s taking a break for the roadie and decided to stay back and do physical therapy shit instead. So Chris texts Caitlin again, informing her that he has a hotel room all to himself, just in case she’s interested. 

And then he gets handed two room keys, and he’s herded into the elevator with Will Poindexter, and he hears someone declare somewhere along the way that they’re roommates and-- 

Chris really doesn’t have anything against Dex. He likes Dex, even. It’s just that-- 

Dex is kind of…’stuck-up’ isn’t right. He’s kind of a stick in the mud, maybe. He takes himself and everyone else and everything that’s happening so seriously. And Chris just-- doesn’t. He’s kind of the happy-go-lucky guy, and Dex is one of the most focused, serious guys he’s ever met. They’re just different people. 

He told this to Cait once, maybe a little more eloquently while he was significantly less groggy, and she’d done that eyebrow furrow thing that he loves. 

“I think he’s just…Derek always tells me he’s just really intense. Like, not Jack Zimmermann intense, but he’s just super focused on what he’s doing.” She had grinned, like there was some kind of joke he didn’t know the punchline to. “Apparently he’s really fun when he’s drunk, though. And he’s really bad at cup pong.” 

So Chris doesn’t not like Dex. He just doesn’t know the first thing about how to deal with him. 

The first thing he does is text Cait in the elevator. 

false alarm, he sends. dex is my roommate apparently . 

Cait replies with :( , which immediately makes Chris frown as well. Can i still come over? our hotel is like 5 mins away . 

Chris looks over at Dex, who is watching him kind of cautiously and also kind of, like, inspecting him or something. Very intense. 

The elevator dings, and they step out. Chris tucks his phone in his pocket and grabs his suitcase handle, then fishes the keycards out of his other pocket as they walk down the hall to their room. 

“Do you mind if my girlfriend comes over?” He asks as he slides the keycard in and opens the door. He sets both of the cards on the tiny little entertainment center where the TV is already on and ironically playing ESPN. 

Dex makes a face. He looks between the two beds, then at Chris, then dumps his bag by the foot of the bed closer to the door and bathroom. Chris leaves his own suitcase on the floor by the bed near the window, and gets on untying his shoes. 

“I’m gonna be sleeping,” Dex says, kicking off his own shoes. “I’m not gonna, like, leave. So.” 

“Oh,” Chris says, and he feels his face flame up. “No, I mean-- not like. I wasn’t sexiling you, or-- or anything like that. We’re probably just gonna like, talk, maybe, and like-- like, actually just sleep, and stuff.” 

Dex narrows his eyes. “ And stuff .” 

Chowder sits on the edge of his bed and pulls his phone back out. “I assume you’ve kissed someone before, Poindexter.” 

Chris isn’t looking at him, but he can hear Dex’s eye roll, so he doesn’t need to be. 

“Yeah, I’m fine if she comes over.” Dex flops on his back onto his own bed. “Bet Nursey would love to actually meet her in person. Like, at breakfast.” 

Chris sends roommate says yes!!!!! Room 408  to Cait, and she just replies !!!! back. 

The knock on the door wakes Chris up from his doze, and he glances over at Dex -- dead to the world -- a bit confused before he remembers. 

“Cait,” he says under his breath, and he kind of stumbles his way to the door, half-asleep. Opening the door and seeing Caitlin on the other side is the happiest he’s felt in weeks. “ Cait! ” 

“Chris!” 

Cait launches herself at him. There’s not any other way to describe it, really. She’s done it plenty of times before, but Chris is tired and half-asleep and can barely hold himself up, let alone the both of them as she throws her arms around his neck and clings on. He staggers a little before he steadies himself on the doorframe and gets his arms around her. 

He buries his face in her shoulder, not ignoring but appreciating where her hair tickles at his face. He feels weird for it, but he takes a deep breath and lets it linger there -- the familiar smell of her shampoo, her shirt, the faint perfume she probably put on hours ago in the morning. 

They stay there, wrapped up in each other, for a long moment. Eventually, his arms get a bit tired -- he’s a professional athlete, but he’s not a well-rested one -- so he lets her down. 

He’s honestly fine with this, too. He could just look at her all day. Her cheeks are flushed and she’s smiling like she can’t help it, and he can’t help but look at her like she’s his whole world. 

Then she puts her hands on either side of his face and pulls him down very gently, and then they’re kissing, and it’s like they’ve never done it before. 

They have kissed before, in fact. Many times, even, considering they’ve been dating pretty seriously for four years. Chris is fairly confident in his kissing abilities, especially now that he doesn’t have braces anymore, but Cait wasn’t exactly complaining even back then. They are, in fact, very good at kissing one another. 

When they separate, they’re both a little breathless, and Chris doesn’t want to stop looking at her. 

She’s tanner than the last time he saw her -- clearly California is doing its job and keeping her sunkissed even in the fall. He had to leave for camp before the summer was really over, though, so he can see where a bunch of freckles had come out in the sun after he’d left. 

He kisses her again, soft and chaste, and then kisses each of her cheeks. She’s properly blushing when he’s done, and he can’t help but smile at it. At her . 

She puts a hand on his cheek and he leans into it just on instinct. “I missed you.” Her brow furrows. “You look tired.” 

“I missed you, too.” He turns his head and kisses her palm, then shrugs. He hasn’t stopped smiling, and he doesn’t know if he will. “Long day.” 

“All good?” 

He doesn’t know if he can grin wider than he already is. “Better now.”

Chapter Text

Waking up next to Caitlin is, like, an enlightening experience. It reminds Chris of the Haus, and waking up for Wednesday morning practice with her wrapped around him. They would always lay there and doze after his alarm went off, just to hold on to those moments before they had to start the day. 

He dozes now, too, even though he can hear Dex shuffling around the room behind him. Chris is spooned up behind Caitlin, his left arm numb under her head and his right hand resting on her stomach. Even though it’s a shitty hotel bed, it’s a queen, which is bigger than the double he squeezed into his room in the Haus. 

“Chowder,” Dex says, kind of softly. “Are you awake?” 

Chris makes a noise somewhere between a hum and a groan and turns his head around the other way to look at Dex. He’s hovering between the beds, glancing between Chris and Cait and looking altogether supremely uncomfortable. 

He sighs, then reaches out and ruffles Chris’s hair. “Team breakfast in an hour. Reese will kill you if you’re not there.” He adds a little thwack to the back of Chris’s head, but it’s more affectionate than anything else, and he takes his leave. Chris hears him pick up a keycard, open the door, and close it behind him. 

“Caitlin!” Nursey yells as he walks into the dining area, moments from being late and getting reamed by Coach and probably Jack. Cait stands up from her chair to greet him, but Nursey takes an honest-to-god running start and picks her up and spins her around like he’s just come back from war instead of his own hotel room or something. 

“Hey, Derek,” she says, and slugs him on the shoulder when he sets her down. 

Chris has this moment of anticipation, of almost expecting himself to be jealous, or for this to be weird or hurt or something. But Nursey takes his seat on the other side of Caitlin, and when Chris leans over to put his arm against hers, she leans back into him, and everything is good. 

Caitlin is, like, perfect, so Chirs wasn’t really worried about her getting along with anyone. She was never at the Haus very much -- not on purpose, but they were both busy and she lived right down the street in the volleyball house anyway -- but whenever she came over, it was like she’d been there right from the start. 

She gets along with everyone like a house on fire. Chris would be concerned if he didn’t love everyone at the table. She ends up sitting across the table from Birdie, and she manages to get the story behind his nickname out in ten minutes flat. Apparently he went birdwatching with his mom as a kid. He’s got a blue jay tattooed on his thigh -- which Chris does know, considering they see each other in the locker room literally every day. 

The most astonishing thing is how much she gets out of Jack. 

Jack is-- well, he’s moody on his best days. He’s got this reputation for being, like, emotionless, or something, but Chris can see through that pretty easily. Chris knows, like, the baseline amount of things that everyone who’s ever played with Jack Zimmermann knows about him: his parents are Bad Bob and Alicia Zimmermann, he loves his parents very much but hates being compared to them, he overdosed right after he was drafted first overall to the Falconers (who were coming off of a bad season just after their inception), he was close friends with Kent Parson, there have been rumors about him and Parson since before the draft, and after the overdose they apparently had a massive falling out. That’s the Jack Zimmermann timeline that, like, everyone who knows anything about hockey has seen go down in the past decade or so. 

Caitlin doesn’t pry, really, but she’s talkative and personable and people just kind of say things around her. Honestly, Chris has the same phenomenon, but he usually bites his tongue more often. Guys in sports don’t get as personal as girls, he figures. 

Cait asks about anything and everything, and it’s like an entirely new side of Jack exists outside of the hardened captain who sometimes gets in on the jokes and hardly ever goes out with the team. 

“Was it weird, having famous parents?” She asks, not even looking up at Jack this time as she steals the blueberries off of Chris’s plate. 

Jack shrugs. He looks…kind of wary, mostly, and Chris can see why. He clearly gets asked these things a lot. Chris has seen how much he hates talking about Bad Bob in interviews, about filling his father’s shoes or following in his shadow. 

“Not really, I guess,” he shrugs again, and it’s clearly a nervous tell. “I wasn’t really-- I didn’t even really know they were famous until I was, like, seven. I didn’t really go out anywhere besides hockey practice.” 

“Oh, I bet you were a cute kid.” She looks over at Chris with this shit-eating grin that he fears. “I’ve seen all of Chris’s peewee pictures. Kids are so adorable in all the hockey gear.” 

Jack huffs something almost like a laugh. “I was kind of an ugly baby, honestly. But-- probably not, really. I was so anxious as a kid, I hardly talked to anyone. I probably looked like I was about to cry half of the time.” He does smile now, if a bit wryly, and spears a slice of pineapple with his fork. “That might be why there’s hardly any pictures of me from then.” 

Cait raises an eyebrow. Jack is next to Birdie, directly across from Chris. He realizes for a moment that they probably strategically sat around him and Cait to, like, meet her . It suddenly feels kind of like introducing Cait to his parents. Except it’s Jack Zimmermann. 

“That’s kind of hard to picture,” she settles on. She takes more blueberries off of Chris’s plate, so he settles by taking one of the pancakes she has that’s still uneaten. 

“Yeah, well,” Jack sighs. He speaks kind of shyly, like he’s trying to stay quiet. “Guess the meds finally work.” 

