Work Text:
I hope you enjoy it underneath the light
I hope you can get some sleep tonight
Because where you live the sun doesn’t set
This is your bed. I hope you enjoy
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Cam wasn’t sure when exactly Mikal hatched his plan to meet up with his old college drinking buddies across town. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment the stars in his eyes replaced themselves with fire, with jealousy, maybe, with a conniving glint, with ice.
It was ice. Cam settled on ice.
Cam didn’t know why Mikal had become so cold. He didn’t know when he noticed it, either, but it had been a slow freeze, one which took months. All was well last year. They had a cute place together in Williamsburg. They picked up the pieces of the 2021 Finals little by little. They were still young stars at 26 and 27, miraculously — all had not ended that summer, at least, not in the way it did for Chris, for Dario, for Deandre, for Jae, for Frank, for Jevon, for Abdel, for Langston, for Jalen…
The list went on. Cam prayed he wouldn’t become a part of it.
Cam kept the apartment when Mikal moved to Manhattan, the same way he and Mikal kept the house when Dario got too sad to live there and Frank fell off the face of the earth. Maybe he’d ask Shake or Nic or Noah to take Mikal’s room, or maybe he’d leave it for Puff, if he wanted it. He hated leaving it empty. Every time Cam came home, his empty apartment was a reminder.
Cam frequently caught himself expecting Mikal to pop up in the doorway with his big eyes and his million-dollar smile. He tried to shake it off, but he expected Mikal’s lanky arms wrapped around him at any moment, he expected Mikal talking his ear off about whatever was on his mind, he expected Mikal, Mikal, Mikal.
It was ice, Cam reminded himself. It’s still ice.
Cam wondered why all that he touched became a ghost town. One night, in the backyard, back in Phoenix, Dario said something about how every player drafted by the Sixers over the past decade — everyone who put on that hat on Draft Night, rather — had been cursed. He said it’s why he got injured in the way he did, in the biggest moment of his career, in the stupidest way possible. It’s why Ben burnt out the way he did, why Joel’s never made the Conference Finals, why Jahlil fell out of the league, why Markelle thanked his lucky stars he found a place in Orlando.
“Mikal put on the hat on Draft Night,” Dario said that night, lying on his back on the cool concrete by the pool. “It was only for a minute, but… maybe that’s why we lost.”
“You’re fuckin’ crazy,” Cam laughed from the shallow end of the pool, looking up at the stars.
“We’ll see if he outruns it,” Dario said. “I thought I did for a while, too.”
Cam didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe in curses. Besides, Mikal had never so much as missed a game in his five seasons in the league, anyway. He was all smiles. There was never any reason for him not to smile. He won with Villanova, he was traded to the Suns and missed the Sixers’ rookie curse, he simply opted out of the Nets’ rebuild just by knowing the right people at the right time. Mikal, Iron Man, Mikal, the Warden, with his ever-present grin and his desire to rest his head on his friends’ shoulders — he could leave whenever he wanted to and could charm whoever was necessary in order to get what he wanted.
Mikal was not the type of person for cosmic tragedy to befall.
Cam was.
This whole thing was cosmic. To end up alone in a city he didn’t yet know like the back of his hand, to be without the only person he knew like that — if there was a curse, Mikal had somehow transferred it to him via hex or kiss or something else.
Did Mikal know? Did he care?
Cam didn’t want to think about it.
He shot three after three. He became something which could cut like Mikal did. He stopped thinking about it.
It rattled in the back of his mind all the same.