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Connor pulls his coat tight to himself, face buried in his scarf to ward off the biting Edmonton winter wind. He quickens his footsteps, trying to get indoors as quickly as possible. Finally, he reaches the bar and throws open the door, relishing in the stifling heat within, letting it warm his face for a moment before looking around.
It’s mostly empty, which isn’t surprising considering it’s a Tuesday night in the middle of winter. He spots Dylan easily and slides into the booth across from him.
“Hi,” Connor says.
“Hi,” Dylan responds. They stare at each other in silence for another long moment.
“D’you want -”
“Why’d you even -”
They start talking at the same time, and both stop abruptly, uncomfortable. “You go,” Dylan finally says.
“D’you want me to get you something to drink?”
“Sure,” Dylan says easily. “An IPA, if they have one.”
Connor nods and grabs them both drinks, returning to the table and sliding Dylan’s IPA over to him. He takes a long sip.
“Why’d you even want to meet up?” Dylan asks.
“We were best friends,” Connor says.
“Sure. And then we graduated high school and moved away. Most people aren’t still friends with their high school buddies.”
Connor looks at him. “But we could be…,” he says, trailing off.
“We live in two different countries, thousands of kilometers apart, separated by time zones and two insane schedules. We’re never going to be how we were back then.”
Connor traces some condensation on the outside of his glass with his finger, feeling the water bead onto his skin. The beer is freezing and the bar is too warm, and Connor is caught in between. “Yeah, I know,” he finally says.
“I mean this in the nicest way possible, Connor, but you need to grow up. You can’t try to collect all of your old juniors people in Edmonton in some twisted way of living in the past. The Oilers are your team now - they have been for almost a decade, way longer than the Otters ever were. You need to move on.”
Connor looks down at his threadbare Otters shirt, logo peeling and faded. He looks back at Dylan. “Sure,” he says. “You’re probably right.”
Dylan drains his beer and stands, putting on his coat. “I’m gonna go back to the hotel. See you on the ice tomorrow.”
Connor nods. “See you tomorrow.” He watches Dylan walk out of the bar. When he finally finishes his own beer, he stands gently, easing himself out of the booth. He wraps his huge winter coat around himself, followed by the thick blue scarf he brought in with him.
He braces for the biting wind before he opens the door, but he can never be prepared for how cold it truly is. Wincing, he quickly makes his way to his car, turning it on quickly and putting the heat as high as it will go before making his way home.
Once there, Connor heads straight to his closet and grabs all of his Otters shirts and sweatpants, putting them in a box that he transfers to his garage. On second thought, he goes through his house and takes down all of the pictures from his years in Erie and adds them to the box, too. Four framed pictures, mostly of him and Dylan.
Satisfied with his work, he sits down on the couch, melting into it, and turns on the fire. As the warmth washes over him, he’s grateful for the foresight in getting a gas fireplace in his house here. He stays on the couch for a long time.
“Excited to play against Dylan?” Leon asks in the locker room before the game.
“Sure,” Connor says without thought. He’s not really certain if anything has excited him in a long time. He tries to remember the last time, but it’s like sifting through mud in his brain. The hazy memories have no emotions attached to them.
He scores a goal and cellies with his teammates, arms wrapped around each other tightly. He basks in the warmth for a moment before breaking off to get back into the game.
After the game and media, Connor goes back to his house, pausing in his garage to grab one of the framed photos out of the box. He brings it to the couch with him, staring at the clear joy on his face. His and Dylan’s arms are wrapped around each other, celebrating a goal Dylan had just scored. He remembers the moment so well and tries to slip back in time - the overtime game winner, the impossible pass he had sent Dylan, the way the goal horn blared, the crowd’s screams, the way Dylan’s smile had mirrored his own.
Things had been so much simpler back then. He’d known how he felt about Dylan, and he knew how Dylan felt about him.
He thinks back to what Dylan had said to him last night. Sure, most people aren’t still friends with the people they knew in high school, but with him and Dylan, things had been… different. Connor said they had been best friends, and that’s not a lie, but it’s not the full truth. They’d also been more than that.
It hadn’t really been defined, and they never really talked about it. Still, it had felt so natural when Dylan’s lips had found his after a hard-fought win. It didn’t stop with just the one time, either - suddenly, best friend hangout sessions had transformed into full-on dates and Valentine’s day plans and birthday plans and anniversaries. Maybe neither of them had been ready for the realities of dating a teammate, especially with NHL aspirations, but their relationship had been special. There was no denying that.
