Archive of Our Own

When Eric is 13, he puts himself on a diet. They're living in an okay place in the GTA; it's small, with four steps leading up to the door from the sidewalk that freeze into a death trap in the winter for anyone who has to carry as much gear as he does, but it's the first time his dad's been happy in a while. They don't have a ton of money and they don't have a ton of free time, but the three of them stick together.

'Don't worry, dad,' Eric tells his father as he measures out protein powder with a small plastic cup. He takes the extra time to level the extra lumps off with one of the many mismatched and blunt-edge butter knives that they'd bought from BiWay to fill up the missing bits of their kitchen after dad moved out from the-house-that-is-now-mum's. 'I'm just preparing you for when Joan hits puberty.'

'You've barely hit puberty,' his dad says, but he looks worried. 'What's in that stuff?'

'Protein?' guesses Eric. He squints at the label. 'Whatever. It's not a lose-weight diet, it's a gain-weight diet.'

His dad doesn't look convinced. 'Candy bars not good enough for you?'

'Muscle weight, not fat,' Eric informs him. 'So: protein, not chocolate. Hand me that banana.'

His dad hands him the banana. Eric dumps it into their shitty blender, pours some milk in, and gives it a few good whirls. The smoothie or whatever it is looks like crap, but hey, it's easy to make, and - he takes a few experimental sips - doesn't taste all that bad.

'Good?' asks dad, picking up the car keys.

'Meh,' replies Eric, throwing it back. He hops shoves the glass into the sink and slings his bag over his shoulder. 'Okay, let's go.'

What sucks: driving three hours to get to wherever they're playing this time because the team bus leaves at what feels like 3am from, well, not this part of town. Eric's only got so many days with his dad, and so when his dad offered to start driving him to his games, he'd felt bad, but not bad enough to say no.

What doesn't suck: they have a steadily-growing pile of mix-tapes that are building up in the back seat of the car. Today's trip is sponsored by way too much Celine Dion, but they belt out off-tune bars together to pass the time as they creep along the frozen Canadian landscape towards - hopefully - another W.

He starts the diet because, really, this guy comes to talk at his school. "This guy" is a sports management consultant, and Eric hadn't really even known what two out of three of those words had meant, but since it'd been prefixed by "sports" he'd snagged a seat in the auditorium and hunkered down to listen to the guy talk.

Mr. Brisson turns out to be a sort of agent. Or dude who manages agents. Or something. Whatever he is, he knows his stuff: he talks major juniors, junior A/B, all that type of stuff. The main point of his talk is that you can't just be good, to get to the show, you've also got to be lucky.

'Why?' he'd asked his audience rhetorically. He put down a transparency onto the projector and a whole bunch of numbers came up on screen. 'Because out of the 22,000 ten year olds who played hockey in Ontario alone in '80, only 110 of them ever made it to the OHL. 22 got scholarships to Div 1 schools. So you think about that - that's less than two-thirds of a percent that made it up there.'

Lots of tittering. Half of his classmates'd fallen asleep by that point, because they wanted to go to university, not skate around a rink all day. But Eric'd wanted to skate around a rink all day, so he stuck around till after the big and public Q&A, and asked Mr. Brisson thereal question.

'Sir,' he'd asked. 'Out of that 22, how many of them made it to the NHL?'

Mr. Brisson'd looked down at him. Apparently he'd been a player once himself, not that Eric has any recollection of his name. Probably played for the Canucks, or something.

'Seven,' he said. 'Just seven.'

Eric found a book, a really massive book, and double-checked just to be sure. Turns out the agents' agent was full of crap.

There'd been thirty Ontario boys who made it to the NHL starting from (and he had to guess this part) 1991.

To be fair, ten of them never played games in the double-digits. Still. Twenty's better than seven.

But then again, no point leaving anything to chance. Mr. Brisson'd left him with some advice: get big, kid, and get big fast. How heavy are you? Well, get heavier.

Whatever's in those protein powders, it works. That, Eric figures, and the getting up at 6am every morning to run around the block before school, and the conditioning at the gym, and the hours at practice, and then those times after school and on weekends when it's just him and a tennis ball and a ripped up net. Over and over and over until the tennis ball goes kaput or his hands do.

Anyway, he hits sixteen, and everyone's thinking about exams but he's thinking about the fact that he's going to the Major Juniors.

'I'm proud of you,' his dad says the night before he has to leave to join his billet family in Burlington. 'You train up good, yeah? Kick some ass.' He's holding onto Eric so tight that Eric thinks he's going to lose circulation in a few minutes, and maybe there's some crying going on, but Eric stays stoic.

His dad's always been proud of his hockey. His dad's Canadian, it's practically obligatory for him to be proud. But there's a niggling feeling in the back of Eric's head, these days; one that won't go away. The one that says to him, how proud'll dad be if he knows what you are?

Well, if what he is is a top-6 NHL forward, then maybe his dad won't notice that what he also is is, er, gay.

It's not like he wants to be. It's not like he uses the locker room as his own private porno stash. It's just that guys look nice and guys are attractive and girls can be nice but girls aren't attractive. Eric settles on that, because it's hard to think after a 3 hour practice for the third time in a week, and it's what works for him.

Things aren't good for gay hockey players, and - by logical extension - Eric guesses it's maybe not so good for gay sons. Maybe dad'll blow up at him, or maybe dad will - worse - blame himself. Who knows what dad will do? But dad's been driving him cross-country for years now, and dad's been supportive and dad's been great. So dad doesn't need to worry about stuff that isn't his business.