Caitlin makes a questioning sound. Chris looks up once, meets Jack’s eyes, and then looks back down at his food. He takes a long drink of his orange juice. 

“Yeah, um.” Jack says, then pauses. He’s…it doesn’t seem like an ‘ about to stop talking’ pause, more like a ‘ finding the right words’ pause, so Chris waits. The chatter around them feels heavy in the air. 

“The, um, the overdose. It was on anxiety medication.” He pauses again, clears his throat. “The draft was not a good time for me.” 

“Oh,” Chris says, then winces. “I-- I mean-- that makes so much more sense. You never, um. You’ve never seemed like a cocaine guy to me.” 

That makes Jack grin, kind of small but genuine. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Makes taking painkillers harder, though.” 

Chris furrows his brows and looks over to Caitlin. 

“Oh, narcotics, right?” She asks, and Jack nods. 

Chris’s jaw drops, and he looks at Jack incredulously. “Weren’t you in the 2010 playoffs with a broken finger?” Jack nods and his grin goes a little smug, and it’s the first time Chris has ever seen that expression on him outside of scoring goals. “WITHOUT PAINKILLERS?” 

“Tylenol.” Jack shrugs. 

“Oh my god,” Chris says and dramatically slumps down in his chair. “I think my mom would actually, like, explode. I sprained my ankle sophomore year and she threatened to fly out to keep me from going to practice.” 

“My mom raised me,” Jack replies. “She knew there wasn’t anything she could do to stop me playing. Plus,” he shrugs again, “I wasn’t gonna miss my first playoff run.” 

Chris raises his cup of orange juice. “To a playoff run.” 

Jack raises his water and clinks their cups together, even though they’re plastic. He’s not quite smiling, but he’s not not smiling, either. “I’ll get us there.” 

This team is— it’s the best hockey Chris has ever played. He watches the whole game play out in front of him, for better and for worse, through highs and lows. Well, mostly highs, so far. 

When Jack leads this team, he leads by example. This team is— it’s Chris’s team, when he’s on the ice, but it’s always Jack’s team. It’s Jack’s team whether or not he’s playing, whether or not they’re on the ice. Jack isn’t really a friend, at least maybe not yet, but he’s team . 

“Does your mom still like me?” Chris asks from behind his orange juice. His face feels hot, but it’s— it’s whatever. He doesn’t need Alicia Zimmermann to like him. Whatever. 

Jack laughs at that, loud with his head thrown back. “Yeah,” he says with an amused little nod, “yeah she does.” 

Caitlin is there to watch Chris play the Sharks, and he has never been more glad about anything in his life. 

In front of the locker room, right before he goes in and she goes to the seats with his parents, she hugs him and goes up on her toes to kiss him on the forehead and says, “You’re gonna kill it.” 

And he doesn’t even throw up in the locker room. He’s fucking shaking when he skates out and stretches for warmups, but he’s settled by the time he gets in his crease. 

It’s like the opposite of his first game; he remembers every second, everything dialed up to eleven and sharp and loud. The crowd is booing them whenever they touch the puck, but they keep showing Chris up on the jumbotron, the shark (not the logo) on the back plate of his goalie mask, the words San Francisco written in tiny little script along the side of it, and then they cheer for him . 

Chris registers his first NHL shutout in San Jose, his parents and sister and girlfriend in the crowd, and he doesn’t think he could forget any moment of this even if he wanted to. The entire team pours out onto the ice like they’ve just won the Stanley Cup instead of winning a game not even a month into the season. He feels warm all the way through. Nursey honest-to-god kisses his mask when the guys all come by to congratulate him.

He goes out for dinner with his family, and between pretty much daily calls with Caitlin and weekly calls to his mom, there’s not really much new to talk about. Cait is applying to a couple new places to work where she can actually get experience teaching elementary school kids instead of just watching classes, and he’s already heard all the stories about her coworkers that she tells, but his parents haven’t yet and she’s enjoying herself, so he eats his pasta -- not part of his nutrition plan, but hey, fuck it -- and listens. It’s not often he gets to be surrounded by people he loves and eat food he’s not supposed to eat. 

Cait orders a dessert, and when the waitress brings it out, it’s this massive brownie thing with a huge scoop of ice cream all covered in chocolate. She looks at him, grinning widely, and hands him a fork. 

“ Caitlin ,” he whines, but she shoves her shoulder into his and slides the plate closer to him. He takes a bite, and it’s heavenly. He hasn’t had ice cream since…since before graduation, probably. He can’t even remember the last time. This is-- well, surely he’s earned it. 

He holds Cait’s hand under the table, their ankles twisted together, and something warm and comfortable and home settles in his chest. 

They talk and eat and drink for hours , long past when curfew is supposed to be. Chris talked with management right after he signed his contract to make sure that San Jose was his exception to the curfew. “I’ve got family there,” he’d said, which is mostly true. He didn’t mention Caitlin, because they wouldn’t have cared, but she’s at least half the reason he asked. He’s lived without his parents for four years now; he’s never lived more than ten minutes from Cait the whole time they’ve known each other. 

So he spends the night in Caitlin’s hotel room instead of his, and it feels like everything is falling into place. He’s going to miss Cait like hell when he gets on the team plane tomorrow morning, but he’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about right here, under the shitty hotel sheets, Caitlin in his arms. 

The universe apparently needs to, like, even out the fact that Chris is having a really good time.

Saying goodbye is worse than last time. It was bad, that first time, but mostly because they’d never really spent much time apart before. The future was uncertain except for the promise of I’ll see you in November , and this time it’s I’ll see you in January , which feels so impossibly far away. 

He’s still bleary-eyed and sad and half-asleep when he gets on the plane and Nursey slides into the seat next to him, like usual. Neither of them say anything, but Chris’s chest kind of seizes up when Nursey bumps their shoulders together. It’s-- it’s nothing really, but it makes him want to cry that Nursey cares that he’s sad. He lays his head on Nursey’s shoulder. 

“Sucks,” Nursey says, all quiet even though the plane is already a bit rowdy. He nudges their knees together. 

Chris leans back into his warmth and tries to fall asleep. 

They can’t stop losing. They lose four in a row, in fact. They lose to the Leafs twice , nearly back to back, and it feels like a breaking point. Like-- something’s got to give. 

They play the Wild, and it’s brutal . Snowy starts, and he lets in four goals in the first period. Coach puts Chris in instead, and he lets in a slapper from the point that he should have saved , the exact same one that Tater always throws at him in practice. He holds on, but it’s not enough. Marty scores the only goal, and it’s this ugly, tiny thing that barely goes across the line. It’s late in the third period and no one even celebrates. 

They beat the Jets -- which, everyone’s beating the Jets this season, big shocker -- and that one’s ugly, too. Jack hasn’t scored since the Sharks. Dex is a minus five. Chris saves a shot that sneaks under his neck guard and gives him a massive red welt that hurts every time he moves. 

November is bad. November keeps getting worse. 

The first time Chris gets pulled, it’s because he lets in three goals in the first against Chicago, and he doesn’t even cry until he’s in the parking lot two hours later and he drops his keys right outside his car. He picks them up and unlocks his mom’s shitty SUV that’s probably going to give out any day now and shuts the door behind him. 

He doesn’t turn it on for a long moment. He just sits there, breathing, in through his nose and out through his mouth. Then he leans forward, his forehead on his hands on the wheel, and he cries. 

It’s so-- it’s fucking stupid . He’s not even sad , really, just embarrassed and angry and-- disappointed, with the team and mostly with himself. They’re better than this, he’s better than this, but they’re playing like shit and they can’t pull out a decent win to save their lives. 

Then there are knuckles rapping on his window, and he jolts upright. It’s Nursey. He wipes at his face with one hand and moves to roll down the window with the other, but the car isn’t on, he never turned the car on , so he makes a frustrated little sound and shoves the door open. 

Standing in front of Nursey, he feels like-- like a little kid throwing a fit. Nursey looks…sad, kind of, but there’s this pity in his posture that means he’s sad for Chris, and it feels bad. 

“I’m, uh.” Nursey stumbles over his words. He’s usually pretty well-spoken, so Chris looks up from their shoes and meets his eyes. His face is a little red, like he’d been crying, too. Or maybe like he’s about to. “Dex,” he says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “We, um-- well, it was his idea, y’know. Um. Can you come over?” 

“To your place?” 

“Yeah, we just. We think you shouldn’t be alone right now.” 

I’m not alone , he wants to say, I live with Snowy . But it’s not the same, and they both know it. Snowy is-- Snowy is Snowy . He’s a great friend, but he’s way older than them and he’s been tanking losses like this since they were in middle school. He’s played with worse teams through worse seasons. Even though--- even though November fucking sucks, Snowy’s been through worse. 

And Chris is…he’s not alone, not by a long shot. But there is something to be said about being lonely and surrounded by people. It fucking sucks, basically. It’s worse than November. 

“Yeah.” Chris sighs. It’s just-- November really fucking sucks. “Okay.” 

Nursey drives Chris’s car. Chris is— he’s shaky and tired and tearstained and doesn't even put up a fight when Nursey steals his keys. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, gently pushing Chris around to the passenger side. “I drove here with Dex, he can take our car.” 

It’s about a ten minute drive from the rink to Dex’s place, and Chris isn’t sure he has a single actual, coherent thought the entire time. He stares out the front windshield and watches as the streetlights change colors. 

“Sorry,” Chris says when they pull into the parking lot. Dex’s condo is nestled between a whole line of similar ones, three stories but kind of skinny. Dex’s front door is blue— not quite Falcs blue, but almost. 

“What for?” 

Chris shrugs. “I don’t— I don’t know. The game. Everything. I don’t know. I’m sorry.” 

“You sound Canadian right now, dude.” 

Chris wrinkles his nose, and Nursey laughs brightly. He turns the car off, unbuckles his seatbelt, and hands the keys over the center console to Chris. His gaze is heavy. He can feel the speech coming. 

Chris is glad they’re talking now instead of inside or wherever. At least it’s not in front of Dex. 

“Look,” Nursey starts. “I’m not Jack, I don’t really know how to do this. But, y’know, we win together and we lose together. You let in goals because they got past me, and they scored more because our guys didn’t score.” 

He reaches out and settles his hand on the back of Chris’s neck. 

“You might get a pep talk from Dex, too. Please tell me if he’s bad at it.” 