Connor sighs as he drags a finger over Dylan’s face in the picture. Everything had felt so certain - they would play amazing hockey, then get drafted into the NHL and keep playing amazing hockey, and nothing would change between them despite the distance that was almost certain to separate them.
But the NHL makes everything more complicated and the certainty they’d both felt had slipped away. It had started during the draft; Edmonton and Arizona weren’t impossibly far from one another, and Connor felt a spark of hope. But going first overall lends itself to a ton of media coverage, and after spending hours being asked to pick apart everything about his personal and professional lives, he was exhausted.
He knew it was only a brief glimpse into the next decade or two of his life - everything he did would be analyzed, regardless of how it related to hockey.
And if the media were to find out about Connor’s love life - well, Connor knows what would happen in that case. Everything he and Dylan had worked their whole lives for would be gone in a flash.
So he did what he needed to do and in the process, he had broken his own heart and Dylan’s, too. Nothing was the same after that. Their friendship had withered and died between the distance, their mismatched schedules, and the tone of bitterness overshadowing everything. From what Connor’s heard and seen online, Dylan had moved on pretty easily. He’s got a great group of friends and has bounced around dating various beautiful women.
Connor hadn’t, though. Still stuck in the past, like Dylan had accused him of, he’d never been able to forget the way he and Dylan had slotted together perfectly. He’d tried going out with people over the years, but none of them had stuck around past the first few dates. While he might technically be single, it’s been clear to everyone that he’s taken, even if it’s just in his own mind and heart.
He desperately wants to move on, but part of him is still clinging to the past. Connor’s not sure how to break that stranglehold grip and leave everything with Dylan behind him. He knows that Dylan is right, that it’s pathetic to still be hung up on high school shit, but he’s also not sure he’s been happy since his draft day.
He gets up and puts the picture back in the box in the garage, then heads up to bed. Tomorrow is a new day. Maybe he can be better tomorrow.
A few weeks after the mishap with Dylan, he hosts the team for a movie night. They crowd into his large, empty house, loudly chatting over each other in excitement, bickering about what movie to watch and where to order food from.
Nuge corners him during the evening. “Your place looks different,” he says. “I can’t figure out what it is, though.”
Connor blushes. “I took down some old pictures I had hanging up,” he mumbles.
Nuge stares at one of the empty spots on the wall as if he’s trying to remember something. He runs a finger over the nail still stuck in there as a smile creeps over his face.
“Redecorating is always fun. You should get some new stuff to hang up, though, or get these nails out of here.”
“Yeah, probably,” Connor says. He knows he won’t do either of those things; they both feel like too much effort.
Connor is surprised to find a gift bag hanging in his locker a few days later. He looks around the room with raised eyebrows. “My birthday was in January,” he says.
Leon rolls his eyes. “Then clearly it’s not a birthday present. Come on, open it up. We’ve all been dying to see what it is, no one knows who left it.”
Cautiously, Connor reaches into the bag. He pulls out four gold picture frames.
The first has a photo of him, Leon, Nuge, and Nursey from one of Connor’s first years on the Oilers; the four of them had been wandering around Edmonton and Nursey had insisted on taking a silly selfie. Connor’s arm is slung over Nuge’s shoulders, and Leon had pulled him close on the other side.
The next has a picture of just him, celebrating an overtime goal in the playoffs to send their team to the western conference finals. If he tries hard, he can remember the joy of that moment, the pure elation of winning.
The third shows almost the entire team from their yearly retreat last year. They’d taken a weekend and gone to a bougie hotel in LA after their game there, hanging out on the beach and generally causing chaos. Some of the guys had insisted on a group photo on the beach, so they’d asked some unlucky strangers to capture it for them.
The final photo is Connor’s favorite. It’s just him and Nuge, arms wrapped around each other on the ice as they celebrate one of Connor’s goals. Connor can’t actually place when it was, although he can figure out it was a few years ago based on his hair. He doesn’t remember which particular moment on the ice it was though; in some ways, it feels like it could be any and every goal he’s ever scored.
“Why did someone get you a bunch of pictures?” Clouder asks as he ties his skates.
“They must have known I needed help redecorating,” Connor replies, catching Nuge’s eye. He feels himself smile and it seems almost foreign to him somehow. Nuge grins back at him.