And Eric, Eric can hedge his bets. Maybe you need to be both good and lucky to make it, but nobody said you can't load the dice.

Eric's billet brother is super, super hot and that's problematic in no small number of ways, not least because his billet agreement says NO SEXUAL CONTACT SHALL BE MADE BETWEEN MEMBERS OF THE BILLET FAMILY AND THE BILLET. Also because that would be incest, right?

The Burlington Cougars do okay, but Eric does - if he says so himself - pretty damned great. He stacks up the points, he picks up the fights, he goes hard with the boys and yeah, it's fuckin' fantastic, that's fuckin' right!

It's hard to swear with a mouthguard in all the time, okay; fuckin' hard.

Since it's their freshman year and all, the boys and him don't really get up to much beyond video games at one of the larger billet family houses. They're trying to figure out the whole how-do-we-get-booze-without-getting-kicked-off-of-the-team game that the other guys on the team have down pat, but nobody wants to put a toe out of line just yet.

So it's pretty tame, except for that one time when he ends up walking with Jordan in the same direction back to their billets one night, and sort of, well, the parents are out, and they don't have kids, and, well, er. It's hot, is what it was, and there's a bro-code of silence because Jordan has as much to lose as he does.

'I'm not, you know,' Jordan flaps his hands at him when they're done.

'Yeah, yeah, totally, right,' Eric agrees. Because he isn't, and they're aren't, and it isn't.

Summertime comes and the season ends and Toronto is hot and life is good. Eric's seventeen and even if his bed in dad's house now feels a little small, it's great to be home.

He goes out with a few old friends, and they lie their way into some bars, and that's fun. He meets a guy - Kyle, at a pick-up game, seriously, nowhere else! - and dad's away at work, so Eric doesn't think twice about taking him home.

Which is how Joan walks in on them in the living room making out, because of course she does.

'This is not what it looks like,' Eric explains in a rush.

His dude looks at him, then at his sister, and then catches on. Kyle scratches his number down onto a piece of paper, shoves it at him, and then Eric gets a comforting clap on the shoulder before Kyle says, 'Good luck!' and flees right out the door.

'Did you forget to put on deodorant or something?' asks his sister, of all things.

Eric blinks. 'What?'

'I mean, that guy legged it pretty fast,' she points out. 'If you smell like your hockey bag does, maybe think of investing in some, I dunno, cologne?'

Picking up his jaw takes a while. 'How did you- Aren't you going to-'

Joan looks at him. 'Does dad know?'

'Do I know what?' asks dad, coming in through the door.

'Why are you home?' wails Eric.

'Half day?' says dad. 'Do I know what?'

'Nothing!' Eric cries out at the same time his sister goes, 'He's gay!'

'I'm going to only go over this with you two once,' says dad about half an hour later, after they sit him down on the couch and ensure his heart's still beating. He stands up and goes to the little chest of drawers they keep in the hallway and then comes back with a little bag. 'At least I only have to do this once, and with the both of you at the same time so thank fuck.'

Eric boggles. He's never heard his dad swear.

His dad opens the bag and Joan howls and jumps backwards. Eric's too numb at this point to really register that, yes, his dad is, yes, taking out a, yes, condom.

'So,' his dad starts. 'The wonder of boys.'

Joan slinks her way to her room after that, deflated. Eric's still, yup, still numb.

His dad puts (thank god thank god) the bag away and comes to sit quietly by him on the couch.

'Eric,' he says seriously after a moment. 'Maybe it's best if you keep it... quiet. In the leagues. You've worked really hard and I wouldn't- I mean, I don't- I mean.' Dad goes quiet again. 'It could mess with your team and your chances. And you don't have anything else lined up in the pipes, so...'

So if I don't make it, I'm screwed, Eric fills in for him.

'I'll be okay,' Eric reassures. 'It's not going to be a big deal.'

His dad looks unhappy, but he does hug him. Doesn't say he's proud, or anything, but hugs him.

That night, Eric digs up that stupid minor hockey association Player Development Handbook that he'd been given ages and ages back and looks at that stupid weirdo poem that they'd printed on page 3:

THE BUILDER

I saw a group of men in my hometown

I saw a group of men tearing a building down.

With a heave and a ho and a mighty yell,

They swung a beam and the sidewalk fell.

And I said to the foreman, “Are these men skilled,

The type you’d hire if you wanted to build?”

And he laughed and said, “Why no indeed.”

He said “Common labour's all I need.

For I can tear down in a day or two

What it took a builder ten years to do.”

And I thought to myself as I walked away.

“Which of these roles am I going to play?

Am I the type that constantly tears down

As I make my way, foolishly around?

Or am I the type that’s trying to build with care,

In hope that my organization’ll be glad I was there?”

'In hope that my organisation'll be glad I was there, huh,' he says to himself, staring down at the words. 'Ugh.'

So when he's 17, Eric makes a list of some basic rules:

• No sex with team mates - they're going to be competing for the same spots as you soon
• No sex with billet family members, no matter how hot - they have to gossip
• No sex with anyone who plays major junior or junior hockey
• So, basically, no sex until the NHL when he can afford to have it
• Literally afford?