Chris ends up on Dex and Nursey’s couch, squished in between them. They’ve got on a rerun of a Yankees game from last season on to appease Nursey, even though Dex is a Red Sox fan and they’re kind of at each other’s throats the whole time. Chris is sort of tucked under Dex’s arm -- which is a little surprising, because Dex is not exactly a cuddly guy and he’s only sort of Chris’s friend -- and he keeps getting jostled every time Dex decides he needs to whack Nursey upside the head about his baseball opinions. 

It’s-- it’s a little weird, but in a good way. Chris is exhausted, from a bad loss and everything that comes with it. He’s used to being the loud one, but one or both of the guys apparently clocked that he’s not up to talking and has just decided to do it for him. 

Dex does not give him a pep talk, which-- thank god, he would almost definitely be terrible at it. Even though Dex will probably get the ‘A’ next year (he won’t admit it, but he definitely is) and he’s the same age as Chris and Nursey, he’s just-- he’s so bad at talking. They should all leave the speeches to Jack. 

They order Thai from the place down the road that Dex swears is like heaven on earth, even though Nursey leans over and whispers, “It just tastes like Thai,” to Chris while Dex is on the phone with them. The game ends before the food arrives -- the Yankees win, and Nursey is smug the entire ninth inning -- so Nursey wades through the video games piled in the cabinets of the entertainment center. 

He’s squatting down and rifling through all the games when he suddenly whips around, an absolutely devilish look on his face. 

“Oh god,” Dex groans. 

Chris looks between them, brows furrowed. He’s sort of-- he’s gotten used to missing inside jokes, as a goalie, but he doesn’t stop being confused when they come up. 

“ This ,” Nursey says dramatically, holding the game case up with grandeur, “is the very first NHL game with us in it, Chowder. We are both in this game. And you’ll never guess how we’re rated.” His wicked grin comes back, and Dex drops his head back onto the back of the couch and sighs in a heavy, long-suffering way. 

“You’re rated one point above me, jackass.” 

“In my rookie year! And oh my god , Chowder, you’re gonna freak at some of the goalies they have you rated higher than.” 

Chris’s eyes go wide. “Who?” 

Nursey inserts the game in the system, then tosses controllers at him and Dex on the couch. “Let’s find out, shall we?” 

Chris Chow is rated higher than Thatcher Demko. He almost cries. 

Even when their losing streak extends to four games again, and then five, Chris tries not to let it get to him. It’s a game, and he plays it better than most, and sometimes you lose games, no matter how good you are. 

He tries not to talk about hockey with Cait, because his entire life is basically playing hockey and preparing for hockey and then playing hockey again, but she’s always the one who brings it up. 

“You don’t have to watch all the games, babe,” he says with a bit of a grimace when their losing streak is broken and then starts over yet again. It’s not November anymore, at least, which has to count for something. It’s almost 11 at night in Providence, and Chris already said goodnight to Snowy and retired to his room. He’s laying in his bed in a long-sleeved shirt and sweats because his window is kind of shitty and there’s sharp cold Rhode Island air getting in under the seal. 

“I want to watch them,” she says with a soft smile, and what’s Chris supposed to say to that? Her lips twist up then, for a moment. “I’ll miss the beginning of tomorrow’s game, though. I have to stay late at work for this new project.” 

Chris desperately wants her to move to Providence. He wants a house with her here, or maybe a little condo with room for their friends and eventually a dog and, like, two and a half kids or whatever. He wants a life with her, and he wants it here . 

Every time he goes for runs with Nursey, he keeps seeing the cutest little houses on the streets where they run and thinking Caitlin would love this one , like he’s in the perfect situation to buy a house or move here long-term or have Cait move here. 

He keeps thinking about the future, and he is really not a big fan of how uncertain it all is. He’s only-- his contract with the Falcs is only for a year. He would need, god, five or six years here for it to be worth buying a house, to be worth moving Cait out here. And he can’t help but feel guilty for wanting to bring her here, to Rhode fucking Island, wanting to uproot her when she loves her job and her coworkers and her life that she has in San Francisco. She has a life outside of Chris. 

The bad thing about hockey is that everything in Chris’s life kind of revolves around it, and he doesn’t want to have to worry about what team he’s going to be traded to next year, or in five years, and he doesn’t want that kind of life for Caitlin. But that’s the reality of it all. He loves what he does, and that’s the price he pays. He just-- he wishes that everyone else in his life didn’t have to pay that price, too. 

“I wish you were here,” he says, instead of all of that. The look he gets back from Caitlin is so sympathetic that he thinks she might have heard it all anyway. 

They play the Sabres back to back, and they win both, and then they beat the Stars, too, and it feels like something has shifted. They’re not quite last in the division, but they’re hovering low, and it’s like Jack has decided that he’s singlehandedly going to change that, because he starts scoring like a demon. 

Jack gets a hat trick against the Canes, and Birdie scores a goal off of a wicked tic-tac-toe pass from Nursey and Tater, and suddenly they’re all on fire . Chris gets to facewash each of them with his giant glove from his spot at the end of the bench when they shuffle down next to him. 

He’s starting for the game against Boston -- again -- and this time he has the foresight to call Bitty beforehand. 

Bitty is-- ecstatic isn’t strong enough of a word. 

“TICKETS? YOU’RE GETTING US TICKETS? TO A BRUINS GAME? RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS?” 

“Technically,” Chris replies, lounging on the couch with another baseball game on, “it’s a Falconers game. But, yeah, I talked to the front office people and they got me three tickets.” 

“THREE?” 

“For you, Shitty, and Lardo.” 

“Chowder,” Bitty says, softly and with emotion, “did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite frog?” 

“ Bitty. ” 

“Yes, of course I can go to the game, oh my god. I’ll close the bakery myself if I have to, I don’t care what Marley says.” 

“ Please don’t get fired just to come to my game.” 

“Chowder. Christopher Chow. My beloved son. I would be honored to get fired so I can go to your game.” 

Chris spots them almost as soon as he steps onto the ice for warmups. They’re good tickets, and they’re also the only two people wearing Falcs blue in the sea of black and yellow. 

Jack skates up to him while he’s stretching his legs. “Those your friends?” He nods his head to Bitty and Shitty shuffling down the stairs towards the glass. 

Chris smiles wide enough that he probably looks like an idiot. He takes his mask off and sets it on top of the goal. “Yeah, they’re mine.” 

“DUDE!” Shitty yells from the other side of the glass, pushing his nose against it. “Our seats are so awesome!” 

Shitty holds his fist up to the glass, and Chris fist bumps him through it. Bitty just smiles at them, like it’s three years ago back at the Haus. 

“Sorry Lardo couldn’t come,” Bitty says, going from looking excited to this sad, apologetic thing. “You know how she gets with her projects.”

Chris shrugs. “There’ll be more games.” Shitty pumps his fist, like he wasn’t sure if he'd get invited back; Chris is maybe a little bit cautious about inviting them back now. 

“You nervous?” Bitty asks. Chris shrugs again, which means yes. He can tell that Bitty can tell. “Well, I’m rooting for you guys!” 

“I’m not,” Shitty says, and Bitty punches him in the shoulder. “Ow! I’m from here! I nearly got mauled walking in with this jersey on!” He turns around, and he’s wearing a Chow 55 jersey. “The general public doesn’t know that I know you, so I’m, like, in actual danger here.” 

“Chow!” Jack shouts, and when Chris turns around, everyone is filing back into the locker room. 

“Is that Jack Zimmermann ?” Shitty asks, putting his nose back up to the glass. 

Chowder reaches down and picks up a puck, then tosses it over the glass. Bitty catches it and hands it to Shitty, who looks at it like it’s made of gold, then back up at him and Jack.. “Yeah. I’m friends with his mom!” 

They beat the Bruins again , by three . It feels so goddamn good, and when the team skates by and knocks helmets with him, Snowy gives him a hug so massive he nearly comes off his skates. 

Jack is last in line, as per usual, even though Chris knows he usually does it to shuffle everyone off the ice quickly on away games. He knocks their helmets together, fist bumps him, then jerks his head towards the crowd the same way he had before the game. 

“You going out with them?” He asks, skating backwards towards the bench. Chris follows, then steps off the ice and waits for Jack to follow him. Jack is one of those superstitious guys who has to be the last guy on the ice, which is usually endearing more often than it’s annoying. 

“Yeah, is that alright?” He twists around a little to say it, because the walk from the ice to the visitors locker room is criminally long. Whoever built this place has never worn goalie pads. 

Jack shrugs. “Don’t miss curfew. The bus leaves at ten tomorrow.” 

“Aye aye, captain,” Chris replies as they get into the locker room, mostly just to annoy Jack. Jack rolls his eyes. “I told them I’d meet them here, so you can totally meet them and stuff.” He grimaces briefly. “They’re kind of. Well.” 

Poots, from his stall next to Chris’s, raises a curious eyebrow. “Who did you bring? Why is Jack meeting them? Is this, like, a meet the parents thing?” 

Poots isn’t the loudest guy on the team, but half the guys are in the showers, so his voice carries easily across the room. In moments, everyone in the room is staring at Chris and Jack. 

“Um,” he says, facing Poots but kind of addressing the whole room. “Just some friends from college. We played together at Samwell, and they live here now, so I got them tickets.” 

“I thought you needed to buy a car, bro,” Nursey says, still in his under armor and pads and damp with sweat. He pushes his hair off his forehead offhandedly. 

Chris flushes a little and shrugs. He’s red enough to begin with after a game that they probably don’t notice. “We’re good friends.” 

Dex punches Nursey in the arm. “Just because you don’t still talk to your college friends--” 

“I’d like to meet them, if that’s on the table,” Jack says, apparently electing to ignore Dex and Nursey’s bickering in the background. “This last month has been hard. It’ll be good for you to see your friends outside of hockey.” 

“I mean, they were my teammates.” 

Jack grins, the lopsided kind he only gives out after wins and have been far and few between recently. “Just don’t miss curfew. At the bus by ten, so don’t be too hungover.” 

“Aye aye, captain,” Chris says again, and now that he’s shed his stick and blocker and glove, he gives a salute. 

(Tater started the saluting thing, or at least that’s what Chris has gathered. They all owe a lot to Tater for making Jack, like, an actual human being with social skills after he joined. They also owe a lot to Tater for being so goddamn good at making fun of Jack. At least half of their chirps started from Tater, apparently.) 