Connor carefully places all of his new pictures on the nails already in the walls, saving his favorite one for last. He puts it in the most prominent place, the one where the picture of him and Dylan used to be. He’s just finished straightening it out when he hears a knock on the door.
It’s Nuge. “I was worried you’d need help hanging the pictures,” he says, smiling as if he knows how ridiculous that sounds.
“I just finished putting them up,” Connor replies. “You should see for yourself, make sure I did an ok job.”
Nuge does just that, chirping Connor for how uneven they all look as he straightens them out with a level he brought over. “What are your dinner plans?” he asks after he’s satisfied.
Connor shrugs.
“Let me cook for us, and then I can kick your ass in chel,” Nuge says.
“We’re in my house, I can cook,” Connor says.
Nuge rolls his eyes and pushes him out of the way gently. “I’ve got it.”
“You seem anxious,” Nuge says as he drops into the seat next to Connor.
“I hate playing Washington,” Connor admits. “I’ll be happy when this roadie is over.”
“Ovi scares you that much, eh?”
Connor snorts. “Not quite. Just - an old friend. It’s complicated.”
Nuge gives him a sad smile. “Not everything has to be complicated, you know.”
Connor sighs and looks out the window. “It’s the NHL and I’m Connor McDavid. Everything is complicated.”
“You’re allowed to be just Connor sometimes,” Nuge says. He grabs Connor’s hand in his, intertwining their fingers. They don’t talk much for the rest of the flight, but Connor never stops gripping Ryan’s hand.
It’s not complicated until it is. Until Connor fucks up like he always does and grabs the wrong sweatshirt before an interview.
He doesn’t realize until it’s too late, until he’s already been asked why he’s wearing his teammate’s sweatshirt. He looks down at the 93 over his chest and his heart skips a beat. He lies his way out of it, stuttering and bright red as he talks about all of the Oilers-branded clothes they’re given looking the same (a flimsy lie, when they’re labeled with small numbers on the front, huge numbers and names stretched across the back).
He apologizes to Ryan over and over, until Ryan makes him stop. “I like how you look in it,” he says simply. “You can wear it whenever you want. I don’t care.”
“But people might think…,” Connor says, trailing off.
“They wouldn’t be wrong,” Ryan says gently. “I’m not ashamed of you. Or of this.”
“It’s the NHL,” Connor replies.
“So what?”
Connor keeps the sweatshirt on for the rest of the day.
“Do you still love him?” Ryan asks one night as they lay in bed together, legs tangled.
Connor doesn’t answer immediately because he can’t find the words to match his emotions. “I don’t really know him anymore,” he finally starts. “I spent a long time loving him, and then I spent a long time loving the memory of what we had. Being in love with a memory is hard - it never changes or goes away, so it’s impossible to stop trying to live in the past.”
“Oh,” Ryan says sadly. “Right.”
“Ry, let me finish. It felt like my body was in Edmonton but my heart and mind were in Erie for years. But, right now - the only place I want to be is here with you. Body, heart, mind, everything. I don’t love Dylan anymore because I don’t know him. I’m not in love with the memories, either. I’m in love with you.”
Nuge kisses him gently and Connor loses himself in the feeling of their lips moving against each other, bodies pressed tightly together, his hands gripping Ryan’s body close to his.
“Hey, Davo! This is Tayler,” Dylan says.
“Nice to meet you,” Connor says politely, shaking her hand. “This is my boyfriend, Ryan,” he says, introducing Tayler to Nuge. Washington is nice this time of year; it’s spring, the flowers are blooming, and they’re sitting outside at a brewery. Ryan kisses Connor’s cheek and asks if he can buy a round for everyone.
They hang out for a while, soaking up the dying sunshine, laughing about their latest hockey mishaps and teammates’ pranks gone wrong.
“Remember that time in Erie when you hid all of Brinksy’s sticks and made him play with one of mine?” Dylan says, choking back laughter.
Connor bursts out laughing. “God, yeah. He’s so short - watching him play with your stick was ridiculous.”
Ryan smiles brightly at Connor, wrapping an arm around him. Connor leans into the touch, surrounded by warmth and love.
“We should get going,” Dylan says sadly after a few hours. “But this was fun. We should do it again when I’m in Edmonton next.”
“We’ll be in Toronto for most of the off-season,” Connor says slowly.
“Sweet! We’ll definitely meet up over the summer, then,” Dylan says, grinning. “Keep in touch, Davo.”
“Of course,” he says, hugging Dylan. “You too.”