He stops there and squints at the list. Then he writes down, and underlines,

• Have a plan

It turns out that it's probably easier to have a plan when you have the energy to do more than just wake up, go to practice, practice, come back from practice, and go to sleep afterwards. So Eric doesn't get very far in his attempts to have Contingencies, which sort of de-escalate monthly from "keep up with school work so that you can bargain for a scholarship come contract time" to "look up whether you need to pass entrance exams or something for university?" to "hm, make a list of schools that care more about hockey player potential than plain grades" to "maybe night school" to "becoming a personal trainer won't be hard at all, right? Especially since I think I've done this conditioning exercise 2000 times now."

Or maybe it's because, whether it's the smart thing to do or not, what Eric really likes, really wants to do, and really is pouring himself into is the game. He can't help the fact that he feels the way he does whenever his skates hit the ice any more than he can help that other thing. Eric dreams in play-by-plays to the soundtrack of Bob Cole's voice making the call, ERIC MCNALLY'S DONE IT, THE LEAFS HAVE WON THE CUP!

There are people, other people, who get told "do what you love" and then spend the rest of their miserable lives trying to figure out what that is. Eric's not going to be one of those people; he isn't one of those people -- he's lucky, lucky as hell, because this is what he wants to do, and by god - he's going to be good at it.

17 gives way to 18.

'Don't worry,' his sister tells him as dad bundles him into the same P.O.S car that had taken Eric to bantam hockey. 'It's not like you've waited your entire life for this or anything.'

Eric's in a suit that's been starched within an inch of its off-the-rack fabric-y life, and whether that's because he's got to look sharp for the draft or because his dad didn't actually know what he was doing when ironing the thing is anybody's guess. His collar is stiff as a board, but that's okay, because by the time they get to Calgary Eric's pretty sure that it's the only thing stopping him from melting into a slop of anxious nerves.

There're lights, there's music, there're GMs right there on the floor. They're in the player section of the stands, where a few hundred other equally green looking guys his age are sitting.

DiPietro goes first, because, well, yeah, the guy's a brick wall.

It doesn't surprise Eric that, well, nothing happens that first day. He's good but he's not great, and first-rounders are great. It's all right. It's okay. He doesn't have to be Mario Lemieux.

And, hey, it gives him some time to wear his suit in so that he can, actually, breathe the next day as the second-round picks go flying past.

He doesn't make third-round, which sucks. But he makes fourth, 116th overall, Eric McNally selected by the home-team Calgary Flames and the stadium does give up a cheer for that. He makes it, he's not one of the 21,980 kids-from-Ontario who never get to see the show. He'll be captained by Jarome Iginla.

Eric holds up his new jersey and a hundred (okay, maybe like two) flashes goes off in his face and the roaring in his ears won't stop, a prelude to the crowds that will come.

They hustle him into a room somewhere and the agent Eric hadn't even been sure he was going to need materialises out of the ether to flip furiously through the one-million page contract that they put in front of him.

It's really a standard player contract, Eric thinks he knows that, but the number of zeroes before the final decimal in his salary make his eyes water. That's... that's a lot of money.

He initials in what feels like a thousand places before he has to sign his name on the... It's not a dotted line. It's a very solid, real line.

'Earth to Eric,' his father says into his ear.

'Don't worry,' Eric's agent reassures them, grinning, yanking the papers out of his unresisting hands. 'It happens. Think of it as practice for all those autographs, eh?'

He smiles. Doug Risebrough smiles. The rest of the front of house or front office or whatever type people smile. There's a lot of smiling. Eric smiles back.

Turns out they had as much reason to smile as he did, Eric figures out later, because they're earning as much as he is from the contract.

Canada herself is charging a serious tax for him profiting off of the national obsession; his agent's getting a serious percent. By the time Eric manages to sort of figure out what numbers he needs to punch into a calculator, there're a lot fewer zeroes involved.

'I'm still buying you a car,' Eric tells his dad.

'I'm very attached to that clunker,' his dad objects. 'It got you this far.'

'But you're going to be driving to a stadium now,' Eric preens.

'You're going to be in Calgary,' his dad reminds him. 'I'm not driving up there even if you buy me a Porsche.' Eric looks at him. His dad looks back for a moment, then sighs. 'Or a car with four wheel drive and clearance and snow tires.'

'New career start,' Eric says firmly. 'New car.'

But because you're supposed to have a plan, Eric only allows himself to buy three nice suits, then shoves the rest of the money into a bank account and swears to himself never to touch it until he has to.

'A bank?' Joan asks over the phone when he calls her from the hotel they're putting him up in for training camp. 'What's it going to do in a bank?'

'Be safe from me?' Eric hazards. 'And my team mates?' Since, Eric figures, that around the same time a bunch of them'd discovered booze and (lucky them) girls, they'd also gone and lost all common sense.

'Yeah, right,' she says. He can see her rolling her eyes. 'Investments, Eric! Not all of it, obviously - you're not wrong to keep a sort of personal finance blue line - but you need to roll a few offensive lines too, you know.'

Eric's too busy trying to figure out if that's Joan torturing a hockey metaphor or making an allusion to all the drugs he's sure he's not going to be doing, or both. 'Right,' he says, falling into the d-zone of sarcasm.

'I usually am,' she agrees. 'So, anyone hot on the team?'

Thing about hockey players? They're not hot unless they're hot as in hot as in scoring a ton of goals, and even then they're not that hot. Maybe it's because of years and years of billets, but a team's basically family. Eric's never found someone he's played with attractive, not in that sense.

Teammates are brothers, they stick together, and that's why it sucks when the predictable but inevitable happens.

'Pack your bags,' one of the assistant coaches says to him, not unkindly, after the end of training camp. 'You're going down to Stockton.'