Dex and Nursey apparently decide that making fun of Jack is more interesting than yelling at each other, so they salute and repeat, “Aye aye, captain!” 

Jack doesn’t glower, but it’s a close thing. 

Bitty actually runs and jumps into Chris’s arms when he comes around the corner, and then he hangs on like a koala. 

“CHOWDER!” He yells, directly into Chris’s ear, and something about distance and a fond heart or whatever, because he doesn’t even care. He grins like a madman and clings right back on. 

“BITTY!” He yells back, just to be fair. 

“We are going to get you so drunk,” Shitty informs him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Very, very drunk, and we won’t even have to deal with sad hungover Chowder in the morning!” 

“Do you really want to make Jack Zimmermann deal with me hungover?” Chris asks, and he gets to watch both Bitty and Shitty’s expressions do very different, very complicated things. “Nah, I’m rooming with Dex, and I’m pretty sure he’s used to me now.” 

“You can’t just--” Shitty looks like he’s about to start pulling his hair out. “You can’t just say that you’re roommates with Will fucking Poindexter like this. You can’t drop these bombs on me, Chowder! I’m not mentally prepared for you to be, like, friends with famous people!” He narrows his eyes. “Did you say you were friends with Jack Zimmermann’s mom? Like? Alicia Zimmermann?” 

Chris flushes. “I wouldn’t say friends --” 

Jack chooses this moment to walk around the corner. He looks like the annoyance of the captain teasing is still lingering, but he seems constantly amused by Chris, so it must be fading fast. “Don’t let her hear you say that.” 

Chris is being chirped by Jack Zimmermann in front of his friends. He’s-- this must be some insane alternate reality. He doesn’t know whether to be excited or embarrassed. 

“It was one conversation, and she just didn’t want to come into the locker room.” 

“I wouldn’t either, lord ,” Bitty says, but he has not taken his eyes off of Jack. He is shockingly pink in the face. 

“Jack,” Chris says, because apparently both of his friends are so starstruck they’re incapable of introducing themselves. “This is Eric Bittle and Shitty Knight. I think I said it already, but we played together in college.” 

Jack holds his hand out, and Bitty shakes it first, suddenly shy and flushing under his gaze. Jack isn’t, like, excessively tall like some of the other guys, but he just exudes this captainly intimidating thing that no one really wants to touch. Even now, slouching and sort-of-smiling politely, he’s still got his captain thing going. 

“Nice to meet you guys.” 

“Nice to meet you, too,” Shitty says, and then because he’s Shitty, he continues: “That goal in the second was wicked , ohmygod.” He honest-to-god moans, and now Jack’s the one flushing. “Bitty had to restrain me from throwing myself onto the ice. And that one pass from Mashkov, christ --” 

“ O kay, it’s been fun,” Chris says, shoving at Shitty’s shoulder and ushering him towards the exit and away from Jack . “These guys are actually significantly more unbearable when they’re drunk, so I’m just gonna--” He points behind him with his thumb. “Good game! See you tomorrow! At the bus I will not be late to!” 

Jack smiles softly -- they need to win more games if Jack always looks this damn calm and pleased afterwards -- and waves after them, more than a little amused. “Curfew.” 

“Curfew!” 

“Sooooo,” Shitty drawls, looking down at his empty beer glass, “what’s it like playing with Jack fucking Zimmermann?” 

“Um,” is the best Chris can muster up. They’ve been just kind of shooting the shit for about an hour, mostly catching up with Bitty’s job at the bakery (fantastic, he loves it, Chris apparently needs to swing by before they leave in the morning) and Shitty’s job with whatever law firm he’s with (apparently it ‘sucks ass,’ but Shitty looked undeniably fond talking about it). 

“I mean, as a goalie,” Chris shrugs, “I don’t really play with him. It’s actually better for everyone if he’s, like, a hundred feet away down at the other end. But he’s a really cool guy!” He takes a sip of his beer, suddenly very glad he managed to talk Shitty down from getting them all shots. 

“He didn’t seem like a robot,” Bitty says, though he’s got his little chirping grin on. 

“He definitely can be a hockey robot,” Chris laughs, and it’s a little easier to phantom chirp Jack now that he actually sort-of knows him. “But that’s really just, like, captain mode. And he gets pissed when people fuck around during practice. But otherwise, he’s just, like. He’s a pretty normal guy. He doesn’t even feel like a first overall pick.” 

Shitty groans and puts his head in his hands. “I can’t believe you know more famous people than me when you’re literally living in Rhode Island , bro. I think god hates me, or something.” 

“Do you want me to list off all the other famous people I know?” 

“ NO! Jack Zimmermann and Will Poindexter are enough. And fucking Mashkov . I can’t believe you know these people.” Shitty gestures around wildly, then looks at Chris with an exaggerated frown and sad expression. He looks at Bitty. “Our tiny little baby frog is all grown up.” 

“Hey! I’m not that small!” 

Bitty places his hand over Chris’s on the table and meets his eyes. “The little baby bird left the nest. And now he’s more famous than us.” 

“Fuck you guys.” Chris grins and shakes off Bitty’s hand. “I’m telling Nursey you don’t think he’s cool enough to be one of my famous friends.” 

Shitty honest-to-god moans and leans back in the booth. “If I wasn’t entirely straight and in a committed relationship, I would one hundred percent ask you for his number. And then you would say no because you’re a good friend and would protect his privacy or whatever. But I would still ask.” 

“You could probably message him on instagram,” Chris says, pulling out his phone. “PR is trying to get everyone to set up an account.” 

Bitty pulls up his phone, the twitter god (addict?) that he is. “Does Jack have one?” Chris raises an eyebrow, and Bitty flushes. “He just-- he doesn’t seem like the social media type.” 

“I honestly have no idea.” Chris messages Nursey, who almost immediately sends back Jack’s profile, even though he’s supposed to be out partying with the team. “Okay, apparently he does. Also, Nursey is chirping you for asking about it.” 

Bitty thumps him on the arm. “Snitch!” 

“I didn’t tell him! He’s got a sixth sense for this stuff, I swear!” He turns his phone around so Bitty can search for Jack’s profile.

Shitty leans back against the booth, arms crossed over his chest and eyes narrowed. “You really like him, huh?” 

Chris grins at him. “Yeah, he’s swawesome.” He pulls up Nursey’s instagram to show Bitty, too. “You guys would probably love him. He would fit right in at Samwell, I think.” 

“And the other guy? Poindexter?” Bitty types furiously. 

“Um. Maybe. He’s cool, but not like-- chill .” Chris stops to think about it. Dex is-- uptight is not a strong enough word. He clicks with guys on the ice like no one’s business, but imagining him in the Haus is an entirely different thing. Chris tries to picture Dex witnessing Shitty going from room-to-room upstairs, entirely naked and stoned out of his mind, and he laughs out loud. “He’s not really the frat type.” 

“You don’t choose the frat life, Chow.” Shitty reaches forward and flicks Chris’s phone so hard it nearly falls out of his hands. “ It chooses you .” 

In the end, Chris has more alcohol in Boston with Shitty and Bitty than he’s had basically since the kegster right before graduation in May. So it’s-- he’s definitely back to the hotel past curfew, and as he fumbles getting his room key out of his pocket, he’s resigned to waking Dex up and pissing him off while he tries to stumble to bed. 

If he wakes Dex up, Chris doesn’t notice. He grabs a cup from the minibar and downs three glasses of water nearly straight from the bathroom tap, thinks about looking through his bag for his toothbrush, gives up, strips his clothes off, and falls into the bed. He’s out like a light. 

Chris wakes up to Dex shaking him bodily and shouting, “Ten minutes until team breakfast! Jack’s gonna fucking kill you if you’re not there!” 

Dex leaves the room, and Chris feels shockingly not hungover. He blinks blearily at the clock between the beds. It’s been barely five hours since he made it back, and his entire body aches from the game the night before. He mentally goes through the monthly calendar in his mind; they’re off the rest of today, but they have practice early tomorrow for a Saturday matinee game. They still have probably three hours of breakfast and travel until they make it back to Providence, and Chris’s laptop is almost dead anyway, so he’s not going to be able to skype Cait until almost one in the afternoon, and then he should probably nap to make up for last night, and probably work on his stretches-- 

He should probably just-- just go to team breakfast. 

He thankfully packed a second outfit, entirely expecting to smell like beer and maybe weed coming back from dinner. He gets dressed and puts on a Falcs hat, because he does not have the energy to deal with his hair at this hour. 

He is technically late to team breakfast, but so is Jack, so no one gives him any shit. He sits between Poots and Nursey and eats a massive plate of waffles. 

He sleeps on the bus, and wakes up in Providence with his head on Nursey’s shoulder. Nursey chirps him about it, but he looks fond about it. 

He skypes Cait at one, and she talks about her day and what Jessica did at work today ( “She’s got a fourth grade class, remember? Chris, come on, I know all your teammates. ”) while Chris goes through his stretches. He leans back against the pillows of his bed when he’s done, just watches Cait for a minute, definitely does not take the time to hype himself up. 

“Would you want to move out here next summer?” 

Caitlin looks up, surprised. Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead, almost hidden by her hair. “Um.” 

“You can-- you can think about it! I just, um.” Chris swallows. “If I can get a good contract here, I would-- I would like it if you could be up here. With me. Like, I know we’ve never really lived together or anything, but there’s-- there’s this neighborhood I always go by when I go running and I just. I always wish-- it would be nice, if you were here.” 

“ Chris ,” she says, sounding soft and looking conflicted. “I would love to. But...” 

Chris feels like he’s cracked open some part of his chest for her to see, offered up his heart in his hands. Vulnerable is not a strong enough word. 

“...I don’t know. I have a life here. I’m-- I’m making a life here.” 

“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to sign back here, so it’s fine. Pretend I didn’t say anything, forget about it.” 

“No! It’s just--” Her brows furrow, and she looks so sad and so beautiful and Chris hates that he made her look like that. He hates that it isn’t easier. “It’s complicated.” 

“I won’t be signing anything until, like, June, so. You’ve got time to consider it, or whatever.” Chris does not sigh, but he wants to. He doesn’t want her to feel-- like this is her fault, even a little bit. “Sorry.” 

Cait does sigh. “Me too.” 