Eric hasn't exactly unpacked yet, but he'd been hoping.

He gets on the team bus that ferries him and the other suckers who didn't make it down to the airport, where they'll be shoved over to their affiliate in California. It's a shitty ride.

The crazy thing about being in the AHL is that you know you're not good enough for the big league. Sure, sometimes they send hotshots down to help them rehab after a major injury or to acclimatise some Russian superstar who's played on a different-sized rink his whole life, but 99% of the minors is made up of bottom-skimmers hoping that they'll be lucky enough to be a call-up during a cup run.

He gets a point here and there, but never enough.

It's not where Eric wants to be. He doesn't care if he ends up being a NHL journeyman or role-player or whatever they call people who can't move like Jagr. He just wants to play.

But it's crazy to go from being one of the best on a team - and Eric's always been one of the best, because he has diets and plans and persistence - to being... just okay. Maybe even a little terrible.

'You got any mitts, Erica?' asks McTavis as he steals, without much effort, the puck off of Eric's stick. 'Or do you moves only work on other gays?'

'Shut your face,' Eric retorts five seconds later, because a master of chirping, that is him. It doesn't matter, McTavis is halfway up the ice and dekeing his way to a flash goal. Soft hands, is what guys like him have. Fucking amazing soft hands.

Eric looks down at his gloves after the game's done; he looks at them, and then pulls them off, and opens and closes his hands: fingers, and then fists.

The funny thing is, he gets called up the next week. The funny thing is, he gets called up because Calgary is literally getting eaten alive and the roster is, after a spate of bad luck and worse injuries, Swiss cheese.

Eric gets out onto the ice in the Saddledome and the crowd roars euphoria and bloodlust into his ears and he never, ever wants to leave.

They still get creamed. They get creamed again the next match, and then the next, until they're on a four-game streak going the wrong way and everyone hates everyone else but not as much as Coach hates them all.

'We're gettin' destroyed out there, boys!' he spits at them, pacing up and down the length of the locker room. 'Fuckin' destroyed! I've seen bantam hockey played better! Jesus Christ.'

No one says anything. The C and both As are staring stonily at the ground, propped up like if they can take the buffeting for the rest of the team it'll make everyone else not want to melt into the floor and disappear.

'You know,' Coach goes on, 'I get ten fuckin' questions about Tabaracci every time we do a god damned presser, and they're asking me, why's he letting in so many goals? And you know, I have to say to them, he's letting in so many fuckin' goals because he's the only fuckin' player who ever shows up on the ice every fuckin' game! It's a fuckin' miracle we're not losing 8-0 every night, is what I want to say to them, because if my team's got a functioning D it's the first I've heard about it, and my forwards sure as hell never learned what "backcheck" meant.'

Coach cuts himself off there, and stops. 'Look,' his voice drops, and it's the worst thing. 'I know you all want to win. Not a guy amongst you hasn't worked his balls off to play in this league. I know you're all as frustrated as I am and that I ain't telling any of you anything new.'

Everyone sort of nods.

In the same quiet voice, Coach goes on. 'I believe in this team. Maybe we're not going to win a Cup, but we aren't fucking chopped liver, either. I believe in you guys, and you guys need to believe in you guys too, eh? So let's put on our best faces and turn this thing around next game, eh?'

'Yeah,' someone says.

'We're not going to lie down and let them skate over us, are we?'

'No!' more people say.

'We're going to get our shit into gear and play some proper fucking hockey, aren't we?'

And they're a chorus, one singular yeah!, because they don't hire chumps for coaches in the NHL, either. People are standing up, tapping sticks, and Eric feels himself get tugged along.

Then Coach says, 'Fuck, yes, so let's stop this faggotry and go out there and win!'

And Eric has to remember, breathe, and Eric has to remember, have a plan, and Eric has to remember that no, really, he doesn't have soft hands.

By the second period of their next game, it feels like nobody's registered a damn thing Coach said to them. They're in Boston down 3-0 with eight minutes left on the clock.

It almost gets to 4-0 when one of the Boston forwards goes crashing towards their net. He loses the puck because of some chippy ice, but tries to reach for it and doesn't even attempt to put on the breaks as he goes careening right into Matts.

The ensuing collision knocks the net and what's left of Eric's sanity right out of place.

Before he really knows what he's doing, he's dropped his gloves and is right up in the Boston guy's face.

'I don't want to go,' the forward - Paverly - screams at him.

'You gave up the choice not to go when you fucking bowled our goalie over,' Eric screams right back. 'Put your goddamned fists up.'

Paverly looks at him. He's got at least fifteen pounds on Eric, sure, because Eric's never been heavy-set. He drops his gloves.

Eric doesn't know whether it's frustration or adrenalin or madness that does it, but he gets his hands on Paverly's jersey and all the angles somehow work out and the next thing he knows the linesman are trying to stop him from riding Paverly up and down the ice.

He gets five for fighting, but when the boys get their shit back together for the faceoff everything clicks and they bring it back.

They still don't win. But it's 4-2 and not 3-0, and Coach slaps him on the back when they get in through the tunnel.

Over the course of the next few games, Eric figures out that there are a lot more ways to get things done than just beating someone's face in. There's slamming them into the boards, and checking them oh-so-gently into another one of their teammates, and following them around the ice until they scream at you to go the fuck away.

No more faggotry, not from him.

Eric might not be putting up points, but he sure as hell makes sure that he makes them.

It's deeply, deeply satisfying when they play Detroit and he sees McTavis try to hook their star forward only to turn around to find Eric right there behind him.

'I've got some mitts,' Eric says, making to peel one of his gloves off. 'But I don't need them. Want to try that again?'

There's fear in McTavis's eyes, fear and respect. 'Go fuck yourself, McNally,' he says, but it's weak, and he doesn't try that again.

Eric doesn't get sent back down.

He does, however, get traded.

To Toronto.

Eric's 21 when he puts on the white and blue maple leaf on his chest and thinks furiously to himself, in spite of all the things that tell him to be sensible about life as a hockey player, that he never wants to take it off. He wants to retire a Leaf, that first step into the Air Canada Centre is like stepping onto cloud nine, if cloud nine were some sort of paradise where 19,800 fans are cheering for you, not against you. They make the playoffs in '00, they make the semi-finals in '00; he makes a pokecheck that gets them through to Game 7 and suddenly people are asking him for his autograph and he gets recognised every time he forgets to put a cap and sunglasses on.

Everything Eric never really thought he was going to have is suddenly right there in front of him. He gets to see his dad whenever he wants instead of once every six months because now he's right there. He gets to go to his sister's wedding without having to take time off from the team because she's right there, too. Eric doesn't have to open up a guidebook to figure out where to eat or what to do on the weekends that isn't turn down embarrassing amounts of recreational, ah, "performance aids." He meets up with Kyle, who's actually now a pretty good friend, and fucks him stupid into his own bed and is only mildly freaked out afterwards when Kyle says, 'Hey, I saw you on Hockey Night In Canada last week. They were interviewing you because you have, what, the most penalty minutes in the league right now? That's... a good thing, right?'

Still, he deletes Kyle's number from his phone, just in case.

It doesn't even matter that, a year or so later, the Leafs can't seem to keep the points up. He's playing with Mats Sundin and Bryan McCabe and life is amazing. Eric doesn't care that they only put him on the ice to make a point, doesn't care that when he goes out with the boys at night that he's the only one to ever really go home alone, doesn't care that they fail to make the playoffs for the first time in years, or that the Toronto media makes getting flayed alive sound more appealing than a post-game interview: this is everything he's ever wanted and if what he's doing works, why stop?

Well. Stop maybe because you check someone into the boards once too often. Stop maybe because your body can't take the abuse you make it take during something as inconsequential as an exhibition practice match. Stop maybe because your shoulder breaks in four (bitty) places and every attempt you make at rehabbing it just seems to make it worse.

Stop because life is ironic, really.

'Well,' he says to his dad and his sister the day they meet in his apartment to discuss The Future. 'I wanted to retire a Leaf - I got it.'

Okay, so, Eric'd had a plan, but all of his plans had involved, well. Hockey.

He'd been planning to kind of go the way of coaching, maybe an assistant job somewhere, but with so few years under his belt that's not really going to fly. Eric feels a little stupid for not having a plan-for-if-the-plan-in-case-the-first-plan-didn't-work-plan-didn't-work, but he thinks about that for a further five seconds and feels even stupider.

'But hey,' his sister says to him as she helps him sort of... figure out what to do about groceries? Because he's never had to before - team lunches and team dinners exist for a reason - and now he has to do things like, just maybe, cook for himself. 'At least you've got money.'

'Not that much money,' Eric says doubtfully.

'Still a lot of money,' Joan rolls her eyes. 'You just have too many millionaire friends.'

'Had,' Eric corrects her.

'They're not going to dump you just because you're retired now,' she says.

'Well, yeah,' Eric nods, but it's non-committal. He looks down at the list in front of him. 'Do I need anything to make pasta with besides, er, water?'

'Sauce,' Joan says sagely. 'Sauce helps.'

See, it's not like the team abandons him. It's just that they travel, all the time, and then they go home over the summers, and when you're the only one not eating/breathing hockey, things get... weird.

His friends come to hang out when they can, but they keep flinching every time someone talks about a game, or the Leafs, or anything.

So Eric finds that they all sort of... drift. He's too young to be retired, is the problem, and it's just- it's fucking embarrassing. He hates it, and it scares him, what he knows about guys who drop out young. There are dark, dark roads that some ex-NHLers walk, and he doesn't want to go down those.

What he needs, he figures, is to get his life in order. He can't keep thinking about how much he misses the ice. That road's closed now. He can't go back.

There's time B.I and time A.I - Before Injury and After Injury - and that's just the way it has to be.

Putting aside the fact that he needs to learn how to cook and clean and do things that normal people do; putting aside the fact that he needs to re-train for some job; putting aside the fact that he needs any kind of job at all -- putting all of that aside, Eric still has a sort of fucked up shoulder.

What's weird about it is that he ends up not just with a PT guy, but a... lawyer.

'I'm Sam,' says Sam. 'I'll be representing you on behalf of the Players' Association.'

Because fucked up shoulder had led to fucked up contract had led to the Leafs sort of maybe trying to dump him in ways that aren't maybe fully legal. Eric can't figure out all of the legal talk: he pays Sam and an accountant some money to get it done, and thanks 13 year old Eric for being wise about pinching pennies.

But he does ask Sam, 'Look, my AAV was so low compared to a lot of other guys on the team, why do they even care?  Why are we fighting MLSE? They'll kill us. I'm done, I washed out, if they want to ding me for quitting early, what's the problem?'

'The problem is,' Sam says, and Sam is great because he doesn't talk lawyer even when he's talking law, 'that you didn't quit, Mr. McNally.'