Chris isn’t-- he doesn’t sulk exactly, but, just. It’s hard to be enthusiastic. Practice is good if about three hours too early in the morning, and then he goes out for lunch with Dex and Nursey and Birdie, and then they all fuck around playing Chel at Dex’s place, and it’s good. They win, and it feels good, and he goes over and has dinner with Marty and his family, because Marty’s been bugging him for weeks to come over and play with the girls again. 

He plays with Marty’s two daughters that aren’t infants (and holds the one that is while Marty plays with the girls) in their big Providence house and he doesn’t think of all the things he can’t have. 

Chapter Text

The thing that sucks is that Chris has honestly been very sure of Cait since, like, at least sophomore year. As much as Birdie and Forty like to chirp him about being one of the old married guys and leaving  early  when they go out for drinks, they’re not— they’re not  wrong . 

He runs his  normal  route, the one he always runs on game days. He turns his music up and doesn’t look at the cute little houses he goes past. 

His car — his mom’s SUV , really  — finally gives out when he’s Christmas shopping.  It’s  kind of  a good thing, because he’s been  sort of  waiting for some  kind of  sign or something to buy a new one, but it’s a bad thing because he’s got about six bags in the backseat that he doesn’t want to get towed away with the rest of the car. It’s also a bad thing because Providence is fucking cold in December. 

He calls Dex first, because Dex can fix cars. It goes to voicemail — he  never  picks up his phone , Chris  should have known — so he calls Nursey. 

“Hey, man,” Nursey answers, the same as always. “What’s up?” 

“Hey,” Chris responds, trying not to shiver inside his car that won’t start. “Um. My car broke down.” 

“Oh, shit? For real? Finally?” 

“Yeah, for real.” 

“Do you need me to, like, rescue you?” He sounds unreasonably smug about this. 

“ Nursey ,” Chris groans. There’s silence across the line, so he  just  sighs and says, “Yes. Please.” 

It takes Nursey about ten minutes to get to the Target parking lot, in which Chris slowly freezes and curses himself for not bringing his gloves. Snowy’s always on him to keep some in his car, but he keeps forgetting. After four years of Samwell, he’s still used to California. 

“Thank you so fucking much,” Chris says once he’s deposited his bags in Nursey’s backseat and turned on his seat warmer. “Oh my god. I thought I was gonna die. Like in that one movie.” 

“Very descriptive.” 

Chris punches Nursey’s shoulder as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main road. “The fucking— the climate change apocalypse one. Freaked me the hell out as a kid.” 

“ Anyway ,” Nursey says with a grin, because he’s an asshole. “Do you need to ride with me and Dex until you get a new car?” 

Chris shakes his head. His  neck  is cold. “I can ride with Snowy. We normally go together anyway.” He grimaces. “Usually in his car. He never trusted mine anyway. I think I’m just— honestly, I’m probably just gonna scrap what’s left. I don’t think I could trade it in for anything anyway.” 

Nursey stops at a red light and slaps Chris on the chest. “Finally gonna buy something with your big boy money now?” 

The guys — Forty, mostly — get on his ass a bit about not  really  buying anything other than groceries. Well,  he  doesn’t have Calder runner-up money,  Forty . 

“Yeah, I guess.” He’s never bought his  own  car before. He’s pretty sure he’s going to get  swindled  immediately. He doesn’t know anything about cars. “Do you think I could bring Dex with me the way girls bring their dads or husbands or whatever?” 

Nursey’s smile turns sharp. “As long as you don’t tell him that he’s coming as your husband, yeah, he’ll probably go with.”

“He wouldn’t be coming as my husband!”

“That’s literally what you just said.”

“If anything,” Chris scoffs, “he’d be coming as my dad.” 

Nursey snorts. “Yeah, don’t tell him that either.” 

Chris has done stuff for FalcsTV before (and their youtube channel, which has a frankly shocking amount of subscribers. Not as many as Bitty has, supposedly, but he’s still never actually seen Bitty’s channel) but he’d never had to come in for an actual media day before. 

He does a photoshoot where they only take a handful of pictures because , really,  there aren’t that  many poses for goalies.  The ones where he’s wearing his pads look  kind of  ridiculous, so they let him take them off and take a couple more where he looks like  a normal  person.  He does an interview  thing  where Andi  the  social media  manager  has him and Dex sit across a table from each other and ask  questions rapid-fire off of  index cards.  He does  another  interview thing, this time with a news station (or maybe another youtube thing? Everyone  just  talks about hockey, he can’t keep track.) who has him answer questions like  “Who on the team spends the most time on their hair?”  and  “Who do you not like to sit next to on the plane?”  

Forty spends the most time on his hair by far, and the person behind the camera laughs and tells him that everyone else who did the interview said the same thing. 

“I always sit by Nursey on the plane, so,” he shrugs, “I don’t really know. Maybe Dex, because we room together on the road and I already see too much of his face.” 

He got a bit of media training right after camp and during the  preseason,  because he didn’t  exactly  do interviews at Samwell  and  most of the  guys who  were drafted  had experience in Juniors. “Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to your mother,” Sarah from PR had told him after handing him a pamphlet and scheduling him to come in a few days later for more… in-depth  training. Which is  overall  a frankly terrifying prospect, but he puts it into his calendar anyway. 

The people from FalcsTV seem to like him, and  Andi  the social media  manager  asks him several times if he’d like to do more media things.  He says  sure,  because if he agrees to public skates  and fan  signings and events with the Little Falcs, then  he’s   fairly  sure he can convince Andi to stop making him do postgame pressers.  He loves kids  and   he  hates postgame pressers. 

The last interview of the day is a sit-down one-on-one with an  actual interviewer who’s  wearing a nice suit. Chris is wearing a Falcs hoodie and  hat   and  jeans. He looks nervously at Andi, who flits around the room talking to various interns and doesn’t meet his gaze. He tries not to look into the cameras. 

Chris doesn’t  actually  know what the interview  is going to  be about until it starts, which is always a  bad  way to start an interview.  

“So, Chris,” the interviewer--  Dave , Andi had told him -- starts, just radiating that false positivity that the media always do, “how do you like it on the Falconers?” 

Chris smiles despite how generally uncomfortable he is. The Falcs are easy. “I love it here! The team is amazing and the guys are great to be around.” 

“How has it been, transitioning from NCAA hockey to the big leagues?” 

“Well,” Chris says, a bit of a frown tugging at his lips. “First of all, I think it’s a bit unfair to think that the NHL is, like, this big ultimate goal that every hockey player has to work towards. I played with a lot of incredible people in college who probably could have done great things here if they had wanted to. But, secondly, it’s been incredible. It’s been a big transition, for sure, but considering I’m not starting this year, it hasn’t been too big of an adjustment. I think the biggest thing is how many famous people I suddenly know.” 

“Like Jack Zimmermann?” 

“Yeah, for sure, but a lot of the other guys, too. Will Poindexter was the Falcs’ first round pick in his year, and Fourtier was the Calder runner-up last year. It’s-- I didn’t really follow the Falconers very much beforehand, but I was still hearing about these guys that I’m  playing  with now. It’s been crazy.” He’s sure his smile looks disgustingly fond. 

“What teams  were  you following?” 

“I have been known,” he  answers,  and stifles a laugh, “to be a fan of the Sharks.” 

They do another FalcsTV thing a couple of days later , after  destroying  the Schooners at home , where about half of the team and a massive camera crew go to this little old-timey Christmas market on an old main street.   It’s got  lights and fake leaves wrapped around all the lampposts, about five  different  stores selling hot chocolate, and a  horse-drawn carriage .  

Naturally, Chris tugs Nursey towards the carriage by the arm, and Nursey tugs Dex with them, and Dex calls for a camera person to film inside with them because they’re supposed to be filming all this. It’s a tight fit, three hockey players and an admittedly not very large guy who’s got a little digital camera with him, but he makes Nursey and Dex sit on the same side so there can be good footage of them bickering like an old married couple. They get out of the carriage on the other end of main street, and Chris leans into the camera that’s tracking Nursey and Dex shoving each other and stage-whispers, “It’s always like this. But it’s okay, they love each other.” 

Chris shops for  just about  everyone he knows, including Jack, who managed to wriggle his way out of coming because he’s Jewish, even though  literally  everyone ever  knows him and his family celebrate Christmas.   Plus   he’s  hosting the Christmas party.  Not even Andi  the  social media manager  has  more sway than Jack , apparently .  

He gets little Rhode Island souvenirs for his parents even though they’re horrendous because he knows they’ll hang the magnets on their fridge, and he gets three candles and a bracelet with a heart engraving for Caitlin.  He already got her one of his  bobbleheads ,   because she  asked  for one, and  this nice calligraphy set  he knows she’s been dying for, considering it’s been on her Amazon wishlist for over a year.  

He gets these  ugly,   ugly  fuzzy socks for Dex solely because he knows Dex loves fuzzy socks and will  absolutely  wear them.  He gets Nursey the same candles he got for Cait and a hand-painted (not by him) mug with constellations on it. He spends probably half his signing bonus in the niche little hobby stores. By the time the camera crew is ready to wrap everything up, his bags are full of trinkets for, to be honest, most of the team. 

Chris thinks long and hard about what to get Jack, and then asks Dex and Nursey, who both shrug. Well. Enlightening. 

He’s in his last shop of the day, ten minutes before they’re all set to leave and buried up to his ears in his scarf when he sees it: the perfect Jack Zimmermann Christmas present. 

He’s never personally been to Jack’s house (yet), but he’s seen pictures of the parties  that have been  thrown in Jack’s house (massive, lots of alcohol, occasionally including the Cup), and he’s seen the pictures in those pictures . Which  is to say that Chris is almost  certain  that most -- if not all -- of the photos hanging on Jack’s walls  were taken  by Jack himself. 

So he gets Jack two photography books, one of nature and one of architecture, and a  thick  book of old National Geographic covers. 

He’s flushed and smiling when he gets back to the cars -- he rode with Snowy, which  he  would have done even if he did have a car of his own at the moment -- and Nursey takes immediate notice. 

“Okay, what’s up with the whole…suddenly looking very happy thing? You were whining about the cold not even ten minutes ago.” He pokes at Chris’s dimpled cheek, right where it’s freezing and chafed from the wind. 

Chris’s smile is less of a smile and more just baring his teeth. “I have a better present for Jack than you!” 

“Well, I don’t have a present for Jack, so.” 

Chris just looks at him, eyes wide. “Damn. So mine is  definitely  gonna be his favorite.” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Nursey says, and promptly grapples Chris into a headlock.