'Eric,' says Eric. 'You're practically my age.'

'I'm practically your lawyer,' says Sam.

'So I'm practically telling you to call me "Eric,"' says Eric. He smiles, smug.

Sam actually rolls his eyes. 'The problem is that you didn't quit, Eric, you were injured during a game. The fact being that injury forced you into an early retirement, not a decision to break contract - so they shouldn't be dinging you, and we're going to fight this because if they start now, they'll never stop. It's not just you: it's every other NHL player who has their career cut short.'

'Oh,' says Eric. 'If you put it that way...' He doesn't want to make a fuss, but if the PA needs him to do it, then it's not a big deal. He shrugs. 'Okay.'

Eric accidentally ends up seeing Sam an awful lot. There are just one million meetings to go to with the PA and the NHL and their lawyers and their lawyers' lawyers or something.

At some point they try to yank his team health benefits, and Sam goes berserk.

'I have never seen this kind of irresponsibility,' he tells Eric in his office one day. There's a big stack of papers in front of him, but there are always big stacks of papers in front of lawyers.

'I can manage,' Eric objects. 'They didn't leave me a pauper, and we've got decent healthcare, right? We're Canada, I-'

Sam slaps down a clipped set of sheets in front of him. 'Those are the receipts for the physiotherapy and rehab you've been going through since your injury. The private rehab? Take a look at the sum total costs.'

Eric peeks at the number. 'Oh,' he says. 'That's a big number.'

'Yeah,' Sam says. 'It's a big number. Also, there's a serious drop off in the number of times you go see your PT person starting from a month after your retirement - are you getting better? I thought...'

'Er,' says Eric, who sometimes can't get up in the mornings, who sometimes can't justify working a body that won't ever be as good as it once was.

'Mr. McNally,' Sam says, frowning.

'I said–'

'Eric,' Sam says, again.

Eric seizes upon a random page of the contract. 'Look, is that a new clause they tried to sneak in there, backdoor?'

The case ends up getting settled fairly quickly, because Sam – when he is not asking concerned questions about Eric's health – is apparently some sort of vigilante bloodhound.

'Let me get this straight,' Eric says as they walk out of the settlement. 'You got in touch with nearly every ex-player who retired because of injuries sustained during a season, and basically said, "come tell me your tragic NHL story," and compiled a list of said tragic NHL stories, and they took one look at the- the- tome you put together and said "nope, we're not even going to try"?'

Sam gives him a bland look, then smiles. 'More or less.'

'More or less,' Eric huffs. 'Right. Okay.' He tucks the folder of papers he'd been given under one arm and holds out his hand. 'Thanks, Sam. Seriously.'

Sam takes his hand and shakes it. He's got a good handshake, Eric thinks dumbly to himself. 'No problem, Eric. It's what the PA hires me to do, and I hope I did a good job for you.'

Awkward, Eric thinks. Also, he's your lawyer!

Ex-lawyer?

'Eric, is something wrong?' Sam asks him, and Eric realises he's sort of just been standing there for twenty seconds in stupefied silence.

'It's over,' he says. 'Like. Really over. No more NHL. No more NHLPA. Just me and the future.'

He's not quite sure where that all came from.

Very cautiously, Sam says to him, 'I'm not trying to jump to any conclusions here, but our firm does specialise in litigation for professional sportspeople and we see a lot of people who go through these sorts of major life and career transitions. There are consultants I can recommend to you, if you'd like.'

To his own surprise, Eric says, 'Yeah. Sure. Why not?'

Hey. Never hurts to have a plan, right?

Sam shuffles him along to some career advice people, some sports management people, but not to any financial advisors because,

'Wow,' he says to Eric over the coffee. They're meeting outside of the office because this is really a personal matter. Private matter. Not-professional matter... thing. 'You really do have your numbers in order.'

'Is that a bad thing?' Eric asks.

'No,' Sam says slowly. 'Just that most people who get this sort of money early on in life blow right through it.'

'Yeah, well.' Eric lifts his good shoulder in a shrug. 'Can't be too careful.'

Sam looks at him then, like he's piecing something together, and suddenly Eric's clothes don't fit right and he can't figure out where to look and he tries to find something else to say except Sam just goes, 'Yeah, that's true,' and breezes right on to prepared foods delivery services.

One of the really staggering things that hits him, as Eric wrangles a few half-hearted applications to management courses over lazy breakfasts with himself, is that he has all this free time, now. Free time and freedom to do whatever he wants.

Like, maybe, date someone. Have a life. Those sorts of things.

'That's a terrible idea,' Eric tells his half-written CV.

Still...

'So,' Eric says over lunch to Ulf, 'I know you retired like, two years ago, but there's this really great lawyer...'

He makes about three referrals (people he played in the AHL with and people he's meeting at these advising sessions) to Sam's firm before Sam catches him one day and drags Eric into his office.

'What?' says Eric, slumping into a chair.

'What are you doing?' Sam asks him. 'Not that we don't appreciate all the new work, but they keep asking for me specifically and my case load is exploding.'

'So... You should be thanking me, right?' Eric asks, waving one hand in the air. 'I'll take a 5% kickback. In cash.'

Sam rolls his eyes. 'Normal people just ask me out when they want to ask me out.'

Eric freezes. 'Who said anything about asking anybody out?' he says. 'Nobody's asking anybody out.'

Sam raises his eyebrows. 'So you're in my office once every other week for... fun?'

'For work! I mean. To give you work! I mean. To say hi, and stuff.'

Sam crosses his arms over his chest. 'So you don't want to ask me out?'

'What kind of question is that?' Eric questions, because this whole thing is one question mark of questions and- 'Isn't that an inappropriate question? You're my lawyer.'

'I was your lawyer,' Sam corrects. 'I'm apparently now the guy you're not asking out?'

'Wh- B- N-'

'Okay,' Sam says, slowly. 'I'll rephrase that question: would you like to go out with me?'

Eric stops dead.

Sam makes a go on motion with one hand.

Eric says the first thing that happens to come to mind, which so happens to be, 'Are you trying to sell this to the press?'

Sam looks so genuinely bewildered that Eric actually doesn't mind when he switches gears right into angry. 'What? No! Why would I sell anything to any press?'

'Because, you know, the Maple Leafs,' Eric blabbers. 'Gay ex-NHLer, all that. People would go crazy.'

'I'm sure they would,' Sam says, looking at him like he's crazy, 'because the press always goes crazy. But only if you made a big deal out of it. Which this does not need to be. If you're asking me about my intentions, Eric – I like you. I'd like to try going out on a date with you. A date where you don't try to pretend it's about work? And if you're worried I'm asking because you're a –' and Sam stops to lift both hands in the air. Sam is literally making jazz hands at him. What? '– big shot hockey player, I literally knew nothing about the Leaves until I took your case.'

'Leafs,' Eric corrects on stunned autopilot.

'Leafs, whatever.'

'How do you not know anything about the Leafs?' Eric blinks, shocked straight back into justified incredulity. 'You live in Toronto! You're actually Canadian!'

'News at nine,' Sam says. 'Not everyone cares about hockey.'

'You have Maple Leafs merchandise right here on your desk!' Eric howls, pointing at the notepad covered in white and blue that's more than halfway used.

'This is actually Canada! I live in Toronto!' Sam parrots back at him. 'Everyone and their pet dog has Maple Leafs merchandise! Someone probably gave that to me the last time they won the Cup or something–'

'We haven't won the Cup in years!'

'How would I know!'

'You would know!' Eric says, standing up because seriously? 'There would be parades! Big parades!'

'We have parades all the time! St. Patrick's Day! The Santa Claus parade! Pride! Yonge is closed more than it's open!'

Eric opens and closes and opens his mouth.

Sam loses patience and quietly hisses, 'So are you going to go out with me or not?'

Eric, who knows a thing or two about responding to aggression with aggression, hisses back, 'Yes, sure, okay!'

'All right! Dinner! Tonight! 8pm!'

'Fine! Good! Where!'

'My place?' Sam asks, breaking their detente. 'It'll be out of the public eye, and I can, actually, cook.'

'Right,' Eric says, flushing. He sticks his hand out. 'Deal.'

Sam looks like he's laughing, except he's not laughing. He still has a really good handshake. 'Deal.'

Sam's apartment is nice, with bits of antique furniture and a kitchen that's really very comprehensive. Sam says it isn't, really, that he's going to wait until he moves into a real house and then he's going to get Miele appliances. Eric has no idea what a Miele is.

'Why do you need so many pots?' asks Eric, nosing through it.

'Why do you need so many sticks?' retorts Sam, stirring something that smells amazing.

'I only use the one,' says Eric. 'It's just got very specific measurements and a curve on the blade and tape.'

Sam blinks at him. 'We're going to just have to understand to not understand each other,' he pronounces.

'Sounds good,' Eric agrees, and sticks his finger into the sauce.

It's only after Sam walks him to his car and he's driven all the way home that Eric realises that that was the first time he'd actually hung out with another guy for, well, sort of romantic-ish reasons that didn't end with two people in bed. And that that's somehow a good thing.

Weirdly, really weirdly, super-unplanned-for weirdly? Sam's good for him. Sam makes him go to PT; Sam talks to him about stuff that isn't the standings; Sam is encouraging about the classes he tries to take; Sam doesn't push him about the fact that the only dates Eric knows how to go on are the ones to sports bars where they sit on opposite sides of a table from each other.

Also unplanned for: life A.I goes on. The world doesn't stop spinning. Spring gives way to road construction season, and road construction season to yet more road construction season, and then it's winter again and it only hurts a little bit.

Eric feels good enough that he goes back to the ACC for the season opener, since they still let ex-players come and sit in one of the boxes. He doesn't wear a suit: just a down jacket and himself, his non-hockey self, but by the second whistle he's on his feet and chirping along with the rest of the crowd at the top of his lungs.

Sometime during intermission, one of the people sitting next to him leans over and says, 'Eric McNally, right?'

'Yeah,' says Eric cautiously. 'Sorry, I don't–'

'Greg, with CSTN news. I noticed you giving that really thorough play-by-play there.' Eric reddens. Greg waves a hand at him. 'No, it was actually really quite good. I always thought you were a bit of a knucklehead on the ice, but you know your stuff, McNally. Want a job?'

'What?'

'That's too much, isn't it,' Eric says, frowning at the suit that he's looking at online. 'It's pinstripes, that's too much.'

'Eric,' Sam sighs. 'Pinstripes don't scream "I'm gay" to the world, you know.'

'It's got to be right,' Eric insists. 'Not flashy like player suits. Not... weird, either.' Because sports newscasting is probably as bad as sports itself and Eric doesn't need to make things any harder for himself than they already are.

'Eric,' Sam sighs again. 'Hockey programmes are hosted by Don Cherry. Whose idea of "conservative" is probably something that's flaming orange but only in one solid colour.'