The Falcs play the Islanders on the 23rd, and Chris has already shipped out his presents to Caitlin, but he  promised   that he would  get her something from New York . Even  if it’s only Long Island. 

They fly in on the evening of the  22nd,  because  apparently , like, the sky gets too busy for everyone the closer it gets to Christmas. As soon as they toss their bags in the hotel room -- Dex closest to the door like always, because even if it doesn’t matter to Chris, Dex is a creature of habit -- Chris immediately turns to Dex and puts on his best puppy dog eyes. 

“No,” Dex says without looking up from his phone. 

“I haven’t even--” 

“ No. ” 

Chris sighs, and then-- “What if Nursey’s there?” He’s  fairly  sure he can puppy-dog-eye Nursey into tagging along, too. 

Because Will Poindexter  apparently  likes Nursey more than he ever tries to let on, he looks up from his phone and hesitates. He sighs, rolls his eyes, and looks back  down  at his phone. 

“Two hours. You get two hours of tourism, and then I’m coming back with or without you.  Both  of you.” 

Chris does not hug  Dex,  because he is  very  aware that he is already pushing his luck, but  he   does  knock their elbows together when he walks past to  go  find Nursey’s room. “Thanks!” 

Chris gets two hours of blissful NYC tourism with his friends before Dex  starts looking  genuinely miserable. 

The Falcs win their game against the Isles, getting an early lead and  then  trading goals back and forth, holding on by the skin of their teeth to barely eke out in the end. Technically, Poots has the game-winner, but no one’s  really  counting. 

They’re all fucking tired by the end of it, and with traffic, they don’t make it back to the hotel until nearly midnight. 

The bus drive the  next morning  is brutally early, but the coffee is good  and  Nursey is awake and alive enough  to  actually  speak to him in something more than grunts . 

Chris falls asleep when he gets home — and was  not   asleep  in Snowy’s car at  any point  between the rink and his apartment, no matter what Snowy texts the guys — and it’s snowing when he wakes up. 

He lived in Massachusetts for four years, but he’s still never gotten used to— it just  snows  sometimes, and it’s  apparently  no big deal. Fluffy ice  just  falls from the sky. And it’s a regular occurrence. It’s  normal . 

He immediately takes ten pictures out of his window,  and  then skypes Cait, who is equally Californian and equally bewildered. She helps him take a better picture for instagram (it’s out of the living room window, this time, which has a much  nicer  view. She has a taste for these things.) and is the first person to like it. He tags Snowy on one of the snowflakes. She hadn’t been helping with that part, and her laughter could be his Christmas present in and of itself. 

“So,” she says, once the Providence sun has  properly  set (not very late, tragically) and Chris is tired enough to mostly  just  smile at her on his laptop screen like an idiot. “Your team got a present for you.”

“Yeah?” He says. He twists where  he’s set up  with his legs crossed on his bed and tries to pop his back. He’s been thinking about getting a softer  bed . “They get me a new car?” 

“No,” she says with an eye roll, though she’s giggling. “They, uh. They  consulted  me for it.” 

He pauses on his stretch, then turns to face the laptop with squinted eyes. “I don’t trust this. Was it Nursey? He likes you better than me, I  knew  he was gonna recruit—” 

“It  was  Nursey,” she cuts in, smiling almost shyly, “but it was also…apparently a lot of the guys were in on it. I’m not allowed to tell you what it is, but. I just wanted to warn you, I guess?” 

“Well, thank you.” He smiles at her,  surely  looking very dumb. “I’ll count the present as part yours, too.” 

Caitlin smiles back, and he  just —  Chris  wants. 

The team is home for just over 48 hours, which is not long enough to justify flying  all the way  to San Francisco and  back,  but  is  long enough to pile into Jack’s house and have a massive Christmas party. 

Chris learned how to wrap presents from his mom, so he wraps all of his and Snowy’s beforehand (Snowy’s are ver y… r ough  before Chris takes over.  He  seems very  guilty about making Chris do it , though , so he finds the Winter Classic game from way earlier this year and finagles it to play on his massive TV).  

Chris still doesn’t have a car (he’s very good at procrastinating ,  and  also  he  has next to zero free time now that he’s promised himself to PR and media events)  but  he would have driven with Snowy to the party anyway .  Even  if their entire trunk  is filled  with gifts for the guys. 

Jack welcomes them into his house  almost  smiling, but Chris is so enamored with his  house  that he  almost  misses it. 

Jack’s house is  nice . It’s big, but not, like, massive. He lives alone — which Chris  knew,  because he would have  loved  to befriend a Mrs. Jack Zimmermann, or something — so it’s not exactly a mansion, but it edges into the territory of needing to have seven kids  and/or  dogs to fill all the space. Or maybe just one hockey team in his living room. 

Jack  does  have a dog; he’s a golden retriever named Jagger  who  is supposedly  not  named after Jagr, but Chris doesn’t believe it when Poots tries to tell him. Plus, Bad Bob played on the Penguins  so , like, it makes sense. 

Chris mostly drinks a disproportionate amount of eggnog on Jack Zimmermann’s couch and around the  absolutely  massive tree  that’s  set up  in front of the big picture window  in front .  

“He cut it himself, every year,” Tater says when he sees Chris staring up at it, pressed warmly against his side on the couch.  There are six of them  total  on the  couch , and  it’s—  it’s not  really  a big enough couch.  

“Really?” 

Tater  giggles . “No, he get service. We try explain ladies like lumberjack, but.” He shrugs, then slings his arm over Chris’s shoulders because , really,  there’s nowhere else for his arm to go. 

Snowy suggests they play “rob your neighbor,” but he gets halfway through the explanation before giving up because Nursey and Dex are  clearly  far too drunk to understand  any  complex instructions.  

In the end, Chris gets  three  fleece blankets, all from different people, including Marty’s wife, two tacky Christmas tree ornaments that make him kinda sad he doesn’t have a tree with Snowy, and a very official-looking voucher from Dex that reads “I WILL MAKE SURE YOU DON'T GET SWINDLED. SINGLE USE.” He smiles widely at Dex, who scowls and punches his shoulder before knocking their knees together. 

The last present under the tree is for Chris — Poots got roped into “being an elf” or  whatever and  distributing all the gifts. It’s a big square box with— 

“Are these sharks?” He asks, tearing at the corner of the wrapping paper and grinning. 

“Read the fuckin—” Nursey pokes him in the leg from where he’s sitting on the ground. “The tag, dumbass.” 

Chris bites down on his tongue to keep from sticking it out at Nursey, and looks at the tag. 

From: Cait ♡ (and the guys) (mostly Nursey)

Now  he  bites down on his cheek to keep from smiling. He narrows his eyes at Nursey. “What did you do.” 

“Open it, dude!” Birdie yells from across the room. 

So Chris opens it. 

Under the wrapping paper (it’s not the Sharks, but they  are  sharks) is a plain cardboard box with all the labels scribbled over with marker.  He  represses the urge to squint suspiciously at anyone else and wrestles one of the sides of the box open instead. 

Inside is a goalie mask.  A— a custom-made goalie mask.  The whole thing is Falcs blue, with a massive yellow and orange sun on one side and the Falconers logo across the other. Across the sun, in thick dark letters, it says  ‘CALIFORNIA ’ .  

“ Guys ,” Chris chokes out. “What the hell.” 

Chris wears his new mask for the first game back after the break. The Falconers win 5-0.  He gets the  first star of the game , much to the chagrin of the home Hurricanes fans, and  is pulled aside  for three different postgame interviews.  

“What do you think was the biggest factor in getting a shutout tonight?”  Asks someone holding a camera and microphone to his face.  They’re approximately the tenth person to ask him  basically  the same thing. 

“I mean, a shutout is always the goal, y’know. The defense was on fire tonight and shut most things down before they even got to me.” It’s a practiced, by-the-book answer  he’s given  a half-dozen times this season already. “And,” he tacks on, almost as an afterthought, “the boys got me a new mask for Christmas, so. It’s a good luck charm, I guess.” 

By New Years, the charm of living with  Dustin Snow , legendary goaltender and Stanley Cup  Champion  has mostly worn off. He drives with Snowy to the practice rink most mornings and then downtown to the actual rink every game night, and it’s just-- it’s  normal  now . Which  is frankly insane to think about. Chris of last year would have  freaked . 

He’d funneled water and Advil to said legendary champion not last week after  a few  too many drinks at the Christmas party, though. The rose-colored glasses came off months ago. 

Still, when Snowy sets them up at the dining room table instead of just the couch for their pregame dinner on the 30th ( New Year’s Eve eve , Tater had said that morning with a giggle), it’s hard  to not  be  intimidated. Sure, Dustin Snow may  just  be Snowy, starting goalie and roommate, but he’s also a real goddamn professional who knows what he’s doing. 

“Chowder,” Snowy starts, in what Chris  likes to think  of as his  serious voice .  It’s the one he uses  when they’re down two goals going into the third in the locker  room,  or when he’s playing around with Thirdy’s kids  and  they knock his bad knee the wrong way.  Chris looks across the dinner table at him with wide eyes. 

Snowy sighs. “Look, kid. I’m, uh. I’m probably getting traded. At the deadline in March.” 

Chris’s eyes go  wider , if possible. “What? Why?  What? ” 

Snowy kind of chuckles, a little self deprecating.  He  pokes  his  fork restlessly into  his  chicken. “I’m getting older, kid. I’ve been injured a lot in the past couple of years. My contract is mostly up and I think-- I think management wants to trade me before I lose real value. I mean, we’ve almost been splitting starts this year, dude. I’m past my prime.” 

Chris-- doesn’t know what to say. What  could  he say? There’s-- nothing. 

“I think they’re, uh, setting you up to be the starter next year. Maybe the year after, if they trade me for another goalie.” 

“How do you know they want to trade you?” 

“We’ve talked.” He stares very intensely into the rest of his chicken, mutilated from where  he’s stabbed  at it with his fork. “It’s been a thing for a while now. I’ve been with these people, this  team , for a long time. No one was springing anything on me.” 

“I’m--” Chris stares at his own hands. “Wow. I mean-- wow. Shit.” 

Snowy huffs a laugh.  “Yeah, kid. You’re gonna be for real next year.” 

“I might not even  be here  next year.” 

“Come on.” Snowy sits back in his chair and finally has mercy on his chicken. “They love you. Everyone loves you. The fans and the team and  especially  management. George thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread. Or at least since Jack.” 