'He's Don Cherry,' says Eric. 'He won a Cup. He can do whatever the hell he wants.'

'I'm not even going to begin with...' mutters Sam. 'Look, just pick one that doesn't make you look like you're going to a funeral, and breathe, okay? You aced the pre-interview, they like you, they're willing to train you up because you've got great hockey knowledge, so relax.' He kisses Eric on the forehead. 'You'll be fine.'

Eric gets the job.

'I got the job,' he says dumbly to Sam over the phone.

'Told you,' Sam says. 'Congratulations.'

'I got a job,' he continues, just as dumbly.

'Breathing,' Sam says. 'In and out. One thing at a time.'

It's not easy because nothing ever is. The Toronto media landscape was scary enough when he was a player getting ripped apart every night that they didn't mark down a win; as a news guy it's somehow even worse. You have to know who ripped whom for what, when, and where, and it's more information than Eric's ever had to keep in his head.

Everyone's nosy and everything operates on the fumes of gossip, and that scares him, too.

But life has never been presented to him on a silver platter, so Eric does what he knows best: he puts his nose down, and he grinds.

'So Sam said, "don't worry about it," and I said, "sorry," and it turns out that replacing a chair that old is actually kind of expensive,' Eric informs Joan. 'Hello? Are you listening to me?'

She shoves a glass of wine over the table at him. 'You know, it's been... almost two years now, since you started dating him?'

'Three, actually.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'So?'

'So what?'

'Are we ever going to... you know, meet Sam?'

Eric blinks. Two years? Really? 'Oh. Right. Yeah. Okay.'

He sets it up so that it's at dad's place, because a) that means they can both run away if things go somehow horribly wrong and b) he doesn't have to cook.

Joan and Sam get along like a house on fire, because of course they do, and even dad seems to like him, so... that's good. This is all turning out a little bit more normal than how Eric ever envisioned bringing a boyfriend home would be, in the sense that he never thought he'd get to the "bringing a boyfriend home" part until he was, like, forty.

'Have you ever tried going to that place in Kensington Market?' his dad is asking Sam, because they're bonding over food. Apparently some grocery stores sell more things than other grocery stores. Go figure.

'I have, but I'm at Rosedale and that's just too far a commute,' Sam says, actually somehow regretful that he can't acquire fancy cheese with complete ease.

'Rosedale?' dad says. 'That's a... long way from where Eric lives.'

'Yeah, it's a bit of a drive,' Eric comments casually, trying to figure out if there's going to be dessert.

'So, planning on moving in any time, then?' his father sort-of jokes.

Eric nearly spits his wine clear across the table.

'Might be worth serious thought sometime,' Sam says, deflecting the parental atom bomb with enviable ease. 'If we do, it'd be really nice.'

'Oh,' says dad, like he's a little disappointed, but he doesn't push it and Sam pats him on the back and refills his glass and steers them on to other things.

Shit. Shit. Shit?

He thinks about it.

He has to think for six months, but he thinks about it.

Eric's 32 when he shoves a printed spreadsheet over to Sam and says, 'Look at how much money we're spending on rent.'

'You have a mortgage,' Sam says without missing a beat. 'I'm spending money on rent, and that's because this is Toronto.'

'But look at how much we'd save buying versus renting,' Eric urges, because look at that number! Look at it.

'Yes,' Sam says, again stupidly calm. 'That's what happens when you have a lot of money and you invest it on a house that you therefore do not pay either a mortgage or rent on.'

'So much money,' Eric emphasises. 'And it'd be closer to my job, and closer to your job. Net win for everybody.'

'Sure,' says Sam, flipping to the next page of the book he's reading and patting Eric on the back of the neck.

Eric groans. 'Say something!'

Sam finally looks up. 'Say that you want to buy a house with me,' he says.

'There are also these other four options,' Eric says desperately.

Sam smiles, and raises his eyebrows.

Eric stares up at the ceiling. 'I want to buy a house with you,' he says, very quickly.

'Okay,' says Sam, and looks back down at his book.

'Okay?' asks Eric.

'Okay,' says Sam.

Eric crosses his arms, and leans into Sam's side. 'Oh. Okay.'

So he does. He buys a house with Sam, and Sam fills it with Mieles and kitchen stuff and rickety chairs and doors and doesn't complain when he moves six gym machines into the attic. The butter knives in the drawers match. They have a subscription to Antiques Monthly, because apparently people do enough archaeology to publish a monthly magazine about antiques.

Eric, when he clears out his stuff from the apartment he's about to sell, unearths a pile of junk in the backs of his closets that he's surprised to find he hasn't thought about in ages.

Empty cans of protein powder. Unused rolls of stick tape. Old cassettes that he doesn't even have a player to listen to. Duplicates of his jerseys, the whole rainbow coloured assortment's worth. Resistance bands from when he had to do light PT.

He takes a moment to look over the stack. Then he puts them into a few garbage bags, and drags them out, and tosses it all.

It's not that they didn't matter, Eric reflects as he slides into bed next to someone he actually, really thinks he could spend a long, long, rest-of-your-life type long time with. It's just that the world isn't just hockey anymore, and he hadn't expected that.

Life is good, he thinks, shutting his eyes as Sam absent-mindedly pats down his hair. Life probably can't get any better than this.

'Hi,' says the kid, who's going to ruin everything Eric's ever planned for for his career. 'My name is Scot. With one "t". S-C-O-T.'