“Since  Jack? ” 

“Dude.” Snowy is grinning like he’s not  absolutely  rocking Chris’s worlds right now. “Every team has their Jack, and their Tater, and their Nursey-and-Dex.” He reaches out and thumps Chris on the shoulder. “Good goalies don’t come a dime a dozen, kid.” 

“I’m.” 

Snowy takes a sip of his glass of water and pretends not to  be smiling  as smugly as he is. 

“Hold on.” Chris puts his elbows on the  table,  then his head in his hands. “Wait.  What?  So they-- they want to, like. Keep me?” 

Snowy nods. 

“Like? Long term?” 

“They want you to be the new me. And that Cooke kid will probably come up and be your backup.” 

“My backup,” Chris murmurs under his breath. He’s not sure he’s had an actual thought in the last five minutes. Just-- static and disbelief. “What the fuck.” 

Snowy  just  smiles at him. “You’re earning it, kid.” 

Chris doesn’t play that night. They pull Snowy with just under two minutes left in a desperate attempt to tie the game, and they celebrate on the bench together when Tater slips one in just under the Blues goalie’s pad. 

Snowy goes back out for overtime,  and he shoves  the brim of Chris’s hat down as he leaves the bench.  By the time  Chris can get his hair out of his eyes and get the hat back on, Snowy’s already skating around in the crease. 

That’s going to be  him . He feels dizzy with it. 

So dizzy , in fact,  that he almost misses Jack’s game-winning goal. He doesn’t, though. It’s a beautiful goal, and all Chris can think is  that’s going to  be me .  That’s going to be me.  

They line up to congratulate Snowy, and when Chris gets to him last, he shoves Snowy’s goalie mask back down over his face. 

That’s going to be him. He can’t wait. 

New Year’s Eve is fun  if  generally uneventful. Jack hosted Christmas, so by whatever rules the guys baked up years ago, Tater hosts New Year’s. At least there’s more vodka. 

Chris honestly does not remember most of New Year’s Eve. 

At one point, he calls Cait, and he remembers her saying, “I wish you were here,” to which he responds, “Me too, fuck, it’s so cold here!” 

He remembers everyone getting together and turning on the live feed from NYC that started everyone on dissing the Rangers. He remembers someone insisting  loudly  that everyone has someone to kiss at midnight, and being  kind of  sad in that drunk way that Caitlin wasn’t there, and then getting grabbed by Birdie.  It’s not a  bad  kiss , exactly , but they are both very drunk and mostly laughing the whole time.  He sends a text to Cait about it that may or may not be coherent. 

He  is dumped  into an Uber that he’s sharing with Dex and Nursey  feeling  warm and content, partially because of the vodka and partially because here, between two of his closest friends, is the best place he could  possibly  be right now. 

Because the world is cruel and unforgiving, they play the Aces on January 1st. 

The entire plane ride is nearly dead silent, everyone in varying stages of hungover. Poots sits in the back by the bathroom  and  everyone pretends he doesn’t look vaguely green the whole time. 

Chris makes the genius  decision,  as soon as he and Dex get to their room -- and he doesn’t remember when that became a permanent thing, really, but at least Dex doesn’t hate him anymore -- that  fuck  his  normal  hour-long pregame nap, he’s sleeping  now .  He doesn’t even get anxious  over the thought of  changing his routine, which is proof  enough  that he needs it.  

He sets an alarm to give himself enough time to  make it  to the bus and passes out. 

He wakes up to Nursey shaking him bodily by the shoulders for team dinner. He’s still half-asleep as he pulls on his gameday suit, but by the time  he’s  lacing up his shoes -- Jordans, even though  he  knows his mom would probably yell at him for wearing sneakers with a suit -- he feels  mostly  normal. A little  groggy ,  but not hungover. 

Nursey’s sitting on Dex’s bed, shoulder-to-shoulder with Dex and  apparently  looking at something on his phone. He kicks Dex’s shin to get his attention. Dex gives him a pissy little glare that he can tell is  actually  a little  affectionate,  now. Nursey gives a little smile from his other side. 

Nursey isn’t , like,  the most talkative guy on the team, but he can  really  get going if he’s got someone to bounce off of, and Chris is almost entirely awake as they get into the elevator.  They talk  mostly  about baseball (the Yankees are doing  great , the Giants are  kind of   bad ) and the Pacific division (the Oilers are tearing shit  up , but Nursey says there’s no chance they make it to the conference finals) and how many times Jack will probably go to the All-Star game before he retires (most years, probably. He’s already been four times.) 

Dex looks frankly sick of the two of them and their varying sports opinions  by the time  they sit down with their plates full at breakfast. He says as much, and Nursey immediately makes a face. 

“You’re literally a Bruins fan.” His face twists further. “You probably like  golf. ” 

“What’s wrong with golf!” 

“Oh my god,” Nursey groans. He puts his head in his hands. Chris knows  for a fact  that they’ve had this exact conversation at least twice already. “Well, if you exclude the massive amount of water it takes to keep all the damn grass alive, which I do  not --” 

“Not this again.” 

“--it’s fucking  boring!  It’s a boring sport! I think calling it a sport is a reach, honestly, and kind of a disgrace to all the stuff  we  do.  Hockey  is a sport, alright. In golf you just-- you just  stand there . Jesus Christ, you don’t even  walk around . You get your own little golf cart because walking is just too hard, apparently.” 

“I don’t know what kind of bougie golfing you’ve been playing--” 

“I like mini-golf,” Chris  says,  because he’s seen this  exact  conversation play out twice before  as well , and he likes this one way less. 

“See?” Dex says, right as Nursey shoves a strawberry in his mouth and says, “A man of the people.” They both glare at each other. 

Jack is notably absent. Chris notices when Tater comes down for breakfast alone -- they  always  come down for meals together, so either they switched the rooms  around,  or-- 

“D’you know where Jack is?” He asks kind of quietly once Dex and Nursey have stopped actively fighting. Dex’s face shutters almost immediately. 

“It’s Vegas,” he mutters, poking intensely at the waffles on his plate. “He’s, um. He always gets like this when we play the Aces.”  He looks up just long enough to make  very  meaningful  eye contact with Nursey and Chris  in turn , then goes back to being very focused on eating.  

The cogs in Chris’s brain work at that statement for a few more seconds before his jaw drops into a little ‘o’.  

“Oh.” Well.  Oh.  

“Yeah,” Dex replies, a little flustered. 

“Parson?” Nursey asks, nudging his shoulder against Dex’s a little bit. Dex sends him a glare that could probably kill a man. “Okay, Jesus. So, yeah, Parson. Do you know, like--” 

“I’m not gossipping about our captain, Nurse.” 

“Fuckin’ hell, Poindexter, I was gonna ask if you, like, have non-rookie tips and tricks or whatever for when he’s in a mood.” Nursey pulls his shoulder back in. 

Dex sighs and makes a visible effort to unclench his shoulders. "Just... don't talk about it. And don't fucking lose." 

The game is a shitshow right from the start. 

The Aces are having some  kind of  event that requires a ceremonial puck drop, and thousands and thousands of people watch on as Jack glowers around on the ice, plasters on a media smile for the pictures, then glowers back to the bench. 

Chris starts the game, but he didn’t get all of his stretches and yoga and mindfulness shit in last night (this morning?) after he passed out entirely, so he spends the first five minutes after the game starts hoping and praying there aren’t any crazy acrobatic saves  he’s forced  to make. Which-- 

Falcs and Aces games are always shitshows, partially because of the weird Zimmermann/Parson rivalry but also because they’re both offensive juggernauts. These are historically, at least in the past couple of years, very high-scoring games.  So when Poots scores,  and then Tater, and then  Forty-- Chris doesn’t relax.  He doesn’t let himself relish the 3-0  lead,  because he’s watched so much damn tape of this team. He’s seen them  score . 

When Parson ducks under everyone, stickhandles straight past the defense, and snipes one right above Chris’s blocker -- it’s  fine .  Well, it’s not  fine , but Chris does his breathing exercises, keeps his head in the game, and waits for the puck to drop again. It’s still early. 

And then they screen him so thoroughly he doesn’t see the puck  at all  until it’s hitting his glove, popping straight up, and getting whacked into the goal out of mid-air. 

The locker room is tense the entire intermission. Chris unlaces and relaces his skates twice. He watches Marty shuffle through the three sticks he taped up before the game to try and find the one that “feels  right” and  Dex nervously twists his freckled fingers until they’re red and chapped. 

Jack doesn’t say anything. His face is blank, focused. The most emotion he shows is when Tater claps a big hand over the back of his neck and exchanges a  look  with him. 

The second period is worse, somehow. 

Poots takes a stupid tripping penalty and looks nervously guilty the entire time he’s in the box. Chris doesn’t take his eyes off the puck once after it’s dropped. Their first penalty kill unit plays the entire two minutes, and they’re all dead on their feet by the end of  it;  so much so that he can’t even really blame them when Parson comes up around the wing with the puck, just maneuvering around the entire exhausted team again, and crashes straight into Chris. 

He knows something’s wrong immediately.  He’s in tune with his body,  alright,  so he can tell  right away  that something is  off .  He’s knocked back into the goal, and for a  second  the only thing he can feel is the rattling sharp numbness of his head hitting the ice. And then he feels the jostling of everyone around him where a scrum is rapidly turning into a line brawl. 

Then there’s a trainer coming up to him, Freddy, and talking to him in soft tones he can only  sort of  hear over the rapid blowing of the whistle. 

“My head,” he makes out, and Freddy nods vigorously at him, face drawn up and concerned. Freddy gets a gentle hand  up  under his arm to move him upright, and Chris flinches. His voice is more strained than he expected it to be. “And maybe-- shoulder.” 

“Okay, this is it for you tonight.” He reaches around to pull on Chris’s good shoulder and gets him sitting upright easily. “Is everything else okay? Nothing else hurting?” 

He shakes his head a little. He regrets it immediately, vision swimming and the lights blinding. Someone had clearly started a fight, and the shrieking of the ref’s whistle on top of yelling, brawling players scrapes along the inside of Chris’s head. “My head, maybe.” 

“Okay, okay. Alright.” Freddy looks up and gestures for Birdie, who’s been  kind of  hovering while most everyone else on the ice has been trying to tear each other  apart,  to help him get Chris up. “Watch the shoulder. He’s sitting the game out, maybe more.” 

Snowy’s coming off the bench right as the three of them  are making  their way onto the bench towards the tunnel. Snowy taps Chris in the pads with his stick. He’s already  taken off  his hat, ready to get on the ice in relief. 

“Good luck, kid,” he says. Sometimes he says things  and  Chris  just -- he   just   knows  that he means more. That he  really, really  means it. 

“You need it more,” he tries to chirp back, but the entire left side of his torso  kind of  hurts, and as the adrenaline is wearing off, it’s hurting more. Birdie puts a firm hand on the back of his neck and stays behind on the ice as Chris steps through the gate and makes his way down the tunnel. 

Getting out of his pads is honestly the worst part. There are three trainers trying to get him out of his equipment  and , with   all due respect to the trainers, they’ve very clearly never put on goalie gear before. There’s a lot of it.  Everyone in the room is  very  quickly frustrated by all the  stuff   that’s  on him.  

He can barely get the jersey off without biting a hole straight through his cheek. “Shoulder,” he tells them, and they all look a little contemplative.  Maybe  worried.  He’s  worried. “Definitely something with my shoulder.” 

When he’s down to his bottom layer of pads and undershirt, Freddy prods  very, very  gently at his shoulder.  “Just looks wrenched,” he says. He tests the mobility slightly, and Chris  does  bite down on his cheek then. “Couple weeks, maybe, but I’m definitely more concerned about a possible concussion.” 

They’ve got him in a sling and his rumpled gameday suit by the time the second period ends. Freddy had to  just -- drape his suit jacket over his shoulders. His shirt is a little damp where he’s holding an ice pack, though they’d had the courtesy to wrap it in a towel. He’s in one of the little medical rooms that they’d  actually  had to leave the locker room to get to, even if it’s just down the hall, with the lights most of the way down. 

One of the trainers -- he  actually  doesn’t know her name, and he’s kind of embarrassed about that one -- goes through concussion protocol with him. He knows his name, the year, the president. He flinches when she shines the light in his eyes so hard he nearly falls off the table. His head hurts, he tells her when she asks, and his vision is a little  off ,  kind of  blurry and like he’s moving too slow, and then halfway through  he  gets so dizzy that he has to grip the edges of the exam table even though he’s been sitting down for the past ten minutes. 

“Yeah, bud, you’ve got a concussion.” She glances up at him apologetically. “Doesn’t seem  too  bad, all things considered. Any nausea? Ears ringing?” 

“Um.” He has to pause  and,   like,  assess his body. Everything feels vaguely distant, just out of his grasp. “No nausea. Ears-- a little bit. Tired, mostly.” 

“You live with Dustin, right?” 

“Who?” 

“Snowy?” 

“Oh. Yeah. I live with Snowy.” 

“And Will is your roommate for the road?” 

Chris pauses.  Thinks.  “Poindexter? Yeah.”

“Okay, good.” She turns to her  computer,  and   then back to Chris. “They’re both still playing right now, so we’re gonna keep you here for observation until the game is over. You should be fine as long as you’re staying with someone, just in case anything happens.” 

Chris understands at least half of that. “Can I sleep? Or will I, like, die.” 

She pats his knee and gives him a small smile. “You should be all good.” She  very  kindly puts the trash can next to the table and turns the light off on her way out. 

Chris wakes up in stages. He’s aware of a soft voice, quiet and almost tentative. Then  a  warm hand on his bicep, his right one that  isn’t tied up  in a sling. The hand is kind of-- massive. It’s almost soothing. And then it shakes him a little. 

He opens his eyes slowly, and  there’s someone standing  above him. He blinks, then blinks again, and it’s Snowy. 

“Ready to go?”  He asks, and his voice is soft and gentle  like  he's  talking to a horse who might spook.  His hair flops down in front of his eyes, still wet from his shower.

Like this, he looks very little like Snowy  the  Falconers' starting goalie. Like this, he looks like Chris's roommate. Even through Chris’s squinting, he can tell that Snowy wants to ask how he’s doing and if  he’s  okay, and all  he  can feel is relief that he doesn’t ask. Chris’s head hurts like hell  and  his shoulder is  mostly   fine  but also throbbing with the beat of his heart. 

“Yeah,” Chris manages. He heaves himself up out of the  cushy  armchair and towards the door. “I'm ready.”

Snowy claps a hand on his shoulder— the one not in a sling. “Good. Let's go home.”

Chris has never actually  not  looked forward to calling Caitlin before. He usually wants to, but tonight he just— he's tired, and his head hurts, and the painkillers are  really  taking a toll on him.  He's  not loopy, exactly, but— well.  He's glad he didn't have to worry about driving home , is all .

He has to have Dex help him take off his shirt — he struggles with the buttons himself, the most uncoordinated  he’s  ever been, and then  he  can’t get it over his shoulder — and by the time  he's  pulling a pair of sweatpants on,  he's prepared  to collapse into bed and sleep for the next twelve hours.

But he can't— he can't NOT call her. He hasn't even looked at his phone since he got off the ice — Freddy-mandated concussion protocol — but he's sure she saw him go down, sure she saw him stumble off and not come back. He's sure she sent messages.

He picks up his phone from where he'd set it on his bedside table and  is immediately blinded  by the  brightness of the screen . He has to blink stars out of his vision as he turns it down, and only then can he see it: 66 unread messages.

Okay, so—  apparently  everyone saw him go down. Like, everyone who's ever gotten his number.

He groans, then resolves to  take care of  everything else in the morning. Or— whenever he wakes up.

He clicks on Cait's contact and reaches for the 'call' button.  Hesitates,  for just a moment. Hits 'call'.

In the end, the call is  fairly  short. “Concussion,”  he  tells  her , quiet because of Dex  getting  ready for bed across the room, and she does sound genuinely upset when she says, “Oh, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?”

He yawns a half-dozen times until she declares that he needs to sleep, and  he's  sure  he's  halfway there before he's ended the call.

His head still hurts.

In the morning, he's supposed to monitor for worsening concussion symptoms and stick strictly to his meal plan.

When he wakes up, it's to Dex softly but urgently shaking him awake so they don't miss the plane.  Chris won't be on the plane with the  rest of the  guys going to Anaheim  and  Arizona   and  Minnesota, but he's leaving at the same time.  He got an email from George furiously coordinating him a flight last night sometime during the third period.

The guys all give him tight little smiles when they get to the lobby, looks that say “I'm sorry” and “That  sucks ” even when they aren't clapping him on the back and  actually  saying it. They won the game, at least, so none of the guys look too  dejected .

Splitting off from the rest of the team at the airport is— weird, mostly.  Chris hasn't done a lot of flying that isn't strictly team related; he never had to fly out to training camps  or  All-Star  games  or  even the draft like most of the guys.   He flew from Samwell to California a few times for the holidays, but this is the first time he's ever been , like,  a frequent flier.

He puts on a movie for the flight and dozes enough through it that he's  very confused  when the plane lands.

He has to get an Uber to get back to Snowy's apartment, which costs an arm and a leg from the airport, but he’s not supposed to be driving  so  he can't just take Snowy's car. Plus  he  can’t just  take  Snowy’s car anyway, even though he knows Snowy would say it’s  fine . He may be injured, but he still has manners. It’s, like, courtesy to not take your  bro’s  car from the airport. Or something. 

Snowy's place is— weird when he's the only one there. He dumps his bag on his bedroom floor and deposits himself on the couch to squint at his phone to respond to all his texts, and it's quiet in a way it never is when Snowy's there.  Snowy isn't , like,  a super loud guy or anything, but  just  his presence in a shared space feels more normal than —  nothing.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Chris calls Caitlin once and skypes  her  twice, goes down a bit of a wikipedia hole about hummingbirds, and teaches himself two songs on Snowy’s guitar.

He can feel the bump on the back of his head the next day, a big welt that’s right where the backplate of his helmet slammed into the ice. It knocks against the seat of the car when he gets an Uber to the hospital -- he needs to buy himself a  goddamn  car, even if  he  can’t drive it right now -- and during the whole time he lays down for the MRI.  He  lays  in there for an hour and thinks about -- well,  everything that he’s  kind of  been trying not to think about.  He’s got one shot at making a good impression with the team, and now he’s  injured,  and head injuries often mean no strict return timeline, and-- he needs to do well here. He likes it here. He wants to spend a few years here, at the very least. 

He thinks about Cait,  and about  long distance, and  about  settling down.  About sacrifices, the ones  he’s prepared  to make and the ones he’s not. The ones that aren’t his to make. 

He comes out of the other side with absolutely no answers. His head still hurts. 

All in all, it’s a  fairly  standard concussion.  No  screens, just as a precaution.   It doesn’t sound that  bad,  Chris isn’t  really  tied to his phone  the way  some of the other guys are, but he quickly finds out that there’s  really  not  a lot  to do.  No movies or video games, and when he picks up a book that he’s been meaning to read since his junior year at Samwell, his vision swims so aggressively he nearly throws up. 

So he’s just left with his thoughts , really . He would go outside, but it’s January in Rhode Island, and the winter-bright sun hurts his eyes  to boot . He works out in the apartment gym, paces around Snowy’s place, and thinks. 

Because, really-- the whole picket-fence, 2 1/2 kids thing was never, like,  his dream . And it feels stupid to fall in love with his college girlfriend, but that’s what happened. And he doesn’t-- that’s not even something they’ve  really  talked about. Because who talks about that with their college girlfriend?  It was mostly  just  hoping to live through  graduation,  and  then--  whatever happens after that.  And for them,  whatever happens next  is going from living down the same street  from each other  to living straight across the country from each other. And-- 

The thing about Cait moving to Providence is that-- this is Caitlin. She isn’t going to do it if she doesn’t want to. But how can Chris even ask? How  could  he? How could  he  tell her  that he  thinks his career is more important than hers? Especially not knowing if he’ll even be here in a year,  or two years , or five years? How can he say  I want to build a life with you  when he doesn’t know what comes next? And what happens if she says  no?  

So. The solution is to wait , obviously . Wait until the season is over and  he  gets re-signed to a pretty little five-year contract  and   then   he  can tell  her  about it all. Which, also obviously, might not even  happen,  because he’s good, but this is the  National Hockey League . He’s hopeful, not delusional. So, he’ll wait. Wait and see, and then talk to Cait. 

Chris  lays on Snowy’s glorious,  glorious couch and stares at the ceiling until his mind empties  out .